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Liberation and Survival of Christendom’s FallThe Watchtower—1979 | December 1
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1, 2. (a) When and during whose prophetic career should the last Jubilee for the Jews have taken place? (b) What did Jehovah’s law through Moses command the Jews about the Jubilee?
IN JEREMIAH’S day the sabbath year should have been a time of liberation for Jewish slaves. The last such sabbath year ended in 609 B.C.E. on Tishri 9, a day before the Jewish Day of Atonement. Jeremiah’s people had been required to celebrate sabbath years ever since they entered the land of Canaan in 1473 B.C.E. Every 50th year from then was to have been observed as a Jubilee year, each Jubilee beginning on the Day of Atonement. The 17th Jubilee would prove to be the last one. It ended in 623 B.C.E., during Jeremiah’s prophetic activity. As a priest at the temple Jeremiah should have heard the trumpet blast announcing the beginning of that Jubilee, a special year of liberation. Jehovah’s law as given through the prophet Moses commanded:
2 “You must sanctify the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty in the land to all its inhabitants. It will become a Jubilee for you, and you must return each one to his possession and you should return each one to his family. A Jubilee is what that fiftieth year will become for you.”—Lev. 25:10, 11.
3. What was God’s law concerning every seventh year between Jubilees, and how long could Hebrew buyers hold Hebrew slaves?
3 Like the weekly sabbath, every seventh year between Jubilees was to be a sabbath year. (Lev. 25:1-9) In a similar arrangement, Jehovah’s law said: “In case you should buy a Hebrew slave, he will be a slave six years, but in the seventh he will go out as one set free without charge.” (Ex. 21:2) “In case there should be sold to you your brother, a Hebrew or a Hebrewess, and he has served you six years, then in the seventh year you should send him out from you as one set free.”—Deut. 15:12.
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Liberation and Survival of Christendom’s FallThe Watchtower—1979 | December 1
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“‘Therefore this is what Jehovah has said, “You yourselves have not obeyed me in keeping on proclaiming liberty each one to his brother and each one to his companion. Here I am proclaiming to you a liberty,” is the utterance of Jehovah, “to the sword, to the pestilence and to the famine, and I shall certainly give you for a quaking to all the kingdoms of the earth.
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Liberation and Survival of Christendom’s FallThe Watchtower—1979 | December 1
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Jer. 34:17-22; compare Genesis 15:10-18.
8. In the light of that prophecy of Jeremiah, what is foreshadowed for Christendom of today?
8 Does that prophecy presage Christendom’s fall before the worldly forces that Jehovah lets lay siege against her? What else could it foreshadow in the light of what befell Jerusalem? The capture of King Zedekiah and his deportation to Babylon, to die there, had been obediently foretold to him by Jeremiah. (Jer. 34:1-7) Certainly, then, in a major fulfillment of that prophetic event of Bible times, no good is in store for the rulers of Christendom!
9. When after the sabbath year did the siege of Jerusalem begin, how long did this last, and how did the city become an object at which to quake for fear of suffering a like end?
9 In 609 B.C.E. the sabbath year ended on the 9th day of the 7th lunar month (Tishri), the day before Atonement Day. After that, on the 10th day of the 10th lunar month (Tebeth) of that same year, Emperor Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian military forces opened up their siege of Jerusalem. (2 Ki. 25:1, 2) Eighteen months dragged on till Jerusalem fell, that is, on the 9th day of the 4th lunar month (Tammuz), in 607 B.C.E. In his trying to escape and thus defeat Jehovah’s prophecy, King Zedekiah got only as far as the city of Jericho, and then his Babylonian pursuers caught him. Then they brought him back for a face-to-face meeting with Nebuchadnezzar and to hopeless exile in idolatrous Babylon. (Jer. 34:2, 3) In the following lunar month, or on Ab 7, 607 B.C.E., Jerusalem was looted and burned down. Its desecrated temple of Jehovah did not save it. (2 Ki. 25:3-17) Truly the horrible destruction of Jerusalem was something to make other nations quake in fear of like treatment at the hands of Babylon.
10. Does Christendom quake at that ancient spectacle, and with what will her own destruction start?
10 However, centuries later the power of the spectacle of Jerusalem in ruins to inspire horror has been lost on Christendom. She does not quake. She sees in the ancient spectacle no prophetic illustration warning her of her own fast approaching destruction on a worldwide scale. This will start off the destruction of all false religion in the greatest tribulation ever to come upon this anti-Jehovah world. It will be as foretold in Matthew 24:15-22.
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