Last night, September 8, 2013, I spent a
long time in prayer
asking God for some illumination into the timing of the
Rapture. I didn’t
expect to hear my phone ding with a meeting invitation from
God bearing the
exact time and date. I just wanted to know if we were close.
Were all the
prophecy teachers proclaiming our generation as the “the one”
wrong? Were the
upcoming signs in the heavens meant for us or were they
diversions? While in
the midst of my prayer time, I fell asleep.
A few hours later, I awoke at 4 a.m., and
all I could think
about as I lay in bed was the story of Jericho. All of a
sudden it occurred to
me that the shouting of the people occurred at the last
trumpet blast, the long
blast, was a shadow reminiscent of the rapture trump we are
waiting for.
Furthermore, at the sound of the shouts at the last trump, the
wall fell.
Then it hit me like a lightning bolt from
heaven, the bricks
were made of earth and God formed man from the earth.
Archeological excavations
have shown the wall to be made of mud bricks, making the city
a seemingly
impregnable bastion. These bricks surrounded the city of
Jericho as a “hedge of
protection.” As I mulled over how this could be related to my
question to the
Lord earlier in the night, I realized that a similar “hedge”
around America is
the Holy Spirit, which dwells in the earthen vessels that make
up the church.
Many evangelists and theologians remark
about the absence of
America in the prophecies of the end of days. Currently, the
church is the wall
of mud bricks that surrounds America making it an impregnable
bastion. AT THE SOUND OF THE LAST TRUMP, THIS “WALL”
WILL BE REMOVED. This seemed the key to why the Lord had
brought the story of
Jericho to my mind so much I could not sleep at this early
hour.
As I pondered the similarities between the
Jericho story and
the rapture, I started to think about the peculiar timing of
the last trump.
God had the fighting men and 7 priests walk around the city
once daily for six
days in a row. The trumpets would blow, but there would be no
“long trump or
shouting.” On the seventh day, the group was commanded to walk
seven times
around the city, and on the final lap there would a long
blast, signaling the
people to shout. Only then would the wall be brought down.
If God simply wanted to aid the Israelites,
he could have
brought the wall down on the first day. Why the delay? Nothing
in the Bible is
irrelevant. If this order of events was given, could it be a
prophetic message foreshadowing
a future event it represents? Could there be clues in the
numbers? Seven laps
on the seventh day? A total of 13 laps?
I’ve always believed that the rapture would
occur at the
true Rosh Hoshana, the sighting of the new moon in
Jerusalem, when there will be a great trumpet blast that
will call the church up into the heavens in the twinkling of
an eye. But if
applied to this story from God’s workings with men, that first
trump at the
sighting of the new moon seems analogous to the first six days
that Israel
marched around Jericho. What if on the Rapture year there will
be a “Last
Trump” on the seventh day after the sighting of the new moon?
Interestingly,
this year the actual sighting of the new moon in Jerusalem was
Sep 7th.
And going forward seven days brings us to … the date set in
Judaism as Yom
Kippur. Could the seven circuits on the seventh day be
signaling that the
rapture will come seven days after Rosh Hoshana? And could the
total of 13 circuits be a clue to the church of
last days when it will occur?
On my way home from work today, Monday,
September 9, 2013,
the news headlines on secular radio sounded like they were
straight out of a
prophecy show. “Are we headed for another Yom Kippur war?”
“John Kerry gives
Syria one week or face US military action,” and Lindsey Graham
says “If we don’t
get Syria right, we could get nuked”. Do you not feel it
brothers and sisters? Like the birth pangs are reaching a
crescendo? If 2013 is not the year, it sure looks
like a dress rehearsal.
Perhaps I'm not interpreting the timing of
the rapture right but I'm convinced that the story of Jericho
holds some clues that almost everyone overlooks. There is a
reason for the 6 + 7 that relates to the rapture in some
way.
Robert