The Second Coming on a future Day of Atonement? The Need For A Tabernacles Church
by Don Clasen
Aug. 31, 2019
The body of this article is excerpted from a chapter of my book, American Babylon, American Antichrist. It’s my hope of what will happen in the Body of Christ immediately leading up to and during the Great Tribulation period culminating in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. It’s a vision of a remnant people that are being called out of the apostasy and irrelevance that is Christianity in our day to form what I call a Tabernacles movement.
To characterize such a remnant as a brand new Church or denomination or movement is perhaps a bit misleading. In truth will be a larger phenomenon that will include believers all over the world who stay faithful to God in the context of their present denominations, circumstances and limited understanding during those apocalyptic days. All the same I do believe there will also be this deliberate movement at the heart of that great company of evangelists and the harvest they bring in (Rev 7:9).
This movement will be in the spirit of Restoration Theology, the idea that the Reformation is an ongoing process that has so far “restored” the New Testament fulfillment of Passover in Martin Luther’s day and the Day of Pentecost a hundred years ago. Yet the Tabernacles movement will be more. It can’t be “restored” since Tabernacles never was fulfilled in the days of the Apostles, yet will be attended by the same miracle-working power that launched the Pentecostals this past century. Better than that, it will be a phenomenon even more powerful and miraculous as the chapter explains.
If there are any local readers here in the Los Angeles area who would like to be part of such a work, please let me know and let’s see if we can start something together. Look for information under the “Contact” drop-down tab.
Now here’s that chapter:
The Feast of Tabernacles-Fulfilled
Levitical Priests of ancient Israel.
Within Pre-Millennial Christianity there are some who believe (myself included) that the Old Testament feasts are being played out in the New Testament age and will culminate in the Second Coming of Christ as the climax of the Feast of Tabernacles. Just as Passover was fulfilled in the Gospels with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and Pentecost was fulfilled in Acts chapter 2 on the Day of Pentecost, so a near-future Feast of Tabernacles will be the occasion of Christ’s return to take over the earth.
The symbology in these feasts is deep yet just a cursory consideration of them says a lot. In the original Passover the death angel of God “passed over” all the Hebrew homes that had the blood of an unblemished lamb on their doorposts (Ex 12:12). So likewise when Christ died at Calvary as the unblemished Lamb of God, He provided His own blood in fulfillment of the typological ceremony to call “whosoever will” out of Egypt (a type of “the world” and its perverse values) into His spiritual Kingdom.
Fifty days later, the children of Israel were at Mount Sinai with Moses receiving the Law during the first Pentecost. This typology was fulfilled in Acts 2 and spoke of what the Holy Spirit would do when infilling and indwelling the believers, that He would write the law of God on our hearts (Jer 31:33, Heb 8:10).
But the Feast of Tabernacles is yet to be fulfilled. This was the feast that took place in the fall after a long summer growing season and celebrated the coming in of the main harvest. The last two millennia have been this long growing season in advance of its culmination, the Great Tribulation and the greatest one-time harvest of believers ever (Rev 7:9).
Because of this unfulfilled typology, I believe Christ will come back some year in Autumn during the Feast of Tabernacles. Tabernacles is not just the celebration of the greatest harvest of souls ever (Rev 14:15,16) but the celebration of the very Lord of that Harvest. So I expect this fulfillment will culminate when He shows up with His saints to destroy the armies gathered against Him at Armageddon. Since this would be in the fall, that would mean the Great Tribulation would probably begin some three and a half years earlier in the spring, probably around a Passover. It’s that time of year I would most be on the alert for an escalation of an incident leading to a world war and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse scenario (Rev 6:1-8).
Why 3 ½ years? As I discussed it in chapter 1 point 4, Daniel was given a sweeping prophecy about the future of his people that declared 490 years or 70 “sevens” to go before the Second Coming and the resolution of all things (Dan 9:24). That last “week” of seven years began with the Baptism of Christ and ended with His being “cut off” at the Crucifixion 3 ½ years later. This still leaves another 3 ½ to go. They are referred to as 42 months or 1260 days in Revelation 11:2 and 3.
“all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues… (Rev 7:9)
Greater Works Than Those of Jesus
During that time there will be a second ministry of Christ on the earth, only this time through His people. That is, that remnant that successfully comes out of the American Babylonian Church and its daughters worldwide, will preach the Word with powerful signs following, miracles perhaps even greater than the ones Jesus Himself did (Jn 14:12). It will be a Word that obviously will be heralding His near-imminent appearance and an exposure of the false Church now so prominent—“The voice of them that flee and escape out of the land of Babylon, to declare in Zion [the churches] the vengeance of the LORD our God, the vengeance of his temple” (Jer 50:28).
These will obviously be “perilous times” (II Tim 3:1) but very exciting ones as well. Young people especially should expect to be greatly used by God to bring in a great harvest (Rev 7:9,14; 14:15,16). Ironically, a lot of the hype you hear from the Dominionist camp about the miracles of the end times is true; it’s just that it’s to be used as signs and wonders to convince people of the truth of the Gospel and the word then going forth. It was never intended to be used to defeat “God’s enemies” as Jesus Himself exemplified when He refused to destroy the Romans, sealing His rejection as the Messiah (Jn 6:15).
