Coming to know the true God—the all-powerful, all-loving Creator and Father—is an exhilarating process.

Herbert W. Armstrong well remembered the beginning of that process when he first repented and turned to God, later writing, “Somehow I began to realize a new fellowship and friendship had come into my life.” He recognized Bible study as God talking to him and prayer as him talking with God. “I was not yet very well acquainted with God,” he continued. “But one gets to be better acquainted with another by constant contact and continuous conversation” (Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong).

Building that “fellowship and friendship” with God through prayer and study is exciting for all of us who undertake it. But there is a day coming when we will come to know God and Jesus Christ in an altogether more awesome way.

That day is pictured by the sacred festival of Trumpets.

In fact, Trumpets is about this whole world finally coming to know God!

As this globe spins, people everywhere live in ignorance of the greatest, most powerful Being in the universe—the one who gave them life and who sustains them. That is about to change dramatically. God promises it!

The God of Judgment

Today, the world is cut off from God, deceived and held captive by the devil (Revelation 12:9). People act like they can do anything they please and God won’t see. That delusion is about to be exposed.

God reveals Himself in Scripture as a God of judgment. And this world, whether or not it realizes it, is about to meet Him.

“Ye have wearied the Lord with your words,” says Malachi 2:17. “Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied him? When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delighteth in them; or, Where is the God of judgment?” This is talking specifically about God’s lukewarm saints in this Laodicean era of God’s Church, but this type of thinking saturates our world. People commit abominable evils and think they are just fine with God. People mock the idea of a God of judgment. God sees it all and is wearied by it.

Still, God is waiting for the perfect moment to intervene. This world confuses God’s patience with powerlessness. People see that God doesn’t act, and they think God doesn’t care.

Many scriptures record righteous people crying out: How long must we wait, O God? How long will you allow the wicked to prevail? (e.g. Psalm 74:10; Habakkuk 1:2; Revelation 6:10). For thousands of years, men have beheld the injustices of Satan’s world and longed to see God set things right.

That wait is almost over! Immediately after “Where is the God of judgment?” comes this prophecy: “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple …” (Malachi 3:1). “The God of judgment will return and deal with the world and its rebellion,” Gerald Flurry writes. “He will come suddenly and unexpectedly. So if people don’t learn today where the God of judgment is, they will then!” (The God Family Vision).

The festival of Trumpets pictures “the day of his coming” (verse 2). When Christ comes, He will judge sinners and those who oppress the powerless (verse 5). Yes, God is very protective of those with no one else to protect them. People don’t realize that, and they don’t fear God. But God is watching, and He will avenge!

Read Psalm 94. Its author is pleading with God to exact vengeance on the evil of this world (verses 1-2). “Lord, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?” (verse 3). God’s people have been asking this question for millenniums. A righteous mind aches to see injustice, vanity, arrogance and evil (verse 4). How long can God allow these sins to persist? How long will the righteous be plagued by persecution from Satan’s society? (verse 5).

Our backward world is filled with terrible sins that the God of judgment hates. “Yet they say, The Lord shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it” (verse 7). They are mistaken! God sees them all and knows even the evil thoughts of man (verses 8-11). We easily overlook how angry God gets over injustice and oppression. And He promises to intervene. “And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; yea, the Lord our God shall cut them off” (verse 23).

This world does not yet know this God. Even we need to get to know God better. Meditating deeply on the meaning of the day of Trumpets helps us do that.

‘You Shall Know I Am God’

The book of Ezekiel describes horrifying punishments that are about to swallow the modern-day nations of Israel and the entire world: famine, plague, sword, land made desolate, cities laid waste, inhabitants scattered and exiled among enemy nations. But over and again throughout the book—at least 45 times—God says the purpose of this punishment is so people come to know Him. He promises, “Ye shall know that I am the Lord” (e.g. Ezekiel 6:7).

And it’s not just Israel. He says this about the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Edomites, the Philistines and other Gentile peoples: I’m going to punish them that they may come to know me! (e.g. Ezekiel 25:5, 11, 16-17; 26:6; 28:21-23; 29:6, 9, 16; 38:23; 39:6-7). These peoples’ sins make God incredibly angry—yet He wants to reach them. He wants them to come to know Him!

The sequence of these end-time events that lead up to Jesus Christ’s Second Coming is vividly described in the book of Revelation. During the 2½-year Great Tribulation, God will give Satan tremendous destructive latitude, which the devil will use to martyr God’s lukewarm saints (Revelation 6:9-11). Those saints who repent will be sealed and reserved for the first resurrection (these are the 144,000 described in Revelation 7:1-8). God will also protect “a great multitude, which no man could number”—those unconverted who repent during that terrible period (verses 9-17).

Beginning in chapter 8, we read of the events of the Day of the Lord—a yearlong period, not of Satan’s wrath but of God’s vengeance on a rebellious world. These events are symbolized by seven trumpets. They include terrifying supernatural plagues, as well as warfare prophesied to kill one third of mankind that still survives (Revelation 9:18). That is on a scale of over a billion people.

