And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. ... The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.” 7
“So Jerusalem is also a shadow of Heaven?”
“It is. As the earthly Jubilee centers on an earthly Jerusalem, the final Jubilee centers on the heavenly Jerusalem. And it is written that within that Jerusalem . . .
They shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. 8
“Who is it in the Jubilee,” he asked, “that everything returns to?”
“The original owner.”
“And who is the original owner of everything?”
“God.”
“So in the last Jubilee everything will return to Him to whom it belongs. ‘They shall be His people. God Himself will. . . be their God.’ In other words, we will be His, and He also will be ours. He will be our possession.”
“So the ultimate mystery of the Jubilee, the ultimate possession, isn’t so much a land or a kingdom . . . it’s God . . . Himself.”
“Yes,” said the Oracle, “the ultimate exile is not to be separated from a land—but to be separated from God. So too the ultimate return is not a return to a land—but to God. The first possession lost will be the final possession restored. In the end our ultimate possession is God Himself. He’s the missing piece, apart from which everything else is empty . . . and without which nothing else has meaning . . . not even life . . . not even Heaven itself.”
“So the ultimate return is the return of God to us and us to God.”
“Yes. Each is the missing possession of the other. And in the Jubilee each shall return to his own possession. We shall be His, and He shall be ours.”
“And what happens after that?”
“Did you see anything in your vision after the seventh door?”
“There was no other door.”
“There was no other door because there is no after that. On the seventh door was a symbol. It was the Hebrew letter ayin. Ayin begins the Hebrew word olam. Olam stands for that which is everlasting, eternal, forever. The last Jubilee is of the olam. It has no end. It has no after that. The last Jubilee is forever.”
“I have a question.”
“Ask.”
“If the Jubilee is the time that each returns to his possession, then if one returns to God now, then the Jubilee can in a sense begin now?”
“Yes,” said the Oracle, “for those who return to God, the Jubilee for them begins here and now.”
“When one returns to God.”
“Not when one returns, but only when a specific one returns to God.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know who that particular one is?”
“No.”
“It’s you. That particular one is you. It is only when you return to God that the Jubilee can begin. And do you know the only place that this one can return to God?”
“No.”
“Here.”
“Here?”
“In whatever here that particular one is . . . here, and as you are. That’s the only one and the only place. And do you know the only time in which it can happen?”
“When?”
“Now,” he said. “Never another time. Never tomorrow. You can only come to Him when the time is now. No other time is real. So the only one who can come is you . . . the only place is here . . . and the only time is now.
“And so the voice of God would now call to the one who is here and now and to each one who would hear His voice wherever and whenever they are . . . The voice of God would say to you this . . .
I have known you from the beginning, from before you took your first step, before you breathed your first breath, before you were even conceived. I have seen all your tears and have known all your sorrows and wounds and pains, all your longings and hopes, all your fears, your dreams and heartbreaks, your burdens and weariness, your times of asking Me why, your cries of loneliness and emptiness, your times of separation, your mourning for what was lost, your weaknesses and failings, your wanderings, your sins and shame . . . And I have still loved you with an everlasting love . . .
And now I call you to leave the darkness and all that is passed and all that I never willed or purposed for your life . . . that the days of your separation would come to an end. It is time now to return. It is time to come home . . . to enter the inheritance of blessing you never knew but were born to enter. It is time for your Jubilee.
Come to Me. And I will not turn you away but will receive you. And I will wipe away all your tears. I will forgive all your sins. I will heal all your wounds. And I will turn all your sorrows into joy. And you will forget your days of darkness and wandering, the days of your separation. And I will make all things new.
And I will bring you into a land where the crippled walk, where deserts bloom, where the blind see, where the defiled become pure, and where that which was lost is found again. I will bring you to a place you have never known and yet have always longed to be, to your Promised Land. And I will never leave you. And you will never again know what it is to be lost. For in that day, you will have come home. You will be Mine, and I will be yours . . . forever.”
