Leviticus 25:10 (NKJV) And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family.
I have been listening to some interesting messages from Jonathan Cahn that have sparked my interest into how the prophesies of Israel’s ancient prophets are being fulfilled in our current times. They have sparked in me a desire to see how these prophesies relate to our current time so much that I went to the local public library and checked out his book “The Oracle”. I was so amazed at how relevant these prophesies were to the events that lead up to Israel’s return to their homeland of Israel that God had promised to them as an eternal inheritance that I ordered the book for myself in which I could underline, highlight and make personal notes. I have also done a bit of follow up research to verify much of what he teaches. Jonathan Cahn is a Christian Jewish Rabbi who understands not only the original languages but also how the various passages relate to each other.
While doing this study, I became more convinced than ever that the Creator God of the universe is using the affairs’ of men to bring about His purposes on planet Earth. It amazed me how many people, nations and government leaders around the world made decisions that lead up to Israel’s reestablishment as a nation after being scattered throughout the world for almost 2,000 years. It amazed me because not only did they orchestrate what God had prophesied would happen but none of them would have had any clue that there was any prophesy that predicted their actions. It was just the current circumstances that brought about their actions. But what was more amazing was that not only were these event prophesied 3,000 years before they happened but these specific prophesies were being read in all the Jewish synagogues all across the world on the very days and sometimes the very hours they were being fulfilled.
Shortly before he died Moses warned the people of Israel that if they worshipped and served the Lord God, that they would experience His divine blessing and protection. But, if they rejected Him and started worshipping other gods that God would remove His blessings and protection. Deuteronomy 28:63-66 (NLT) 63 “Just as the Lord has found great pleasure in causing you to prosper and multiply, the Lord will find pleasure in destroying you. You will be torn from the land you are about to enter and occupy. 64 For the Lord will scatter you among all the nations from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship foreign gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods made of wood and stone! 65 There among those nations you will find no peace or place to rest. And the Lord will cause your heart to tremble, your eyesight to fail, and your soul to despair. 66 Your life will constantly hang in the balance. You will live night and day in fear, unsure if you will survive.
When God established the Nation of Israel, He gave and assigned a specific tract of land to each specific family as their forever inheritance. If for some reason, the family was forced to sell their inherited land, on every 50th year, the Year of Jubilee, it reverted back to the original family. It was more like a lease based upon the number of years until the Jubilee. Thus, every generation could experience the value of living on their own inheritance at some point in their lifespan. He put into place a system known as the Jubilee. Every 50 years since their founding they were to practice the Year of Jubilee. Unfortunately, it seems that the Nation of Israel never practiced this principle consistently.
Many years after their founding, in 607BC, the Nation of Israel became so ungodly and so idolatress that they were sacrificing their children to idols; God allowed the wicked nations of Assyria and Babylon to defeat them and take many of their citizens as captives, including Daniel the Prophet. Nineteen years later the Nation of Israel would rebel, and the Babylonians would return and destroy the City of Jerusalem and the Temple and take most of the Jews back to Babylon as slaves.
However, 50 years later God implemented a Jubilee and allowed them to come back to their inherited homeland. At the end of their captivity, there would have been no land disputes because each family would have returned to their own inherited land.
Approximately 2600 years ago during that time of the Babylonian captivity some Jewish Rabbis organized a regular established portion of readings from the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) assigned to specific days that are read or chanted publicly in every Synagogue around the world at least every three days throughout the world. They are known as the “Parasha”. To this day every Shabbat (Sabbath) Jews everywhere are reading or chanting the same scriptures. These scriptures will become relevant in this study of the modern Jubilee of the Jewish people to their homeland. Some of these prophesies were spoken and written by Moses approximately 3300 years ago and chosen as regular assigned reading for all Jews about 2500 years ago but they are relevant not just to our current times but were assigned to be read or chanted on the specific days and some times the very hour when they were being fulfilled. Does that not speak of the hand of an all knowing God verifying His hand at work in the universe He created?
However Moses warning foretold a time when the Jews would be scattered throughout the world and would fear for their lives but in their previous captivity they were only taken to Assyria, then Babylon and finally Persia where they were sent back to their homeland. But, in 70 AD, thirty seven years after Israel rejected their Messiah, Jesus Christ and condemned him to death, the Roman General Titus, who later became Caesar, conquered the Nation of Israel, almost totally destroying it and scattered the Jewish people throughout the Roman Empire. He forbad them at the penalty of death to return. He gave the country to their arch enemies, the Philistines. He renamed the country the “Land of Palestine”, Palestine is Latin for Philistine. The Jewish people have been scattered throughout the world for the past almost 2,000 years. The Palestinian conflict today is a direct result of that Roman decree from Titus.
For all those years that the Jewish people were out of their promised homeland it became a deserted wasteland that was basically uninhabitable. Homes, buildings, and cities were destroyed, most never to be rebuilt or repaired. Bedouin Arab shepherds roamed the land but never improved or farmed it. God was preserving it for His people to repossess in His own time.
1867
But during the 19th century God began moving on behalf of His people to bring them back to their promised eternally inherited land. As a verification that it was a movement of God, the Parasha scriptures that are read on specific Sabbaths are relevant as if prophesying the specific current events that were happening at the very same time in preparing the way for God to bring His people back to their homeland, their Jubilee. These events were not orchestrated to fulfill the relevant Parasha, but instead happened quite by circumstances related to decisions made by people totally unrelated to the Nation of Israel or the Jewish people.
