New Prophetic Considerations

The Mysterious Stranger (1)

Beginning a Series of Numerous Considerations

Of Some New Discoveries of Previously Hidden Aspects of Bible Prophecy

The last words of Moses to Israel at the end of the Exodus journey of 40 years, just prior to the nation’s crossing the Jordan and entering the land of their future inheritance, are recorded in the last chapters of Deuteronomy. Bear with us as we set the stage for, in our opinion, significant new insight which has been shed on these words by new historical research – fresh conclusions about them which we wish to present for your consideration.

Let me be clear: the research that I am invoking this day, for the most part, did not originate with my personal investigations although I have vetted its content and conclusions to my present satisfaction and have deemed them more than worthy of comment – and of readers’ consideration. Please consider them for their inherent worth. Their principles certainly do corroborate all (and do not negate any) previous conclusions as to the current course of events.

Please take them for what you feel they are worth...but consider these points critically, for we believe these amazing discoveries to be extremely relevant to the events we are now witnessing – and to be a valuable certification that we understand the implications of the astonishing series of events of history which we are observing today.

Although I do not intend to announce the specific source of the research at this early time, please allow me to remind you that we, as dedicated Bible researchers, have relied heavily upon credible “outside” scholars for many of our conclusions, not only about aspects of the prophetic literature, but also the doctrinal portions of God’s word – for corroboration of these at the least.

I am referring, of course, to such familiar names as Adam Clarke, John Wesley, Sir Isaac Newton, E.W. Bullinger, Elliott, Young, Strong, Tyndale, Coverdale, even Luther, Calvin, Henry and others.

All propositions may (and must be) readily testable by scriptural standards; if they do not agree with the Bible’s overall teachings, they are certainly to be ignored and discarded.

We believe you will be astonished by the numerous points of corroboration of the details of Bible prophecy to historical records of the end-time. As such, these events and their prophetic basis will be strengthening to your faith and broaden your understanding in many ways.

Moses’ Last Words

Among those last words written by Moses is his comprehensive prophecy are these ... that the devastation of God’s Land as observable in future days should be so great that this description should come alive:

Deuteronomy 29:22 - So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD hath laid upon it;

Deu 29:23  And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:

Deu 29:24  Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger?

Deu 29:25  Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt:

Deu 29:26  For they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given unto them:

Deu 29:27  And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book:

Deu 29:28  And the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.

 Our prior view of these dreadful descriptions beginning in verse 22 was simply that generic “strangers” should, in amazement, observe the conditions of the downtrodden Land and make such generalized comments. That is, that every outside observer who witnessed the dissolute conditions of the Land should bewail its devastation in amazement – and in sorrowful words.

But, on closer consideration, this verse can grammatically (and logically) refer to a specific Stranger (because the word in Hebrew is singular, and therefore can pointedly refer to a certain “Stranger”) who should come from a far-off land at a specific time, and with significant impact, record these dire conditions – making them widely, certifiably, and publicly known.

As such, the words would become a vital, public, highly-visual, focused account of conditions at the beginning of the Peoples’ second Return. They would be a markedly singular record of conditions at a given time – at the base-line of their Second Recovery – that return “from the nations.”

And that they would credibly announce conditions as being ripe for the end-time fulfillments which should build upon them and REVERSE them – namely, the return and restoration of the Jews to their homeland, its miraculous re-birth, their prosperity, their industry, their war-making capabilities, YHVH’s protective hand over them, and their fierce love for their Land.

If we find these added remarks relevant, they take on vastly more substantial and sobering meaning. In addition, they substantiate and further strengthen our faith – our certainty that the precise words of the prophets are being fulfilled, and that these fulfillments are our Father’s expressed Will, and that they are bringing the entire world closer and closer to the Kingdom Age.

Identity of the Stranger

Recent credible research has suggested that the Stranger of this verse was a specific person – that he was the renowned American writer Mark Twain whose widely-published and -read description of the physical territory of ancient Israel in his own day was devastating and dolorous.

In addition, he came from a “far land,” namely San Francisco, California. At the time he was working as a correspondent for a West Coast newspaper which financed Twain’s world tour, which would include not only European countries but also the land of Israel of old and its capital, Jerusalem.

His words are recorded in his most important book, The Innocents Abroad, published after his visit to Palestine in 1867 (that date is a key date, so take note of it). This book, above all the others that Twain wrote, positioned him at the forefront of American authors for all time; it established his reputation more than any other up to that time. And it recorded the utter desolation of the Holy Land in ways that it had not been widely noted on any prior occasion.

It would become a uniquely notable and credible extra-Biblical confirmation of the predictions of Moses! It is ONLY in the records of subsequent history that we may note the fulfillment of Bible prophecy. That venue is where Biblical fulfillment is described and recorded – so let us give our diligent and rapt attention to the exhaustive words.

We have quoted extensively from Twain’s work several times in previous articles in eTPL. His visit to the lands of the Levant in 1867 made a marked and indelible impression upon him as he concluded them; Palestine was the most desolate place imaginable. He had never seen another land even nearly as forlorn, wasted, and forgotten – cursed, in his words.

Note, please, that Moses’ divinely-inspired words indicate that the faithlessness of the Israelites who had inhabited the Land in an earlier time had brought these curses upon their lands and that, as a result, He had cast them (would scatter them, for the event is future to Moses’ time) into another land  (vs. 28). It is notable that the expression of Moses is written in the past tense because of the absolute certainty of its fulfillment.

When the prophet Moses wrote these words, the scattering had not yet been accomplished – neither their first dispersion to Babylon nor their second to all the nations. In his day the nation had not even entered the Land in its first habitation of it. But his description of what should come reflects the conditions that consisted after their first Return and their second Dispersal.

Whereas their first removal resulted in the influx of many foreign people and practices, it did not result in any appreciable desecration of the land itself. The second dispersal DID result in the deprivation of nearly every virtuous feature of the physical land including the disappearance of most of the Jewish population.

Notice carefully these dire sentences of the Mosaic prophecy: "And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book: And the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation...” Deuteronomy 29: 27, 28. The people had become so wicked that their personal, collective curse devolved, even after their dispersion, upon their Land as well as a reflection and a permanent record of that desolation!

Palestine in 1867 had become a forsaken backwater of the nations, barren of trees and people, rock-strewn, arid, desiccated, and unfruitful in every way so that even the cynical Mark Twain himself was moved to cry out, “Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?”

The stark accuracy and singular completeness of such dire language cannot be denied as describing the fulfillment of Moses’ prophetic words ...

But there is much more in this bleak consideration of the prophecy – many more facets of its implications, its veracity amplified and confirmed, and its various permutations are shown to be astonishing!

Our practice has not been necessarily to look for the specific records of modern-day fulfillment of such pin-pointed and inspired words ... but is that our shortcoming?

Probably so.

There is much, much more to this intriguing story with its uncanny fulfillment of explicit, landmark prophecies on specific, exact dates, reflecting the subtle, sometimes overlooked factual details recorded by the prophets of Israel. We intend in ongoing installments of this series of considerations to bring many more of these forth for your consideration.

Importance of the Year 1867

The year 1867 is important in several ways.

Not only was it the year of the significant visit to Palestine by Mark Twain which resulted in the account of record, it continued a series of fulfillments at fifty-year intervals which are unmistakably notable...and included other characters who were relevant to the specific Jubilee year.

Another important prophetical figure was also present in The Land within the same time frame, within the same month, and lodged on the same days at the hotel in Jerusalem in which Mark Twain was staying. These two men did not know each other at the time, and were each not aware of the presence of the other.

They never realized that they were playing out the scriptural roles upon which each had embarked if these conclusions are valid.

There was no collusion between them as to the fulfillment of the vital role that each was playing – all entirely insensible to the two men.

Another enigma is that one (Twain) was a Bible skeptic at the time, but the other was intensely interested in God’s word.

The Man with a Measuring Line in His Hand

The other man to whom we refer was Sir Charles Warren, an officer in the Royal Engineering Corps, who excavated and “measured” the City of Jerusalem and the Land of Israel as we know it today. We will reveal many fascinating facts about Warren as this discussion continues. His project was the first such laying of the physical measuring “line” upon the land that possibly had ever been done – certainly the first in modern times.

And that too is Biblically substantiated, in our opinion, in the startling words of the prophet Zechariah, whose second chapter begins with these pointed words:

I lifted up mine eyes again, and looked, and behold a man with a measuring line in his hand. Then said I, Whither goest thou? And he said unto me, To measure Jerusalem, to see what is the breadth thereof, and what is the length thereof. Zechariah 2: 1, 2.

 Note: it is “a” man – a specific man! And that he is about to survey the City and the Land for the Lord’s imminent work!

The entirety of the 2nd of Zechariah is devoted to making known the Father’s intention to return His People to their homeland and to be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her. (Verses 4, 5).

But what is the significance of the “measuring line?”

A measuring line is applied to a property just prior to its changing hands, preparatory to the validation of the previous “deed.” The Charles Warren “measuring line” would distinctly define the Land and its limits and other properties in preparation for this change of ownership – this approaching Second Recovery of the Jewish people.

The accomplishment should be all the more meaningful in that he adds this positively significant, permanent ending: And the LORD shall inherit Judah his portion in the holy land, and shall choose Jerusalem again.  Be silent, O all flesh, before the LORD: for he is raised up out of his holy habitation.  Zechariah 2: 11, 12.  

This activity would initiate a new direction for the Land concerning His People, notably the Tribe of Judah from the outset. That is revealed in the words of Zechariah 12: 7: The LORD also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem do not magnify themselves against Judah.

The Relevance of 1867

But what are some of the other important correlations with 1867 to be noted?

Our sensibilities should be alerted by realizing that...

·        The year 1867 is exactly 350 years (7x50 years – seven Jubilees) subsequent to the whirlwind takeover of Palestine by Ottoman Turkey (the King of the North of her day) in 1517, from the King of the South, which had maintained control over Palestine for centuries – the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate – from 1250 to 1517. These seven Jubilees ending in 1867 marked the beginning of the end of the servitude of the Land to foreign overlords. The process was now beginning in which the Land would presently be returned to its original owners according to the Law of Jubilees. It must be noted that the number seven indicates completion. Ottoman Turkey’s tenure is now solidified and being completed. It would begin to degrade toward complete reversal; Turkey would be required to give up the Land to its original owners in a fascinating and complex process ...

·        The year 1867 is exactly 50 years (a Jubilee period) prior to 1917 – which marked the significant end of the period of time (2,520 years) which the LORD Jesus designated “the Times of the Gentiles.” (Luke 21: 24)  In this action, the Land returns closer to ownership by its original owners, but is not completed until the next Jubilee anniversary. It must be noted that 1917 is the eighth Jubilee since the ascendance of the present overlord of the Land, the Ottoman Empire. The number eight indicates perfection, which would be achieved in that year – the perfection of the release from the Ottoman desolator of so many centuries.

·        The year 1867 is exactly 100 years (2X50) prior to 1967, which marked the conquest of Jerusalem by Jews for the first time in over two thousand years. During all that time, no valid Jewish authority possessed the City. It saw the precise fulfillment of the prophecy of the 2300 Days (years) of Daniel 8:14...on the precise anniversary of that extremely long-term prophecy as best we can determine! Only then could the Sanctuary be “cleansed” – and so it was, by its return to the sovereignty of the People of Israel!

·        The year 1867 is exactly 150 years (3X50) prior to 2017, when an unprecedented event took place in the first presidential year of President Donald Trump: he announced on December 6th of that year, that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and placed in motion a mechanism to have the physical embassy moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv where it had been since the state’s inception. It was the fulfillment of a solemn campaign promise by Mr. Trump as he sought the office of president – a prominent “plank” in his political platform.

That decree would come in the 71st year of Israel’s rebirth just as an earlier recognition of Jerusalem by another man of power had come from the mouth of Cyrus, King of ancient Persia, exactly 71 years after the dispersion of the People to Babylon!

These four events, having occurred on these specific anniversaries, cannot have been by chance; the divine design is here seen in all its sublime beauty and precision! Our claim is reinforced by the certified determination that all these subsequent dates were specified as proven by the fulfillment of ancillary prophecies of the same calendar date. They are certifiable by “two or more witnesses.” Matthew 18: 16.

The Precise Fifty-Year Intervals

We have noted the concurrence of these years with Jubilee periods of fifty years. What significance does this fact have?

The law of the Jubilees of Israel was established millennia in the past in these earlier words as given to Moses in Leviticus 25 – the entire chapter: but note carefully verse 10 ...

Leviticus 25:10 - And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a Jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.

That provision of YHVH had decreed that all the properties and lands which had been lost by any member of any tribe would come back into its possession at the end of every Jubilee period: it is the Law of Return.

Israel’s people were about to return to their Land ... and ownership of their Land was about to return to them! It would be the fulfillment of the prophecy of Micah 5, in which the prophet wrote: Therefore will he give them up (i.e., abandon His People) until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel. Micah 5:3.

Is that the picture of what historically occurred?

Yes...it is!

Thus, there is significant evidence that these periods of Jubilee even now continue in their application to Israel’s history in being extremely and precisely relevant to the destiny that our Father has determined for His people...and that their anniversaries mark significant moves forward in the Divine Plan of the Ages.

Are these bonafide Jubilee anniversaries? Honestly, we cannot determine that to be true from the information we have at this time; but they are notably precisely fifty years apart.

See further disclaimer below ...

We can see as cited above – dating from this significant year, 1867, numerous fifty-year periods of time (both forward and in reverse) as being extremely relevant to the progress of Jewish history toward its conclusion – the Kingdom of Christ and of YHVH to be established on the earth!

Having stated that evident fact, Israel today does not acknowledge or celebrate the Jubilees for various reasons – one being that most rabbinical authorities believe it should not be observed unless all twelve tribes are dwelling in their rightfully designated cantons in the Land, which has not happened since the Assyrian captivity c. 700BC.

W. H. Carter in his work, Times and Seasons, opines that 1897 (First Zionist Congress) and 1947 (UNO Partition of Palestine) were Jubilee years. That would point forward to 1997 being the last one that has occurred (that time was beyond the authorship of his excellent work and beyond his demise, so he did not live to see it), but that date as far as we can determine, did not bring forth any palpable movement forward in the plan of God for his People.

He believed he had established these particular years by counting forward by fifty year intervals from the beginning date, which, if I remember correctly, he believed to be the year that Israel entered the Land under Joshua as was stipulated in Leviticus 25: 1, 2: And the LORD spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying, 2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD.

That would be the initiation of the Shemitah years; seven of these seven-year periods would end in a Jubilee year (the 50th year). I am not sure that that particular year of their entry into the Land can be established with certainty.

In all the above discussion we are not claiming that Israelis should (or even could) observe the Jubilees on the specific anniversaries within the discussion, but are simply observing that these notable occurrences are fifty years apart – which, of course, is the term of one Jubilee. This subject deserves and will receive (God willing) more investigation from this source as we continue to investigate these fascinating and notable events. We urge interested readers’ participation!

 <HEL>   September 28, 2019. To be continued, Lord willing.  

More on the Stranger, and The Man with the Measuring Line (2)

Recall, please, that Mark Twain was lodging in a hotel in the City of Jerusalem on the last night of his visit to the Holy Land. On the morrow, he would travel down to Joppa and board his cruise boat for the return trip home. That date was recorded by him as being the Sabbath: Saturday-Sunday, September 28-29, 1867.

Now, you are probably aware that in the Jewish culture each day, many centuries ago, each Shabbat has had assigned to it a particular Torah portion that is to be read by the Jews around the world on that day. The references tend to be scriptural accounts that are related to the events of the days on which each is read according to the Hebrew calendar. For example, on special days such as Purim, they are verses relevant to the story of Esther and Mordecai.

These readings are termed the Parashas. They are the “weekly readings” of Hebrew congregations and households throughout the world; they are uniformly read in all the synagogues of the world each day.

September 28th of that year, therefore, had its own special scriptural passage that was designated to be read on that day, and that reading encompassed Deuteronomy 29: 22 - So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD hath laid upon it...

Think about this: Mark Twain would stroll through the hushed streets of the Holy City on this Sabbath evening and would audit the chanting of the very words of scripture which described him and his mission personally, but of course, he would not understand them, nor be aware of their precision of meaning for him on that special day!

And at the same moment, he was in near proximity to the Man with the Measuring Line, Charles Warren, who even at that moment was heavily involved in his own divinely appointed task of uncovering, measuring the City, and illustrating it – and, later, the greater Land! – in his process of ordering and executing the Land survey.

