There are some areas where we still are in bondage. We are unconscious of our limitations and bondages: we’ve accepted them without seeing the liberty that God has for us. We need to understand how the Year of Jubilee is involved with what God is doing to restore what is really ours according to the Word.
The Year of Jubilee occurs every fifty years, and in the divine calendar of events, it should usher in a great period of the Kingdom. The Kingdom should actually begin in a period of Jubilee.
Luke 4:16–19 is a quotation from Isaiah 61, which speaks of the Year of Jubilee. And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book, and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”
“The favorable year of the Lord” is the term used for the Year of Jubilee. In Ezekiel it is called “the year of liberty.” Different titles were used for it, though most references in the Old Testament call it the Year of Jubilee.
A sabbatical year occurred every seventh year. After seven sabbatical years (forty-nine years), one more year was added, and the fiftieth year was called the Year of Jubilee. At that time, any inheritance of land or property was returned to the original owner. This plan was designed to benefit their economy and prevent land reforms. They did not have revolutions because they did not build up an oppressive land and property system. Revolutions are caused because of the necessity for land reform. Big land owners become richer and richer and squeeze out the little land owners, until finally no place remains for them and a class system has been created. According to the law of Jubilee, no one should oppress his brother.
Notice that Jesus sat down in the synagogue and said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Verse 21. He was proclaiming the Year of Jubilee. When did this occur? His preaching at Nazareth must have taken place at the close of His first year of ministry, about one year after He had been anointed and baptized in the River Jordan by John. The Year of Jubilee began on the Day of Atonement, in the month of Tishri, corresponding to October on our calendar. At this time they proclaimed the beginning of the year, with the sounding of trumpets. 4 B.C. is the date generally accepted as the time of Jesus’ birth. We know that He began His ministry at the age of thirty, so He was probably thirty-one years old at this time, which would make the date about 28 A.D. when He said, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your ears.”
We can assume that what Christ was saying was true literally, as well as spiritually, because no one contradicted him to say, “This is not the Year of Jubilee.” If the year 28 A.D. was a year of Jubilee, then we are coming to the close of the thirty-ninth Year of Jubilee since Jesus spoke those words in the synagogue at Nazareth. This means that the last Year of Jubilee occurred about 1928 or so, and the next one will fall in 1978 or 1979. According to Adam Rutherford, this agrees with the date revealed in the study of Pyramidology.
We know it would be wrong for us to set a date. We could set a date, but we still wouldn’t know what is going to happen in 1978, except that we do know the Lord is going to begin to proclaim certain things. We would never go so far as to say that this is the date of His coming. We don’t know the day nor the hour. No one knows that, only the Father. Even Jesus Christ Himself had either refused that knowledge or had been refused that knowledge, for He said He did not know the hour that He would return. If Jesus didn’t know it, we surely don’t know. This knowledge is in the heart of the Father, who holds a sovereign plan for all of these things to unfold and to be completed.
It is important, however, that we recognize the significance of the Year of Jubilee. Perhaps you remember the song, “I have a jubilee down in my heart,” but that does not actually convey the true meaning of Jubilee. It was a law that during the fiftieth year, debts were cancelled and inheritances restored. At the division of the land of Canaan, the tribes received their appropriation, which they divided between the various clans and families. A man who owned a certain piece of land might be forced to sell it during the course of the years, because of crop failures or other problems. However, at no time was that sale a permanent transaction. He only relinquished it until the next Year of Jubilee.
Suppose a man had to relinquish ownership a year after the Year of Jubilee. Then the new owner could keep it for another forty-nine years before the next Year of Jubilee, at which time it would revert to the original heir. The price was determined by the number of years the new owner would possess it, or as the Word reads, “By the number of crops he would receive.” For example, if the man had kept the property forty-five years and then suddenly had to sell it, the price would be proportionately lower, based upon the crops that could be raised on the land during the remaining five years.
