West Coast Cast Episode 36

WEST COAST CAST  •  BEYOND THE PODCAST

God's Alarm Clock

The Fall Feasts, Jerusalem, and What Time It Really Is

A Companion Workbook  •  Rod Meyers & Mike Donnelly  •  Covington Community Church

 

This workbook walks through the episode in the order the conversation unfolded: the seven appointed times of Leviticus 23, the spring feasts Jesus already fulfilled, the three fall feasts still on the horizon, and what is happening on the ground in Jerusalem this season. Every scripture reference is hyperlinked to the NIV on BibleGateway. Read the passages, work the questions, and keep your pen handy.

 

Part One: Seven Appointments with God

Rod opened the episode with a claim that frames everything else: the feasts are not merely Jewish holidays, they are Leviticus 23's prophetic clocks. God set seven annual appointments, and every one of them rehearses something He has done or will do through the Messiah. Read the chapter straight through before going further.

Word Study: Moedim

 

The English Disadvantage

Mike and Rod both pressed the point that English-only readers miss things. Two examples came up. First, the Hebrew text uses the covenant name of God (the four letters YHWH) more than six thousand times, and most English translations render it "LORD" in small capitals rather than as a name — see the footnote at Exodus 3:15. Second, English Bibles say "trumpet" for both the shofar (ram's horn) and the silver trumpets of Numbers 10:1-10, flattening a distinction the original readers would have heard instantly.

The Seven Feasts at a Glance

 

Reflection

1. Before this episode, what did the word "feast" mean to you? Does "appointment" change how you read Leviticus 23?

 

 

 

2. Mike said the feasts are "for all generations" — not "until Christ." Read Leviticus 23:14, 21, 31 and 41. How do you respond to that language as a New Testament believer?

 

 

 

Part Two: The Spring Feasts — Already Fulfilled

Rod argued that the entire New Testament is written against the backdrop of the spring feasts, and that they were fulfilled both literally and spiritually, in their entirety, in Jesus' first coming. Trace it yourself with the table below.

 

Communion Is Passover

 

Born on Pentecost — Twice

Israel became a nation at Sinai on the day that would be Shavuot (Exodus 19:1-8). The church was born on the same day of the calendar more than a millennium later (Acts 2:1-4). Same appointment, two births. This is the kind of pattern Rod means when he says the feasts are God's timeline.

Reflection

3. Read 1 Corinthians 5:7-8. Paul tells Gentile believers in Corinth to "keep the Festival." What does keeping it look like for you?

 

 

 

4. How does seeing communion as the Passover cup change the way you approach the Lord's Table?

 

 

 

Part Three: The Fall Feasts — Sound, Judgment, Kingdom

Rod summarized the fall feasts in three words: a sound, a judgment, and a kingdom. Each feast builds on the one before it, and none of the three has seen its final fulfillment.

1. Trumpets (Yom Teruah / Rosh Hashanah) — The Sound

The only command attached to this day is to blow the shofar and to hear it (Leviticus 23:23-25; Numbers 29:1-6). Rod called it "God's alarm clock" — a call to wake up and repent. Mike added the piece most Christians miss: the blast on Rosh Hashanah is not the end of anything. It is the beginning of the danger zone, the ten Days of Awe that lead to judgment.

 

"No One Knows the Day or the Hour"

Mike flagged a detail that lands differently once you know the calendar: Rosh Hashanah is the only feast that runs two days, because it begins on a new moon that had to be sighted and confirmed. It was known as the feast where "no one knows the day or the hour." Read Matthew 24:36-44 with that in mind. This year it fell September 11 through 13.

2. Atonement (Yom Kippur) — The Judgment

The holiest day on the calendar (Leviticus 16; Leviticus 23:26-32). Rod was careful here: for the believer, the day you said yes to Christ was your day of atonement, and His blood keeps washing you clean every day after (1 John 1:7-9; Lamentations 3:22-23). But the feast itself still points forward — to a national day when Israel looks on the One they pierced and a fountain is opened for sin.

 

3. Tabernacles (Sukkot) — The Kingdom

Both hosts promised a full episode on Tabernacles, so this section is a preview. Sukkot celebrates God dwelling with His people (Leviticus 23:33-43) and finds its conclusion in the Millennial Kingdom and the new creation (Revelation 20:1-6; Revelation 21:1-4). Zechariah 14:16-19 says the nations will come up to Jerusalem to keep this feast during the Kingdom — which is why Rod says these feasts are not going away.

 

Reflection

5. Mike said the shofar on Rosh Hashanah is "not the end, it's the beginning." If the Rapture is the trumpet, what does that make the Days of Awe for those left behind?

 

 

 

6. "Every day should be your day of atonement." What would it look like for you to live in daily confession rather than a once-a-year reckoning?

 

 

 

7. Read Zechariah 14:16-19. Why would God command the nations to keep Sukkot during the Millennium if the feasts had been abolished?