Our realization of this divine precision of fulfillment coming now to light reinforces our faith in our Father’s omnipotence and omniscience for every one of us His servants – whether we are Believers, or not so.

As to that concept, just ponder these necessary facts – all seeming to be events of chance:

·        Mark Twain had to become a journalist (one of many in a long series of his careers) in order to place him in position to be available for this bounden set of divine circumstances.

·        Mark Twain’s newspaper publisher had to make a costly and critical decision to send his star reporter on an expense-paid excursion of reportage to Europe and the Middle East.

·        Mark Twain had to book his passage on this particular ship and at this time for his great adventure.

·        Someone prior to that tour had to set up the itinerary of the boat so that it would be in port at Joppa over that time period.

·        Twain had to arrange his excursion of the Holy Land itself to terminate in Jerusalem on that particular day – on September 28-29th, that pivotal Sabbath evening.

·        Twain had to have been so impressed by the poverty and unloveliness of the Land that he was compelled to write about it in a book.

·        That book had to become so popular as to establish Twain as an authority figure whose descriptions were unassailable and his writing so compelling as to gain the attention of much of the world of his day.

On those multiple bases alone, we feel, he became the embodiment of The Stranger who would come from a far land and describe the utter desolation of God’s Land, setting the stage for its recovery, the recovery of its fortunes and People, and the revival of its favor before the Lord of all the earth.

Samuel Clemens

So now consider these astounding facts...

This Stranger had been part of God’s plan all along.

Mark Twain was not his real name. He was born Samuel F. Clemens. Samuel is an Hebrew name and means “God has heard.” Just who or what has God heard? He had heard the unceasing cry of God’s People through many ages, which is a prayer known as Al Hamichya – which is a blessing given for certain foods. A translation of it goes like this:

“Have mercy, Lord, our God...on Jerusalem, Your city; and on Zion, the resting place of Your glory.... Rebuild Jerusalem, the city of holiness, speedily in our days. Bring us up into it and gladden us in its rebuilding and let us eat from its fruits and be satisfied with its goodness, and bless You upon it in holiness and purity.”

The mysterious Stranger was an invisible sign to them that their expectations were about to be fulfilled...their heartfelt desire granted...their salvation emerging swiftly and steadily over the coming years – inevitably and unerringly bringing about the fulfillment of their sincere prayer for His blessing.

 God was hearing them; Samuel’s presence assured that to be true although that reality, too, at the time, was invisible to them. They would only see their God’s progress in a positive direction as the tiresome 19th and 20th centuries wore on and on, ending eventually in 1933 to 45, with the Time of Jacob’s Trouble, out of which only a small remnant would be saved and would make the dangerous journey back to their homeland in a time fraught with great darkness and trouble – ending finally with their own independent polity upon the mountains of Israel and the fulfillment of their Hamichyas of the ages.

Samuel’s last name was Clemens. That name means merciful. God had heard their fervent prayer and was about to be merciful to them once more! The “time to favour Zion” was swiftly approaching; but they did not yet know that fact... Psalm 102: 13.

Charles Warren the Cartographer, the Archaeologist

Charles Warren, the British army officer (initially, a second lieutenant), was working under the diligent watchfulness of the suspicious Ottoman officials who controlled the Land. He often continued his archaeology into the night when no one was watching. He measured and mapped; he dug and classified and correlated his findings; he diligently followed his divine appointment, re-kindling interest in Biblical archaeology...reestablishing that science in the academic community of his day.

The intrepid Charles Warren discovered the actual location of the City of David – determining it to lie south of Temple Mount and outside the present city walls.

He also discovered and documented Hezekiah’s tunnel which drains the waters of the Spring Gihon nearly 600 meters through solid rock down into the Pool of Siloam, well inside the protection of the City of David.

He unearthed the extensive structures beneath the Temple Mount and meticulously recorded their dimensions by hand.

He found the secret tunnel leading from inside the walled Jebusite city of Jerusalem down to the waters of the Spring Gihon (Warren’s Shaft), which back-flowed under Temple Mount and could be accessed by the women of the city for their daily supply of water.

Above all else, he countered the modern Arab claim that the Jews had nothing whatever to do with the Land of “Palestine,” and refuted thoroughly the “Palestinians’” claim to be “the indigenous people” of the Land – even prior to many of them making that incoherent claim.

He illustrated and described meticulously any and everything that he encountered in this strange land and among this strange people. He became the father of modern archaeology.

He was indeed The Man with the Measuring Line in Hand!

The Ottoman Land Laws

Within the coming fifty years most of the initial stipulations of The Return would take place.

Up until this moment in time private citizens could not purchase land in Palestine for private use.

However, note this startling provision which came about enabling just that possibility...

The Stranger’s journey (voyage) began on June 8, 1867. It would lead directly to his intimate role in the movement of Bible prophecy forward.

But on June 10th, 1867, only two days after Twain’s embarkation, another highly important development took place ... in this fashion:

It is most remarkable and unlikely that the impetus for freer land transfer was brought about by a much earlier incident which occurred within six miles of Jerusalem.

It began strangely enough with the theft of a metal star from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The Orthodox clergy blamed the Roman Clergy and vice versa, and the respective, hostile sides formed. As further complications arose, the result was the Crimean War in which Turkey became financially strapped and entered into loans with European creditors.

This created a critical need for an increase in land revenues, so the sultan of Turkey enacted, in 1858, the Ottoman Land Code, which required that all Turkish lands be registered (and taxed). Because land records were nearly non-existent (Warren’s work would correct this deficiency!) and due to the illiteracy of most of the dwellers upon the land, the records were in great disarray.

So the increase in revenues was insufficient to meet Turkey’s needs. This need led, in June of 1867, to a further relaxation of Turkish land control in Palestine. The result was the following development as described in a quotation whose source is divulged at the end of the passage...

“In June 1867 [June 10th] a law allowing the purchase of land in the Ottoman Empire (except in the Hijaz, i.e., the eastern Arabian peninsula) by foreign citizens was enacted, subject to bilateral agreements signed later between the Ottoman state and foreign states. This law led to intensified activity by foreign institutions (such as Christian religious orders and members of the German Templer Society, Tempelgesellschaft), as well as by private citizens in Palestine, who were able to purchase land legally for the first time...”

This is a direct quote from the paper, “Land Privatization in Nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine,” by Nadav Solomonovich and Ruth Kark, both of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. Their paper containing this report (within the larger report) is from the Islamic Law and Society 22 (2015).

Notice carefully the date of the critical change in the land laws which allowed foreigners to purchase Palestinian lands – the beginning of the acquisition of land by small Jewish groups who dedicated their purchased plots to the establishment and operation of kibbutzim! It was the critical factor needed for the eventual Restoration of the People to their land!

General Sir Edmund Allenby, First Viscount of Megiddo and Felixstowe

The Ottomans would not relinquish the land without a fight. So the British nation was appointed by the Almighty to deliver the People from their oppressors and effect the stipulations of the Jubilee – all described fully in Leviticus 25. All – nearly all – the possessions and lands and sovereignty of Israel’s former halcyon years would move abruptly toward full return in the next Jubilee year – 1917.

Charles Warren laid the sure foundations for that return by accurately surveying and plotting, placing a measuring line upon the Land, uncovering it, defining its borders, exposing its ancient structures, and proving its Jewish heritage to all the world.

But the British would have to fight for the land’s freedom. And it would not be permitted to retain the conquered lands for its own use. Britain would not become another King of the South in a long line of such in past history. The Balfour Declaration attested to Britain’s intention to acquire the land so that the Jewish people could have their own nation. They were not acquiring the land for their own imperial interests.

That somewhat vicarious acquisition came in 1917 – the next year of Jubilee.

General Sir Edmund Allenby, Viscount Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe in the County of Suffolk became the delivering agent for Britain. He strategically defeated the Ottoman armies by feinting a move northward along the Jordan River valley. When the Turks had moved eastward to thwart his advance along the Jordan valley, he brilliantly struck northward along the Sharon – the coastal plain of Beeersheva, Gaza, and Joppa.

Jerusalem officially fell on December 9th as people in the city met two British army cooks who, before dawn, had left their barracks in search of fresh eggs for their troops and met a motley group of Jerusalemites holding aloft a bed sheet tied to a broom handle – their surrender signal – and begging the Brits to accept the surrender of the City! Two British sergeants appeared and took affairs into their own hands, accepting the tenure of the surrender of Jerusalem.

It was as if the Old City herself were begging for refuge from friendlier forces!

Two days later, General Allenby rode his horse to the Damascus gate, dismounted his steed and strode into Jerusalem through that beautiful Gate at the Tower of David and accepted the City’s surrender for the Empire...all without firing a single shot in anger!

After that time a long series of years of British Mandatory rule began over the mountains of Israel. In 1922 at the San Remo Conference, a decision was made to take 78% of the eastern portion of the Mandate and award it to “King” Abdullah of Mecca as mollification for his earlier loss of that city to the Saudis.

In 1947 the British government decided to give up the mandate because of the widespread rebellion of the Jews who wanted the provisions of the Balfour Declaration to be implemented. At a meeting of the United Nations Organization the land was partitioned between a proposed Jewish and an Arab state.

The Jews reluctantly accepted the offer, but the Arabs did not.

At the moment of the British departure, David Ben Gurion stood before the Jewish Agency for Palestine (the provisional government of the new state) in Tel Aviv’s Art Museum, now known as Independence Hall, and proclaimed that the State of Israel had come into existence.

Immediately the armies of all the nations round about attacked the new state in unison: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt sent waves of troops and armor over the frontiers “to drive the Jews into the sea.”

Miraculously that did not happen. The battle wore on through the fall, winter and spring – and into the following summer. At the signing of the truce in August of the following year, Israel had gained far more territory than it had been awarded by the UN Partition Plan.

The Return had almost been accomplished except for one venue: the Israeli army, the Haganah, was unable to maintain its fragile hold on Old Jerusalem, and near the end had to give up the battle for the city. Old Jerusalem – the city within the walls, and all of eastern Jerusalem and its environs – remained held by Jordan’s Arab Legion – the only significant victory achieved by the attacking Arab forces.

During the next nearly two decades all the city’s synagogues were destroyed; all the Jewish men who remained were taken as prisoners of war, their women and children allowed to move to the western portion of the city where they could join family members. The Western Wall became encroached upon by squalid Arab hovels, its plaza filled with refuse and waste. No Jew was allowed to remain, or even enter Jordan’s portion of the city.

It was only nineteen years later – at the next Jubilee anniversary – that the Old City was conquered by Israel during the Six-Day War. On June 7th, 1967, Israeli paratroopers entered the precincts of the Temple Mount through the Lions’ Gate (aka St. Stephens’ Gate) in the northeast sector of the platform, and the crackling message went out over the Israeli Army’s radio network, that “The Temple Mount is ours!!”

We have already noted that the 7th of June, 1967, was the twenty-three hundredth anniversary of the Prophecy of the 2300 Days (meaning years) of Daniel 8: 14.  <> October 5, 2019. To be continued, Lord willing...

 General Sir Edmund Allenby (3),  

The Ottomans would not relinquish the land without a fight. So the British nation, arguably the most powerful nation on earth at the time was appointed by the Almighty to deliver the People from their oppressors and by default to allow, to effect, the stipulations of the Jubilee – all described fully in Leviticus 25. All – nearly all – the possessions and lands and sovereignty of Israel’s former halcyon years would move abruptly toward full return in the next Jubilee year – 1917.

We have noted how significant Twain’s books and writings stating the desolation of the Land had been in arresting the attention of the world.

It was up to Warren to promote it in a different way.

We noted that, while Mark Twain was a Bible skeptic at the time, Charles Warren was not. He was a Bible-believing man whose research in the Holy Land had kindled a spirit of renewal for the Land in his heart. After he returned to England, Warren wrote a book called The Land of Promise.

In it he projected the possibility of the Land’s recovery by the addition of millions of trees – trees which would restore the climatic cycle, would stabilize the soil of the Land, and would help retain its moisture, would provide relief from the heat, and could be productive of fruits for nutrition. He proposed that these measures could effectuate a complete renewal of the Land and make it productive – that the desert could indeed blossom as the rose under the diligence of a returning Jewish population!

Charles Warren laid the sure foundations for that return by accurately surveying and plotting, placing a measuring line upon the Land, uncovering it, defining its borders, exposing its ancient structures, and proving its Jewish-ness to all the world.

But the British would have to fight for the land’s freedom. And it would not be permitted to retain the conquered lands for its own use. Britain would not become another King of the South (Daniel 11) in a long line of such in past history. The Balfour Declaration attested to Britain’s intention to acquire the land so that the Jewish people could have their own nation. They were not acquiring the land for their own imperial interests.

That somewhat vicarious acquisition came in 1917 – the next year of Jubilee.

We have always marveled that the Ottoman occupation of God’s Land lasted exactly 400 years – from 1517 until 1917 – a period of exactly eight Jubilee cycles. The Ottomans, final possessors of the Land, had conquered it in 1517 – the same year that Martin Luther had initiated his revolt against the Catholic Church with the issuance of his Ninety Five Theses – a date recognized by observers as the official beginning of the Reformation ... another “beginning” of the end-time.

In our studied opinion, that liberating move by Luther ended the “binding of Satan” of Revelation 20, and loosed the unclean spirits of revolt, rebellion, anarchy, lawlessness, evil and treachery that we observe about us this day!

So 1517 was also a pivotal year, beginning, as it did, the incessant march toward the end of the period of oppression of the land – and then of its relinquishment by those possessors in the Jubilee years of 1917 AND of 1967, when Jerusalem was finally restored to Jewish ownership and control ...

It is doubly impressive in that, as already stated, it also became fulfilled at the end of a thousand-year period of time since around 500AD, the events of the “loosing of Satan” detailed in Revelation 20. Those considerations, although tangentially relevant to this discussion, will be deferred at this time, being a separate train of events and circumstances.

The period of time from 1517 (the Ottoman acquisition) until the appearance of The Man with the Measuring Line (Warren) and the Stranger (Twain) was exactly seven Jubilees.

Seven is a period of completion. The hegemony of the Land by the Turk was being completed and a certain trend toward a new era was beginning abruptly – a series of events leading to the perfection of EIGHT Jubilees (eight is the number of perfection) which occurred in 1917. The land would be “perfectly” (i.e., fully) delivered from the Ottoman Turk as the end of a long series of hostile overlords.

At its end, the restoration of the People to their Land should begin.

At that time the tenure over God’s land by hostile forces would come to its end in this manner...

General Sir Edmund Allenby, Viscount Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe in the County of Suffolk became the delivering agent for Britain. He strategically defeated the Ottoman armies by a feinting move northward from The Negev along the Jordan River. When the Turks had moved their two armies eastward to thwart his advance along the Jordan valley, he brilliantly struck northward along the Sharon – the coastal plain of Beer Sheva and Joppa, bypassing and defeating the defending Turks.

Jerusalem fell on December 9th as people of the city met two British army cooks who, before dawn, had left their barracks in search of fresh eggs for their troops and had met a motley group of Jerusalemites holding aloft a bedsheet tied to a broom handle – their surrender signal – and begging the Brits to accept the surrender of the City! Two British sergeants appeared and took affairs into their own hands, accepting their surrender of Jerusalem. It was as if the Old City herself were begging for refuge by friendlier forces!

And it was the initial, palpable move toward the Land’s complete liberation and its deliverance into the control and governance of God’s People. As its departure from God and His ways, so should be its return ... in stages.

Two days later, General Allenby rode his horse to the Damascus gate, dismounted his steed and strode into Jerusalem through that beautiful Gate at the Tower of David and accepted the City’s surrender for the Empire ... all without firing a single shot in anger!

We have noted that the Land itself moved closer to its final destiny in this Jubilee period. The entire land would pass under the control of the Jews during the next fifty years, but incrementally so. It would be a period which would see the establishment of a Jewish state on nearly all the territory that the Almighty intended for the time – in 1948. Only Jerusalem and some eastern areas would remain un-controlled for 19 more years – a period that brings history precisely to the next Jubilee anniversary - 1967.

At that time, the Sanctuary would be “cleansed,” in a significant fulfillment of a colossal, prolonged prophecy of The Return from All Nations. All its territory should pass under the control of Israelis...

