13.10 The Jubilee Trumpet

13 - Jubilee; Section 10 THE JUBILEE TRUMPET

You will say this is all incredibly wonderful and I will reply, Amen; but I must remind my reader that there is a reality beyond the Day of Atonement, a glory beyond redemption; there is the YEAR OF JUBILEE! Almost all Christians and most preachers have confused the silver trumpets that announced the seven annual Feasts of Israel with the Jubilee trumpet, but the truth is, they are not the same at all. The Feasts of Israel were uniquely redemptive Feasts, portraying and foreshadowing the great plan of redemption wrought out in God’s elect. Redemption includes within its scope only those persons who regain their inheritance here and now - before the Year of Jubilee. The Year of Jubilee has nothing whatever to do with redemption, therefore the silver trumpets were not employed to herald its arrival. The Hebrew word for Jubilee is YOBEL which means loud, long blast by a ram’s horn. In time the word YOBEL came to mean trumpet, but it is never once applied in scripture to the silver trumpets so frequently used by the priests in calling the assembly of Israel to the various Feasts. Each and every Feast was introduced by the priest’s blowing of the silver trumpets. But I would draw your reverent attention to the fact that AT THE CLOSE OF THE GREAT DAY OF ATONEMENT the blast of the Jubilee curved trumpets proclaimed throughout the land liberty. Thus, Jubilee began in the end of the Day of Atonement, but it was something different than Atonement. The Day of Atonement came every year, but Jubilee came only once in fifty years.

Every sabbath and festival had its purpose and its spiritual significance. Cleansing, change, development, growth, attainment and restoration are ordained to take effect at different times and seasons. All are processes by which the redemptive activities of God are experienced in our lives. But God’s great plan of redemption doesn’t end with the Day of Atonement. It is consummated in the Feast of Tabernacles which follows the Day of Atonement. Neither does redemption climax in Jubilee. Jubilee is no part of the plan of redemption. It is something extra, something added, something beyond. Now let me make this very clear. Truly, the blessings and benefits of the Year of Jubilee are made possible by the precious blood of Christ, as if a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. That is why the Lamb had to be slain from the foundation of the world - He is the Lamb who takes away the sin of THE WORLD and His is the blood by which ALL THINGS are reconciled to God. But the blood, as it affects Jubilee, is the blood that saves, reconciles, and restores ALL - it is not the blood that redeems. There can be no mistake about that. Strange as it may seem, the Year of Jubilee itself has no ritual, no sacrifices, no bleeding lambs or dying rams or burning bullocks. Jubilee had two, and only two, ingredients: blowing of trumpets and RELEASE! Redemption is a precious provision for this age, while Jubilee is that last blessed appointment by which all those who lost their freedom and their inheritance, and could not redeem them, or would not redeem them, as multitudes have, regain what has been lost, finding a full and free deliverance.

