kingdoms.’ 3 So the rule of hostile powers would be overthrown.”
“Yes, and so the Ottoman Empire would be overthrown.”
“The clock!” I said. “That’s what it struck. It was 9:24, the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month . . . December 9, 1917.”
“And when,” asked the Oracle, “did the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month begin?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Hebrew day always begins at sundown the night before. So it began at sundown on the night of December 8. The night of December 8 was when the Ottoman soldiers gave up the city and fled through its gates. So just as the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month began, the Ottoman soldiers departed the city and two thousand years of hostile occupation came to an end, and a new era began for the Jewish people. And it all happened on the day ordained in the Bible to end the curse and begin the days of blessing.”
“What about the oil lamps that ignited in the midst of the celebration? Did that have any significance?”
“There was one other time when Jerusalem was liberated and restored to the Jewish people. It happened in between the writing of the Old and New Testaments. A foreign power, the Seleucid Empire, occupied the land of Israel and the city of Jerusalem and launched a persecution against the Jewish faith. But by a miracle the people of Israel drove out the invaders, regained Jerusalem, and rededicated the Temple. From that victory came the celebration of Hanukah. Hanukah is the Festival of Lights, when the Jewish people commemorate the dedication of the Temple and the restoration of Jerusalem and the land by lighting the lights of the menorah, the oil lamps.”
“But why were there oil lamps in my vision?”
“Jerusalem was liberated on December 9, 1917. But December 9 encompasses two Hebrew days: the day that ends at sunset and the day that begins at sunset. The city was liberated from Ottoman rule. And then the sun set. The moment the sun set, it was no longer the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month but the twenty-fifth day. The twenty-fifth day of the ninth month is the Feast of Hanukah. So December 9, 1917, was the beginning of Hanukah. So on the evening of the day that Jerusalem was liberated, all over the world Jewish people lit the lights of Hanukah to celebrate the rededication of the Temple and the ending of the foreign occupation of Jerusalem.”
“So the night that sealed Jerusalem’s liberation and the ending of its occupation happened to be the start of the ancient holiday that celebrates Jerusalem’s liberation and the ending of its occupation.”
“Yes. And there’s a special word appointed to be read on the Sabbath of Hanukah. And so on the Sabbath of the week that sealed the liberation of Jerusalem, this was the word proclaimed all over the earth:
The LORD will take possession of Judah as His inheritance in the Holy Land, and will again choose Jerusalem. 4
“And so in the closing days of 1917 the Lord again took possession of Judah as His inheritance in the Holy Land . . . and had again chosen Jerusalem.
“We have seen,” said the Oracle, “the ancient mystery manifest on a global scale, on the stage of world history, moving through all events, obscure and overt, the lives of individuals, the courses of nations, a world war, the rise and fall of empires. And as in ancient times, when God ended the Babylonian Empire and raised up the empire of Persia to accomplish His purposes, so now the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the British Empire was raised to unparalleled heights. And another nation was likewise being readied for purposes yet to be revealed . . . America. But that will be for another time. We have now completed the mysteries of the second door.”
“And what happens now?” I asked.
“What happens now,” said the Oracle, “if the revelations are to continue, is that you will open the third door and unlock the mysteries that lie behind it. And in that event you’ll find me in another place.”
“So you opened the third door . . . ”
“Yes.”
“And what mysteries did it hold?”
“The revelation of a Jubilee unlike the others . . . a mystery of skeletons, a hidden parchment, the secret of a president that began thousands of years before he was born, someone who was and was not and then was again, a twentieth-century event encoded in the law of Jubilees . . . and much more.”
“So you