We know Him as Jesus or by his Hebrew name Yeshua and today just happens to be his birthday. You see today is the Biblical Feast of Sukkot also known as the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths and it was around this time of year that Yeshua was born in Bethlehem of Judea. Interestingly, the traditional association of Christ’s birth with Christmas likely comes from the fact that it was nine months earlier during the Feast of Hanukah (in late December) when the conception of the Messiah took place. Over the years the lines between Hanukah (also known as the Festival of Lights / Feast of Dedication) and Christmas blurred due to the increasingly gentile make-up of the early church and slowly the messianic significance of the Jewish Festival of Lights was forgotten.

Did you know that Yeshua, during the Festival of Lights in Jerusalem, told his listeners that He was “the light of the world”? Indeed, when YHWH’s spirit brought about the conception of the Messiah in a Jewish maiden named Mary, a new hope was brought into a world blinded by the darkness of sin.

And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him…

As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing…..

And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. John 9:1-7; 10:22

Although Yeshua told us that He was the light of the world it was the apostle John who so eloquently alluded to the birth of Christ in words which remind us of the Feast of Tabernacles.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God…..

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt [tabernacled] among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. John 1:1-2, 14

So over the coming days when you look back on the “super blood moon” during the Feast of Tabernacles in 2015, no matter what your opinion on the subject, don’t forget about a lowly little Jewish child born in a manger who brought light and hope into this world.

source: William Struse