TWO TRUMPETS
How God Interrupted Reality at Mount Sinai and Plans to Do it Again
Back in the 1980s, broadcasters would occasionally break into a television program with the startling words, “We interrupt this broadcast to bring you the following important announcement.” On other occasions, the jarring buzz of the Emergency Broadcast System intruded with a test to evoke fears of an imminent nuclear holocaust. The broadcast interruptions not only startled the viewer, but they also shattered the comfortable entertainment illusion the viewer was trying to enjoy.
That’s sort of what it was like when God stepped down onto Mount Sinai and spoke the Ten Commandments on the first Pentecost. He interrupted the regularly scheduled program of reality in which the presence of God remains concealed from human perception, and life proceeds normally along predictable lines of natural cause and effect. The blast of the shofar-trumpet on the original Pentecost went off like the alert of the emergency broadcast system, jolting humanity out of the illusion that God is remote, disinterested, or non-existent. His self-disclosure at Mount Sinai before an entire nation brought an unprecedented level of revelation that, to this day, remains unrepeated. The original Pentecost was the biggest moment in human history, and it is the foundation on which the authority of the Torah and the whole Bible rests.
Behold, I will come to you in a thick cloud, so that the people may hear when I speak with you and may also believe in you forever.[1]
Thereafter, the Jewish people celebrate the annual “Feast of Weeks,” (i.e., Pentecost) to remember the day that God interrupted reality at Mount Sinai.
There’s a bigger revelation coming in the future when God will once again interrupt the program with the jarring klaxon of heaven’s emergency broadcast system. That future interruption of our regularly scheduled reality is called the Day of the LORD:
Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming; surely it is near.[2]
TWO THEOPHANIES
The future Day of the LORD not only parallels the Pentecost at Mount Sinai, but it also goes far beyond it by many scales of magnitude. The writer of the book of Hebrews compares the two events.[3] His argument runs like this: if the theophany at Mount Sinai was fearsome, how much more so the theophany of the Day of the LORD! The shaking that took place at Mount Sinai when God’s “voice shook the earth” will seem insignificant compared with the shaking of all things in the Day of the LORD.
The word theophany refers to the appearance of a deity. In the biblical context, that deity is the LORD. We also use the term to describe a specific trope found in biblical literature, especially in the Psalms and Prophets. In theophanic texts, the LORD’s entrance into the world comes with cataclysm, storm, natural disaster, and a shattering of the natural order. Start watching for the patterns, and you will start recognizing theophanies when they pop up. God enters the scene with thick storm clouds, thunder, lightning, whirlwinds, torrential bursts, hailstones, flash floods, earthquakes, and fire. He descends on the wings of the wind, on the clouds, on the cherubim, in His chariot. The heavens are dismayed at His passage, bent low, and shaken; the heavenly bodies are disarrayed. The mountains shake before Him, the hills melt away in terror, whole forests shatter, and the nations cringe in terror. Devastation and destruction trail in His wake. The LORD strikes His enemies as a warrior, as a ravaging beast, as a pouncing lion, but He redeems His people. The world is filled with His glory. Read through the third chapter of Habakkuk. It’s a classic theophany. Then start to pay attention when you encounter the pattern.
