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The moed of Trumpets was a memorial feast, it was given during the forty years in the wilderness, yet it was also prophetic of the opening event in the conquest of Canaan: the fall of Jericho. In Joshua 4 the Lord dried up the Jordan river so Israel could pass over into Canaan. He instructed Joshua to have one man from each of the twelve tribes take a stone from the middle of the river and place it on the other side, while Joshua himself set up twelve stones in the middle of the temporarily dry river bed. Here are a total of twenty-four stones in two groups, twelve on the other side of the river and twelve which would be covered over when God caused the Jordan to begin to flow again. This represents the generation that died in the wilderness and were replaced by a new generation that would inherit the promise. Those twelve stones were set up in the river bed but they were not forgotten by God - Moses himself was represented there. In like manner, due to the national Jewish rejection of Messiah, God opened salvation (covenant) to a new group - Gentiles. In Joshua 5 we learn that those born during the forty years in the wilderness were not circumcised. Circumcision is the token of the covenant, therefore those who passed over Jordan needed to be circumcised to enter into that covenant. The new covenant is entered differently: Jer. 4:4 "Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings." Rom 2:28-29 says, "For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God." Covenant, old or new, was kept by faith, so again we see the same two groups: the righteous of all time. In Rev. 4 & 5 we see a total of twenty-four elders representing the resurrected righteous of all time, both of Israel and the church. Once the children of Israel entered the covenant something really great happened: Joshua had a visitor. Josh. 5:13-15 says, "And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the LORD am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my lord unto his servant? And the captain of the LORD's host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so." This was not an angel (angels don’t receive worship Rev. 22:8-9) – this was an appearance of Jesus. He gives Joshua the same instruction regarding holy ground as Moses received from God in Exo. 3:5. Joshua was in the presence of God. Notice the Lord is neither for or against Israel or Jericho, but is present as the "captain of the host of the LORD" and has a drawn sword, the weapon of Jesus, in his hand. He is ‘for’ those who live according to the will of God - the covenant people. In Josh. 6 we get to the trumpets. Seven priests sounded trumpets while the people marched around Jericho once each day for six days. On the seventh day they marched around seven times, shouted at the proper time, and the walls of the city fell. Those seven days equal one week. According to Dan. 9:27 there is yet to come a very important week, each day equaling one year. At the end of that week the kingdoms of this world will fall to the stone cut out without hands: the kingdom of Heaven ruled by King Jesus himself. During those final seven years there will be seven Rosh Hashanas. The rapture may occur on the first of the seven Rosh Hashanas, with the final trumpet, the great trumpet of Matt. 24:31, sounding at the second advent of Jesus, thus fulfilling the moed of Trumpets. On September 28, 1995 Israel and the PLO signed a peace accord, Oslo II. I find it interesting that under Oslo II, not just any city, but JERICHO, was to be given over to Arab control. It is as though the Lord is pointing out that the first city taken in Canaan, the one that he himself delivered to the people of Israel, would be the first to be given back under what very well could be the antichrist covenant. While the Oslo agreement has been considered dead for some time now, there is currently a large push toward peace in the middle east, and some believe Oslo might be resurrected.
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