Thanksgiving - thanking God for Hope

This weekend people in Canada will be taking time around table with turkey and friends.  Often holidays become just another excuse for a party, and I wonder how much we do care about the meaning and purpose of the event.

In the Biblical times, when the nation of Israel lived by the Temple Calendar, a Divinely instituted timeline which instructed the people of God’s Plan of Salvation, there was also a Thanksgiving holiday.  Some consider it the most important, the central among three pilgrimage feasts.  There were three spring feasts before and three fall feasts after.  This feast was placed right in the middle of religious year.  Whereas the spring feasts pointed to Jesus first coming, to Messiah’ Death, Burial and Resurrection, and the fall feasts are still prophetically pointing to the Second Coming of Christ, the Judgment, removal of evil and the re-Creation, this one – the Jubilee, the 50^th day of counting – Shavuoth, or as we say – the Day of Pentecost was a Day of Thanksgiving.  It is also called the Feast of First Fruits (Hag Ha-Bikkurim).  Historically on that day Israel arrived t Mt,Sinai and it was the day when the Law was given.  Since then the nation of Israel celebrates the Giving of the Torah and the Thanksgiving for the first fruits together.  It is interesting that the Thanksgiving was celebrated at the beginning of the harvest, for all the future blessings, long before the fall harvest would collect it all before winter.

Why am I bringing this all up?  Since the shooting at Umpqua Community College near Roseburg, Oregon, many are asking this question “if you were Christian, what would you have said?”  An article in the Washington Postquoted an Adventist pastor Lonnie Wibberding who said to his congregation last Sabbath: “We now know that this was an attack on all of us here.”  I heard comments from fellow Canadians how thankful we must be for living in Canada, where there are no guns like in USA.  Some are politicising this already, focusing on ethnic profile of the shooter, mental health issues, gun control, etc.  Yet, as believers we must be aware that it is an attack on all of us, faithful followers of Jesus, and it is not a lone attack, but one in a series of multiple diverse attacks.  On the night October 6 the 10 Commandments monument was removed from Oklahoma Supreme Court grounds.  On July 26 the satanic temple in Detroit installed a massive statue of baphomet, turning the cross upside down. The best selling muslim author Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar), who popularized creationism to the secular audience, is advocating for rebuilding the temple in Israel as a multi-faiths centre, meeting with Jewish Rabbis and Christian leaders. These are just a few glimpses on peculiar things happening rapidly in recent weeks. Or maybe we should not consider these as odd and surprising, because we are called to be peculiar people and we know better that in the Great Controversy between good and evil final events will be rapid ones, and we must be watchful, sober, eyes wide open, knowing the times in which we live, and appealing to people around us to come out of the confusion which is in the world, inviting people in our influence to meet Jesus, to discover the Savior for themselves.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, consider the meaning of this festival – giving thanks for God’s provisions, being mindful that God has a plan, that god is working His Will all around us.  Thanking God for the Good News and the Blessed Hope we have in soon Coming Christ, and inviting all around us to worship and give thanks to God, the Creator and the Redeemer.