THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS “THE FEAST OF TRUMPETS”!

If you are a member of God’s Church, then you really should understand something very clearly! This involves an error which we all ignorantly accepted when we came into God’s Church. It is an error that the various Church of God organizations have for at least the past two decades simply not been willing to correct. But you, a baptized member of God’s Church, need to understand this, and then consider discussing it with your pastor.

Simply put, the error is this:

The Holy Day of Trumpets is not a Feast, and it has never been a Feast! And it does not represent a Feast! Is that clear?

It is wrong to refer to Trumpets as “a Feast”. To think of Trumpets as a Feast reveals a glaring lack of understanding God’s plan. Such thinking removes all meaning from the word “feast”. It makes “feast” a word without meaning. Such thinking reveals a mind that is not prepared to think logically, a mind that will simply accept whatever it is told to accept.

If something does not involve “feasting” in some way, why would God possibly call it “a feast”?

How about asking some serious questions?

Do you have a desire to understand the truth of God, or are you content with accepting whatever someone else tells you? Do you actually believe in seriously studying the Bible, in order to “show yourself approved unto God” (see 2 Timothy 2:15)? How can you show yourself approved unto God in this specific regard? Do you make an effort to “rightly divide the word of truth”, i.e. rightly distinguishing truth from error which, in this case, is based on mistranslations?

If you accept the responsibility, which 2 Timothy 2:15 squarely places on your shoulders, then you need to stop referring to Trumpets as “a Feast”! You don’t have the rest of your life to make that change. You need to face this question now, and then you need to change your thinking. Because it is wrong to think of Trumpets as “a Feast”. There is nothing feast-like about Trumpets, nothing at all. So why would God call it “a feast”? God has never called Trumpets “a feast”!

THE BASICS

In God’s plan there are 3 Feasts and 7 Holy Days in the year. There are not 4 Feasts or 5 Feasts, just 3 and 3 only.

The 3 Feasts are: the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. There are no other Feasts in the year. And the weekly Sabbath is certainly not a feast.

The 7 annual Holy Days are: the 1st Day of U.B., the 7th Day of U.B., Pentecost, the Day of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, the 1st Day of F.o.T., and the Last Great Day. There are no other annual Holy Days in the year. The Sabbath is a weekly Holy Day. As you already understand, Pentecost is both a Feast and a Holy Day. The Feast of U.B. consists of 7 days, only 2 of which are Holy Days. The Feast of Tabernacles also consists of 7 days, but only 1 of those 7 days is a Holy Day. And the Last Great Day Holy Day is attached to the end of the Feast of Tabernacles.

In addition, there is 1 annual observance which is neither a Feast nor a Holy Day. It is a commanded observance which is restricted to baptized members of God’s Church. That restriction ensures that it is neither a Feast nor a Holy Day, and unbaptized people (both adults and children) are not desecrating holy time or “sanctified time” by not participating in this observance. It is God who prohibits them from having any part in this observance. That observance is the Passover.

Consider a parallel.

People in the world are not trying to obey God. But even though they are not in God’s Church, they are still responsible for breaking the weekly Sabbath week after week. The Sabbath is holy time that God established in a repeating pattern, and every human being who breaks the Sabbath is guilty of breaking a law of God, including all the people who have never seen a Bible. Not keeping the Sabbath incurs guilt, which will certainly be forgiven when such a person comes to a real repentance. But there is guilt to start with.

Now if the Passover was also holy or sanctified time, then every human being who does not observe the Passover would be guilty before God of defiling that holy time. No human being can disregard holy time that God has established without the consequence of guilt. But the Passover is not holy time, and God does not want any unbaptized person to participate in the Passover service.

And the Passover applies to God the Father “giving His only begotten Son” for our sins (see John 3:16), which was the greatest sacrifice God the Father could possibly make ... and that was certainly not “a feast-like occasion”. It was a stressful time for God the Father. And calling the Passover “a feast” very callously makes light of the stress God the Father accepted, in order to make salvation for us human beings possible. The Passover was certainly not “a feast” for God!

Understand that when God establishes holy time, then that holy time applies to all human beings. But God will never, under any circumstances, establish a period of time that is both holy and not holy at the same time! Never! That is, it can never be holy time for a certain limited group of people, and at the same time be not holy time for all other people. A period of time established by God is either holy or it is not holy.

So when God makes clear that unbaptized people are not to observe a specific occasion (i.e. the Passover), then that Passover time cannot be holy time, because non-observance by unbaptized people would imply desecrating holy time, simply by following God’s instruction for unbaptized people not to participate in the Passover. So the Passover is not holy time.