What is there in the traditional doctrines and so-called Gospel of this day, which in the least explains or fulfills these various arrangements, in and through which were wrought successive cleansings, atonements, redemptions, and releases, not of persons only, but of their lost inheritances? And if in the Gospel, as now preached, no truth is found corresponding with these figures of the law, is it not a proof that something is at least overlooked? God knows how much is overlooked by shallow and carnal minds and from neglect of those scriptures, which the apostle Paul tells us are needed, "to make the man of God perfect, fully furnished," but which by some are openly despised, by some are not in the least comprehended, and by others are neglected, as the useless shadows of a by-gone dispensation. But in them is the key, under a veil perhaps, of those "ages" and "ages of ages" during which the great mass of mankind are debtors and bondmen under judgment, without their true inheritance. The distorted and perverted "gospel" of our day would never condone a Year of Jubilee for these! The preachers never touch on the truth of the Jubilee, or, if they do, it is so confused with redemption, so garbled, corrupted, misrepresented and mutilated as to be pathetic. Praise God, it is now given to us to know that there is such a time and season, and in knowing it to gain still wider views of the "manifold wisdom of God," and of the "unsearchable riches of Christ," our Lord and Saviour. When the Jubilee trumpet begins to blow, mankind will start returning from its fallen state in sin, back to that perfect state of fellowship and life in God. But each one will "return to his family." Each has his own mansion, house, estate, dwelling place, inheritance in God. There is a habitation prepared for each one. What a day it was for Israel when the Jubilee trumpet blew! What rejoicing, what freedom, what hope when homes and lands were restored and people’s lives were restored to their families and possessions. My friends, this is the day we are approaching. Creation shall return home to the Elohim family. Mankind shall at last regain their possessions. The Year of Jubilee is upon us! Then shall "the earth be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Habakkuk 2:14). And "All the earth shall worship You, and shall sing unto You; they shall sing to Your name" (Psalms 66:4). For "THE GOD OF THE WHOLE EARTH SHALL HE BE CALLED" (Isaiah 54:5). An array of verses like these (and the scriptures are full of them) can only cause great rejoicing and hope within us even now. And we would cry out with the prophet, "O earth, earth, earth, hear the Word of the Lord!" (Jeremiah 22:29). There is a message of hope, there is a vision of victory to be fulfilled. The end thereof is secure, it was made certain at Calvary when life was poured out for all mankind. The command concerning the Jubilee trumpet was simply this: "Then shall you cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall you make the trumpet sound throughout all your land" (Leviticus 25:9). After Israel was settled in the land, it is difficult to see how one blast of the trumpet could be heard from Dan to Beersheba. The trumpet was to be sounded all over the land, from one end to the other, that the most general proclamation might be made. The same principle is mentioned in Ezra 1:1 where we read, "The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, the king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom." The Hebrew literally reads, "He made a voice to pass through all his kingdom." It is held by all the Jewish writers that ram’s horns were sounded extensively all over the land, in the mountains, in the streets, and at nearly every door. Not a corner was to remain unvisited by "the joyful sound." It was intended as a universal waking up of all the population to the occurrence of this Festival. In every populated area there was a simultaneous blowing of the trumpet. It would begin at the Tabernacle or Temple. There would be a person stationed far enough away to be able to hear it, and then the trumpet note would be passed on and on out to the very extremities of the land.

Under the Old Covenant the outward Israelites blew the outward trumpets to proclaim liberty throughout all the land. But in the New Covenant the Year of Jubilee is proclaimed, blown and sounded with spiritual trumpets, the trumpets are spiritual and heavenly, which are sounded with the power of the Spirit of God through an anointed company of deliverers. The divine and heavenly message of liberation will be sounded throughout all the world, and unto every creature under heaven, unto bond and free, to set all the prisoners and captives at liberty, and to make the blind to see, by opening their eyes; and to heal the leper, cripple, and the sick, and loose the tongue of the dumb. Here is the year of Jubilee, the everlasting holy year, or day of Christ, who brings all into His glorious liberty as children of God, and to an eternal inheritance; yea, he takes off and destroys that which has brought the oppression upon the creation. The Jubilee trumpet spiritually and antitypically bespeaks the sounding forth of a MESSAGE. What kind of message? Why, a delivering, liberating, releasing message! Unto whom? "And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout ALL THE LAND UNTO A-L-L THE INHABITANTS THEREOF" (Leviticus 25:10). The Jubilee trumpet represents a people who sound forth to creation the decree of their release from the shackles of sin and darkness and death. It is not the responsibility of the Church to heap condemnation, damnation and judgment upon the world, while the Church goes free. God is preparing a JUBILEE TRUMPET MINISTRY with such a totality of coverage that it is His peace and goodwill brought to ALL men, for, as the scripture says, "He is the propitiation (mercy-seat) for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2).

