This Festival was known in Biblical times as Yom Teruah, “Day of Blowing”; it is known today as Rosh Hashanah, the New Year. This may seem a bit confusing since it comes in the seventh month. The Jews actually observe two different calendar years at the same time. One is their religious calendar which begins in the Spring with Passover in the first month and continues with the months numbered the way God gave them to Moses. The other calendar was adopted while the Jews were in captivity in Babylon. It uses Babylonian names for the months, rather than numbering them, and starts the year in the fall with the first month, Tishri, corresponding to the Jews’ seventh month. Since the Feast of Trumpets occurs on the first day of Tishri, the Jews began calling it Rosh Hashanah (meaning “Head of the Year”) rather than Yom Teruah. In a certain sense, it does come at a transition between years – it is the end of one agricultural year and the beginning of the next since the fruit harvest is completed by this time and the next crop year is started afterward with field preparation, grain planting, vine dressing, tree pruning, etc., each coming in their appropriate order.<\/div>\n
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In Biblical times, the blowing of the shofar was usually a signal of something serious – a warning of enemies approaching, a call to war, a call for assembly, etc. The Jewish concept of this solemn time was that God spent the days following the blowing of the trumpets reviewing the record books that He had kept for each individual throughout the year, and then gave His final verdict on the Day of Atonement. Each individual must examine his own life and make sure that his personal sins were thoroughly repented of and properly dealt with by offering a perfect female kid goat or lamb as a sacrifice. When the priest had properly applied its blood and burned its fat, the sin was atoned for and the person was forgiven. Symbolically, the purity of the sacrificed victim was transferred to the person and the defilement of the sin was transferred to the sanctuary where it was “stored” until the Day of Atonement. If someone had not repented in this way, he would be “cut off from among his people.”<\/div>\n
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Moses Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher, wrote regarding Rosh Hashanah: “Awake, O you sleepers, awake from your sleep! Search your deeds and turn in repentance, O you who forget the truth in the vanities of time and go astray all the year after vanity and folly that neither profit nor save–remember your Creator! Look at your souls, and better your ways and actions. Let every one of you abandon his evil ways and his wicked thoughts and return to God so that He may have mercy upon you.” (quoted by Samuele Bacchiocchi in
God’s Festivals in Scripture and History<\/u>, p. 57)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Significance to us:<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The Festival of Trumpets is a symbol of a pending personal “court hearing”: there is a time of judgment coming for each individual (2 Corinthians 5:10); the final verdict will be based on the records God has kept of each person’s life (Revelation 3:5; 20:12); God doesn’t want anyone to be “cut off” from Him (John 3:16); each one needs to confess and repent ahead of time so He can clear their record (Psalm 139:23, 24; 1 Corinthians 11:31; Colossians 2:14; 1 John 1:9); Jesus is our High Priest in the Heavenly Sanctuary, our personal Advocate (Hebrews 2:17; 4:14-16; 1 John 2:1).<\/div>\n
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God is very merciful and gracious and has a forgiving attitude but He will not acquit those who persist in their sinful ways (Exodus 34:6, 7) Sin in our lives is not a minor issue, especially if we neglect or refuse to give it up and turn away from it. We need to do some serious introspection, ask God to apply some of His eye salve so we can see ourselves the way we really are (Revelation 3:18), acknowledge the sinful issues in our lives (thoughts, attitudes, actions) and then repent, turn away from those things, get them out of our lives, and let God deal with them. He wants to save us from our sin problem and has made every provision for that to happen, but He can’t take sin out of our lives if we don’t recognize it and bring it to Him. We need to come to Jesus with a humble attitude and ask Him to do that for us (Psalm 51) so that we can receive the blessings that come from being right with God. (Psalm 32:1, 2)<\/div>\n
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The Festival of Trumpets is a type of the seven trumpets of Revelation 8-11 which are also a warning of impending judgment. (Joel 2:1; Zephaniah 1:14-16) When we look at them from the historical perspective, they were a warning that the judgment of the dead was pending. They will be repeated in the near future just prior to the judgment of the living. Since they are to be a warning of final events, they need to be given to the generation that will experience those events.<\/div>\n
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Solemn events before us are yet to transpire. Trumpet after trumpet is to be sounded, vial after vial poured out one after another upon the inhabitants of the earth.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0Last Day Events<\/u>, p. 23<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
It is interesting to note that the first four trumpets affect the earth, the sea, the rivers and fountains, and the heavens. These are the parts of creation that are specifically mentioned in the First Angel’s Message and in the Sabbath Commandment. The plagues God sent on Egypt were directed against the various parts of creation that the Egyptians worshiped. Nature worship has taken many forms in our modern times and God will use these trumpet-plagues to warn these worshipers.<\/div>\n
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Another interesting parallel involving trumpets is the seven days of trumpet-blowing by the Israelites prior to the fall of Jericho. The seven trumpets of Revelation come before the fall of Babylon.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Leviticus 23:23-25; Numbers 29:1-6) History: On the first day of the seventh month, on the day of the New Moon, a Sabbath was proclaimed and each individual Jew sounded a special great blast on a shofar, or ram’s horn trumpet, as a warning reminder that the annual judgment time had come and ten days later … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Festival of Trumpets \/ Rosh Hashanah”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biblical-festivals"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8gHhX-U","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godsfoodforlife.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godsfoodforlife.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godsfoodforlife.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godsfoodforlife.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godsfoodforlife.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.godsfoodforlife.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57,"href":"https:\/\/www.godsfoodforlife.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godsfoodforlife.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godsfoodforlife.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godsfoodforlife.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}