Sid: We want everyone everywhere to get the heart of the One New Man glorious congregation because God’s glory is about ready to fall on this earth, and you better get your patterns right or you won’t be able to contain the glory that’ll be coming on this earth. That’s why as my guest I have Kevin Howard Hebraic scholar, Bible teacher, because… actually the reason God directed me to Kevin is I was given a gift. It’s such a wonderful gift, it’s a book, but it is a hardback book it’s about “The Feasts of the Lord,” that’s the title. I’m just opening up at random and I happened to open up because there’s a 150 full color photographs, a picture of a Passover table. I have the author Kevin Howard who I’m speaking to him at his home in Cincinnati on the telephone. This is… I mean anyone would be able to come inside of the Last Supper which was a Passover Seder with this particular picture here. Kevin this is beautiful! One of my favorite ingredients is here Elijah’s cup because we all… because Elijah is supposed to announce the coming of the Messiah and it’s almost like a game when I was a child. My sister and I would run to the door, front door, and open the door to see if Elijah was there. My grandfather would always send us there. I’m just kind of curious, obviously this was staged but this was the most beautiful photograph of a Passover table. Tell me a bit about it.

Kevin: Well that… a lot of those elements on that table are my own personal things from Passover.

Sid: Oh you must have one wonderful Passover…. No wonder you told me that was your favorite festival!

Kevin: So we used what we use for our personal Passover. So you know people can get the imagery in their minds of what a Passover table is like. You notice on the full page spread there every item is diagramed and explained.

Sid: Let’s go to Rosh Hashanah since Rosh Hashanah is this Friday night it begins. Tell me a bit about it.

Kevin: Well Rosh Hashanah is known as the Feast of Trumpets. Biblically the observance of Rosh Hashanah was the blowing of the shofar. That was the command in scripture “Blow the shofar and keep it a day of Sabbath rest.” What has been carried over till today is the name was changed to Rosh Hashanah emphasizing the tradition that that’s the beginning of the civil year, that is all the harvest is past now we begin a new agricultural year. So it’s known as Rosh Hashanah today which literally means in the Hebrew Head of the Year. So it is the Jewish new year it’s a tradition today to send cards well-wishing Jewish New Year cards to your friends and family.

Sid: Tell me a bit about the shofar.

Kevin: The shofar is very interesting. I’m glad that you asked that Sid because in scripture this 5^th holiday, or Trumpets, or Rosh Hashanah, God did not command the people to specifically take the shofar He said simply it was to be a day of blowing, as in sounding the trumpet. Historically the Jewish people, the nation of Israel had 2 trumpets that God had commanded Moses to build and construct in Numbers chapter 10. They were long flared instruments used in the temple sounded over the sacrifices. Then there was also the shofar which was the horn a ram. It couldn’t be a cow because a cow reminded the Jewish people of the golden calf and the idolatry at Sinai. So the shofar is a musical instrument was the horn of a ram. It reminds people of the ram that was caught in the thicket as provision for Isaac’s deliverance there on Mount Moriah. But the shofar the rabbis said that was the instrument to be used for this feast, and there is some scriptural basis for it on Yom Kippur just a few days later God said that on that holiday that the shofar was to blow every 50^th year to announce the Yovel, or the Jubilee year. So the shofar is sounded on this day.

Sid: There’s an ancient rabbinic view as to what happens to the devil when he hears the shofar. Tell me about it I love to hear about this.

Kevin: That is a great tradition. The rabbis say that the reason for the trumpet or the shofar sounding is to confound Satan, referred to popularly as confounding Satan. So on Feast of Trumpets, or Rosh Hashanah, the shofar will be sounded many times in the synagogue anywhere from long blasts, to 3 short blasts, to 9 staccato blasts. It’ll be sounded many many times traditionally over 100 times that day to confound Satan. You might say “Why does it confound Satan?” Well the tradition says “That when Satan hears the shofar blow he will think the Messiah has come and that his time is up.” So it confounds him and it’s blown to confound Satan the great enemy of God’s people.

Sid: You know in your book you also explain what happens in a synagogue. You actually explain the synagogue liturgy. Why did you put that in there?

Kevin: Well I thought it was very important because the synagogue liturgy Sid today a large portion of it reflects temple liturgy in the days of Jesus. I mean ancient temple liturgy a lot of its been pulled forward and there’s lot of good passages of scripture that are read and still preserved in very beautiful readings and liturgy of the synagogue today. It’s very uplifting, it’s very important but on this holiday part of the liturgy spends its time exalting God as King and Ruler, a big portion of the liturgy is devoted to that. As well as His majesty, as well as His remembrances of His everlasting covenant to His people. So those are very important themes in scripture and they’re reflected in that liturgy.