The events of the eighth Jubilee period of 1917 had come to pass, and had visibly advanced the impetus of the Return – the second Recovery of the Hebrew People to their ancient and future homeland.

The Next Fifty Years

After that time a long series of years of British Mandatory rule began over the mountains of Israel. In 1922 at the San Remo Conference, a decision was made to take 78% of the eastern portion of the Mandate and award it to “King” Abdullah of Mecca as mollification for his earlier loss of that city to the Saudis.

In 1947 the British government decided to give up the mandate because of the widespread rebellion of the Jews who wanted the provisions of the Balfour Declaration to be implemented. At a meeting of the United Nations Organization in 1947, a poll of member nations was taken and it was voted that the land be partitioned between proposed Jewish and Arab states.

The Jews reluctantly accepted the offer, but the Arabs did not.

At the moment of the British departure, David Ben Gurion stood before the Jewish Agency for Palestine (the provisional government of the new state) in Tel Aviv’s Museum, now known as Independence Hall, and proclaimed to all that the State of Israel had come into existence. US President Harry S Truman responded to the announcement within eleven minutes, officially recognizing the Jewish state. It was followed hours later by Russia!

Immediately the armies of all the nations round about attacked the new state in unison: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt sent waves of troops and armor over the frontiers “to drive the Jews into the sea.”

Miraculously that did not happen. The fierce battles wore on through the summer, fall, winter and spring – and into the following summer (1949). At the signing of the truce in August of that year, Israel had gained far more territory than it had been awarded by the UN Partition Plan.

The Return had almost been completed except for one important venue: the Israeli army, the Haganah, was unable to maintain its fragile hold on Old Jerusalem and near the end had to give up the battle for the city. Old Jerusalem – the city within the walls – and all of eastern Jerusalem and its environs – were retained by Jordan’s Arab Legion, the only significant victory achieved by the attacking Arab forces.

During the next nearly two decades of Jordanian control (19 years), all the city’s synagogues were destroyed; all the Jewish men who remained were taken as prisoners of war, their women and children allowed to move to the western portion of the city where they could join family members. The Western Wall became encroached upon by squalid Arab hovels, its plaza filled with refuse and waste. No Jew was allowed to remain in Jordan’s portion of the city. The City’s desolation, therefore, continued for a short time.

It was only nineteen years later – at the next Jubilee anniversary – that the Old City was conquered by Israel during the Six-Day War. On June 7th, 1967, Israeli paratroopers entered the precincts of the Temple Mount through the Lions Gate (aka St. Stephen’s Gate) in the northeast sector of the platform, and the crackling message went out over the Israeli Army radio net, that “The Temple Mount is ours!!”

We have already noted that the 7th of June, 1967, was also the twenty-three hundredth anniversary of the Prophecy of the 2300 Days (meaning years) of Daniel 8: 14. It was another wonderful prophecy that had been given to Daniel in which the prescience and the precision of the foreknowledge of YHVH was made known to His People – to be realized only at its fulfillment, exactly 2300 days (years) after its initial event in 334BC with the assault of the Ram (Greece) upon the He-Goat (Persia) at the River Granicus in Asia Minor by Alexander the Great!  

<>October 11, 2019. To be continued, God willing...

Events of the Seventh Jubilee Period (4)

We have noted that Charles Warren was fully aware of the prophecies of Israel’s rebirth. His detailed plan for its revival came twenty years before a similar proposal would come from a Jewish author with much the same convictions – Theodor Herzl.

In 1870 another pivotal event would occur which would move the Plan forward. It was the establishment of an agricultural school in Palestine, Mikveh Yishrael. Its charter was to teach Jewish people how to farm the Land. It was the first visible sign of the more organized Return in the target territory that we know about.

All these developments illustrate how history seemed blindly to be moving forward steadily and accurately toward The Return, driven by an unseen guiding hand. The same decade (1870) witnessed the first trickle of the Great Aliyah which was the result of Russian persecution (pogroms) causing many Jewish families to seek refuge among similar expatriates in Palestine. A small movement was gaining impetus!

Soon, unlikely as it was, the lives of Theodor Herzl and Mark Twain reached conjunction. They actually met and became friends – in Paris, in 1894 – the date of the birth of Zionism according to Herzl’s dream. Twain did not necessarily agree with the entire plan of Herzl, but that did not deter their friendship.

Herzl played a huge role in the ancient prophecies. He, too, wrote a notable book proposing that the Jews of the world must have their own state: Der Judenstadt (The Jewish State). It proposed a political future for the Jews and paralleled the concepts of Warren in many ways. The ensuing events would further this mysterious chain of events...and will eventually astound the world!

Just before the next Jubilee, the Great War broke out – World War I.

Before it ended, a gezerah – a decree – would bear heavily on the events of 1917. And that will be the result of an entirely separate and mysterious chain of events which seemed “just to have happened!” But they are examples that world events continued to trend directly toward a specific event (the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire) and related events (the Balfour Declaration).

These events came to be in the following rough sequence...

The Archduke of the Austria-Hungarian Empire was assassinated at Sarajevo by a Serb.

Serbia was backed and defended by Russia.

Germany backed Austria-Hungary and soon invaded Belgium.

Belgium appealed to Britain for assistance against the Germans and Britain complied: WW I.

Ottomans had signed a secret pact with Germany.

A German admiral commanded the Ottoman navy and attacked Russian Black Sea ports in a surprise move.

On November 2nd, 1914, Russia declared war on the Ottomans.

On November 5th, so did Britain and France.

Now Britain had become an enemy of the Ottoman Empire which was then in possession of God’s Land of “Palestine.”

All these complex events had to develop in order to bring about God’s intended result – freedom of the Land from the Ottomans, opening it to His People, the Jews. Not only that; the British would become custodians of the Land of Promise for a time.

Chaim Weizmann

Now a subplot lends meaning to all the above...

In 1874 a Jewish Russian family birthed its third of fifteen children. The child’s passion was science. He traveled to Germany to study chemistry. But he had a deeper, more serious interest – and it was that the Jewish people would return to their ancient homeland. While a student he attended the Second World Zionist Congress led by Theodor Herzl in person, the father of Zionism. He was in his element. The young man was Chaim Weizmann.

Time moves forward. In 1904 Weizmann arrives in Great Britain to teach chemistry at the University of Manchester. He moves up in importance in his profession. One day, by seeming chance, he meets the eminent Lord Arthur Balfour, the parliamentary representative of his district in Manchester. Balfour was a man of deep Christian faith who would feed Weizmann’s growing desire for the return of the Jews to their Land.

When the war had its onset, Britain found itself unable to procure acetone, a vital chemical of war-making, because it was under German patents and production. The result was that Weizmann devised an economical chemical method of producing acetone in great quantities, saving Britain in its hour of need. Events are seemingly blindly leading to a notable and desirable end...

Sir Arthur Balfour and the Declaration

In December 1916, British Prime Minister Lord H. H. Asquith collapsed and died.

He was succeeded by David Lloyd George, who appointed Sir Arthur Balfour as Foreign Secretary (equivalent to Secretary of State in the US). This event linked the two proponents of Jewish return in high places – places of power and authority – at just the right time!  It is significant, we believe, that Asquith had been averse to a Jewish homeland, whereas both these men were in favor of it. And the British Empire was being placed in a position of destiny in relation to moving forward the Jews and their future.

As 1917 began, British leaders conferred on the status of Palestine, knowing that the war would soon be over and that the Central Powers would be defeated, leaving Britain in the premier position among the nations of the world. It would be up to them to decide the future of “Palestine” and other lands of the Levant.

At mid-year, Lord Balfour issued a public declaration regarding the Land.

But the plan he proposed needed the support of the American President, Woodrow Wilson. In October 1917, the Brits were informed of Wilson’s approval of Balfour’s plan, and on November 2, 1917, there went forth a single-page letter from Lord Balfour’s office stating that Great Britain viewed with favour the establishment of a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine.

The Balfour Declaration, as it was known, would send the Land back to its original owners, probably oblivious to the fact that was the function of every Jubilee year. But this was a special Jubilee due to the divine decree (Jesus’ words in Luke 21: 24, attesting to the prophecy) that this year would be the end of the “Times of the Gentiles” of Daniel’s prophecy and as supported by other scriptures.

As we have noted earlier, Allenby captured Jerusalem and freed God’s Land on December 9, 1917, and the Land began its tortuous backward journey toward reversion to its original owners, the Jews. The oppressors of the Land for 400 years were driven back into Anatolia where the Ottoman Empire came to its end: and “... none shall help him.” Daniel 11: 45.

It (the Balfour Declaration) was the first time any major world power had supported the Return of the Jewish People in 2,500 years!

None of the more recent overlords would permit Jews freely to return – and certainly not as a national entity. Rome put down a massive Jewish revolt, and afterward would not even allow Jews to set foot in the land. Greece did not encourage mass immigration and maintained tight control over the population.

 But the next earliest hegemon had not only allowed the Jews’ return (from Babylonian captivity) but even mandated it! Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, in the 71st year of the Jews’ captivity, allowed every Jew to return who desired to do so – and even paid for their passage and the rebuilding of their City. That had occurred 2,451 years prior to 1917.

Now, Great Britain had sanctioned the Jews’ return from all the nations – their second and final return to their ancient homeland!

So 1917 was the year of the gezerah – the Decree of Return – parallel to Cyrus’ decree of 535BC. In the Balfour Declaration, Great Britain had sanctioned the (legal) return of the People to their Land; but additionally, by physically ejecting the Ottomans, it had assured it on a political basis as well. The Jewish colonization of Palestine would have the approval of the majority of the nations of the world when the vote came to be counted by the UN Security Council in December 1947, when it authorized the Partition of Palestine.

The eighth Jubilee of the semi-final outworking of the Plan of God came about just 50 years after the visible seeds of the Return were planted! In the previous Jubilee period, the land would be measured and prepared for the Return – for the nearing change of ownership required by this Jubilee.

In the eighth Jubilee, the Land was transferred back to its original owners in principle. The ensuing fifty years would see even more remarkable developments in moving forward the Yishuv to full fruit as Israel was reestablished and then Jerusalem recovered from the Arab Legion of Jordan.

If the world had not noticed the remarkable events of the seventh Jubilee, it took great note of the events of the eighth.

The religious world was shaken to its roots. The Catholic Church would repudiate Israel in full and fail to recognize Jerusalem as Israeli land as the State came into being. Even the Ultra-Orthodox Jews would declare the Jewish State un-Biblical, claiming that only Messiah can establish Israel as a nation.

 Those of the Arab “religion” were livid with anger – and began their deadly resistance to the Jews.

 But the latter-day “People of the Book” – the avid, dedicated students of Bible prophecy were overjoyed at the event, recognizing on the very day of its accomplishment, that it was a significant step forward toward the Second Advent and the Kingdom Age – for it was an event that would bring about the return of the Jewish People to their Land after 2500 years of exile ... and would do so as a bona fide nation within the confines of their ancient homeland!

So certain Bible-believing folk, ourselves being perhaps the chiefest were immensely encouraged by the events of 1917 and were positively elated by the events that followed in 1948 – and especially in 1967, the ninth Jubilee in this series! They strongly believed that they were seeing the detailed end-time prophecies being fulfilled, especially with, immediately subsequent to 1917, the “budding” of the Fig Tree (Israel: 1948) and of “all the trees” of the other new nations round about Israel – all of them Arabic ... and strongly opposed to Israel.

That reality was reinforced when scholars came to realize that June 7, 1967, was the precise end of the Prophecy of the 2300 Days (years) of Daniel 8 – that now, the Sanctuary (the Temple Mount) had been “cleansed” in a very meaningful way by passing under the control of the Jewish state.

We are perceiving a pattern here: each Jubilee brings progressive fulfillment...and sets in motion a new cycle of accomplishments leading further toward the original status of the Jewish nation (stand-alone sovereignty over their own affairs, but also the final status of the impending nation: the nascent Kingdom of Christ established under His personal leadership and authority, and the beginning expansion of that kingdom into the nations of the earth...

At this time one remembers a significant moment in the history of Abraham, Genesis 12 et seq. There the first glimmerings of the Return of the end-time were forecasted by YHVH. God, in the finality, would give this Land to Abraham and to his offspring – his children of many generations – and would also bring to pass the great inheritance that would soon be revealed: a “return” of Abraham’s spiritual “seed” embodied in one of his future progeny – Jesus Christ of Nazareth – for, as the apostle writes, God spoke of seed not as of many, but as of one – of his Seed, which was Christ (including those who are His).

But there is still more...

On the Sabbath before the week that would reverse Jewish fortunes, the extensive perasha that had been selected from centuries ago was seen to have special significance for June 7th. The portion of Torah scheduled to be read on that day established the ancestral right of the Jews to this Land which Abram was viewing. It centers upon the key passage, Genesis 12!

 Whether the religious world or the secular world agrees, the Lord God had irreversibly awarded possession of the Land to Abraham’s descendants. These Jubilees advance that event ever closer, all the while making it move perceptibly as observed by those with eyes to see and ears to hear...

The final result is clearly evident for those same devotees: Genesis 15: 16, “they shall return here.”

Here are reproduced a mere smattering of the scriptural passages having to do with this Return...

Gn 12:1  Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee:

       Gen 12:2  And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:

        Gen 12:7  And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land:

        Gen 13:15  For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.

 Gen 13:16  And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.

 Gen 13:17  Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.

        Gen 15:7  And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.

 Gen 18:18  Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?

        Gen 17:8  And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

        Gen 15:16  But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.        <HEL>  To be continued, God willing.

Allenby and the Well (5)

Abraham dug a well in Beersheva. Beer means well; sheva means oath. But sheva also means seven.

Beersheva is the capital of the Negev, and the well is the first Hebrew possession recorded as having been taken by others and then restored to its owner. It is the prototype of “The Return.”

The followers of Abimelech, king of Philistia, captured the well from Abraham’s people. After some negotiations, the well was amicably returned to Abraham’s use and a covenant was cut between the two leaders and sealed by Abraham giving Abimelech seven ewe lambs in token of the covenant; thus, there is a play on the word sheva – that it indicates both the seven lambs and the fact that they sealed the oath between the two men’s dispute over the beer – the well!

On a recent visit to Israel the writer’s tour group visited what is believed to be that very well. It has a diameter of about eight feet, is surrounded now by a stone wall about twenty inches high, and appears to be quite deep. This was one of several wells that Abraham excavated in this region and the only one known to have been recovered by him, and to which he received the official title (legal, recognized ownership).

Remember that General Allenby had taken command of the British forces in Egypt in 1917. The previous commander, General Archibald Murray had failed to advance against the Turks at Gaza on two occasions – indeed had been decisively repelled.

General Allenby spent the early summer training his troops and planning his assault upon the Turks to the north. He would concentrate not on Gaza, but on Beersheva. Against all odds, the British were successful in taking the city on October 31, 1917.

In alignment with the Plan for Recovery, it is significant that Beersheva was the first victory by the liberating forces – those acting on behalf of the Lord’s People. Think of this: Gaza had never been “lost” by the Hebrews as it had never been their possession. But Beersheva HAD been lost – indeed, was their first loss of property which was later recovered. Thus Beersheva became a “type” of the Return, and was the first property in the latter days to be recovered!

Beersheva was the first legal title given by a ruler of  another people to the people of Abraham concerning their right to the Land – a representative portion of it. The restoration of the Jubilees requires that the property be restored to them by the ones occupying it – the Ottoman Turk. That victory would lead quickly to the recovery of Jerusalem – then of northern Israel on the Jews’ behalf. Jerusalem passed into the Jews’ hands with but 22 days left in the year – on December 9, 1917!

The Birds

In 1917 something appeared over the Land and the city of Jerusalem which would separate that war from all previous conflicts.

Allenby, after assessing his military assets determined that he needed to revitalize his aerial corps. New and better planes were needed, and more of them. He needed to establish aerial superiority over the few Turkish aircraft in the theater. The skies previously had been dominated by the Turkish planes piloted mostly by German pilots.

When his new planes arrived Allenby quickly gained control of the skies. His integration of aerial offensive parallel to ground operations became the new model for warfare. His fighter planes prevented Turkish bombing raids – and reconnaissance.

This rendered the Ottomans and their German components blind to Allenby’s moves, and vulnerable. The city of Jerusalem was preserved from any harm from Turkish bombing raids in line with the desires of the British battle doctrine for that stage of the conflict. They did not wish any harm to come to holy Jerusalem, but to preserve its integrity.

