A summary of the Feasts and Appointed Times of the Lord. They are important to us, because of what they represent to us, which is that Heavenly Father is so Loving, and so kind, that He wants for us to come home, to come back to Heaven. He wants no one to go to Hell, but wants all of us to come back to Heaven.

The Feasts reveal the Plan of Salvation. The whole gospel is contained in the Feasts. And if we were faithful in holding these feasts every year, nobody would grow up with doubts, nobody would not know what God was all about. The Feasts and Appointed Times of the Lord represent the life of a man, the progression, the making of a God, a year upon the earth, an eternal round, etc.

If we go through these Feasts every year, we begin to realize that the Lord has introduced these things for us, to help us understand His plan and desires for us to succeed and become like Him. This is His objective and this is His goal, to keep coming year after year and gathering more of His children to bring them back home and "marry" them into the family of the Gods, the Fathers or the ancestors that have gone on before us, that is His goal. When we see how He works with us in every one of these Feasts, nobody can think that the Lord wants anything other than to bring us Home. It is His only desire and only work, to rescue us, and we can see that this is all He is trying to do the whole time. The true nature of God is revealed in these Feasts. No wonder He wants us to celebrate them every year!

Purim
Purim represents a new hope, like pregnancy, when a new life is on the way.

Pesach - Passover, and Feast of Unleavened Bread
Passover would be birth, and the 7 days following that are the feast of unleavened bread, that would be the first week of life. (This can represent many things, the birth of a new way of life, keeping the commandments, the teachings of the Lord, etc.) The birth of the child. The birth when the baby comes out, that is why there is blood on the entryway. It is that sacrifice that is done in meekness and humility from the mother.

Seven Days of Unleavened Bread
At this time, in many cultures, it is a delicate time, in some countries there is a very hard time to keep children alive for the first week of life. This being the case, it can be a very solemn time, and people are often very careful with their child in this first week. In olden times, if the child lived to the 8th day, that is when the child was circumcised or when the child was named, when you would bring the child before the Lord etc.

This Time is the birth and the first week of life, what Passover and the feast of unleavened bread is. Not only is it springtime, and time to get the fields ready to start planting and stuff like that, but it is the birth of a God, in the eternal round. These are the things that the Gods go through for us just like we go through for our children. This is the symbolism of it.

Why would God be giving birth to us, why would he be giving us this knowledge? Remember this is the time when the Passover came so that we did not die, because we did things the Lord's way. So we were born into this new life. And it is the same as joining the gospel. We have this new beginning and if we do it right, stick to the commandments, stick to the things God says, then we have a good start to our life and we will live.

Shavuot - Festival of Weeks
It is when we would be baptized, read Torah, bar Mitzvah, make our covenant with God, etc. In return God makes a covenant with us of the Holy Ghost to lead us.

Tish'a B'Av - Destruction of the Two Temples
Teenage years. The years when things go bad, we make mistakes, things go crazy and we destroy, basically, our temporal temple, we do lots of things wrong. And we make a few serious mistakes, which kind of destroys the inner temple as well, our soul, our heart. Both temples are destroyed, because of stubbornness, rebelliousness, pride, etc.

Yom Teru'ah - Feast of Trumpets - Also known as Rosh Hashana
God is coming to us, like God went away to far country, like when Yeshua gave the parable; God, the landowner, went away to a far country and He gave all the talents to His people and He is going to come back and see how we did with our talents and those who did well, He is going to bring in and make them rulers over a kingdom. This is the time. The trumpets are blowing because it is the time when He is coming. The trumpets are blowing, we are getting excited, God is coming back, He is on His way. It is to signify that He is coming to get us, that He has not forgotten about us, that we are still worth everything to Him. Everybody is excited, because the Son of God is coming to get us, to find us. The Saviour is on His way, our Father is coming. So we start repenting, start remembering where we come from. This begins the 10 days of awe.

Ten Days of Awe
We start remembering things and we start remembering why we are here, and that the Lord has come to get us, that we actually are royalty, we are born of Godhood. We start repenting everything. The Lord comes and He spends those 10 days working with us and watching us, and we are supposed to repent of everything in those 10 days.

Yom Kippur - Day of Atonement
Ten days of us repenting, and the Lord writing down our names in the Book, and on the tenth day that book is sealed. These are now the candidates for marriage into the family of God. This is the day when our names are sealed into Book of Life. Our repentance has been accepted, and Lord has written our names down because our repentance has been accepted. It is the day the Book of Life is sealed. We are able to be part of the family of God once again. Now we are engaged to be "married" into the family of God.

Sukkot - Feast of Tabernacles - Wedding Feast
The marriage feast. We have to be careful, because when we enter into the marriage feast, it has to be that we have to be clothed in a marriage garment, in other words we still have to maintain that change, which got us written in the Book. It had to have been real, it has to be part of our hearts. We cannot want other things, that is where we get the parable of the ten virgins, we are not going to get a reward, we are just part of the family of God which means service. We were already given our inheritance, so now we are part of the family again, like the prodigal son coming home, we have to make sure it is a true change of heart. So we have this wedding feast. This feast continues from where Yom Kippur left off. It is here that the Saviour has time to work with those who were written in the Book of Life. During the wedding, that is when He is working with people, working and seeing who will wear the wedding garment or who is wearing the wedding garment. The Saviour uses this time to develop the people, getting them more and more pure, with the characteristics and virtues that they need in the Kingdom of the Father.

Sh'mini Atzeret - The Eighth Day
The consummation of that marriage happens. It is called Sh'mini Atzeret, which means that now we wake up on the next day after we just consummated the marriage in the wedding chamber, and we are now part of the family, and our new life has begun.

Chanukah
Hanukkah was introduced by the Maccabees/Maccabeans, that was when they won their temple back. They re-dedicated the temple, and they only found oil to light the menorah for 1 day, but the menorah miraculously burned for 8 days. This miracle was taken as a witness from God that God had accepted the re-dedication of the Temple. That is Hanukkah, the festival of lights that celebrated every year around Christmas time.

When we go through the scriptures, we see they do all these ceremonies, these feasts, and we can see that they are all symbolic to show the Lord's love, how He is coming to get us and how He actually wants us to be part of His family. And so to be raised with this information, and celebrations, every year, would definitely give people hope. We would always have that correct understanding of the character of God, of His character, perfections, and attributes, like the prophet Joseph said. We would always have that full confidence, to fully exercise faith, in other words, we can actually follow fully believing, fully trusting in whatever God tells us to do, knowing with a certainty, that those instructions are completely for us, to bring us back into His Eternal Presence.

All the Lord's parables actually fit with the Festivals. They all are there to teach us. They explain the feasts, for all the people who had forgotten and got lost in traditions, and forgot what the meaning was. When the Lord came, he gave those parables to the people, to explain the true doctrine of the Father once again, to bring back to life the reason God is doing all of this, and how God is so loving toward them.

This is a beautiful sort of thing to remember. It reminds us that there is always hope, that the Lord always wants to come get us, that the Lord is always reaching out to us, and always wants us to come home. We can always have full faith in this fact, and always know why we are here, that we are here trying to better ourselves, trying to create that wedding garment, trying to build those virtues, to become like our Heavenly Father.