Happy Rosh Hasanah

The Feast Of Trumpets
Trumpets
by Zola Levitt

God seems to have enjoyed the trumpet. Ever since Isaac was spared by virtue of the ram being caught in the thicket by its horn, the trumpet, or in biblical times, the ram's horn, was special to God. After all, without Isaac, we would not have had the Jews; and without the Jews, we would not have had the Bible, the apostles, the disciples, and we must suppose, the Messiah Himself.

God actually seemed to enjoy hearing trumpets blown, and He used them to great effect when Joshua conquered Jericho. He also specified their use in the Year of Jubilee (Lev. 25:8-10) having the trumpets "proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." That quotation appears today on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, and may reassure those who feel this country was not founded by Bible-reading men.

But even previous to Jericho, God instructed Moses about trumpets on Mt. Sinai, in regard to our fifth feast!

Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, in the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation (Lev. 23:24).

We have skipped over quite a bit of time now from Pentecost, to picture the year as it was prescribed. Our first three feasts occurred, of course, in the first month, normally in April.

Pentecost occurred at the early part of summer, usually in late May or early June. Now we go over to the first day of Tishrei, on the Jewish calendar, the seventh month, which occurs in the fall, in September. This jump in time seems to represent the Church Age in God's planning, since the trumpet unquestionably represents the Rapture of the Church.

The trumpet was the signal for the field workers to come into the Temple. The high priest actually stood on the southwestern parapet of the Temple and blew the trumpet so that it could be heard in the surrounding fields. At that instant, the faithful would stop harvesting even if there were more crops to bring in, and leave immediately for the worship services.

The Lord used the image. We can imagine the scene as a Jew and an Arab worked side by side in the fields, as they do even today. When the trumpet would sound, the Jew would leave immediately, and the Arab, believing otherwise of course, would continue bringing in the crops. Thus the Lord stated, "Where there are two working in a field, I'll take one and leave the other."

The Rapture is very clearly associated with trumpets:

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lordin the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord (I Thess. 4:16-17).

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed (I Cor. 15:51-52).

When that great trumpet sounds, the miracle to surpass all miracles will take place. The living believers will rise from the earth. The graves will give up their dead. All the believers will be mysteriously changed and outfitted for immortality. (The Scofield Memorial church of Dallas has made good use of the phrase "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all bechanged," placing it in the church nursery.)

The triumph of mighty Joshua at Jericho is a type of the Rapture of the Church. There, the people shouted and blew on trumpets, and the walls fell down, and each man "ascended up" into the city. Beautiful Jericho, with its flower gardens and citrus fruits, is a gorgeous oasis in a very arid wilderness. It was the place where God chose to take His people into their Promised Land. It was their first sight of anything but hopeless desert for some forty years. Likewise, with the Christians, our glimpse of heaven at the Rapture will represent the end of a long journey for each of us through the wilderness. The entire story of the exodus--the story of Passover, our first feast--illustrates the salvation of the believer. First, there was the blood of the lamb, which delivered him from death, then the trip through the Red Sea--baptism, then the wandering in the wilderness--this life on earth, and finally, Jericho--heaven, when the trumpets sound. There is a very close comparison between the verses, Joshua 6:5 and I Thes. 4:16-17, as if God purposely indicated the correlation. If the Israelites could believe that their exalted group of men, women, and children could cross the Jordan and assault mighty Jericho, with its huge walls, and somehow take the city, then the Christians can equally believe that he can rise off the earth and meet the Lord in the air. The clincher of the type is in the name of the leader; in both cases, Joshua (Jesus' name was, of course, Yeshua, in Hebrew, Joshua, in English.)

Sadly, only a small portion of the Jews (the remnant which is in the Church at the time of the Rapture) will see this magnificent fulfillment. Jeremiah, with his usual clear-eyedforecast, lamented the situation:

The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved (Jer. 8:20).

But for the remaining Jews of the world, who will not participate in the Rapture of the Church, God will have a restoration to the Promised Land. We have seen a portion of theJews retake the land, of course, but Isaiah indicates that they will all go back at the sound of the trumpet:

And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria and the outcast in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the Lord in the holy mount of Jerusalem (Isaiah 27:12-13).

We might suppose this would be a logical move for Jews left on earth after the Church is gone, in the tribulation period. The Jewish people will hardly have a friend anywhere. They certainly won't bow to the Antichrist, particularly when he enters the Temple (II Thes. 2:3-4), and their best defense will be to stand back-to-back with their brethren in the Holy Land. This is how it will find them all regathered when He returns (Romans 11:26).

Trumpets, then, occurs on the seventh new moon of the year, a significant time for the conclusion of an age. The Church will be taken out of the world, and God will move on to the difficult fulfillment of the next and most sacred of Jewish feasts.

Source

To buy his booklets, go here. I HIGHLY recommend to any Christian or seeker of the truth to read Zola's books. Zola is a Jewish Christian (or as he says, a complete Jew). His writings and TV shows helped me a great deal when I first believed.

We won't all meet one another here on earth so may we all " ... be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever." (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17)

God bless.