vision of the lions.”
“Yes. And whenever the ram moved, it was as if its movements were generating flashes of lightning and peals of thunder. The ram then ascended the mountain of the ancient walled city. It turned its gaze to one of the city’s closed gates and began to charge it. As its horns struck the gate, the doors burst open and fell off. The ram then entered the walled city, followed by a great procession. And the vision ended.”
Chapter 34
THE YEAR OF THE KIRYAH
I KNEW IT was only a matter of time before I would see him.”
“The boy . . . ”
“Yes. It was the next morning. I was getting ready for the day. In the corner of my eye I noticed a movement in the tent curtains. I pulled them aside, and there he was. He had grown bolder. He had been peering in to see if I was awake. He smiled and motioned for me to come.
“I followed him through a plain, alongside a mountain, and through a winding canyon. At the end of the canyon was a small valley. In the middle of the valley was something of a garden, hedged in by a low wall of irregular stones, a little over three feet high. He led me through the gate. The garden was filled with all types of trees—olive trees, fig trees, palm trees—and flowers and plants and vines. And there were gardens within the garden, each in a compartment framed by the same low stone wall that enclosed everything. And then I saw him.”
“The Oracle.”
“He was sitting on a rock surrounded by flowers of different colors and varieties.”
“Welcome,” he said. “It’s a little pleasure of mine, bringing life to the desert. Join me.”
So I sat down on a rock beside him and told him the vision.
“The ram you saw behind the third door stood for the Jubilee that was unlike the others and of its own fifty-year cycle. But when you walked through the fourth door, you were taken back to the mountain you had seen at the beginning. Thus you were returning to the larger mystery and the progression, that which began with the Jubilean year of 1867 and continued into that of 1917. What you saw behind the fourth door is the continuation of the larger progression. So the ram you saw behind the fourth door represented . . . ”
“The next Jubilee.”
“Yes. Remember, each of the Jubilean years sets in motion the events of the next cycle. So the next Jubilee would seal the cycle begun in 1917.”
“What events did the Jubilee of 1917 set in motion?”
“It would set in motion the fall of the Ottoman Empire and ultimately the defeat of the Central Powers in the First World War. The consequences and repercussions of that fall would lead to the Second World War and beyond. The central document of that Jubilee, the Balfour Declaration, would lead to the British Mandate, in which Great Britain would administer the land of Israel in view of a future national home for the Jewish people. Beyond that the declaration would be critical in the rebirth of Israel. It was President Truman’s belief in that declaration as an unbreakable promise that strongly influenced his decision to support Israel’s rebirth.
“The Jubilee of 1917 would continue to shape the history of the Middle East and the world for decades to come. It would dramatically open the gates for the exiles of Israel to return home in unprecedented numbers. By the mid-1930s the number of Jewish people in the land was over six times larger than what it had been in 1917. At the time of Israel’s rebirth it was over ten times larger, and just two years later, over twenty times larger. Before the eyes of a world that had just entered the Cold War and the nuclear age the words of the ancient prophecies were being fulfilled:
Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the ends of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and the one who labors with child, together; a great throng shall return there. They shall come with weeping, and with supplications I will lead them. . . . Hear the word of the LORD, O nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, ‘He who scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him as a shepherd does his flock.’” 1
The Oracle paused, looked into the distance, then