Sukkot: The True God’s Week Long Festival

And then every survivor from all those nations coming against Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the king, Yahweh of hosts, and celebrate the Feast of Booths.

Zechariah 14:16 (LEB)

Most Christians have no knowledge of the week long festival the Creator gave to His people to enjoy called Sukkot. However, most celebrate the worldly festival of Saturnalia every year for the god Mithra, Saturn and Odin. Creating a myth about the timing of the birth of Jesus to coincide with the sun worshiper’s festivals does not sanctify the days. So how did Christians switch from celebrating festivals ordained by Yahuah to festivals of the gods of this Earth? It is a valid question that everyone who celebrates the time of Saturnalia, renamed Christmas by the Catholic church, should find an answer. Essentially it is a 3500 year old prophecy.

Deuteronomy 4:25–28 (LEB)

²⁵ “When you have had children and grandchildren and you have grown old in the land and you act corruptly and you make a divine image of the form of anything and you do evil in the eyes of Yahweh your God, thus provoking him to anger, ²⁶ I call to witness against you today the heaven and the earth, that you will perish soon and completely from the land that you are crossing the Jordan into it to take possession of it; you will not live long on it, but you will be completely destroyed. ²⁷ And Yahweh will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations to where Yahweh will lead you. ²⁸ And you will there serve gods made by human hands, of wood and stone, gods that cannot see and cannot hear and cannot eat and cannot smell.

Sukkot is a week long festival of the Creator that He shared with the Israelites through Moses. It is the harvest festival of God with specific instructions. Like all the feasts and festivals, without a temple and priests, there are many aspects of the instructions we cannot complete. However, it can be a remembrance of what God has done and point to the future that God has in store for His people.

Leviticus 23:1–2 (LEB)

23 Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, ² “Speak to the Israelites, and say to them, ‘The festivals of Yahweh that you shall proclaim are holy assemblies; these are my appointed times.

Take note that the Creator refers to the Feasts as His festivals and appointed times, and not the feasts and festivals of the Jews, as Christians call them today. Christianity separated themselves from God’s special days listed in Leviticus 23 early on, mostly due to the antisemitism of the Church leadership and the ingrained paganism of the new converts. There were Christians well into the 5th and 6th centuries still celebrating these days and they were persecuted for doing so. Paul encouraged believers in Colossae not to worry about people who judged them for keeping God’s Sabbaths and feasts.

Colossians 2:16–17 (LEB)

¹⁶ Therefore do not let anyone judge you with reference to eating or drinking or participation in a feast or a new moon or a Sabbath, ¹⁷ which are a shadow of what is to come, but the reality is Christ.

Many Christians today have been programed to think Paul is saying not to keep Sabbaths and Feasts of God by these words in his letter to the Colossians. How ridiculous is that? Believers in Colossae were surrounded by pagans celebrating the days of the “elemental spirits” of the world. The root of this Greek word, “stochion” was talking about fairies, elves and Santa Claus, otherwise known as, demons.

Colossians 2:20 (LEB)

²⁰ If you have died with Christ to the elemental spirits of the world, why do you submit to them as if living in the world?

1 Corinthians 10:19–22 (LEB)

¹⁹ Therefore, what am I saying? That food sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? ²⁰ No, but that the things which they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to become sharers with demons. ²¹ You are not able to drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You are not able to share the table of the Lord and the table of demons. ²² Or are we attempting to provoke the Lord to jealousy? We are not stronger than he is, are we?

Paul would never refer to the word of God, or the special days of God, as elemental spirits. Someone who thinks that has been duped by the enemy! Melding God’s days with the worldly festivals and gods was exactly how the Northern kingdom, the House of Israel, was cut off.

Jeremiah 3:6–9 (LEB)

⁶ Then Yahweh said to me in the days of Josiah, the king, “Have you seen what apostate Israel has done? She has gone on every high hill and under every leafy tree and she has prostituted herself there. ⁷ And I thought, ‘After her doing all these things to me she will return,’ but she did not return. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it. ⁸ And I saw that for this very reason, that on account of apostate Israel committing adultery I divorced her and gave the letter of divorce to her. Yet her treacherous sister Judah was not afraid and she went and prostituted herself also. ⁹ And it was because of the frivolity of her fornication that she defiled the land and committed adultery with the stone and with the tree.

Israel gets rejected by God for “committing adultery with stone and tree”, and Christianity thinks it is a good idea to fabricate their own holy days where they place the same trees used by the pagans on their altars and in their homes. Not to mention, the use of stone pillars at their religious sites. Typically, these same people will reject the holy days provided by the Creator through Moses and Israel.

Leviticus 23:33–36 (LEB)

³³ Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, ³⁴ “Speak to the Israelites, saying, ‘On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, this shall be the Feast of Booths for seven days for Yahweh. ³⁵ On the first day there shall be a holy assembly; you must not do any regular work. ³⁶ For seven days you must present an offering made by fire to Yahweh. On the eighth day it shall be a holy assembly for you, and you shall present an offering made by fire to Yahweh; it is a celebration; you must not do any regular work.

During Sukkot, all of the men were required to travel to Jerusalem for the feast and people would make temporary shelters to live in to remind them that they lived in tents when they left Egypt. It is a remembrance of the mighty works of God in the Exodus where He gathered His people out of Egypt.

