Why God Is Calling Only a Few Right Now
Why is the world not getting better?
Ask most Christians and you get one of two answers. Either the church is not trying hard enough, or Jesus is waiting for more people to decide. Both answers assume God is trying to save everyone right now.
He is not.
God gave Israel a festival calendar built on two harvests: a small one in spring, a large one in fall. The small harvest is growing now. The large one has not started.
This essay proves three things from your Bible. First, the spring festival called Pentecost pictures a small harvest, not the whole crop. Second, Yeshua (Jesus) is calling only those firstfruits today. Third, the great harvest of everyone else waits for a trumpet at His return.
God is not failing to save the world. He has not started that part yet.
Pentecost Is a Harvest Festival, Not a Birthday
Most churches remember Pentecost as the church’s birthday. The name is Greek and means fiftieth day. The Bible’s own names for the day are harvest names, and one verse gives both of Israel’s harvests: “the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors” and “the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year” (Exodus 23:16). Firstfruits means the first and smallest part of a crop, picked as proof that more is coming. The New Testament uses the same word for Christians. We are “a kind of firstfruits of His creatures” (James 1:18), and converted people have “the firstfruits of the Spirit” (Romans 8:23). If God were calling everyone alive today, that word would make no sense. First compared to whom?
The Bread Had Yeast in It
At Pentecost, Israel waved two loaves before God. He commanded one detail about them: “They shall be baked with leaven. They are the firstfruits to the LORD” (Leviticus 23:17). Leaven is yeast, the ingredient that makes bread rise. Last week — Week 34 (The Blood Did Not Deal With Pharaoh) — we saw that God uses yeast as a picture of corruption or sin. Here He leaves it in. Christ’s sacrifice cleanses His people’s guilty past. Human nature is still in them, and God accepts them while He helps them overcome it.
Then the Calendar Goes Quiet for Almost Four Months
After Pentecost, God commands no festival for nearly four months. The next one falls in “the seventh month, on the first day of the month” (Leviticus 23:24). Week 33 (God Wrote His Plan on a Calendar) showed that the order of the festivals means something. So does the gap. The crop is in the ground, growing. No one is reaping yet. Christ is calling His “little flock” (Luke 12:32), and they will be gathered when He returns. We are living in that gap now.
The Trumpet Ends the Waiting
In Israel, a trumpet was a signal. It gathered the people and moved the camp. So God opened the fall festivals with “a memorial of blowing of trumpets” (Leviticus 23:24). Paul says the first resurrection happens at that sound: “at the last trumpet… the dead will be raised incorruptible” (1 Corinthians 15:52). Christ said He will send His angels “with a great sound of a trumpet,” and they will gather His elect (Matthew 24:31) — the firstfruits. This small harvest comes in first. Then the firstfruits will help Christ bring in the much bigger harvest later.
Why This Matters for the Kingdom
Christ called the end of this age a harvest: “The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels” (Matthew 13:39). He also said the crop is huge and the workers are few (Matthew 9:37–38). God is not short of power. He is short of trained people. Paul asks, “Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?” (1 Corinthians 6:2). If God is calling you now, He is preparing you to help others later.
Conclusion
God is not losing. He is working in order: a small crop first, then a long wait, then the trumpet at Christ’s return. Your neighbor who died without ever hearing the truth was not passed over forever. His turn comes later. Atonement, Tabernacles, and the Last Great Day show what God does next. If God has called you, it is not because you matter more. He is getting you ready to help everyone else. That is the work He is doing in you.