Some time ago the following question was presented to me. "Why preach and teach the Gospel if all are to be saved ultimately? There is no need to witness for they will be saved someday, someway, somewhere - right?" W-R-O-N-G! First, the Christian life is so rich and beautiful and worthwhile that it would be the only life to live, even if there were no hereafter. Ask those who have truly known and experienced Christ over a period of years. Was it not Dr. A.J. Gordon who met an old crippled man on the street, and asked him why, with all his handicap, his face was nevertheless so bright and shining? And the old man answered, "The devil has no happy old men!"

Furthermore, God will never save any person who has ever lived or ever shall live apart from a MEANS, an INSTRUMENT THROUGH WHICH TO REACH THEM. And we are that instrument! God declares to His elect in Isaiah 49:6, "I will also GIVE YOU for a light to the nations, that YOU may BE MY SALVATION unto the end of the earth." During this age of redemption the method by which God causes men to believe is revealed in Romans 10:14-15. "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach except they be sent?" Not preach and teach the Gospel because all men will be saved ultimately? The very idea is ludicrous and merely reflects the depth of ignorance and the incredible lack of understanding God’s economy on the part of the asker. The simple truth is that God purposes to save all men, some now by redemption, the remainder later by Jubilee. But whether now or then, whether here or there, the means by which He saves men is the proclamation of the Good News! Those who should really give up preaching and witnessing to the lost are those who believe most of them will burn for ever in hell anyway! What on earth could be a greater waste, and more unprofitable and disappointing than preaching to men when we actually believe that the vast majority of them will be eternally damned anyhow! Now comes the word: "And all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and has given UNTO US THE MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION; to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling T-H-E W-O-R-L-D unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and has COMMITTED UNTO US THE WORD OF RECONCILIATION. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: WE PRAY YOU IN CHRIST’S STEAD, BE RECONCILED UNTO GOD" (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).

