THE GREAT JUBILEE

  By

Bertrand L. Comparet

All Christians should know we have reached the place where this age is just about finished. It is at the point now where it is destroying itself. The one hope of civilization remaining is the second coming of Yahshua our Savior. Naturally everybody has been wishing for this to happen since Yahshua went away. Anything that may lead to a little clue, as to when we can expect Him to return, should be welcomed.

I have often taught there is as much Christianity in the Old Testament as there is in the New Testament. It is not as easy to understand because it is in the form of prophecy and symbols, in the Old Testament rituals. However, it is all there, once you understand the meaning of these rituals, in the very earliest days these rituals were understood.

Moses who did not originate the law or the rituals, but who crystallized them into a specific code, understood the full significance of all that he set up. Later this knowledge was lost, as is the fate of all deeply religious truths. When we learn to look for these truths, the Bible becomes a new book. All the Old Testament rituals were symbolic of Yahshua, either His first coming or His second coming.

There were four festivals in the spring. These festivals were called Passover, first fruits, feast of unleavened bread and the feast of weeks, now called Pentecost. These were symbolic of Yahshua's first coming, crucifixion, resurrection and His gift to us of the spirit. It is worthy to note that Yahshua fulfilled the reality of each one of these, on the exact day of the festival, which symbolized it. This should not surprise us, the Bible is His book, and Yahweh wrote it through His secretaries, the prophets.

  The three fall festivals are symbolic of His second coming. I therefore feel very confident that on the particular year He returns, Yahshua will fulfill the reality of each of these festivals, at the exact time of the festival that symbolizes it. To fully understand this we have to go back a little bit.

Adam was not the first man, as I documented in the study "Adam Was Not The First Man". The Bible recognizes there were pre Adamic races here for vast periods of time. There is no conflict between true science and the truth of what is in the Bible. Satan had been the governor of this planet, possibly of some others also. He was rightfully so under the appointment of Yahweh, until Satan forfeited his right to rule by rebelling.

Adam was sent here to throw Satan out and take his place as governor of this planet, ruling it in obedience to the commands of Yahweh. Adam was just like we are, easy going, liking to avoid conflict, so he made the same foolish mistakes that so many of us are making today. The thinking of today, as it was then is, "Why can't we have peaceful co-existence with evil? Let's talk things over with Satan and his followers the Jews. Let's agree not to be too harsh with each other, after all, isn't tolerance a virtue?". It goes on and on. Of course you know what the consequences of this type of thought and action are. This was rebellion on the part of Adam, consequently he forfeited all that had been given to him and which we might have inherited from him.

The Bible records that Adam was made in the image of Yahweh. Are we today in the image of Yahweh? Does Yahweh get tired, sick or grow old and finally die? These things happen to us, so you no longer have the image of Yahweh, you have a pretty faded copy of it, because Adam lost these glories. Adam was told that as part of the curse, which was placed upon him, because of his violation of Yahweh's laws, he and his descendants would have to earn their living laboriously. Whether you earn your living plowing a field or working at a desk, it is still plenty of work.

These people that assure you, very cheerfully, that lots of work is a great blessing, do not convince me at all. The Bible tells us this hard work is a curse. Adam and his descendants would have died of despair long before now, if they had not been given some reason to hope that eventually this trouble would be straightened out, and things would be put back as they were before Adam lost it all with his disobedience to Yahweh.

Sometimes, if you have a symbol to remind you, it is easier to keep in mind the reality. On the other hand, some stupid people fail to realize what it symbolizes and they miss the point. While the Bible does not record it all, we know that Adam and Eve were given pretty complete information about what was going to happen. Genesis 3:15 is the first promise of the coming Redeemer, but there was more than this. It is quite obvious Yahweh also told them that the Redeemer, was going to come in human form as a descendant of Eve.

Much of this is lost in the mistranslations, which garble up the King James translation of the Bible so badly. If you have a Scofield Notes edition of the Bible, even the marginal notes help to straighten things out. The text quotes Eve, when she had given birth to Cain, as saying, "I have gotten a man (i.e., a man child) from the Lord". However, you will notice that in the Scofield note in the margin, the literal meaning of what she said is, "I have gotten a man-child, even Yahweh".

