👉🏾👉🏾👉🏾How the #Church Describes the The #Prophets’ #Fast
(Part 8)
Dear followers of the Orthodox teachings on John's Repentance website .we greet you with the peace of the Lord. Today, based on the topic mentioned above, we present to you the following important lesson. We encourage everyone to read it carefully and learn from it.
✍🏾The Fast of the Prophets is a holy season of fasting that is prescribed by God’s law. It is not only a time of abstaining from food, but a time of repentance, humility, prayer, and return to God. Through this fast, the faithful weaken the power of sin and strengthen their spiritual life.
The Holy Scriptures teach us that fasting must be proclaimed and entered with a sincere heart. Although this message was spoken through the prophet Joel, it reveals the same truth taught by the prophets: that fasting brings divine blessing.
The Word of God says:
👉🏾 “Now, says the Lord, return to Me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning. Do not rend your garments, but your hearts. Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and He relents from sending calamity. Who knows if He will turn and leave a blessing behind Him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing infants. Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, and the bride from her wedding.”(Joel 2:12–16)
✍🏾Through this teaching, the Church understands that fasting is not only a physical discipline, but a spiritual calling to return to God with a broken and humble heart.
✍🏾The Orthodox Tewahedo Church, based on the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Prophets, and the Apostles, has established a holy fast called the Fast of the Prophets, also known as the Fast of the Nativity.
This fast is founded on the spiritual preparation made by the prophets before the birth of the Savior. Through prayer, fasting, and prophetic revelation, they prepared themselves and the people to receive the coming of the Messiah.
✍🏾Foundations of This Fast
The basis of this holy fast is:
The prophets spiritually counted and awaited the appointed weeks before the birth of the Lord.
Fasting is a sacred remembrance of the spiritual struggles and hope of the prophets who waited for salvation.
✍🏾The Prophecy of Daniel
The holy Prophet Daniel revealed the mystery of the coming of the Messiah through his prophetic vision:
“Seventy weeks are determined upon your people and upon your holy city,
to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins,
to make reconciliation for iniquity,
to bring in everlasting righteousness,
to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.
Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
And after the sixty-two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
And He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week He shall cause the sacrifice and the offering to cease; and for the overspreading of abominations He shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.”(Daniel 9:24–27)
The holy prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Malachi, and many others proclaimed the coming birth of our Lord Jesus Christ in advance through fasting, prayer, and earnest supplication. Their hearts were fixed on the promise of salvation, and they longed to see the fulfillment of God’s word.
Continues 👇🏾