Those blessed saints unto whom is committed the word and ministry of universal reconciliation ARE THE JUBILEE TRUMPET. This is God’s JUBILEE TRUMPET COMPANY. None can deny that those who embrace the truth of the deliverance and restoration of all men and all things to God are the only Christians in the world who bear the JUBILEE MESSAGE. I must confess that betimes I am deeply grieved in my spirit when I meet these would-be sons of God who loudly profess in one breath to be creation’s long-awaited deliverers, while with their next breath they ridicule and condemn as heretics those who are actually believing for the salvation and restoration of ALL MEN to God. These poor souls may be children of God on some level, but they most assuredly are not part of God’s JUBILEE TRUMPET COMPANY. They bear no sound of release for the creation, but only a fearful looking for of eternal damnation and judgment. You cannot damn the larger part of God’s precious creation to endless burning hell and be their deliverer at the same time. The simple truth is, my beloved brethren, that until we are able to embrace God’s immutable intention of reconciling all unto Himself, we will never be able to clearly see God’s great plan of Redemption and Jubilee. And most certainly God will not entrust into our hands the Jubilee trumpet message as long as we remain hostile toward God’s gracious purpose and vindictive toward men for whom Christ died and the creation we are sent to rescue and restore. In the Year of Jubilee the Lord will roar out of Zion through a many-membered High Priestly ministry to bring deliverance and liberty to the earth. In the Jubilee Year there is rest, reversal, release, remission, refreshing, reunion and restoration! There is return to family and property, pillows of rest, peace, protection, provision and plenty! The anointing will bring this deliverance, and not the devices of men. God will anoint His three hundred to deliver the thirty-two thousand. God will anoint this One New Man like unto the Son of God to deliver Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and bring the whole Realm under the rule of the one true and living God. He will anoint His Samson to tear off the city gates of modern Babylon and expose the Church’s enemy. He will anoint His Elijah to destroy the prophets of Baal. He will anoint His Joshua to bring His people into their inheritance. He will anoint His David to rule with a rod of iron. Ah, the sons of God will be revealed in company with the Firstborn, and the creation will be freed from bondage, and brought into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. What a Jubilee that will be! What a triumphant last word on God’s part after all the foolishness of men! And all of this brought about purely by divine mercy and grace and by a power that gives effect to all the purposes of God. The Jubilee Years in Israelitish history are chronicled in the writings of the first century Jewish historian, Josephus. He dates the Jubilees from the first cycle when the children of Israel entered the promised land to the Jubilee that was celebrated in A.D. 27. Note the significance of the A.D. 27 date. That is the same year Jesus launched His ministry in His home town of Nazareth by reading from Isaiah 61:1-2, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me; because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable Year of the Lord." In short, God blessed that Year of Jubilee - that year of liberation - by sending His Son to proclaim a Gospel of liberation from the bondage of sin, sickness, sorrow and death. The "acceptable Year of the Lord" is called by Ezekiel the "Year of LIBERTY" (Ezekiel 46:17; compare Isaiah 61:2) which is the Year of Jubilee. The Lord Jesus came to reveal this ministry of deliverance. Jesus the forerunner was in that long ago Year of Jubilee the trumpet - He was the clear-sounding living Word of God who came to deliver the beggar, the brokenhearted, the bound, the blind and the bruised (Luke 4:18). All these things He demonstrated daily during the three and one-half years of his earthly ministry as He delivered men from devils, healed their diseases, opened their eyes and their ears, touched the maimed so that their limbs grew back on, raised the dead to life again and brought pardon and peace to men’s hearts. These things He did were merely demonstrations and samples of the fullness that shall bless mankind, yea, all creation, too, in the acceptable Year of the Lord, Jubilee. When Jesus read the scripture from Isaiah 61:1-2 He cut that prophecy in half and said, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." He cut the prophecy in half, and what He did is beautiful. He closed the book and gave it to the minister and sat down. And that is exactly what Jesus did in His coming in the flesh. He fulfilled that three-and-a-half-year ministry, He closed that book, that part of it, gave the message and the responsibility of it to His body, and sat down at the right hand of God. And if you will go back to Isaiah sixty-one you will see where He cut the prophecy in half, and it is plain to see that the rest of the prophecy is to be fulfilled in us - the sons of God - in a Jubilee ministry. Two thousand years ago our Lord did His part, fulfilled it, closed the book and gave the rest of the responsibility to us. We are, in due time, to continue that Jubilee ministry for we are His seed and we prolong His days (Isaiah 53:10). So our Lord Jesus proclaimed, heralded, trumpeted, announced, and demonstrated the acceptable Year of the Lord, the Year of Jubilee, the Year of Release, the Year of Liberty. The annunciation of the Jubilee was very wisely fixed to the Day of Atonement, as it might be considered that the people would be better disposed to forgive and release their brethren their debts when they had so recently been receiving the full and free pardon of their own trespasses. A people whose many transgressions have been forgiven, and their sins blotted out and remembered no more, should not find it difficult to "make a release" even of what might be a just claim. We are to be "compassionate, forgiving one another, so as God also in Christ has forgiven you" (Ephesians 4:32). People say sometimes, "But I want justice! I want righteousness!" Well, righteousness is to act toward others on the same principle as God has acted toward us. You and I are living in the greatest time any people has been privileged to live in. You are called forth and being prepared and anointed to set free the creation. GOD WILL DELIVER HIS CREATION BY FORGIVING IT. "To wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them" (2 Corinthians 5:19). In Luke 4:18 Jesus read the passage from Isaiah 61:1-2, and again I call your attention to a portion of what He said. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to ... preach deliverance to the captives." The word "deliverance" is in the Greek APHESIS. It is translated forgiveness or remission elsewhere. It means to be let out of the prison house. And if you are going to set creation free, only a free man can set a man free! So let me tell you what you must do if you want to partake of this in reality. You’ve got to forgive God, because if you love God and you’re called according to His purpose, then everything that has worked in your life has worked for your good! There have been no accidents. So you’ve got to forgive God. I know people who are mad at God. They think that somehow God isn’t fair because of all the negative things that have come into their lives. Secondly, you must forgive yourself. "Forgetting those things which are behind ..." Thirdly, you’ve got to forgive everybody in your family and everyone in the Church. You want to get radical? Then you’ve got to forgive all the ministries, even the ones that hurt and offended and hindered you. You must forgive your enemies. Forgive them! And once you’re delivered forgiven - and you have ministered that reality to all who touch you, then you can turn to this planet as an ambassador of Christ and in His stead say, "Be reconciled to God!" How we have ranted and raved and stormed at men about their sins and judgment! But it has been well said that "There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer; no disease that enough love will not heal; no door that enough love will not open; no gulf that enough love will not bridge; no wall that enough love will not throw down; no sin that enough love will not redeem. It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the problem, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangles, how great the mistake - a sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all; if only you could love enough you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world." Ah, perhaps now we can understand something of the divine wisdom that, when it purposes to save a world gone awry, says "FOR GOD S-O L-O-V-E-D THE WORLD, that He gave His only begotten Son ..." And God in Christ has enough love to go around!

