FEAST OF TABERNACLES & THE FORMER AND LATTER RAIN
FEAST OF TABERNACLES & THE FORMER AND LATTER RAIN
October 4, 2014, the Year of our Lord
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Leviticus 23: 40-42:
“You shall take on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, the branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days…You shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths.”
The Seventh Feast of Jehovah is Tabernacles. This year the dates are October 8-16th, 2014. With the closing harvest (fruit) of the year, the nation of Israel under the Old Covenant set aside 7 days unto the Lord, on the 15th to the 21st day of the 7th month. Israel observed two different calendars. They had the Sacred year which began with the Passover in April. They had a Civil Year which began in October. Thus October was the first month of the Civil Year, but the seventh month of the Sacred year ---the month of the Feast of Tabernacles.
Jesus Christ is revealed in the fullness of the Godhead bodily, the Lord of this feast, the Booth in whom the Father lived, moved and had His being.
Applied to the Christian, we receive the full adoption and redemption of our bodies, becoming a tabernacle for the fullness of God.
“And the Feast of Ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when you have gathered in your labors out of the field” (Ex. 23:16).
“If the Passover is wonderful---and it certainly is---how much more wonderful shall we expect Pentecost to be in its fullness? If Pentecost is wonderful, how much more shall we expect Tabernacles to exceed it in glory? In the Passover we have but the sheaf of First-fruits by way of harvest, and not the harvest itself. But Pentecost was the harvest. And what a tremendous harvest there was! So now the Feast of Ingathering must far surpass Pentecost, even as Pentecost surpassed the harvest of the Sheaf of First-fruits.
The Cross and Pentecost ---this was but the dawning of the great Day of the Church. That Day has already extended over 2000 years. The sun rises higher and higher and higher in the heavens of God’s eternal purpose.
Through the disobedience of the reapers, the sun was darkened, and the moon (even the Church) did not give her light. During the dark ages, did the Sun of Righteousness set in the heavens? Was the church swallowed up in defeat? No! It was not the setting of the Sun, but it was a great eclipse that caused the darkness, even the eclipse of the Dark Ages.
First there was the eclipse of the moon, the Church. In her circuit about the heavens, she was caught in the shadow of the earth, and the corruption of the earth transformed her beautiful glow into blood and sorrow. A few godly saints were left. For God has always had His remnant. They must have thought the sun had set forever upon the once---glorious Church! But no! It was just an eclipse, and in due course---according to Divine pattern, the moon began once again to take on her celestial glory, and the Sun began to shine brilliantly in the heavens of the Church Age. The Reformation had started. Light began to dawn upon the darkened understanding of men, and truth began to be restored to the Church.
The Reformation has not ended by any means. Indeed, in 2014, it too seems to have gone into partial eclipse. But rays of promise are again breaking forth from the heavens. “The darkness is passing away, and the true light now shines.” (1 Jn. 2:8)
“Who is she that looks forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?”
Satan’s plan in the latter days is to “wear out the saints”. Remnant of God let us not be weary in well doing. Let us hold our banner high. Let us declare the mighty works of the Lord and never accept defeat.
There are many groups, i.e. “streams” in the Church according to God’s plan and purpose. “There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number. My dove, my undefiled is but one” (Song 6:9). There is a place for all God’s people in His great House.
Jesus testified, “I am the vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, He prunes it, that it may bring forth more fruit.” (Jn. 15:1-2).
God always brings light out of darkness, life out of death, joy out of sorrow, strength out of weakness, and fruition out of barrenness. We can rejoice, therefore, as we see the desolation of Zion, knowing that her “desert” shall become like the very Garden of the Lord. “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing…” (Isa. 35: 1-2).
We are looking forward with anticipation for the coming of the promised “latter rain”. The saints of God are thirsting for these living streams from heaven. What has happened to the church even in the past five years? We go to meetings hoping for a touch of the Lord…more often than not, the meetings are pleasant, social, seeing and being seen by the popular, but no true presence, no holiness.
My whole purpose for choosing the obscure and humble structure of the Little White Church was to sort out the “crowd” who were “following the crowd”. I wanted to join with the remnant, who were seeking after the Lord with their whole heart. There are times I think the “crowd mentality” that measures success by numbers has worn me down.
God is waiting for the hour when He shall bestow His latter rain, just as anxiously---and even more patiently---than we are. James says, “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.” In a very real sense the coming of the latter rain is the coming of the Lord into the midst of His people. That is exactly what the prophet Hosea declared: “then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord; his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth” (Hos. 6:3).
The time is at hand when we may with all confidence expect the latter rain, for this is the last day, and God’s triumphant Church must be a glorious Church. However, it is not only the latter rain for which we are looking, but the latter and former rain!
God promised that His people should have the seed rain and the harvest rain, both in due season as they walked in His ways. The first rain and the latter rain that you may gather in your corn, wine, and oil. This is what James was referring to, and it is what Joel prophesied about.
‘Be glad, you children of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God; for he has given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month. The floors shall be full of wheat. The vats shall overflow with wine and oil.”
Of course, this passage had a partial fulfillment at Pentecost. Peter declared: “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel…” Pentecost, however, is a harvest of First-fruits. The fullness of the harvest however is the Feast of Ingathering in the seventh month when the wine and oil were gathered in. “Be glad then you children, and rejoice in the Lord, you’re God; for he has given you the former rain moderately…” Dispensationaly this was Pentecost, when God first poured out His Spirit in showers of the former rain.