British fighter planes also prevented any Ottoman counterattack upon the city, further ‘preserving’ it!

Remember the parashas? There are other works containing prescribed Bible reading on specific days of the year. In the Anglican Church’s Book of Common Prayer, a sixteenth century compilation, the reading for December 8th – the first full day of fighting around the city – the appointed reading in the BCP contained the words of scriptures which had foreseen this special benefit. Isaiah had spoken of this specific feature of the war – the innovative aerial warfare – in Isaiah 31: 4. 5: “...so shall the LORD of hosts come down to fight for mount Zion, and for the hill thereof. 5 As birds flying, so will the LORD of hosts defend Jerusalem; defending also he will deliver it; and passing over he will preserve it.”

On that very day, the British troops present there would find the scriptures describing what was happening before their eyes that day!

In addition, on December 9th, the following day, the BCP designated another reading which was literally being fulfilled. It was Isaiah 33; 20: “Look upon Zion (i.e., Jerusalem), the city of our solemnities: thine eyes shall see Jerusalem (becoming) a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken.” It spoke unmistakably of Jerusalem in distress, under siege, and that her enemies would be defeated and would flee the Land!

In addition...

On December 10th, there was a day of rejoicing and comfort for Jerusalem – because peace had been attained for its citizens. The BCP readings for that day included Isaiah 40: 1, 2: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. 2 Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD'S hand double for all her sins.”

In our view, this proclamation is another confirmation that the Cup of the LORD’s Fury was removed from them on that occasion ... and that they should never drink of it again in their Land. Isaiah 51: 22, q.v.

The “chance” happening of these designated readings on these particular days is very unlikely, especially in that they occurred on three successive days on which the events were being consummated!

The Number of the End

Students of the prophets will recall that in Daniel 12 the prophet was shown a river attended by certain angels on either side, as well as one above the waters (presumably at mid-point), and was given certain numbers associated with that river.

We believe the river, from bank to bank, represented a period of time – namely 2,520 years, the “Times of the Gentiles” which would be fulfilled in 1917 with the return of the land to a power that was friendly to the Jewish interests, Great Britain – the end of aggressive Gentile domination of the Land of Promise.

The reference of the angel to 1260 days represents the time from the mid-point of the length of time to its end: 1,260 years. From 657AD (the date of the Moslem desecration – their erection of the Dome of the Rock) to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and its removal from the Land. The second figure of 1,290 years would coincide with the Partition of Jerusalem in 1947 as well as the establishment of Israel as a nation in 1948 (both in the same Hebrew year).

The 1,335 years then mentioned is suggested to refer back to the date of the year on the Muslim calendar ending the 1,260 “day” period, which was 1917 – the eighth Jubilee year from the Ottoman takeover of Palestine.

Throughout the Muslim world, every minted coin that year bore a date – but it was not 1917, for that is a non-Muslim designation. The Muslim year was 1,335 – the 1,335th year of the ascendance of Islam!

But there is more...

Recall that the British Empire needed the approval of the American President Woodrow Wilson before proceeding with the Balfour Declaration? Britain was notified of that approval on October 16, 1917. It just happened that that exact day was the very day that ended the Islamic year 1335!

And there is still more...

The first return to Jerusalem from Babylon did not happen all at once; it occurred in waves. Just at the Babylonian captivity had taken place in three stages, so did the peoples’ return occur in three separate waves. It was therefore in stages. Much resistance was encountered and many obstacles were thrown up in their pathway. God sent them the prophet Haggai, whose name means “celebration.”

But in Haggai’s day there was no marked celebration; that had to wait for the end-time fulfillment as the recovery should gain headway. The prophet’s words would speak to the Jews of modern times in a special way which no one could have reasonably forecasted.

According to the ancient pattern, waves of Jews in these end-times started to return in the first wave of immigration of the 19th century, but they were still not a nation at the end of the First World War.

Immigration increased in these decades, too. Yet they could not yet lay claim to their Land or to Jerusalem.

But Haggai had given the people the date when the blessing would come...

Haggai 2: 10, 15, 18-19 gives the summary:

On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month ... the word of the Lord came by Haggai, “Now, carefully consider from this day forward .... Consider now from this day forward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month ... from this day I will bless you.”

The particular day is specifically named four times in Haggai two; everything was to be centered upon that specific day in a given year. But the prophecy speaks of events never fulfilled in Haggai’s day. They obviously refer to the end-time fulfillment of the blessings of the prophecy for between those anniversaries there had been no opportunity for their fulfillment!

Haggai 2:22 gives specific details:  “And I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen; and I will overthrow the chariots, and those that ride in them; and the horses and their riders shall come down...”

In the year of the Jubilee – in 1917 – that event occurred on December 9th – the day Jerusalem was liberated WAS THE TWENTY FOURTH DAY OF THE NINTH MONTH – the same morning when the two British army cooks ventured forth into the darkness of Jerusalem to purchase eggs for their breakfast service to the British troops and were met by the hodgepodge group of Jerusalemites bearing the white bed sheet tied to a broom handle, literally begging the British to accept their documents of the formal surrender of the city on that specific day!

In the third century BC, the Revelator had proclaimed the precise day of Jerusalem’s final deliverance from the Ottoman desolator, the overbearing rulership of the Porte of Constantinople, and the beginning of its process of return to the Jewish People!

The Jews had been awaiting this date for over 2,000 years...and now it was suddenly upon them. The Ottomans had been ejected from the Jews’ capital city, and within weeks would exit their entire Land as well. They had fled the city on the night of December 8th - 9th – and it was the precise date specified by Haggai: the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month!

And, incredibly, there is still more...

On one occasion between the two Temple destructions the Jews rebelled against their overlords and regained possession of their City – not as a nation, but as a partisan force. The rebellion was against the Seleucids who had overrun the Land and were mounting persecutions against the Jews’ faith. By a miracle, the people drove out the invaders, regained Jerusalem, and rededicated the Temple.

From that victory came the festival of Hanukah – the Festival of Lights – when the Jewish people mark the rededication of the Temple and the restoration of Jerusalem and their Land by lighting the lights of the menorah (the seven-branched oil lamps).

Now, consider these facts: Jerusalem in 1917 was liberated on December 9, 1917. But December 9th of the Jewish calendar is made up of parts of two days of the Gentile calendar – so on the evening of the day that Jerusalem was liberated, all over the world Jewish people lit the lights of Hanukah to celebrate the rededication of the Temple and the end of the foreign occupation of Jerusalem.

The night that sealed Jerusalem’s liberation, December 9 in 1917 happened to be the start of the ancient holiday that celebrates Jerusalem’s liberation in ancient time. The Torah portion appointed to be read on that day is extremely significant – and likewise celebrates the liberation of Jerusalem in modern time. That scripture reading is “And the LORD shall inherit Judah his portion in the holy land, and shall choose Jerusalem again.” Zechariah 2: 12. <> End Part 5. To be continued, God willing...

 Herzl’s Countdown (6)

Because of the complexity and convolution of these new findings, there may be several instances of redundancy, when information is repeated more than once. Repetition is never to be avoided in any expositional writing unless it becomes excessive, because repetition improves every reader’s memory – his retention of facts.

After the First Zionist Congress of 1897, Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary these words: “At Basel, I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years, certainly in fifty, everyone will know it.” Fifty years – the next Jubilee ... a “chance” prophecy by Herzl concerning, as it turned out, the exact time of the United Nations Partition vote on a Jewish State (1947) but ALSO the actual year of the establishment of that State on May 14, 1948 – a date that also falls within the same Jewish year!

The First Zionist Congress ended on August 31, 1897. But note this incredible, “chance” occurrence: the completed plan for the establishment of the impending Jewish state was physically received at the UNO offices in New York, exactly fifty years later, on the same date – August 31, 1947!

The proposal was officially received and recorded at the UNO on September 3, 1947. Is this a significant date?

Yes ... it is. It had been exactly fifty years before this date that Herzl had penned that prophetic note in his diary. It was entered in his notes for the page dated September 3, 1897!

Can these events have been mere happenstance? We hardly think so...

The UNO Votes on the Partition Plan

Because of the announced intention of the British government to abandon its Palestine Mandate early the next year, the proposal to partition the land did not have long to wait (could not wait long) until it came to a vote. A decision had to be made quickly. On November 29, 1947, at Lake Success, the Security Council met to conduct the vote.

ON THAT DATE the Torah portion included Genesis 32: 9: “And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the LORD which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee:” Although not recorded here as such, the term “thy country” can be written “moledet eretz” – ‘native country’ as noted in Jeremiah 22: 10 – which is certainly its closer meaning. Moledet indicated “native (land).”

The Torah portion of that day also included this passage: “To your descendants, I will assign this Land!” (Genesis 35: 12)

It was as if YHVH was instructing the UNO, on that specific day, to approve the return of His People!

And finally, on this same date, the Torah portion foretold the actual name of the nation which was about to be approved by the world body: “You shall be called ‘Israel’” (Genesis 32: 28). It is the first occurrence of that name in all scripture and marks the re-naming of Jacob (supplanter; “heel-catcher”) to Israel (“he shall rule as God”).

In these three Torah portions, the world body ON THAT CRUCIAL DATE was being given its instructions as to three salient necessities:

(1) The Jews must return to their native land;

(2) The Land had been assigned to them by YHVH, and

(3) The literal name of the Land was specified to be “Israel.”

It is a matter of historical record that at the very hour of Israel’s announcement of its formation as a nation, the leadership in Tel Aviv had not yet decided on a name for the new country. Among the suggested names had been Jacob, and Zion. When the announcement was read from the podium by David Ben Gurion, he uttered his own election of its name: the scripturally-prescribed name, “Israel!”

How could the historical outcome have been other than UNO approval for the Partition Plan?

It was approved 33 to 13 along with ten abstentions. The Partition Plan passed by a narrow margin, which was assured when, in the alphabetically descending roll call, Uruguay voted “yea” to the resolution. It was the first vote to place the Plan into positive, undefeatable territory! It brought a cry of relief and joy to the hundreds of thousands of Jews then living in the Land, huddled around their radios in the wee hours of their morning, listening to the deliberations of the UNO in New York.

But there was another group of avidly interested individuals who listened carefully to that broadcast. These were the devoted Gentile Believers in God’s Plan – Christ’s present-day disciples, scattered across the globe. In the writer’s own local community perhaps forty families of these were so doing – awaiting confirmation of their understanding of the prophecies of the Return, which would lead imminently to the Second Advent of the LORD from heaven.

And we did also rejoice: There would finally be a Jewish state!

The Relevance of the Scrolls

The restoration of the certified Word would also have an integral part to play in the Return.

Before the world was, the The word existed – the Father’s intentions were set. It was this spoken Word that brought the creation into existence.

In the same manner, God spoke to Abraham of a nation springing from him that should become as numerous as the stars of heaven. First the Word, then the reality.

At Sinai, God spoke to Moses about the establishment of the people in their own Land. Forty years later they were led to enter it under Joshua and begin to free it from its occupiers. First the word, then the reality.

In Babylon, Jeremiah was informed that the captivity should last seventy years ... and then there would be Restoration. It happened just as YHVH had foretold.

In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd near the Dead Sea idly threw a stone into a small cave and heard the breakage of pottery. Upon investigation, he discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls – again the Word of God.

At first, these scrolls were not deemed valuable. They were acquired by an Arab merchant in Bethlehem. Word of them soon reached the ears of a Hebrew scholar, Eliezer Sukenik of the Hebrew University, who went to Bethlehem to examine them. The merchant allowed Sukenik to take them to his home so he could study them in private.

He quickly discovered that the scrolls were written in the ancient Hebrew language – again, the Word – and had miraculously lain in storage in that cave for 2,000 years, preserved in its dry air for discovery at just the right time in history. Dr. Sukenik determined that these were the earliest record of the Word by well over a thousand years. It was the greatest discovery of the modern age of archaeology.

Among the most well-preserved scrolls was that of Isaiah; it was almost complete – and readily decipherable. Isaiah’s modern content was found to have been unchanged from its original text – and it was he who spoke most forcefully of The Restoration! Perhaps most notably, “And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth” (Isaiah 11: 12).

In the year of the Partition Plan, and the UN resolution that would resurrect the Jewish nation, the accuracy of His Word was proven! The Word had become a prominent feature of Jewish history again. The Word preceded the nation.

As Dr. Sukenik examined the scrolls with amazed excitement he had neglected other events that were current. As he began to examine the scrolls of the Dead Sea, his young son, Mati, came rushing into the study to tell his father of news he was hearing on the radio – that the Partition Plan was being approved by the UNO.

The date was November 29, 1947 when these two momentous events colluded!

And there is more: in the same Hebrew year, prior to the next Rosh Hashanah, the State of Israel had come into actual existence. The Word had dictated both the legal “permission” of the nations but also had confirmed the reality of the nation itself!

 “Prophesy Over These Bones”

The intensely scriptural nature of the proceeding of the Jewish Agency in Tel Aviv are underlined by the notation written at the bottom left of the page of the Proclamation of Statehood as read by Ben Gurion. They were the words, “Prophesy over these bones,” and they come from Ezekiel 37. They refer pointedly to the resurrection of the dry bones of that great vision, and reflect a conscious realization of that assembly as to the “resurrection” of the Jews from the nations of their dispersal.

Resurrection is not a natural process; it goes against the natural order of things; it may occur ONLY governed by the intervention of YHVH and His Son.

Usually, nations are formed by some kind of national movement in a new place and grow into maturity in that place. They have no previous history. Such is the process of “birth.”

In Israel’s case, not “birth,” but the word “resurrection” comes into play in every way. Although Isaiah asked, “Can a nation be born at once?” in Isaiah 66: 8, he was really speaking of the increase of the nation which was resurrected – of its children being added to it without delay – if we analyze the passage critically. Daniel 12 gives intimate details of the resurrection of the people and their nation...

Israel was not “born” in the usual sense on that day – it was resurrected.

The vision of the valley of dry bones makes that condition entirely clear. The desiccated and scattered bones of its previous existence would begin to come together bone to his bone and immediately, muscles, sinews and skin would be added to them, reversing the process of death and dissolution.

The reassembled bodies would stand upon their feet as “an exceeding great army” only when the ruach (breath) was breathed into the reassembled bodies (vs. 10). It was as if a film clip were being played backward!

From that juncture, events would occur in reverse order leading the People and their nation back to their original status of one nation under God upon the mountains of Israel – to the original point from which they had departed into iniquity and deprivation, defeat and scattering to all the nations of the world. Events would restore to the People My Servant David – a perfect descendant of that great unifying king of Israel, the LORD Jesus Christ.

Your analytical mind will doubtless continue mulling the process – backward – to the beginning of time in the Garden of Eden ... before the Fall, and before death and sin entered into the world.

This is the real end-point of the resurrection ... complete and utter Restoration.

Their regathering from all those nations would necessarily be the first step in the Restoration. Numerous elements of reversal of the process would then ensue as the nation, starting with a modicum of its rightful territory, quickly expanded its hegemony to wider areas.

The Mechanics of the Resurrection

The first region that was separated from the people by the Romans was in the north – in Galilee. From that point, the Roman army of 67 AD marched southward and consummately destroyed Jerusalem. Three years later it overran Masada to complete the subjection.

Where was the first “settlement” of Jews established at the beginning of the restoration? The first of the modern Jewish settlements was established in 1878 – as Rosh Pinna northeast of the Sea of Galilee. It came under the patronage of Baron Edmond James de Rothschild because it could not survive on its own merits at first.

At about the same time, Petah Tikva was also founded near the Gaza Strip in the south of Palestine – an event which confirmed the destiny of reclamation of the entire Land in these end-times.

Later, in 1910, the first permanent settlement and the first socialist Zionist farming commune in the Land of Israel, Degania was founded – later named Degania Alef (Degania One) when two other kibbutzim of the same name were established nearby, Degania Bet and Degania Gimel. These lie on the south shore of the Sea of Galilee near the baptismal site at Yardenit.

This early reclamation of the Galilee was following the orderly path – the backward path, the reverse path – of the resurrection.

There are many other startling elements of the reverse process ... consider these:

In the world, nations give rise to national anthems. But in Israel the anthem appeared when the nation was but a dream. Hatikva was composed in 1877 by Naftali Herz Imber, a Jewish poet from Zolochiv, Ukraine, which was part of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria under Austrian rule. It is one of the most lyrically beautiful hymns ever to be composed. The anthem forecasted the resurrection of the nation in a real sense!