God is going to have to raise up a faithful remnant, a true “new company” if you will, who will have the faith to act now, to prepare and position themselves now. The reference in Joel 2 for instance to the “former rain, and the latter rain in the first month” (i.e., both at the same time—Joel 2:23) could very well be symbolic of this great time of outpouring of God’s Spirit on all flesh (vs. 28) when “the floors shall be full of wheat” (vs. 24).
Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles. “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water..” (Jn 7:38)
What It Means To Come Out
Prominent in the instructions God gives to His people during those days is that they should “come out of Babylon.” We find these admonitions no less than nine times in Revelation 18, Isaiah 13 and Jeremiah 50 and 51 as listed below. What this entails is a literal leaving of the false Church at some point, and a leaving of the United States itself as well if you hope for any chance at survival.
During the Great Tribulation, the United States and Israel will be the worst places in the world to be, the very heart of the Antichrist’s base. Here in time the U.S. government, Israeli agents, hired “contractors” and the like will hunt you down, arrest or disappear you, torture you, take you to FEMA camps, black sites or Israel and eventually kill you. It may be in ovens (“Holocaust revenge”)or by beheading (Islamist execution or Guillotine) if you don’t literally leave the country. Christians who are counting on safety in remote places in the U.S. will not escape, not with the pan-opticon total surveillance state they have developed. These gruesome details can be found in Revelation 17:16 and Revelation 20:4 as previously mentioned.
This does not preclude the possibility that God may lead you to stay for one reason or another. You may have family obligations or whatever. I myself feel a strong conviction I must stay here in the media capital of the world. But everyone should do some serious thinking and praying for guidance here.
The safest place to always be of course is in the will of God for your life as best you understand it. It’s the patience and faith of the saints that keep them to the end (Rev 13:10). The only “safety” available to Christians during those days will be in the jungles and remote areas of the earth, although no place on the earth will be free of calamities (Rev 12:14-17). Due to the horrific natural disasters of those days and the persecution, it may be that what Christians make it to the Rapture when Christ returns may only be tribal peoples, missionaries and the like in remote areas.
All these exhortations are warnings. But I would advise you to dwell on the glass half full, that a glorious harvest with great exploits is ahead. The people will be like ripe fruit falling from the tree.
Tabernacles-commemorating the main harvest of the year.
Relevant Passages
These four chapters Isaiah 13, Jeremiah 50 and 51 and Revelation 18 give excruciating detail about what God is going to do to the United States in the very end. If you’re still not convinced that the Jeremiah chapters are about a last days Babylon and not the nation contemporary to him, I would suggest my article, “America As The Latter Day Babylon.”
Within these chapters are nine exhortations about “coming out”:
-Isa 13:14—“And…they shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every one into his own land.” This is a description of trust between various ethnic groups in America breaking down, and complicated by an invasion of the country by, I would think, Russia, China and Latin America (Isa 13:5).
-Jer 50:8—“Remove out of the midst of Babylon, and go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, and be as the he goats before the flocks.” The idea here is to set an example by leaving that others will follow.
-Jer 50:16—“…and they shall flee everyone to his own land.” Babylon is a “nation of nations,” an exact description of the United States. This could imply that when these nations come to invade America, the people here will have to flee to the lands of their ancestries. This is the sentiment found in Matthew 24:7 where Jesus said one of the signs of His Second Coming was that “nation shall rise against nation.” The word for “nation” there is ethnos, Greek for “an ethnic group.” While young people today have never been less concerned about ethnic identity (and rightfully so), there is a concurrent trend toward tribalism in today, ironically led by the chauvinistic example of Israel.
-Jer 50:28—“The voice of them that flee and escape out of the land of Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of the LORD our God, the vengeance of his temple.” The idea behind “declaring in Zion” is going to the churches outside America that know only too well of the hypocrisy of American Christianity to help them identify who the Great Babylon is (many will have already figured it out!), declare God’s judgment on her and the imminent return of Christ.
-Jer 51:6—“Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul: be not cut off in her iniquity; for this is the time of the LORD’s vengeance; he will render unto her a recompence.”
-Jer 51:9—“We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed: forsake her, and let us go every one into his own country: for her judgment reacheth unto heaven, and is lifted up even to the skies.
-Jer 51:45—“My people, go ye out of the midst of her, and deliver ye every man his soul from the fierce anger of the LORD.”
-Jer 51:50—“Ye that have escaped the sword, go away, stand not still: remember the LORD afar off, and let Jerusalem come into your mind.” Jerusalem will be in the battle of its life and is where the Lord will be returning.
-Rev 18:4—“And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”
Clearly, the import of all these similar exhortations is that a great destruction is coming from the Lord upon Babylon, such that no one will inherit the land, but that it will remain desolate forever (Jer 50:3,12,13,21,26,29,39,45; 51:26,29,37,43, and 62). In these verses, the ones highlighted in bold emphatically declare both the disgust of the Lord with this entity and what He intends to do to this wicked nation. This Babylon will be wholly de-populated and remain desolate forever as a monument to God’s everlasting hatred of all that she stood for.
Indeed, there are few judgments in all the Bible more detailed and withering than these. It shakes us and breaks us out of the conditioning we’ve been used to as Americans, and the sooner we can get this out of our heads, the better off we will be.