Sid: Now you also, and this is for every Biblical festival, you have the traditional foods. What can we expect on this festival?

Kevin: Well the traditional food, which I’m sure you had it in your background as well the community I live in is apples and honey. It might sound like a strange food for Rosh Hashanah whenever we’re thinking of it as being a somber day of preparing repentance for Yom Kippur coming up, since it is the Jewish New Year apples dipped in honey are eaten to symbolize and wish for a sweet and glorious coming new year. So it’s pretty much universal food eaten on that day.

Sid: Of course you have a chapter in here called “Israel’s Dark Day,” explain that.

Kevin: Well it’s interesting and very unique to me as I look at this holiday that Rosh Hashanah, or Trumpets, is the only holiday out of the 7 that occurs at the beginning of the month when the moon is dark. You look at it Passover begins Nissan 14 the middle of the month the moon is full, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits the moon is full. Tabernacles the moon is full and bright, but this day the moon is dark it’s only a small sliver. I believe it fits in again with the prophetic significance that Trumpets points forward to time of great judgment. The prophets all spoke about it, and most of the New Testament writers too speak of a time of great judgment called “The Day of the Lord” when God stands up in great wrath to judge the wicked of this earth in preparation for Messiah’s glorious return and setting up of His eternal Messianic kingdom.

Sid: Then of course you talk about the last trump.

Kevin: Yes the last trump is tied to this holiday because only twice in scripture are we told God blows a shofar and it’s very important. God sounded the shofar at Mount Sinai when He prepared to bring the nation of Israel into the Mosaic covenant. We’re told in Zechariah chapter 9 as well as the New Testament that God will again sound, it’s called the Trump of God, or God’s Shofar, He will sound that again whenever he sends Messiah back to judge the wicked, to deliver His people, and set up His kingdom. So there’s a future day of Trumpets when God Himself will blow the shofar.

Sid:  I really don’t understand how non-Jewish Christian can understand the depth and the riches of the New Covenant, or the Old Covenant at all with not understanding the Biblical festivals as you have them laid out in this book.

Kevin: I agree it’s all tied affect point of illustration when Paul said “Messiah our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us.” How can we fully understand the work of Messiah upon the cross if we don’t understand what He did as our Passover Lamb? It’s all wrapped up in these prophetic feasts and portraits of Messiah and His works.

Sid: You have some very interesting thing in the book. You have a 10 year Biblical calendar to tell over the next decade when the Biblical festivals are. Now there’s no point and reason why you did not go beyond 10 years is there?

Kevin: Actually I believe it was about 20 years but it’s just a matter of how many fit on a page.

Sid: Oh I thought you meant He was going to be coming in 10 years, okay (laughing).

Kevin: Well hopefully He comes in the next year, hopefully even in our days very soon.

Sid: Okay we go through the 10 days of repentance and prayer and we come to Yom Kippur, what is that?

Kevin: Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement Israel’s Day of Atonement. In fact it can’t be emphasized enough that Yom Kippur was the most solemn day of the year for Israel and even today in the synagogue. It is the most solemn day of the year in fact scripture says it was to be a day of afflicting the soul which is defined by some of the other writers as day of fasting.

Sid: You know I’m just looking through your book. The print is just so readable, the white is so white, the colors are so magnificent in this book, but you talk about the 2 goats, and you talk about the confession of the high priest. I mean very few Christians understand these things. You talk about the burning of the incense and you explain that. The sprinkling of the blood, the scapegoat, then you talk about… I remember this my father used to share this in Poland. He would, my grandfather would take a chicken by the neck and swing it around his neck and they’d break the neck, and this chicken would die for his sins he would say.

Kevin: Wow that’s amazing because that ceremony is not seen that often, it’s a very rare ceremony.

Sid: Well I never seen it my father told me about it.

Kevin: Well it’s called kaparot, and it still exist today in some of the Chasidic ultra-Orthodox circles, but even that ties back to the basic understanding that a covering for sins, which is what Yom Kippur means, a Day of Covering, or a Day of Atonement, only was possible through a blood sacrifice. In fact that’s what the Lord said “I’ve given you the blood on the altar for a covering (kefar) an atonement for your souls.”

Sid: I’m sorry our time is up we’ll pick up right here tomorrow.

Sid:  I tell you if you’ve been listening all this week to Ella Brunt and what she had to tell about her son. Her son was… it was this kind of freak accident, they were out on a sailboat and a wind came up he got tipped out of the boat and at the time he was just 6 years old under the water for almost 10 minutes. He actually was dead, they gave him… they brought him back artificial resuscitation, but in the hospitals the doctors didn’t expect him to live. But they had a strategy they had a game plan. They decided they would only speak faith filled words, only believers would be allowed around their son, and they’d only speak the desired result rather than what they saw with their eyes. They had a pair of socks that they gave to a pastor who preached a sermon, in the Bible it talks about taking cloth that is anointed and putting it on a sick person. So you put it on your son Cody’s feet and what happened next Ella Brunt?