In Israel, the names of its cities came first – they were already in existence – and the nation built upon them in most cases, resurrecting them, rehabilitating them, for modern habitation.

In nations, languages develop over long periods of time. Israel’s language (Hebrew) had existed for millennia but had become largely disused – never updated or modernized. Its revival was brought about by Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who dedicated his life to its revival and refinement to modern standards before the founding of the state!

In the world, languages give birth to dictionaries. But in this case, Ben Yehuda spent years of his life creating a massive Hebrew dictionary and creating thousands of new words relating it to the modern world before the day of independence. The language thus reversed its course of development to the level of utility that existed when the people were dispersed.

Even the land itself was resurrected. Whereas forests did not exist (recall the dire description of Mark Twain) so they were among the first feature to be restored. Forests provide many useful benefits including land conservation and enrichment; soil stabilization; climate control; the production of fruits; shade for the relief of persons and animals; and beauty. Israel is said to be the only country on earth to end the 20th century with more trees than at its beginning – indeed, millions and millions of trees as compared to almost none in 1900.

Vineyards, olive groves and orchards arose where they had existed in far distant time.

Israeli farmers and vineyard keepers appeared in great number – many of them doctors, lawyers and accountants who had no previous experience at these occupations. But they revived the ancient character of the Land in this parameter.

All Israel’s soldiers had been decimated in their last encounter with the Romans. In modern time, they reappeared in sparse numbers but grew with advancing Aliyah and training – and in determination to assure the continuance of their polity.

Even the nation itself arose from death and became viable in this immensely complex process of its resurrection. Its people returned in their millions by every conveyance known to man – the sick and decrepit, the fragile infant and elder, the poverty-stricken and the well-to-do, the religious and the secular, the scholars and the unschooled together – to reconstitute the resurrected national entity that became modern Israel.  <> End of part six – Hezl’s Countdown. To be continued, God willing...

 The Second Return Parallel to the First (7)

There would be only two exiles in Jewish history and two returns.

The first exile would be to Babylon (BC604 et seq); the second to all the nations of the world (AD70).

Both returns would depend critically upon the sanction and support of a powerful world ruler.  In the fifth century BC, his name was Cyrus of Persia. Readers probably know the history well...

In modern time, that ruler would be Harry S Truman (HST), the president of the United States.

How were these two connected?

In many ways.

Cyrus the Persian had championed the return of the Jews at the end of the 70th year of their exile. President Truman supported the establishment of the State exactly seventy years from the establishment of the first settlement of the Great Aliyah – in 1878.

Cyrus had been prophesied by name about 200 years before his birth (Isaiah 44: 8 to 45: 3). It may also be significant that this positive identification was made in Isaiah’s scroll – a feature that surely should have been noted by Dr. Sukenik on subsequent readings. His biography is unmistakable here.

But how is Cyrus further connected with HST?

Harry Truman was a “commoner” who lived in Independence, Missouri. His eyesight was marginal but he memorized the eye chart and was able to enlist in the army during World War I. He became an artillery officer. After failing in business (haberdashery) in Kansas City in later years he connected with the powerful boss of the Kansas City political machine, Tom Pendergast.

After serving as a relatively minor functionary within the Pendergast Machine, Truman wanted to become a County (tax) Collector. But Pendergast had already promised that position to another person and suggested that Truman rather consider a US senate seat.

He became one of the two senators from Missouri in 1934. It was a spectacular turnaround from a previous business failure; Truman began to make his mark in Washington DC.

His fortuitous rise to supreme power began when, in 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked him to be his running mate as vice president. He took office in 1945 just before the president’s death – at which time he became the president of the United States – one of the most powerful men of his time – in a quirk of history which now seems unlikely to have been a progression of “chance.”

He became president in that turbulent period which ended WWII and the comprehensive rebuilding of Europe (recall the Marshall Plan) and the heightened, feverish movement of the Zionists to form their own independent nation. His rise to power was just what conditions called for. President Roosevelt would not likely have favored the establishment of Israel whereas Truman, a lifelong Bible student, was inclined to favor the Jewish people and their need for a safe haven.

Truman, in our opinion, was raised to the height of world power for one primary reason: to facilitate the return of the Jews to their Land as a political reality – as the State of Israel.

Just as Cyrus’ support was vital for the returning Jews of his day, so was Truman’s support for Israel of modern times. Although his own State Department did not favor his decision to support Israel, Truman heartily gave his support, officially recognizing the The state of Israel in a telegraphed wire to Ben Gurion, a reported eleven minutes after the state was proclaimed by David Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv. During those eleven minutes, he was awaiting the official name for the new State before sending his message of approval and support!

There are many other close similarities between Cyrus and Truman:

His first governmental service began in 1923; it ended with his second term as president in 1953. The period of his ascendancy was exactly thirty years – the same as those of Cyrus.

When Cyrus became the ruler of the most powerful empire the world had yet experienced, he was sixty years of age. Truman’s ascendancy to the same level of power came when America became the premier superpower of the earth in the spring of 1945; he became the vice president of the United States – at precisely sixty years of age!

The restoration of Israel under Cyrus came in the aftermath of great political strife – warfare; so, in Truman’s case, did Israel’s restoration come as a result of great international turmoil and strife. It was a time in which the nations of the world offered at least some transient sympathy for the plight of the Jewish people and their long centuries of oppression ... and officially approved their ascendancy to statehood!

Cyrus had written a primary statement of his convictions on a clay cylinder: it declared the inherent right of those who had been exiled and displaced from their lands to return home. It was the first “Charter of Universal Human Rights.”

Likewise, Harry S Truman famously penned a similar document, his “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

In all history only two men are associated with such a far-reaching document, and they both are intimately associated with the return of Israel from their captivity!

Harry Truman rose to the height of power in the early summer of 1945. The plight of the Jews of Europe being held by Britain in camps highly similar to the concentration camps of wartime Europe reached his attention. He wrote Prime Minister Clement Atlee on August 31, 1945, bringing this to his official attention.

That letter forced Britain to release huge numbers of Jews to go to Palestine. That event greatly increased the ability of the Jews of Palestine to resist the British Mandatory Authority and its tight control over the Land; it hastened Britain’s relinquishment of the Palestine Mandate with which they had been charged.

Although they knew it not, the Zionists were working toward a tight deadline of accomplishment: their own independent state on May 14, 1948. The result was the “Brexit” from Palestine of its day and ultimately the establishment of the Jewish state on that precise date!!

On Saturday, August 31, 1945, the same date as Truman’s letter to Clement Atlee, the Torah portion included this passage:

Deuteronomy  30:3 - That then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee. 4 If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the LORD thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee: 5 And the LORD thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers.

But there is more ...

While HST struggled to support the Jewish nation he would often observe two plaques on prominent display in the Oval Office. Yes, one of them was “The Buck Stops Here,” it is true.

But there was another one which the principled Truman had long observed. It stated the adage,  “Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest!”

These words were written by a fellow Missourian many years prior to Truman – the Stranger from Hannibal, Mark Twain! Years after his demise, the Stranger whose writings laid out in detail the dire need for improvement in the Land by the People’s return would also lead to the fulfillment of the prophecy!

So we wonder ... Did Harry S Truman ever realize the importance of his role in the Jews’ resurrection?

Yes, he did.

In the spring of 1949, Israel’s chief rabbi, Isaac Herzog, visited Mr. Truman in Washington. He related to HST that when he was in his mother’s womb the Lord had called him to enable the restoration of the Jews after two thousand years of exile.

He also told the president that the leader of another great nation had been given a similar mission – Cyrus the Persian. The rabbi read the scripture which was apropos: Ezra 1:2 - Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

The president then asked the rabbi if he believed that the Almighty was involved in his actions toward the Jewish people – and the rabbi answered, Yes!

The president was overcome with emotion. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Years later, Mr. Truman remembered that encounter as he spoke to a gathering in New York City: He said soberly, “I am Cyrus!”

And there is still another eerie parallel involving the principles of the Second Return ...

At the time of the second dispersal – the Diaspora – as events grew more critical in AD67-70 the Jews formed a provisional government to combat the Roman onslaught. One of the most prominent leaders became a hero and a martyr in that conflict – and his name was Ben-Gurion.

In the formative years leading to 1948, one of the main leaders was David Grün from Poland. In his younger years, a man in a dark suit with a heavy black beard visited his home city of Plonsk. That man was Theodor Herzl. David Grün determined then and there that he would stand upon the shores of his people’s beloved homeland – and did so in 1906.

Accepting a job as a journalist in Jerusalem he decided to adopt the Hebrew pen name David Ben-Gurion in honor of the ancient hero ... and largely replicated the earlier man’s life by becoming the leader in Israel’s regathering and statehood movement. The ancient Ben-Gurion’s first name was Joseph. David’s middle name was also Joseph – David Joseph Ben-Gurion!

The ancient Joseph Ben-Gurion proclaimed the Jews as a sovereign nation to Rome.

The modern one proclaimed the modern Jewish state to the world.

The ancient polity perished; but the modern one reversed the People’s fortunes in every way and successfully brought their nation into being!

One of the major prophets of the return was Amos (“burden-bearer”). The main load borne by Amos was his prediction of the “raising up” of the Tabernacle of David – a symbol for the Jewish state. It is recorded in Amos 9: 11-15: In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old:

That tabernacle was raised up on May 14, 1948 – the deadline which was bearing down upon the militant Jews of the Holy Land as they fought against the British overlords for independence! You may peruse the remainder of that prophecy and apply its words to the remarkable course which it laid out and which is being followed to this day.

It has been rebuilt and its vineyards have been replanted. Its government has been restored along with the pertinent arrangements for all state-mandated services: its laws, its borders, its military, its institutions. Other advances lie ahead, such as their possession of Edom and all their Land of Promise.

David Joseph Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State on the Sabbath eve. The day of the Sabbath was marked by a Torah portion assigned centuries ago to be read on that day: “On that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down!”Amos 9:11. That is surely the signature of YHVH Himself!

On that day the armies of five hostile Arab nations poured over the borders invading the nascent country ... but Amos had given a word about that uncertainty, too: Amos 9:15  And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God.

The date was 5 Iyar – and on that date the ancient reassurances God had given Amos were being chanted around the world ... words speaking of the precise event which they witnessed that day!

But the actual year of appointed fulfillment is also specifically given in a deeper set of facts.

The Hebrew words “you shall return” are translated from one Hebrew word: tashuvu, which is Tav (400) – Shin (300) – Beit (2) – Vav (6) which totals 708. In the Hebrew calendar, 660 is equivalent to 1900AD on the Christian calendar. But the TSVB total is 708 – or 48 years AFTER 1900 – which is 1948! Embedded in the words of the prophecy since the time of Amos had been the accurate designation of the year in which Israel would be resurrected!

Are these well-reasoned facts significant? We believe they are extremely relevant, and their discovery adds immensely to our understanding and reinforces our faith that in every way, our Father has had His detailed Plan in effect and honing in on specific dates and events throughout the ages ... and all of them are coming to pass precisely on schedule to the glory of His name! <HEL>  End Part 7. To be continued, God willing ...

 The Next Jubilee: Return of Jerusalem (8)

The Jubilee of 1917 would bring great advancement to the Jews – including their establishment as a nation in 1948. But it did not include the city of Jerusalem. Much of the land west of the Jordan River remained in the hands of Jordan until the Jubilee’s end, and the People were cut off from the essential core of their inheritance ...

A Song as Prophecy

On May 15, 1967, a young Israeli woman, Shuli Natan, approached the stage of the Israeli Music Festival. She would introduce to the public a plaintive song that had been written by Naomi Shemer echoing the beautiful words of Psalm 137 (q.v.).

The ancient Babylonian captives were requested by their captors to “sing us one of the songs of Zion.”

Their ambivalence and regret was reflected in the words, How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land? Psa 137:4. In despair, they had hung their harps on the weeping willows of Babylon.

The new song was “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav,” or “Jerusalem of Gold.” It too would be one of the songs of Zion. It recalled that the ancient cisterns had dried up ... that the market square was deserted ... that no one of Israel’s children was able to enter the ancient city ... and how that no one now ascended to the most holy place in the Jewish faith.

It expressed the longing of the Jews for access to their holy places and to Zion. It contained the exact words of the ancient song of Psalm 137 – “Eem eshkabhech Yerushalayim,” (“If I forget you, O Jerusalem”) – the exact words spoken by the forlorn Jewish exiles by the rivers of Babylon!

And it would be wonderfully prophetic of an event about to occur in Zion – an event long-awaited and anticipated by the People – and the terminal day of an ancient prophecy which would be 2300 years in length!

In less than thirty days after it was first sung, the exile that had begun in ancient time would come to its end – and their longing fulfilled!

On the very day that the song was first sung, the ominous events which would bring its hopeful wish to pass were happening. Enemy troops were moving across the outlying deserts, approaching the borders of Israel with evil intent – with malice for God’s People.

Just prior to Israel’s anniversary on May 14th, an official of the Soviet Union sent word to Gamal Abdul Nasser, president of Egypt, that Israel was intending to launch an invasion – a false report. This “warning” had facilitated the troop movements of Egypt toward a stance of war. In an ironic twist, the country that had vilified the Bible and repudiated God was actively causing Bible prophecy to be fulfilled!

Israel’s war planners met in emergency session and decided to strike preemptively on June 5th – and in the early morning hours of that day destroyed nearly every aircraft in the Egyptian Air Force on the ground in Egyptian airfields. On June 7th the paratroopers of the IDF entered the precincts of the Temple Mount through the Lions Gate and the City of Jerusalem passed within the jurisdiction of Israel for the first time in 2500 years!

Daniel had been given the great prophecy of The 2300 Days that he recorded in Daniel 8:14 et seq. A detailed study of that prophecy shows it would end in early June of 1967 – a destiny that was fulfilled to perfection on June 7th1967!

We ask interested readers to consult this URL for an in-depth study of that prophecy in eTPL August 2017...  August: The 2300 Evening-Mornings of Daniel 8

The event was the undoing of the Roman destruction of 70AD – the second such – when the people were expelled from the City and it was destroyed. Now they were returning – reversing the process. 

The Lions of Liberation

Recall that Isaiah had written in 31: 5 that the City would be protected as birds flying. The verse prior to that one mentions a “lion and a young lion” as another species through which the Lord should “fight for Mount Zion and for the hill thereof.”

The conflict of 1967 was the completing episode of that overall liberation – and “lions” are involved in many ways. Israel’s capital itself is referred to as Ariel in Isaiah 29, defined as “lion of God,” or lion-like men. Is this principle prominent in the liberation of Jerusalem?

Yes!

Without going into great detail, here are several facts of great significance in our opinion...

The Harel Brigade of the IDF captured Mt. Scopus and led the way into the Temple Platform. It was commanded by Colonel Ben Ari. “Ari” means “lion.”

The operations officer of the army’s Central Command directed the battle for Jerusalem. His name was Arik Regev. “Arik” means “lion.”

The officer who put in place the plan for the paratroopers to take Temple Mount was Arik Achmon ... yes, “the lion” again! The Lions of God are at their appointed tasks...

The commander of the 55th Paratroopers Brigade – and who led them through the LIONS Gate onto the Temple Platform was Motta Gur. “Gur” is from a different Hebrew root and means, again “lion cub, or young lion.” These two men accompanied each other during the attack – Arik Achmon and Motta Gur – the lion and the young lion!

The next day David Ben-Gurion walked through the streets of the Holy City. And wouldn’t you know ... Gurion means “lion cub.”

And just to reinforce your memory – these entered the Holy City through St. Stephen’s Gate in the northeast wall – otherwise known as “The Lions Gate.”

No person on earth could have put all those elements and players together in the hot pitched battle that raged that fateful day for the City of God!

And even the rabbi who sounded the Shofar as the soldiers entered the Temple Platform figured in the great mystery surrounding this occasion with a significant name ... Rabbi Shlomo Goren. He sounded the Shofar both atop Temple Mount and later at the Western Wall. And the significance of his name is this...

Recall that David purchased Mt. Moriah (Temple Mount) from its owner who was operating a threshing floor at the site; it later became the home ground of the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple.

When Rabbi Goren reached that place on Temple Mount he sounded the Shofar.

“Goren” in Hebrew means “threshing floor.”

So Rabbi “Threshing Floor” sounded the Shofar when the troops reached the threshing floor!

