As the Jewish people became increasingly separated from their land, the church became increasingly separated from its ancestral roots. You see, the church is an Israel of spirit. The two are bound together. When one departs, so does the other.”
“What does the Jubilean mystery have to do with the church and the Christian faith?”
“Each shall return to his own possession. So the church must also return. It must return to that from which it departed at the beginning. If Israel is coming home, so too must the church, so too must the faith.”
“When?”
“The two departed together in the beginning,” he said, “and so together they must return in the end.”
“But if Israel is already returning, what does that mean for the church?”
“It means the church must increasingly return to its original form and nature. It means that the two-thousand-year-old separation between the church and Israel must come to an end. It’s already beginning. And just as in ancient times the destruction of Jerusalem sealed the separation of the two, so the restoration of Jerusalem in modern times has ushered in their reconciliation. Never since the first century have believers in Jesus and the nation of Israel been more closely joined together or the faith more strongly bound to its Jewish roots. It is also part of the mystery. It is the church’s Jubilean return.”
“Everything returning to where it was in the beginning.”
“Yes. In the beginning of the age there was an Israel in the world, and the faith was joined to it. And so there is again now an Israel in the world, and again the faith is returning to it. In the beginning of the age, in the gatherings of believers, Jesus’ true Hebrew name, Yeshua, was spoken. It is being spoken again. In the beginning of the age Jewish and Gentile believers were as one in Messiah. They are so again. And as the faith once turned from Jerusalem to Rome, so it now turns back to Jerusalem. The branches are returning to their roots and the roots to their branches, each to its own possession.”
“The stained-glass woman in my vision, she was the church.”
“Yes. And her journey and metamorphosis represented the return of the church to its roots, to Jerusalem.”
“So will it involve the whole church,” I asked, “and every Christian?”
“Not all who are called by those names . . . but the true, the remnant.”
“And what about the other loss,” I asked, “the church’s departure from the revolutionary state of its origins?”
“There is a return to that as well,” he replied.
“How so?”
“The mystery of reversal,” said the Oracle. “It was as the church became established, a part of the status quo, and joined to the world that it lost its radical nature and its revolutionary power. So in order to return to what was lost, it must be separated from the status quo and disestablished from the world.”
“How?”
“It’s already happening,” he replied. “In the same era in which the Jewish people began separating from the nations to return to their homeland, a parallel phenomenon took place, the separation of the faith from mainstream culture, the disestablishment of the church, and the dechristianization of Western civilization.”
“In the vision, as the woman returned to Jerusalem, she lost her jewels, her riches, and ornamentations, and ended up clothed in the simple garments of Bible times. So it’s the opposite phenomenon of what took place at the beginning.”
“Yes, the return of the faith to its original state. What you saw was the woman leaving the trappings of two thousand years to come home.”
“You said that the church was born in persecution. Does that mean persecution is part of the return?”
“It does.”
“But that’s not a good thing.”
“Yes and no,” he said. “It is another double-edged sword, a necessary part of the mystery, the ushering in of the return. The church must decrease in worldly power that it might increase in the power of God. For all things must return to the state in which they were at the beginning of the age, the Jewish people, the world, the faith, and the church.”
“And so that means . . . ?”
“It means the return to the Book of Acts ... the return of true disciples, apostles, and messengers of God, the return of the radical and revolutionary witness that once stood distinct from the world and shined into the darkness the light of God. It means the return of the power that once broke down ancient walls, made kingdoms shake, opened prison doors,