And on the day that the tabernacle was reared up the cloud covered the tabernacle, even the tent of the testimony: and at even it was upon the tabernacle as it were the appearance of fire, until morning. So it was alway: the cloud covered it, and the appearance of fire by night. And whenever the cloud was taken up from over the Tent, then after that the children of Israel journeyed: and in the place where the cloud abode, there the children of Israel encamped. At the commandment of Jehovah the children of Israel journeyed, and at the commandment of Jehovah they encamped: as long as the cloud abode upon the tabernacle they remained encamped. And when the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle many days, then the children of Israel kept the charge of Jehovah, and journeyed not. Numbers 9:15–19, ASV.
Rewording it over and over, this carefully says that they only moved when God moved. When God stood still, they stood still; when God was ready to move, they moved. God set the pace for them.
And sometimes the cloud was a few days upon the tabernacle; then according to the commandment of Jehovah they remained encamped, and according to the commandment of Jehovah they journeyed. And sometimes the cloud was from evening until morning; and when the cloud was taken up in the morning, they journeyed: or if it continued by day and by night, when the cloud was taken up, they journeyed. Whether it were two days, or a month, or a year, that the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle, abiding thereon, the children of Israel remained encamped, and journeyed not; but when it was taken up, they journeyed. At the commandment of Jehovah they encamped, and at the commandment of Jehovah they journeyed: they kept the charge of Jehovah, at the commandment of Jehovah by Moses. Numbers 9:20–23, ASV. How carefully those people were led in the wilderness!
This passage is introductory to what we want to read in Numbers the tenth chapter, which describes the purpose of the trumpets, the Shofar, the sounding of the trumpets. According to the Jewish civil calendar, the Feast of Trumpets is the beginning of the year; but on their original calendar, the sacred calendar, it is actually the beginning of the seventh month (Leviticus 23:24). This month is called Tishri now; Ethanim was its old name. The civil calendar begins the year in the fall, in September or October; but the spiritual, sacred calendar begins approximately in April—the month of Abib, when the Passover took place.
The Jews actually had two different calendars that they went by; and when you read the prophets, you have to be sure to find out which calendar was being used. When they were speaking about civil and agricultural events they used Tishri as the first month. That is why Joel prophesied that God would send the former and the latter rain in the first month (Joel 2:23); he was speaking about the time of ingathering, the time of the harvest, when the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with new wine and oil. Joel 2:24, ASV. Haggai 2:1 states that on the twenty-first day of the seventh month Haggai began to prophesy and speak about the Feast of Tabernacles. Haggai called it the seventh month, but according to the civil calendar it would have been the first month. Sometimes it takes a little study to determine which calendar the Old Testament writers were referring to when they mentioned the seventh month or the first month.
On the first day of the seventh month was to be the sounding of trumpets (Leviticus 23:24). The trumpets have always had a great significance, yet many Christians have never understood what they meant. If we read just ten verses in Numbers 10, we can outline seven functions of the trumpets and show what they really symbolize in the spiritual walk.
And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, Make thee two trumpets of silver; of beaten work shalt thou make them. Numbers 10:1–2a, ASV.
Notice that the trumpets were to be made of beaten silver. These trumpets could not just be molded; they had to be beaten out. When God begins to bring the Living Word, the vessels who sound it forth are not created on an assembly line; they are beaten out by the hand of God. They are a beaten work. In this day of the Living Word, if you have a ministry to sound the trumpet in Zion, you will find that you have reached that ministry through the deep dealings of God, His beatings upon your life that have molded you and shaped you into the vessel He wants you to be.
Numbers 10:2b–10, ASV, lists the seven basic functions that the Feast of Trumpets, and the blowing of the trumpets, fulfilled: thou shalt use them for the calling of the congregation, and for the journeying of the camps. And when they shall blow them, all the congregation shall gather themselves unto thee at the door of the tent of meeting. And if they blow but one, then the princes, the heads of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves unto thee. And when ye blow an alarm, the camps that lie on the east side shall take their journey. And when ye blow an alarm the second time, the camps that lie on the south side shall take their journey: they shall blow an alarm for their journeys. But when the assembly is to be gathered together, ye shall blow, but ye shall not sound an alarm. And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow the trumpets; and they shall be to you for a statute for ever throughout your generations. And when ye go to war in your land against the adversary that oppresseth you, then ye shall sound an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before Jehovah your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies. When they were going to war, they were to blow these silver trumpets and God would come on the scene to help them in their battling against their adversary.
Also in the day of your gladness, and in your set feasts, and in the beginnings of your months (Shofar sounded out to them the beginning of the whole year; they were to blow the trumpets because the feasts of the Lord would come and the years would unfold before them), ye shall blow the trumpets over your burnt-offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace-offerings; and they shall be to you for a memorial before your God: I am Jehovah your God.
