Rosh Hashanah: The Trumpet of Creation

by

Rev. Leon W. Mohammed, Jr.

Christ is the Alef and the Tau: He is that which stands between the beginning and the end, and through him all things consist . He is before the beginning, and he remains at the end.

There is an order in everything the Eternal does, an appointed time for all things. The actions of the Most High are not haphazard, for he operates according to his divine law of immutability. He made the seasons rotate in perpetuity. He made the water cycle, which gives us the same quantity of water on the planet today that existed four thousand years ago. The wind currents are always the same, and the sun rises and sets from day to day. Within this holy pattern there is equilibrium and consistency. God never changes.

We all have read that there is a last trumpet blast that will metamorphose reality as we know it. As evidence by the God’s immutability in nature, there must have been a first trumpet blast that ushered in reality as we have lived it. Many of the sages of Israel believe that the Feast of Trumpets was the time of creation.

The Order of Events

There are three feasts of Yahweh given in Exodus 23:14-17: "Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year. Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread . . . and the feast of harvest . . . and the feast of ingathering . . . Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord." Interestingly, in what may be the most ancient book of the Bible, the book of Job, there were also three scenarios where the sons of God presented themselves before the Lord: 1) "One day the angels came to present themselves before . . ." (Job 1:6); 2) "On another day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord . . ." (Job 2:1); and 3) "While the morning stars sang together, and all the angels shouted for joy. . ." (Job 38:7). These two corresponding events give insight to the verse: "Your kingdom come, your will be done in earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10). Yahweh is a God of eternal cyclical order, and he never changes (Malachi 3:6).

Though there are three primary Feasts of Yahweh, correlated with them are four additional festival times that make a total of seven festivals. The Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Firstfruits coordinate with Passover, and the Feast of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement coordinate with the Feast of Tabernacles. This liturgical calendar is chronicled in Leviticus 23.

Yahweh’s calendar is divided into two parts. The sacred (agricultural) year begins in Abib (March-April), and the civil year begins in Tishrei (September-October). The Feast of Tabernacles season, therefore, is the fulcrum of the liturgical calendar. It is at the beginning of the civil year and the ending of the agricultural year.

The Creation of the World

At this infinitesimal point in the perpetual cycle stands God, the Creator, Jesus Christ. He is the Alpha and Omega, the Alef and Tau.

"When the Holy One, the Ancient of Ancients, decided to make the world, all the letters of the Alphabet were in their potential spiritual form. When this spiritual energy intelligence of the letters would become manifest, they would constitute the dimensions of life. For time eternal the Holy One joyously held these dimensions within Himself, contemplating how and why He would make them manifest. In time eternal the Holy One organized the letter energy intelligences, activating the Spirit. Just before the beginning, just before the creation of the universe, each of the letters presented itself before the Holy One. In reverse order they presented themselves, beginning with the t (tau)" 1

Yeshua, The Nexus

If Christ is the Alef and the Tau, then he is that which stands between the beginning and the end, for through him all things consist (Colossians 1:17). He is the Logos of God, eternally existing before the beginning. "And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began" (John 17:5). He is before the beginning, and he remains at the end. "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." The Word of God (Jesus Christ) remains even if the universal reality as we know it ceases to exist. And we only understand this from an anthropological point of view. He eternally exists after the end.

Christ, The Beginning

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made . . . The same was in the beginning with God" (John 1:1, 3, 2). "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). From the preceding verses we establish the fact that Christ is, was, and forever will be the Creator, and his presence is at the beginning and the ending.

There is an etymological clue in the first chapter in the Gospel of John: "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt about us." The Word dwelt is correctly translated as "to tabernacle a place, to tent, or to encamp." The temple was God’s residence. The Word was made flesh and tabernacled with men–Christ, the bodily manifestation of God. And this tabernacle was at the beginning.

The Season of Tabernacles

The first festival that coordinates with Tabernacles is the Feast of Trumpets. Many Jewish scholars believe that Rosh Hashanah was when the world was created. This is connected with the "sound" of trumpets. "On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast . . . and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder . . ." (Exodus 19:18, 19). "The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and Highest gave his voice" (Psalm 18:13). The presence of Yahweh is accompanied with sound whether it be thunder, whirlwind, lightning, or trumpet blasts. It was an ordinance, therefore, to blow the shofar at the beginning of the month Tishrei (Psalm 8:13).