Anyway, that’s enough about the Passover. The Passover is not really involved in the subject we are discussing here.

WHY ARE THE 3 FEASTS CALLED “FEASTS”?

Feasts are intended to be celebrations of times when good things have happened. There is joy and happiness and positive excitement. Feasts are not occasions for dealing with problems. Problems certainly need to be dealt with, but dealing with problems is not something to put people in a festive mood. Dealing with problems is a sobering activity, not a feast activity.

It is God who determined to call each of these 3 occasions “a Feast”. They are not our Feasts. No, they are God’s Feasts. They are occasions when God calls for “a Feast”. But why would God do that? What is there for God to feast about?

God the Father and Jesus Christ have been working for a very long time, and are still working right now, towards the goal of building the Family of God, with ultimately multiple billions of members making up that Family. And achieving that goal is something that God will celebrate with a feast on a huge scale, which scale we human beings cannot possibly grasp.

We need to understand that this present period of physical human existence is also a very stressful time for God! And when certain significant events along the way towards achieving God’s great goal are actually achieved, then God celebrates with great feasts. Consider the following points:

1) It was extremely stressful for both God the Father and Jesus Christ, for Jesus Christ to take upon Himself the extremely dangerous responsibility of becoming our Savior by living a perfect mortal human life, and then dying an agonizing death, to make the forgiveness of our sins possible. Christ was seriously tested, and it was by no means a foregone conclusion that He would succeed in living a perfect life. The level of stress that Jesus Christ had to deal with is revealed in His prayer shortly before His crucifixion. This is recorded by Luke as follows:

Saying, Father, if You be willing, remove this cup from Me: nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done. (Luke 22:42)

This request is an expression of the stress that Jesus Christ was dealing with at that point. And so God the Father sent an angel to strengthen Jesus Christ.

And there appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him. (Luke 22:43)

And even after an angel had strengthened Him, Jesus Christ was still in extreme mental agony, as shown in the next verse.

And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly: and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. (Luke 22:44)

Jesus Christ was facing the greatest possible danger to His future immortal existence, and that created an agonizing stress for Jesus Christ.

No other human being has ever faced the level of stress that Jesus Christ had to deal with. Christ knew very vividly that His own future existence and the potential for human beings to be resurrected into God’s Family lay squarely on His shoulders. He risked His own existence to make future immortal life possible for human beings. That risk was an enormous stress. And I believe that it is very offensive to refer to that occasion (i.e. the Passover) as “a Feast”!

2) God the Father and Jesus Christ both are “not willing that any should perish” (see 2 Peter 3:9). Think about that. That is how God views human lives. So consider the monumental stress on God, when before the flood all but a small handful of human beings chose the path of perishing. Multiple millions of human beings “perished” in that period before the end of the flood. That was a stressful result for God, who had created human beings with very great expectations.

It was an extremely stressful recognition, when God finally accepted that:

... the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart. (Genesis 6:5-6)

This tells us that dealing with human beings before the flood was very stressful for God. It was so stressful that God actually regretted that He had created human beings. When something grieves God at His heart, that creates stress for God. Stress makes us regret doing the things that brought the stress upon us. And for a while God regretted having created us human beings.

3) So when some human beings actually freely and voluntarily submit their lives unconditionally to God’s rule, then there is “joy in heaven” for every single person who truly repents (see Luke 15:7). In other words, when any human beings really repent, then that results in a festive joyful atmosphere “in heaven”. God and all the holy angels are excited to witness real human repentance. That is what Luke 15:7 is telling us.

So here is the point:

The 3 occasions God chose to call “Feasts” all represent very significant steps in the fulfillment of God’s great plan, with the specific focus on human beings being changed into the immortal sons of God. This is how it goes:

1) The Feast of Unleavened Bread represents putting sins out of our lives. And putting sins out of our lives represents the very first step in submitting our lives to God. It is the first step towards increasing the Family of God. That is what creates “joy in heaven”. When people truly repent, that creates a reason for a feast. When the prodigal son repented, his father made “a feast” for him (see Luke 15:21-24).

Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread only represents the start of the process of human beings making a commitment to God. They can still go back on their repentance, and lose out on salvation. But they are starting out on the right track. God’s focus is directed on those specific individuals. And that event (putting out all sins) God represents as a Feast, because it gives God joy. Those people are no longer identified with the definition God presented in Genesis 6:5-6.