Eve had been told that a descendant of hers would be Yahweh Himself, taking on a human body to do the work of redemption. Here was a descendant of hers, here was Yahweh already come in the flesh. We know she was mistaken, but we can't blame her for being optimistic. It is therefore obvious that she had been told more than is recorded, in these early chapters of Genesis.

Then take the matter of animal sacrifices. The symbolism of this is that the Israelite, realizing that he has sinned, is making a public proclamation that, "I know I have committed a sin, I know the consequence of sin is death, this means my death unless another pays the penalty for me". The people didn't originally think there was any merit in cutting the throat of a sheep. The Book of Hebrews indicates this. The death of this offering of the lamb was to act out a charade, to act out the belief that by this violent death, the shedding of another's blood, the penalty of death would be lifted from you.

The first detailed mention of this was by Moses. As the Book of Hebrews records, when Abel brought a blood sacrifice, "By faith Abel offered unto Yahweh a better sacrifice than Cain." You cannot have faith in something you have never heard of, so obviously this had also been explained. Adam, Eve and their descendants were under this terrible burden of having to earn their living in a very hostile environment.

The promise was given that eventually this burden of hard labor would be lifted and they would have a period of rest again. The weekly Sabbath was a reminder of this promise. Six days you work hard, but on the seventh day you had a day of rest as a reminder that there is an age of rest coming eventually. Then the scope of this promise is expanded.

Every seventh year was a year of rest. You do not get much pleasure out of just one day of rest, so you get a seventh year of rest. You also got one more thing, you were under an obligation to make an honest repayment of your debts as well as you could. If in spite of all honest effort some of your debt proved unpayable, this debt was canceled in that seventh year, the year of release.

Yahweh promised the creditor, "If you will cancel the unpaid debt in the seventh year, I will make you so prosperous, that you will have a lot more than you would have if you had tried to collect a few pennies from a broke, bankrupt debtor". Yahweh paid our debts for us. What is the application of this on the great scale? We are debtors to our God, Yahweh. We owe Him the debt of obedience and we haven't met this obligation have we? As a result of our disobedience, our sins, the death penalty looms ahead of us. But Yahweh said He would pay our debts for us. Then after seven of these seven-year periods (49 years), seven being a year of release, we come to the fiftieth year, the year of the jubilee.

Do you know what caused the decay and fall of the Roman Empire? They started as a nation of hardy, independent farmers and they conquered the entire world they knew about. Then problems came about that have plagued farmers all through the centuries. There was a year of poor crops and the farmers had to borrow money from the moneylenders, ancestors of the same moneylenders we have today. When these poor farmers weren't able to repay these loans, the moneylenders foreclosed on the farms. Then the farmer and his family drifted to the city as homeless and landless and they became rabble. You know what happened to Rome after that. It was Yahweh's intention that this should never happen to His people. The farm was the source of living for yourself, your family, and their families. You could lose it neither by foreclosure because of debt, nor by a voluntary sale.

If you became poor, had to sell your farm or borrow money on it, and then lost it by foreclosure, there was a remedy so the farm would not be lost permanently. The only thing you could mortgage or sell was the right to use the farm to raise and take crops until the next year of jubilee. This year of jubilee might be fifty years away, it might be next year, but just until that next jubilee was all that you could sell or all that you could lose. In the meanwhile, if you became prosperous enough to redeem your land, you could do so.

Let's suppose you lost or sold your farm when there was ten years to go until the next jubilee and after two years you had enough money to redeem it. Your creditor had already gotten two out of the ten years he had loaned or paid for the land. So, you paid him eight-tenths of what you had sold it for. You were buying back the unexpired portion and you again took possession of your own land. If you didn't have enough money to do this, it could be redeemed for you, but only by you’re nearest relative.

Do you know the difference between mere salvation, which means only continued existence, and redemption, which is the restoration to us of all that our ancestor Adam lost? We know that Yahweh is our heavenly father. Yahshua was called our brother, the first born of many brethren. Our brother is certainly one of our nearest relatives, so the symbolism of the Bible is fully carried out.

All of these facts were originally well known, and then gradually the rituals became mechanical. This is the tendency of a professional priesthood. Finally Yahshua had to say to His disciples, "O fools and slow of heart, to believe all that the prophets have written," and they had been living and studying with Yahshua for over three years. This is equivalent to about 3,000 years of study in the modern theological seminaries.

