A thorough but warmly accessible book, easy to read and rich with insight. The following understandings that impacted me most deeply.
One of the early points is that Jesus went around, according to
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Show More Matthew 4:23, preaching the gospel of the kingdom. Clearly this could not be the message of His death, burial and resurrection, since these acts of salvation hadn't happened. Nor could this have been the message that the disciples delivered when they were sent out to preach the gospel. Instead it must have been the message of the Messianic Jubilee. (p9)
"In the Jubilee when God restores all things and brings His people back to their inheritance, then we too will be restored to life, returning from exile into our restored human bodies." (p34)
"The Messianic Judgement of our world is another key component of the promised Jubilee Redemption. To 'redeem' in Hebrew doesn't just mean 'to buy back' in terms of the Jubilee, but to 'pay back'." (p45)
There are parallels between the battle plan for the taking of Jericho and the Jubilee cycle. (p59)
The phrase "meet the Lord in the air" is used to describe a delegation leaving a city to meet an honoured guest on his approach. (p68)
Joel points out that the meal eaten by the seventy elders on Mount Sinai was a covenantal wedding banquet. (p69)
Cassius Dio recorded that 580,000 men were slain in the Jewish rebellion of the early second century. Those who died from famine, disease or fire was past finding out. (p72)
During the siege of Jerusalem in 1948, rationing was imposed at the level of a Japanese concentration camp. However unseasonal rain caused the nutritious weed khubeiza to sprout up. Local Jews exclaimed, "God is with us, like in the days of Egypt." (p77) The siege ended as Jerusalem was down to its last day's supply of bread and last 12 hours of electricity. (p78)
The Feast of Tabernacles is reminiscent of the pattern of the Jubilee cycle. (p85)
Jerusalem is a plural word, indicating there is more than one. (p106)
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