When the Year of Jubilee came, the property all came back to the original family that had received it at the division of the land of Canaan. With this system, the poor could only get so poor before God gave them a real boost. They could lose their inheritance for only a little time. Such a system was better than the bankruptcy laws of today, though some of us would probably not care to return to the old homestead owned by our parents and grandparents. This system was very essential in the rural agricultural communities in Palestine.
Anyone who owned a house in a walled city, and sold it, would have redemption rights for only one year. If the house was in a village without walls, it was considered to be open country, and then the Year of Jubilee principle applied. These were simple, but very effective laws.
At one time or another all debts were to be cancelled. What does this mean to us spiritually? We know that God forgives sin, but I have a feeling that sometimes we live with the consequences of them more than we should. We carry the scars, the conditioning of past experiences. At some time God must say, “This is operation wipe-out. This is where we wipe everything out. Not only the memory of a thing, but any of its significance or any of its lasting effects are to be removed, once and for all time.” There must be some time when we become well aware of the principles of divine fullness and perfect provision.
Although the provision is perfect, the procedure and practice of experiencing it is difficult. We know that His divine grace has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Theoretically it’s all ours. But have we possessed it? No, even though we reach in constantly to get as much as we can. God has provided a glorious inheritance for us by His grace, but we just don’t get it.
Sometimes that’s our fault. As we go along in the process of living, consciously or unconsciously we relinquish, little by little, bit by bit, our divine inheritance. Because we are conditioned in some battle, we stop contending for that high goal, and settle for a lesser one. After another battle, we may decide to try for even less. And soon we have accepted only a small portion of the objective we started to believe for.
That is a process of life. A young man may be all set to go out and turn the world upside down. He’s never been any place, seen anything or done anything. Yet he has a high goal: he’s going to be a famous surgeon. But does he have the stamina and the discipline required for long years of study? If not, he may change his mind and lower his goal, saying, “I’m not going to be a famous surgeon after all. I think I’ll be a druggist. I’m pretty good at chemistry, but I washed out in some of the other subjects.” We see him several years later and ask, “Well, how are you doing?”
“Things didn’t turn out right. I got married and I have a family. So I had to quit school and go to work.” Somewhere along the line he kept settling for less and less. Some young people contend earnestly and break through to the goal they first envisioned, the dream that was so real to them, but most settle on a lesser plane.
I think it is good to have noble ambitions. Sometimes it may be necessary for us to change our goals, but many times we change them because pressures lead us to compromise in our thinking. Then along comes the Year of Jubilee, and the Lord says, “Let’s open the prison doors and let the captives go free.” You say, “I didn’t know I was in prison.” It isn’t a prison with bars, but in your thinking you have put up invisible shields, and you never tried to break through them. You did it because of that day-by-day aggravating and irritating condition that led you to accept lesser goals than God’s Word said were yours.
Oh, that the Year of Jubilee could mean something to us! If we have to wait another four years for it to come, that’s fine, but even that isn’t necessary according to the law of Jubilee. When the Year of Jubilee came, God said, in effect, “Now, everybody is free.” What happened in the meantime? If they could get the money together, they could go and buy back their property without waiting for Jubilee. But when the Year of Jubilee came, they didn’t have to pay for it. They didn’t have to struggle for it. It would not be a transaction to haggle over, and figure out the crops for a certain number of years. It was automatically theirs at Jubilee. But if they wanted it before, they could go back and redeem it.
That’s what we’re doing. We know that a day is coming, and it’s not very far off, when the restoration will be a sovereign thing at which you will be amazed—a time when people will have tremendous things from God. In the meantime, there will be others, like yourselves, who have had the vision of restoration and have believed it, who have believed that all the promises of God are yours. You decided that you would have it now, and you went about getting it. It wasn’t just a matter of blowing a ram’s horn on the tenth day of Tishri; it wasn’t that simple. You had to struggle for it.
Do you realize that you don’t have to wait fifty years for Jubilee? If you’re willing to pay the price, you can buy your Jubilee at any time. You don’t have to wait another four years; you can buy in on it now. What will it take? A little intercession, a little heart searching, a little digging in to find how you’ve been conditioned to accept limitations. Come to grips with that deadly, ungodly oppression and discouragement that grips the human spirit and destroys the drive of faith. It takes away the violence of appropriation and eats away like a dry rot in your spirit, leaving you miserable and sick and functioning on such a low level that you’ll never rise above it.