The Bible’s theophanies typically allude back to the event at Mount Sinai or to the future revelation on the Day of the LORD. At Mount Sinai, a thick, dark cloud covered the mountain. The mountain shook and trembled as the voice of a loud ram’s horn (shofar) trumpet split the air. The LORD descended on the mountain amid fire and smoke. The summit seemed ablaze; smoke rose from the mountain like that of a furnace. God’s voice spoke, and the whole nation heard His utterance. On the Day of the LORD, the whole world will shake. The whole world will hear the voice of the shofar. Wonders in heaven and on earth will appear in blood, fire, and columns of smoke. The moon will redden, and the sun will don sackcloth “before the great and awesome day of the LORD”.[4]
That future theophany occurs not at Mount Sinai but at Mount Zion (i.e., Jerusalem). At Mount Sinai, the LORD appeared in the midst of the cloud of glory that covered the mountain. At Mount Zion, “they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory”.[5] From Sinai, the nation heard the sound of the trumpet; from Zion, the whole world will hear the sound of the trumpet. At Mount Sinai, God’s feet stood on the mountain and “under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself”,[6] but “in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east”.[7]
TWO TRUMPETS
The sound of a ram’s horn (shofar) announced the descent of the LORD on Mount Sinai.[8] In the future, “it will come about also in that day that a great trumpet will be blown”.[9] A Jewish legend associates the two trumpets with the two horns of the ram that Abraham offered in the place of his son Isaac.[10] The Holy One, blessed be He, blew the first ram’s horn at Mount Sinai on the occasion of the giving of the Torah. He will sound the second to herald the coming of Messiah. The shofar of Messiah is called “the great shofar” because it was the larger of the pair:
The shofar blown at Mount Sinai, when the Torah was given, came from the ram which had been sacrificed in place of Isaac. The left horn was blown for a shofar at Mount Sinai, and its right horn will be blown to herald the coming of Messiah. The right horn was larger than the left, and thus concerning the days of Messiah it is written,[11] “On that day, a great shofar will be blown.”[12]
Sequentially, we should understand the shofar at Sinai as the “first trumpet” and the “great shofar” announcing the coming of the Messiah as “the last trumpet”.[13] The last trumpet is the “great trumpet” of Isaiah 27:13 that signals the ingathering: “He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet”.[14] At that time, “The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God”.[15]
TRUMPET OF THE RESURRECTION
When the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder.[16]
English translators supply the word “sound,” but the Hebrew of Exodus 19:19 speaks literally of “the voice of the shofar.” One could translate it to read, “The voice of the shofar going exceedingly strong.” Paul preserves that Hebraism when he refers to the Messiah coming “with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God”;[17] in other words, the voice of the archangel is the trumpet of God. The book of Revelation also plays with that double meaning when John describes the angel of Yeshua speaking with a voice as a trumpet.[18] Yeshua says that His voice will awaken the dead: “An hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live”.[19] The voice of the shofar says, “Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Messiah will shine on you”.[20] At the sound of that voice, “the dead in Messiah will rise first”.[21]
We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.[22]
THE SEVENTH TRUMPET
When the Lamb breaks the seventh seal on the scroll with seven seals, seven archangels take up seven trumpets to create a sequence of seven blasts.[23] Each trumpet initiates some heightening calamity or plague on the earth. The sounding of the seventh and last trumpet heralds the coming of the Messiah, the kingdom on earth, and the day of wrath. A grand theophany commences.
The seventh trumpet signals a grand theophany. The gates of the heavenly Sanctuary swing open, exposing the ark of the covenant.[24] The appearance of the ark indicates that the LORD goes forth to war. The Torah says that whenever the ark set out, Moses said, “Rise up, O LORD! And let Your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate You flee before You”.[25]
(Excerpt from Torah Club: End of Days. Torahclub.org)
FOOTNOTES
[1] Exodus 19:9
[2] Joel 2:1
[3] Hebrews 12:18–29
[4] Joel 3:4[2:31]
[5] Mark 13:26
[6] Exodus 24:10
[7] Zechariah 14:4
[8] Exodus 19:11, 16
[9] Isaiah 27:13
[10] Genesis 22
[11] in Isaiah 27:13
[12] Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer 31
[13] 1 Corinthians 15:52
[14] Matthew 24:31
[15] 1 Thessalonians 4:16
[16] Exodus 19:19
[17] 1 Thessalonians 4:16
[18] Revelation 1:10, 4:1
[19] John 5:25
[20] Ephesians 5:14
[21] 1 Thessalonians 4:16
[22] 1 Corinthians 15:51–53
[23] Revelation 8
[24] Revelation 11:19
[25] Numbers 10:35