He sounded it in the proper location in this markedly appropriate Jubilee year. And having been born in 1917, he was also fifty years old in that year!

In the year of Jubilee the land had returned to its original owner in an accomplishment of all the remaining early elements of the kingdom’s development which are foretold in God’s word. This event placed into motion the completion of God’s Plan to liberate and elevate His Holy City ending in its prestige and importance in the Kingdom age.

In summary, he was the Jubilean man. So the Jubilean man sounded the Jubilean Shofar in the Jubilean year in the Jubilean place at the Jubilean moment. And as he sounded it, the ancestral possession passed back into the hands of those to whom it originally belonged!

It fulfilled the sad longing  of Naomi Shermer’s plaintive Jerusalem of Gold, written in remembrance of Psalm 137. The Israeli singers now could take down their harps from the willows of Babylon and employ them in the joyous songs of Zion!  It was the most significant Jubilee among God’s people for two and an half millennia! And it was accomplished on the terminal day of a prophecy that had been in progress for twenty-three hundred years.

<>HEL End of the events of 1917-1967 (8). To be continued, God willing...

The Next Jubilee: 2017 (9)

The events that followed in the next Jubilee year, 2017, are as prominent as those that had come before. Each Jubilee sets in motion events which will terminate in the next era leading to the next Jubilee year. We expect the Jubilee year just passed (2017) to have introduced events which will lead to the consummation of all things (Daniel 9: 27).

The Israelis were (in June, 1967) in control of an area about six times the size of their former occupancy – the vast Sinai Peninsula and the remainder of the territory west of the Jordan River including the Golan Heights.

The City of Jerusalem, now united, prospered and grew. It was cleared of many of the slums of Jordanian occupation and the Western Wall Plaza was created – a huge open space for thousands of worshippers on any occasion. More Jews returned to the Land than ever before. Israel declares all of Jerusalem as its capital – a fact not recognized by any other national power or organization. That accomplishment was one of the events set in motion in 1967 – events, the completion of which would be required to wait for another fifty years ...

Therefore one must expect at least one other significant act of restoration to take place in 2017 – the next Jubilee. What was it to be?

The history of this process is complex...

In 1967 Jerusalem had been restored to Israel’s possession – but no other nation had given any recognition to that fact. Such recognition would be an act parallel to the decree of Cyrus for the Jews of Medo-Persia to return to Jerusalem, their Holy City, and to possess it again. And that happened in the 71st year after the Jews’ exile began.

The year 2017 is 70 years after the UNO resolution to Partition Palestine. In the same Hebrew year, Israel became a nation again – a “side issue” which offers yet further confirmation of these events as divine in character.

In the 71st year of Israel’s independence, parallel to the action of Cyrus following its captivity, the US embassy was physically moved to Jerusalem as an act of official recognition and approval by an external world power in this way...

The year 2017 witnessed the power and might of the United States – by far the strongest power on earth. It is legislatively governed by its Senate.

Background: in the mid-1990s, a Congressional law was passed calling for America’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city within six months if the president would approve the move. If he did not deem it a wise decision he might sign a six-month deferral – at which time he would have another opportunity to sign the decree to move the embassy (a physical confirmation that the US now considered Jerusalem the capital of Israel). But the president could refuse to sign the decree at that time and it would automatically go into another six-month cycle awaiting his approval.

In successive years forward from that time each president failed to approve the recognition of Jerusalem every six months when the anniversary of the law was reached.

The reasons for not approving the move every six months that were given were mostly “for security reasons” – a nebulous excuse to be kind. In reality, the appointed year had not arrived!

In the year 2017 the Senate passed a resolution which again raised the recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel – in the fiftieth year since the recovery of Jerusalem by Israel! The resolution commemorated the fiftieth year of the liberation of Jerusalem and called for its recognition as Israel’s capital.

Note how the conjunction of the fiftieth and the seventieth year anniversaries now come together!

The legislators had no idea that they were about to fulfill the Jubilean destiny of the City!

But this Senatorial resolution was not the central event of the process...

The resolution was taken on June 5th 2017 – a date that is hugely important.

Because Israel’s initial move upon the Egyptian Air Force in the Six Day War of 1967 – the earlier Jubilee – was precisely on June 5th 1967 exactly fifty years before the date of this resolution.

And it was EXACTLY 100 years before that time, that the British Cabinet had resolved to appoint General Edmund Allenby to command the Egyptian expeditionary Force – June 5th 1917! All three events were pivotal to the outcomes in which each resulted – all seemingly by mere chance!

All three Jubilees were set in motion on the same day in the year exactly fifty years apart! Like clockwork, the anniversaries were being observed and commemorated all completely unknown to the “players!”

What began on June 5th 1967, led to the liberation of Jerusalem on June 7th.

What began on June 5th 2017, led to the actual relocation of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on May 14th 2018, the first day of the 71st year of Israel’s independence, in complete parallel with the earlier decree of Cyrus, which was the only other such accomplishment relating to the Jews’ possession of the City – in the 71st year of Israel‘s removal from their Land.

In a concrete sense, this Jubilee brought the return of a possession which had been lost by God’s People –their Holy City, the place in which He has chosen to place His name forever!

The details of this momentous event are that on December 6th 2017, the president of the United States entered the White House Diplomatic Reception Room with an announcement for the world: he had determined that “the time” (his exact words!) officially to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel had come! He would no longer “put off” the already-approved move by the Senate as had his forerunners for decades! The deed would be done!

Now ... note that the date on the Biblical calendar is 18 Kislev.

It was a fortuitous date: it was the first time any world power had recognized Israel’s right to Jerusalem since the decree of Cyrus!

How did it figure into the equation?

In 1949, the UNO had passed a resolution for the first time calling for the legal separation of Jerusalem from Israel, creating over it a decree of corpus separatum instead – international authority over Jerusalem and West Jerusalem. Jerusalem was separated legally from the Jewish people by that decree, and it was widely approved by worldly powers, including enthusiastic endorsement by the pope of Rome.

The Gentile date of that resolution was December 9th 1949.

But on the Biblical calendar, that date was also 18 Kislev.

Is that an important date in the previous Jubilee in yet another way?

Yes, it is. It is the very day that Jerusalem was officially liberated from the Ottomans an hundred years earlier! The president’s decree went forth on the 100th anniversary of the UNO double-Jubilee anniversary of Jerusalem’s liberation by General Allenby on the Gregorian calendar!

On that specific anniversary of the world’s issued declaration by the UNO that Jerusalem was NOT the capital of Israel, the president issued the Jerusalem Declaration, proclaiming that Jerusalem WAS the capital of Israel!

His internationally received recognition of the validity of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital fulfilled to a “T” the parallel recognition of Cyrus in the 71st year, over 2500 years prior!

And there is yet more...

Nowruz

The events of every Jubilee succession sow the seeds for important advances in the next Jubilee. Is it possible that during the days of the first American “Cyrus” (President Harry S Truman – whose history has been reviewed earlier), that the first seeds were planted for another?

Yes!

It was in the days of Harry Truman’s presidency that a child was born which uniquely fits that description. And that child was Donald J. Trump, born in 1946, the second year of the Truman administration!

Recall that Truman was a student of the Bible. But Donald Trump could not be said to be so. In the closest sense he resembled Cyrus of old, of whom it was written, “... you have not known Me.” But as we shall see, that fact did not keep him from doing the will of God...

Consider these astonishing “coincidences:” In March of 2017, President Trump issued a statement from the White House on the occasion of Nowruz – the New Year’s day celebration of Ancient Persia. In it he spoke of King Cyrus’ philosophy: “Cyrus the Great, a leader of the ancient Persian empire, famously said that ‘freedom, dignity, and wealth together constitute the greatest happiness of humanity.’” In this quotation, Mr. Trump was speaking AS Cyrus, not merely OF him.

This action set the stage for the later Jerusalem Declaration!

Entirely parallel to the proclamation of Cyrus, who stated clearly that he was returning the Jewish people to “Jerusalem, which is in Judah,” Donald J. Trump attested to the same fact in that Declaration: he recognized that Jerusalem (all of the City) was part of Israel and belonged to Judah, and held up the written proclamation for all the world to see on TV.

Cyrus of old fulfilled the prophecy of the term of Judah’s captivity as written by Jeremiah in 29:10 – “That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.”

“After seventy years!” Donald J. Trump was seventy years of age when he arose to world prominence. He announced his candidacy only two days after his seventieth birthday as he descended the great escalator in Trump Tower in New York City in that now iconic appearance before the world.

The seventy years of Cyrus were continued in a sense in Donald Trump whose life had embodied those seventy years at that time – a man similar to Cyrus who was now beginning to rise to power in the world.

These seventy years were connected intimately to Israel.

If one goes back seventy years from the date of this announcement it leads him to 1947 – the year in which the State of Israel was voted into existence by the UNO!

When President Trump made his Declaration he spoke of another “Cyrus,” Harry Truman. His Declaration clearly linked the modern Declaration to the ancient one: “It was 70 years ago that the United States, under President Truman, recognized the State of Israel,” he said.

The end-point of both periods of seventy years had to do intimately with the only two restorations of Israel – separated by over 2500 years!

There is still another correlation: as the reign of Cyrus framed the seventy-year period, so the American president’s also framed the modern seventy-year period – the first at the beginning and the second at its end – all these factors having to do with the only two restorations of Israel that have occurred! And all in the years of Jubilee!

In summary, note well these striking parallels...

The King’s (Cyrus) proclamation granted legal authority and sanction to the return of the Jewish people to Jerusalem by the greatest power of the ancient world, and ...

The President’s (Trump) proclamation granted legal authority and sanction to the return of the Jewish people to Jerusalem by the greatest power of the modern world!

And now ... The Trumpet Man

Jubilees are intimately connected with the Shofar – the ram’s horn. Its brash sounding signals the return ... underscoring the restoration as no other signal can. Thus it was sounded in 1967 at the return to Temple Mount and of Old Jerusalem to its rightful owners, Israel.

But what was the central act of the following Jubilee? Was it not the Jerusalem Declaration? And was not the central figure of that Declaration Donald J. Trump, its author and originator?

Recall that he who sounded the Shofar was Rabbi Goren ... Rabbi “threshing floor” in his now native language. His name had had a different meaning in his native Europe, which was not now immediately relevant ... but would become so.

Similarly, Donald Trump’s family came from Europe. In his native land his last name is related to a drum – the musical instrument. But in English, the language of America, where the Jubilean event was accomplished, it holds another meaning entirely: it means “he who sounds the trumpet!”

By his proclamation, Donald J. Trump had sounded the trumpet of Jubilee as the Scriptures instructed...

But the president’s name holds another meaning, somewhat different: it refers to the trumpet itself. In the prophetic literature of the Bible, the last trumpet is called “the last trump.”

We have long noted the similarity of these two entities – the president’s name and the reference cited – but have not had the impetus or insight to assign further significance to them as being intimately related.

Indeed, a correspondent of The Prophecy Letter recently wrote and specifically posited a close connection between the two! She specifically asked, “Could Donald Trump be ‘the last trump’” in a strange twist of logic? (Cf., I Corinthians 15: 52)

“Trump” is the English translation of the Greek word salpinx. In the Greek translation the word salpinx referred to the Shofar, the ram’s horn, the trumpet of Jubilee, of the fiftieth year...

The year will especially be signified by the trump’s sound. 2017 was the year of the Trump, the man, too – the year he came to power.

In the Jubilee year the trump sounds, so in 2017, the Trump “sounded.” It sounded “throughout all your land” as Scripture specifies in Leviticus 25: 9!

And all the world heard the disturbing blast...

It is almost as if the president was always appointed to be the trumpet to sound in the year of Jubilee! And it all goes along perfectly with the fact that the Senate passed a resolution on June 5th 2017, recognizing the fiftieth year of Jerusalem’s liberation – its intimate Jubilee – when the trumpet must sound.

The Trump DID sound ... and the people of Israel soon received back into their legal possession the property which had been lost so many ages ago!

This entire episode is another example of the convoluted but wonderful way in which the Scriptures often “play” on words and their meanings in order subtlety to assure, and to solidify their significance by seemingly “undesigned coincidences.”

We are sure there will be those who will refuse to consider the divine slant in all these intensely fortuitous, accurate and corroborating events – but to some they will provide yet another layer of deep confidence that the Word of God is powerful in this manner, and superbly capable of the generation of deeper faith in many of His people. That it is capable of using the most elemental means of reinforcing its message to the true Believers in these precarious end-times.

It is significant in our minds that the Senate passed its resolution on June 5th 2017. It was on the exact fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Six Day War in 1967! Both actions led to a significant restorative event in favor of Israel.

Such exact timing in so many repetitious cases is far beyond the possibility of mere chance. Our opinion is that they are divinely appointed and executed in the interest of enhancing the faith of some!

And there is yet another significant “coincidence” that relates to Donald Trump – “the trumpet!” It is the appointed Torah reading for June 14, 1946 – the day of his birth: it incredibly contains the text of Numbers 10: 1-10 – which is the unique revelation of YHVH concerning the vital trumpets – how to produce them and when to blow them!

On the day when the scriptures were read which related to the production of trumpets, The Trump was born!

The sounding of the second trump of Donald Trump would seal the promise of the first sounding – that of Rabbi Goren on Temple Mount on the same date in 1967. Israel had returned to its capital but the nations would stubbornly refuse to recognize that reality. Only fifty years later would someone significant and authoritative have the courage to support Israel’s godly accomplishment and decision of June, 1967!

And on the subject of Rabbi Goren’s name: in Hebrew we have learned that it means “threshing floor,” and was entirely appropriate to the place of his blowing the Shofar – on Temple Mount, which when David purchased it, was a threshing-floor.

But we mentioned that Goren was not his original name in Europe.

His family’s original name was Gorenchik.

What does that name mean in his home country?

It means horn, as in trumpet, as in ram’s horn, as in shofar, as in Trump!

The earlier Jubilee had been ushered in by the blowing of the shofar by a rabbi named “threshing floor” in one language but “horn” in his present language, and the later Jubilee had been ushered in by a president actually named “Trump!” Most remarkable!

<>HEL End of The Next Jubilee: 2017 (9). ~2800 words. To be continued, God willing.

 Return Unto Me ... (10)

The great Prophet Micah wrote concerning the now onrushing future of the people of Israel ... “Therefore will he give them up (or, abandon them), until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth (re-formed the nation of Israel): then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel.” Micah 5:3.

The prophecy contains two pivotal words in its text, both delineating a certain set time but both un-specified as to date. It foretells that dual destiny as the direct result of Israel’s leader being “struck upon the cheek” (slapped, or insulted but not destroyed).

We believe this remark refers to the crucifixion of Christ, the ‘Judge’ of His people at a time when He was not yet their ‘Ruler’ as in the next verse.

Jesus was not destroyed by being ‘slapped,’ because He was then resurrected from the death state and made to stand again upon the earth and before His Father in immortality, was raised to His right hand from Olivet’s peak, and will return in profuse glory to be ‘great unto the ends of the earth’ as in the fourth verse.

It is a forecast of the microcosm of history as related to the redemption of a People for His name...

But as a result of their refusal of His authority, His people were severely punished through their vicious defeat and exile which awaited them in 70 AD – a period of forty years in which He gave them the opportunity to repent and learn of Him – and to establish His teachings among the Gentiles. Many of their number did accept Him – but few of their leaders did.

In light of the facts as we know them today – after their fulfillment – we may gloss the verse with these added clarifications...

“Therefore (for that reason) will He give them up (abandon them), UNTIL the time when she (Zionism) which travaileth hath brought forth (hath born a child – an entity which was destined to be Israel re-formed in the end time); THEN the remnant of His brethren shall return (Hebrew, shub) unto the (land of the) children of Israel.”

As frequently alluded to, those two words “until” and “then” are specific time-markers indicating sea changes in Israel’s circumstances – in which their fortunes were at first diminished for nearly 2,000 years (they were abandoned, or ‘given up’).

But at a certain time – noted as ‘until’ – they would be remembered by Him again and a positive thing would come to the remnant of His brethren who remained: they should return to their ancient home, being resurrected from the Valley of Dry Bones to which they had been relegated.

The words of Moses in Leviticus 25 tell of the same destiny – and furthermore, specify a greater understanding of just WHEN that return should be (it would be in a Jubilee year!): “And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return (Hebrew, shub) every man unto his possession, and ye shall return (Hebrew, shub) every man unto his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you:” Leviticus 25:10, 11.

