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Understanding Time Cycles

To understand what is going on today, one must know how things got started many years ago. Likewise, to understand anything about the timing of prophetic events, one must know the timing of related events in biblical history.

Most people have trouble with history. With many, history and dates simply do not compute in their brains. I find that this is mostly because the events of history are meaningless to most people. That is, these past events do not seem relevant today, and so they are disconnected. One can hardly remember a historical event or date without seeing how it is connected to another that is relevant and has already been learned.

This is how the human brain works. Understanding prophecy--and remembering it--depends upon knowing how prophetic time cycles link historical events to modern events.

For example, if you check out the genealogical information in Genesis 5, you find that Noah's flood occurred 1,656 years from the beginning of the chronology--Year 1 of Adam. Most people have passed over this number as meaningless, until a man in 1946 had the insight to see that this was 4 x 414 years. He connected Noah's flood to the curse on the ground in Adam's day. Gen. 3:17 says, "Cursed is the ground because of you." Years later, when Noah was born, he was so named to indicate an end of the curse on the ground (Gen. 5:29).

Hence, the man dubbed the number 414 as meaning "Cursed Time." His son, Lalo Cadona, worked with this foundational revelation in the 1980's, but because he did not have a sufficient background in history, he never found any more examples of this 414-year cycle that would have helped him to understand it.

I spent a week with Lalo in April of 1991 to learn everything I could from him. I then went home and read every book on chronology on two shelves of the Arkansas State University library. My desire was to see if Lalo's chronological charts were verifiable in actual known history. I discovered a few errors, and when I corrected them, I found five more examples of Cursed Time. In other words, once the chronology was corrected, the entire revelation opened up, and a much bigger picture could be seen that would have a huge impact on my view of Bible prophecy.

It also opened up the flip side of this study, showing examples of "Blessed Time" (490-year cycle). Daniel's 70 weeks (of years) is not the only biblical example we have of a 490-year period. But we have to know the history in order to see those examples.

For example, we are told in 1 Kings 6:1 that it was 480 years from the Exodus to the year that Solomon laid the foundation of the temple. The temple took seven years to complete the basic structure (1 Kings 6:38), so this was finished in the 487th year since the Exodus. We are told that after he finished the temple itself (in verse 14) he hired Hiram of Tyre to construct the vessels of the temple (7:13-51). We are not told how long this took, but it is reasonable to conclude that the entire work was finished 490 years after the Exodus. Then the temple was glorified by God's presence. It was a event that occurred on "Blessed Time."

That much, Lalo Cadona knew, because biblical history is quite plain. He also understood Daniel's 70 weeks to some extent, as most students of prophecy have studied that prophecy. But one that he missed was the 5 x 490 years from Adam to the day that the 12 spies gave their report (Num. 13).

Since a 490-year period is also a cycle of ten Jubilees (49 x 10), then fifty Jubilees is 50 x 49 or 5 x 490 years.

This was Israel's 50th Jubilee, and the law of Jubilee states that everyone is supposed to return to his lost inheritance (Lev. 25:13). Israel's inheritance was the land of Canaan, and they were supposed to proclaim the Jubilee on the day that the 12 spies gave their report.Theoretically, if they had done this, the great Jubilee of history would have been fulfilled, and this would have prepared the way for the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles as well.

With the fulfillment of Tabernacles, those Israelites would have become the manifested sons of God and received their glorified bodies--their REAL inheritance. As glorified sons of God, they would have conquered the Canaanites with the Sword of the Spirit, and the inheritance would have been obtained by evangelism, rather than by the physical sword.

Well, obviously, none of this happened. While it was God's WILL that Israel enter Canaan at that time, it was God's PLAN that they would not inherit the glorified body until the Messiah came to do His work on the Cross. Yet this established a pattern and a type for us to learn from, so that we can apply it to the proper time in the divine plan. We know from the law of Moses that it would require two comings of Christ to accomplish His full purpose. The New Testament gives us the full history of that first coming, along with His death-work. And we are now living at the time of His second work, the living-work, which is completing the divine plan and making it possible for us to become the manifested sons of God.

My point is that once we have obtained a more perfect chronology to the time of Moses, we can see how the Jubilee system works. We can see what might have happened if the 12 spies had all given a good report. We see Canaan as a type of the real inheritance that we lost when Adam sinned, and after fifty Jubilees of history we see the prophetic type of regaining our lost inheritance.

The people in Moses' day probably did not know the significance of that Year of Jubilee. If they had known, I think they would have had the faith to believe the good report from Caleb and Joshua. But instead, the great Jubilee would be delayed while Israel went through a 70-Jubilee captivity under the bondage of this body of death.

You see, the 70-year Babylonian captivity was also a type of the 70-Jubilee cycle of bondage in long-term prophecy. This brings us to the 120th Jubilee from Adam, which occurred in October of 1986. The full story is too complex for us today, but 1986 was the hinge date of modern prophetic history that started an extensive sequence of events relating to the second coming of Christ and the manifestation of the sons of God.

This manifestation could not have occurred prior to October 1986. But neither could this manifestation have occurred prior to May 30, 1993, because it was not going to happen during the Pentecostal Age (i.e., the reign of "Saul"). Neither could it happen prior to our Jubilee declaration on Sept. 23, 1996, which was 10 years "late" according to the Hezekiah Factor. Neither could it happen prior to the night of Sept. 11, 1999, which was Jesus' 2000th birthday and the beginning of the Third Day (Hosea 6:2).

Likewise, we had to complete the 13-year warfare against Babylon from 1993-2006, so it is plain that the manifestation of the sons of God would not occur prior to October of 2006.

Do you get the picture? All things must be in place before we see this manifestation of the sons of God. There are many prophecies and time cycles that must be completed according to the prophetic law, before we actually see the event that we desire. How many more of these remain to be completed? That is the 64-dollar question. We only know what we know, and most of that is by 20/20 hindsight. We have a Lamp that shines a short distance into the darkness of the future, but we cannot see too far. All we know is that we are not yet there.

On March 15, 2006 we completed 2,520 years from the building of the Second Temple in the days of Haggai. We are now coming up on the 3-1/2 year cycle of constructing the vessels of the Temple (Sept. 15, 2009). But there are yet other things that need to be completed, so we know that 2009 is not the year. But we continue to be watchful.