And in the seventh month, on the first day of the month, ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work: it is a day of blowing the trumpets unto you. Numbers 29:1
The day referred to in our text is called Rosh Hashanah by the Jews; it is one of the holiest days of their religious calendar. It marks the beginning of a ten day period that they call the Days of Awe, a period of personal review and repentance that terminates with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Our text describes it as a day of blowing of trumpets. Tradition says this could be the blowing of the shofar, a ram’s horn trumpet, or the blowing of the silver trumpets that were used to give commandments to the Israelites during their pilgrim march from Egypt to Canaan. Or it could be both. This important day for the Israelites reminds us today that we are also waiting for a coming day when we will hear a trumpet sound.
The day we are looking for is thus described in 1 Thessalonians 4:16: ‘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’. The Rapture will include three distinct sounds: the shout of the Lord, the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God. The parallel passage in 1 Corinthians 15 confirms the trumpet call: ‘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’ (verse 52). In these verses we see a major difference between the trumpets of Rosh Hashanah and the trumpet call of the Rapture. On Rosh Hashanah, the trumpets were to sound all day. At the Rapture, the trumpet call will occur within the ‘twinkling of an eye’, which some have calculated to be one-eleventh of a second, more or less. Are we getting excited about this trumpet call yet?
Rosh Hashanah occurs on the first day of the Jewish calendar’s seventh month Tishri, corresponding to our month of September. Despite being the seventh month, it is often referred to as the beginning of the year. After this special day, followed by the Days of Awe and Yom Kippur, and then the feast of tabernacles. All of these special events on the Jewish calendar are foreshadows of future events. Just as the feast of trumpets began a great period of feasts and special events for the Israelites, so the blowing of the trump of God at the Rapture will usher into this world an incredible program of events leading up to the Millennium, the reign of Christ. We don’t have time to look at these events today, except to note that it will focus around God taking up His dealings with His earthly people Israel. All after the trump of God sounds.
Listen; do you hear the blowing of the trump of God? Neither do I, not yet. And yet, its sound could break through the skies today, even as you read this message. Maranatha! – Jim MacIntoshÂ