More on 5787. Sadly, it gets worse.

A few days ago, I wrote about the Hebrew year 5787. In response, someone sent me an email from a ministry, carrying a word for the year titled “The Year of Rest and Righteous Revival.” I won’t reprint it here, but you can read it at this link.

What is particularly concerning about this teaching is that it is just a regurgitation of what others are saying. It’s almost identical. In other words—I can’t tell you the root of this teaching—but you have people simply repeating a teaching (like the 2020 Trump prophecies), and they appear to be educated… but they’re not.

Paul told his protégé Timothy, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.” These days we need to be glued to the word of God, and not copying the teachings of others because they appear to be mystical and mysterious, or enlightening and prophetic. Teach the word!

I am not writing to attack the author, whose love for the Lord I have no reason to doubt. But this was sent to a massive audience, and I think a few things need to be said gently and clearly. Here is what stood out to me.

1. The “civil year” is not a biblical category

The article says the first of Tishri begins the “civil year” and the seventh month of the “religious” calendar. That is a common way of speaking, but Scripture never says it. The Bible never formally gives us two calendars called a ‘civil year’ and a ‘religious year.’ Those labels are later ways of describing different ways of reckoning the year. In the Bible, the head of the months is Nisan (Exodus 12:2). The civil-versus-religious distinction grew out of later Jewish tradition. It is a fair shorthand, but it should be presented as tradition, not as something the Bible teaches.

In other words, the “civil year” distinction was used to explain why the “New Year” is actually exactly six months into the year. But it is never mentioned in the Bible.

2. “Rosh Hashanah” means what it says

The phrase “Rosh Hashanah” appears once in the Bible, in Ezekiel 40:1. It simply means “the head of the year.” It is not the name of a feast, nor a title God gave the first of Tishri—the seventh month. Exactly which calendrical reckoning Ezekiel has in mind is debated. But, importantly, the Torah never names Tishri 1 “Rosh Hashanah” or calls the Feast of Trumpets “New Year’s Day.” The Mishnah does, about 1,800 years ago. The ‘civil year’ label is a later way of describing that practice, and nothing in Scripture supports it.

To be clear, Sukkot marked the end or turning of the agricultural year (Exodus 23:16), but Scripture still never identifies Tishri 1 as “Rosh Hashanah”—something that takes place three and a half weeks before the end of Sukkot.

3. About Zayin

The article makes a great deal of the letter zayin, calling it a weapon and “our strategic weaponized position.” Zayin is the seventh letter, so the focus on that comes from the last number in the year 5787. This is where a little familiarity with modern Hebrew would’ve helped.

Here is why people unfamiliar with Hebrew shouldn't write emails like this. In everyday Israeli Hebrew, the word zayin is also a vulgar slang word for the male genitalia. If you use the word, that is what Israelis hear—they do not hear weapon or sword. A plethora of ministers are using this word online, and they don’t know what it means to Hebrew speakers.

So Christians are announcing a “prophetic sword” using a word that an Israeli hears as crude language. The Lord is using this to expose the foolishness of those who would take his feast and turn it into a “prophetic gimmick.”

It gets worse!

The Hebrew letter is called zayin, but the noun zayin, meaning ‘weapon,’ is not a biblical Hebrew word. It is nowhere in the Bible. That usage belongs to later Hebrew/Aramaic tradition. It is not biblical Hebrew. I am quite sure that none of them know this. You might be asking, why? It’s not because they’re knowingly deceiving people. It’s because they’re simply repeating what they heard or read.

Zayin began to be used for ‘weapon’ in the early centuries after the New Testament was written. It is not biblical Hebrew, but is Mishnaic Hebrew, the form of Hebrew used by the rabbis in the Mishnah and related writings, roughly the first two centuries CE, after the Bible was completed.

They’re using a word as if it is biblical Hebrew, and yet in modern Hebrew, it refers in a vulgar way to the male anatomy.

4. It reads more like a horoscope than prophecy

The entire word is tied to the calendar. This year is “rest,” next year is “new beginnings,” the year after is “fruitfulness,” and it all leads to a “13-year birthing corridor” ending in 5800. That treats God as if He were bound by dates on a chart. No Bible writer or Hebrew prophet ever spoke this way regarding dates.

By that logic, what comes next year will be determined by the number 5788, and not by what is actually happening in the world: not in the United States, not in Iran, and certainly not in Israel. That is not how the God of the Bible works. He speaks into history as it unfolds. A horoscope tells you what to expect because of the month you were born. A prophet tells you what God reveals about you personally. Biblical prophecy starts with God speaking into real events, to real people, at a real moment in history.

5. There is no “decade of the mouth”

We are told we are in “the 80s decade, the decade of peh, or the mouth,” where “what we speak, decree, and proclaim shapes our reality.” Nothing in Scripture assigns a Hebrew letter to a decade. The year count itself (5787) is a later tradition, not something the Bible gives us. Whatever power we have to speak the word of the Lord is not connected to a fictitious year. It was not stronger on the first day of the Hebrew calendar in 5780 than on the last day of 5779. Seven years into it, we’ve seen no evidence of this.

Think about what it would mean if it were true. The 5680s, the 5780s, and the 5880s would each be a “decade of the mouth,” meaning every hundred years would bring the same prophetic theme again. That is numerology, and it is no different from a horoscope. I don’t say that to be harsh, but it does not hold together. This is all rooted in what is called mysticism, not the Bible.