There are many other passages which speak of the feasts of the Lord. The twenty-third chapter of Leviticus gives a complete outline of the feasts, as does Deuteronomy 16:1–17.
Let’s see what the Feast of Trumpets, or the sounding of Shofar, means for us. According to Numbers 10, there were seven functions accomplished by blowing the trumpets.
First of all, there was the calling of the assembly. When the priests blew the trumpets, all Israel would gather to the tent of meeting, the tabernacle. They would all come to the center place where the glory of the Lord was revealed, that they might hear the Word of the Lord.
Second, they would blow the trumpets for the journeying of the camps. When they saw the glory cloud moving, the priests blew the trumpets, and everyone was alerted; they knew it was time to move on. When an alarm was blown the first time, one side of the camp would move; at the second alarm, another side would move. Imagine three million people, with all their flocks and herds, converging into a long line of march and beginning to journey, all by the blowing of trumpets. What an amazing sight that must have been! Don’t you wish there were some way that you could go back through time and actually see what the journeyings of Israel were really like as they would blow these trumpets of silver.
Third, the preparation for war was by the blowing of the trumpets. When an adversary came against them, the priests would blow the trumpets; and as they sounded the alarm, they would be “remembered before the Lord their God and saved from their enemy” (Numbers 10:9).
The fourth function of the trumpets was for days of gladness. Whenever they were to have times of just pure joy—festivals, a wonderful, happy time—they would blow the trumpets and the people would come together. I hope in these days to come we have more times when we blow the trumpets for gladness than when we blow them for war. Nevertheless, even though it be for times of conflict, it will be wonderful to have the trumpets of God sound forth.
Fifth, the celebration of the feasts was always heralded by the blowing of trumpets. That is important to us, and we will come back to the meaning of it a little later.
Sixth, the trumpets were sounded at the beginnings of the months. Also, if a new era was to come, if God had ordered a year of Jubilee, then they would blow those trumpets to bring in the year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8–10). They would blow the trumpets to announce anything that God had established in the way of ordering their time or their months or their years.
The seventh function was that whenever they made their sacrifices and presented what they had to the Lord, the trumpets were blown.
What do these trumpets really mean to us? To help explain this, let us read some prophecies which the Lord gave in 1955. Read these carefully; they are notes that were written down directly as the Lord gave me the Word.
“Understand that for many generations the believers have been justified by faith (Habakkuk 2:4) as revealed in the Feast of Passover, and filled with the Holy Spirit as revealed in the Feast of Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4). In a very restricted sense they partook of atonement in the anointing unto utterance and the glorified presence of the Lord. But now a new day comes and the Lord announces it with trumpets. The trumpets are symbolic of the Living Word coming by the Spirit of God to announce a new day. This Word shall bring the people together. This is the day that God shall also sanctify the people wholly that they may be blameless in the day of the Lord (I Thessalonians 5:23). It is the day to purify yourselves because of the living hope that cometh by the trumpets. All with this hope purify themselves (I John 3:3).
“The Feasts of Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles shall be a threefold experience of the Living Word in the Kingdom, of the redemption for making alive the mortal body as well as the spirit (Romans 8:10–11), and of the enthroned presence of the Lord Christ within His people (Isaiah 66:1–2; 57:15).
“Can a man enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born? (John 3:4.) Nicodemus’ question shows that each revealed plane in the Spirit cannot be understood or attained by the methods which brought forth on the lower plane. The birth or foundation cannot be repeated. The physical birth cannot be repeated, nor can the old-order experience be repeated to bring us into the new plane.
“The symbols of the experience do not change—the oil, the wine, the bread, the water, the fire, the wind, and the rain shall always remain symbols of My working with the individual in each plane he passes through. (See last page for a list of Scriptures on each symbol.) You can see that all which has gone before in the day of the Church shall have its counterpart in the Kingdom to be revealed, even as the Church had its counterpart in the Old Testament Israel.
“Here is wisdom: There are three seasons appointed in which God brings forth the perfection of man. They are as times, a time, and a dividing of time (Daniel 7:25; 12:7; Revelation 12:14). Each period is a division in duration which is half of the preceding season. The first season which dealt with the whole man on a physical plane was four thousand years. The second which saw My dealings with man in the realm of soul was half as much, two thousand years. The third season which shall bring forth the perfection of man shall be My dealings on the plane of the Spirit, which shall be half again the time of the season of the soul, or a thousand years. Thus shall seven thousand years or seven days be accomplished to bring forth the perfect man who is to rule over all the work of My hands. And yet as you shall look well and study carefully, you shall see that the advances that men make are limited to the phase I am dealing with. Each dealing and struggle must be elevated to the new realm if you would know the truth. You must look to understand the things in the first season by interpreting them in the physical realm, and those of the second season in the realm of the soul.”
