Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Feast of Trumpets

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Feast of Trumpets

Genre:

Track: 55

Dictation Name: RR181AD55

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple. Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord. Let us pray.

O Lord, our God, we thank thee that thou art God and it is thy will that shall be done. Forgive us our impatience, forgive us our willingness to wait on thee, and give us a heart that is content with thy ways. Discontented with the evils of the world, but always firm in faith that it is thy will that shall be done. Teach us patience, faith, hope, and a holy boldness in a face of all things, to the end that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. In His name we pray. Amen.

Our scripture is Numbers 29:1-6. Our subject: The Feast of Trumpets. “And in the seventh month, on the first day of the month, ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work: it is a day of blowing the trumpets unto you. And ye shall offer a burnt offering for a sweet savour unto the LORD; one young bullock, one ram, and seven lambs of the first year without blemish: and their meat offering shall be of flour mingled with oil, three tenth deals for a bullock, and two tenth deals for a ram, and one tenth deal for one lamb, throughout the seven lambs: and one kid of the goats for a sin offering, to make an atonement for you: beside the burnt offering of the month, and his meat offering, and the daily burnt offering, and his meat offering, and their drink offerings, according unto their manner, for a sweet savour, a sacrifice made by fire unto the LORD.”

We come again to the Feast of Trumpets, the celebration at the beginning of each new month. This was, first of all, a celebration of God’s time. Each new month was an opportunity for a fuller life in the Lord. Although ours is a fallen world, the passage of time means the advancement of God’s kingdom and His holy purpose. We may not see the movement of time as God does, and almost certainly do not, given our limited perspective, but we must recognize that He ordains and governs all of time. So, the passage of time is something that God requires a celebration of.

Then second, it was a day of special sacrifices, public sacrifices. The text spells out what these are. There was to be a holy convocation or gathering, and no servile work on this particular Feast of Trumpets. While not the same as the regular sabbaths, it was in a way a sabbath also. Add this to the other festive days, and then the fifty-two regular sabbaths, then the seventh year sabbath, and then the Jubilee, another full year, and it becomes apparent that a great deal of time was spent at God’s orders, at rest and celebration. Medieval life reproduced this in its own way with holy days for saints. Now how is this possible? Well, in a society without a land tax or an income tax, man did not need to work most of his days to pay the tax collector, or the bank. Today, new home buyers, as we have seen some time back, pay out perhaps $1500 a month on their house mortgage, with only $50 -$100 going towards the principal. Neither psychological, nor physical, let alone spiritual rest is impossible. Statism and debt living are the oppressors of modern man, and he has neither peace nor rest.

Then third, the day began with the blowing of trumpets. The blowing of trumpets in the Old Testament has several meanings: to mark time, to summon men into battle and to declare that the people of God must move ahead, because God is moving forward.

On the Feast of Trumpets, all these meanings are apparently in view. We begin the new month, we mark time in the faith that we are moving forward because God has so ordained it. Because God’s purposes move forward constantly, we are the gainers by following no matter what the difficulties.

In Numbers 10:10, we are told that we celebrate time because God is the Lord. The required offerings are specified here and in Numbers 28:11-15. The trumpet is a summons also to victory. In the New Testament we hear of the final or last trumpet sounding the end of our battle, and the great victory, the final victory. In Revelation 8:2, the blowing of trumpets signals judgment upon the evil world around us, and in Revelation 10:7, it sounds the conclusion of that judgment, as does Revelation 11:15, which reads, “ And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.” All through the Bible, the first represents the totality, so that the celebration of the first day of the month means a celebration of all time. The prayer in the temple was “Blessed be He that reneweth the months.” Later on in the Old Testament era, when the synagogue developed, the synagogue prayers, “Thank God for creation, for the hope of the Messiah, and for His glorious kingdom.”

Our text, however, calls attention to a particular feast of Trumpets, or blowing of trumpets, for the new moon or new month. It is as verse 1 makes clear, to be done in particular with specified sacrifices in the seventh month. In this month, there was a penitential season for ten days after the Feast of Trumpets, followed by the Day of Atonement. Extra sacrifices were thus required. Four main kinds are specified in verses 1-7: The burnt offering, the sin offering, the guilt offering, and the peace offering.

First, the burnt offering was common to both public and private sacrifices. The whole sacrifice was consumed upon the altar. The worshiper had to lay his hands on the animal to identify himself with it as one to be wholly given up to God. The sin offering was for specific offenses or uncleanness, and it was again common to public and private worship. The guilt offering was not part of the usual sacrifices. It refereed to serious and specific offences such as sacrilege, adultery, with a slave girl in particular, or breaking a Nazarite vow. Healed lepers also offered the guilt offering. The peace offering was required also for the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost. The laymen here shared the meat. People could offer peace offerings at any time to rejoice before the Lord.

