Yom Teruah - Just that - NOT Rosh HaShana but let’s check with God’s Word

Just to make it clear after sunset on Monday 22nd September in the ‘Gregorian Calendar’ according to the God of Israel, we DO NOT enter Rosh HaShana, but the 1st of the 7th month of God’s Calendar, which is Yom Teruah, The Day of Blowing, period. Because I believe that God’s Calendar is the only calendar that matters, and I have a passion to encourage every believer to know that this is very very important to God himself: His idea and His command, so I figured some time ago, it really should be important to me too. No brainer.

Also I am trusting and hoping that all believers understand we need to embrace and continue to study and learn from the whole Word of God, starting at Beresheet, Genesis, not just jumping to what we call the New Testament.

Sometimes our reaction to commandments can be resistance because we have an inherently Western Roman view of rules. Deep down we think of rules as restrictions to our freedom. This attitude can sometimes prevent us from seeing that God’s “instructions” are for life! The point of God’s “rules” is to provide life. The rules protect us from things that would destroy us. So even though I do hear some believers saying “we are not under The Law now” I am not sure what that means, if you are not under the law, or released from the law how do you decide how to live.

Is it OK to steal, murder, commit adultery, of does it mean you just pick the laws that suit you? I am pretty sure we are called to listen up to what God tells us through His Word. As I love to remind myself and others, Yeshua himself said:

“I have not come to abolish The Torah and The Prophets, I have come to fulfil them.” (Mat. 5:17)

Also we read time and time again in the Tenach that when the Children of Israel were obedient, it was a pleasing aroma to God. That is my heart’s desire, to live my life in obedience to God’s Word, and be a pleasing aroma to my Heavenly Father.

Sadly over the years both the descendants of The Children of Israel, and the gentile believers have completely mucked up, not only God’s Word but also His calendar. So I have enjoyed finding out what I can to get straight in my mind what is right and what is wrong. And I mean right in God’s sight of course, according to His Word, because at the end of the day that really is all that matters. This is a journey I am on and will be until the day I die.

So God’s calendar all hinges on the cycle of the moon, throughout the year we get new portions of time, firstly as we welcome the weekly Shabbat and then as the little slither of the new moon appears in the sky indicating the beginning a new month. So let’s look at a few scriptures where God speaks about this:

His invitation: “The gateway of the inner court that faces toward the east shall be shut the six working days; BUT on the Shabbat it shall be opened and on the day of the New Moon it shall be opened.” (Ezekiel 46:1)

His idea: “He made the moon to mark the seasons.” Psalm 104:19

His command : “At the beginning of your months you shall blow the

trumpets” Numbers 10.10

And probably the most important:

His prophetic word: “Every month on Rosh Chodesh, and every week on Shabbat, everyone living will come to worship in my presence.” Says The Lord. (Isa. 66:23)

So as I said it all starts in in Beresheet, Genesis. “In the beginning God created the heavens and earth”. Creation, everything perfect, “ God said let there be lights in the dome of the sky to divide the day from the night, let them be for signs, seasons, days and years”

Now here is something I would like you to consider. God gave mankind the pattern of 6 days of work and the 7th as a day of rest, right from the beginning of His creation. I am pretty certain that there were no Jews in the garden of Eden. This weekly Shabbat, this day of rest was given to MANKIND. And it is interesting when we eventually get to the giving of the Ten Words/Commandments, no. 4 is NOT a “do”. or a “do not” it is a REMEMBER. Remember to keep my Shabbats, because God had already put it in place, remember for - EVERYONE He created.

It was around 345 AD that Chrysostom of Alexandria, 20 years after the 1st Council of Nicaea, that he lashed out against the Jews by comparing them to beasts “that are fit for slaughter”, adding that by killing Jesus they have “no chance for atonement, excuse, or defence.” According to the Bishops celebrating Jewish feasts and keeping Shabbat was like “mocking Christ”.

A new weekly holiday was then established, Sunday. Until then, Sunday was not observed as a holy day at all, but the aim was to separate the Church completely from any Jewish customs. So, to keep Christians from observing Shabbat, he invented the new holy day of Sunday. A number of Christians struggled to agree. But the follow-up Synod of Laodicea settled the matter. Christians who still kept the Jewish Sabbath were considered “Judaizers”.