“He didn’t say a word after that. Nor did I. I couldn’t. It was enough to just take it all in. And there was nothing I could think of to say that wouldn’t have sounded inappropriate or inadequate in the wake of what had been spoken. There was nothing else to say.
“So we just sat there in silence as the wind swept over the mountaintop and as the light of the rising sun broke through the cloud beneath us.”
Chapter 63
AFTER THE END
SO THAT WAS the last time you saw the Oracle?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever go back to that mountain?”
“No. I knew if I did, I wouldn’t find him there.”
“What about his tent?”
“I did go back once to look . . . but it was gone. He had moved on.”
“Where do you think he is?”
“I have no idea but somewhere receiving revelations or giving them.”
“And what about you? The revelations weren’t just about the big and cosmic things; they were also personal . . . to you.”
“And to each.”
“Yes, but also to you.”
“If you mean, did I come to God? The answer is yes.”
“And you never went back home?”
“Not yet.”
“What about the visions? Did they continue?”
“No. I don’t believe they were supposed to. I saw what I was meant to see, and I was shown what I was meant to be shown.”
“But you can’t just keep it to yourself. It’s too big, and it involves the world . . . and everyone.”
“No, I don’t believe it was just for me. I wrote it all down. And now you know it as well.”
“But it was given to you. You were the one who came here seeking truth and the meaning of the vision that started it all.”
“But you came here seeking truth and revelation as well.”
“Yes, but I didn’t actually come here to discover what I discovered. I never expected to be shown what you revealed to me. But once you began, I knew I had to hear everything.”
“Then why did you actually come here?”
There was silence for a moment. He hesitated to answer.
“Actually . . . ”
“Yes?”
“Actually . . . ” he paused again, “I had a vision . . . ”
The statement produced a silence much longer than that which had preceded it. The traveler waited anxiously for a response from the man on the mountain, who was now looking out into the distance, as if deliberating in deep thought. Finally he spoke.
“So then,” he said, turning his gaze away from the distance and toward the one awaiting h
is answer, “where shall we begin?”
NOTES
CHAPTER 2
1. 2 Samuel 16:23, emphasis added.
2. Romans 3:2.
CHAPTER 6
1. Deuteronomy 28:64, emphasis added.
2. Leviticus 25:10.
3. Deuteronomy 30:3.
CHAPTER 9
1. Deuteronomy 29:22–23, author’s translation.
2. Deuteronomy 30:3.
3. Deuteronomy 29:22, emphasis added.
4. Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2010), 362, https://www.amazon.com/Innocents-Abroad-Wordsworth-Classics/dp/1840226366.
5. Deuteronomy 29:23.
6. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 320, emphasis added.
7. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 313, emphasis added.
8. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 396, emphasis added.
9. Deuteronomy 29:23, NASB, emphasis added.
10. Deuteronomy 29:22–23, CEV, emphasis added.
11. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 387, emphasis added.
12. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 393, emphasis added.
13. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 309, emphasis added.
14. Deuteronomy 29:23, NASB.
15. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 311, emphasis added.
16. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 326, emphasis added.
17. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 311, emphasis added.
18. Deuteronomy 29:23, emphasis added.
19. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 396, emphasis added.
20. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 391, emphasis added.
21. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 309, emphasis added.
22. Deuteronomy 29:23, AMP.
23. Deuteronomy 29:23, NLT.
24. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 350.
25. Deuteronomy 29:27, NASB, emphasis added.
26. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 396, emphasis added.
27. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 397, emphasis added.
CHAPTER 10
1. Zechariah 2:1–2.
2. Zechariah 1:16–17.
CHAPTER 11
1. Deuteronomy 29:22–23, author’s translation.
2. Al Hamichya (Blessing After Certain Foods).
CHAPTER 13
1. Leviticus 21:24, KJ21, emphasis added.
2. Isaiah 62:4, author’s translation.
3. Jeremiah 32:44.
CHAPTER 15
1. Charles Warren, The Land of Promise; or, Turkey’s Guarantee (London: George Bell & Sons, 1875), https://books.google.com/books?id=1YH7CkC5RgMC&q.