According to Marsing, the term a Day of blowing of trumpets, could also be translated “A day of shouting shall it be for you,” and there is evidence not only for the trumpets, but for the shouting, a happy acclamation. This helps emphasize the fact that the passage of time was to be a cause for joy, because God’s purpose for us is accomplished in time. We tend to see the passing of time as something that makes us older and feebler, as something that brings possibly bad news on the horizon, but God requires us to see the passage of time joyfully. When Paul, on one occasions, in Listra, after performing a miracle, was stoned, dragged out of the city and left as a dead man, tossed aside. He revived, and he returned to teach there and elsewhere that we must, through much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of God, and this same Paul, after many tribulations, could still declare, “Rejoice in the Lord, always, and again I say rejoice.”

This seventh month of the Hebrew calendar includes part of our September and October. In Numbers 28:11-15, we have the usual offerings for the new moon harvest. Here, we have added one young bull, one ram, and seven yearling male rams, because of the celebrations which follow. Because of the seventh month fell between the time of harvest, and the time of sowing for the winter to spring plantings, it was a season also for more festivals than any other time of the Hebrew calendar. It was the religious month. In that, attention was called to central aspects of faith and life.

There is another aspect of the blowing of trumpets to mark time. We are used to the formal uses of trumpets in history to herald royalty, to proclaim victory, or to announce something of great importance, and this is clearly part of the meaning of the Feast of Trumpets. In Numbers 10:9 we are told, “And if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before the Lord your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies.” One of the most popular radio programs in the 1930’s and very often the most popular, was a new report and commentary put on by Time Magazine called Time Marches On, and it was a very, very grim bit of radio dramatization of bad news. If you wanted your night to be spoiled, you listened to Time Marches On. The idea of the march of time as a march of evil is very prevalent, and it does have a shadow of truth to it. We see the world around us grow more evil, our loved ones sicken and die, our children become enmeshed in evils and troubles, and we ourselves grow older and wearier. A very fine Christian woman, Chadles{?}, who died in the 1960’s, told me that seeing the coming evils then beginning, she was glad now to leave no children behind to suffer in the coming years of grief.

This feast however, requires the believer to think very differently. Every new month brings closer God’s victory, every seeming triumph of evil as a prelude to its judgment and destruction. The beginning of a new month and the blowing of trumpets tells us, as Numbers 10:9 declares, “Ye shall be saved from your enemies.”

So this is the meaning of the celebration of time. We are required to celebrate time. Most people mourn its passing, because their vision is limited to this world, and therefore, the passing of time means growing old and feeble. It means ultimately death. It means seeing more and more evil, but what scripture tells us is the passage of time is to be celebrated as the portent of victory, the portent of God’s victory and ours in Him, so that every month was celebrated with the blowing of trumpets, a marvelous fact, and it is one that should be remembered in our own lives. The first day of the month marks the passage of time towards God’s kingdom, toward His ultimate victory, towards our putting off mortality and putting on immortality, eternal youth. So, the fact that time marches on is not something for weeping and wailing and for grimness as Time’s program always gave the impression of. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank thee for thy word. Teach us to numbers our days in the light of thy word, and the certainty that time is on our side because time comes from thee. The beginning of the end are all known to thee because they are ordained by thee from all eternity. Make us joyful therefore, in the passing of time. Patient, knowing that thy will shall be done, confident because thy word is truth, and there is no other God beside thee. Our God, we thank thee. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions or comments now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] On the question of time, it seems to me that on the TV and the radio keeps talking about the year past, and a decade past, and we’re spending our time looking backward all the time.

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes, very good, and Dorothy and I were discussing at the breakfast table today the fact that some of these economic forecasters who are writing about the future to entice investors can only think of a material future. “The potential for this or that new development,” and how you should get in on it, as though only technology determines the future and not man. Now, technology is worthless if people are worthless. I think I called attention at some time or another to the fact that, not too long ago, the New York Telephone interviewed 27,500 people before it found 1500 who had the educational competency, and technical competency to be linemen or repairmen. So, viewing the future as some of these people do in terms of technology as though God didn’t exist and man didn’t exist is ridiculous. So, we have the media looking backward and we have some people looking forward as though man didn’t exist and all things were a given with regard to human ability. I recall some years ago a doctor who had been a medical missionary in Africa, described to me the surgeries that some of his native assistants performed. He said he trained several men and their competency with a scalpel, a knife, was amazing. They were as sure of hand as any master surgeon he had seen, but he had to direct it. They had no comprehension of what they were doing, and so he would go from table to table, as these natives whom he had trained would perform surgery to identify what the problem was and what had to be removed, and when, with the end of Colonialism, he was removed from the scene, they could not function. They had the technical skill, but they could not comprehend the meaning of that which what they were dealing. Now, that’s what’s absent from our vision of the past and of the future. The knowledge of what is required in man in order to command time, and to move forward in it. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] Some of the sadness in the passing of time for the human being is a fact of what he accomplished, he wants to accomplish to be truly a servant of God. He wants to accomplish certain things, and time keeps passing and he can’t quite make it. He wants to build those children and grandchildren in the way of the Lord, and time keeps passing. When he teaches, he’s afraid the time is leaving him because he hasn’t accomplished, and I just {?} sin, that’s God’s will, but it’s still saddens some of us.