6. The real sadness: no mention of the trumpets

What grieved me most is that the article never mentions the Feast of Trumpets. Leviticus 23:24 calls the first day of the seventh month a memorial of trumpet blasts (zikhron teruah), and Numbers 29:1 calls it Yom Teruah, “a day of blowing.” The Bible does not call it Rosh Hashanah or a new year. That name came later.

Prophetic declarations are being built on something the Bible never says. And it sells! People are eating this stuff up. They love it. Anything that is mysterious or secretive. There is a segment within the Body that wants this. They can’t get enough. They don’t want to hear that it’s wrong because it has fused with their very identity.

Meanwhile, the real meaning of the day is passed over. Whatever wider prophetic significance we see in the trumpet—including the biblical connection between trumpets, alarm, repentance, and the coming King—the starting point should be the trumpet God actually commanded. Yeshua is coming back to the Mount of Olives; He will set up His kingdom in Jerusalem, and the nations will come up to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles (Zechariah 14:4, 16). We are in that feast right now. This is the season to pray and prepare for His return, not to chart a prosperity calendar.

7. Prophecy is meant to be tested

Finally, Scripture gives us a way to weigh a word like this. Paul says, “Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:20–21). Moses gives the standard for a prophet: if what he says does not come to pass, the Lord has not spoken it (Deuteronomy 18:22). Of course, some prophecies are conditional, such as the one about Nineveh.

Try applying that here. The word promises “righteous revival,” “restoration,” “financial abundance,” and nations shifting toward “sheep-nation status.” Nothing in it can be checked. There is no event, no name, no date that would tell us whether it was true. And if there is no way for the word to fail, there is never any reason for the prophet to admit he got it wrong. That should concern us.

The author goes on to decree the seven blessings of Joel for the reader. If it were really that easy, why didn’t she decree this last week or last year? She also decrees this year that 5787 will be a turning point for the reader. But maybe they’re not ready for a turning point. Maybe that’s not where they’re at in their relationship with God. Maybe their turning point happened six months ago or will happen six months from now. God is very personal with each one of us. Please don’t turn Him into a horoscope.

The idea that apostles can make decrees is something that we don’t ever see in the book of Acts, the premier book on what the apostles did. We don’t see Paul going to Corinth and saying, “I decree that this is going to be the year of your breakthrough.” Years ago, I watched a video where several leaders at Bethel stood with a woman dressed as Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, and they decreed an end to racism in the Church. It didn’t work. There’s a wing of the Church right now whose identity is racism, speaking of several Reformed pastors like Joel Partridge and Joel Webbon.

(C. Peter Wagner popularized this idea that God was restoring apostles and prophets, and they had special authority to make decrees over regions. They use one obscure verse in the book of Job to justify this: “You will also decree a thing, and it will be established for you.” What is interesting is that the text records exactly what Job’s friend Eliphaz said, but it’s not necessarily correct. God rebukes Eliphaz later for speaking falsely. More importantly, Eliphaz is not teaching apostles how to issue authoritative decrees. He is speaking to Job—and God later rebukes him for speaking wrongly.)

8. Reading the signs of the times

There is a biblical way to discern the times, and we don’t need a calendar or a calculator. Yeshua rebuked the religious leaders of His day for missing it: “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times” (Matthew 16:3). He did not tell them to check the date or add up the numbers. He told them to look at what was happening in front of them.

When His disciples asked what would mark the end of the age, He answered the same way.

• “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars” (Matthew 24:6).

• “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places” (Matthew 24:7).

• Luke adds “pestilences” and “fearful sights and great signs from heaven” (Luke 21:11).

• “On the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves” (Luke 21:25).

Notice that every one of these is something you can see, hear, or feel. None of them depends on knowing what Hebrew year it is or what letter belongs to it. When God does give dates, it is often to give time to repent. Or He explains when the judgment will come. But the idea that we are on this fixed calendar that dispenses blessings like a vending machine dispenses treats, when they are fixed in time, is not the God of the Bible.

Sons of Issachar

The sons of Issachar are the model here. First Chronicles 12:32 says they were “men who understood the times, to know what Israel ought to do.” The verse does not say they consulted a chart or worked out a numerical pattern. It says they understood the times, and that their understanding led to action. In context, it refers to God turning from Saul’s house and installing David as king. Discernment in Scripture is never about predicting the future for its own sake. The sons of Issachar understood what God was doing with Saul and David, and therefore they knew what Israel should do. Prophecy is not impersonal; it is connected to our behavior and our destiny.

Reading the signs of the times means paying attention to what God is doing in the real world—in Israel, Iran, the United States, wherever—and asking how we should respond. Starting with the number 5787 and working backward to find a prophetic message is something altogether different. One looks at the world as it actually is, in the United States, in Iran, in Israel, and asks what the Lord is calling us to do. The other looks at a number and tells us what we must feel about the year.

None of this means we should stop praying for revival, for Israel, or for the nations. We should pray for all of them. But we should pray with our Bibles open and our eyes on what is actually happening, not on a numerology chart. 

This also doesn’t mean that we should not join with the Jewish people in celebration of the Feast of Trumpets and the Jewish New Year. That is solidarity. That is contending for their salvation through friendship. But the wacky prophetic stuff is not only deception, but it is also a turn-off to Jewish unbelievers. And, as followers of Yeshua Messiah, we want to provoke them to jealousy.