Ten Days of Awe

Awe is an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, produced by that which is grand, sublime, or extremely powerful. Positive may be “awesome”, while dreadful is “awful”. Do you know that God can be either awesome or awful depending on your faith in Jesus Christ? He is an awesome Father to those who have been made righteous through faith in Jesus. He is an awful Judge to those who have rejected Christ.

Jews have practiced Ten Days of Awe for thousands of years. The Days of Awe in 2025 begin with Rosh Hashanah at sunset on Monday, September 22nd, and conclude with Yom Kippur at nightfall on Thursday, October 2nd. This ten-day period, also known as the High Holidays, is a sacred time for self-reflection, mending broken relationships, and praying for forgiveness. Ultimately, it is a time of remembering God, restoring hope, repenting from sin, and solemnly preparing for the coming year.

Seven Feasts of God

In the Bible, God instructs His people to observe seven main annual holy days. These are referred to as feasts or festivals, but they look very different from the worldly versions of festivals. There are four in the spring and three in the fall. These were illustrations to prepare the world for Jesus Christ. Each feast is fulfilled by Christ with a specific action. In fact, He has already completed the four springs feasts.

• Passover — Crucifixion of Jesus
• Unleavened Bread — Burial of Jesus
• First Fruits — Resurrection of Jesus
• Pentecost [Shavuot] — Outpouring of Holy Spirit and Establishment of Church
• Trumpets — Rapture and Resurrection of Saints
• Day of Atonement — Return of Christ & Saints to Establish Millennial Reign
• Tabernacles — The Only Feast Remaining & Observed During Millennial Reign, Concludes with Final Judgement and New Heaven & Earth

At sunset on Monday, September 22nd, we begin the Ten Days of Awe. These ten days begin with Trumpets and end with Atonement. At some point in our ever narrowing future, Christ will take action during these two festivals. O, how awesome and how awful these ten days will be!

Today we’re going to look more closely at the significance of:

• The New Year in the Hebrew Calendar – Rosh Hashanah
• The Feast of Trumpets – Yom Teruah
• The Day of Atonement – Yom Kippur
• The Feast of Booths – Sukkot

Head of the Year

Rosh Hashanah [Head of the Year] is Biblically referred to as Yom Teruah or Feast of Trumpets. It takes place sunset Monday, September 22, to sunset Wednesday, September 24. Rosh Hashanah is not in the Bible. Instead the Feast of Trumpets announces the new Hebrew year.

In the Hebrew calendar, we are shifting from 5785 (what’s been referred to as the Year of Double Grace) to 5786 (the Year of Connection and Strengthening Stakes). 5 is grace, 7 is completion, 8 is mouth and new beginnings, and 6 is the vav —the connector, the number of man, and the tent peg or stake. This next year there is importance in decreeing with our mouths the connection between heaven and earth. Through Jesus, we stand in between as intercessors. Also, the Lord wants to increase our Kingdom influence. In order for our boundaries to be stretched and our reach to be lengthened, we must strengthen our stakes, making sure that we are firmly and deeply rooted in faith in Jesus and in His Word and in the His Body. This is a year of connecting and strengthening.

• Genesis 1:1 ESV — In the beginning, God created the heavens AND [VAV] the earth.
• Isaiah 54:2 ESV — “Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your STAKES.”

Trumpets

The Feast of Trumpets is the most mysterious feast. The Bible says very little about it except to not work and to blow shofars. Leviticus 23:24 and Numbers 29:1 both command a time for rest from work and for blowing trumpets.

This feast (along with the Hebrew new year) is initiated not by a calendar day but by the new moon; therefore you had to wait and watch the sky. The people would post watchmen to announce the New Moon by blowing shofar. This feast is known as “the day and hour unknown or hidden”. In Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32, Jesus says that no one will know the day or hour that He catches up His church. We don’t know the day or hour, but we do know the feast, a 48-hour period.

Trumpets/shofars are blown to call for attention, to shock people into alertness. Through this 48-hour window spread over three days, trumpets will be heard all over Israel. Finally the last trumpet is the longest blast, wrapping up Teruah and moving into the seven days until atonement.

