The Year of Jubilee

I am glad I get to spend time diving into scripture each week. I facilitate a group study that seeks to go deeper into context, and understand more fully the word of God we call the Bible. We have been in Leviticus with the prior week being chapters 23 and 24 (the festival calendar), and then this week we studied chapter 25 (Sabbath years and Jubilee).

“‘You are also to count off seven Sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven Sabbaths of years, that is, forty-nine years. You shall then sound a ram’s horn abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land. ‘So you shall consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family.’” NASB Leviticus 25:8-10.

With so much of Levitical Law being seen by some as unnecessary under the New Testament, the Holy Spirit has been leading me to not think light of this matter. So deeper into this issue I went. While this rotation of Sabbath years and Jubilee are no longer practiced in Israel, I thought it would behoove me to see when the next one would be if it were. BacktoJerusalem.com revealed that this year, 2025, is to be that year of Jubilee. If we look to the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, as the time to herald its beginning, that is October 1st.

I have had so many faithful brothers and sisters who have told me they feel a stirring and know a shift is coming. The past couple of weeks that feeling has ignited in thousands, if not millions, of people. Now we enter into God’s year of Jubilee. I say “God’s year of Jubilee” because while mankind may not have been marking the calendar as such, the precepts God set forth on Mount Sinai have not been lost to Him. What if this is the reason His kingdom has been feeling the swell of spiritual awakening?

In The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures by F. Duane Lindsey he writes “The motto for the year was to proclaim liberty (i.e., release) throughout the land with the primary purpose of getting family property and the family back together again.” These very concepts have been the rising call from the awakening in God’s people; freedom, family, and faith. This was engrained in the people of Israel from their founding and in the United States as well. The inscription “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof,” from Leviticus 25:10 is on this country’s Liberty Bell from Philadelphia Hall.

What if we honored God’s word, and what He is obviously doing in our generation, and spoke boldly on what we know to be true? We might just change the world, or at least change our lives to be more aligned with the Kingdom of God. Don’t you want to be that bold? Like Jesus when he walked into the synagogue of his own hometown and read from the scroll of Isaiah in Luke 4:18-19 ““The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the LORD’s favor has come.””(NLT) Then he mic dropped that moment by telling the crowd that he was the fulfillment of this scripture. They were stunned and their world was shaken.

Since we are to be Christ-like in our own lives, would it not be upon us to be so bold in this year of Jubilee? Let us say as we are told in 2 Corinthians 5:20 “We speak for Christ when we plead, ‘Come back to God.’” The precepts for this year of Jubilee are clear:

1) Proclaim freedom throughout the land. For years we have been buying into the lie that we keep our faith private. We are not to be made mute by a false sentiment of “let’s not offend with our words.” We have Freedom to speak. We have Freedom to practice our religion, not just at home but in the public arena.

2) Reconcile God’s kingdom as He has established. This was God saying “I am giving you this land and as such you will return it under my order.” Even today the land on which we stand belongs to God first. Let us acknowledge that and be the stewards He intends.

3) Return to the family of God. No longer slaves to the world. We are sons and daughters of God. We need to return to the posture of praise and worship for all He has done, and will do, as promised.

So let’s blow the trumpet on this Day of Atonement, (metaphorically; we don’t all have trumpets) and proclaim the year of God’s favor. I will focus my eyes on this as I step into God’s New Year. I hope you will choose to do the same.