So how important is our calendar? We make appointments with friends, doctors, car mechanics, plumbers, dentists, we have invitations to celebrate birthdays anniversaries, weddings. What happens if we turn up on the wrong date – we miss it!

God’s redemptive plan was, and is, and will be intertwined with His Appointed Times, Moedeem מעודים. He begins with setting out the weekly, monthly and annual cycle and then gives out His invitation for us to meet with him.

So now we pick up the story just before The Children of Israel are amazingly, wonderfully and dramatically brought out of Egypt, out of slavery, by the Mighty Outstretched Arm of The Lord.

So let’s see what God has to say: “The Lord spoke to Moshe and Aharon in the land of Egypt: He said:

“You are to begin your calendar with this month, it will be the first month of the year for you.” (Exodus 12:1-2)

That’s pretty clear isn’t it? I mean, really, it could not be any clearer, there is no way anyone could misunderstand that?

I think it was like God started a new season of time, a sort of re-set, as He brings The Children of Israel out of Egypt, and then shows them how to live. Of course His plan was the nations would see what a blessing this was, and want to align themselves to the Chosen People of God, and to Him, their God, the only God. But remember, God says time and time again, same mitzvot, same law for the alien, ger, foreigner who aligns themselves with you and me. No converting, we are just aligning ourselves to the God Given Way of Life.

Now I know we have references to weeks and months and years in the scriptures before this event, but this is the first time God categorically says: This will be the first month of your year. So all this hinges on the cycle of the moon, God’s calendar is Lunar, starting with the sliver of the new moon, which is called Rosh Chodesh, the head of the month.

Its important too to mention that God never named the days of the week, He calls them, day one, day two day three etc, just as in modern Hebrew today the days of the week are, Yom Rishon, the first day what most of the world calls Sunday, Yom Sheni, the second day, Monday ,Yom Shlishi, the third day Tuesday etc. and I would add that when God refers to the last day of the week as Shabbat, that is NOT its name. He says it is A SHABBAT. Just as the first and last days of Passover and Succot are SHABBATS, just as the day of Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement, is A SHABBAT. All of these days clearly not necessarily falling on the last day of the week every year.

Now, God also did not name the months of the year. He just refers to them as the first month, second month, third month etc. However, it becomes apparent quite soon in the Exodus story that it is very important when this 1st month of the year begins. Everything hinges on this. All that the Children of Israel had at this point to know when things started and ended, was God’s Word and the moon. We need to note that God also NEVER said how many months there were in the year, or how many days in a month. So as the cycle of the moon is 29.5 days, that would mean if there had been an assumption that there were 12 months in a year the first month would come earlier and earlier as the years went by. But as I said God gave the biggest hint ever when this first month of the year should always start.

“Remember this day, on which you left Egypt, the abode of slavery; You are leaving today, in the month of Aviv,” (Exod. 13:3-4). “You are to eat matza at the time determined in the month of Aviv, for it was in that month that you left Egypt.” (Exod. 23:15).

Its seems a fair and logical conclusion to me, that as The Lord did not give names to any other months, the reference to “Aviv” simply means the month of “Spring” which is what Aviv means. So that is the other pointer to when the first month of the year will begin. God’s Word, The sliver of the new moon, and when there are signs of spring, new life.

When all those three come together we have the 1st day of the New

Year again. What a wonderful idea, new year, new beginnings, as we say goodbye to the winter and see new signs of life all around us.

I also believe God had another reason for this, because time and time again after the Exodus He says “the 2nd month since you left Egypt”, the 4th month since you left Egypt”. He wanted there to be a constant reminder over the years of the absolutely amazing, wonderful spectacular event this was, when The Almighty God, The God of Israel, brought The Children of Israel out of slavery by his mighty Outstretched Arm, rescued and redeemed them.

Now I am sure you know that the moon is the only visible ‘planet’ by the human eye that actually changes shape during its 29.5 day orbit of the earth. From being barely visible as a tiny sliver in the sky, to becoming what is called the full moon. From which we get the term, the waxing and waning of the moon. Its position changes drastically during the cycle. When it is new it sets around the same time as the sun at

the end of the day, making it very difficult to see, and then sets an hour or so later each day as it begins to wax.