Leviticus 23:39–44 (LEB)

³⁹ “ ‘Surely on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, at your gathering the land’s produce, you shall hold Yahweh’s festival for seven days; on the first day there shall be a rest period and on the eighth day a rest period. ⁴⁰ And on the first day you shall take for yourselves the first fruit of majestic trees, branches of palm trees and branches of a leafy tree and of a brook’s poplar trees, and you shall rejoice before Yahweh your God for seven days. ⁴¹ And you must hold it as a festival for Yahweh for seven days in the year; it shall be a lasting statute throughout your generations; in the seventh month you must hold it. ⁴² You must live in the booths for seven days; all the natives in Israel must live in the booths, ⁴³ so that your generations shall know that I made the Israelites live in booths when I brought them from the land of Egypt; I am Yahweh your God.’ ” ⁴⁴ Thus Moses announced to the Israelites Yahweh’s appointed times.

When God’s people returned to the land from seventy years of captivity in Babylon, they read from Moses’s writings, and some heard this for the first time.

Nehemiah 8:13–18 (LEB)

¹³ On the second day the heads of the families of all the people, the priests, and the Levites gathered together to Ezra the scribe to study the words of the law. ¹⁴ They found written in the law, which Yahweh had commanded by the hand of Moses, that the Israelites should live in booths during the festival of the seventh month, ¹⁵ and that they should proclaim and give voice in all of their cities in Jerusalem, saying, “Go out to the hill and bring olive tree branches, olive oil wood branches, myrtle shrub branches, palm tree branches, and other leafy tree branches to make booths, as it is written.” ¹⁶ So the people went out and brought them and made booths for themselves, each on his roof, in their courtyards, in the courtyards of the house of God, in the public square of the Water Gate, and in the public square of the Gate of Ephraim. ¹⁷ And all of the assembly of those who returned from captivity made booths and lived in the booths because the Israelites had not done it from the days of Jeshua son of Nun until that day. And there was very great joy. ¹⁸ And he read from the scroll of the law of God day by day from the first day up to the last day. They celebrated the festival for seven days, and on the eighth day there was an assembly according to the rule.

Forever is a very long time, and even though Christianity chooses to celebrate feasts of other gods now, it will not always be this way. Many Christians are leaving the Babylonian, Roman roots of Christianity and are returning to the word of God, trying the best they can to do what He says we should do. This is also prophecy from 3500 years ago, repeated by many of the prophets.

Deuteronomy 4:29–31 (LEB)

²⁹ But from there you shall seek Yahweh your God and will find him, if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. ³⁰ In your distress when all these things have found you in the latter days, then you will return to Yahweh your God, and you will listen to his voice. ³¹ For Yahweh your God is a compassionate God; he will not abandon you, and he will not destroy you, and he will not forget the covenant of your ancestors that he swore to them.

Everyone who makes it to the Millennium kingdom will surely be celebrating the Feast of Booths. Why wouldn’t people who are striving to be in this kingdom want to learn now about these things that they will be doing?

Zechariah 14:12–21 (LEB)

¹² And this will be the plague with which Yahweh will strike all the peoples that fight against Jerusalem: their flesh will rot while they are standing on their feet; their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. ¹³ And then on that day a great panic from Yahweh will fall on them, and they will seize one another’s hand, and the hand of the one will be raised against the hand of another. ¹⁴ And Judah also will fight at Jerusalem. And the wealth of all the surrounding nations will be collected—gold and silver, and garments in great abundance. ¹⁵ Like this plague will be the plague on the horse, the mule, the camel, and the donkey, and every kind of animal in those camps.

¹⁶ And then every survivor from all those nations coming against Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the king, Yahweh of hosts, and celebrate the Feast of Booths. ¹⁷ And then whoever of the clans of the earth does not go up to Jerusalem to worship the king, Yahweh of hosts, it will not rain on them. ¹⁸ And if the clan of Egypt will not go up and come in, on them will be that plague Yahweh inflicts on the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Booths. ¹⁹ This will be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Booths.

²⁰ On that day there will be inscribed on the bells of the horses, “Holy to Yahweh.” And the cooking pots in the house of Yahweh will be holy like the sacrificial basins before the altar. ²¹ And every cooking pot in Jerusalem and in Judah will be holy to Yahweh of hosts, and all those who sacrifice will come and will take from them, and will cook in them, and there will be no longer a trader in the house of Yahweh of hosts on that day.

It sounds like even after Yahuah establishes His kingdom on this Earth there will be people still not on board with His Feasts. I wonder if they will still be celebrating the feast of other gods such as the Saturnalia (Christmas) at that time? The people that do not celebrate the Feast of Booths in this kingdom will be punished with drought and plagues, yet we often pray this prayer:

Matthew 6:9–10 (LEB)

“Our Father who is in heaven, may your name be treated as holy. ¹⁰ May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Learn about Sukkot and leave behind the gods of this world. With Israel still dispersed in the nations, no priests or temple, we will have to wait until the Millennial kingdom to be able to celebrate properly; however, that does not give us reason to ignore the feasts and turn to feasts of other gods. That is nonsensical. Repent and believe the gospel!

Featured photo by Maja Petric on Unsplash.

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