time. And no one’s orchestrating it, no one on earth. And those who play a part in one Jubilee are gone in the next . . . but the mystery keeps moving forward . . . ”
“Yes,” said the Oracle. “One Jubilee prepares the way, sets the stage, and leads to the next. Take just one of its streams, the return of Jerusalem. In the Jubilee of 1867 Charles Warren begins the mapping out of the parameters of biblical Jerusalem and in the process accidentally uncovers the ancient city. In the next Jubilee Allenby liberates Jerusalem. To wage his campaign, he uses the maps of the land that were drawn up as the result of Warren’s mission in the previous Jubilee. Fifty years later Israeli soldiers enter through the gates of the Old City and Jerusalem is restored to the Jewish people. And fifty years later that return is given legal sanction and Jerusalem is recognized as Israel’s capital for the first time since ancient times.
“Or take another stream, the return of the land. In the Jubilee of 1867 the Ottoman Empire enacts the law that begins the release of the land. In the next Jubilee the Ottomans themselves are released from the land and the land is released to the Jewish people. Fifty years later, in the Six-Day War, comes the most dramatic release of the land in Jewish history. And do you know when that release was completed?”
“No.”
“The day the Six-Day War came to an end—on June 10, 1967. And do you know when the release of the land began, when the Ottoman Land Code was enacted?”
“No.”
“On June 10, 1867, two Jubilees, exactly one hundred years, earlier . . . on the same exact day.
“Or take another stream,” he said, “that of the political realm. At the end of the First Zionist Congress, Theodor Herzl writes that he founded the Jewish state and everyone would know it in fifty years. The United Nations finishes the plan that will bring Israel into existence fifty years later to the exact day. And on that exact day, the Jubilee of Zionism is being celebrated across the world in Basel, Switzerland.”
“So as one Jubilean event is commemorated, the next is set in motion.”
“Yes, and it happened more than once. In 1967 Israel planned to celebrate the Jubilee of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. But before the celebration could begin, the next Jubilean event, the Six-Day War, had begun. And in 2017 celebrations were planned to commemorate the Jubilee of Jerusalem’s return in 1967. But again, as the one Jubilean event was being celebrated, the next was being set in motion, in this case by the resolution of the United States Senate. And in that same year another Jubilee was being celebrated, Allenby’s liberation of Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire. And on the very week of its commemoration, Jerusalem’s one-hundred-year double Jubilee, the next Jubilean event was breaking forth from the White House with the issuing of the Jerusalem Declaration. Every Jubilee is connected to every other Jubilee in ways of which we have spoken . . . and in ways of which we have not.”
“Of which we have not? What do you mean?”
“I’ll give you an example in just one life. The phenomenon of Jewish soldiers fighting in the land of Israel had been gone from the world since ancient times, since the days of the Roman Empire. But if what was lost is to be restored, then part of the mystery must be the return of Jewish soldiers to the land. At the beginning of the age the armies of Rome warred against the last of the Jewish soldiers, killing them or driving them out of the land and thus beginning two thousand years of foreign occupation. So what would the reverse of that be?”
“The return of Jewish soldiers to the land and the driving out of the occupying power . . . which in modern times would be the Ottoman Empire.”
“John Henry Patterson was born in Ireland to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother. He grew up with the Bible, reading of Israel’s ancient heroes and warriors. When he was seventeen, he joined the British Army. Before retiring from the military, he would attain the rank of lieutenant colonel. But it was the role he played in the First World War that would bring him into the mystery.
“While stationed in Alexandria, Egypt, he met two Jewish men from Russia, Joseph Trumpeldor and Ze’ev Jabotinsky. They envisioned the creation of