[We have particularly revealed the Hebrew word, shub, for “return” for a specific reason which will be discussed in a moment; there is much more to the principle than appears in English.]

These two verses might logically be labeled “The Jubilean Ordinance.” 

So, in this passage, in addition to the Jubilee’s occurrence at fifty-year intervals ... an unforeseen Jubilee year is specified to be the TIME of Israel’s return to its land,

And the year of their return to it is specified as being a qualified (genuine) Jubilee year. This is an important point because it enables Believers to re-establish the Jubilee cycles in a meaningful context, and to be able to “label” a given year AS a Jubilee year ... a function that has been impossible to ascertain until it happened!

Is it then possible that, although the observance of the Jubilee years by Israel have not been observed (and have not even logically been possible to observe) since the fall of the Second Temple – that the very year of the beginning of their “return” (1917) may be designated as a recognized, valid Jubilee year?

May it be validated further by similar 50-year anniversaries which occurred both before and after 1917?

Yes!

The words of Moses seem to allow us that possibility ... indeed, seem to require it.

Such a possibility is a means of re-orienting Believers to this eternal cycle of fifty-year anniversaries, whether or not they have been being observed.

Israel’s Resurrection

We now review some facts of history to see whether that proposal can be validated.

In that earlier citation from Micah 5, the nation might seem to be being re-born, but there is another possibility; resurrection is far more apropos.

That impression of Israel being re-born might be gained from another vital reference which every Believer noted on the very day when Israel was given permission by the UNO to re-form itself upon the mountains of Israel – referred to as the UNO Partition Plan of November 1947.

The verse to which we refer is Isaiah 66:8 – “Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation (Hebrew, goy) be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children."

But there may be room for doubt, because the Hebrew word for the “nation” which might be born in a day is “goy” or Gentile nation; it looks as if it’s a theoretical question about generalized national birth – not “resurrection,” not the reconstitution of Zion, its resuscitation.

Zion is not referred to as being “born” in this verse contrary to popular opinion (our conclusion after careful consideration); it is referring to the nation’s children, or offspring, being born immediately upon her reconstitution ... a condition of actual historical fact. No historical period of gestation was experienced – her “children” were “born” immediately as hundreds of thousands of the remnant of Jacob began their instant return to their Land without any perceptible delays ...

We believe the more appropriate term for this reconstitution is not that of Israel’s birth – because Israel was born out of Egypt under Moses. The more appropriate term is resurrection – in line with the events of the restoration from the dissolution of the Valley of Dry Bones ... a clear resurrection of God’s people from the nations of their Diaspora, and as having been described in precisely the detailed reverse terms of its previous death and dissolution in Ezekiel 37.

Daniel 12: 1-3 is also a graphic and direct depiction of this process of national resurrection as a foreshadowing of the physical resurrection of all the People of God from their graves.

You see, this account illustrates the innate character of the resurrection – the reversal of death – the revivification of a being which has been born earlier, has lived its life to its end, and then has died and dissolved in the dust of the earth.

Resurrection of a nation or a person is characterized as being the reversal of this entire process – of their being brought again from the dust of death, being reconstituted and made to live and breathe again.

 In this sense it is dissimilar, and even opposite, to birth in every way.

That was surely the clear beginning of that progressively backward pathway which began to take effect upon Israel’s people in 1917, and continued on May 14, 1948 – its resurrection.

Resurrection: the Reversal of Birth

In the process of resurrection, everything occurs in reverse order.

This is a useful principle to bear in mind when pondering the wider concept of the restitution of all things (cf., Acts 3: 21) as further indicated in Isaiah 1:26; 49: 26; Joel 2: 25; Acts 1: 6.

Firstly, in distinction to being a physical event in its entirety, resurrection is a spiritual event as a whole. Unlike birth, it is an unnatural process, requiring input from beyond human initiatives.

Death results from the ebbing away and withdrawal of God’s Spirit (pneuma) and is a natural phenomenon.

Resurrection may only be accomplished by supernatural power – the spiritual power of God – acting upon the deceased to restore his life and vitality.

When Israel was re-constituted a nation (resurrected) its eternal fortunes began to be reversed in a fully orderly fashion, retracing the steps backward from its earlier dissolution and death.

Physical warfare had resulted in its death under the Roman Eagles in 70AD.

Physical warfare by British Lions against the Ottomans of Turkey had resulted in its end-time awakening – and Britain’s legal conveyance of the Land (by means of the legally-based Balfour Declaration) to the Jews of the world for a national homeland in Palestine.

Just as its dissolution had been gradual, so would be its restoration.

Nearly 30 years of strife with the British overlords had to be endured before the People gained their statehood, ONLY after which they could exercise the privileges of free return to their Land – because during their Mandatory Period the British authorities prevented (nearly as efficiently as the Ottomans), any mass return of Jews to their Land!

Since that notable time when they gained full independence they have been required to defend their existence numerous times in a series of conflicts which yet shall end in the state’s complete pacification under the Christ of the Second Advent.

But there is a short, uncertain distance still to go in order to achieve that result.

In a patent illustration of such reversal, the course of Israel’s long and tortuous downfall would be clinically reversed in its long and tortuous uplifting all the way back to its original position of prestige and power as the Kingdom of God on the earth – which was the identity of the Kingdom under King David ... and in the end-time will be so reconstituted under “David My Servant” – the pivotal figure coded into the text of Ezekiel 34:23, 24 and 37:25.  

It is destined to bear that designation once again under the Greater Son of David, the LORD Jesus Christ, Who shall assume the restored (the resurrected!) throne of David and rule over His people for a thousand years in complete peace and safety as to internal hazards or deadly consequences.

That is not to say there will not be external conflict – conquests to make, kingdoms to be overthrown, systems to be demolished, societies to be assimilated, worlds to be conquered by Christ and the Saints of that day.

But all these reverse processes are then seen to be the retrogressive refinement of the world and its people at large, a series of destinies leading it safely and surely back toward its original status – its resurrection to originality of purpose and character ... backward, ultimately, toward the restoration of the Garden which our Father originally planted eastward in Eden – but without its Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

But there is much more to the process...

In retracing its pathway backward toward its ultimate, original state of being “very good” (Genesis 1:31), all the other elements must also similarly retrogress back toward their original purity...

The teachings of Christianity, for example, have declined in quality and efficacy as it was serially corrupted by men – “scholars” – who changed the truth of God into a lie as in Romans 1: 25, neutralizing – abolishing – mainstream “Christianity” as a viable force for salvation.

That reversal back to its pure original state will begin to occur on an authoritative scale when the Everlasting Gospel of Revelation 14: 6 goes forth to the world of the future!

Many in Israel today have become “Messianic Jews,” meaning that they have accepted the identity of the LORD Jesus as the Son of God.

Well ... not really.

They have come to believe the “Christian” concept of “the Son of God” as being “God the Son.”

The two are opposite identities, one of which (the latter) is critically in error.

But think of the condition precursory to this corruption of God’s word: before the leaders of the Church changed the Truth into this falsehood, it had known and believed the original Truth – that Jesus was indeed the SON of God – not the “second Person of the Trinity,” or “God the Son.”

The stepwise corruption of God’s Truth is readily available and is verifiable in history...

As time lapses into the future, this fundamental flaw in “Christian” teaching will be erased – will be eradicated from the message of salvation and shown to be radically in error.

The truth will be restored as the resurrection of things proceeds backward toward the perfection which preceded it! That truth is proclaimed in such passages as this from Isaiah: So shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider. Isaiah 52:15.

This portion of Isaiah’s scroll clearly forecasts that, in our day and the days of the immediate future, the general public shall be completely ignorant of what is happening ... and of what shall already have happened ... because they have not known His Truth; but then it shall be revealed to them in clear terms!

Another such attestation is found in Romans 15:2 - But as it is written, To whom he was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand. The centuries of gross ignorance of His great Plan of Salvation shall be clearly taught – and understood – by the kings and peoples of the nations of the earth... 

This means that the “Messianic Jews” and their “Christian” counterparts will from that time be taught the pure Truth of Jesus’ identity. That process will begin to occur at the moment when He reveals Himself to the entire nation as He stands before them on Mount Olivet and shows them the nail prints in His hands and the spear-wound in His side, and reveals to them His true nature ... that He is indeed the “Son of David,” (Matthew 1:1; Mark 12: 35) and “Son of God” (Acts 8: 37; 9:20) and “Messiah!”

That original Truth will then emanate from the spiritual center of the earth that in that day will be Jerusalem, and from the re-established (the resurrected!) Throne of David, upon which shall sit the King of kings and Lord of lords of that future age, wielding His authority over all men beginning at that sacred place!

The Jubilean Ordinance

Early in this presentation we quoted these words of Moses as he related to his people God’s institution of the Jubilees that they should observe ... “And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return (Hebrew, shub) every man unto his possession, and ye shall return (Hebrew, shub) every man unto his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you:” Leviticus 25:10, 11.

We took special care to designate the source word for “return” in this passage of Scripture – the Hebrew word shub, or shuv: Strong’s H7725. That is because the word is rich and broad in its implications – and means far more than the English reader may comprehend. It is utilized to relate the exquisite particulars of the returns of the end-time:

·        the Jewish people return to their ancient land;

·        the language returns to the People;

·        the ancient scrolls (the Dead Sea Scrolls) return to their original owners;

·        the Temple of the Millennium is built and furnished;

·        and fertility of the land returns in force;

·        the priests return to their holy City;

·        the soldiers return to their ancient fortress, Masada;

·        the farmers return to their ancient fields in Judea and Samaria;

·        the Nazir (Nazarite) returns to his ancient court at the Temple;

·        each returns to his own possession in the appropriate Jubilee eras;

·        the ancient covenant of the Law shall be replaced by an higher Covenant that He will make with His beloved ones;

·        “David” returns to His throne in Zion;

·        and the People return to their God and to His service!

Hebrew linguists have stressed that the word shub begins with the Hebrew letter shin, which itself is rich in meaning.

One may even see it physically emblazoned upon Jerusalem’s physical geography in this manner: visualize looking directly down upon the Old City from a 3,000-foot altitude. Trace the three valleys of Jerusalem (Hinnom, Tyropoeon (“Cheesemakers” – Josephus), and Kidron) down to their base in the Brook Kidron which connects them all together just south of the Pool of Siloam. The resultant diagram will be a perfect shin – the mark of YHVH laid out in the declivities of His Holy City, clearly marking the holy place of His return!

His very name, HaShem (“The Name”), utilizes the letter “Shem” as its initial!

In terms of the ancient Covenant, it specified that if the people remained in league with God, their bond to the land would be unbroken. But if they departed from God they would be exiled from it.

The physical realm was bound to the spiritual realm in every way.

There is a profound dimension even to this condition that escapes most observers...

Bound closely by the same covenant – and foretold by the prophets if they returned to God – that accomplishment would be defined by their return to the Land.

The two conditions were intimately associated.

 In the same way, physical separation from the Land would be reflective of spiritual separation from God. One would be a reflection of the other, and both conditions would be defined by that principle.

So their end-time physical return to their Land would be reflective of their returning to some level of spirituality as well, though it might not be apparent to observers.

Their physical return would indicate in a concrete sense their spiritual return, because these achievements were deeply embedded in each other, because shub has yet another meaning...

It is “to repent.”

In this way, returning to their Land is indicative of a certain level of repentance – perhaps not to the full extent required, but is certainly an indicator of a modicum of repentance; in a palpable sense, their hearts are thus being turned toward the Spirit by their physical relocation back into their Land!

Most observant Israelis will admit that redemption is found in Israel – upon the hill of Zion.

And we believe that even the secular (non-observant) Jews feel it in their bones, for the lingering details of their long-standing history is engrained – is embedded – into their psyche.

A strong hint of this reality, and of their inevitable conversion, is found in Malachi 3: 7, which says: Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts.

But the principle is most clearly laid out in the words of Hosea 3: “For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim: Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the LORD their God, and David their king; and shall fear the LORD and his goodness in the latter days.” Hosea 3: 4, 5.

 There are these two elements associated in one prophecy! – “returning” and “seeking the LORD” ... Physical and spiritual returns intimately associated.

They are sequential events ... and consequent upon each other.

Their physical return leads directly to their spiritual return.

The process shall come full circle at the physical return of Messiah to His returned People after He appears suddenly in their midst and in THE LAND, and destroys their enemies round-about ... at the open,  uninhibited manifestation of Himself to them upon the Mount of Olives.

The stark record is found in Zechariah 12 and 13,q.v.

It is prophesied to be at that moment that their minds are enlightened, and their consciences are pricked by the horrifying realization that He is indeed the Man of Bethlehem which they thought to have destroyed in 29AD – and their passion and depth of repentance for that sin reaches the redemptive level of intensity as they mourn for Him as one mourns for his firstborn son (Zechariah 12: 10).

Their enthusiastic and sincere response triggers His making with them a new Covenant – and their ready acceptance of it.

From that deeply emotional beginning their spiritual healing progresses under the loving care of their Messiah and His multitude of Instructors, the immortalized Saints!

In addition, all their other brethren, at that time yet in Diaspora, shall be regathered (returned physically) to their Land and be brought under the bonds of the new Covenant (returned spiritually) which He shall make with them on that day.

The shub shall fulfill its innate mission in the wonderful accomplishments of those days...

Further Benefits of the Shub

Yet another feature of the process of shub involves those who heard and believed the words of The Teacher – the LORD Jesus Christ – in His own day.

All the original believers were Jewish – a condition that was true until the incident of Cornelius’ baptism by Peter in Caesarea Maritima in 36AD (?).

By the time the disruption and dispersal came in 70AD, there were many Gentile disciples. These increased with the scattering of the Jews and the traveling preachers of the Gospel about the Roman Empire.

As time progressed, wolves in sheep’s clothing entered in and subverted many of the Believers. Doctrines of salvation were corrupted. The lingering teachings of Babylon entered into “Christianity,” and it became transformed, changed, made ineffectual.

Men reasoned that God was not One, but Three “coequal and coeternal” partners; that evil in man was caused by an external agent termed the Devil or a personal Satan; that the righteous’ reward was to be enjoyed not on the earth as promised to Abraham, but in heaven as promised by Nimrod; that salvation could come by works instead of faith, and that men (priests) could change bread and wine into the literal flesh and blood of Christ (the Eucharist). See how the sublime truths of the Gospel have been subverted!

In the latter days, we are seeing a stark reversal of those events – of that departure from the core truths which bring salvation. Our own community has led the way back toward that restoration for 150 years but has made little impact upon the world in general.

“Messianic Jews” are largely just members of the “Christian” faith of the Gentiles.

But as events move toward the actual return of Christ to the earth and His divine instruction begins to be disseminated to the people, those errors will be corrected.

The curriculum of instruction will revert to its original forms and doctrines; men and women will again learn His Truths from the Master Himself in that day, and from His immortal disciples.

And in that process, the great body of “Christians” will also become converted to Truth by Him.

They will learn the accurate doctrines of the early Believers who sat at the feet of Jesus in that earlier day, and learned His ways and teachings.

Dogma will be refined – will immediately be established on truth, and on God’s word.

That, too, is part of the shub that is implied in the principle of “return” and “repentance.” It is a principle which is thus seen to apply to the body of Christendom at large ... and indeed, to the entire race of men and women upon the earth – because, in the beginning, every person on earth understood and believed the core truths of God’s revelation.

The entire race has strayed from those footings – but will be returned to them forthwith!

The process will bring untold benefits to the race, refining and perfecting its level of understanding and faith ... bringing it back nearer and nearer to the conditions of that great Garden of the LORD inhabited by the original pair of olden times.

There is far more profitable consideration to be had in this category of interest – the shub; some of these will be considered at a later time, God willing.

Our Privilege ... and Our Prospects

At the present moment in time we find ourselves greatly privileged in many ways.

·        We have been granted a rational, scriptural understanding of the coming events of the end-time.

·        We occupy the superbly blessed position of being called, chosen, and elected by our Father to be His sons and daughters ... a superb status of which we should become more appreciative.

·        We possess the Pearl of Great Price – the precious articles of salvation – of redemption – of justification.

·        We possess the Hope of Israel in verifiable truth.

·        Our prospects are superbly optimistic as we look ahead into the time of trouble for the world and its people – a time which shall be prolonged by man’s stubbornness – by his resistance to acceptance of divine teachings as given in His Word ... and will be illustrated even by his physical resistance to the Christ as He goes forth in power and great glory to subdue the earth to His will.

