Zechariah 14:16

"And it shall come to pass, that everyone that is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, Jehovah of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles."

"Everyone that is left ..." is a reference to the survivors from repeated judgmental destructions that shall mark the progress of the holy church throughout the ages of her probation, during which time the forces of evil align themselves repeatedly against Christ and his church, suffer the inevitable judgment that Jehovah brings upon the persecutors, with the consequent destruction or humiliation of the evil powers. It is the survivors of those wicked powers who are envisioned here as accepting the gospel of Christ and keeping the duties and ordinances of his church.

"The feast of tabernacles ..." The three great feasts of the Jews were Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. (The feast of Lights was added after the Macabbean wars.) Tabernacles was the feast which the Jews celebrated in memory of their forty years wandering in the wilderness, that experience coming in time to stand for the Church's probation throughout the Christian dispensation. The Jewish wanderings were "on the way to the promised land"; The Christian's wanderings are "on the way to heaven." What is said here must be applied totally to that "Jerusalem which is above," the church of Jesus Christ. The language is metaphorical and simply means that all nations of the earth shall yield a harvest of souls unto Jehovah, and that these shall accept Jesus Christ and dutifully observe the teachings and ordinances applicable under his supreme authority.

Any literal acceptance of this verse as a pledge that God will destroy the whole world except a remnant of Jews in every nation, and that the entire physical earth shall journey three times a year to physical Jerusalem to live in tents for a week must be accounted as a preposterous misunderstanding.

There is nothing in the last 2,000 years that resembles a fulfillment of this prophecy, except the repeated triumph of Christ and his gospel in those very lands which once were pagan enemies of the Lord. This verse is a pledge that it will continue to be so.