For six days the armies of Israel marched around the walls of Jericho. On the seventh day, they marched seven times around the wall and at the command from the Ancient of Ancients, they blew the trumpets and shouted. The walls came down. It would appear that the sound produced by the blast of the trumpets and the shout of the armies of God brought about the fall of the city of Jericho, yet it also created a victory for Israel. One can positively conclude that not only can his sound (in this case his command was to make a sound) bring about destruction, but that the antithesis is also true: his sound can also create. "For God said, let there be . . ." (Genesis 1:3).

If Yahweh can determine the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), he can also determine the beginning from the end. If a sound order by Yahweh can destroy, then a sound ordered by Yahweh can create. Essentially, we are talking about "sound" whether it be a trumpet blast or his voice, and his voice is creative.

Two Last Blasts

On the sixth day God created man. "Let us make man in our own image. . ." (Genesis 1:28). The voice of God commanded that man be created. He trumpeted man into existence, and Adam became a living soul.

There is also a last trump for the redeemed: ". . . at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed" (I Corinthians 15:52). Then, there is also a last trumpet for the physical universe: ". . . in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the elements . . . shall melt with fervent heat" (II Peter 3:10). ". . . nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth . . ." (I Peter 3:13).

Bereshiyt

The word bereshiyt is pivotal in elucidating the fact that Rosh Hashanah was the time of creation. Its translation starts with the words: "With a first cause God created the heavens and the earth," or, "When God began to create heaven and earth." "The world is continually being created–every day, every hour, even this very instant. The world is being sustained by the same primordial creative force (Word) with which it came into existence. The force of bereshiyt, ‘in the beginning.’ If this creative force would depart for even a split second, the world would return to nothingness."2

The first cause that created the universe is revealed in the last cause that creates the new universe. II Peter has several key words that unfold what happened in the beginning:

Fervent: ekteonas is the word in Greek, meaning "without ceasing."

Heat: kausoo means to set on fire.

Melt: luo means "to loosen, break up, destroy, dissolve, shattering into minute fragments, but not a reduction to the constituent particles."

Elements: stoicheim means "something orderly in arrangement, a serial (basal, fundamental, initial) constituent."

If we put it all together, we have a great noise with heat, fire, and particles. The breaking up of the particles does not reduce the amount of matter that is being dissolved. The same amount of

energy and matter that God will use to create the new heaven and earth was used to create the present. Many scientists believe that the universe was created by the "big bang," the cosmological theory that all the matter and energy in the universe originated from a state of enormous density temperature that exploded at a finite moment in the past. We know from II Peter that the universe ends with a big bang. He declares the end from the beginning, and the reciprocal is true.

In a void where there was not a universe, the Word trumpeted the galaxies into existence with a great noise. The Feast of Trumpets is the festival of the Lord that is initiated with sound of trumpet blast, and there are over one hundred shofar sounds during the day of Rosh Hoshanah. Many physicists believe that sound waves are the basis of matter. There is a universal hum, called "microwave background radiation," a cosmic background of radiation which has a frequency range. Believed to have emanated from the primordial fireball of the big bang with which the universe is thought to have originated, this radiation has an energy density in intergalactic space.

Yahweh’s voice trumpeted all of creation into existence, and it is his Word that sustains it. "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it" (Isaiah 55:11). The words formed by the voice of God will speak eternally, for we know that whatever the Lord does, it is forever (Ecclesiastes 1:9; 3:14). Hence a background noise of His Word holds everything together.

The Beginning and the End

It was during Rosh Hashanah that the universe was created. Some of the rabbis say that if the study of Torah were to cease, the world would return to this primordial chaos (tohu-v-voho).3 Words spoken by God, however, will always speak. He is the Alef and the Tau. He is the Word eternal. He is Rosh Hashanah, the Trumpet of Creation, and he will again sound the Shofar blast to create new heavens and a new earth.

Rev. Leon Mohammed, board member of Restoration Foundation, has become an authority on the application of the Judaic heritage of the Christian church in the lives of various ethnic communities throughout the world. He is now engaged in research on the presence of African peoples in biblical religion for a book he is writing on that subject. His challenging and enlightening teaching has inspired audiences in various faith communions. Leon lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Footnotes:

1 Robert M. Haralick. The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters (Northvale, New Jersey: Jacob Aronson, Inc.), p. 1.

2 Robert Maralick, p. xiii.

3 Benjamin Blech, The Secrets of the Hebrew Words (Northvale, New Jersey: Jacob Aronson, Inc.), p. 33.

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