Inexplicably, men will resist Him to death in great numbers. Multitudes will perish by being met with His wrath upon their intransigent opposition to Him as he makes His will known among men and nations. This grave fault will come about because of their stubborn reliance upon “holy books” that do not express His will and purpose, such as the Qu’ran, and the writings of Buddha, and other works of which He is not the author.

The LORD Jesus Christ addressed that principle also in some of His last recorded words; He said “Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.” Revelations 22:7. And further: “... behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” Revelation 22:12, 13. 

<> HEL An eTPL 30  Exhortation.  ~4450 words. November 19, 2019; edited January 1, 2020.

 The Conclusions (11)

These remarkable events which have been rather hastily reviewed (there is much more source information available!) in the previous ten papers are unmistakably works of divine Providence. They are so numerous and so complex – and so subtly connected – as to be crafted exclusively from Above.

In this editor’s opinion, we are pathetically deficient in our appreciation of His ability as well as His intention to arrange such sequences of events as profound proof of his omniscience if we do not acknowledge such.

In our opinion, such voluminous detail and such perfect sequential integration of related events are a modern reconfirmation of His sovereignty, and sure illustration of His anciently-proclaimed ability to give accurate prophecies of future events – the expression of which is unique to YHVH.

We intend to bring these comments to a conclusion with this paper.

We reviewed the fact that President Truman had recognized the validity of the State of Israel in his declaration of May 14, 1948 ... and that his recognition was parallel to that of Cyrus, who decreed that the Jews should return to their land “which is in Judah.” But Cyrus also decreed specifically that they should build a house there – a reference to the Jews’ reconstruction of their destroyed Temple. Cf., Ezra 1: 2.

President Truman had not addressed the “house” component – only the “land” feature in his recognition of Israel.

On the other hand, President Trump had decreed, as had Cyrus of old, not only the official recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in his decree of December 5, 2017, but also the “house” component of Cyrus’ earlier declaration. In his remarks that day he said, “... consistent with the Jerusalem Embassy Act, I am also directing the State Department to begin preparation to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”

Now ... we acknowledge that an embassy is not the Temple, or even parallel to it. But is undeniable that the embassy is a house that was linked to the full validation of the Jews’ return to their land, and that it, like the Temple, would stand “in Jerusalem.” Indeed, the “house” selected to be renovated and made suitable for the American Embassy is the existing US consulate in Jerusalem, which is located partially in West Jerusalem and partially in no-man’s land – in territory essentially claimed by the Palestinian Authority as being part of the “Palestine” of their fantasy! The property straddles the 1949-1967 Armistice line in Jerusalem! (Wikipedia)

It would stand as repudiation not only to the worldly powers which, to a nation, actively deny Israeli ownership to the Old City but also to the Palestinian Authority – a local group of thugs whose only intention is to grab land and sovereignty from Israel and from its deity, YHVH – for His enemies are THEIR enemies (cf., Psalm 83: 1-3).

The Trump decision was a double slap-in-the-face to all comers!

The Trumpian decree was the first declaration by any major power (besides Israel itself) since the days of Cyrus to affirm Jerusalem specifically as belonging to the Jewish people ... a fact also attested to, in our studied opinion, by the entirety of Scripture.

It is significant also that the decree by the UNO (the Partition Plan) that brought Israel back into being in 1947 was followed in five months with the literal accomplishment of that intention – the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948.

In parallel fashion, President Trump’s decree of December 5th, 2017, declaring that the embassy would be moved, resulted – five months later – in the physical deed becoming accomplished!

Such exact timing does not happen by chance!

Now ... readers should consider one additional possibility: Since in the original decree of Cyrus the house was the Temple, could what happened in 2018 (the physical establishment of the house – the embassy in Jerusalem) be the precursor to the future rebuilding of the other house, the Temple? Since we are assured that “the LORD'S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it” (Isaiah 2:2) could the first usher in the second? We believe it is not only possible but is certain...

As validation of this principle, consider the following examples ...

None of the examples to which we have referred were engineered by human minds. Nobody was planning them to occur when and as they did. But they happened time and again like clockwork to accomplish the fulfillment of many prophecies for the end-time!

One Jubilee clearly prepares the way and leads to the next ... and the next.

Several examples are...

1.      The return to Jerusalem. In the Jubilee of 1867, Charles Warren begins the mapping out of Biblical Jerusalem and discovers the City of David – ancient Jerusalem. In the next Jubilee, Allenby liberates Jerusalem utilizing the maps of the land that resulted from Charles Warren’s discoveries and his entire mission of the previous Jubilee. Fifty years later, Israeli soldiers enter through Lion’s Gate into the Temple Mount and the Old City and Jerusalem is restored to the Jewish people. And still, fifty years later that return is given legal sanction recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city since ancient times!

2.      The return of the Land. In the Jubilee of 1867, the Ottoman Empire enacts the law that leads to the release of the land. In the next Jubilee, the Ottomans are ousted from the land releasing it to the Jewish people in the terms of the Balfour Declaration. Fifty years later, the Six-Day War brings the most dramatic return of land to the Jewish people in Jewish history. That release was completed on a fortuitous date, too – it was accomplished as the Six Day War ended – on June 10, 1967. It was the precise one hundredth anniversary of the Ottoman Land law of June 10, 1867!

3.      The political return. After the first Zionist Congress at Basel, Switzerland (1897) Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary that he had founded the Jewish state and that it would be realized in fifty years. The UNO finished the plan that will bring Israel back into existence fifty years later to the exact day! And fifty years after that, Jerusalem would be recaptured as the Israeli soldiers entered the Holy City victoriously for the first time in over 2500 years! And fifty years later, the decision by President Trump to move the embassy to Jerusalem seems to complete the circle1

Now consider these possible Jubilee dates ...

We must recognize 1967 as being a year of Jubilee because that is when Jerusalem was regained as the capital of Israel. The process of their second restoration was essentially completed in that year of 1967 on June 7th, when Jerusalem was captured by Israeli soldiers. Leviticus 25: 9-13 specifies that the year of their return should be specified as a Jubilee year.

It would be interesting to know more about the number of the Jubilee year that occurred in 1967. What number was it? We cannot easily determine by chronological means the number of the Jubilee year as Israel has not kept Jubilee since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70AD. We seem to have no original starting point...

Are there any significant dates near that time of the suspension of Jubilees that might be important – that might inform us of the number of Jubilees that have been missed since that time?

That is possible. Every significant event (nearly all) bearing on Israel and its end-time restoration ends in years ending either 17 or 67 ... just like clockwork.

1517 AD Ottomans conquer Palestine on their way to Egypt (Daniel 11: 40-45).

1867 AD The years of the Stranger and the Man with the Measuring Line (Twain and Warren)

1917 AD The land is liberated from Ottomans by the British army.

1967 AD Jerusalem is returned to Israeli possession and occupancy.

2017 AD Jerusalem is recognized by a great power as being the capital of Israel.

What date is most logical for the beginning of this series? We should think it might be around 70 AD. Investigation reveals that the Roman Generals Vespasian and Titus approached the land intent upon putting down the Jewish revolt in 67 AD – by taking the first villages located in the Galilee on their way to Jerusalem several months later.

Hmmm ... 67AD: a year ending in 67 – the only year so designated!

We haven’t enough information to fill in all the interim years ending in 17 or 67, but suspect that many of them may have been integral to the overall process of Israel’s return.

However, we do know of the concrete anniversaries note above ... and we are pretty sure that 1967 AD must be labeled a year of Jubilee.

In that case, all the previous and subsequent anniversaries ending in 17 and 67 would also be bona fide Jubilee years, whether or not anyone was keeping track of them.

If that is so, subtract 67 AD from 1967 AD and what is the result? It is 1900 years ... or 38 Jubilees.

That would necessitate 2017 being designated the 39th Jubilee ... correct? (Yes.)

What is the significance of that number? We know of no information about the number of Jubilees that we may expect, so the point may be moot. However, it is seemingly certain that we are now experiencing the end-time events subsequent to the 39th Jubilee, and that the days before the Second Advent are indeed short ... and we can be fairly certain to have discovered bona fide years of Jubilee.

In an earlier paper in this series we noted that there are still other considerations of the principle of the shub – the return – to be discussed.

Here is one of those...

We are struck by the new development by many Jews of today to adopt the tenets of Christianity (sic). By this we mean that they have come to “see” Jesus as Messiah ... and have come to expect their salvation as being very near. In these convictions, they are correct in a broad sense.

But their understanding of the nature of Messiah is skewed by “Christianity’s” view of Him, i.e., as God the Son, the third part of a Trinity of gods. That view does not negate their expectation of redemption for those who anticipate it.

But this stark fact illustrates the necessary backward pathway to purer understanding. Recall that we likened the resurrection of a person or a nation to be a retracing of events that brought them to the juncture now being experienced. This pathway backward necessitates their acceptance, first, of “corrupted” Christianity – of the tainted form of dogma which has developed from the First Century doctrines and teachings of Christ and the apostles.

We are aware of the immense body of information which proves the departure of true Christ-ones of the First Century into errors of belief and conduct as induced by “wolves in sheep’s clothing” which came at an early date into the Ecclesia, and “changed the truth of God into a lie.” Romans 1: 25.

The original Ecclesia of Christ consisted exclusively of Jews – converts from the Judaism of the First Century to the true teachings of Christ. After the conversion of the Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus, many evangelists traveled to the outer reaches of the Empire to teach the Gospel in centers such as Ephesus and Corinth. When the events of 70 AD came upon the Jews they were scattered from Jerusalem and Israel into all nations and the essentially Jewish character of the Gospel began to ebb and be lost.

So the adoption of the Jews of today of “Christian” principles is no surprise, being the logical, backward journey toward purer roots. Hosea 3: 4, 5 states the endpoint of this process: “The children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince.... Afterward, the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their King.”

The name David was utilized by the prophets to refer to Messiah, the royal descendant of King David.

That is a statement which describes their further “regression” toward the true doctrines as taught by the LORD Jesus in the days of His ministry and the true “David My Servant” of Ezekiel 37: 24 et seq.

A huge portion of the shub – the return – would be prompted by a spiritual movement for the reclamation of the Land by its people. Accordingly, the first impetus toward this end was accomplished by Bible-believing Protestants such as Balfour, Allenby, Patterson, and many others. They were aware that the time had come for the Jews to reclaim their land and were willing to assist them to this end.

The zeal of these Gentiles fed the national fervor of men such as Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Menachem Begin ... and David Ben Gurion – all of whom believed that their initiative of “return” was a spiritual endeavor – that it was decreed by YHVH!

These were the Jewish Movers and Shakers of the Return and its incredible result!

That spiritual impetus was followed by a physical event – their actual acquisition of the Land by highly unlikely means and their physical return to it in greater and greater numbers. That scenario was a reflection of Micah’s words (Micah 5: 1-3) that He would “give them up” (abandon them) until she who was to give birth gave birth – i.e., until Zionism gave birth to the nation of Israel. At that point, they should return physically to the Land of their fathers in great numbers fulfilling the mandate given them in the prophets. ONLY after their physical return could come their spiritual return – a momentous time yet future as described best by the narratives of Zechariah 12 and 13, which draws a compelling picture of this great event of their spiritual return. It is the accounting of their deeply-felt cry, “Blessed is He who cometh in the name of the LORD,” foretold as requisite, as essential, in Luke 13: 35.

Unfortunately, there are some believers who preach that Israel has to “repent” before they can possibly experience the return of Messiah to them. Isaiah 63 and scores of other passages belie this conviction and show that regardless of Israel’s non-meritorious nature today, He will return to them in just the nick of time anyway, not for their sakes, but for His holy name’s sake, to “save them from their enemies and those who hate them” as in Luke 1: 71, 73.

ONLY after that event will they, after seeing His physical return in power and enormous glory, make that key admission ... that sincere, heartfelt confession of Luke 13: 35 ... and again be wholly accepted by Him. 

But there are other permutations of this process of Return – darker developments: these include adverse changes for nations, for world leaders, for world events, and for warfare at large. These will give Believers some concern ... because they can affect us and our families greatly.

If Israel is steadily returning to its original composition at the time of Messiah’s first coming, so also must the world return to a comparable condition.

Two millennia ago the center of Western civilization was Rome and its Empire. The word of God came into that Empire and transformed it from the outside – not to a perfect form, however, for its “Christianity” was already corrupted at the time of Constantine, the first “Christian” emperor. His reign marked some of the formational years of Roman Catholicism – the ultimate despoiler of Truth...

Going further back in “the world’s” condition we regress deeper and deeper into sheer paganism – into the ungodly practices of heathen peoples who never knew God or the principles He taught. The Roman state was void of godly values or principles and lived by the urges of the flesh and human nature.

This status is well on its way to its restitution too.

As the State of Israel was returning to its original status so was the world around it ... and that original state was only pagan.

Experience tells us that when such regression happens the encroaching civilization (or lack thereof!) will see itself as enlightened, as secular (non-religious), as progressive, as revolutionary, as “new” and “exciting.”

Just as in Roman times, when children were slain in their mothers’ wombs, today’s society has enthusiastically embraced the “freedom” of women legally to do the same act. Statistically in the United States, more than 61 million tiny lives have been sacrificed on the altar of abortion since the Supreme Court began to allow it in 1973. And this trend it closely associated with deviations in sexuality, in gender identity, and the institution of marriage and the family.

Not only was Roman civilization at the time of Christ non-Christian but it was also anti-Christian. The contemporary return to Rome is well beyond its beginning. The war on the family values and on godly living is well underway.

And not only that: in addition the world was anti-Israel. We see clearly-stated prophecies which relate worldwide opposition by all the nations to Israel and to Jerusalem in the approaching years – a fact already well established by the machinations of the United Nations Organization which routinely passes resolutions condemning the Jewish state for nearly any activity it undertakes! A tenth of one percent of the world’s population receives the brunt of well over half of the legal vilifications of the UNO!

The departure of the faith from Israel was connected intimately with the events of 70 AD – but it began well before that. It began with the refutation of the man Yeshua of Nazareth, who had revealed Himself as Messiah of Israel in those troublesome times ... and been refuted and pushed aside – crucified.

Forty days later he had not only been raised from the dead and made immortal ... He was taken up into the heavens. “This same Yeshua,” said the angels on Olivet when He was taken up, “shall return in like manner as ye have seen Him go,” thus comforting the disciples who gazed after Him as He ascended out of their sight.

Yeshua is ALSO part of the Return – a vital, inseparable part of it. And the final destiny of the intricate details of the Return revolves around Him and His imminent return to the People of Israel and to the living and dead in Christ.

Because Jerusalem will be His throne, He will return to Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives in His first realizable, identifying revelation of himself to His People – His undeniable identification of Himself to them after He has summarily destroyed their enemies round-about with the sharp Sword of the Spirit ... for it is only AFTER that display of might and authority that Israel as a collective shall “behold Him” (understand just Who He is) and acknowledge His Messiahship over them – His kingship ... His sovereignty – as the One to whom they must now give allegiance.

That will be an event which marks the beginning of the next major stage of “the Return” – that of the world at large! For only He has the power and the authority to carry out the ultimate reforms of the world at large to His Way – to God’s Way. It is He who shall reign over all the earth, coercing all the nations to beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks – inducing in them the contentment to “know war no more” and to enjoy the good-natured pleasures of every man sitting under his own vine and his own fig tree, respecting the inherent rights of all others around them.

Those events are revealed by the prophets of Israel. They are immense in scope. They involve the return of all things back to the original state of things ... to the time before sin and death entered in ... to the time before YHVH planted His Garden East of Eden and placed within it the man and the woman He had created ... to the state when, at the end of the creation days, He confidently pronounced everything to be “very good.”

And that is a return to our Father Himself – to the time of our ultimate unity with Him and His creation, and in perfect harmony with His great Plan of Redemption – even before that benefit was required (for there had been no transgression) ... to the Jerusalem of Revelation 22 which descends from God out of heaven and rests upon the earth forever – to the aion of the aions – eternally.  <>HEL End of (11) The Conclusion. ~3500 words. December 2, 2019. 

N. B. I am not posting here the main source of these voluminous notes – the almost exclusive source (some of the remarks and conclusions are mine alone) – but will reveal it to anyone who sends an email to my mailbox (helafferty@gmail.com) and requests the bibliography. <>HEL.