In part one of our series we invited you to join us as we work together like detectives in a mystery novel to solve the Mystery of the Lost Jubilee. Solving the mystery means finding a treasure, not hidden in the earth, but hidden in time, finding when this mysterious year might have occurred in the past, present and the future.

We said we hoped that we might be able to solve this mystery together sometime in 2016 or at least by the end of 2017, and we asked you to write the comment “Count me in” if you wanted to jump into the detective story with us, no prior Jubilee experience required!

Why are people getting excited about the years 2016 and 2017 in connection with the Jubilee?

The answer has to do with certain events of the past.

Let us go back to spring of 1967 in Israel. Fear was mounting within the nation as enemy forces gathered against the tiny country. Jordan, Egypt and Syria were preparing to attack. Jordan controlled the West Bank, the Old City of Jerusalem and everything up to the green line drawn in thick magic marker in the armistice agreements of 1949; Egypt controlled the Sinai Peninsula; and Syria held the Golan Heights. Then, between June 5 and June 10, Israel waged the famous and miraculous Six-Day War, taking these territories from these belligerent Arab states.

The victory was unexpected by everyone, not only in territory gained but by the relatively light casualties incurred by Israel versus the Arabs they fought. Twenty Arab soldiers died for every Israeli, uncommon especially because the IDF was the army gaining territory, not the other way around.

And besides the massive land gains in the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria, and Sinai, the most important result was the reunification of the entire city of Jerusalem into Israel’s hands, which would soon be declared its “Eternal Capital.” This war changed so many things, and set so many wheels in motion which still spin today — not only the rise of a more stable and defendable Israel with the reclamation of critically important lands for its own defense and the restoration of the Western Wall as a place of prayer, but the rise of opposition to Israel and the seed of the narrative of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the popularization of the term “Palestinian” to replace “Arab”, the beginning of opposition to international recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the beginning of the withdrawal of each and every national embassy previously present in Jerusalem, and many more.

Jerusalem: The Eternal Capital of Israel. (Photo: Bob O’Dell)

Of course we, Gidon and Bob, see all this as the having the fingerprints of God/Hashem. God sought to make good on His covenant to bring the Jews back into the Land of Israel. And this leads to an extremely important assumption we make: this detective series assumes that God is in control and is an active participant in world affairs, and that we, together are trying to search out and discover God’s intentions, to understand His future actions. While we will try to keep an open mind about many things in this series, that is one major assumption that must we expose for your comment right away!

Although the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel occurred on May 14, 1948, as the world witnessed a “nation born in a day” literally fulfilling Isaiah 66:8, the Six-Day War in 1967 marked the beginning of a new era for the nation of Israel. Those events in 1967 were and still are so significant, that this first historical clue of our series, even without any additional supporting facts (of which there are many), is enough to compel us all to watch carefully the events that might happen 49 or 50 years later to see if God will “do it again!”

Even without explaining the significance of the Hebrew Calendar and the Shemitah cycles (which we will examine in future series articles), a simple calculation follows. Knowing that there is a debate regarding whether Jubilee years might occur every 49 years or every 50 years, and given the importance of the events of the Six-Day War when the nation of Israel doubled in size in a week, it behooves us to add 49 and 50 to 1967.

And the answers are: 1967+49 = 2016 and 1967+50 = 2017.

So there you have it! This simple observation of the monumental importance of the Six-Day War in Israel’s history, together with the addition of 49 and 50 gives us two very important years to watch! And so we need to start this detective series now!

Next Time

In the next installment in this series, we will look at the Jubilee from an entirely different perspective. Our thoughts and interest will depart from Jerusalem and Israel entirely and we will find ourselves in another of the world’s great cities: Rome.

Connect with Others

Does it make sense to you now, why so many people are watching 2016 and 2017?

• If God were to do something amazing for the nation of Israel in 2016 or 2017, what might YOU want it to be?
• And conversely, if you do not think that God is actively involved in the affairs of modern Israel, tell us why not?

Put your comments below!  If you are new to this series and want to jump in with us to help solve this mystery, write “count me in” below.