[As an aside: Jesus Christ is the first of the firstfruits (see 1 Corinthians 15:23, etc.). But Jesus Christ was a member of the God Family before His human ministry. And when God the Father gave back to Jesus Christ the glory Christ had possessed before His human life, then that did not make the Family of God larger. Christ’s ministry had created a specific foundation, but as yet the Family of God had not grown in numbers. So Christ’s part in God’s plan is not represented by a feast. Feasts are reserved for the process of human beings becoming members of God’s Family. And in addition, feasts are reserved for joyful occasions, which is not at all the case with the Passover.]

2) The Feast of Pentecost represents the 144,000 firstfruits being inducted into God’s Family. It represents all the people who will be in the first resurrection. This step represents 144,000 men and women being resurrected (or changed in the twinkling of an eye) to immortal life in the Family of God. This step expands the Family of God from 2 God Beings to 144,002 God Beings. This is a mighty occasion for a Feast for God. The actual feasting for this specific occasion is identified as “the marriage supper”, a time of joyous feasting for God and His Family.

3) The Feast of Tabernacles represents “the great fall harvest” into the Family of God. The people in the millennium and the people in the second resurrection will form one single group (that’s why the Last Great Day is appended to the Feast of Tabernacles!), who are all inducted into God’s Family at precisely the same point in time. That point in time will be the instant before the lake of fire will begin to consume this entire present universe.

This harvest will add many, many billions of human beings to the Family of God. This harvest will complete the Family of God. After that time no new members will ever again be added to the Family of God. And that achievement will be a reason for God to have a staggering feast, represented by keeping this feast for 7 days, compared to the one day Pentecost Feast for those in the first resurrection. This Feast is on a much bigger scale than the Feast of Pentecost.

So that is why these 3 occasions are “the Feasts of God”, and not just Holy Days. They are joyful occasions for God, that mark 3 highly significant points in God’s extremely ambitious plan to create a Family of God Beings:

1) Unleavened Bread: Putting out sins involves putting down the natural mind that is spontaneously hostile towards God (Romans 8:7). It gives God great joy when we begin to change, and to put “leaven” out of our lives.

2) Pentecost: God’s Family grows from 2 to 144,002 individuals. This represents the fruits that will result from the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It represents all those who stayed faithful after having begun with putting sins out of their lives. Again, this will give God great joy.

3) Tabernacles: God’s Family grows from 144,002 to many billions of individuals. The Family of God will be complete. God will have achieved the goal God the Father and Jesus Christ set out to achieve such a long time ago. And that will be something God will celebrate with a monumental Feast!

So these 3 occasions God chose to identify as His “Feasts”.

HOW DO HOLY DAYS DIFFER FROM FEASTS?

We’ve sometimes explained that all the annual observances refer to the various steps in God’s plan of salvation for mankind. Now within that overall plan there are some steps that are worthy of celebrating as “feasts”. But there are also other steps that are vitally important, but they don’t refer to anything that we could possibly “feast about”.

Those important non-feasting steps are identified as either Holy Day observances, or as “an annual observance for a very limited group of people” (the Passover).

The Passover is nothing to feast about! God does not “feast” about the death of Jesus Christ for our sins. The Passover represents a sacrifice that both God the Father and Jesus Christ were prepared to make for us sinful human beings. A  time to feast and God bringing a sacrifice for us human beings are mutually exclusive. If something is a feast, it cannot involve God making a sacrifice for us. And when God makes a sacrifice for us, then that occasion cannot be a feast. It is very wrong to refer to the Passover as “a feast”.

The Holy Day of Trumpets is primarily focused on a devastating war! It takes place when Christ returns, and it takes place in the presence of Jesus Christ. That war is a part of the wrath of God, ending with the 7 last plagues being poured out upon a rebellious humanity. You have to be totally out of your mind to believe that such a horrific war could possibly be called “a feast”! What is there to feast about when billions of human beings will die? Does God celebrate when billions of people die? Of course not! Recall 2 Peter 3:9.

Okay, maybe I’m not being very diplomatic here, but we need to understand what will actually happen when that 7th Trumpet is blown. Keep in mind that a trumpet represented the imminency of war. The events that will take place when the 7th Trumpet is blown are not anything to feast about. The Day of Trumpets cannot be a feast! And neither does Trumpets add any additional members to God’s Family.

The Holy day of Atonement nobody has ever referred to as a feast. Why not? The only reason why ministers don’t speak about “the Feast of Atonement” is because Atonement demands fasting. And they could figure out that if we are commanded to fast, then we can’t possibly be feasting at the same time. But understand something here:

They have not denied Atonement the label “a Feast” because of the events Atonement represents. They have only denied Atonement the “Feast” label because the day requires fasting. And if Atonement did not require fasting, they probably would call this “the Feast of Atonement”. Denying Atonement the “feast” label because of the fasting requirement is very shallow flawed reasoning.

