Here we shall continue to explore keeping time. To truly understand this, it would be best to have read Have you considered this: Time? In the first part, we discussed days, months and years but the Bible has other divisions of time that must be explored. First up, the seven-day week. In the creation story of Genesis 1 & 2, God created for six days and then rested on the seventh, Shabbat. In Genesis 2:2, “God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” This seven-day cycle has continued unabated into our time. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been attempts to change it such as the decadi during the French Revolution when they tried, unsuccessfully, to create a 10-day week. Notice how God divided the week, six workdays and one rest day. How do we divide the week? Five workdays and two weekend days. We frequently use one, or both, of these two weekend days to mow the lawn, clean the house, etc. so we do work six, or even seven days. God’s pattern of six and one will repeat so we should really understand it better.
Next, the Shemitah (שְׁמִטָּה) or the Sabbatical year. Years are divided into seven-year cycles, six normal years and then a Sabbath or Sabbatical year; after seven years, the cycle starts over the same as the weekly pattern above. In Exodus 23:10-11 we find, “For six years you are to sow your land and gather its produce, but in the seventh year you must let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor among your people may eat from the field and the wild animals may consume what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and olive grove.” We also find this detailed in Leviticus 25:1-7. There is also a second aspect to this as Deuteronomy 15:1-18 details. In verse 1 we read, “At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts.” The rest of the verses go into more detail on what this means but the point here is that there is a seven-year cycle that repeats. Think about if America honored the Shemitah cycle and had to cancel debts at the end of the cycle. We surely couldn’t have accumulated $36,000,000,000,000, and rising, in debt!!
Seven of these seven-year Shemitah cycles total 49 years. The year after that is the 50th year, which is the Jubilee, or Yobel in Hebrew (יוֹבֵל). Sometimes people get confused as to how many years are in a Jubilee cycle. Since it is the 50th year, people frequently misunderstand and think there are 50 years between Jubilee years. This is incorrect, the cycles are 49 years long, the 50th year is also the first year of the next seven-year Shemitah cycle, as well as the first year of the next 49-year Jubilee cycle. We find the Jubilee in Leviticus 25:8-55, verse 8-10 say, “And you shall count off seven Sabbaths of years—seven times seven years—so that the seven Sabbaths of years amount to forty-nine years. Then you are to sound the horn far and wide on the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement. You shall sound it throughout your land. So you are to consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be your Jubilee, when each of you is to return to his property and to his clan.” Leviticus 25 is where you can get the details.
In Genesis 6 we read about how the earth is corrupt and Yehovah God has decided to destroy all living creatures save Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives, eight people. In verse 3 we read, “So the LORD said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days shall be 120 years.’” The context of this verse is over 100 years prior to the flood. After the flood we find that Abraham died at 175, Isaac died at 180, and Jacob died 147. So, apparently Yehovah God didn’t mean that everyone after the flood would only live 120 years, at most. In our modern time, 120 years is an exceptionally long life with the vast majority not surviving beyond 100, in fact Psalm 90:10 says, “Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures.” In Genesis 6:3, the Hebrew word translated as years is shanah (שָׁנֶה). It has a definition of “a year” but the usage section of the concordance says, “The Hebrew word ‘shanah’ primarily denotes a ‘year’ in the context of time. It is used to measure the passage of time, often in terms of age, duration, or cycles. In the Hebrew calendar, a year is a significant unit for marking religious festivals, agricultural cycles, and historical events.” What if, in this case, “cycles” or “religious festivals” is more appropriate? What cycles might that be? I would suggest Jubilee cycles, 49-year cycles. Twenty 49-year cycles total 980 years, or almost, about, similar to, or like 1,000 years, a millennium. Six (6 x 20 = 120) of these 980-year periods total 5,880 years. In 2 Peter 3:8 we see, “Beloved, do not let this one thing escape your notice: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” The word “like” can be defined as “similar to” though not exactly the same. 980 years is similar to or like 1,000 years, not exactly, but close. It is easier to understand in nice round one-thousand-year increments but remember Proverbs 25:2, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” So, what if He is saying He is not going to contend with mankind in our current fallen state for more than 5,880 years, or six prophetic days each consisting of twenty Jubilee cycles? Revelation 20 speaks of a thousand-year [I suggest that is rounded up from the actual 980 years] reign of Messiah on the earth. This is a continuation of the pattern of six normal prophetic days and one set-apart prophetic day of Messiah reigning on Earth.