 

 

 

Part Four: What Is Happening in Jerusalem

The internet went down before the hosts could show footage, so this section gathers the scriptures behind what Rod described from the Western Wall and the Temple Mount this season. Watch the clips online, then read the passages.

Repentance at the Wall

Rod, who lived in Jerusalem for several years and has been in Israel for every feast except Passover, said he has never seen a season like this one: crowds estimated in the hundreds of thousands gathering nightly for prayers of repentance through the forty days leading to Rosh Hashanah, in what is still a war zone, with Israel's president leading prayer at the Western Wall. He called it a type of revival, and named October 7 as the catalyst that drove a nation back toward faith. Compare Hosea 5:15 ("in their misery they will earnestly seek me") and Joel 2:12-17, the classic Days of Awe text.

Silver Trumpets on the Mount

For the first time in the hosts' memory, worshipers went up onto the Temple Mount with prayer books, shofars, and silver trumpets — and no one was arrested. The silver trumpets are distinct from the shofar: they were made by Moses' command for the priesthood and sounded only in connection with the Tabernacle and Temple (Numbers 10:1-10; 2 Chronicles 5:11-14). Rod's read: this is a people rehearsing for a temple that does not yet stand.

A Third Temple and the Abomination

Mike laid out why the pieces are in place: a high priest of proper lineage, vessels prepared and ceremonially cleansed, the red heifer question, and persistent reports that prefabricated structures could be raised in a matter of days. Both hosts were careful to say what that would mean. A rebuilt temple is not simply good news — scripture ties it to the Antichrist's defiling act, which Jesus called the abomination that causes desolation.

 

Gog, Magog, and the Question of America

Rod and Mike raised the Ezekiel 38–39 war — a coalition led from the north (Rosh, Meshech, Tubal — associated by many with the region of modern Turkey) alongside Persia (Iran) — and noted that most dispensational scholars place it before the third temple rather than after. Mike's open question was where America fits, since scripture names no clear western power. Read Ezekiel 38:1-16 and Ezekiel 39:1-8. For the dry-bones restoration that precedes it, read Ezekiel 37:1-14 — a passage that took on flesh in 1948, as Mike noted: before that year there was no Israel to gather to.

Reflection

8. Rod said he would know "clearly" we are in the end times when he sees two prophets on the Temple Mount. Read Revelation 11:3-6. What would your response be if that appeared on the news?

 

 

 

9. A third temple would be cheered by many believers, yet it is also "a very dangerous sign." How do you hold hope and sobriety together when you watch Jerusalem?

 

 

 

Part Five: What's In It for Christians?

The hosts kept returning to the listener's real question: what's in it for me? Their answer had four parts, drawn from the "What is in it for Christians" section on the prophecy page.

1. You Are Grafted In

Mike's foundation text: the Gentile believer is grafted into Israel's olive tree, so Israel's appointments are now yours (Romans 11:11-24; Ephesians 2:11-19). Paul, apostle to the Gentiles, kept the appointments himself — see Acts 20:16 and Acts 18:21.

2. The Feasts Are a Shadow of Christ

The feasts are all about Him — His death, burial, resurrection, Spirit, calling, atonement, and return. Colossians 2:16-17 calls them "a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ." Rod's point is that a shadow is cast by something real, and the fall feasts are shadows of events still ahead.

3. Meeting God on His Calendar

 

4. Transformation, Not Information

Mike's closing challenge: if you have the verses memorized but you are the same person you were five or eight years ago, it is time to ask harder questions. The feasts are meant to change you, and the Rapture itself is the ultimate transformation — permanent. Read Romans 12:1-2, 2 Corinthians 3:18, and Galatians 5:22-25. For the signs of the times that Mike said "could have been written this morning," read 2 Timothy 3:1-5.

A Name Known to the Nations

 

Reflection

10. Which of the four "what's in it for me" points challenged you most, and why?

 

 

 

11. Rod suggested you "start getting your speech ready." If the trumpet sounded this week, what would you want to have said and done first?

 

 

 

12. What is one concrete way you will keep an appointment with God during Yom Kippur or Sukkot this year?

 

 

 

Further Study

• Leviticus 23 — read it in one sitting, marking every occurrence of "appointed" and "lasting ordinance."
• Daniel 9:20-27 — the seventy weeks, the backbone of the timeline charts on the prophecy page.
• Matthew 24 and Luke 21 — the Olivet Discourse, Jesus' own end-times outline.
• 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11 — the trumpet, the Day of the Lord, and how to live in light of both.
• Zechariah 12-14 — Israel's repentance, the fountain, and the nations keeping Sukkot.
• Revelation 19-22 — the return, the Kingdom, and God tabernacling with His people forever.

 

covingtonwacc.org/prophecy  •  Charts, timelines, and the full feast reference