Sometimes when I hear gentile believers getting excited about certain dates on the Gregorian calendar I want to point out to them that even though this is the calendar used by most of the word, it was named after Pope Gregory XIII and was introduced in fact quite recently, October 1582. Superseding the Julian calendar, which was started by Julius Caesar in 46 BC and was a reform of the Roman calendar. So I hope you can understand why I believe this ‘manmade calendar’ is of absolutely no interest to God, or me!

Actually there are over 40 different calendars used in the world today, I am sure you have heard of some of them, Chinese, Egyptian, Iranian, Hindu, Islamic, Coptic, Armenian, Old Icelandic, to name a few. None, absolutely none of these are of any interest to The God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob. As believers, we need to understand that God is not going to get into our calendar so we definitely need to get into HIS.

Sadly, man never seems satisfied with just God’s Word, and man started giving names to the months, mainly during the Babylonian exile. However, when some of these months are then mentioned later by these names in the Tenach, they are always also referred to by their number as well as the man made name.

The reasons some of you may have thought that Rosh HaShana was in the autumn/fall was because of one of the many tragic results of the Babylonian exile. While in exile God’s people were sucked into the ways of the land they were in, where one of their new years was in the autumn/fall. So even though God had clearly stated that His Hebraic/Biblical New Year was in the spring they decided to create a Civil Year which started on the first of the 7th month. This autumn agricultural new year then became more and more accepted, and now has actually been transformed into the major New Year celebration. It is so widely accepted that the number of the Hebrew year is actually changed on that day.

So the first day of the 7th month, which God very clearly says is Yom HaTeruah, The Day of Blowing, is now called Rosh HaShana , New Year, accepted and celebrated by nearly everyone, not me by the way, how can this be? Why do so few people care or mind about this? This has left the Biblically God commanded New Year in the spring just as a marker of the festivals. So now we have God’s calendar completely

messed up, clearly wrong.

Added to all this it was then in the 4th Century Rabbi, Hillel II, decides to establish a fixed Hebrew calendar based on mathematical and astronomical calculations and this is the Hebrew calendar which is actually still in use today. Hillel’s calculations standardised the length of months and the addition of months over the course of a 19 year cycle. Giving a “Leap Year” with an extra 13th month, around three times during the 19 year cycle. So Once again man decides God’s Word is not enough!

My point in all of this is to remind you again that God has a calendar in place when He has done, is doing and will do mighty things, so if we mess with His calendar we may very well miss some important events, and we could, during any year, actually be a whole month out of sync with God. Which I suppose is good as it should keep us on our toes regarding any thoughts we may have about when Yeshua is coming back!

So now we will look at some of the amazing things God did at the beginning of His calendar during His appointed times – how they were all fulfilled through Yeshua when he first came to earth, i.e. Pesach, First Fruits and Shavuot, and how prophecy points clearly to the Autumn/Fall Appointed times of Yom Teruah, Yom Kippur and Succot, being fulfilled by Yeshua when he returns.

Having clearly established when the first month of the year begins let us look at what The Lord commanded The Children of Israel to do in this first month before they leave Egypt. I am sure you all know the story well:

On the 10th of the month take a lamb into the house

Make sure it has no defects

Remove all leaven from your homes

Kill it on 14th day

Smear its blood on the wooden door frames.

So as believers in Yeshua it’s quite important that if we call him the Lamb of God, the Passover Lamb, that there is some connection with him and the Pesach Lamb. Well let’s see:

On the 10th of the month take a lamb into the house.

It is very well recorded in the gospels that the year Yeshua died in Jerusalem on the 10th of the first month, just before Passover, he entered into his Father’s House, The Temple.

God also commanded the children of Israel to clean their houses of leaven, yeast, which is a symbol of sin, before Passover.

So Yeshua entered his Fathers house and then cleansed it by turning over the tables of the money changers and dealers in doves and pigeons.