(There is an apocryphal book called the Book of Jubilees. It is a very interesting read and helps wrap your head around the above because it counts time in Jubilee cycles.)
Let’s explore that a bit. I’ll pull from my earlier piece, Have You Considered This: Trump? Updating the 1,000 years for the 980 years derived above.
Consider that approaching six thousand years ago God said, “Let there be light,” in Genesis 1:3. Five days later, on the sixth day God created humans, Adam and Chava (Eve). They were placed into the garden and told that they could eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life was right there with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and there was no command against eating from that tree. Once they had chosen to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were banished from the Garden of Eden and cherubim and a flaming sword were put in place to prevent them from getting to the tree of life. I believe that had they chosen wisely, chosen to eat of the tree of life, that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would have been removed and the last almost six thousand years would have been totally different.
Yehovah God, knowing all, was not surprised when they partook of the wrong tree, had already put in place his plan for the next seven thousand 6,860 years revealed in the seven-day creation story in Genesis 1 & 2. Yehovah reveals in Isaiah 46:10, “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’” In the opening two chapters of the Bible, He lays out the template of his seven-thousand-year 6,860-year plan, declaring the end from the beginning.
In the creation story, God created for six days and then rested on the seventh. He made the seventh day Holy, set it apart (Genesis 2:2). The easiest day to understand in the template is the seventh day, the Sabbath rest when Messiah (Christ) reigns upon the Earth for those one thousand 980 years (Revelation 20:6). During those one thousand 980 years, we will rest from the influence of Satan as he will be bound and cast into the Abyss.
What about the other six days? Since we chose to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil we will be allowed to exercise that power, knowing and determining for ourselves good and evil, for those six days. How’s that working out for us? Look at history. Where has that led? There has been very little time here on Earth where there has been peace. Kingdoms rise against kingdoms. Wars have been the norm, not the exception. Yeshua says in Matthew 15:19, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” This is what we, collectively, have manifest with this power. Sha’ul (Paul) writes about us in Romans 3:10-18, “As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.’ ‘Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.’ ‘The poison of vipers is on their lips.’ ‘Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.’ ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.’ ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes.’” Romans 3:10-18 are not original thoughts of Sha’ul, this starts with “As it is written.” Written where? In the Tanakh (Old Testament) of course, the New Testament did not exist! The footnotes in your Bible will lead you to the source of Sha’ul’s quotations. Have we progressed in the almost two thousand years since Sha’ul wrote this letter? Look around at the division. Read any news site. I dare say not only have we not improved but we have gotten increasingly worse. Isaiah 5:20 tells us we would get it all backwards, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who turn darkness to light and light to darkness, who replace bitter with sweet and sweet with bitter.”
We have been given six thousand 5,880 years (six prophetic days) to show how we would handle that power. Yeshua in Matthew 24:22 said, “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.” He’s confirming that we, collectively, are so wicked, so evil, that if He doesn’t come back prior to the end of those six days (six thousand 5,880 years), we will destroy ourselves! Who would know better than Him? The world progressed very slowly prior to the birth of America; very little technological innovation (read The 5000 Year Leap). We also went through the dark ages. America’s birth was in the last half of the sixth prophetic day (millennia); meaning we are fast approaching the end. Yehovah gave America a multitude of blessings, saw us through the War for Independence and led us in the creation of our Constitution. Yehovah did that because we feared God and because he made a promise to Abraham. The Constitution that Yehovah lead the founders to create was the best hope for mankind. It separated powers and provided checks and balances because of the natural proclivities of humans to seek more and more power. It may have started out okay, but we have proven that given all these advantages we are not up to the task of governing ourselves, properly discerning good from evil. Hard to hear, isn’t it? I believe that we are dividing ourselves into sheep and goats (Matthew 25). We get to choose if we, each of us individually, will be a sheep or a goat; it doesn’t go so well for the goats, choose wisely!
We are so close to the 5,880-year mark (and the 6,000-year mark if you don’t like the Jubilee numbers from above) and Yeshua said he would come back early. I currently believe that we probably will not complete this decade prior to the need for Him to return before we destroy ourselves. Nuclear World War III anyone? Seems to be mentioned in so many news articles that I read lately. All the signs from Matthew 24 that Yeshua spoke of that would happen prior to His return and the end of the age are manifesting right now.
It’s about to get bumpy as His return is very near!
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