3 Bible Tips: Harvests and God's Vast Eternal Plan
The Bible uses the analogy of spiritual harvests as a description of God's wonderful plan of salvation. Let's look at several examples that correlate with the three harvest festival seasons in the Holy Land.
1. Like the first ripe grain of the spring harvest, Jesus Christ was the first of the spiritual firstfruits.
"But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20).
2. The Church is also called firstfruits, represented by Pentecost at the end of the spring harvest.
"Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures" (James 1:18; see also Acts 2:1, 41).
3. Those living during the Millennium and those resurrected at the end of the thousand years will have their opportunity to be in the third spiritual harvest season.
"And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished... And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books" (Revelation 20:4-5, 12).
This brief overview is explained in more detail in God's Holy Day Plan: The Promise of Hope for All Mankind.