ROSH HASHANAH: Happy New Year! 9/25 Thursday Thoughts

If you know me very well, you know that I like to educate Christians about their Jewish heritage, particularly the Old Testament festivals that Jesus Himself celebrated, which all were foreshadowings of His own birth, death, resurrection, and return.

Rosh Hashanah ("head of the year") or Yom Teruah ("Day of the Shout") or Feast of Trumpets begins at sundown Wednesday, September 24, and continues through Friday.

 

 Leviticus 23: ²³ Again the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ²⁴ “Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘In the seventh month on the first of the month you shall have a ^[d]rest, a reminder by blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. 

 

The blowing of the shofar symbolized God's judgment, Israel's repentance, and divine restoration.  Jews in Jesus's time believed that the shofar would announce the resurrection of the dead.

Rosh Hashanah is traditionally the day that the world was created.  It begins a ten-day period of repentance, culminating on Yom Kippur. 

Why is the new year celebrated on the seventh month (Tishri) of the lunar calendar?  "B'resheet" ("in the beginning") is the first word in the Bible.  Spelled backwards, it reads "On the first of Tishri".   I'm sure you're all slapping your foreheads wondering why you didn't realize that!  LOL.  
 

For the fourth year, BP1 and I will be welcoming the new year at Sar Shalom Messianic Congregation in Mansfield.  Don U. and BP2 will be joining us this year for the first time.  We will have a celebration with liturgical dance, liturgical prayers, contemporary praise and worship with dancing the hora around the sanctuary, blowing about 30 shofars outdoors at sunset, and eating sweets for a sweet new year.    

from Sar Shalom's assistant rabbi Michelle Foss on Facebook:

Here's the Hebrew idiom of all Hebrew idioms...
 In Judaism, because no one knows the day or the hour of Rosh Hashanah- because it is the only feast that falls on the first day of the new moon/month on 1 Tishrei...
when the watchmen see the first white sliver of light on the blackened disc of the moon...it ushers in the feast of trumpets...
and because it looks like a winking eye, they call it the "twinkling of an eye!"
 In ancient Israel, the watchmen had posts from the desert to Jerusalem - when they saw that sliver of white light on the moon, they would light each of their torches from the various distances of their posts...
they would sound their shofars, so it sounded like thunder, and the torchlights resembled a flashing of lightning all the way from the west to the east!
 Now I don't know about you, but scripture does say we won't know the day or the hour, but we will be able to discern the signs and seasons - "the ot and the moedim..." it also says this...

 Mat 24:27 For as the lightning comes forth from the east and shines as far as the west, so also will be the coming of the Son of Man.  ...
 
1Co 15:51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
1Co 15:52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
 
1Th 4:16 Because the Master Himself shall come down from Heaven with a commanding shout of an archangel's voice, and with the trumpet of YAHWEH. And the dead in Messiah will rise again first.
1Th 4:17 Then we who remain alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet with our Master in the air. And so we will always be with our Master.

  for more information:    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosh_Hashanah