[Rushdoony] Yes, I understand exactly what you’re talking about, and in fact, I recall very, very vividly, forty years ago approximately, this very fine woman, a grandmother who was rearing her only granddaughter. She lived next door, and she felt that she alone was competent to rear that child. Well, there was no question that she had a great deal of knowledge and wisdom that came from years, and so when she was dying, the nurse in the hospital said, “I’ve never seen anyone struggle harder to live,” because she feels so strongly that she has to care for that child, but she died, and the granddaughter is doing very, very well. So, sometimes we forget that those who are younger than us can grow in maturity, and maybe when we look back at the same age, we did not have anywhere near the maturity that we do now. So, it’s hard for us to let go and say, “Well, they are in God’s hands more than they are in ours.” It’s not an easy lesson, but it is a necessary one. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience] The public ceremony or the sacrifices that started the month in the celebration of time, even though we wouldn’t be carrying the sacrifice part forward, it would seem to be something important in doing something on a regular basis to remind ourselves, and to remind the church, of the lesson you gave today, really the lesson coming out of the scripture. Would you say that there will be any room for that type of thing in a regular liturgy in a church?

[Rushdoony] Very good question. Is there any room for this sort of thing in the liturgy of the church? In the early church, such things were, in many areas, observed. The problem has been, first, we have moved to a secular calendar. Then, second, we live in a world of land tax, property tax, income tax, things which make rest impossible because you’re working not only to support your family, but a vast bureaucracy, and the result is the religious calendar has all but died. We don’t see Merry Christmas even at Christmas time, in any public place. Happy Holidays, and the religious calendar is virtually gone, and the secular calendar is virtually gone. The days like Memorial Day are no longer tremendous community days where services are held at cemeteries, and everybody, in my day, high school children and grade school children would go to the cemeteries, and there would be services there, religious and patriotic, and a great many other days that were observed, they’re all gone because time has lost its meaning. It’s just one day after another, and you work until mid-May or later now, I believe, before you’ve paid the tax collector, so what meaning does time have then, or what joy does it convey? 29:45.5]

So, I think when we get back to a Christian society, we will begin to observe the passage of time, and our historians are bent on falsifying the past. They do not tell us, for example, how, during much, not all, the Middle Ages, men had more time to celebrate life, simply because the land was not taxed, and what even under Louis XIV was considered to be a new high in taxation and oppression, became as nothing under the French Revolutionary regime, and since then, the tax collector has really learned how to squeeze every last nickel out of the people. So, we may be on our way if our Lord does not bring judgment on this present order soon, to the time of Rome when the tax collector had the right to torture everyone to squeeze every last hidden dollar out of them.

Now, you could not celebrate time in Rome very well, but the Middle Ages, the celebration of time began, but by the time of the Council of Constance, the kings had gained radical and total control over the church, something the history books don’t tell us very often, and so time began to lose its meaning. For a time, with the Reformation, time began to regain meaning, but with the Enlightenment, we’ve seen a steady retreat to the meaning of time, and humanism taking over, and because humanism denies God it ultimately denies all meaning. It tells us this is a world of brute or meaningless factuality, and as one professor in the graduate division of Johns Hopkins told me in an argument at a conference where we were both speakers, this was some years ago, “There’s only a thin edge of meaning in history, and it exists,” he said, “entirely in the mind of man.” Now it so happened at that same conference, Dr. Hans Senholz was present, and he was on his feet to challenge the professor. He said, “Why don’t you be open about it and say you don’t believe in God, and therefore, your universe is a dead meaningless universe,” but he said, “I do believe so I believe it is a world of total meaning.” Now, there are not many who think that way, even in the churches. There are too many who see no meaning beyond man, so time is nothing to celebrate. Well, if there are no further questions, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, grant that we who are heirs of all eternity may, by thy grace, be used to restore meaning to time, that we may be empowered to enable people to see thy purpose, thy kingdom moving forward in and through all things. Make us joyful even as Paul was joyful, so that we, too, can rejoice in and through all these things. And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen

End of tape