Troublesome Topic: Symbolism Is for Interpreting What Is, Not for Predicting What Will Be

If I were transported to ancient Israel prior to the arrival of Jesus, but I retained what I had been taught as a modern Christian, I would have likely predicted that Jesus would die on the Day of Atonement. It would have made perfect sense. Yet Jesus did not die on the Day of Atonement; He died while families across Israel were killing their Passover lamb. Why? The Day of Atonement is only one aspect of the covenant relationship God had with the people of Israel. Passover celebrated the foundation on which that entire covenant was built. Thus Passover pointed to the entire covenant relationship, while the Day of Atonement comprised only a small part of it. God was saying through this that He was giving them a new relationship. When it happened, the Jews of that day understood the significance of His death coming on Passover. That is the way it should be; once something happened, they knew what it meant because of the symbolism, but they were not equipped to predict it ahead of time.

The early Christians correctly utilized the correlation between events that happened and the days on which they happened (usually feast days) in order to interpret the significance of the event, but they did not try to predict anything in the future using those days or events. I know people today who try to use the feast of trumpets, the red heifer, or the blood moon, to predict that something will happen and when. I am convinced that is not how we should use those things. Rather, we should wait and see what God does, and when He does it, the timing will make perfect sense. We should not put God in a box by our predictions. We should use the special days in the Jewish calendar for interpretation, but not prediction.

The next lesson is: The Spiritual Admonition Comes from the Symbolism Not from a Literal Interpretation