Renee M (5 Oct 2012)
"A Bride Catching Festival"


 

http://jesusiscoming2015.webs.com/whenistherapturetext.htm


October 7/8, 2012, last day of Tabernacles - FIRSTFRUITS RAPTURE OF THE CHURCH!!! (part 6)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF9lkZ6mVaU


A Bride Catching Festival

Judges 21:19-25 deals with the time that the Tribe of Benjamin was permitted to seize wives as they are dancing at "the annual festival of the Lord in Shiloh." (Shiloh is the place where the Tabernacle of Moses was set up in Joshua 18:1. It was still there when the narrative in Judges takes place.) The text tells us that the girls are dancing in a vineyard, so the festival is likely to be connected to the end of the grape harvest, or Feast of Tabernacles. 

Furthermore, since the men of Israel were required to go to Shiloh to observe the Pilgrimage Festivals while the Tabernacle was there, it is quite possible that festival was the Feast of Tabernacles.  (Later, when the Temple was built in Jerusalem, Jewish males were required to go to Jerusalem.)

There may be a hidden pattern in the narrative. According to the Bible, the Tribe of Benjamin had offended the Israelites by their unwillingness to surrender fellow Benjamites who had committed a heinous crime.  A conflict ensued between the two sides resulting in the deaths of the entire Tribe of Benjamin, with the exception of 600 fighting men. According to Judges 20:47: "But six hundred men turned and fled into the desert to the rock of Rimmon, where they stayed four months."  Now, the Israelites had made an oath not to give their daughters in marriage to any Benjamite.  Consequently, they realized that the tribe of all men was bound to die out.  Regretting their vow, but unable to break it, they devised a plan to get wives for the remaining 600 Benjamites.  First, they determined that no one from the camp of Jabesh Gilead had assisted them in the war.  So they put that entire camp to death, except for 400 virgin girls.  Then they took the girls to Shiloh and sent an offer of peace to the Benjamites at the rock of Rimmon, who accepted the women as wives.  

Then they told the remaining 200 men to go to an annual festival of the Lord at Shiloh.  "So they instructed the Benjamites, saying, 'Go and hide in the vineyards and watch.  When the girls of Shiloh come out to join in the dancing, then rush from the vineyards and each of you seize a wife from the girls of Shiloh and go to the land of Benjamin. When their fathers or brothers complain to us, we will say to them, 'Do us a kindness by helping them, because we did not get wives for them during the war, and you are innocent, since you did not give your daughters to them.' So that is what the Benjamites did.  While the girls were dancing, each man caught one and carried her off to be his wife."  Judges 21:20-23.

Perhaps this strange story about the snatching of brides is prophetic.  Perhaps its timing, during the grape harvest, gives us a clue to the timing of the Rapture.  Judges 21:23 uses an interesting Hebrew word for "took" – it is "nasa." It means "to lift up."  It is the same word used in Genesis 7:17 to describe the lifting of Noah's Ark during the Flood.

"For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth."  Genesis 7:17.

Please notice that the 600 Benjamites obtained wives in increments of 400 and 200.  First through killing, and second through a bride snatch.  If you add an extra zero to 600, 400, and 200, you can see the timeline of 6000 years of human history.  During the initial 4000 years, God obtained a wife through killing or the sacrificial system.  After the final 2000 years, Christ will obtain His wife through a bride snatch – the Rapture.

The name Benjamin translates to "son of the right hand."  Jesus Christ is the ultimate Son of God's right hand.  "Jesus replied, 'But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.'"  Matthew 26:64.  The 600 Benjamites initially fled to the "rock of Rimmon." Rimmon is Hebrew for "pomegranates."  The fruit is connected to only the High Priest. Jesus is not only our High Priest, but He is also our Rock.  The Benjamites stayed at Rimmon for four months before they seize their wives at Shiloh where the Tabernacle is located. There are four months between the Feast of Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles. Jesus said, “Do you not say 4 months until the Harvest?" Pentecost was the beginning of the wheat harvest and the Feast of Tabernacles is the harvest at the end of the age.