What Do the Feast Days Teach About the Advent Movement?

God called the feasts "the feasts of the LORD" and "holy convocations" (Leviticus 23:2, 4). Every year they took Israel from Passover in the spring to Tabernacles in the autumn. Hebrews says the sanctuary services were "the example and shadow of heavenly things" (Hebrews 8:5). Paul says the holy days were "a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ" (Colossians 2:16–17).

So we start with Jesus. The feasts were not an end in themselves. They were a picture of how God would save His people through His Son.

Passover: "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Corinthians 5:7). Jesus died at Passover time, as the Lamb of God (John 1:29; John 19:14).

Unleavened Bread: Paul links it to a life made clean, kept "with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Corinthians 5:8). The sinless One lay in the tomb.

Firstfruits: the first sheaf was waved "on the morrow after the sabbath" (Leviticus 23:11). "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept" (1 Corinthians 15:20).

Pentecost: fifty days later (Leviticus 23:15–16), the Holy Spirit came and three thousand souls were gathered in, like the first harvest (Acts 2:1–4, 41).

These spring feasts were fulfilled in the very season they pictured. That pattern leads many students to ask whether the autumn feasts also have a fulfillment.

Trumpets (Leviticus 23:24): a blowing of trumpets on the first day of the seventh month. It called Israel to get ready for the Day of Atonement ten days later. In Scripture, trumpets often announce a warning and God's coming judgment (Joel 2:1).

Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16; 23:27–32): the one day each year when the high priest went into the Most Holy Place, "to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the LORD" (Leviticus 16:30). It was a day of searching the heart and of judgment.

Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:34–43): the joyful feast of the final harvest, held as Israel remembered living in booths in the wilderness. It looks ahead to God living with His people (Revelation 21:3).

In the 1830s and 1840s, students of Daniel 8:14 — "Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed" — reasoned that the cleansing of the sanctuary pointed to the Day of Atonement. The spring feasts had been fulfilled on time, so they expected the fulfillment of the autumn feasts to come on time as well.

Using the Karaite Jewish way of setting the calendar, Samuel S. Snow and others placed the Day of Atonement of 1844 on October 22. Thousands proclaimed the warning, which many later compared to a trumpet call and to the first angel's message: "the hour of his judgment is come" (Revelation 14:7).

The movement expected Christ to return to the earth that day. He did not, and the disappointment was bitter (compare Revelation 10:9–10). As they studied again, some saw that the Day of Atonement pictured the high priest entering the Most Holy Place, not leaving it. That pointed to the start of Christ's closing ministry and judgment in the heavenly sanctuary (Hebrews 8:1–2; Daniel 7:9–10, 13), not His Second Coming.

The feasts do not set a date for Christ's return. "Of that day and hour knoweth no man" (Matthew 24:36). The 1844 experience is itself a warning against date-setting.

The feasts also do not make observing the ceremonies a test of salvation. Christians are not to be judged over holy days (Colossians 2:16). Their value lies in the Christ they point to.