The fall festivals were symbolic of the second coming of Yahshua the Christ. The Hebrew calendar was a lunar calendar, the new moon beginning each month. This does not fit in with either a four week, twenty-eight-day month, or a thirty day calendar month. One lunar cycle is twenty-nine days, twelve hours and a few minutes, so it is always getting out of step with things. The result was, a lunar year worked out as some 354 days. So, years would go by and the calendar would be a month out of step with a solar year of 365 1/4 days. Because of this an extra month was added to bring the calendar up to date.

The Hebrew day began at sunset, not at midnight, the new moon started each month. When you look at the calendar today and you see marked on it, new moon, that is the astronomical new moon computed at the point where it is exactly opposite the full moon. This is as close to the sun as it can get consequently it is invisible. You cannot see the moon because of the dazzle of the brilliant sun. By the time the sun has set enough for that dazzle to fade, the moon has set also. The Hebrew new moon was the following evening when you could see that thin crescent of the moon up in the sky just after sunset.

These ancient people also recognized two different starting points for the year. In the spring, with the month of Nisan, they began a year. Their two different calendars were generally called the sacred year and the civil year. There seems to be some disagreement among scholars as to which one is which. Perhaps the better view is that the year beginning in the spring was the sacred year and the year beginning in the fall was the civil year. The Hebrew month Nisan began the sacred year. None of their months correspond exactly with any of our calendar months. They all began somewhere in the middle of our months and ran over until they were in the middle of the next month.

The Hebrew month of Tishri began in our month of September and continued over into our month of October and Tishri began the civil year. Tishri begins very close to the fall equinox and that was the ordinal ancient starting point of the year. Later, upon Israel's coming out of Egypt in the exodus, Yahweh gave them a new spring equinox calendar, which should properly be called their sacred year.

There are three festivals occurring in this month of Tishri, beginning when that thin little crescent of the new moon could be seen in the sky. Then on the tenth day of Tishri, there was the Day of Atonement. On the fifteenth day of Tishri began the weeklong feast of tabernacles. Here we have some of the deepest symbolism of the entire Bible. As I have taught in the past, these three festivals are symbolic of the return of Yahshua the Christ.

In Matthew chapter 24, the disciples asked Yahshua, "What shall the sign of Thy coming, and the end of the age?". Yahshua gave them seven sign to watch for as warnings that, when you see all seven of these, His return would be very near. At the present time I cannot go into detail of what these signs are, because this is a lesson in itself. Almost any Biblical subject you choose dovetails around into other interesting subjects. It is very hard to pick out what you can teach on in the time people can sit still and listen.

Within our lifetime we have seen the first six of these seven signs of the return of Yahshua the Christ. The seventh sign is, "The abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place". The holy place is where King Solomon's temple was. Today the mosque of Omar, also called the Dome of the Rock, stands on this site. This is the second most holy site for the Moslems. When the Jews take control of this site, watch out!

Yahshua went on, after listing these seven signs of what to watch for, He told them they would see in the heavens the sign of the Son of man coming in the clouds with power and great glory. Obviously this is something to look for.

The seven signs Yahshua foretold are to warn you to be ready, it can happen almost any time now! It could be tomorrow; it could be ten years from now or even much longer. Sometime soon it is going to happen. When you see in the heavens the sign of the Son of man coming, this warns us it has already happened.

Let's look at the symbolism on the small scale, the prophetic scale, and see what this means on the great scale of reality. This was the ritual for the New Year. They knew from the calendar this day was approaching. The question was, what was the moment of time that marked the end of the old year and the beginning of the New Year?

Today we look at our watches and wait for them to show midnight. The ancients looked in the sky to see the new moon, because this would mark the instant of the ending of the old year and the beginning of the New Year. They would put watchers up in towers in the city, or on a nearby hill if it was a small village, up where local lights would not dazzle their eyes and nothing would be in the way of their vision.

They were watching and when anybody saw that thin, hairline crescent of moon in the sky, he set up a shout and the people of the village took up with shouting and blowing of trumpets, making great whoopee. Now we do it at midnight, then they did it at sunset.