Demonstrations of mercy, such as the world has never known, are now upon our horizon, ready to be manifested at our Father’s appointed time. God has prepared a divine show for all the earth. It is a light arising in the darkness and over the darkness. It is a theatrical of MERCY in a world of darkness and bondage. I do not hesitate to tell you that the hour is approaching when God’s JUBILEE TRUMPET shall be heard upon the mountains of earth, in the streets, at the door of every dwelling, and before the gates of hell itself. Then, in reality, the captives shall cast off the ignominious chains which for ages have bound them; then shall the teaming billions of exiles, banished in father Adam from the portals of Eden, return to that happy home from which they have so long been banished; then shall every debt be cancelled, every burden removed, every yoke be broken, and every tear wiped away. "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I MAKE ALL THINGS NEW ... and He said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely" (Revelation 21:1-6).

It is vitally significant that the Hebrew word for "Jubilee" is YOBEL meaning a loud, long blast of the ram’s horn throughout all the land. But on one occasion, in Leviticus 25:9, we read, "Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound." "Jubilee" in that particular passage is from a different word, TERUWAH, which means a clamoring, an acclamation of joy, a battle cry, and the clanging of trumpets as an alarm. It has a root word, RUWA, meaning "to split the ears." How humanity needs to have their ears split! The world has for long millenniums been listening to the voice of the stranger, the delusions of the carnal mind. Praise God, the message of the Jubilee trumpet will be a message which will split men’s ears, sanctify their hearing, alter their perceptions, transform their understanding, drown out the stranger’s voice, and GET THEIR ATTENTION for God. It is time for the whole earth to HEAR THE WORD OF THE LORD! God will give the power to His Jubilee trumpet company, in the positive realm, to get mankind’s attention, to subdue them to Christ. The blast of the Jubilee trumpet is a L-O-N-G blast. Multitudes who love to wallow in the muck and mire of the flesh, the world and the devil will not want to hear this message of release right away, so the trumpet will continue to blow. And it will blow and blow and blow until it has blown throughout the whole land and split every ear and flown like arrows directly to their mark and pierced every heart with the message of God’s infinite love and grace and brought every man home to his inheritance in God. Hallelujah!

While in the typical Jubilee Year many restored liberties and blessings were at once entered upon, yet most of the year was required to straighten out affairs and get each one fully installed again to all his former liberties, rights and possessions. So, too, with the antitype, the glorious dispensation of the fullness of times in which all things in heaven and in earth are gathered together into one in Christ. It will open with mighty manifestations of God’s power and glory, with grace poured out upon the inhabitants of the world, with abundant overflowing streams of mercy and goodness to all who thirst after righteousness, with deliverance and restoration to life and light and liberties and possessions long lost sight of; but the work of completely restoring ALL THAT WAS ORIGINALLY LOST will require all of that wonderful age of the ages. May God hasten the day! Amen.