Atonement represents all sins that have been forgiven by God being placed on Satan’s head. And Satan is then removed from any opportunity to influence human beings. But that doesn’t add any new members to God’s Family. And some human beings will still sin and conduct themselves in selfish ways even when Satan has been removed. Any event that deals with sins cannot be a feast, i.e. except when human beings actually voluntarily walk away from sins, in which case sins are not really involved.

The removal of Satan has no effect at all on the tendencies of the natural human mind. The natural human mind is opposed to God, whether or not Satan is around. All Satan’s presence does is amplify and bring out into the open the tendencies of the natural mind. But the tendencies are there already, even without Satan’s presence. And we must recognize, face up to, and deal with those tendencies.

The Last Great Day represents an opportunity for salvation for all those people who either were not prepared to freely submit their lives to God during their first lives, or who never had the opportunity to come into contact with God’s truth during their first lifetime. So God has not declared a Feast for this group.

Rather, God has attached them to the great harvest feast (i.e. Tabernacles), putting them on the same level as all the people who will live during the millennium. This group does indeed contribute towards increasing the size of the Family of God. And so they are attached to the Feast of Tabernacles, like an afterthought. In fact, they actually are “an afterthought”, because they represent a later addition to God’s original plan. 

They were not a part of God’s plan at the time of Adam. But after the abysmal results for the time before the flood, God modified His plan of salvation to some degree, and that is when the Last Great Day (i.e. the people in the 2nd resurrection) was attached to the 3rd Feast of God. So technically they are not a Feast, but they are attached to a Feast.

So much for understanding why neither Trumpets nor Atonement can possibly be called “a Feast”. Now let’s consider the proof in the Old Testament, which proves that Trumpets is not a Feast.

TWO DIFFERENT TYPES OF RELIGIOUS DAYS

As already indicated above, God established two completely different categories of religious observances. The one category involves festive celebrations, representing times of joy and happiness. This category of observances God has called “feasts”. Feasts celebrate the good results that will be achieved by God’s plan.

And then God also established one category of observances that does not qualify to be called “feasts”. This category doesn’t necessarily involve feasting. Rather, this category is focused on meeting together, for the purpose of representing specific events that are also significant parts of God’s plan for mankind. Now where those occasions for “meeting together” also involve “feasting”, they are simultaneously identified with the “feast” category.

But the bottom line is that God established two completely different categories of observances for His people.

And in order to make this clear to His people, God used two completely different and unrelated Hebrew words, to identify these two distinct categories of observances. Those two Hebrew words are “chag” and “mow’ed”. We’ll consider both words shortly. We’ll see that one word is focused on feasting, and the other word is focused on getting together with others. One reason for “getting together” is to feast. And that reason is acknowledged by placing 4 of the annual “getting together” days within the 3 annual “Feasts”. Those 4 “getting together” days are: 1st Day of U.B., 7th Day of U.B., Pentecost, and 1st Day of F.o.T..

But there are also other reasons for getting together, which don’t involve any feasting at all. And those other “getting together” days are: Passover, Trumpets, Atonement, and the Last Great Day.

Before we consider the two Hebrew words involved here, there is something we need to understand.

PAGAN RELIGIONS DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS

Our English versions of the Hebrew Old Testament have come to us first by way of the Greek language (i.e. the LXX), and then also by way of the Latin language (i.e. the Latin Vulgate). While our translators mostly used the Hebrew text for translating the Old Testament into English, they also relied to a considerable degree on the Greek language LXX version, and on the Latin language Vulgate version. And their actual understanding of what certain Hebrew words supposedly mean was heavily influenced by how those specific Hebrew words had been translated into Greek and into Latin.

And with our subject here that influence has created a problem.

Whereas in the Hebrew text God made a clear distinction between religious observances that are “feasts”, and religious observances that are not “feasts” but are only “occasions for meeting together”, such a distinction simply did not exist in Greek society. The pagan religious days in Greek society did not have any such distinctions. And so in biblical Greek there simply wasn’t a word available to express this distinction between two completely different categories of religious observances.

So the translators translated the Hebrew word that means “feast” (i.e. “chag”) with the one Greek word that also means “feast”. That was fine. But then they also translated the other Hebrew word that really means “gathering, getting together” (i.e. “mow’ed”) with the same Greek word that means “feast”. And that was wrong! In making this mistake the translators implied that the two Hebrew words “chag” and “mow’ed” are synonyms, that they basically mean the same thing. And that is simply not correct.

