The Children of Israel were told to keep three feasts each year - the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of first fruits, and the feast of ingathering. Should we still do that?

In Exodus 23:14-16, Moses receives the instructions about these feasts. Those three verses in Exodus comprise our brief story. Their inner meaning is explained in Arcana Coelestia 9286-9296.

There are three feasts. In the Word, the number three represents a completeness, a sense of things being covered from beginning to end. Our thankfulness to the Lord is supposed to keep going - to endure.

The first feast, of unleavened bread, stands for worship, for our thankfulness for the Lord's action in our minds to get rid of false ideas. That enables us to start to receive good loves.

The second feast, of first fruits, relates to the planting of true ideas in that "soil" of initial loves for doing good.

The third feast, of harvest, or ingathering, stands for the time when, by applying our true ideas, we receive real good - loves of the neighbor and of the Lord - that become the middle of our lives. This is the state of rebirth, where we have - by working through the year (our lives), and enduring in thankfulness, allowed the Lord to get rid of our false ideas, and push our evil loves to the periphery, so that good can work, and be fruitful.

These feasts, then, represent the progress of our spiritual lives. In some manner, we need to keep them.

572. 13:2 Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard. This symbolizes their heresy destructive of the church, being founded on the Word's truths falsified.

Animals in general symbolize people in respect to their affections (no. 567), and a leopard symbolizes an affection or penchant for falsifying the Word's truths. Moreover, because it is a fierce beast and slaughters harmless animals, it also symbolizes a heresy destructive of the church.

A leopard symbolizes the Word's truths falsified because of its black and white spots, its black spots symbolizing falsities, and the whiteness between them symbolizing truth. Consequently, because it is a fierce and savage beast, it symbolizes the Word's truths falsified and so destroyed.

A leopard has a similar symbolism in the following places:

Shall an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard its spots? Then you also can do good who have been taught to do evil. (Jeremiah 13:23)

...a lion from the forest slew (the great men), a wolf in the fields shall devastate them; a leopard is watching their cities. Everyone who goes out... shall be torn in pieces, because... their apostasies have become mighty. (Jeremiah 5:6)

A leopard lying watching their cities is to ambush doctrinal truths - a city being doctrine (no. 194).

(Because) they forgot Me... I have become to them like a lion, and like a leopard by the path I will watch them. (Hosea 13:5-7)

A path, too, symbolizes truth (no. 176).

The wolf shall tarry with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat... (Isaiah 11:6)

The subject there is the Lord's kingdom to come. The young goat is genuine truth in the church, and the leopard is that truth falsified.

(The third beast that came up from the sea) was like a leopard, which had on its back four wings... (Daniel 7:6)

On the four beasts seen by Daniel, see no. 574.