The Word promises so many things that we will have to believe. By His stripes we are healed (I Peter 2:24). His divine power hath given us all things that pertain to life and godliness (I Peter 1:3). Bless the Lord, O my soul, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction (Psalm 103:3). No good thing will the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly (Psalm 84:11). The Lord is going to make your way prosperous and you will have success (Joshua 1:8). Whatsoever you do shall prosper (Psalm 1:3). There it is in theory. Why are we so ready to accept something less?
In the first place, the preachers have preached it, if not in their words, at least in their actions. Their own spirits were depressed. They have accepted something less than God’s perfect provision. We all need to repent of this subtle deadly form of unbelief. We say we believe the Bible, we rejoice in all of it and theoretically we believe it, but we have been conditioned to constantly accept one level, then a lower level, and then one lower still—always less than what we could have.
What are we going to do about it? It isn’t enough to read this and say, “This is a good sermon. It is something we need.” There should be something in our spirit that rises up and says, “I’m going to violently change my attitude and my goals.” It is true, hope deferred maketh the heart sick (Proverbs 13:12). We get sick at heart when we need to see something and it doesn’t happen. How many times have we needed to walk up to God and say, “O God, where are Thy miracles?” How long can we keep on interceding when we haven’t seen the breakthrough? We’ve claimed it and had every witness of the Spirit. How weary we become in well doing, instead of being steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as we know that our labour is not in vain in the Lord (I Corinthians 15:58). We know it. Still we become conditioned—down, down, down—to a lesser goal. We have to change.
I’m going to keep trying to change in every way, down to the last attitude. And I’m going to keep goading you and putting pressure on you constantly. You’re not going to lapse into some lower level of spiritual living. You’re not going to do it! You’ll never be the remnant moving in the earth with miracles and signs and wonders unless somebody is crowding you, stepping right on your heels. And that’s what God raised me up to do—to set the vision before you and step on your heels, to make you step lively and get right with it, because this is what you’re here for. This vision must burn in your spirit. It must torment you as you constantly deal with this unbelief, and believe for the whole counsel of God, believe to break through to the walk with God that is beyond anything we’ve ever been able to sustain a faith for.
Perhaps this sounds as if we’re full of unbelief. We’re not. But there’s just enough unbelief that it’s cutting the faith, making it less effective. We’ll press on. We’ll make it. One goal after another. But something ought to blow up that dam of restrictions and restraints, and open the floodtide. It’s time. It’s not sovereignly being held back until a certain hour. The right of redemption is ours at any time. We can pay the price and we can get hold of God.
Let the Lord search us. It comes right back to that again. I know—that’s all we’ve heard for years, “Search your hearts.” But notice how you’ve changed. Take a look at your attitude. You’re changing and you’re going to be those walking living miracles, epistles of Christ, only because somebody keeps putting the pressure on you.
The thing that bothers me is the fact that every time the Lord gives us a word, it seems as if He throws us in a wilderness and we have to die over that word. Many of you are in the wilderness and you’ve accepted that as your permanent residence, instead of accepting it as a temporary place of God’s dealing. A wilderness tests you to see if you’re willing to patiently endure with a steadfastness in the vision and in the promise until you come out of the wilderness with it still glowing in your heart, or whether that wilderness and its conditions will affect you until you give up. The wilderness is a place from which a few come out, wholly following the Lord their God, while many never come out. They are buried in the wilderness. I think it’s time for us to get up and say, “Let’s go in and take the land. Let’s wholly follow the Lord. Let’s believe that we can do it. Let’s try.”
How many years do we have? Not many. And I don’t want to spend these next few critical years frustrated on some lower spiritual level. Wouldn’t the devil love that, if we were to sit back, bogged down in our own inner life, instead of breaking through to that fullness, that miracle walk? It’s our inner life that is preventing our getting out of the wilderness. People don’t get out of the wilderness because they never get Egypt out of their heart. Let’s believe for God to change something in our lives.
