Happy Yom Teruah / Day of Trumpets / Day of Shouting!
If you are among those who believe Yeshua (Jesus) fulfilled the reality of this day, please tell me how. What did the shadow point to and what was the reality casting the shadow? For example, we know the shadow of the Passover lamb with its blood put upon the doorposts saved the firstborns from death and that the realty is Yeshua the Messiah, the true Passover Lamb whose blood will protect us from death. Had Yeshua not died as the fulfillment of the Passover lamb, we would still be sacrificing Passover lambs. That is because a shadow cannot cease until the reality comes.
As I understand it, the shadow of Yom Teruah has not been fulfilled and therefore, we still live under its shadow awaiting the coming reality. Only when the day is fulfilled can the observance of it cease. If we no longer need to observe this day, then what is the reality (fulfillment) of Yom Teruah?
Many years ago I ran across Jesus’ words, “Therefore every student of the Law which is instructed in the Gospel of the Kingdom is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.” I took those words to heart and have spent many years studying the typology of the Old Covenant and what it has to teach us about the person and work of Messiah Jesus. From my studies I understand Jesus to have fulfilled all the feasts as well as all the times and seasons of the whole Jewish calendar, both the civil and the ecclesiastical.
As to the feast of Trumpets in the beginning of the civil year, the beginning of its fulfillment is seen in the ministry of John the Baptist and the beginning of the Gospel. I will refrain from any lengthy post with all the minutia, but for a broad outline, the first and most significant typology of trumpets in Scripture is that it represents the summoning of God in the wilderness calling the people to come up to the mount and receive the Word of God (Exodus 19:10-19). I think the shadow of that event being fulfilled by John the Baptist, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness," calling sinners to come to Jesus is sufficiently self-explanatory, but to go back and study and meditate on these things is edifying.
Another typological use of trumpets in Scripture is that they represent the voice of God in another way. In the days when Israel was on the march before they had conquered and entered the promised land, the armies were directed in their movements and in setting up and breaking camp by signals from the trumpets, governing their every move. Again, how that relates to the church today, being the army of God faithfully obeying the voice of God as we journey through the wilderness of this world battling the enemies of God on our way to entering that heavenly kingdom, is also self-explanatory.
And yet another use of trumpets is that it regulated the daily worship of God’s people. From the first blast of the trumpet summoning the people to come up to the mount for the morning sacrifice and gather at the door of the Lord’s House to worship the One who dwelt there, until the last note drifted across the tops of the houses in preparation for the evening sacrifice and the close of another day, so too God’s people today are called morning and evening to ascend to the mount and set our feet in His Holy Courts and enjoy communion and fellowship with the Father and the Son.
And last, but not least, the shadow of trumpets sounding an alarm, which is to my mind the heartbreaking shadow. Paul used this shadow in his denunciation of the Jewish elders at Corinth who rejected his testimony about Jesus and blasphemed the work of God and Paul warned them that their blood was upon their own heads, he was clean.(Acts 18:1-6) This harkens back to the days when cities had watchmen on the walls of a town. They were instructed that if a watchman saw an enemy approaching and did not sound the alarm to warn the townspeople and any were slain, their blood would be upon his head. But if he sounded the alarm, and they ignored it, then their blood was upon their own heads, he was clean. (Ezekiel 33:1-6)
I have often shaken my head in dismay when I hear the music and see the dancing to the song, “Blow the Trumpet in Zion.” That Scripture is not about celebration, it’s about warning, warning that destruction is coming, with blood and fire and pillars of smoke from one horizon to the other. And the fulfillment of that shadow, of a trumpet blast warning of coming destruction, was the total destruction that God brought upon the land of Israel in the Great Revolt of 66-73 A.D. when His wrath was poured out upon an apostate Jewish state, when not one city or town or village was left standing but the land and even the Holy City and Temple were desolated and millions of Jews were slain and everything that God had provided for the observance of the Old Covenant was quite literally wiped from the face of the earth.
Those are a few preliminary thoughts on the fulfillment of Trumpets and what it signified in the Jewish calendar, and how it was fulfilled in the days of Messiah, and continues to find fulfillment today in His Kingdom.
But the foreshadowing of these things didn’t end there. There followed the Day of Atonement when two goats were slain to make atonement for sin, and only one of them foreshadowed Jesus.
In Christ,
Pilgrimer