On the small scale we looked in the heavens for the sign of the ending of a period of time, a year, and the beginning of a new period, another year, but what did it symbolize? We were to look in the heavens to see there the sign announcing the ending of an age and the beginning of a new age. Certainly this is what the return of our Savior Yahshua is going to mean. This will be the end of this age of tribulation and punishment. It will be the beginning of Yahshua's 1,000 years of reign on earth as King of Kings. The symbolism of this is very plain. Because it is a lunar calendar, always getting out of step with the solar calendar, the New Year never starts on the same day of the week in its successive years. For any particular year, you will have to get a calendar that has the Hebrew calendar dates on it, to find when the Hebrew New Year is. This marks the first day of the first month of the New Year, the New Year’s Day.

When we go on to the tenth day of this month Tishri, for the Day of Atonement, here we do come to the deepest symbolism in the Bible. It would be good to read the Book of Hebrews, in the New Testament, because it undertakes to explain a great many of the rituals and the symbolism in the Old Testament.

It is fashionable in most of today's churches to say, "Well, the Old Testament is only a record of Yahweh's mistakes and failures. It had to be thrown in the garbage can so He could whittle it down to a new religion that was simple enough that He could make it stick". Our God did not make any mistakes, He was right the first time and He had nothing to correct. The Old Testament is as Christian as the New Testament.

The Book of Hebrews tells us that our real high priest, our permanent high priest, is Yahshua the Christ. Under the Old Testament a man was high priest but he had only a limited lifetime and then died. Then somebody else had to be appointed high priest in his place. This high priest was doing on a small scale, the symbolic scale, and the things, which were to remind Israel of what Yahshua was doing on the great scale of reality.

Since the high priest was acting out the part of Yahshua, something had to be done to set this high priest apart from other men. It was necessary to give some indication that he was to have some degree of majesty and glory that ordinary men did not have. This is a hopeless task. The best they could do was to give him a splendid uniform, which no one else is allowed to wear, so this is what they did. The high priest's robes were magnificently embroidered. On his breast he had the breastplate, the plates of gold, each containing a jewel engraved with the name of one of the tribes of Israel. The turban on his head bore an engraved plate on the front of it, also beautifully engraved. It was about all that could be done to indicate that here was a man with a degree of glory that his fellows did not share.

Now we come to the ritual of the animal sacrifices, the meaning of this is very clear. Any time during the year an Israelite, who was conscious that he had committed a sin, could go to the temple, offer a sacrifice as a sin offering, and this relieved him of the burden of his sin. He went away cleansed, the load was lifted off his shoulders. However, this wasn't the end of it. This sin still had to be answered for, even though not by him. So the symbolism was that the sins of all the people were gradually accumulating in the temple throughout the year.

The Day of Atonement symbolized the great judgment, which is to take place. The high priest was just a mortal man he had his own sins. Before he could participate in a ritual where he acted out the part of Yahshua, he first had to offer a sacrifice to cleanse himself of his own sins so that he was fit for the next few hours to go ahead with his job, so this is what he did. Then he offered another sacrifice for the cleansing of the temple. This wasn't too different from other times of the year. Now we come to the part where the deep significance lies.

During the year any individual Israelite could bring his own sacrifice and offer it as his sin offering. This was his offering for his family and himself only. On the Day of Atonement, two goats were chosen on behalf of the entire nation. Mistranslation in the King James Bible has garbled this beyond understanding and belief. In the King James Bible it is recorded that of these two goats, one was chosen by lot to be a sacrifice for the people and one goat was to be a scapegoat. This is a meaningless phrase, which doesn't exist in the Hebrew nor is there any equivalent of it. This is simply some clergyman's idea of how Yahweh should have written it. What the correct translation records is, "One goat as a sacrifice on behalf of the people and one goat for Azazel". Who or what is Azazel?

The Bible itself doesn't record who Azazel is but, there is a book written back in Bible times which, while I don't give it the credit for being the divinely inspired book the Bible is, it is still valuable for recording some things the people of that day knew and understood. By reading this book, we can read the Bible with the knowledge they had when they were reading it in that day.