This is what God had in mind when He instituted the day of Trumpets in ancient Israel. Meditating on these events helps us understand the God who unleashes them. Trumpets reveals how angry God really is at this world’s sins! Do you think like God? Truly righteous anger is absent in our society. We need to align our thinking with the emotions of the God of judgment and of the day of Trumpets.

The truth is, God is chastening people to correct them. He is a Father trying to turn rebellious sons back to Him—because He loves them! The Feast of Trumpets depicts Christ coming and correcting this world—and loving this world by bringing it under His authority.

Realize: The only reason the horrors of the Day of the Lord are necessary is that mankind is so hard and uncorrectable. God doesn’t correct more than He must. Those who repent before the Tribulation will be protected in a place of safety. Those who repent in the Tribulation will be protected from the Day of the Lord. Those who repent during the Day of the Lord will be protected from further punishment. That is God’s way: He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11). He only wants people to turn to Him.

This is further proved by God sending “two witnesses” who will proclaim His warning throughout all 1,260 days of the Tribulation and the Day of the Lord (Revelation 11:3). God truly does want to provide the opportunity to repent and turn to Him for protection! (There are also scriptures indicating that God’s people will be doing a work in the place of safety. Read about this in Mr. Flurry’s free booklet Jordan and God’s Church in Prophecy.)

It is only after wicked men murder those two witnesses (and then God dramatically resurrects them) that the seventh trumpet sounds (verses 7-15). This signals the final day in the age of man—and the pivotal event in all human history, the Second Coming. At that time, the world will finally come to know God!

Gathering the Saints

How will people respond to Jesus Christ’s appearing? He Himself prophesied, “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earthmourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:30). Later chapters in Revelation show that, tragically, this world will fight Christ (Revelation 11:18; 19:11-21).

These prophecies warn strongly about the great God of judgment! He will forcibly instill proper fear in mankind. When Christ returns, He will devour His enemies (Hebrews 10:26-27). “… Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (verses 30-31). At His return, men will tremble in fear! And for God’s saints who have turned from Him, it will be a day of reckoning.

Christ’s prophecy continues, “And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matthew 24:31). When the last trump sounds, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the dead saints shall be raised incorruptible, and the living saints shall be changed to spirit! (1 Corinthians 15:52).

Among our ranks in that resurrection will be the tens of thousands of faithful saints who lived and died through the millenniums without yet receiving God’s promises (e.g. Hebrews 11, especially verses 13, 39-40). In their next waking moment, they will rise and meet Christ in the air as glorious, radiantly bright spirit beings!

Though Satan-inspired men mourn, the elect of God will surely thrill to finally see, with our own eyes, our Savior, our Head, our Commander in Chief, our Husband—emerging from the clouds with power and glory, on a great white horse, eyes blazing like fire, head adorned with many crowns. Our hearts will leap for joy!

‘Ever With the Lord’

What jubilation radiates from the Apostle Paul’s words: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

The day of Trumpets is a sobering day, portraying fierce warfare. But it is also the day picturing Christ’s return, giving God’s people so much to look forward to. On a personal level, one of the greatest of these will be our opportunity to finally meet our Husband and see Him face to face! We will begin our new life together and be ever with Him!

We will watch Christ descend to the Earth and wage war against the armies of this world. We will see Him as He directs the angels who follow Him. We will receive direct instruction from Him as He assigns us responsibilities, and we will witness Him begin to establish His government on Earth.

In that day, we will really come to know God as never before! “[W]e know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

When we imagine our future as king-priests (Revelation 1:6; 5:10), we may feel overwhelmed. Responsibilities like counseling people, teaching, speaking before crowds, and ruling nations may seem staggering. Yet surely such duties will become much more feasible once we begin witnessing Christ’s example! Being around our Husband, seeing the way He conducts Himself, following His personal example, will profoundly influence us and inspire greatness we have never before achieved.

Together with our Husband, as part of the God Family, we will teach this whole world to stop fighting God and to come to truly know and love the true God.

King David wrote a psalm for his son Solomon, who was destined for kingship, but the words are even more appropriate for the millennial rule of the King of kings: “He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment. The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness” (Psalm 72:2-3). These “mountains” and “little hills” symbolize the major and smaller nations, as Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in Mystery of the Ages. God’s house will be established in the “top of the mountains” (Isaiah 2:2), and Christ will establish true peace—which comes only through righteousness and through God’s government—among all people.

What wonderful effects God’s rule will have: “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth. In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth” (Psalm 72:6-7). Life needs showers to survive. Christ’s kingship will be like refreshing, life-giving rain! What a wonderful picture of how blessed the world will be under Christ’s rule, who will govern exactly according to the will of God the Father.

This day of Trumpets, celebrate the soon-coming day when the whole world, and we personally, will come to know intimately the true God—the all-powerful, all-loving Creator and Father!