The Scripture in Leviticus 25:8–28 speaks of the Year of Jubilee. It tells of the restoration of the spontaneous harvest, the day of superabundance, when God Himself blesses the people with the double portion. In one year He gives them double crops, enough food to last for three years. How fantastic! Reading this, we sense as never before, that all the property is His and we are only stewards of it, and that we can redeem these things any time.
You are also 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. 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. 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.
You shall have the fiftieth year as a jubilee; you shall not sow, nor reap its aftergrowth, nor gather in from its untrimmed vines. For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You shall eat its crops out of the field. On this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his own property.
If you make a sale, moreover, to you friend, or buy from your friend’s hand, you shall not wrong one another. Corresponding to the number of years after the jubilee, you shall buy from your friend; he is to sell to you according to the number of years of crops. In proportion to the extent of the years you shall increase its price, and in proportion to the fewness of the years, you shall diminish its price; for it is a number of crops he is selling to you. He is not selling land; he’s selling so many crops. The title of the land was inherent with the original owner. Even though someone else was using it temporarily, the original ownership was still recognized.
So you shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the Lord you God. You shall thus observe My statutes, and keep My judgments, so as to carry them out, that you may live securely on the land. Then the land will yield its produce, so that you can eat your fill and live securely on it.
But if you say, “What are we going to eat on the seventh year if we do not sow or gather in our crops?” then I will so order My blessing for you in the sixth year that it will bring forth the crop for three years. When you are sowing the eighth year, you can still eat old things from the crop, eating the old until the ninth year when its crop comes in.
The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are but aliens and sojourners with Me. Thus for every piece of your property, you are to provide for the redemption of the land. If a fellow countryman of yours becomes so poor he has to sell part of his property, then his nearest kinsman is to come and buy back what his relative has sold. Or in case a man has no kinsman, but so recovers his means as to find sufficient for its redemption, then he shall calculate the years since its sale and refund the balance to the man to whom he sold it, and so return to his property.
Notice that if you lost your inheritance and had to sell it, a relative could buy it back for you. This is a principle of body ministry. When one person begins to break through, he can help to redeem some of the rest of us and get us out of the hole.
But if he has not found sufficient means to get it back for himself, then what he has sold shall remain in the hands of its purchaser until the year of jubilee; but at the jubilee it shall revert, that he may return to his property. The spiritual significance of this must be understood. We can have redeemed and restored to us everything that God has ever promised.
Let us read the passage from Isaiah 61 that Jesus quoted, telling how He had come to proclaim this acceptable year of the Lord, so we can see what the Year of Jubilee is to mean to us spiritually.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me—to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives, and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. When Jesus quoted this Scripture in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:18), He read only this far. But Isaiah continues, expressing the fact that the coming of the Lord to proclaim the Year of Jubilee was also to open up the time of judgment and of complete restoration in the end time.
And the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.
Then they will rebuild the ancient ruins, they will raise up the former devastations, and they will repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations. And strangers will stand and pasture your flocks, and foreigners will be your farmers and your vinedressers. But you will be called the priests of the Lord; you will be spoken of as ministers of our God.
You will eat the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast. Instead of your shame you will have a double portion… The Year of Jubilee involves the double portion. In one year the Lord would so bless the land that it would bring forth enough food for three years. That is a double portion—plus.
Everlasting joy will be theirs. For I, the Lord, love justice. I hate robbery in the burnt offering; and I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. Then their offspring will be known among the nations, and their descendants in the midst of the peoples. All who see them will recognize them because they are the offspring whom the Lord has blessed. Isaiah 61:1–9.
Notice also verse 22 of the preceding chapter: The smallest one will become a clan, and the least one a mighty nation. I, the Lord, will hasten it in its time. I’m claiming that promise. We’re not going to be just a little remnant forever. Just to be a little flock is not an end in itself. The little flock is supposed to rejoice because it is the Father’s good pleasure to give them the Kingdom. Everything is to expand and come forth.
