https://www.pcog.org/articles/1880/trumpets-god-confronts-sin
We must take on the same attitude toward sin that God has!
The concept of God confronting sin permeates Passover and the Days of
Unleavened Bread. But the Feast of Trumpets is also about God
confronting sin! And comparing these holy days shows some important
similarities, and sobering differences.
It is one of the most dramatic stories in the Bible.
There
was a slave nation of about 3 million—driven hard by their taskmasters,
crying out for deliverance. One day, their deliverer came—and brought
with him a host of terrifying plagues from the Almighty God: Water
turned to blood, frog infestation, insects, boils. Plague after plague
hammered their captors, yet they were protected.
Finally, one
night, all the firstborn of the Egyptians died. The plague was so
horrifying, so intense, they relented and granted the slaves their
freedom.
The Israelites left with a high hand—escaping Egypt and starting their journey to a Promised Land.
This
is history that God’s people memorialize each year during the spring
holy days. It provides us a dramatic picture of our dealing with sin—how
we must come completely out of it.
On Passover, we memorialize
Christ’s sacrifice, which purged our sins and reconciled us to God. We
remember how, if the Israelites hadn’t put the blood of the lamb on
their doorposts, the death angel would have killed their own firstborn
along with the Egyptians; by this we learn that it is only the blood of
the Lamb—Jesus Christ—that saves us and removes that death penalty. We
also remember how God inflicted the Egyptians with a series of plagues
that, really, was a punishment on them for their sins.
Prior to
the Days of Unleavened Bread, we get leaven out of our homes, which
pictures getting sin out of our lives. We remember Israel’s exodus from
Egypt, a type of our coming out of sin. At the end of seven days, we
remember Israel passing through the Red Sea, a type of baptism, and the
cleansing power of the Holy Spirit. We remember the drowning of the
Egyptians in the sea, just like our sins are left buried in the
baptismal waters.
Through this rich history, God has given us a
spectacular illustration of what we go through during repentance,
baptism and conversion.
The spring holy days show us just how serious God is about our getting the sin out of our lives. They force us to ask the important question:
What is our attitude toward sin?
God
commands that we examine our lives each Passover season (1 Corinthians
11:26-29). We must realize just how much Christ went through so we can
be cleansed of our sin and reconciled to God—physically and spiritually.
We go through this examination process year round, finding ourselves
wanting, coming before God, confessing those sins, seeking forgiveness,
and then living anew. Those in God’s Church are well acquainted with the
process of repentance.
Now, what does all of this have to do with the Feast of Trumpets?
Spring and Fall Parallels
There
are tremendous parallels between what we memorialize during the spring
holy days and what is pictured on Trumpets! The story of the Israelites’
delivery from Egypt was not only a type of our coming out of sin: There
will be a future fulfillment even
more dramatic.
As we examine these parallels, we will see that both holy day seasons picture
God confronting sin.
Again: What is our attitude toward sin? Do we hate it as much as God does?
The spring holy days show how God purges sin from His people. The fall holy days, beginning with the Feast of Trumpets, picture
how God will purge sin from the world. The process is similar in many ways—but there are also some important contrasts.
The First Six Seals
The
book of Revelation describes the end-time events culminating in
Christ’s Second Coming and the establishment of God’s Kingdom. Let’s
look briefly at this chronology.
First, the Apostle John describes
in the opening verses of Revelation 5 his vision of a book sealed with
seven seals. Jesus Christ is the only one worthy to loose these seals
and open the book, which He does.
In chapter 6, we see that each
seal being loosed represents the fulfillment of a terrifying prophetic
event. Within this one chapter, the first six of these seals are
described. They begin with the four horsemen of the apocalypse—false
religion, war, famine and pestilence—which are riding
even now in their early stages of fulfillment (verses 1-8).
The
fifth seal describes the Great Tribulation and the martyrdom of the
Laodicean saints (verses 9-11). This is the full expression of Satan’s
greatest wrath. Here at the end of this 6,000 years of the age of man,
God allows him virtually free reign. His most powerful instrument, the
Holy Roman Empire, will be at the height of its power, wreaking
excruciating suffering upon both physical and spiritual Israel for a
period of 2½ years. During this time, the nations of Israel will go into
captivity and slavery in Gentile lands.
