Rosh Hashanah and the Rapture

The prophetic significance of September 25-27, 2022

I’m so grateful for all of you who attended the Tipping Point Prophecy Conference last weekend at Fellowship Church, along with those of you who watched the livestream feed. It was an incredible crowd and I really enjoyed meeting members of this community, putting faces to the names I see so frequently in the comments.

I’m thankful for this community! It’s such a blessing to me personally. I appreciate your prayerful support of my books and teachings. As those who watched and attended heard over the weekend, we scheduled our first conference for mid-September for a reason. And if the Rapture hasn’t happened yet, we’ve scheduled another conference next year around the same time (September 16, 2023—God willing, of course).

Why mid-September? It’s because we believe this time of year—every year—has particular significance when it comes to end-times prophecy. A number of us spoke about this in depth at the conference, but for those who couldn’t attend or watch, I want to walk through some of that reasoning in today’s article.

A Prophetic Framework

First, I don’t ever predict when the Rapture is going to happen and I’m not going to do it in this post. Any time you hear someone say, “Jesus will come back on _________, 2022,” you can safely ignore that statement. These people are setting themselves up to be easily disproven. If the Bible says “of that day and hour no one knows,” then I feel pretty confident I won’t be able to set an exact day or hour for when the end will come.

As I have written in the past, I am confident of the things I preach and teach, but I am not God. I am only here to explain what the Bible says. I want to point the Tipping Point community to the signs and evidences of Scripture that help us contextualize what is happening in our world today.

Thankfully, it’s not my job to measure time and set dates. But I do believe the Bible gives us a prophetic framework for when the Rapture might happen.

To start looking at that framework, let’s begin with the Old Testament Book of Leviticus, in which God instructs the Jewish people to keep seven different feasts. Four were in the spring and three were in the fall, and all were considered prophetic dress rehearsals for future events:

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘The feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are My feasts.’”—Leviticus 23:1-2

This holy, prophetic connection became clear in the life of Jesus. He was crucified on the Feast of Passover. He was buried during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. He was resurrected on the Feast of Firstfruits, and 50 days after the Resurrection—on the day of Pentecost—the Holy Spirit descended upon the people of God.

Those are the four spring feasts, and each of them found fulfillment in events during the Incarnation, the first coming of Jesus.

If those four spring feasts corresponded to events in the life of Jesus, then it also makes sense for the three fall feasts to correspond with the Second Coming of Jesus and the last days.

The fifth feast is the Feast of Trumpets, also known as Rosh Hashanah. It represents the Jewish New Year, and it is a High Holy Day in Judaism. For 2022, the Feast of Trumpets takes place from the evening of Sunday, September 25, to the evening of Tuesday, September 27.

In other words, it is happening soon.

Trumpets and New Beginnings

Here is how God described the Feast of Trumpets, speaking to the people of Israel through Moses:

“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.’ ”—Leviticus 23:24-25

As the start of a new year, this “memorial blowing of trumpets” represents new beginnings within the Jewish faith. The phrase Rosh Hashanah means “head of the year” in Hebrew. It is also sometimes called Yom Teruah (“day of shouting or blasting”). Trumpets are also associated with judgment—any reading of the Book of Revelation will make this clear—and another name for this feast is Yom Ha-Din, a reference to the judgment of God.

According to tradition, on Rosh Hashanah, the priest blows a shofar—a ram’s horn that is often translated “trumpet” in the Bible—one hundred times. Over nine different sessions during the celebration, the priest blows 11 blasts on the trumpet. Added up, that’s 99 soundings of the shofar, which leaves one more trumpet blast for the end.

That final trumpet, the 100th blast, is the loudest and longest.

That represents the final trumpet of the Feast of Trumpets. Doesn’t it remind you of how the Apostle Paul described the Rapture?

Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.—1 Corinthians 15:51-52

The Rapture has been associated with trumpet blasts since the first century, so it’s natural to connect Rosh Hashanah—the Feast of Trumpets—with the Rapture.

No One Knows the Day or Hour

Jewish tradition also refers to Rosh Hashanah as “the day which no one knows.” You may have noticed it is referred to as a “holy day,” but it spans two days on the calendar, September 25-27. Why is this?

It has everything to do with the new moon. The ancient Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar based on the cycles of the moon. (This was before humans had been able to calculate the movements of the planets and the cycles of the solar system). All the other Jewish holidays—like Passover—were timed to occur on the full moon, but Rosh Hashanah was at the first of the month at the beginning of a new year. That meant it was determined by a new moon.

Obviously, the new moon is the lunar phase when the moon itself is not visible to the human eye. It’s easy to tell when the moon is full. It’s much harder to know when the moon is new, because the moon disappears during a window of darkness!

According to ancient Jewish traditions, the new month would not officially begin until two witnesses reported that they had seen the sliver of the new moon to the High Priest. Jews knew that this sighting could take place at some point over a period of hours—but the exact time was uncertain. No one had clocks or watches back then. But once the sighting was witnessed and confirmed, the priests would sound the shofar. That’s when the trumpet would blast and Rosh Hashanah, the Feast of Trumpets, would begin.

Isn’t that background, and the phrase “the day which no one knows,” interesting when you look at how Jesus described the Rapture? It reflects the verse I already quoted at the start of this article:

But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know when the time is”— Mark 13:32-33

Watch and pray, Jesus says, just like the witnesses waiting for a sliver of moon and the sounding of a trumpet.

The Jews knew an approximate period the Feast of Trumpets would begin, but they didn’t know the exact day or hour.

The Next Major Prophetic Event

Again, I am not interested in setting dates. But the Bible makes it clear that the Rapture is the next major prophetic event in the history of the world.

So every time Rosh Hashanah comes around, I am hopeful it will be accompanied by the Rapture—and with the state of the world these days, I would not be surprised for it to happen this year. We don’t know the day or hour, but this could be the season. We are living during a time of spiritual darkness, the moon has disappeared, and we are all watching and waiting for the first sliver of light.

The fact that we are living in the Sabbath year of the Hebrew Shemitah cycle—which I’ve spoken about in a number of teachings this year and wrote about here—makes this year of blessing and release a good candidate for the Rapture. Historically, significant events have happened during a Shemitah year. God takes them seriously and uses them to bless His people and set them free from burdens.

If you haven’t read this Shemitah cycle post, please do, and feel free to share it with others.

The Rapture could happen during Rosh Hashanah. Or it could happen next month or even next year. It’s very possible we will no longer have any need for our prophecy conference in 2023 because we will be enjoying the Marriage Supper of the Lamb!

Or the Rapture could happen years from now. I won’t set dates and I won’t presume to be God. That’s not my job.

But here’s what I will do: I will live as if the Rapture is going to happen very, very soon.