Next command make sure the lamb has no defects:

Not only do we know that Yeshua was sinless, as the Son of God, but he was symbolically tried too before his death, and not even Pilot or Herod could find any fault in him.

Kill on the 14th day of the first month:

This is not so clear as the gospel stories differ a little. According to John it would seem that Yeshua died the same time as the Passover Lambs were being killed in the Temple for Pesach, i.e. the day the Seder meal would take place after sunset that day. This, of course, begs the question how Yeshua and his disciples managed to have their “Passover meal” already when the rest of Jewry had not. As recorded in John 18:28 after The Last Supper had taken place: “Early in the morning Yeshua was taken from Caiphas’s house to the governor's palace. The Jewish authorities did not go inside the palace, for they wanted to keep themselves ritually clean, in order to be able to eat the Passover meal.” John 18:28

It’s a huge question therefore whether Yeshua’s last supper was a Seder, but I don’t have time to go into this now.

What we do know is that this was the day the Passover lambs were killed in the temple ready for the Seder meals in the evening and the day Yeshua was killed.

The next command to daub the blood on the wooden frames of the houses - this will be a SIGN.

Again it is well documented that Yeshua was nailed to a wooden beam and obviously then his blood would have gone on that wood.

Interesting here is that The Lord said it would be A SIGN, as written in Exodus 12:13, it says, the blood will be a SIGN, and the word in Hebrew there is OT, spelt with just two Hebrew letters, aleph tav, (א ת ) the first and last letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. As you know we are told in Rev. 1:8 that Yeshua is the Aleph and the Tav, the first and the last (or as gentile believers more often say Alpha and Omega which. are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet ) So just as the blood was a sign at that first Pesach coming out of Egypt, so now Yeshua’s blood is the OT, the sign for redemption and rescue for the world.

Of course the only slight problem we have here is that the Passover Lamb was not a sacrifice for sin, it was JUST a SIGN for the angel of death not to kill the first born, just the first born, of the Egyptians, and enabled God to Redeem, and Rescue His people and remind them that they Belonged to Him.

So I believe that there needs to be a connection to Yeshua sacrificing himself not just for redemption rescue and belonging, but for the sin of the world, i.e. the sacrifice at Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement which will be exactly 6 months later, on the 10th of the 7th month. So just as the Passover lamb was selected on the 10th day of the first month, the sacrifice for sin for the nations is killed on the 10th day of 7th month.

Before I continue though I want to say that there are only two tenses in Biblical Hebrew, perfect and imperfect, and that means whenever God speaks prophecies, it is in the “perfect” tense, i.e. it has happened, even though many of the prophecies we have not seen fulfilled in our time yet.

Let’s look at some of the prophecies in Isaiah 53: Our diseases he bore, our pain he suffered. Wounded because of our crimes, crushed because of our sins, by his bruises/stripes, we are healed. All perfect tense. In God’s eyes has happened. Also when we see in Rev 13:8: The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, it happened before Yeshua came into ‘our time’, but in God’s timing it had already been fulfilled.

I want you to remember this as I continue.

I believe there is another definite connection to Yeshua and the Yom Kippur sacrifice for the sins of the nations. Lev. 16 explains all that the High Priest had to do on Yom Kippur which included the sacrifice of a goat, on behalf of the nation. BUT there were two goats, one to be killed and one to be released, known as the. scapegoat. The year during Pesach when Yeshua died there were two men, Yeshua, Son of God, and Barabbas (meaning Son of the father).

As written in Matthew 27:17 we read Pilate asked the people “To choose”, which man to sacrifice, to kill, and which one to release. I think this was to give us a another SIGN pointing us towards the autumn/fall feasts, connecting Yeshua to the sacrifice offered for the sin of the nation at Yom Kippur.

God then commands them to bring Him the First Fruits of their labours, usually interpreted as the first spring harvest of barley. God stipulated after the Shabbat of Passover, bring a portion of their first spring harvest as an offering to the Lord. The year Yeshua died we know he rose on the First Day of the Week after Passover, which would have been The Feast of First Fruits, what an apt day, and again Yeshua

fulfilling the commands of the Spring Feasts.

Then the the day after Pesach the command is to start counting the Omer leading up to the next spring Festival of Shavuot.

