BLOG

The filet mignon of the word, part 4, Jubilee Calendars

After Adam sinned, the Kingdom of God suffered a setback (divinely planned, of course), which delayed the purposes of God from being fulfilled in the earth. Time as we know it began to run its course. From our present-day vantage point, we see that God’s purpose was delayed for thousands of years.

It took 50 Jubilees for God to bring His people to the place where they had the next opportunity to establish the Kingdom. This was the year 2450 from Adam (50 x 49 years). The moment of truth came when the 12 spies gave their report in Numbers 13 and 14. It was a Jubilee of Jubilees, and the people should have accepted God’s plan by blowing the shofar for the Jubilee, signaling that they had faith in the promise of God. But instead, they refused out of fear.

Thus, they turned the Jubilee into a Day of Atonement, from jubilation to mourning and fasting. This is why the Day of Atonement and the Jubilee are celebrated on the same day of the year. Most of the time, this day was a day to repent for refusing to enter the Kingdom. It was a day of introspection, designed to repent of their fear and unbelief.

Even so, every 49 years they were supposed to declare the Jubilee. However, they were incapable of doing even that much. Jewish history records that Israel never kept a Jubilee. In fact, they did not even observe a Sabbath year until the remnant of Judah returned from Babylon.

If the Israelites had been capable of establishing the Kingdom at Kadesh-barnea, they would have entered the land five days later on the first day of the feast of Tabernacles. Theoretically, they would have entered the land transformed into the image of God and would have conquered the land by the Sword of the Spirit. But unfortunately, they had discarded the spiritual Sword a few months earlier at Pentecost at Mount Sinai. They were left only with a physical sword.

This setback meant that the Israelites would have to remain in the wilderness for an additional 38 years—a total of 40 years from when they left Egypt (Deuteronomy 2:14). The next generation of Israelites were allowed to enter the land at the time of Passover, and this ensured that their kingdom was established by the anointing of Passover, rather than Tabernacles.

The result was that the Israelite kingdom was a Passover kingdom. Passover was a good feast, but it was not capable of establishing the Kingdom in its fulness. In Acts 2, the Pentecostal kingdom was established, bringing in a new and greater level of Kingdom manifestation than they had known previously. However, as I have shown, even Pentecost was inadequate, for it was only a manifestation of Saul’s leavened kingdom.

It now remains for us today to prepare for the third Kingdom manifestation that is based on the anointing of the feast of Tabernacles. To reach this point, we first had to complete the 40 Jubilees of the Pentecostal era (1993). This is when the final preparations began to be made for the Tabernacles Kingdom.

More importantly, though, the year 2024 is 70 Jubilees since Israel crossed the Jordan under Joshua. We see how the establishment of the Kingdom requires very preparation time. God is in no hurry, and we need to orient our thinking to match the mind and plan of God.

The 38-Year Delay

If Israel had entered the land of Canaan at the 50^th Jubilee from Adam, they would have kept their Sabbath years and Jubilee based upon the Creation Jubilee Calendar. That is, they would have kept their first Sabbath year in the seventh year from the Jordan crossing, followed by their first Jubilee after seven Sabbath years.

Leviticus 25:2-4 speaks of Sabbath years, saying,

² Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, “When you come into the land which I shall give you, then the land shall have a Sabbath to the Lord. ³ Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, ⁴ but during the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath rest, a Sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard.

Leviticus 25:8-10 speaks of the year of Jubilee, saying,

⁸ You are to count off seven Sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven Sabbaths of years, namely, forty-nine years. ⁹ You shall then sound a ram’s horn abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land. ¹⁰ You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family.

As long as the Israelites were in the wilderness, they did not plant crops, and so the Sabbath years did not need to be kept. But when they settled in the land of Canaan and began to grow crops, it was commanded that they observe the Sabbath years and Jubilees. For this reason, they had to function on a different Jubilee calendar, and there was a 38-year discrepancy between the Creation Jubilee Calendar and their Jordan Crossing Calendar.

This discrepancy would have to be overcome before the fulness of the Kingdom could commence.

Israel spent 19 years in the land of Canaan. The fall of Samaria in 721 B.C. occurred in the 14^th Jubilee from the Jordan Crossing. The people had refused to keep their Sabbaths and Jubilees, so God took the initiative and gave the land its rest by removing the people who had forced the land to continue producing fruit without any rest.

Sabbath Laws and Divine Judgment

In the Law of Tribulation, we read about God’s judgment in Leviticus 26:43, “For the land will be abandoned by them and will make up for its Sabbaths while it is made desolate without them.” When Judah was taken to Babylon for 70 years, God judged them by the same law. We read of this in 2 Chronicles 36:20, 21,

²⁰ Those who had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon, and they were servants to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, ²¹ to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept Sabbath until seventy years were complete.

This 70-year captivity was not only to judge Judah for its sin but was also timed according to the Sabbath years and Jubilees that the nation had failed to keep. Their time debt was paid while they remained in captivity. (The full story about this might be covered in a later study.)

This 70-year captivity was a short-term judgment. The longer cycle of judgment from the Jordan Crossing to the year 2024 is a period of 70 Jubilees. The basic principle remains the same. Again, this emphasizes the importance of the year 2024.

Judah’s Return to the Land

The Persians took control of Babylon in 537 B.C. Three years later the Edict of King Cyrus allowed the people to return to their land to rebuild their towns and houses. We know that this return under Zerubbabel took place in 534 B.C., because history records three Sabbath years from then until 69-70 A.D. Each of these Sabbaths occurred on a seventh year that began in 534 B.C.

The destruction of Jerusalem had essentially put the nation to death, and when the nation was resurrected, so to speak, it had to undergo a 76-year cleansing cycle. We know that 76 is the biblical number of cleansing. In the law, a man who touched a dead body was to be unclean for seven days, and then he was to be pronounced clean the following morning (of the 8^th day). The total amount of time in his unclean state was about 7½ days. But for national cleansing, the time was to be about 7½ decades, specifically, 76 years.

Therefore, from 534 B.C. to 458 B.C. the resurrected nation of Judah remained unclean for 76 years, and this ended when Ezra was sent to Jerusalem to make sacrifices for himself and for the Persian king. This was the seventh year of King Artaxerxes. Ezra 7:8 says,

⁸ He [Ezra] came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king.

The full text of the Persian king’s edict is recorded in Ezra 7:11-26. Ezra began his long journey in the first month of the year (April), and he arrived in Jerusalem four months later. This is the edict “to restore and rebuild Jerusalem” that marked the start of Daniel’s Seventy Weeks (Daniel 9:24). Because the nation had completed its time of cleansing, the Jubilee calendar was reinstated, and the seventy weeks (of years) was also a period of ten Jubilees (49 x 10), ending with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

For further proof of this time frame, see my book, Daniel’s Seventy Weeks.

The 70^th Jubilee on the Creation Jubilee Calendar was the year 465-464 B.C. It was also the first year of Artaxerxes. So Ezra was sent to Jerusalem in the first Sabbath year of the next Jubilee cycle. Therefore, the 38-year discrepancy was reduced to a mere 7-year discrepancy when Judah’s calendar was reinstated after the Babylonian captivity. At this point, the Sabbath years of the two calendars coincided, although their Jubilee years differed by seven years.

This marked an improvement toward full realignment. The final 7-year discrepancy was not overcome until 1996—and again in 2024. More about this later.