Then, the
sixth seal
introduces the fact that something totally different is going to happen
next. A sequence of supernatural events—a great earthquake, a darkened
sun, a blood-like moon, falling stars—petrify the inhabitants of the
Earth with fear, so much so that they cry out for death: “And the kings
of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief
captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid
themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to
the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him
that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the
great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?” (verses
15-17).
The seventh seal is about to be opened, which will propel the world into the Day of the Lord.
Two Groups Spared!
But
before that seal is loosed, something else happens. Revelation 7 is the
chapter of the “two companies”—the 144,000 and the great multitude.
In verses 1-8, the 144,000 Laodiceans are “sealed.”
Malachi’s Message
says that means their eternal salvation is placed beyond doubt—they
have made it. At that point, the Laodicean era ends. The Tribulation,
terrible as it was, was successful in turning half of the Laodiceans
back to God, to rise in the first resurrection and become a part of the
bride of Jesus Christ.
Then it talks about a
great, innumerable multitude.
“After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could
number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood
before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and
palms in their hands” (verse 9). These are the people who will repent in
the Tribulation (and, as we will see, even the Day of the Lord) and
live over into the Millennium. Many of them will have heard the
pcg’s
message. They will have recognized the fulfillment of the very things
Herbert Armstrong and Gerald Flurry prophesied about! As Mr. Armstrong
wrote, “We of
this ministry well know that our
real reward in the harvest of precious lives will mostly come after our labors are finished!” (
The Book of Revelation Unveiled at Last!). This is why it’s so important to reach the largest audience possible right now, even if we can’t see the fruits.
Among
these people will be Israelites captive in Assyria, Egypt and other
Gentile nations. God protects them from the punishments that are about
to happen, even though they will still be in the middle of it—just as
the Israelites in the middle of Egypt while it was being besieged by
plagues were protected.
In all these events, God’s goal is to have as many people repent as possible.
We’ve
already seen that there will be a significant number who repent during
the Tribulation. So although the lesson was painful, God must consider
that a success. The angels rejoice when
one sinner repents (Luke 15:10). This will be multiple tens of thousands—
innumerable
persons, in fact—who, while experiencing the agony of the Great
Tribulation, will accept the correction, and will then repent and begin
submitting to God. That’s what He wanted all along from them. It took
the Tribulation, but they made it.
Now, as great a success as that
will be, God isn’t finished. He wants to see if He can possibly convict
the hearts of a few more individuals before Christ returns and forces
this evil age of man to a crashing end.
The Day of the Lord
“And
when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about
the space of half an hour. And I saw the seven angels which stood before
God; and to them were given seven trumpets” (Revelation 8:1-2). The Day
of the Lord lasts for one year, and includes these seven trumpets.
Mr. Armstrong explained, “These symbolic
trumpets portray, then,
the Day of the Lord—the day of God’s
wrath! The day God intervenes in world affairs to
punish this world for its
evil—the day God pleads with all flesh in the physical language it can
understand!—and, as Zephaniah 1:16 says: ‘A day of
the trumpet and alarm against the
fenced [that is,
fortified, or defended] cities, and against the high towers [that is, military fortifications].’
“The
trumpet was always blown as a warning of
war, or approaching
armies. It signifies
war and destruction. When
Israel turned
a deaf ear to all God’s prophets—rejected God’s loving pleading through
preaching—God punished ancient Israel by sending the armies of Assyria
to conquer them. When Judah disobeyed worse than Israel, God Almighty
sent the armies of the
Chaldeans to conquer them. As God steps in to punish
the whole world—yes,
all nations, for their evil, which is destroying them and bringing such suffering and unhappiness on all their peoples—the
trumpets, or alarms of
war, are sounded” (ibid).
This is no longer Satan’s wrath. This is
God’s wrath poured out on mankind for all their sins.
Here is where we begin to see how God purges sin from mankind.