The Bible records there was a rebellion among the angels in heaven. About one-third of these angels rebelled and were thrown out of heaven and cast down on earth as a result of this. The Book of Enoch records this in some detail.

The first six chapters of Enoch record the conspiracy among the angels to lead this rebellion. It gives the names of about twenty or so of the principal ringleaders in the rebellion. One of these rebellious angels is named Azazel, and then it goes on to record how they came down to earth. Remember how the Bible speaks of the angels who left their first estate, and so on.

These rebellious angels came down to earth, began mingling with people, and began teaching them wicked things to do. It goes on to record how Azazel had taught much wickedness, including teaching the people the art of warfare. This warfare was to fight wars for the purpose of conquest, looting their neighbors and that sort of action.

With all the wickedness taught by this angel and the other wicked angels, the earth was in a very bad condition. Enoch records that people were dying in great numbers and their bitter cries of complaint were going up to heaven. Because of this Yahweh sent a committee of four archangels to investigate and to report to Him how bad the situation was. I will admit that this seems to me a roundabout way of doing it, so I'm not citing the Book of Enoch for anything more than who Azazel was.

The Book of Enoch records these angels investigators looked the situation over to make a report to Yahweh. They reported the situation was every bit as bad as the complaints of the people indicated. These angels reported, "Thou seest what Azazel hath done, teaching all wickedness in the earth". Yahweh said, "Therefore unto Azazel ascribe all sin".

Certainly individual people have committed individual sins, but they have done so because Azazel had started this process by teaching people to sin. Therefore he is responsible not only for what he has done, but for what he has taught people to do. Azazel bears the responsibility for their sins as well as that of his own personal ones. Yahweh then tells one of the archangels, "You take a chain and tie up Azazel and cast him into a pit out in the desert. Let him stay there and think it over for awhile, until I get around to his final judgment." Now we know who Azazel is.

Two goats have been selected, one as a sacrifice on behalf of the people of Israel and one for Azazel. The high priest, up to this time, has been wearing his majestic robes of office. This was symbolic of Yahshua when He had all the majesty of the Godhead in heaven, before He hid that in human form to come here among us upon the earth.

Now the high priest lays aside the majestic robes, bathes and puts on clean, white linen robes. This is symbolic of spotless, sinless purity, because Yahshua though a man like ourselves, had no sin whatsoever of His own. The high priest is now symbolically acting out what Yahshua accomplished by His first coming. The first goat, the one chosen on behalf of the people, is sacrificed. Then the high priest takes some of the blood. Here we had better go into a little architecture.

From the time of the tent tabernacle on the exodus, right on down to the great stone temples in Jerusalem, the layout was always on a similar plan. There was a large outer court into which the people could come with their sacrifices. Then there was an inner court, limited to the priests, which contained the altar; the priests offered the sacrifices upon this altar. This was the holy place; behind this was the holy of holies. This was a little chamber about thirty Feet Square; in this was the mercy seat. Remember when Moses was up on Mount Sinai, Yahweh gave him two stone tablets upon which He had written the Ten Commandments.

The people built a chest, which the King James Bible calls an ark. It was a wooden chest covered with gold inside and out. It was about four feet long, about two feet high and about two and a half feet wide. In this Ark of the Covenant was kept the stone tablets, written by Yahweh, and a golden vase containing a sample of the manna with which the Israelites were fed during the forty years of wandering in the wilderness. There was also a section of Aaron's staff, which budded, to show he was Yahweh's choice for high priest. In the holy of holies this chest, the Ark of the Covenant, was set flat on the ground. At each end of it was a great carved figure of an angel with outstretched wings.

These angels were huge figures, about fifteen feet from wing tip to wing tip. Each stood with one outstretched wing touching the sidewall of the room and the other wing outstretched over the Ark of the Covenant and the mercy seat. The two angelic statues were identically positioned at each end of the ark, so their outstretched wings formed a canopy over the mercy seat. Yahweh had said, "I will be there in the holy of holies sitting upon the mercy seat when you come in with your sacrifices".

Ordinary people couldn't go into the holy of holies, only the high priest. The priesthood was comprised of the tribe of Levi. The priests themselves couldn't go into the holy of holies ever, excepting the high priest. The high priest could enter the holy of holies one day only; this was the Day of Atonement, because he was going into the direct presence of Yahweh.

