When Is the "Last Great Day"?

 During His earthly life, Jesus Christ celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles, for He obeyed His Father’s law perfectly “without sin” (Heb. 4:15). John 7 recalls one such celebration because it played a significant part in Jesus’ ministry. We’re told in vv. 37-38, “On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” From this verse has been coined the term, “the Last Great Day.”

The Feast of Tabernacles is a seven-day Feast: “The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days to the LORD” (Lev. 23:34). God’s Word tells us the same thing in Lev. 23:40-42; Num. 29:12; Deut. 16:13, 15; and elsewhere. So the Feast of Tabernacles begins on Tishri 15, by the Hebrew calendar, and lasts seven days. Immediately following the Feast of Tabernacles, on Tishri 22, is the Eighth Day: “On the eighth day you shall have a holy convocation” (Lev. 23:36).

The Eighth Day is the seventh and last of God’s seven annual holy convocations, or Holy Days. Like the others, it’s a day on which God prohibited work: “It is a sacred assembly, and you shall do no customary work on it” (Lev. 23:36). Again, we read, “Also on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep the feast of the LORD for seven days; on the first day there shall be a sabbath-rest, and on the eighth day a sabbath-rest” (Lev. 23:39).

Today’s question is, on what day did Yeshua/Jesus make His pronouncement about living waters? What day is the Last Great Day? Many say it’s the Eighth Day. Others say it’s the last day of the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles, the seventh day. So which is it?

The Eighth Day or the Seventh?

First of all, the Bible mentions the Feast of Tabernacles, also called the Feast of Ingathering, by name about a dozen times and alludes to it at least two other times. Yet not once does the Bible single out the seventh day apart from the rest of the Feast, or declare it more special than the other days of the Feast. If the “Last Great Day” is to be understood as the seventh day of the Feast, then John 7:37 would be the only verse in all of Scripture that singles out that day apart from the rest of the Feast!

On the other hand, the Bible mentions the Eighth Day by name in five separate verses (Lev. 23:36, 29; Num. 29:35; 2 Chron. 7:9; Neh. 8:18). God’s Word DOES give special importance to the Eighth Day, unlike the seventh day of the Feast!

Further, the seventh day of the Feast isn’t a Holy Day, but the First Day (Lev. 23:35, 39) and the Eighth Day are Holy Days. It hardly seems plausible that a day which isn’t a Holy Day would be described as “that great day of the Feast,” rather than a day which IS a Holy Day! No, “the last day, that great day of the feast” must be the Eighth Day, a day which God made holy. This alone matches the rest of Scripture, and this should be sufficient for us. Nevertheless, there’s another facet that we can quickly explore.

What About the Water Pouring?

Given the absence of Scriptural support for declaring the seventh day of the Feast to be the Last Great Day, proponents instead point to history. They argue that Jesus’ statement about living waters should be understood in the context of a water-pouring ceremony that supposedly happened at the temple on the seventh day of the Feast.

I say “supposedly,” because the Bible itself mentions no such ceremony, nor have I found any eyewitness accounts of a water-pouring ceremony at the temple during the Feast of Tabernacles. (If anyone else can find any, please let me know.) The Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the first century AD, made no mention of a water-pouring ceremony at the temple, yet he was a Pharisee from a priestly family and would have witnessed many temple ceremonies. The Jewish philosopher Philo, a contemporary of Jesus Christ, likewise made no mention of such a ceremony.

Instead, the tradition of the water-pouring ceremony comes from the Mishnah, which was written many decades after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, and written by men who never witnessed any of the temple services. Yet the Mishnah doesn’t link the water-pouring ceremony specifically to the seventh day of the Feast, but says rather, “The basin for the water libation was not that large; rather, one would pour the water with a vessel that had a capacity of one log on all eight days of the Festival and not only seven” (Mishnah Sukkah 4:9).

Thus there is no special link between the water-pouring ceremony and the seventh day of the Feast. If such a ceremony happened at all, it seems that neither the Bible nor Yeshua’s Jewish contemporaries considered it worthy of mention.

But beyond that, both Josephus and Philo wrote about God’s Holy Days, as well as other Jewish holidays and customs. Yet neither of them made any special mention of the seventh day of the Feast, just as the Scriptures themselves don’t. Both did write about the Eighth Day, just as the Scriptures do.

Philo had this to say about the Eighth Day:

And after the festival has lasted seven days, he adds an eighth as a seal, calling it a kind of crowning feast, not only as it would seem to this festival, but also to all the feasts of the year which we have enumerated; for it is the last feast of the year, and is a very stable and holy sort of conclusion, befitting men who have now received all the produce from the land, and who are no longer in perplexity and apprehension respecting any barrenness or scarcity. (The Special Laws, 28:33.)

Philo’s description of the Eighth Day as “the last feast of the year” and a “crowning feast” seems to correspond well to the apostle John’s own description of “the last day, that great day of the feast.”

Thus, there is neither any Scriptural nor historical basis for describing the seventh day of the Feast as the Last Great Day. It isn’t a Holy Day, and God’s Word doesn’t distinguish it from the rest of the Feast. Nor, as we have seen, did the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus Christ.

The Eighth Day, however, IS a Holy Day, and it’s the culmination of all God’s annual Holy Days. Both the Bible and the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus ascribed special honor to the Eighth Day. When Jesus made His pronouncement about living waters, it was therefore on the Eighth Day, the Last Great Day.

The Eighth Day and the Last Great Day are one and the same. The last and crowning feast of God’s Holy Day calendar.

Thoughts? Additions? Corrections? Let us know in the comments below!