So when we come to the Greek text of the New Testament, the writers had the Greek word “heorte” available to translate the Hebrew word “chag”. Both words (“heorte” in Greek, and “chag” in Hebrew) mean “feast”. But there was no Greek word for the Hebrew “mow’ed”! All that the NT writers could do was to also render “mow’ed” as “heorte” in their Greek text.

That created potential problems of misunderstanding! “Chag” and “mow’ed” do not have the same meaning in Hebrew. But the Greek New Testament text implies that they do (supposedly) mean the same thing.

Some people may reason: God “inspired” the New Testament writers to translate both Hebrew words with the one Greek word for “feast”. But that line of reasoning is garbage! There simply wasn’t a Greek word available that would have expressed the correct meaning of “mow’ed”. And it was God who had “inspired” the distinction between “chag” and “mow’ed” in the Hebrew text.

9 years ago, in May 2017, I wrote a 22-page article titled “THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN ‘FEASTS’ AND ‘HOLY DAYS’”. That article examines these two Hebrew words “chag” and “mow’ed” in great detail. The article is available on my website for downloading.

Anyway, once the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament erased the distinction between “chag” and “mow’ed”, treating these two Hebrew words as 100% synonymous, then Jerome did the same thing with his Latin language translation known as the Vulgate. Jerome did this even though the Latin language actually had two distinct Latin words available. Jerome could have used the one Latin word to consistently translate “chag”, and the other Latin word to consistently translate “mow’ed”. But Jerome didn’t do that! And so the Latin Vulgate translation upheld the confusion that the Greek LXX translation had initiated.

This is explained at length in the above-mentioned article. I’m not going to repeat it here. You can check that article for all the information about these two words. Here I will just present some consequences and conclusions.

In the Old Testament the weekly Sabbath and the 7 annual Holy Days are all identified by the Hebrew word “mow’ed”, a word that means “to gather, to assemble”. And so in the KJV “mow’ed” is correctly translated 150 times as “congregation”. And then it is also 23 times translated incorrectly as “feast”.

A word that means “congregation” (i.e. people getting together) cannot also mean “feast” at the same time, because these two words “congregation” and “feast” refer to completely different things. The word “feast” does not mean the same as the word “assembling”. People can assemble for any number of reasons other than wanting to feast.

But in order to uphold and to justify their unbiblical traditions, people will ignore the actual meanings of words. That’s what the Jewish sages of past ages did, and that’s what many ministers amongst God’s people will still do today. Who really cares if “chag” and “mow’ed” have different meanings? Who really cares if it is totally inappropriate “to feast” about events that refer to someone dying (i.e. Jesus Christ at the Passover, and billions of people at Trumpets)?

In the Old Testament only the 3 feasts are identified with the Hebrew word “chag”. Trumpets, Atonement and the Last Great Day are never identified with the word “chag”. The word “chag” is used 62 times in the Old Testament: In the KJV it is correctly translated 56 times as “feast” and 2 times as “feast days”; and it is incorrectly translated 3 times as “sacrifice” and 1 time as “solemnity”.

[On my website I also have a 20-year-old  article that discusses the forged insertion of the word “Passover” into the text of Deuteronomy 16. You can check that article for more information.]

This illustrates the confusion which the KJV translators created. 56 times they translated “chag” as “feast”; and 23 times they mistranslated “mow’ed” as “feast”. In so doing, they assigned the same meaning to both Hebrew words. And in the process they also obliterated the actual meaning of the word “feast”.

Now the Jewish Talmudic sages had an ulterior motive for wanting “chag” and “mow’ed” to mean the same thing. That ulterior motive was to justify their unbiblical custom of calling the Passover “a feast”. Never mind that the voluntary death of Jesus Christ is absolutely not something that God would ever call “a feast”.

And today ministers in the various Church of God groups are simply not willing to examine the evidence for why Trumpets must never be called “a Feast”. They are not interested in examining the different meanings of the Hebrew words “chag” and “mow’ed”. They are not interested in examining the evidence for the forged insertion of the word “Passover” in Deuteronomy 16, inserted explicitly to justify referring to the Passover as “a feast”. They are not interested in “growing in knowledge” (see 2 Peter 3:18).

And so they continue speaking about “the Feast of Trumpets”!

Well, what about you? Do you still believe that God refers to the Day of Trumpets, picturing the death of billions of people, as “the Feast of Trumpets”?

I am not presenting the grammatical evidence in this article. That evidence is available in the other articles I have mentioned. And it is freely available for anyone who will put out the effort to look it up. But do yourself a favor, and don’t ever again speak about “the Feast of Trumpets”, because Trumpets cannot possibly be a feast!

Frank W Nelte