In the past twenty-five articles we have looked at the Jubilee year from both Jewish and Christian perspectives to examine whether God might be restoring to the world, an identification of the Jubilee calendar as described in Leviticus Chapter 25.
This article examines whether recent “upset events” like Trump’s win and the Brexit can help us identify whether a Jubilee is here.
Remember! Jubilee is the largest systematic social reconstruction tool in the Bible, short of the inauguration of Messianic rule at the end of the age. It is a divine reset of the land every 50th year, that gives the poorest of the land a chance to restart their lives in a new direction. Slaves are set free. People who have sold, given away, and even been tricked out of their most precious possession—their own land—get it back.
In the economies of ancient times, it was not God’s but man’s “golden rule” that always prevailed: those who have the gold make the rules. Thus the rich and powerful made sure that they could stay that way (short of a populist revolt), and the poor were managed and frequently abused by their rulers in a way that would skew ever more of the available resources to those at the top.
But the Jubilee was God’s invention to systematically and periodically uproot this human tendency, giving every family of the earth the chance, at least once in their lifetimes, to be part of a grand reset: to move in a new direction and gain economic success.
In this series, we have asked whether God might be in the process of restoring the Jubilee to the world. That process, we reasoned, should begin by restoring the Jubilee calendar itself, and indeed there seems to be a striking pattern exhibited through a series of key events that have occurred in a 50-year cycles, most notably relating to the nation of Israel, but even extending to the rest of the world. We have pointed out the pattern of events in late 1917 (the Balfour Declaration and the retaking of Jerusalem by the British), and the events in the spring of 1967 (The Six Day War and the Reunification of Jerusalem) were so startling that we said in this series that we have to watch the events of 2016/2017 to see whether God might do something important in the nation of Israel. We said that on the Hebrew Calendar, the period we would first examine should be the Jewish year of 5776 (roughly September 2015 thru October 2016), and on a Gregorian calendar we must watch thru the end of 2017.
This particular article looks at the evidence for a Jubilee year ending in 5776, a year that is now fully in the books.
Has there been clear evidence of Jubilee-like events in the year of 5776 in Israel?
Our view is that everything begins with Israel, so we must look there first.
Yes, there has been one big decision within the nation of Israel that is Jubilee like – the restoration of land to the Jewish people. On Sunday April 17, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took his cabinet across the Jordan river to the Golan Heights and declared that the future status of the Golan Heights within Israel had been irrevocably decided: the Golan will be forever part of Israel – that the Golan is now to Israel what Jerusalem is to Israel.
While we had desired to see Jews becoming completely free to pray on the Temple Mount, and that did not change officially, the change in status in the Golan was the most notable change of its kind since 1967. This is the first time that the nation of Israel has formally annexed land on the Eastern side of the River Jordan in its modern history! It is the number one reason why 5776 can be considered a Jubilee year.
Has there been any clear evidence of Jubilee-like events in the year of 5776 in the world at large?
Yes, the Brexit vote of the United Kingdom on June 23, 2016. It seems fitting that the very nation that helped propel the establishment of a Jewish homeland in 1917 should itself be set free from the clutches of the European Union in the Hebrew calendar year of 5776. The separation of Britain from the EU was also coupled with the changing of power and the appointment of Theresa May as Prime Minister of England, a pro-Israel one at that. The UK is now free to chart its own course in the years ahead.
But what was so notable about this Brexit referendum was the populist nature of the vote – giving hope to the working class and standing against globalism. This provision of hope for the downtrodden, coupled with freedom to choose one’s own path forward, is very much the theme of Jubilee.
What about other key elections around the world?
Two other election “upsets” have recently rocked the world, one before, and another just after the year 5776.
In March 2015, Netanyahu and the Likud party shocked Israel by winning a landslide victory. Many see this as not just an election, but the end of an era, the era of two-state solution proposals. Israel’s demographics are changing to favor a more conservative and religious political view! The people were speaking. While this election was actually in year 5775, it seems to have been a harbinger of the future upsets that were upcoming, such as the Brexit in 5776, and now the Trump victory in early 5777 on November 8th.
Now we write of the American election that made Trump an upset winner. Like Brexit, this populist decision, the most dramatic upset in over one hundred years in America, is once again reminiscent of a Jubilee – a desire for freedom from government as we know it.
Jubilee as a Year of Rest — what else has happened?
The Jubilee itself is not just about slaves being set free and land being returned, it is about rest.
The year 5776 was one of the most watched years ever with respect to war against Israel. The typical view was that the Blood Moons and Shemitah years could signal a war against Israel in 5776 – a view that we have always opposed. We found no basis for that claim in scripture nor in history! In our book Israel FIRST! we stood against the tide and predicted God’s blessing on Israel in the post Blood Moons period, even though we had to hold our breath a bit regarding the signing of the Iran deal signed in late 5775.
Instead, what we saw was the God’s grace was upon Israel in 5776. Israel’s relationship with Jordan, Egypt, and even Turkey and Saudi Arabia have strengthened. Israel even is able to work productively with Russia. Yes, there was the “stabbing Intifada” early in the year 5776 in Israel, but rather than an onslaught on Israel it seems, looking back, to have been more of a harbinger of a new strategy for terror in the West.
Now we come to that “crazy pronouncement” by the educational, scientific and cultural arm of the UN (UNESCO) to vote to disassociate Israel from the Temple Mount. This is nothing but blatant anti-semitism, and God Almighty will not ignore this for those 50 nations that voted for it or remained silent. The United States, the UK and Germany notably stood in opposition to the madness. But while the vote was planned for this summer, the Turkish coup surprisingly pushed the vote to be held only after 5776 was completed, one day after the holiest day of Yom Kippur.
Finally, in the final days of 5776, the decades long season of Israeli leaders staking their hopes for peace upon a divided Israel, came to a close. On September 13, 2016 former Prime Minister Shimon Peres had a stroke (strikingly on the 23rd anniversary of date of his signing of the Oslo Peace Accords). He died 15 days later, just enough time to fit his funeral and remembrance into the last days of 5776. It was widely reported that 70 nations were in attendance. It was less commonly reported that Peres had served in twelve different Israeli administrations.
While we had desired to see Jews becoming completely free to pray on the Temple Mount, and that did not change officially, the change in status in the Golan was the most notable change of its kind since 1967. This is the first time that the nation of Israel has formally annexed land on the Eastern side of the River Jordan in its modern history! It is the number one reason why 5776 can be considered a Jubilee year.
So has the Jubilee been found? And was Year 5776 a Jubilee?
While 5776 seems to fit the evidence fairly well, it is not a slam dunk. A much better, much safer proposition is to say that:
We are going through a Jubilee transition!
Rather than focusing on the exact boundaries of the Jubilee year, let us keep watching and investigating, to see what God does between now and the end of 2017. God does not usually fit within the nice, neat boxes in which we vainly try to place Him!
Ultimately, as we stated in our book Jubilee NOW!, our goal in trying to solve the mystery of the lost Jubilee is to understand the nature of God better. As such, we can safely assume that we will never reach the end of that endeavor, nor would we ever want to serve a God for which that endeavor could be completed.
Final Thought!
When it happens, Jubilee is not the same as Messianic deliverance. It has to be walked out, lived out. You may get your freedom, but with a few bad decisions you can go right back into slavery. The populist movements in Israel, the United Kingdom, and now the United States would do well to prayerfully remember that.