Mark Twain, believe it or not becomes part of this Jubilee account. Well, you may ask, “What does Mark Twain have to do with the Jewish Jubilee”? Well, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) embarked on one of the 1st steamship trips across the world aboard the Quaker City in June of 1867. He went as a journalist and journaled the daily events of the trip and then published his notes. He published the record of his notes in a book titled “Innocents Abroad”. They toured through Europe during the summer and arrived in the Holy Lands in September arriving in Jerusalem on Monday the 23rd. They took a horseback excursion through the desert country of Israel for several days returning to Jerusalem on Friday the 27th. On Saturday, September 28th (Israel’s Sabbath) Twain sat down with his pad and pen to write out a report of his week’s travels. In that report he describes what he saw throughout the Land of Israel. These are excerpts from his description of the Land of Israel when he visited it:
“Which all of us will freely grant. But it truly is ‘monotonous and uninviting,’ and there is no sufficient reason for describing it as being otherwise. . . Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant tint, no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every feature is distinct, there is no perspective — distance works no enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land. . . Small shreds and patches of it must be very beautiful in the full flush of spring, however, and all the more beautiful by contrast with the far-reaching desolation that surrounds them on every side. . . Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists — over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead — about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. . . Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village; . . Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?”[i]
That very Sabbath morning as Samuel Clemens was writing his notes on the Holy Land in his hotel room in Jerusalem the Jews in in their synagogues in Jerusalem and all around the world were chanting their Parasha. The passage they were reciting was from Deuteronomy, is part of the rest of Moses prophesy about when the People of Israel are scattered throughout the world. Deuteronomy 29:22-23 (NKJV) 22 so that the coming generation of your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, would say, when they see the plagues of that land and the sicknesses which the Lord has laid on it: ‘The whole land is brimstone, salt, and burning; it is not sown, nor does it bear, nor does any grass grow there, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and His wrath.’
Moses prophesy continues to say that when these things are accomplished then the Lord would begin to gather His people back to their homeland. Deuteronomy 30:3-5 (NKJV) that the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you. If any of you are driven out to the farthest parts under heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you. Then the Lord your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers.
So, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was the stranger who came from a faraway land and wrote both newspaper reports weekly about their travels and also a book, “Innocents Abroad” that was published and sold around the world documenting the desolation of the Land of Israel. Moses’ prophesy said that when that happened the Lord God would bring His people back home. And the process began that very year. That took place on September 28, 1867.
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Charles Warren, the man with the surveyor’s line. Charles Warren, as a member of the British Royal Engineers was sent by the British government to Jerusalem to map out the City of Jerusalem. The Land of Palestine was currently controlled by the Ottoman Turks who occupied the city so much of his work had to be done so as not to be under suspicion. In his mapping in 1867 he discovered a shaft that led him to the underground ruins of the ancient parts of the Old City of Jerusalem. Much more ancient than the days of Rome. They dated back to the days of King David and King Solomon. Later he came back and mapped out the whole of the promised lands of the Nation of Israel.
What I found so interesting about Charles Warren was that he was in Palestine mapping out the city at the exact time as Mark Twain and he even stayed in the same hotel in Jerusalem at the same time even though as far as we know they never met each other or communicated. There is also prophesy relating to the people of Israel returning to their land and the land again becoming inhabited and prospering related to a man with a measuring line. In order for land to be transferred from one owner to another, it must first be surveyed, mapped, deeded to transfer to the new owner. God was preparing to transfer the ownership of the Land of Israel back to its original owner. Below are the prophesies of man with the surveying line that were fulfilled in the fall of 1867.
Zechariah 1:16-17 (NKJV) ‘Therefore thus says the Lord: “I am returning to Jerusalem with mercy; My house shall be built in it,” says the Lord of hosts, “And a surveyor’s line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem.” ‘ “Again proclaim, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: “My cities shall again spread out through prosperity; The Lord will again comfort Zion, And will again choose Jerusalem.” ‘ “
Zechariah 2:1-4 (NKJV) Then I raised my eyes and looked, and behold, a man with a measuring line in his hand. So I said, “Where are you going?” And he said to me, “To measure Jerusalem, to see what is its width and what is its length.” And there was the angel who talked with me, going out; and another angel was coming out to meet him, who said to him, “Run, speak to this young man, saying: ‘Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls, because of the multitude of men and livestock in it.
So, Charles Warren and the British Government became involved in fulfilling the Zechariah’s prophesy even though they were totally oblivious of it ramifications.
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Ottoman Land Code: The Land of Palestine was controlled for much of the last century by the Ottoman Empire. However, during the middle of the century they were at war with surrounding enemies and acquired much national war debt to their European allies. In order to raise money to pay off their debt, in 1858, they established the Ottoman Land Code that required all landowners to register deeds of their land for the purpose of taxation. However only Ottoman citizens were allowed to own land. Nine years later, 1867, they revised the code so that anyone could purchase and own the land. So in 1867 and on Jews began buying up land in their eternal inherited homeland. The very same year as the stranger walked the land acknowledging its desolation and the same year as the man with the surveying line measured out and mapped Jerusalem. The people of the Nation of Israel were beginning to experience Jubilee.
You’ll have to wait for my next post to get as Paul Harvey says, “The Rest of the Story”.
[i] Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad – Chapter 56 pg1
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