Ella:  We had written on there on one sock saying “My victory is complete” and the other sock said “The devil is defeated.” So the doctors and the nurses would ask us that and we would show them in the scriptures how scriptural it was and that’s what we were believing. Of course we were out of the ordinary parents from the ones that they had seen that we just would go by their report and use them as prayer targets to believe God to change. So God was changing the situation.

Sid:  Now Cody in the meantime was in a coma, he was on life support equipment, then the hospital had determined to take him off of life support, explain that.

Ella:  There had been no change in his medical status and after 10 days they have to excavate the patient because of the tubing on the vocal cords were, just literally destroys the vocal cords. So after 10 days it’s just a medical procedure that if they don’t start breathing on their own then they do a tracheotomy and put the breathing machine in that way. So it was 9½ days and the doctor came and told us that it was time that they take him off of the mouth incubation therapy. So they were making plans to do that so we were not allowed to be in there during that time. So we used that time to pray and believe God that during that time he would breath, and sure enough whenever they did excavate him he started breathing on his own and within an hour or so he actually said something. A nurse was working on him and he… because they just talk to their patients just like they can hear and since he was in a coma that was just their regular procedure. All of a sudden he said “Yes mam.” Well the doctor ran over there to see if that’s what he thought she thought she heard and Cody started moving and started responding to their vocal commands move fingers and this sort of thing.  They came and got us and we were able to speak life and God literally put a new brain and new lungs in our son. After a couple of days…

Sid:  How is he today I mean he just last month celebrated his 10^th birthday, how is Cody today?

Ella:  Well he’s doing what he loves to do and that’s play baseball. He’s an all-star baseball player and he’s top academic achiever in his class, he’s an “A” student.  So God gave us the miracle that we believed for physically and mentally. He is totally restored and you would never know that he had ever been in an accident. He loves to swim, he is not afraid of water, he dives under the water with his snorkel and he just loves life to the fullest.

Sid:  I have to ask you this question, would your son be alive today, or if alive be any better than a vegetable if you had not taken such a strong stance of agreement with God’s word?

Ella:  I don’t believe so. Our pastor says “What happens next is determined by what happens now.” As we began to immediately just speak the word of God over him from the very start that that paved a foundation for God to work on. I believe in my heart that we would not have him if we didn’t radically stand against what the devil was trying to destroy in Cody’s life and stand and believe for God for life the life of God.

Sid:  Now after he recovered he went back to your church and what was the first thing he said to the congregation?

Ella:  Our first Sunday back the pastor invited us up to the platform because the whole church had been praying and believing God all this time almost a month had gone by. He asked Cody “I think you have something to say about this don’t you?” So Cody just took the microphone in his hand and he said “God always wins.” That was just something that he said, he thought of it on his own and really that pretty much sums it up God always wins in every situation.

Sid:  Now when Cody was under the water for almost 10 minutes he had an experience with God describe what happened to him.

Ella:  He relayed later that he saw Jesus that there was this bright light and Jesus walked out of this light and talked to Cody He told him some things. He could see Him speaking to him but he looked at me and he said “Mom I don’t remember what He said.” I told that he would remember whenever it was time and everything, but God literally, you know, came and visited him.

Sid:  The person that is in an impossible situation that needs a miracle from God right now what is your advice?

Ella:  I would say believe God that God is a good God that there is a real bad devil and that he comes to steal, kill and destroy, but Jesus will come and give you life. Just trust we talk about faith and everything and faith is just trusting God to do what He said He would do, and the Bible is full of miracles and instruction for our lives today. We just need to believe God that what He even said 2000 years ago is still even true today and He still works miracles.

Sid:  I love what Cody said I want you to say that again at church, what did he say?

Ella:  God always wins.

Sid:  I think you like saying that too don’t you?

Ella:  (Laughing) I just think it’s got a ring to it. I want to make some bumper stickers on it.

Sid:  God always wins. But what about the people that believe God and die?

Ella:  Well to me they get the ultimate healing you know to be absent with the body is to be with Jesus. So they just beat us there to heaven, but there are some things that we will just not understand why until we get to heaven and that’s not for our reason to question why. But we just do our part and believe God then God sees the whole picture. Just never blame God or be mad at God, but I just want to encourage you to know that God is a loving God and He just loves us and He is good Father God.

Sid:  Thank you Ella. God always wins.