The high priest, after putting on his plain white linen robes, sacrificed the goat, which was the sin offering for the people. Then he took some of the goat's blood, went into the holy of holies, and sprinkled a few drops of the blood in front of and upon the mercy seat. This was a reminder that the people's sins had been paid for by a death, a brutal and bloody death. This had paid in full for all the sins of the people.

Now that we understand Christianity, we know that it was the death of Yahshua upon the cross, the shedding of His blood that paid the penalty for our sins. It is pointed out in the Book of Hebrews, that Yahshua is our real high priest. His going into the real holy of holies, into the presence and person of Yahweh, bearing His own blood not just the blood of a goat, is the proof that our sins have been paid for.

The high priest then comes back out of the holy of holies and again puts on his majestic robes of office, as Yahshua returning from where he had been in heaven. In Acts 3:21 the Bible tells us, "...whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things." This is the restitution of all the good things that we lost by the disobedience of Adam and ourselves since then. Yahshua isn't coming back as just a man, to be brutally kicked around and murdered. He is coming with all the power and majesty of the Godhead.

During all this time, the goat selected for Azazel has been standing there and has not been sacrificed. Now the high priest lays his hands over the head of this goat and he confesses over the head of this goat, all the sins of all the people. All these sins have been accumulating at the temple for the whole year; symbolic of the entire age we have been living through. All the sins of the people are laid upon the head of this goat. Then a man selected for the job, takes the goat out to the edge of town, gives him a good swift kick to start him going, and sends him into the wilderness.

Remember that out there in the desert in a pit is Azazel, confined in chains, awaiting his judgment. The message sent to Azazel by the goat is, "Look Azazel, all these sins are yours, and for you there is no sacrifice. You must pay for all of these sins". This is indeed fair enough; otherwise there wouldn't be any justice. All this is done on the tenth day of the autumn month of Tishri.

The fifteenth day of Tishri starts the feast of tabernacles, which was the most joyous of all the festivals of Israel. The people spent this week in tents instead of their comfortable homes. This was perhaps a reminder this was how they had to live during their forty years of wandering in the exodus. Prophecy does not look backward prophecy looks forward. I really think it is symbolic of what we are going to experience when our cities have been destroyed by atom bombs. We are going to find the best shelters we can, which are going to be very poor for a while, until Yahweh restores order.

The Israelite civilization was agricultural. The Israelites did not make their living as stockbrokers or moneylenders; they were out in the field cultivating the land. They planted in the spring and harvested in the fall. The grains crops were harvested first, and the grapes the last crop of all to be harvested. When the grapes were trodden and the juice was pressed to make into wine, to preserve it, all of their year's work was over. Then for the first time, a farmer could sit down and draw a deep breath. There was nothing more for him to do immediately. He could feast on the earnings of a season's hard work.

Let's go back and study the full significance of all of this. Yahshua said in Matthew 24:30, "We shall see the sign of the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with great power and glory". On the smaller scale, the symbolic scale, we look to the heavens for the sign that the period we have been in is ended and the new period, the new age, is beginning. There is no way to tell the exact year Yahshua is going to return.

In Mark 13:32 Yahshua said, "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, but only the Father". It is worthy of note that the Greek word translated here as knoweth, basically means to know intuitively. Had they meant that no man knoweth by study, they would have used a different word. We aren't entirely discouraged in our study of the scriptures, even though we may not know the exact day and hour.

In the year Yahshua comes back, I am absolutely confident that on the Hebrew's new year day, we will see in the heavens the sign of the Son of man coming with power and great glory.

Continuing on to the tenth day of Tishri, what has happened? Judgment has been passed and executed upon Yahweh's enemies. So, on the tenth day of Tishri, in the particular year Yahshua comes back, He will have arrived and executed judgment upon His enemies. I am not trying to tell you the hour nor even the day, but I am telling you about a ten-day period, which I am confident will include the exact day of His arrival.

All through this long age we have been working hard and doing our best to grow crops of one kind or another, and the children of Satan have been stealing these fruits of our labor, haven't they? We have had an age of terribly hard work, in which the product of our work has not been for us; it has been taken from us. But Yahweh has said that He keeps books of account, and He is just. What we have earned will be given to us when this age comes to an end.