God brings us down to a remnant in His dealings in order to produce the quality of ministry that He can expand and multiply. This principle works every time. One of our pastors has been approached by a fundamentalist church in his area, with about two hundred members. They have asked him to pastor their church, and I have counseled him to do so. You know what will happen. Those two hundred will be brought down until they are just a handful. Why? Because you don’t start with quantity, with large numbers; you start with quality in a few. Then the people who are added, are added to the same level of dedication and consecration that you find in the handful. Then it multiplies. The church must be established on a solid basis: These are the principles, this is the anointing, this is the level we’re going to contend for, these are the objectives. Large numbers weaken it by diluting it until the high spiritual quality is gone. So the Lord always has to take a little remnant, and He says, “Maybe you’re a remnant now, but the smallest one will be a clan, and the least one a mighty nation.” Do like that? We may be just a few, but we’re going to multiply.
I like the idea of Jubilee, of the days of restoration that are going to come because we are the offspring whom the Lord has blessed. I believe this is going to take place on the spiritual level predominantly, that there will be thousands added to this Walk. I believe further, that in the days of judgment, whosoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. There will be this delverance in the remnant that the Lord will call. I am anticipating (though this idea has been relinquished by many people) that there will yet be an end-time ingathering, a latter-rain outpouring of the Spirit upon the nations, and we will see millions of people brought into Christ. I believe the stage is being set for it, because the Lord speaks of a spontaneous harvest. We will not even put our hand to it, but in that one year, before Jubilee. He’s going to rain upon us until the harvest brought forth is enough for three years. That will be the Lord’s doing.
Now He’s trying to establish little stations where these people can be brought. He’s not going to let those little chickens hatch out without having a nice warm incubator for them. He’s not going to let the little children come to birth unless there is a New Testament church where they can be taught and nurtured in the Lord. He’s teaching us all the things necessary to bring people forth, to bring them into perfection. Would He be doing all of this preparation work within just a few people and then add to us only one or two here or there? No way. There’s going to be an ingathering. The signs keep pointing toward it. God is bringing in a remnant, an elect that He is preparing. I don’t suppose this Walk will ever be a thing of majority; it will always be a minority. But at least we’re not going to be just a handful, because the Lord is going to start multiplying.
I’m standing on the promise the Lord gave to me years ago. He spoke to me so plainly of the people I would lead. He said, “The sheep shall bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our streets” (Psalm 144:13). And I believe it is yet going to come to pass. Every once in a while someone comes along and says, “You don’t have any burden for souls.” Yes, we do. We’re getting ready. We have the burden for them, to see them saved—really saved—and not just having them come in to increase the number of names on the roll and make the preacher look good when they check to see how many souls he has won this month. The important question is, “How many did he keep? How many went on in God?” This is a day that they’re falling away faster than they’re coming in.
We are not going to see that happen here. When they come in, there will be ministries who will labor to present them mature in Christ Jesus. There will be the apostolic company—apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers—so that these people will no longer be children tossed to and fro, but they will grow up into Christ in all things. Growing up and being preserved in Him. We’re going to have an army, marching right through from one age into another.
We don’t want to suddenly find a lot of casualties that are wiped out. That’s why you’re going through this period of preparation. And that’s why you’re going to contend for the restoration. Start believing for God to restore it to your spirit right now. Say, “Lord, I want to believe it. I want to believe it’s for me, that I’m going to walk in it. Nothing is going to keep me back from this. Lord, You’re going to change my thinking, even if you have to give me a transplant or another brain. I’m going to change. I am going to change! I’m not going to unconsciously accept limitation and lower levels of attainment. I’m going to believe for that abundant grace that God has ordained me to walk in.
Declare war on this secret conditioning of unbelief. Determine to be grabbers of the promise. Ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate the areas of unbelief in your own heart. We are to be believers in the exploits that are to come forth, in the mighty works of God that are to fill the earth. We dare not look at our unworthiness, nor allow ourselves in any way to be limited.
Lord, make this Walk and these end-time events a revelation to our hearts so great that we’ll not waver nor draw back in any way.