Leviticus. Day 78, The Appointed Festivals, Part Three

Today we'll talk about the Festival of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Festival of Tabernacles. 

"The Lord said to Moses, 'Say to the Israelites: 'On the first day of the seventh month you are to have a day of sabbath rest, a sacred assembly commemorated with trumpet blasts. Do no regular work, but present a food offering to the Lord.'" (Leviticus 23:23-25) I confess this is a holiday I don't recall ever studying before. In my background study it seems unclear what the blowing of the trumpets commemorates except (according to some of the commentaries I consulted) perhaps to commemorate the sound of the long trumpet blast when the people approached the foot of Mount Sinai in Exodus 19 and 20 when the Lord prepared to make His covenant with them. If that is the case, then the original purpose for the Festival of Trumpets may have been to serve as an annual reminder that the people of Israel are God's covenant people. Over time the Festival of Trumpets has become Rosh Hashanah (meaning "the head of the year") and marks the beginning of the Jewish civil new year.

I am at a disadvantage, being a Gentile, when studying the history and significance of these holidays and when attempting to understand the rabbinic teachings regarding them. I found far more theories and teachings on the Festival of Trumpets than it's possible to discuss here, so if you have the time you might want to do some in-depth googling of the subject. 

As a Gentile and a Christian, though, I can't help seeing a parallel between a blast of trumpets that ushered in something new in the Old Testament (a new year or the new relationship between God and Israel when He gave them His covenant law) and a trumpet blast in the New Testament that ushers in something new (the occasion known as the rapture, from the Latin "rapio" which means to be "caught up"). This is a new era for Christians everywhere---alive or dead---when Christ calls His own out of the world before the final days of the end times. 

We find this passage in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17: "For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will 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." 

If the trumpet call prior to the giving of the law commemorates the fulfillment of God's ancient promise to Abraham to make of his descendants a great nation, and if it commemorates the making of His covenant with them after He called them out of Egypt, then we see something similar happening in 1 Thessalonians 4. It is a fulfillment of God's ancient promise to send a Redeemer, to make a new covenant written not on tablets of stone but on the tablets of the heart, and to call His people out of this fallen world. 

This is the next great historical event we, as believers in Christ, should be looking for. No Biblical prophecy remains to be fulfilled before Christ calls His own out of this world. It could happen at any moment, so instead of looking around us at a world in chaos and a planet stricken with a plague, let's look up to heaven from which we expect our Savior.