FEAST OF FIRST FRUITS
PROPHETIC CONNECTIONS

Rediscovering First Fruits: The Forgotten Feast of the Resurrection

For over 1,400 years, the people of Israel practiced a ritual during the Feast of Unleavened Bread—removing every trace of leaven from their homes. Why? Because leaven was symbolic. It represented sin, pride, ego, and even Satan himself—the source of rebellion and the reason for his fall. During this feast, leaven was put away, and in its place, unleavened bread—symbolizing sincerity and truth—was eaten.

The Prophetic Placement of Jesus in the Grave

It is no coincidence that Jesus (Yeshua) was placed in the tomb at the very beginning of this sacred festival. First Corinthians 5:8 captures this beautifully:

“Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

Yeshua entered the grave as Israel began the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread, and His resurrection aligned with another feast—First Fruits—which always falls on the first Sunday after Passover. Regardless of the day Passover lands on (Monday, Thursday, Friday), the following Sunday marks First Fruits, launching the 50-day countdown to Pentecost (Shavuot).

A Feast Overlooked by the Modern Church

Why don’t most believers today celebrate this biblically appointed feast? What happened to God’s calendar? How did we trade prophetic, God-ordained dates for a Romanized religious schedule?

Let’s dig into the richness of the Feast of First Fruits and discover the powerful connections it has to the resurrection of the Messiah.

God’s Calendar in Exodus and the Early Church

Exodus 12:17-18 commands:

“Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come.”

This isn’t just about history—it’s about prophecy. Paul makes a direct connection in 1 Corinthians 15:20-23:

“Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep… each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when He comes, those who belong to Him.”

Jesus rose on First Fruits. This wasn’t random. It was perfectly placed on God’s prophetic calendar. The same time the high priest waved the sheaf of barley before the Lord, thanking Him for the harvest to come, Yeshua was rising from the grave, the First of the great spiritual harvest to follow.

Sabbath Confusion and the Real Timeline

Many assume Jesus died on a Friday because Scripture mentions a Sabbath approaching. But they missed a key detail: the first day of Unleavened Bread is a High Sabbath, regardless of the day of the week.

That year, the timeline likely looked like this:

• Thursday afternoon: Jesus dies.
• Thursday night: He is buried.
• Friday: High Sabbath (First day of Unleavened Bread).
• Saturday: Weekly Sabbath.
• Sunday morning: Resurrection—First Fruits.

Mark 16:9 gives us the timing: Jesus rose early in the morning, during the fourth watch (3–6 a.m.)—the exact time the high priest waved the sheaf offering.

The Sheaf, the Resurrection, and the Prophetic Meal

Leviticus 23:12–13 outlines the First Fruits offering:

• A lamb without blemish (a burnt offering)
• Fine flour mixed with oil
• A drink offering of wine

This offering wasn’t just a sacrifice—it was a meal with the King.

Each element is rich with prophetic meaning:

• The Lamb: Yeshua, the perfect Passover Lamb.
• The Bread: Unleavened, doubled in portion—symbolic of a feast for two: God and His people.
• The Oil: Representing the Holy Spirit and anointing of kings.
• The Wine: Sealing the covenant—Yeshua’s blood, poured out for many.

Even the Book of Esther mirrors this: Esther fasted for three days and nights before going before the king—risking death unless she found favor. Likewise, after three days and nights in the grave, Jesus appears before the Father, bringing us with Him.

Prophetic Patterns on Nisan 17

The date Nisan 17 carries profound prophetic weight. Consider what happened on this day in biblical history:

• Genesis 8:4: Noah’s Ark rests on Mount Ararat—new life after judgment.
• Exodus 14: The Israelites cross the Red Sea—freedom from slavery.
• Joshua 5: Israel eats from the land for the first time—no more manna.
• Jesus’ Resurrection: The Bread of Life rises, giving us eternal nourishment.

All of this—on the same day: Nisan 17. A Nobel-winning mathematician, Robert Faid, calculated the odds of these events aligning on one day to be 1 in 783 quadrillion.

Why It Matters Today

This isn’t just about historical coincidence—it’s a divine design. Yeshua’s resurrection wasn’t about Sunday. It was about First Fruits—the day God chose, not man. The early believers knew this. They celebrated it, not with Easter eggs and Roman myths, but with reverence, recognizing Jesus as the First Fruits offering of the resurrection.

Paul even tells the Gentile church in 1 Corinthians 5:7–8:

“Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us keep the feast…”

The Call to Return

We’ve lost touch with God’s calendar. But the richness is still there, waiting to be rediscovered. This season is an invitation—not just to remember the resurrection—but to align with God’s prophetic timeline, to purge the leaven from our lives, and to offer ourselves as a First Fruits offering of sincerity and truth.

What is he saying? He’s talking to Gentiles. He’s saying, “Look, you guys were once outside of the covenant of Israel. You could not be part of the commonwealth of Israel, but through the blood of Christ, you are now allowed to be part of the commonwealth of Israel, and you are now part of the covenants of promise.” And the feast day calendar was part of the covenants of promise that the Roman church stripped from us.

