How well I remember attending conferences in my youth when in my heart there was nothing but an undefined longing, a vague spiritual hunger for something I didn’t have. If you had asked me why I was attending, I would have been hard pressed to tell you. It was more than the crowd of like-minded believers, the good singing, the hope of learning from the Word. I may have been looking for a fresh awakening in my Christian life, a new insight into some Scripture passage (like Rom. 6–8) that would unlock latent power to give me a greater measure of victory in my life. In more wistful moments, I might have told you that I was looking for a cosmic embrace, a divine hug that would tell me His love was unchanged, that there was still hope for me, that I hadn’t failed so miserably that I was permanently on the shelf.
Whenever Christians gather under the sound of God’s Word, in some sense—as has often been prayed— “the needs are as varied as the faces.” But obviously there is overlap, many people coming with a few basic needs and hopes. Are these laid out for us somewhere in the Lord’s great Diagnostic Manual?
I’ve written before that conferences were God’s idea. He called His ancient people together at least three times a year for the feasts and fasts in Jerusalem. Why? And is there a correlation between the reasons for Israel’s conferences and ours? Note that the first four were Spring conferences; the last three in the Fall.
1. They came together to remember the Passover lamb and that they were a redeemed people. Called “the Lord’s Passover,” it took them back to the “beginning of months” when on the same night they were delivered from wrath, bondage and poverty. And such is the blessed experience today where Christ is “lifted up.”
2. The Feast of Unleavened Bread drove home the point that redeemed people are also to be holy people. It was time to come clean. Paul links these first two reasons as they were historically and as they ought to be experientially: “Purge out, therefore, the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Cor. 5:7). Holiness is born in the heart through Calvary love.
3. The Firstfruits Feast not only was a portend of the coming harvest but a reminder that everything they enjoyed came from the Lord. Their token gift sheaf expressed the truth that it all belonged to God. Our conferences should herald the truth of the sovereign rights of “the Lord of the harvest” and we should celebrate the joy of the harvest made possible by “Christ the first fruits” (1 Cor. 15:23).
4. Pentecost would mean something different to the Jews of Canaan than to the early Church, “when the day of Pentecost was fully come” (Acts 2:1). It was the one festival prescribed for the first day of the week, following the seventh sabbath. Of course it was the birthday of the Church. And how important at our conferences to reaffirm our commitment to that which “Christ also loved…and gave Himself for” (Eph. 5:25).
5. The trumpet blowing memorial heralded the beginning of the civil New Year (New Year’s conferences are 3500 years old!). And as surely as Israel awaits the call to return, so we wait for Heaven’s trumpet blast. How good it is at our conferences to collectively anticipate the dawning of that Day without a sunset.
6. This calling together by trumpet also introduced the Day of Atonement. While not exactly the same, it answers morally to the Judgment Seat of Christ and the setting right of our affairs at the start of the Long Day. It is a fitting theme for us, our meeting at the Bema, and the need to set things right before then, if possible.
7. Succot, the dwelling in booths, points back to the time when God “tabernacled among us” but also anticipates the time when it will be said, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God” (Rev. 21:3). That is the one conference that will not end with goodbyes. And I’m registered to go.
Written by J.B. Nicholson Jr