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.

3489. To those within the Church it is not apparent that this is the condition of the Church, that is to say, that they treat with contempt and loathe everything to do with goodness and truth, and also show hostility towards those things, especially towards the Lord Himself. They do indeed attend places of worship, listen to sermons with some kind of reverence while they are there, go to the Holy Supper, and sometimes discuss those things with one another in a seemly way. The evil accordingly do the same things as the good, even exercising common charity or friendship to one another, and as a consequence others do not see in them any contempt for the goods and truths of faith, or therefore any contempt for the Lord, still less any loathing of these, and least of all any hostility towards them. But those very actions are outward forms, by which one person leads another astray, whereas the inward forms existing with members of the Church are completely different and the complete reverse of those outward forms. It is the inward forms which are described here and which are of that nature. The essential nature of these inward forms is presented visually in heaven; for the angels pay no attention to anything else than the things that are internal - to ends in view, that is, to people's intentions and wills, and to their thoughts stemming from these. How different these are from external things becomes clear from members of the Christian world entering the next life, regarding whom see 2121-2126.

[2] Indeed in the next life it is solely in accordance with internal things that people think and speak, for external things have been left behind with the body. There it is evident that however peaceable such people seemed to be in the world they nevertheless hated one another, and hated everything belonging to faith, hating the Lord above all else; for at the mere mention of the Lord's name in their presence in the next life a sphere not only of contempt but also of loathing and hostility towards Him clearly emanates from them and envelops them, including those who to outward appearances spoke about Him with reverence and also preached about Him. It is similar when charity and faith are mentioned. As to their inward form which is disclosed there, these people are such as they would have been while living in the world if external restraints had been released and taken away from them. That is, if they had not in the world feared for their lives and feared the law, and in particular if they had not feared for their reputation on account of the positions they strove and worked for, and of the wealth they desired and avidly sought after, they would on account of their deadly hatred have laid into one another, as their intentions and thought directed them. And without any conscience they would have seized other people's goods and also without any conscience would have butchered them, no matter how utterly innocent their victims may have been. Such is the nature of Christians interiorly at the present day, apart from a few who remain unknown. From all this it is evident what the nature of the Church is essentially.