At Sundown Monday, September 6, 2021 a new year begins the Jewish calendar, as recorded in Leviticus 23 (also recorded in Numbers 29:1-6):
23 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 24 “Speak to the
children of Israel, saying: ‘In the seventh month, on the first day of the
month, you shall have a sabbath-rest, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy
convocation. 25 You shall do no customary work on it; and you shall offer an
offering made by fire to the LORD.’ ”
As practicing Jews, the Lord Jesus Christ, His disciples,
and the Apostle Paul all marked this solemn occasion. It is traditionally
called Rosh Hashanah and begins the Feast of Trumpets, including the
blowing of the shofar.
The New Year begins in the Seventh Month?
You may have noticed that nowhere does these passages from Leviticus and Numbers say that this is Rosh
Hashanah or a “New Year”. Just as the holiest day of the week is the seventh day; that is, the
Sabbath, the number seven often signifies holiness to the Lord. Rosh Hashanah is in the seventh month of Tishri, with the first month being Nisan, which occurs in March/April. Only in Ezekiel 40:1,
the phrase “Rosh Hashanah” is used, literally meaning the head of the year,
rather than the New Year.
I compare it to the calendar year begins in January, but the school year begins in August/September. The Jewish calendar is based on a lunar cycle of the moon, and of course that is from where we even get the word “month”.
From sundown Monday to sundown Wednesday were days of self-judgment (two days are used, just to make sure that the right time is observed), a time to remember our sins, our repentance, and our forgiveness of those sins.
Typically in modern Judaism, Micah 7:19 is read, “He will again
have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities. ‘You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea.’ ”
But I’m not Jewish…
…But Jesus was and still is Jewish. He is of the tribe of JUDAH, from which we get the name Jew, and Judea. Numerous passages in the New Testament refer to the concepts of Rosh Hashanah. Since the first four feasts from the Old Testament coincided with the fulfillment of those prophecies in the New Testament, these feasts celebrated this month may also coincide with the future prophecies when they are to fulfilled.
What were the first four feasts that coincided with the fulfillment by Jesus Christ that have already occurred? Passover, Pesach, celebrated the liberation from enslavement and coincided with Jesus’s institution of a “New Covenant” or a “New Testament in My blood” (Luke 22:20, KJV) and occurs at the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Ḥag haMatzot. There is also the Feast of Weeks, Shavuat, (Pentecost), which Christians also link with the New Testament fulfillment in Acts 2.
Further, twice Paul referred to the holy day of Pentecost in
Acts 20:16 and 1 Corinthians 16:8. If he, as a Christian to the Gentiles, we too should be mindful of the Jewish feasts, and especially those which have not yet been fulfilled, including Rosh Hashanah, the Feast of Trumpets, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
Rosh Hashanah can be celebrated by Christians in
anticipation of several coming prophecies to be fulfilled. Consider:
At the sound of the trumpet, the dead in Christ shall rise
(see Matthew 24:31, 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, and 1 Corinthians 15:51-57). When
John is called up to heaven in Revelation 4:1, he heard a trumpet sound and
voice which said, “Come up here…”. This passage marks the beginning of the
Tribulation, when the church is raptured from the earth.
In Luke 10:20, Jesus said we are to rejoice that our names
are written in heaven. In the Jewish Talmud, there is a rejoicing at Rosh Hashanah
about those whose names are written in the Book of Life (see Philippians 4:3, Revelation
20:15, 21:27).
Revelation says there are “ten days” of tribulation. The
time from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur is exactly ten days of repentance. While
the Great Tribulation is seven years, it is possible that it could begin at
Rosh Hashanah with the rapture of the church, of Christian believers both Jewish and Gentiles, and
during those seven years, the Great Day of Atonement would come seven years and
ten days later at Yom Kippur.
It is amazing that the seven years of Tribulation from Revelation 4 through Revelation 22:15 that the word is not mentioned, but yet, in Revelation 22:16, it is clear that these things are testified to the churches!
John 5:24 through 29 states clearly that we who
1) hear the word of Jesus and
2) believe in God who sent Jesus (see also John 3:16)
3) have everlasting life and
4) will not come into judgment.
Verse 25 says that an hour is coming and now is for those who will hear the
voice of the Son of God and live. That “hour” has lasted nearly 2,000 years
that we have heard (either in His presence or through His word, the Bible) from the Son of God, Jesus the Messiah, and, as a result, live in eternal
life. From my book The Gospel of John One Day at a Time, I wrote:
