Today I’d like to take a look at a famous NT verse and show you exactly how it’s connected to the events we’re studying here in Joshua Chapter 6.
The verse I want to highlight today is as follows:
“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Messiah will rise first.”-1 Thessalonians 4:16
Notice the “with a shout” bit I’ve bolded and underlined .
In Hebrew, this is making a RUA and it is the same word used here in Joshua 6 when it talks about the people and shofars making a great shout.
The gentile church has termed this event The Rapture and when it occurs it will be a day of great joy and happiness for some but for a good portion of mankind it will be a day of death, horror and utter finality.
Those who during their lifetimes made the decision to stand with Israel’s God and His Son Yeshua will be saved.
However, those (a good majority of the planet) who refused to bow down to the God of Israel and His Messiah will be destroyed (per the Law of HEREM I discussed in the last post).
The pattern for the unsaved who are doomed for destruction is represented by the city of Jericho in Joshua Chapter 6.
The citizens of Jericho shut their gates (a metaphor for closing their hearts off) and barricaded themselves against Hashem thinking that was the best way to secure their lives.
Unfortunately for them, the walls they had built to secure themselves offered zero protection against the wrath of the Lord.
They had just created their own mass graveyard that they would perish in.
And so it will be with the vast majority of mankind who rely on ridiculous and earthly things for their salvation such as bank accounts, their businesses, procreating huge families or whatever it is secular man attaches himself to in order to feel safe and secure in this world.
Next, I want you to notice the connection between the “shout”, the “voice of the archangel” and the “trumpet of God”.
This is exactly the pattern we see established in the battle to take Jericho we’ve been studying.
What happened at Jericho about 3000 years is scheduled to happen again, possibly in the near future.
Let’s take a look at what the specific patterns are.
The heavenly angels and their archangel leader is equal to Joshua and the soldiers he is leading.
The shout from heaven is equal to the final shouts from the shofars that the priest blew at Jericho on the 7th day after circling the city seven times.
And what does this final shout signal?
It signals salvation!
Just as the final shout at Jericho signaled salvation for the gentile Rahab and her family who made the wise decision to cast her lot with Israel and their God, so too will this same scenario play out again in the future…just on a global scale.
It’s all in the patterns folks!
If you wanna know what God is gonna do in the future, look at the patterns of what He did in the past.
The Rapture ain’t some new New Testament idea.
It’s simply following a pattern established in the Jewish Bible thousands of years ago.
This Divine Pattern is very clear , understandable and fearsome, any one who awaits His second coming should be fully prepared like Rahab and family to accept the God of Israel and His Dear Son to be saved before the heavenly Trump of the Arch Angel and loud shout of the angels will come. As it where in the days of Jericho, the World has shut themselves in, but their earthly walls of security and dependencee shall crumble.