The first period was four thousand years. The second period was half that—two thousand years. The third period is half that, or a thousand years. Do you know that we are close to the end of the six thousand years of appointed dealings of God? We are right in that season now—within a fraction of a generation of it. We are living now in that overlapping period which is pointing toward the Kingdom to come. I believe very much in the coming of Jesus Christ (Matthew 24:3; Acts 1:11; I Thessalonians 4:15–17; II Thessalonians 1:10); and I believe that all of these things we are witnessing are preliminary to that great advent of the Lord to the earth again (Matthew 24:3–44; I Thessalonians 5:2–3). I believe in the Kingdom that is to come. And already this Kingdom, which is to be of a thousand years’ duration (Revelation 20:2–6), is having its preliminary dealings and expression in what God is doing in a remnant of His people now.
The Scriptures speak many times of two things. They speak about the last days, and about God’s new day. For instance, when Paul spoke to the Christians in the first book of Thessalonians, he said, “You are not of the night; you are of the day. You are children of the day. The others can slumber because they are children of the night; but you are children of the day, to watch and be sober and see what God is bringing forth” (I Thessalonians 5:4–6).
It is as it was in the land of Goshen in Egypt when the ninth judgment, the thick darkness, came: All the children of Israel had light in their dwellings, but there was darkness over all the land of Egypt (Exodus 10:21–23). Understand that God is doing the same thing today. He is bringing the last days of darkness on the earth, but that does not mean there will be darkness for the people of God. For the people of God it is a day of light; we are children of the day. We are already walking in a new day. Once in a while you may become confused about this.
You will hear someone talking about the last days and someone else talking about God’s new day. You say, “What is it, the last day or the new day? What are we in?” We are in both. To the world it is the last days of many an order that God is going to bring to naught. And while the trend in the world is going that way, God has people who are coming up in a new day.
This is the only way you can really understand the prophecies of what is to come, because it is a day of judgment, but it is also a day of restoration and blessing. When you read the book of Joel again, you can have confusion. You see the judgment that is upon the earth, and yet you have prophecies of fullness, of an outpouring of rain, and of God dwelling in the midst of His people continually. How can these two contradictory things be? Oh, it is so simple! As you come to the house of God, you are going to know that you are the people of God walking in a new day. As the book of Hebrews says, you are partaking of the powers of the age to come (Hebrews 6:5). You are already beginning to walk in some of these things. You are already beginning to experience them as God prepares you to be an instrument in His hand to usher in a new age. The coming of the Lord is not far away from us.
At the same time, we see the conditions in the world coming to a culmination. There are great difficulties, wars and rumors of war, and troubles and distresses (Matthew 24:6–7). But I deplore the preaching of the signs of the times that only deals with the close of an age and does not speak of the wonderful things God is doing in His people to herald a new age. That kind of preaching is negative. It actually produces a fear in people until finally they pray, “Oh, I just pray I’ll be able to hold out to the end.” I don’t like that kind of thinking. I know the Word does say, “But he that endures unto the end shall be saved” (Matthew 24:13). But there is something else to anticipate. I would rather be walking in the glory and the wonder of the Lord, walking in that wonderful thing God is going to do for us. Enoch did that. In the day of great wickedness he walked with God and he was translated (Genesis 5:22–24). Noah lived wholly given over to God, a preacher of righteousness; and the flood came (II Peter 2:5). But he was walking with God, and God delivered him into a whole new age (Genesis 6:8–9; 7–8). God has His people in every age.
I don’t want to be a partaker of the judgments that are to come upon the world, and I have no feeling in my spirit that God intends for me to be a partaker of judgment. Romans 8:1, KJV, tells us, There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus …
I don’t see that God is going to make me, as a human being, suffer in a judgment that will come upon the ungodly when He has already redeemed me out of that. That is what the blood of Jesus Christ means to me—a release from judgment and the release from the penalty and the power of sin (Romans 6:23). I am set free in the will of God, so God works His protection for me.
Some have tried to explain this by saying that a rapture will come and take us all out ahead of time, before tribulation comes on the earth. But that theory does not stand up in light of what the Scriptures teach about the things that are to be done by God’s remnant and people at the end of the tribulation period of judgments (Matthew 24:29–31; Daniel 7:21–22; Isaiah 60:1–3). If the rapture had taken them all away, how in the world would those things ever be accomplished? There is only one way that this can happen: God can preserve us through tribulation. Already He is doing this very thing. He is opening up a new day to us while the world is coming into a greater darkness all the time as far as God is concerned. Even the churches of Jesus Christ are kicking around the question, “Is God dead?” All kinds of theologies are being taught until there is less real faith in God in the majority of the pulpits, and in the majority of the pews, than ever before. I don’t know what people go to church for, because they don’t go to believe in God. They have no real, vital faith in God; there is darkness over the world.
