REVELATION 3:3
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Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
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The reason for focusing on the Letter to the Church at
Sardis
is that the messenger is told to wake up twicenot a command to one spiritually deadconfirming the letter was and is, prophetically, to a believer. The consequence of any church believer remaining dead is that he will not know the hour that Jesus is coming for him at the rapture (Rev. 3:3).
Two points are critical here: one, Jesus suggested clearly and unequivocally by implication that He intended His church to know the hour of the rapture; and two, the word hour, in context means a definite, fixed time period.
The chilling suggestion Jesus made in Rev. 3:3 was that a believers state of spiritual unresponsiveness (Jesus referred to the state as being dead) would result in ignorance about the timing of the rapture.
In his classic treatment of biblical prophecy, messianic Jewish scholar, teacher, and author Dr. Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum convincingly argued the rapture . . . will be the fulfillment of the Feast of Trumpets (Fruchtenbaum, Arnold G., The Footsteps of the Messiah.
Tustin
,
California
: Ariel Ministries Press, 1983. 101). A decade-and-a-half after Dr. Fruchtenbaums exhaustive tome was published, Dorothy A. Miller provided the uninformed with an informative chapter about the feast of the trumpets (Miller, D.A., Forbidden Knowledge, Or Is It? updated expanded ed.,
Fountain Valley
,
California
: Joy Publishing, 1998. 89-99). Miller enlightened us: Today, this feast is called Rosh HaShanah [Hashana] by the Jews (Miller, p. 89).
But that was not all. Miller also informed us that, . . . the Jews attached an additional day of observance to this feast (Miller, p. 89). Hence, Rosh Hashana 2007 (the Feast of Trumpets) will actually take place on two consecutive days September 13 and 14in the year 2007.
Furthermore, the last trump that the apostle Paul referred to as an integral part of the rapture event (1 Cor. 15:42) will be sounded in
Jerusalem
s several synagogues at various hours on both those days since neither day falls on the Sabbath. Only the Father knows which will be the biblical last trump.