beginning June to the beginning of December . . . from the fifty-year anniversary week of the one Jubilee to the one-hundred-year anniversary week of the other. Nobody intended it. Nor did they intend this: four days before Trump issued the declaration, the appointed Scripture that was recited throughout the world was that which spoke of the return of Jacob, the return of Israel, to his ancestral possession.” 5
“The focus of the declaration.”
“And that wasn’t the only appointed Scripture,” said the Oracle. “From the scroll of the prophets the appointed word spoke of how the Jewish people had been removed from their Holy City . . . how it was taken by the peoples of the region to whom it did not belong. It declared that Jerusalem was the possession of the Jewish people . . . and how they would again return to that mountain . . . to Jerusalem.
“So the year of Jubilee had come and the Jubilean event had again been displayed before the entire world. For the first time in two and a half thousand years a proclamation had gone forth sanctioning the return of the Jewish people to Jerusalem . . . the return of each to his own possession.”
“The next time I saw the Oracle, I would be shown a mystery that lay behind a modern American president.”
“What kind of mystery?”
“An ancient one . . . a two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old mystery.”
“And how was it revealed to you?”
“Through the tomb of a king.”
Chapter 48
THE RETURN OF THE PERSIAN
I RETURNED TO the ancient building on the mountaintop but saw no sign of the Oracle. Finally I heard his voice. ‘In here,’ he said. The reason I hadn’t seen him was because he was sitting inside the building’s only enclosed chamber. I’m sure there had once been other chambers, but it was the only one left. I went inside. There were several openings in its walls, through which came shafts of sunlight. The Oracle was sitting on a stone slab. There was another one to his right. I sat down on it.”
“I saw a stone house on a pyramid of stones, and in the house, a golden king. I know it was connected to Cyrus, but what did it all mean?”
“Twice,” he said, “the nation of Israel was sent into exile, the first time to Babylon, the second, to the ends of the earth. And twice they returned, once in the ancient world and once in the modern. Who was the king who issued the decree concerning their ancient return?”
“Cyrus.”
“And so in the modern return, in the regathering of the Jewish people in the twentieth century, we saw the replaying of that mystery in a Cyrus of the modern world.”
“In the presidency of Harry Truman.”
“Yes, in his sending word for the exiles to return, in his working for the resolution that brought Israel back into the world, and in his recognition of the nation at the moment of its birth.
“But Israel’s regathering and restoration didn’t end with Truman. It went on, just as did the Jubilees. So as one Jubilee and one restoration led to the next, could the one American Cyrus have led to another? If the return and restoration were to continue, is it possible that the template of Cyrus could manifest a second time? Could there be another to arise in whom the ancient mystery would manifest?”
“Was that what my vision was about?”
“Yes,” said the Oracle, “the building you entered wasn’t a house—it was a tomb. You entered the tomb of King Cyrus.”
“A tomb in which a king came back to life.”
“As there would be a second American Cyrus, one who would replay the mystery and who would begin where the first had left off.”
He paused to give me time to ponder his words before going on.
“If each Jubilee leads to the next, and if in each Jubilee the seeds are sown for the one that follows, is it possible that in the days of the first American Cyrus the seeds were planted for another?”
“Seeds for another? What does that mean?”
“It was in the presidency of Harry Truman, in the days of the American Cyrus, that the next Cyrus would be born.”
“And the child was named . . . ”
“Donald Trump,” he replied.
“Donald Trump . . . Not the most likely person to fulfill a biblical calling.”
“It is the least likely who are often used. He was born in the year 1946, the second year of the Truman administration. His birth came right in the midst