The Sound of the Supernatural Shofar

The evening of Sunday 4th December 2016 was a defining moment in the life and ministry of the Waters Edge Elim Church here in Poole, Dorset UK. The arrival of Lisa Miara from Springs of Hope Jerusalem and Mike and Jill O'Brien of Kingdom Connections USA, on the eve of the beginning of our 16th Anniversary, reaffirmed to the Glory of God His faithfulness towards us.

It had been a strange week for both Liz and myself.  I had buried my father on the Wednesday 30th November 2016 and here on the Sunday Morning service my mother was sat in front of me sharing our first communion together.

After witnessing and praying for your family for 35 years and eventually witnessing your dying father making his peace with God, three weeks, before he died and seeing your mother worshipping is God's grace personified. Within the natural grief of losing a parent was the shared joy that my father was now worshipping face to face with Yeshua the one that I have longed to serve.

The evening service was attended by 35 - 40 people. The people had come to hear Lisa Mira's testimony of her life and ministry as she worked amongst the refuges in Northern Iraq. Just before the evening service began Mike O'Brien came over to me and said "Steve, we need to hear the sound of the blast of the shofar tonight.”

However, as Keith from the worship team had left his shofar at home Mike replied, "then the Lord will provide the shofar.” When we began to worship, my wife Lizzie led the congregation to that place where we can worship Yeshua in Spirit and Truth.

It was no different to what we have always done except for the last few months an expectancy had arisen in all our hearts that something was going to happen. I had shared over many months about the coming of a sound from Heaven that would usher in His presence and would cut into our hearts His Lordship and His covenantal love.

I had been ministering for a period of 3 weeks in Russia and Siberia. I had preached my last message in Tomsk, Siberia on Saturday 8th October 2016 from Genesis 3:8 ‘And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.’

On my return to the U.K. during the first worship song we began to sing, the Sound of a Supernatural Shofar divinely interrupted the worship service. We were all awestruck and confused. Liz stopped and asked what was happening and asked Slava if this was being played through the PA? Slava was shaking and turning dials and sliding controls but he couldn't tell us where the sound was coming from.

Then the blast of the Supernatural Shofar was heard the second time and captured on a video. The sound was so loud and clear that people witnessed the sound coming through the walls, through the roof and it was heard outside in the street. Furthermore the sound of the shofar seemed to resonate through our core beings.

This same ancient sound that caused the thick walls of Jericho to implode was heard within the walls of our building. The miracle of hearing the Blast of the shofar is that God stepped out from His limitless universe where there is no space or time, where there is no beginning and no end and stepped into our limited 3 dimensional world to demonstrate His love to us through the voice of the Supernatural Shofar. 

And when this is revealed: “ A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”Oliver Wendall Homes.

God revealed himself and communicated to us in a form so we can understand, like a father to a child. God chose us to hear this sound in the process of being reduced to a humanly comprehensible level where we could hear it.

This is the wonder and uniqueness of Jesus and the incarnation that has allowed us to somehow comprehend God’s self-disclosure of himself. God speaks to us so that we can somehow grasp with our understanding and finite minds His truth which reveals something about himself and something about the way that he desires us to live.

When this video clip was finally sent to two Rabbis’ in Israel their interpretation of ‘their’ sound was prophetically astonishing especially when we consider the days that we are living in.
The first sound they heard was the gathering of God’s people to a solemn assembly of repentance. The second sound they heard was a gathering of God’s people to war. And the third sound they heard was the gathering of God’s people for the King is coming.

The events and atrocities that took place in Israel on October 7th 2023 has exposed this underlying ‘Ancient Hatred’ towards God’s chosen people in the Land of Israel. Therefore I believe that the Sound of the Supernatural Shofar, which belongs to Israel, is to strengthen the people during this time of mourning and time of War for soon and very soon Messiah will be returning to gather His people with his outstretched arms.
Shalom

Pastor Steve & Lizzie Sheppard