“You shall count for yourselves from the day after the Shabbat, seven shabbats, count 49 days.” Not surprisingly there are different opinions about when we start counting the Omer because of this word Shabbat: According to Rabbinic Jews, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform, they start counting on the day after Pesach, i.e. The Day of Pesach being a’ Shabbat’, but the Karaite Jews start counting after the weekly Shabbat during the week of unleavened bread. Since at least the 8th century

Karaite Jews across the world have kept to an interpretation of Judaism in which the Bible, the Tanach, is taken as the ultimate authority on religious practice. Karaites will consider the insights of the Oral Law, Talmud, Mishna etc., BUT do not accept their rulings as binding, and outright reject rabbinic traditions that clearly contradict the plain meaning of scriptural biblical verses.

Personally I favour the Karaites, especially as it says count 7 Shabbats, which seems clear to be the weekly Shabbat.

The counting of the Omer brings us to the next Appointed Time, Shavuot, which literally translates weeks, shavua being the single word for week. Sadly the church now calls it Pentecost, which is the Greek word for 50, and also sadly according to the Gregorian calendar.

We know after Yeshua’s death and resurrection he said to wait in the city. And they waited and it was on this God commanded Biblical Festival of Shavuot that The Holy Spirit came in power, equipping those first believers in Yeshua for the task ahead of them. So just to make it clear the hundreds, probably, thousands of people who were in Jerusalem on that day of Shavuot were Jews from the Nations, this was a Jewish holiday, and I have to say I find it hard when many gentile believers say it was the birth of The Church.

Yeshua was Jewish, He did not come to start a new religion, and he certainly did not tell his Jewish disciples to start a new religion. Yes it was a time of equipping them to take the teaching of Yeshua first to Jerusalem, then to Judea and Samaria and then to the ends of the earth, but Yeshua’s teaching never ever implied a new religion. In fact he really did not say anything new that God had not already spoken through Moshe and the prophets.

“Repent of your sins, turn back to God” was the main message. Warning, “unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the Kingdom of heaven”. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and love your your neighbour as yourself. Do this and you will have life.” Luke 10: 25-27.

In fact for the first few years after Yeshua’s death and resurrection most of those who believed Yeshua was the Messiah were Jewish, and were called people of The Way who continued to go to synagogue and keep the Festivals of The Lord. I personally think it all started going very wrong when some people asked the question whether the gentiles who believed Yeshua was the Messiah and Son of God, and all the words he taught over those three years of ministry, needed to keep the same laws. I cannot fathom why they did not just remind themselves of God’s Word, where He had clearly said, SAME MITZVOT SAME LAW for the gentile WHO ALIGNS with you.

I know my thoughts are seen by many as controversial, but you need to remember that the Jewish believers were not of one heart and mind on this issue, they disagreed, so sadly it leaves us with deciding who we think was right. I am sure they all thought they were being led by the Holy Spirit. Personally I think once the decision was made there could be different laws for the gentiles, this is when it all started going off the

straight and narrow.

Certainly something began to go wrong pretty soon. It was only just over 300 years after Yeshua returned to his Father that in 325 AD, in the same spirit of Chrysostom of Alexandria, that the Council of Nicaea wanted independence from the Jewish calendar and wanted to celebrate the death and resurrection of their Jewish Messiah, who they called Jesus Christ, on a different date to Passover.

Supposedly under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit they decided to establish their own date, and that Easter (pagan name) would be held on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox. From that point forward, the Easter date depended on the ecclesiastical approximation of March 21 for the vernal equinox. Then is carries on. Easter, however, is delayed by 1 week if the full moon is on Sunday, which then decreases the chances of it falling on the same day as the Jewish Passover.

They decided a date on the Julian calendar, and that date was delayed by a week if it was going to coincide with Passover. Oh my gosh, really!! So the date on which the Christian world started to remember the death and resurrection of their Jewish Messiah was totally pagan, with Constantine declaring Judaism was “an abominable sect”, and Jews were despicable. This all so OBVIOUSLY WRONG, JUST PLAIN WRONG, NOT EVEN NEARLY right. Are you happy with that – because I am not.

