Joel 2:1 Blow ye the trumpet (shofar in Hebrew) in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD is coming, for it is near at hand;
Amazingly another year has passed and tomorrow night begins the feast of Yom Turah -- or Rosh Ha Shannah -- the Feast of Trumpets.
At the end of summer, the Hebrews are commanded to blow the shofar -- the ram’s horn, all day long. The sound of the shofar was a sound of alarm -- it told the people to get ready. It marked in the calendar that the summer harvest was over and the day of atonement was near and it was time to stand before God.
The feast of Trumpets is amazingly prophetic. Right now, we are in the midst of the great harvest and the next major event is the sound of the trumpet -- just before the great day of the Lord. Within the feast of trumpets contains a personal message for us. It’s God’s wake up call: We don’t have forever! We only walk through this life once -- and as quickly as steam rises from hot water and quickly disappears, so it is with our lives.
Soon it will be passed and we will stand before our Maker. If we are going to do great things for Him -- now is the time! If we need to repent for anything -- now is the time. The Lord commands us to arise and shine and let our light shine throughout the world! The shofar is sounding, the summer harvest is nearing completion, and the day of the Lord is near.
Become God’s shofar, sound His warning of judgment and radiate the love He’s given us through His Son, that those around you will be able to stand pure before God!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]As thousands of believers around the world will celebrate Palm Sunday, I thought I’d offer some additional historical insight into the day Yeshua (Jesus) entered Jerusalem. Most people associate Palm Sunday with the fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9, “Behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass”. But there is another significant detail associated with this beautiful fulfillment…
I could tell you about countless difficult and drawn out circumstances over which we have tried to stand firmly in faith until they finally came to pass. Sometimes we made it and sometimes we were weak and began to doubt. But God mercifully came through for us on most of these things, despite our lack of strength to stay faith-ful.
New Testament genealogies of Yeshua Ha Mashiach (Jesus the Christ) all identify Him as the son of king David. It was universally understood from the Tenach (OT) that the messiah would be descended from David and that he would restore the Davidic monarchy to its ultimate and most universal expression, even that this king would reign and sit on the throne forever.
This weekend, the Jewish people will celebrate the festival of Purim. This holiday commemorates Israel’s amazing reversal in Persia during the reign of King Xerxes (Ahasuerus) when Queen Esther and her uncle Mordecai gained victory for the Jews and protected them from annihilation at the hands of the evil Haman.
Over two decades ago, when I moved to Israel, I had the opportunity to spend considerable time with a pastor and his wife. This pastor imparted significant wisdom to me during that period, counseling me to “be like the children of Issachar,” he directed me to this specific passage in 1 Chronicles 12.
Over the past few days, I’ve been discussing the will of God and how to walk out His will daily in our lives. The Lord’s general will involves the development of our character and the ways in which we relate to Him and to our fellow man. Much of this is the same for every believer. But each of us is unique, and each has a potential life vision unlike any other. God has an individual will for every soul that belongs to Him, an individually shaped destiny which varies according to our gifting and calling and purpose in His Body.
As God worked on creation for six days and rested on the seventh day, so our seven day week is established on that pattern. If, as the scripture declares, with the Lord one day is as 1,000 years and 1,000 years as a day, then the seven-day cycle also finds expression in a great historical “week”. As we approach the 1,000-year reign of the Messiah, this “millennium” as it is called, (described in some detail in Revelation chapter 20), is clearly understood as a time of global rest, peace, and righteousness throughout the Earth.