Leviticus 23 · a question people ask
Do the feasts map out Jesus' first coming and his return?
The New Testament ties some of these days to Jesus by name. Paul writes, "Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place" (1 Corinthians 5:7), and "Christ the first fruits, then those who are Christ’s at his coming" (1 Corinthians 15:23). And of feast days and Sabbaths as a whole he says they "are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s" (Colossians 2:16-17). Christians agree on all of this. They differ over whether each feast has its own event in Jesus' story, in order.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
The first feasts kept, the last still to come
Those who hold this view read the first-month feasts and the fiftieth day as kept at Jesus' first coming: Christ is "our Passover" (1 Corinthians 5:7), "the first fruit of those who are asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20), and the Spirit was poured out "when the day of Pentecost had come" (Acts 2:1). They read the seventh-month feasts as pointing to his return, and set "a memorial of blowing of trumpets" (23:24) beside the Lord's coming "with God’s trumpet" (1 Thessalonians 4:16) and "at the last trumpet" (1 Corinthians 15:52).
1 Corinthians 5:7 · 1 Corinthians 15:20 · Acts 2:1 · Leviticus 23:24 · 1 Thessalonians 4:16 · 1 Corinthians 15:52
A shadow, without a timetable
Those who hold this view note that the New Testament never cites the feast of 23:24 when it speaks of the trumpet at the Lord's coming (1 Thessalonians 4:16), and that Hebrews sets the high priest's entry "once in the year" (Hebrews 9:7) beside Christ, who "entered in once for all into the Holy Place, having obtained eternal redemption" (Hebrews 9:12). They take "a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s" (Colossians 2:17) as a word about the feasts together, and don't assign each one a future event.
1 Thessalonians 4:16 · Hebrews 9:7 · Hebrews 9:11-12 · Colossians 2:17
The verses
“Purge out the old yeast, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place.”
“But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then those who are Christ’s at his coming.”
“Let no one therefore judge you in eating or drinking, or with respect to a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day, which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s.”