2. Warren, The Land of Promise, 3.
3. Isaiah 62:4, NASB, emphasis added.
CHAPTER 18
1. Arthur James Balfour, letter to Lord Rothschild, November 2, 1917, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/balfour.asp.
CHAPTER 19
1. Genesis 12:1, emphasis added.
2. Genesis 12:2.
3. Genesis 12:7, emphasis added.
4. Genesis 13:15.
5. Genesis 13:17.
6. Genesis 15:7.
7. Genesis 15:18.
8. Genesis 17:8.
9. Genesis 15:16.
CHAPTER 20
1. Earl Wavell, Allenby, A Study in Greatness: The Biography of Field-Marshall Viscount Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe (n.p., Pickle Partners Publishing, 2016), chapter 1, https://books.google.com/books?id=rlJvCwAAQBAJ&pg.
2. Genesis 21:31, emphasis added.
CHAPTER 21
1. John Mordike, “General Sir Edmund Allenby’s Joint Operations in Palestine, 1917–18,” Commonwealth of Australia, 2008, http://airpower.airforce.gov.au/APDC/media/PDF-Files/Working%20Papers/WP06-General-Sir-Edmund-Allenby-s-JointOperations-in-Palestine-1917-18.pdf.
2. Walter Raleigh, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1935), 248, https://archive.org/details/warinairbeingsto05rale/page/248.
3. Isaiah 31:5, KJV, emphasis added.
4. Isaiah 31:5, KJV, emphasis added.
5. “14 Squadron,” Royal Air Force, accessed June 5, 2019, https://www.raf.mod.uk/our-organisation/squadrons/14-squadron/, emphasis added.
6. Isaiah 33:20.
7. Isaiah 40:1–2, emphasis added.
CHAPTER 22
1. Daniel 12:12, author’s translation.
CHAPTER 23
1. Haggai 2:10, 15, 18–19.
2. Haggai 2:22.
3. Haggai 2:22, emphasis added.
4. Zechariah 2:12, emphasis added. Note that the haftarah for the first Sabbath of Hanukah, Zechariah 2:14–4:7, uses Masoretic verse numbering. Zechariah 2:12 is Zechariah 2:16 with Masoretic verse numbering.
CHAPTER 25
1. Jerry Klinger, “The Messiah and Theodor Herzl,” Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, accessed June 6, 2019, http://www.jewish-american-society-forhistoric-preservation.org/images/The_longing_makes_the_Messiah.pdf.
2. Theodor Herzl, as quoted in Evelyn Gordon, “Warping Herzl’s Legacy on Legitimacy,” Jerusalem Post, February 3, 2014, https://www.jpost.com/Experts/Warping-Herzls-legacy-on-legitimacy-340205, emphasis added.
3. Chaim Weizmann, “Fifty Years of Zionism” (speech, Jubilee of the First Zionist Congress, Basel, Switzerland, August 31, 1947), https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00072101/00001/1j.
4. United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, “Report to the General Assembly,” vol. 1, September 3, 1947, https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/07175DE9FA2DE563852568D3006E10F3.
5. Leviticus 25:10.
CHAPTER 26
1. Laurent Rucker, “Moscow’s Surprise: The Soviet-Israeli Alliance of 1947–1949,” Cold War International History Project, accessed June 6, 2019, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/CWIHP_WP_461.pdf.
2. Genesis 32:9, author’s translation, emphasis added.
3. Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, May 14, 1948, https://www.knesset.gov.il/docs/eng/negilat_eng.htm.
4. Genesis 35:12, author’s translation, emphasis added.
5. Genesis 32:28, author’s paraphrase, emphasis added.
CHAPTER 27
1. Isaiah 40:8, author’s translation.
2. Isaiah 11:12.
CHAPTER 28
1. Ezekiel 37:4, NASB.
2. Jeremiah 30:18, NASB.
3. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, as quoted in “The History of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda Hebrew,” Lev Software, accessed June 25, 2019, http://www.levsoftware.com/history.htm.