Our period of hard and unproductive work will then be over, and we will begin to enjoy the fruits of what we have earned and it will be joyous! The feast of tabernacles was the most joyous ritual feast in the Old Testament.

One of the things they did on the Day of Atonement was to proclaim the jubilee year. They measured their time in seven-year cycles. After six years, the seventh year was a year of release. Then after six more years, the fourteenth year was also a year of release, and so on. After the forty-ninth year, the fiftieth year was the year of jubilee. Like the year of release, it was a year of rest and it also included the restoration to you of everything you had lost. So, on that particular year, on the Day of Atonement, they proclaimed the jubilee year.

Remember, on our Liberty Bell of which we are so proud, cast in the metal around the rim are the words, "Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof". This is a word for word quote from what the Bible says about it in Leviticus 25:10. So the Day of Atonement and the jubilee are connected together. The festivals were symbolic of these great truths, and in each case Yahshua fulfilled the reality upon the exact time of the symbolic festival. The jubilee year was the time of restoration to us of all we had lost. This is what we will enjoy during the millennium when Yahshua is on the throne, ruling as King of Kings.

Doesn't it seem likely that Yahshua would return and start this period of His rule in a jubilee year, for this would surely be fulfilling the symbolism? However, I am going to tell you later why it will not work out quite this way. When is the next jubilee?

A tremendous amount of historical research and mathematical work has been done by David Davidson, who wrote one of the truly authoritative books on the Great Pyramid. Much more work has been done by Adam Rutherford, who has also written a great deal of material on the Great Pyramid. However, Davidson and Rutherford do not come out exactly the same on all their dates, on some they do and on some they don't.

All of these rituals and festivals were commanded to be started on the year the exodus ended, the year the children of Israel entered the Promised Land. If we can ascertain what year this was, we can establish the first year of the first seven-year cycle. Then we can repeat the seven year cycles until we come to the fiftieth year, which was the jubilee. Then we can calculate all the jubilees after this.

According to Davidson, 1446 B.C. was the year the Israelites entered the promised land, but according to Adam Rutherford it was 1413 B.C.. With all due respect for a great deal of work done by Mr. Rutherford, I am inclined to doubt the accuracy of his datings on this particular event. For reasons we shall see, I think Davidson's datings work out better.

The jubilee year did not affect the running of the seven-year cycles. The fiftieth year was simply the first year of the next series of sevens. You didn't go over to the year fifty-one to begin another seven-year cycle. You keep running a series of forty-nine year cycles, and the first year of each successive forty-nine years was another jubilee. This is very easy to compute. If you take Davidson's dating of 1446 B.C., you will find the next jubilee year ahead of us, is the year beginning in September of 1985, running through to September of 1986. Remember how the Hebrew year overlaps our year.

The next jubilee year will be 2035 A.D. Could Yahshua's return be then or before? Remember that Yahshua said, "Except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened". Yahshua's return could come ahead of the time you would compute for it by an understanding of the cycles.

In Ezekiel 4:6 the Bible says that for prophecy we should adopt the scale of one year for a day. In Daniel 9:24 the prophet was told, "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people". Seventy weeks would be 490 days, but it didn't refer to a period of time that was just a little more than a year. It was 490 years, or one year for each symbolic day.

In discussing the jubilee and the fall festivals, the Bible does not specifically tell us that we should apply the scale of a year for a day. However, I am taking it upon myself to do so experimentally. I will not give you a written, money back guarantee on it because we will have to wait and see how it works out.

Let's suppose that the year for a day scale does apply here. The jubilee begins on the Day of Atonement, the tenth day of the month of Tishri. The next jubilee year, which is coming in 2035 A.D., will begin on the day of atonement of that particular year. Now count back from the tenth day to the first day to find out when you will see the sign of the Son of man coming in the heaven with power and great glory.

If we take Adam Rutherford's dating of 1413 B.C. for the year when we start to count the jubilee cycles, then the next jubilee would come seventeen years earlier than the Davidson dating. It would come in September of 2018 A.D.

  At this time all we can do is pray to Yahweh that Yahshua returns and begins His thousand-year reign, destroying the control of Satan and his minions. This is what all Israel looks forward to.

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