All those of mankind for whom the Messiah died and whom he calls forth from the memorial tombs of the dead will have to bring themselves into harmony with that spiritual Paradise. (John 5:28, 29) They will have to put Jehovah’s worship first in their lives. They will have to accept the Bible truth and to cultivate the fruits of God’s holy spirit. (Galatians 5:22, 23) If they really desire to gain life eternal in the Paradise earth, they will have to come up to the worship of the heavenly Theocrat, the God-King, at his spiritual temple. By doing so, they will enter into boundless joy, never to fade. This divine requirement for such resurrected ones is spoken of in Zechariah’s closing sentences. Those of whom he speaks did not come up to Jehovah’s temple before Jerusalem was attacked. So they do not picture survivors of Har–Magedon. They appear on earth after it by resurrection.

8. What will happen to those who do not go up from Egypt and other nations to worship Jehovah and celebrate the festival of booths?

⁸ “And it must occur that, as regards everyone who is left remaining out of all the nations that are coming against Jerusalem, they must also go up from year to year to bow down to the King, Jehovah of armies, and to celebrate the festival of the booths.

ADVISABILITY FOR NATIONS TO JOIN IN THE FESTIVAL

10. How will Jehovah’s victory over the international attacking forces affect the attitude of the nations that supplied such forces, and why will they not want to risk passive resistance to Him?

¹⁰ We can imagine how, in the prophetic picture, Jehovah’s magnificent victory over the international armies attacking Jerusalem would affect the people back home of those nations that supplied such armies. His victory would painfully demonstrate to them that Jehovah is the only living and true God and that He is invincible. And if He smote their combined armies in the astounding way that He did, what could he not do to them if they kept on showing opposition to him and did not acknowledge him? What would he do to them if they did not go up to Jerusalem and bow down to him as King at his temple? Will he tolerate even their passive resistance? If they were not positively for Him, would it not mean that they were actually against Him? Yes, it means exactly that!

12. To what annual festival were the nations required to come up, and what special sacrifices were offered during that festival?

¹² Whether Jehovah of armies gained his victory over the attacking nations just before the Jewish festival of the booths (or, tabernacles) in the seventh lunar month, Tishri, is not definitely stated in Zechariah 14:12-15. However, the festival of booths, celebrated on Tishri 15-21 of each year, at Jerusalem, is the one that all the nations are specifically required to celebrate at the temple in Jerusalem. It was most appropriate that to this particular festival all the nations should come up and bow down to the King, Jehovah of armies. At this seven-day festival in Jerusalem there were offered seventy young bulls, beginning with thirteen young bulls on the first day and decreasing the number of them by one each succeeding day down to seven on the seventh day.

13. (a) Why is the number of the young bulls sacrificed significant, and how many benefit from such a sacrifice? (b) To gain everlasting blessings to whom must the nations dedicate themselves?

¹³ Such young bulls appeared to be sacrificed in behalf of all the families of the earth, there being seventy family heads enumerated in the record of Genesis, chapter ten, concerning the spread of earth’s population after the flood of Noah’s day. Seventy is the product of seven times ten; and, since in Scripture both of these numbers represent perfection, completeness, wholeness, spiritually and earthly, the seventy young bulls of the festival of tabernacles or booths would figuratively serve as a sacrifice for all the world of mankind, all nations. (Numbers 29:12-34; Leviticus 23:33-35; Deuteronomy 16:13-15; Exodus 23:16) All nations, without exception, must turn their backs on false gods, on false religion, to which they had formerly ‘dedicated themselves.’ (Hosea 9:10) They must now dedicate themselves to the worship of the God-King Jehovah at his temple. This will result in everlasting blessing to them.​—1 Thessalonians 1:9.

14. At the festival of the booths, to what emotion was expression most fully given, and, by Jehovah’s inviting nations to attend it, what does he indicate to be his will for the nations?

¹⁴ Of all three annual festivals celebrated at Jerusalem, the festival of booths or of ingathering proved to be the most joyous one of all the year. Why should the celebrants not rejoice at the abundant harvest with which their God had blessed them at the close of the agricultural year? So great was the joy at this seven-day festival that it was said that whoever had not seen the joy at the festival of the booths does not know what joy is. The great Rainmaker, who blesses the earth with moisture from heaven, wants all the nations to be joyful. Their worship of Him will be blessed with this overflowing joy. How wise, then, for the nations to accept his invitation to celebrate this festival at his temple!​—Deuteronomy 32:43; Romans 15:10, 11.

15. Why is it that the nations must not go up to an earthly Jerusalem in the Middle East to celebrate a seven-day “feast of the booths”?

¹⁵ Do we catch the significance of this prophetic picture? Not that all the nations must celebrate the literal feast of tabernacles or booths at an earthly Jerusalem annually. The celebration of the festival of tabernacles at Jerusalem in the Middle East ceased in the year 70 of our Common Era. And appropriately so, for since the death and resurrection of the Messiah Jesus and his ascension to heaven in the year 33 C.E. that literal seven-day festival had ceased to apply, to have value. It was a part of the “law of Moses,” which law had a “shadow of the good things to come.” (Hebrews 10:1; Colossians 2:16, 17) Those prophetic shadows of the Mosaic law gave place to the realities, when the ascended Messiah Jesus appeared in God’s heavenly presence and applied the value of his sacrificial blood to the validating of the promised “new covenant,” which introduced the Christian realities. So the reality, as foreshadowed by the typical “festival of the booths” or “festival of the ingathering,” is the thing now to celebrate. To it the redeemed ones of all mankind, the living survivors and the resurrected dead nations, must come, under the Messianic kingdom of Jesus, the Son of God.

16. (a) To what Jerusalem will the nations go up for the celebration of the festival? (b) What will befall those who refuse to go up, and what will that mean for them?

¹⁶ To the “city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem,” these earthly celebrators out of all nations, tribes and peoples must approach, by recognizing the heavenly Messianic kingdom. To the earthly courtyard of Jehovah’s spiritual temple they must come, and there they need to “bow down to the King, Jehovah of armies,” the Great Theocrat, the Universal Sovereign.