He will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain, in the first month” The period from October to April was the rainy season. Then followed the long summer months when no rains were to be expected. The October and early November rains were called the former or the seed rains---the rains which prepared the ground for the seed; then the rainy season ended with the latter rains of April, or the harvest rains—that which caused the grain to ripen; preparatory for the harvest.
Joel’s prophecy, therefore, speaks of Pentecost---but it goes on to embrace the fullness of Pentecost, even the Feast of Tabernacles.
Are we the church as blind as the world? Can we not see what God has promised His people in this great hour? Not only the fullness of a great and glorious harvest, as in Pentecost. Not only the wonderful harvest of Tabernacles, the Feast of Ingathering. But all the glory and power of the early Church combined with all the glory and power which rightfully belongs to the triumphant Church of the last days! All her former glory combined with all her latter glory! Truly we cannot begin to imagine the great and tremendous things which God has prepared for them that love Him!
“And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall over flow with wine and oil”; literally “new wine and oil”. “Be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. God bestows His gifts freely by His grace upon whosoever He will, but the Gifts are not evidence of spiritual attainment. Fruit must grow. God has never intended that the Body of Christ should ever bring forth fruit except through a continual Divine growth in the Spirit of God.
The Ascension gifts are for the purpose of adding growth to God’s Garden that we “may grow up into Him”. God will not come to us looking for gifts, but for fruits of the Spirit. He gave us His gifts freely by His grace. All we had to do was to receive them and use them. What God wants now is fruit. That is something which must grow in us by our patient and continual walk with God and our appropriation of His Spirit.
Until now the Husbandman has come into His garden, pruning, cultivating, and watering---without expecting anything in return. But now the harvest time is approaching, and soon He shall visit His garden for one purpose and for one purpose only; seeking for fruit, and trust that His tender care over the vine has produced genuine fruit of the Spirit.
Let us never forget that the fruits of the Spirit, not the gifts of the Spirit, constitute the real test of spiritual life. It is the fruit that is the embodiment and expression of Christ-likeness within the heart and soul.
Paul exhorted, “Follow after love, and desire spiritual gifts”.
O what a grand and glorious day awaits the Church in the Feast of Ingathering! The Day of the fruit of the Spirit! Because we do not have the fruit of the Spirit in any degree of fullness, we cannot appreciate its glory.
Our chief difficulty seems to be a limited and finite understanding of the greatness, vastness, height, depth and width of God’s Truth. In finding God, one must be prepared to go ever onward and upward into the vast expanses of the Spirit of God. God is infinite. There is no limit to the experience which we may have in union with Him by the Spirit.
There were three events which comprise the Feast of Passover. All three blended harmoniously together to form that first great Feast of the Church. These are Passover, Unleavened Bread, and the Sheaf of First-fruits: distinct events, yet blending together to form one Feast ---beautiful type of the death and resurrection of Christ, and the new life which His death made possible.
So now in the last Feast, the events are of a threefold nature; The Blowing of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Ingathering. Again these three events blend together to form one great Feast, the last great revival of the Church age.
Let us not imagine that this great revival of gifts and ministries of the Spirit is by any means the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles. But it is the promise of the earnest of this fulfillment, the beginning of the end.
For this move of the Spirit must rise and rise and rise (through much sifting, testing and trial), even unto the fullness of the Feast of Tabernacles itself.
As the day of glory and of triumph begins to dawn upon the eastern horizon, we may expect to receive a foretaste of that glory as the first rays break forth upon the church. But we dare not, we must not, settle for anything that God has yet given to any people in any age or dispensation.
We must go forward to explore the infinite realms of the Spirit of God…We must pass out of the realm of the natural, and into the realm of the spiritual... we must progress from the “length and breadth”… and begin to comprehend somewhat of the “height and depth” of spiritual things. The “running to and fro” must give way to the “ascending and descending” experience on Jacob’s ladder. We must pass from a knowledge of the understandable…to a knowledge of the inconceivable. We must rise from the visible to behold the invisible. We must hear the inaudible…grasp the intangible…explore the unsearchable…and declare the unspeakable.
God has set eternity in our hearts. We will not rest---nor will we give Him rest, until He establish and make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. The Church must yet bring forth a child that shall “rule all nations with a rod of iron”. For it is given unto the overcomer to “rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter, shall they be broken to shivers.” (Rev. 2:27).
I had a vision of the birth of the man-man-child in 1989. That was 26-years ago. Thirty is the number of maturity. Lord let it be.
We can expect that with the travail of the saints to bring forth this son, there shall also be the travail of a dying priesthood to bring forth something to perpetuate and sustain the old order. But it shall not prosper. The Aaronic priesthood---glorious as it was in its day, must give way to a new priesthood, the priesthood after the “order of Melchizedek”.
Preached by: Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Eastgate Ministries, Inc.
Scripture from K.J.V.; I entered into the labors of George H. Warnock, Feast of Tabernacles. Vision of the birth of the man-child given to Carolyn Sissom in 1989 – See sermon notes of The Sun Clothed Woman, www.eastgateministries.com