D16-2: One Major Worship Practice That Islam Borrowed From Israel

The 7 Biblical feasts were not only central to the worship practices of Israel, but they were also key to establishing the identity of the Hebrew people as a nation handpicked by God to represent Himself to the world. 

These are the feasts that a true believer should be observing and NOT the outrageously pagan Christmas and Easter holidays.

So understand what I’m going to be sharing with you comes straight from the Scriptures folks.

Let’s get the party started.

The Lord refers to the Biblical feasts as His “appointed times”.

This means that the feasts are to occur on a yearly cycle based on God’s calendar and not the world’s.

The purpose of these feasts was to serve as a momentary pause amidst the busyness of life and give the Israelites a chance to reflect on just who their God was and why they were chosen by Him.

Out of the 7 feasts, three of them held a special significance because they required the Israelites to make a journey all the way up to the central sanctuary in order to present themselves before God.

Remember, it was understood that God’s divine presence resided above the Ark of the Covenant.

Hence, in Scripture, whenever we come across the phrase “to appear before the Lord”, it refered to the location of the Ark which of course pointed to the Tabernacle and then later the Temple. 

Now according to the Torah, all adult Hebrew males were obligated to make a pilgrimage and present themselves to the Lord regardless of how far one’s home was from the Central Sanctuary.

However, even though the Law required only males make the trip, in general these pilgrimage festivals were seen as family occasions and thus the whole gang was encouraged to go up and celebrate.

Understand that at this point in time, Israel in terms of their lifestyle and customs wasn’t too radically different than their pagan neighbors.

However, when God commanded Israel to make a pilgrimage for a religious festival unto Him, this was a revolutionary idea unknown to the ancient world at that time.

That’s right.

These three God-ordained piligrimages further set the Hebrew people apart as indeed a very unique nation who worshipped their God in a different way than all the other nations and peoples of the world.

One may say…

…what about Islam?

Doesn’t Islam also have a pilgrimage in their religion?

My response is yes they do and where do you think they even came up with the idea of making a pilgrimage to Allah?

Or a maybe a better question to ask is…

…which came first, Judaism or Islam?

Obviously Judaism, right?

The truth is about 2000 years AFTER the God of Israel established these three yearly pilgrimages for His People, that new and rival Middle Eastern religion known as “Islam” borrowed and incorporated the same idea into their worship practices.

This is also evident when what looks at the Arabic word for “pilgrimage” which is HAJ and compares it with the Hebrew word for “pilgrimage” which is CHAG.

Isn’t it obvious who borrowed from whom?

Even though we’ve studied in excruciating detail the Biblical Feasts before, we’re going to be doing some more serious deep-diving into what these pilgrimage feasts are all about as we continue to walk through Deuteronomy.

There are along of fascinating things that aren’t so apparent to a lot of folks, especially to a gentile who grew up in a church.

What’s really interesting is that you’ll find many of the great events of Yeshua’s life actually centered around these Pilgrimage Feasts.

Stay tuned.