4. Jeremiah 30:3.
CHAPTER 29
1. Written on the Cyrus Cylinder is “I am Cyrus, king of the world, great king, legitimate king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four corners of the earth . . . ” As cited in William J. Duiker, Jackson J. Spielvogel, World History (Boston, Cengage Learning, 2016), 31, https://books.google.com/books?id=hqKaBAAAQBAJ&pg.
2. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Article 13, United Nations, December 10, 1948, https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/.
3. Earl G. Harrison, “Report of Earl G. Harrison,” August 24, 1945, https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/displaced-persons/resourc1.htm.
4. Harry S. Truman, “Letter to Prime Minister Attlee Concerning the Need for Resettlement of Jewish Refugees in Palestine,” August 31, 1945, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=481&st=&st1=.
5. Deuteronomy 30:3–5, emphasis added.
6. Mark Twain, “Note to the Young People’s Society, Greenpoint Presbyterian Church,” February 16, 1901, http://www.twainquotes.com/Right.html.
7. “Truman Recognizing Israel,” December 6, 1964, https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4010891/truman-recognizing-israel.
8. Michael T. Benson, Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), 190, https://books.google.com/books?id=jmoab5xc9ogC&pg.
9. Benson, Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel, 190, quoting Ezra 1:2, KJV.
> 10. Benson, Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel, 190.
11. Benson, Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel, 189.
CHAPTER 31
1. Amos 9:11.
2. Amos 9:11.
3. Amos 9:11.
4. Amos 9:14, NIV, emphasis added.
5. Amos 9:14.
6. Amos 9:14.
7. “Scroll of Israel’s Independence,” May 14, 1948, http://makomisrael.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/talkspace-Israel-Full-Session-Line-up-03-03-08.pdf
8. Amos 9:11.
9. Amos 9:14, NIV.
10. “Scroll of Israel’s Independence.”
11. Amos 9:14.
12. “Scroll of Israel’s Independence.”
13. Amos 9:14.
14. “Scroll of Israel’s Independence.”
15. Amos 9:15.
CHAPTER 32
1. Leviticus 25:10, author’s translation, emphasis added.
2. Leviticus 25:13, author’s translation, emphasis added.
CHAPTER 34
1. Jeremiah 31:8–10.
CHAPTER 35
1. Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, 7.10, http://sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/war-7.htm.
2. Hugh Orgel, “Yadin Buried as Herzog Calls Him ‘Architect of War and of Peace,’” Daily News Bulletin, July 2, 1984, http://pdfs.jta.org/1984/1984-07-02_125.pdf?_ga=2.223402332.637821424.1559914138-1078271779.1559914138.
3. Ezekiel 37:1.
4. Ezekiel 37:3.
5. Ezekiel 37:7–8, 10–12.
CHAPTER 36
1. Naomi Shemer, “Jerusalem of Gold,” 1967, http://www.tousauxbalkans.net/Yerushalayim_Shel_Zahav.
2. Psalm 137:1–3, 5.
3. Gamal Abdel Nasser, as quoted in David Remnick, “The Seventh Day,” New Yorker, May 21, 2007, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/05/28/the-seventhday.
4. “Arab Threats Against Israel,” CAMERA, accessed June 7, 2019, http://www.sixdaywar.org/content/israel.asp.
5. “The Six-Day War: Background & Overview,” Jewish Virtual Library, accessed June 7, 2019, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-six-daywar.
6. Mordechai Gur, as quoted in “1967: Reunification of Jerusalem,” CAMERA, accessed June 7, 2019, http://www.sixdaywar.org/content/ReunificationJerusalem.asp, emphasis added.
7. Moshe Dayan, as quoted in Mitchell Hurvitz, “Column: A Return to the Holy Land,” Greenwich Sentinel, January 15, 2017, https://www.greenwichsentinel.com/2017/01/15/column-a-return-to-the-holy-land/, emphasis added.
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