But if we can hear it, there is the sounding of the Spirit that brings the Living Word, that brings the spiritual Shofar to us in this day.
The trumpets are sounding, and they are sounding for every reason that Numbers 10 reveals.
They are sounding because God is calling the assembly of His people together to reveal His glory and presence to them.
The trumpets are sounding because God is saying, “It’s time to journey. The people of God must break camp and move on to new glory and new planes in God.”
The trumpets are sounding because God is saying, “Prepare for war: it’s the end-time struggle against principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12), and Satan is going to be dethroned completely from every area and every place in men’s lives.”
The sound of trumpets is also coming to say, “These are days of gladness. My people shall be filled with plenty, and they will rejoice in the blessing of the Lord.”
It is the sounding of the trumpets of God that by the Spirit of the Lord are coming with a Living Word. It is coming through prophecies, through exhortations, through teaching; it is all God’s Living Word blowing the trumpets again to say, “There is something else coming. Celebrate the Feast! I am ready to tabernacle once again with My people in My glory. I will come and dwell in the midst of them and they will know My presence in the great Parousia as never before. They are going to know that I am right there dwelling in the midst of them” (Zechariah 2:10–11; Joel 2:27).
He is coming to be glorified in His saints and to be admired in all them that believe (II Thessalonians 1:10). But don’t ever confuse it as being just a spiritual coming. I believe that the spiritual coming is first, but you can never divorce Jesus Christ from His humanity. It is the Son of Man who is going to come in the clouds of glory (Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:26). He is going to come in His humanity in like manner as the disciples saw Him go away (Acts 1:11). We are going to see the Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh, in His glory, in His deity, in all that He represents, coming as King of kings and Lord of lords to set up His Kingdom (Revelation 17:14; 19:16; 11:15).
The trumpets of God are sounding, and they are saying, “These are the beginnings of your months. This is a new day. It is a new era.” The trumpets are blowing to herald that it is a whole new time for God’s people to move on in the will of the Lord. And the trumpets are blowing over the sacrifices that God’s people are bringing and giving to Him. The trumpets of the Spirit of God are blowing, and God is consecrating and making holy that which the people bring to Him.
Addenda: Scripture References to the Symbols on page 6.
OilExodus 27:20; 30:25–31
Psalm 23:5; 89:19–24; 95:10–15; 141:5a
Isaiah 61:3
Joel 2:24
Zechariah 4:2–3, 11–14
Matthew 25:3–11
James 5:14
WineNumbers 28:14
Matthew 9:17; Mark 2:22; Luke 5:37–38
BreadExodus 12:8, 15–20; 25:30, NAS
John 6:48–51, 57–58
WineGenesis 14:18
andMatthew 26:26–29; Mark 14:22–25;
BreadLuke 22:19–20
John 6:53–56
I Corinthians 10:16–17; 11:23–29
WaterJohn 4:10, 13–14; 7:37–39
I Corinthians 10:4
Ephesians 5:26
Revelation 22:1–2
FireExodus 3:2–6; 13:21–22; 19:18
Numbers 9:15–16
Deuteronomy 4:24; Hebrews 12:29
I Kings 18:24, 38
II Kings 1:10–14; 2:11; 6:17
I Chronicles 21:26
II Chronicles 7:1–2
Job 1:16
Psalm 104:4; Hebrews 1:7
Isaiah 6:6–7
Jeremiah 5:14; 20:9
Zechariah 2:5
Malachi 3:2
Matthew 3:11–12; Luke 3:16–17; 12:49
Acts 2:1–4
Revelation 1:14; 2:18; 3:18; 4:5; 19:12
WindII Samuel 22:11; Psalm 104:3–4
Ezekiel 37:9–10
John 3:8
Acts 2:1–4
RainDeuteronomy 11:13–14; Joel 2:23–24
Hosea 6:3
Amos 4:7; Revelation 11:6
Zechariah 10:1; James 5:7
Scripture References:
Numbers 9:15–23; 10:1–10
Leviticus 23; 25:8–10
Deuteronomy 16:1–17
I Thessalonians 5:1–11, 23–24
Kingdom Proverbs
The trumpets of God are not produced on an assembly line; they are made of silver, beaten out by the hand of God.
Israel in the wilderness moved only when the cloud of glory moved; in the Kingdom the sons of God will also be led.
If my sins were truly judged and atoned for at the Cross, I will not fear nor partake of the judgments and tribulations that are coming upon the world.
God creates His Trumpets to sound forth what He is doing; we must have ears to hear His signals.