This is an image of rapture of the church, seven years of great tribulation, and the day of Christ’s return. For the non-Christian Jews, these Ten Days of Awe are looking toward their coming Messiah. For Christians, these days look toward His calling up and then coming down.

• 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 ESV — Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
• 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 ESV — For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

The seven years of tribulation (between the Feast of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement) will be the darkest period of human history. During Yom Teruah, Jewish women and girls light candles and recite: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and has commanded us to light the candle of the Day of Remembrance. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.”

Atonement & Judgement

Yom Kippur [Day of Atonement] is sunset Wednesday, October 1st, to sunset Thursday, October 2nd. The Jewish people observe this with a 25-hour fast and intense prayer, marking it the holiest day of the year.

According to Jewish tradition, this time each year God opens a book. If your name is in the book, you’re saved for one more year. During this time people repent of their sins and intentionally reconcile with one another, hoping they’ll be good enough to have their name added. This Day of Atonement is also known as the Day of Judgement.

This day looks forward to the return of Jesus Christ and the establishment of His millennial reign on the earth. He will return with His resurrected saints, and He will judge those on the earth by how they’ve treated His Hebrew brothers and sisters during the seven year tribulation.

• John 5:24 ESV — “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
• Revelation 21:27 ESV — But nothing unclean will ever enter it [New Jerusalem], nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Through faith in Jesus, the Lamb of God who was slain for the sins of the world, we know that we are forever written into His book. For those who have not been saved by faith, they are continually trying to do good enough to make it into the book. Jesus died for us because we’ll never be good enough. You must know the Lamb and trust the Lamb in order to be in His book.

When Jesus announced His ministry to the Jewish people and the world (Luke 4:16-21), He did so by reading Isaiah 61:1-2:

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.”

In His reading He stops at the year, or age, of the Lord’s favor. Jesus initiated the Age of Grace (also known as the Age of the Church) that has spanned from the time of His reading Isaiah 61 until today. When He returns, He will finish His reading by initiating the day of vengeance, which is also the day of atonement and judgement. He will reign over the earth for a thousand years and then will come the final completion of Isaiah 61:1-2: “to comfort all who mourn”. This final completion will be after His reign and after final judgement, when this heaven and earth are replaced with the new heaven and earth saturated by the fullness of the Lord.

Tents

Sukkot (Festival of Booths, Tents, Tabernacles) is after the Ten Days of Awe, taking place sunset Monday, October 6th, to sunset Monday, October 13th. This is a seven-day festival beginning five days after Yom Kippur. it’s is one of the three pilgrimage festivals (including Passover and Shavuot/Pentecost) in which Jews are expected to return to Jerusalem. During this period they live in booths or tents.

This is the only feast that continues during the millennial reign of Jesus. Zechariah 14:16-21 says that during the Messiah’s reign on earth, every single person in all the nations must make an annual journey to Jerusalem during Sukkot. If someone refuses, their land will see famine.

Sukkot is called the Feast of Booths or Tents or Tabernacles because during this time the people live in makeshift shelters. This is to remind everyone about how God led the Israelites through the wilderness and faithfully cared for them on their journey to the promised land. During the millennial reign, it will remind the people that Christ is caring for them as they wait for the new heaven and earth and the new Jerusalem. Even during the millennial reign, the people of the earth are reminded that this earth experience is temporary, and that their ultimate and eternal abode is the full presence of God in the New Jerusalem on the new heaven and earth.

• 2 Peter 3:11-13 ESV — Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
• Revelation 21:1-4 ESV — “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Sukkot is also known as the “Season of Our Joy.” Our joy is not in our houses, buildings, and structures. He is our covering and our provision. Our joy is in following Jesus and trusting Him. We live and prosper by God’s grace, instead of relying on our own harvest or wealth. He is our present and future promise.

Awesome Age of Grace

Over the next ten days, I want to encourage you to remain in a position of awe. Marvel at the Lord and His lovingkindness displayed to you through Jesus Christ. Pay attention to what He is currently doing in your life, through your life, and all over the world. We are truly in awesome times as we draw near the end of the Age of Grace. We are in awakening, revival, and transformation. Do you see it? 

Seeking His face!
Matt

Matt Neese
Wellspring.Live

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