Dr. Barclay with Something to Think About - FESTIVALS

FESTIVALS

Christianity has a number of days we consider to be Holy Days or festivals. These have been primarily pagan festivals that have been Christianized; thereby making them into Christian religious times. But there is nothing in the Bible which suggests that we should be celebrating such days. There is, however, instruction to follow the festival days that are noted in the Scriptures; and although they are primarily there for the Jewish nation, should we also be giving them more significance than we do? After all, much of Jewish history, and therefore in part our history, can be related to events that took place on these or other similar days.

For example, there is the day in the Jewish month of Av [August] which commemorates the loss of the Jewish Temple that was burned when God withdrew His presence.

 

When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months during those seventy years, did you really fast for Me—for Me?

(Zechariah 7:5)

This event of the Temple burning apparently took place on the ninth day of the month of Av. But not just one event in Jewish history took place on that day. Apparently, on this same date, those whom Moses had sent to spy out the land of Canaan returned and told of the giants there and caused the people to turn against Moses and want to return to Egypt. 

There we saw the giants; and we were like grasshoppers…in their sight 

(Numbers 13:33)

Only the counsel of Caleb and Joshua swayed the masses and apparently this was on the ninth of Av, 1490 BC.

On the same date in 587 BC, the army of Babylon broke through the last defence of the Jews and destroyed Solomon’s Temple.

He [The Lord] has abandoned His sanctuary…

They [the enemy] have made a noise in the house of the Lord… 

(Lamentations 2:7)

Similarly, in AD 70 the Roman army reached the edge of the Temple area and began the destruction of the Temple once again. It was the following year, AD 71, on the same date when the Romans plowed the Temple mount.

…they will not leave in you one stone upon another… 

(Luke 19:44)

…Zion shall be plowed like a field,

Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins… 

(Micah 3:12)

In AD 135, a further Jewish revolt developed and was led by a Simon Bar Kochba. This rebellion was put down by the armies of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, and on the ninth of Av of that year over 500,000 were killed according to the Roman historian Dio Cassius

On the ninth of Av in 1290, King Edward 1 ordered the Jews in England to be expelled, and on the same date in 1492, Spain expelled over 800,000 Jews from the country. Again, on he same date in 1914, as Russia prepared for war, a persecution against the Jews began in that country as well.

The odds of all of these events occurring by chance on the same date in history are extremely small and gives evidence that perhaps chance alone was not the reason. Perhaps there is behind all of this a plan of which we may not be aware. In any case, this is an important date in Jewish history and in our history and is another reason why we should become a little more aware of dates mentioned in the bible.

Certainly it gives one something to think about.