Skip to content

The Purpose of Rosh Hashanah or Yom Teruah

Though most Christians do not believe that it is necessary to keep these feasts nowadays, there is a small number of them who are starting to acknowledge that these feasts could still be relevant. But we are just simple believers without grand doctrinal statements. We keep these festivals because we love the clarity of our Father’s Word and we see how the festivals point to our Saviour. We do not see anywhere in the Bible a command that would make us think that these feasts have been canceled. And because we know the great sacrifice of the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world, our Passover and Day of Atonement is very meaningful.

On the first day of the seventh month we are told to observe a “Day of Shouting” (Lev 23:23-251; Num 29:1-62) on which work is forbidden. This holiday is widely known today by established Judaism as Rosh Hashannah. However, the Bible never calls it Rosh Hashanah, but instead variously calls it Yom Teruah (“Day of Shouting”) and Zicharon Teruah (“Remembrance Shouting”).

Rabbis in Babylon renamed the holiday Rosh Hashannah (“New Year”), claiming it as the Jewish New Year. It is an odd claim, since the Bible refers to this holiday as the beginning of the seventh month. The actual beginning of the year, according to our Father, is the month of Abib, in the spring, as defined in Ex 12:2, which states, “This month will be for you the beginning of months; it is first of the months of the year.”

What’s the Purpose?

There are scriptures that make reference to shouting or crying out loud and/or sounding a trumpet (or shofar – ram’s horn) to call the people of God to repentance, such as Is 58:1.

Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins.  (Is 58:1)

This is not for the purpose of condemnation, or making people feel bad (as the spirit of worthlessness does) but for the purpose of repentance and healing.

[If] My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land. (2 Chron 7:14)

The festival of Yom Teruah is to awaken sin-sleepy Israel to see their desperate need and cry out for deliverance from their spiritual enemies.

Yom Kippur is about “soul-searching” to make sure we are living a life pleasing to God, and are not being hypocrites. It is actually a ten-day period, starting with the blowing of trumpets at Yom Teruah to alert us that it is the time of year to cry out and seek God. We ask Him to show us our hurtful ways so we can repent and be cleansed from them.

Yahshua the Messiah didn’t give His life as a sacrifice so we could just be forgiven, but so that we could be cleansed and saved from our sins! It is one thing to be forgiven (and yes, we need forgiveness) but it does no good to us or Him if we are forgiven over and over again for the same thing our whole lives and are never saved from its power over us.

You will hear trumpets sounding all day long on Yom Teruah if you come by to visit any of our communities on that day.

Wake Up!

Yom Teruah alerts us to quit just “fiddling around” with your life and get down to business… are you really about our Father’s business? Or your own business? We need to wake up as to what motivates us, and our wrong ways, and how we’ve gone off, and how we haven’t pleased our Father like we wanted to.

So we have this chance every year, this special time to “wake up” on the trumpet day. Someone shouts, or blows a trumpet and wakes us up and we say, “What? Why? What’s going on?” It is to wake us up spiritually.

…are you really about our Father’s business? Or your own business?

There is an eternity in the mind of our Creator — an eternity of life and peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government, or of peace. So everything that doesn’t make for peace has to be judged and put away in order for that eternity to play out. Whatever is not love, whatever is not joy, whatever is not of peace, whatever is not kindness… (all the fruit of the spirit Gal 5:223).

…it is in the heart of our Creator that He could speak now to His highest creation, and there could be a conversation now about the “why.”

In Rev 21:4-54, it says there is going to come a day when there will be no more tears, no more pain, and no more death! No more Satan! “The former things have passed away.” Everything that is evil will be done away with; it will be finished.

There will come a time when all mankind is going to be raised from the dead to stand before their Creator, and the books are going to be opened — the clear record that is written in every man’s conscience — on what he did and why he did it. Then the “why” is going to come out. Like it or not, the answer is in the book. But, it is in the heart of our Creator that He could speak now to His highest creation, and there could be a conversation now about the “why.” We can get all that worked out beforehand, before all that is left is regret — even eternal regret.

  1. Again the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘In the seventh month on the first of the month you shall have a rest, a reminder by blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall not do any laborious work, but you shall present an offering by fire to the Lord.’”
  2. ‘Now in the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall also have a holy convocation; you shall do no laborious work. It will be to you a day for blowing trumpets…
  3. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…
  4. and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away…