That’s why it says just a few verses down, in verse 19: “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and aliens,” which is another word for Gentiles. That’s why he says, “There’s no Jew, no Gentile, no slave nor free. You’re no longer Gentiles, but fellow citizens with the household of God.” You are sovereign citizens of God’s company and His ecclesia, and He called it Israel. And Israel simply means those who would struggle with God, would rule with God.

If the Holy Spirit has been working in you to go deeper and farther and to go wider in the breadth of your relationship with Him, then let it be known this day that if you’re not familiar with God’s calendar, this is one of the beginning steps to getting in sync in a more profound and intimate way. I’m going to submit to you that just like the first-century early believers—both Jew and Gentile, connected together—were celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and His death, burial, and resurrection through the Passover lamb, through the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the resurrection on First Fruits, and the Holy Spirit coming down on Pentecost (Hebrew: Shavuot), I believe we should be on God’s calendar as well.

Is the Holy Spirit Speaking to you?

And I believe if you connect with this, if the Holy Spirit is igniting something in you to go past the Protestant forefathers and the traditions and doctrines of men that were passed down to us from the Roman church—that was an influx of nothing but paganism and compromise so that more people could convert to Christ—but in the process of that compromise, we lost the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

As a matter of fact, if you want to learn more about the prophetic feast days of the Lord, I have a free PDF download that is a cheat sheet that tells you everything you need to know. All you have to do is text the word “feast day” to 844-763-9543. That’s “feast day” to 844-763-9543.

So, I believe that now is the time that we get back to doing Bible things in Bible ways. So how do we do this? What does it look like? Well, there were two counting methods in the first century of when to count for the festival of First Fruits. How did that happen? The Pharisee way was to count the day after the first day of Unleavened Bread. So the second day of Unleavened Bread, the 16th of Nisan, would always be First Fruits.

But according to the Sadducees’ counting method, they always believed that the Scripture was very plain and clear that the day after the Sabbath is the day that you start counting the Omer, the day that you start counting down towards Pentecost, was the first day of First Fruits. That’s when you’re supposed to celebrate it. And they took the Sabbath as very literal, that it’s the only Sabbath they have is on Saturday. It’s the seventh day of the week, and that’s the counting method that we use today.

Traditional Judaism today on their calendar celebrates Pentecost on a different day because they used the original Pharisaical accounting method that we choose not to use. Jesus rose from the dead on the 17th of Nisan that year, and it was on a Sunday, and we believe that’s the right day to celebrate the Feast of First Fruits.

Before the creation of the heavens and the earth, these dates were already written before time, and their symbolism was secure and in concrete. The day of the resurrection would be the third feast day. Go figure—the third one on His seven-day feast calendar, and all of us are supposed to be on that calendar. God did fulfill the first four according to His first coming of His Son. And that means we should remember those and be passing this memory down to our sons and our daughters through celebrating the resurrection through the Feast of First Fruits.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE RESURRECTION

I encourage you, when all things come to a close, that we recognize that the Feast of First Fruits is all about the resurrection of Christ. The depth of the Scriptures is there to support it. And then God says, “This is one of the pilgrimage feasts.” Check this out in Deuteronomy, chapter 16. It says this in verse 16: “Three times in a year shall all the males appear before the Lord thy God in the place which He shall choose: in the Feast of Unleavened Bread, in the Feast of Weeks” (that’s Shavuot, or what we call Pentecost), “and in the Feast of Tabernacles. And they shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed. Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God, which He gives thee.”

At the end of the day, when the sun sets on this topic, this is a critical feast, not only because Yeshua (Jesus) became the First Fruits and He gave His whole life. He says, in return, you are to come before Me during this time, and don’t come before Me empty-handed. This is our moment that we make an offering before God. This is the moment that we seed into the kingdom of God. This is the moment that we look into people’s lives around us, and we feed them the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. We look for ways to serve. We look for opportunities to kill our ego, to kill our pride by getting the leaven out of our house.

It is a symbolic memorial, rehearsal, a reminder that God sent His only begotten Son so that we could live. And now we have the opportunity to give to others. We have the opportunity to seed into the kingdom of God and the ministry before the kingdom of God. We have the opportunity to seed into people’s lives and to get outside of ourselves and holding on to everything so strong, and to freely give whatever God has given you—freely give back to Him into the kingdom. That is the principle of the First Fruits offering.

The moment that Noah landed on Mount Ararat was the moment that he gave to the world everything that God had given him—all of the animals, everything that God had put into that boat was then seeded into the earth, and the earth was repopulated.

IT’S YOUR DECISION

Let me ask you a question, my friends: what are you seeding into the earth right now? What are you seeding into your family, into your spouse, into your children, into your neighborhood, into the community? What are you doing to increase? What is the First Fruits offering of your life that you can point to right now and say, “This is what I’m doing to be an asset to the kingdom of God”?

The feast days are incredible. We’ve gone through Passover. We’ve gone through Unleavened Bread. We’ve gone through Yom Bikkurim, First Fruits. Next will be the last one in the first set of the spring feast days of the Lord. It’s going to be the Feast of Shavuot, the prophecy of Pentecost. We’ll talk about that next time.

Watch the full teaching here:
https://youtu.be/PPCSl9NXNmI

Full Teaching Transcript: