Welcome to the fifth day of this year's Jericho March which corresponds to the fifth annual festival of Yom Teruah, the Day of Trumpets also called the Day of Shouting. And yet today, for the Jericho March, was yet another day of not shouting but it was also another day of trumpet-blasting.

In the Creation Calendar, only one day is for trumpet-blasting and shouting, and that is Yom Teruah, when the whole heavens will become a cacophany of noise that will be heard by the whole world, announcing the Saviour's Second Coming! So the two cycles differ slightly because the one (the Jericho Cycle) is the Children of Yahweh proclaiming the presence of Yahweh for Judgment of a heathen fortress with shofars; and the other - the original prototype - is the Father announcing His Son's return for the Earth's Judgment at Yom haKippurim (Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonements), using twin silver-trumpets, the Great Marriage Feast of the Lamb at Sukkot, and the beginning of the Messianic Millennium of Peace at Shemini Atseret (the Last Great Day). So there are parallels between the two cycles but they are not identical as they portray different things. We need to remember this when we search for divine patterns in the Father's Creation, ordinances and events.

These six days of doing exactly the same thing day after day in anticipation of the 7th day is not unlike our life. Most days are more of 'much of the same' as we await the Second Coming. Overcoming sin issues can take a long times, for various reasons, and the temptation is to stop doing 'much of the same' because of impatience. I well remember a vision I had of a brother-in-Christ who would also lose patience and walk away. Many, in fact, have done so. But this one was a pastor serving in a responsible office. In the vision he was dressed for a wedding and waiting at an airport. When the person he was waiting for didn't arrive, he took of his wedding garments, changed back into his ordinary work clothes and left. It was then I knew he would apostacise. And sure enough he did. When I was away, abroad, he staged what amounted to a coup d'état, announced to his congregation that he was dissolving the ministry (which wasn't his place to do) and that they were all going to start over again. Though all his large family backed him up, but one, the rest of the congregation were left in stunned silence, including investigators, who never came back again. He was my father-in-law. In our history we call this the 'Third Rebellion'. It effectively ended our work in Norway and soon after that Yahweh called me to Sweden where I have lived ever since.

People stop waiting for Yah'shua (Jesus), the Bridegroom, for all sorts of reasons. Learning to wait is part of the discipline required of the talmid (disciple). As the expression goes, 'all good things are worth waiting for'. Abraham and Sarah had to wait until they were very old before Sarah, who was one supposes several decades past her menopause, became pregnant with the long-awaited Promised Seed, Isaac. Yahweh kept His Word even though it seemed to them that that promise looked null and void. Unless we are willing to wait to the very end, we lack the emunah (faith) to be a true talmid (disciple). And I am sure that by the time of the 5th day (today) and the 6th day (tomorrow), that some, if not many, of the Israelites in that Jericho March were beginning to wonder whether what they were doing was some huge mistake.

When faith deserts you, because you let it, everything around you starts looking different. What seemed a permanent part of the landscape suddenly looks impermanent. What seemed sure suddenly looked unsure. When doubt sneaks past faith, the world trembles - not the world of Yahweh's enemies like the city of Jericho but your world - you start to shake, and that is a frightening experience. Panic results and the urge to flee gets stronger and stronger. And there are many voices out there, put in place by the Enemy, calling you over and (to use current postmodernist parlance) to 'deconstruct your faith'.

Now it is true that some things in our lives need to be deconstructed, sometimes urgently so. Once the current political narrative collapses...and it has already started collapsing as the Enemy goes from the offensive to self-preservation and 'plausible deniability mode' (for as long as they can make that last while they flee their sinking ship with all their ill-gotten gains)...then people will start 'deconstructing' that narrative and be apalled at just how many lies they believed because of the many false assumptions they made. So some thing desperately need to be deconstructed, like much of the false theology in the churches. But here we must be careful. If we are not very careful when in a deconstruction process, we can make new false assumptions and end-up deconstructing our whole faith in Christ and even reality itself. I have seen that happen so many times. It happened to my father-in-law only in his case he started deconstructing truth and ended up an atheist and with him most of his family.

We are back to the importance of ballance again and to be ballanced means staying centred within true mental constructs. The Israelites only had to do one thing - march around the city of Jericho one time in the pattern or tavnith ordained - seven cohenim (priests) blowing seven shofars leading those carrying the Ark of the Covenant - with a detachment of troops behind and a detatchment of troops in front with sheathed swords and silent tongues. That's all. All the first couple in the Garden had to do was not eat from the fruit of a particular tree - the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They needed but one commandment - not to eat of that Tree. Since they disobeyed, each for different reasons (Eve, because she was seduced by the Serpent, Adam because he didn't want to be alone without his fallen wife, choosing to fall with her), Yahweh has had to create a whole system of mitzvot (commandments) - once 'conscious, always conscious' - and so now we live by faith and by a rule book which is the Constitution of the Nation of Israel - the Torah. Unfortunately most Evangelical Christians have made the assumption that we don't need the Rule Book - the Torah - any longer but only need one mitzvah (commandment): faith in Christ. They make the assumption that because they are trusting in Yah'shua (Jesus) and because they have been 'filled with the Spirit' that they are more or less in the same innocent state as Adam and Eve were before the Fall, which isn't true. Our eyes, like theirs, have been opened.

Now it is absolutely true that when as sinners we turn to Christ and the Cross for salvation and our rebirth has been genuine, that we are returned to a state of innocence. But we are not in the Garden of Eden. We are not in Paradise. We live in a very unsafe and dangerous world and must be about out wits. We need to observe, compare, assess, analyse and make choices, which is another way of saying we must eat from the Tree of Knowledge - the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Does that mean it's an 'either/or' situation? Does it mean that if we eat from the Tree of Knowledge that we can't eat from the Tree of Life? Of course not. Christ is the Tree of Life and if we are rooted in Him we remain on secure ground but we still have to analyse the world around us. I call this the 'faith-science connundrum'. Getting that balance right is key to successful living.

That's why Yah'shua (Jesus) gave all sorts of new mitzvot (commandments) like loving your enemy as well as affirming the old ones, even going to the point of making everyone understand that He hadn't come to abrogate the Torah (as Protestants claim) but to complete it with His own mitzvot (commandments)!

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Torah (Law) or the Nevi'im (Prophets); I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill - fill up, complete - them" (Matt.5:17, NIV).

He did so by fulfilling the types that lay in the animal sacrifices and priestly ministry of the Tabernacle, meaning they were no longer needed because He became the Final Sacrifice and the Final Cohen Gadol or High Priest of Israel. Does that mean He abolished His Father's moral and ethical commandments? Protestants seem to think so and yet they consult them to see what is permitted and what is not. Even this makes little sense from the Protestant perspective. They claim that once you have 'the Spirit' you don't need the written Torah (Law) which is why, they imagine, it was 'nailed to the cross' or 'abolished'. If that were true, why consult the Old Covenant Scriptures at all? Why not just 'follow the Spirit' which is what they say they do. The problem is - and this really ought to be obvious - they have been doing this for 500 years and have come to all sorts of different conclusions as to what the 'Spirit' is telling them, as well as interpreting the Bible differently, resulting in over 33,000 denominations. Yah'shua (Jesus), in any case, contradited them, as we have seen, in Matthew 5:17 and down to verse 20, ending with this very non-Protestant statement:

"I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear (they haven't disappeared yet, nor will they), not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Torah (Law) until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these mitzvot (commandments) and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these mitzvot (commands[ments]) will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Torah (Law) (Scribes), you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt.5:18-20, NIV).

What Protestants do, as all sinners dos, is, in effect, say, 'That was for then...before the Cross but now we are free of the Law and can do what the 'Spirit' tells us'. What if you're not actually listening to the 'Spirit', as you suppose, but to some other spirit, and go and do something that the Torah (Law) forbids? People will start getting contradictory instructions and confusion results, followed by new denominations. Then what results is what Paul says cannot be:

"For Elohim (God) is not the author of confusion but of shalom (peace), as in all the assemblies (churches) of the qopdeshim (saints, set-apart, holy ones)" (1 Cor.14:33, NKJV).

So why, do you suppose, Paul keeps quoting from the Torah (Law) to back up his statements? For the same reason we have to, in order to make sure we are following the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) and not some deceiving spirit. The two were given to back each other up. They're like the two ends of a piece of string, the strong being the way we are suåposed to live. The string is us, our life, defined and held tight by the Ruach (Spirit) at one end and the Torah (Law) at the other. This is the Alpha and Omega of living, the Alef and Taw, which is what Yah'shua (Jesus) is, and was, setting us the example on how to build the Kingdom. This dual principle is everywhere to be found in the Scriptures. It's the only way to successfully navigate life and to live it to the full.

The self-contradictory Protestant system of 'faith alone' (the word 'alone' is not there in the Bible) was invented by Martin Luther and is opposed by James (Jas.2:24). Yes, faith alone in Christ saves us from sin and death but salvation is both past, present and future, and we are not finally 'saved' until we reach Yom haKippurim and are finally declared to be righteous, which Messiah does by also taking our works into consideration. In the present we are saved by faith alone but at the last day, as Scripture emphaticallty declares over and over again (as we're seeing in the Book of Revelation) works do enter the equation. How have the Protestants missed this? By misunderstanding Paul. And so they walk a tightrope only one end is not attached to anything. We walk in, and between, the King (Yah'shua/Jesus) and the Kingdom (Messianic Israel). That is the true doctrine.

And that is why there are seven days of Chag haMatazah, seven days of Sukkot, seven annual festivals, seven days in a week and why Israel had to march around Jericho 13 times over seven days. Only on the last day, as we shall presently see, they did two things differently - they marched around the city seven times on the 7th day (making a total of 6+7=13 circuits) and they SHOUTED LOUDLY. You see, the last day is different because on the last day of our lives we are brought to judgment to see whether we, the originally saved, were obedient or not, and are rewarded accordingly. Yahweh will determine whether we have retained our salvation or not (and remain saved as we were on the first day when we accepted His Son as our King) and, if we remained saved, what kind of final salvation we shall receive: whether it be the salvation of the firstborn, elect, or 144,000 (which is after the brilliance of the sun) to inherit the first resurrection; or whether it be the salvation of the disobedient who remained saved (which is after the order of the brilliance of the moon by comparison); or whether it be to salvation with no inheritance at all, like that of the unbelievers (which is after the brilliance of the stars by comparison), and rise in the second resurrection after the Millennium (1 Cor.15:41-42). The third category must go through a painful cleansing over a very, very long time, since they rejected Christ, until the Cosmic Jubillee when the whole of Creation is finally reconciled to the Creator and hell is no more.

You see, there is no Sabbath day during the seven days of the Jericho Walk. It begins on the New Moon - at Rosh Chodesh - when work is allowed (unlike on the Sabbath) - and concludes on the 6th day of the week, not the 7th (which is the Sabbath day) which they would have broken if they had done all they did on the 7th day of the Jericho March! Indeed, the Jericho march is one of the firm proofs of the Creation Calendar. But more than that, it is a picture of how salvation works. For six days they did the same thing, being justified by their faith and so declared righteous; but had they continued doing the same thing on the 7th day - if they had on the seventh circuit of the seventh day just marched around once with trumpets blaring but not shouted, Jericho's walls would have remained standing. They were not justified - declared righteous - until they had completed their instructions - until they had been fully obedient. And that is true of our final salvation too. You can learn more about this on our Justification website.

Carnal, unspiritual, impatient people - don't like waiting. Another one of our pastors quit because we hadn't yet received all of the spiritual gifts which he insisted had to be present if we were a true work of Elohim (God). Today he's a New Ager, a spiritualist, contacting the dead for bereaved family members and spouses. All because he would not wait. Not all the gifts are for everyone, like tongues, anyway, and we were few in number in those days with many still not having come. But he was impatient. He went over to the Pentecostals only to be disappointed there and what exactly happened thereafter I do not know. The last I heard he was channelling demons, beieving them to be the spirits of the dead, in seances. So please don't be impatient. There is a time and season for everything. And your initial salvation is enough until Yahweh gives you more. You can achieve great things for the King and the Kingdom by exercising the gifts you already have, so don't be greedy! Go and serve with what you have! He will use you more and more. Things may not work out the way you expected or planned for but they will work out if you go forth in faith. Marching day after day around Jericho blasting shofar's must have been more and more difficult each day, but they continued, their faith was justified, and the walls were brought tumbling down. They trusted...and they obeyed. They accomplished.

If you have been marching around aimlessly wondering what on earth you are doing and maybe even thinking this is spiritual exercise just make-believe, think again! It's up to you how you make use of the opportunites Heavenly Father gives you. For myself, I am walking on a metaphorical cloud right now because I am sensing Him like never before and things are happening inside and outside. The long wait has been worth it, the seeds planted years ago in many cases are now sprouting, and some which sprouted long ago are now trees bearing fruit. I am content because I am content with what I have and content to wait for whatever Yahweh intends to give me in the future. For me, this 2023 March gets more exciting with each passing day, not a burden to bear until it's all over and we can get back to what we were doing before. I don't want to get back to where I was before. I'm ready to move on. But it's a choice. We can either 'do what we always do' and stagnate or we can quit, take of our wedding garments, and return to the world. As for me and my House - those who will join me - we will serve Yahweh with greater devotion and joy (Josh.24:15). So will you, as Israel did in the days of Joshua, say "We will serve Yahweh" (Josh.24:21,24) or will you let the gap widen between those who choose to serve, and those who choose not to? I'm telling you frankly, this Gospel Caravan is about to move on and won't wait for stragglers! The stragglers will have to run with all their might to rejoin it later!

Let's pray:

"Father, we want to sing You a new song! We want our congregations of the faithful to sing Your praises. Israel rejoices in his Maker, Zion's children exalt you, our King. We dance in praise of Your Name. For You have been kind and generous to us, when we have least deserved it; You have shown us grace upon grace, You confer victory on us when we are weak, and those of faith exalt You in triumph. We prostrate ourselves before You, we acclaim You with discourse and sermon, with testimony and witness on our lips, and with a two-edged sword in our hands bearing Your salvation for the humble and judgment for the wicked. You have gloriouslty rewarded Your faithful ones. See us, we pray, through the seventh day and bring down the walls of our strongmen and enemies, we pray in Yah'shua's (Jesus') Name. Amen."

I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow for Day #6 of the March which corresponds to Yom haKippurim Amen.

Endnotes

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