turned to me. “So then,” he said, “according to the mystery, when would the next Jubilee come?”
“The fiftieth year after 1917. . . ”
“Which is?”
“1967.”
“So if the mystery continues . . . ”
“It doesn’t have to?”
“The mystery continues as long as He wills it to. So if it continues, the appointed year will be . . . ”
“1967.”
“And so the mystery ordains that 1967 will be the year in which a prophetic event will take place. And if we take what the mystery has revealed thus far, what would it tell us about what would happen in 1967?”
“It would involve a return, an event of restoration, the regaining of an inheritance . . . the coming home of those who were separated from their ancestral possession.”
“And what would that regaining and restoration be? In the late 1940s Israel regained its nationhood. But there was still a crucial part of the ancestral possession that was missing.”
“Jerusalem.”
“Jerusalem,” he repeated. “And so in your vision the symbol on the fourth door and on the ram was the Hebrew letter kof. It stands for the Hebrew word kiryah. It means city. So the coming Jubilee would concern the city.”
“Jerusalem.”
“So if the mystery continues to manifest, it would ordain 1967 as the year in which an event of prophetic restoration would take place, when that which was lost would be returned to those to whom it belongs . . . and the event would be connected to Jerusalem.”
“Was it?” I asked.
“That,” said the Oracle, “we shall see.”
“So what did you see?”
“A mountain on which was a prophecy waiting for two thousand years to be uncovered. And the moment it would be uncovered, the prophecy would be fulfilled.”
“And how would it be revealed?”
“Through the ten men with torches.”
Chapter 35
THE PARCHMENT
I RETURNED TO the garden. The Oracle was now sitting under a low and wide-spreading tree, something I could picture growing in the plains of Africa. I sat down beside him.”
“It’s an acacia tree,” he said. “It grows in the desert.”
“The vision of the men with the torches who entered the mountain and stood in front of the tombs . . . what did it mean?”
“In the year AD 70 the armies of Rome destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem, the city, and the nation. But there was one last stronghold. It was called Masada. The word means fortress. Masada was a mountain fortress built by King Herod the Great and then taken over by Zealots, Jewish revolutionaries central in Israel’s war against Rome. When Jerusalem fell, Zealots, soldiers, and refugees fled the city and joined the resistance in Masada. So the center of the Jewish struggle moved from Jerusalem, now in ruins, to the desert mountain fortress.
“Eventually the Roman army, under the command of Flavius Silva, laid siege to Masada. According to the ancient account, when the Roman soldiers reached the top, they found the fighters and resisters dead, slain by their own hand. Rather than be taken captive by Rome, the soldiers had decided to take their own lives and die as free men. So they drew lots to appoint the executioners, ten men, who in turn drew lots to appoint the final executioner, who would then in turn die by his own hand.” 1
“Ten men, the band of ten men in the vision.”
“So Masada,” said the Oracle, “was the place of Israel’s last stand.”
“In the vision there were tombs. Are there tombs in Masada?”
“Masada itself is the tomb . . . the tomb of ancient Israel and the resting place of the last soldiers of that war. The nation’s ancient grave stood abandoned for ages in the desert wilderness as the Jewish people wandered the earth. But after two thousand years the nation that vanished with Masada was resurrected. The last of the ancient Israelis to stand on the mountaintop were the soldiers that had perished in Masada’s fall. So according to the Jubilean dynamic of reversal, the first Israelis to return to Masada . . . ”
“Would be soldiers. Did that actually happen?”
“In the first years of the nation’s rebirth, Israeli soldiers were drawn to the ancient fortress. They began making pilgrimages to the desert mountain.”
“Each shall return to his own possession,” I replied. “Masada was the possession of the Israeli soldier. So that’s where they returned to.”
“And not only these but soldiers in the Israeli army, having completed their basic training, would be taken to the top of the mountain to be sworn in as they vowed, ‘Masada shall not fall again.’ But