And as the years went by theology took them further and further away from God’s Word. When you think today the majority of “christians” are either Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox. Praying to Mary, and man made saints, marrying people of the same sex, ordaining homosexuals, etc etc.

So there we have it, the God commanded Spring appointed times, all fulfilled by Yeshah Hamashiach. I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to figure that it is more than likely that when He comes again it will be during the Autumn appointed times. Literally half way through the biblical year, six months later.

On the 1st of the 7th month we have Yom Teruah, the day of blowing. That is God’s only commandment on that day, to have a holy convocation and to blow shofars, make a noise, which as you probably know is usually a wake up call – for what? Maybe heralding the return of Messiah Yeshua.

Nine days later on the 10th of the 7th month we have God’s command to fast and pray on Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement, remembering when a sacrifice was made for the whole nation, already fulfilled by the Son of God.

Then on 15th of the 7th month, when the moon is full, we have the week Festival of Succot, Tabernacles, remembering not only the temporary dwellings of the Children of Israel during their 40 years of wondering, BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY when God dwelt, tabernacled with them, guiding them with a cloud by day and fire by night. Could this be the time of year when Yeshua returns and tabernacles, dwells with us and rules and reigns for ever and ever.

So I see Yeshua’s first coming as a pointer to his second.

John the Immerser was like the “wake up call” pointing to Yom HaTeruah,

Yeshua’s death at Pesach pointing to Yom Kippur,

and after His resurrection, his 40 days before his ascension when he was temporarily with the world in his resurrected body, pointing to Succat. When Yeshua will come and tabernacle with us permanently.

I have to point out here that I am definitely NOT into “End times”. When I lived in England I have to say it was never a big issue with the believers there, but many of my friends in Israel are from America where end times is huge. In fact my late husband told me on his many travels to the States to teach that most fellowships have a particular view on how and when it will happen, and as you know we have a few different options being bandied about today. Pre this and Post that, Raptures, tribulation, etc.

Michael used to tell people, I know EXACTLY when Yeshua is coming back. As you can imagine that would get people’s attention, then he would pause and then say, WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT! And this is the truth . Yeshuah clearly says, ONLY the Father knows, it will be like a thief in the night. When that day and hour will come no one knows, not the angels in heaven, not the Son, only the Father.

We have parables of the wise and foolish virgins, and the time being likened to the days of Noach, but when you have lost the love of your life after 42 years of marriage in a moment, I want to tell you I look and receive each day as a gift from The Lord, and I live my life as if Yeshua died yesterday, rose today, and is coming back tomorrow. Up until

this point a lot of people have died before Yeshua returned and some of them had wrongly predicted when his return would be, but I know if I die today I have to stand before the Lord and account for all that I have done, both good and bad, that is enough for me to make every effort to keep short accounts with God and short accounts with my fellow man, and to be continually seeking His face, and asking Him to give me ears to hear His word.

I strive to be like the wise virgins. Yes, I love God’s calendar, and I know He has given it to us as signposts to what is to come. And the more I learn about how man has messed up with it the more I think the actual Hebrew calendar today, as I said before, could very well be up to maybe a whole month out of cinque in some years.

But whether we are raptured, or ‘tribulated’, or whatever, I tell you I am a “PAN Millennialist”, really, it will all pan out in the end. We just need to be ready!

So why do I think God’s calendar is so important - because GOD SAID SO!

The Tenach is the Word of God, stands for ever, should not be added to or have things taken away, and even though I do not understand a great deal of it, I continue to pray The Lord will give me a heart after Him and His Ways, and the determination and discipline to keep walking the straight narrow path in a world which is more like Sodom and Gomorrah these days, and, I continue to work out my salvation in fear and trembling.

But if our creator, the only God, states time and again how important His Shabbats and New Months, and His Appointed Times are, it seems a no brainer that I want to acknowledge them, keep them, celebrate them and be part of them. And I leave you with a reminder of how you will be part of them ….. eventually.

“Every month on Rosh Chodesh, and every week on Shabbat, everyone living will come to worship in my presence.” Says The Lord. (Isa. 66:23)

Don’t wait, delight in being obedient NOW.