The Book of Mysteries

by Jonathan Cahn

  The Mission: Today live out the words Ani Lo. Live as one totally belonging to your Beloved. Make Him the aim and purpose of all you do. Give yourself to Him.

  Song of Solomon 2:16; Romans 14:7–8; 1 Corinthians 6:19–20; Colossians 3:17

  Ani Lo

  DAY 209

  THE SCARLET REDEMPTION

  HE LED ME into the Chamber of Books where he retrieved one of the large reddish books of the Talmud, the writings of the rabbis. He then took out from his pocket a scarlet cord.

  “It is recorded by the rabbis,” said the teacher, “that in the time of the second Temple, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a scarlet cord, representing the sins of the people, was tied to the Temple doors. When the ordinances of Yom Kippur were completed, the cord on the Temple doors would turn from scarlet to white . . . as in the Scripture, ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow . . . .’”

  “Every year?”

  “Yes,” he said, “that’s what they record. The phenomenon would take place every year on the Day of Atonement to signify that the atonement had been completed and accepted. But then something happened. The rabbis write that at a certain point in the first century a sign appeared in the Temple signifying a change of cosmic proportions. The cord stopped changing from scarlet to white.”

  “A sign that the sacrifices were no longer accepted?”

  “Or that they were no longer central to the forgiveness of sins.”

  “Because . . . ”

  “Because the final atonement had been offered up . . . the final sacrifice for sin.”

  “When do the rabbis say that this happened, that the change took place?”

  “They record it beginning about forty years before the destruction of the Temple.”

  “The Temple was destroyed in the year AD 70,” I said. “Therefore, the cosmic change took place around the year AD 30.”

  “Which just happens to be the same time in history when Messiah came to Jerusalem to die as the final sacrifice for sin, as the final atonement. So too the Book of Hebrews declares we are no longer saved by the sacrifices of the Temple or of Yom Kippur, but by the atonement of Messiah. And the rabbis pinpoint the time of the cosmic change to the time of Messiah’s death . . . a sign of history written in scarlet that the final atonement has absolutely taken place, that the guilty have actually become innocent, that God has indeed cleansed us of the past, and that our sins which were as scarlet . . . have for real become white as snow.”

  The Mission: See all the sins and errors of your life as turning from scarlet to white. Seek now to live a scarlet-free life, in the white of your cleansing.

  Isaiah 1:18; Hebrews 10:10–14, 18–22

  The Yoma Mysteries

  DAY 210

  GALILEE OF THE BROKEN

  WE WERE WATCHING the sunset from the ridge of a low hill. “Did you ever wonder why Messiah first appeared in Galilee? Why He made Galilee the center of His ministry?”

  “Because it was unlikely?”

  “Yes,” said the teacher. “It was unlikely, but there was another reason. Centuries before Messiah’s coming the people of Israel fell away from God and defied His ways. And then the judgment came as the armies of Assyria ravaged and depopulated the regions of the north, namely the land of Galilee. It was destroyed and left desolate. Galilee was the first of lands to suffer God’s judgment. So too Galilee would be the first of lands to receive the comfort of God’s mercy in the coming of Messiah. And it was of this land that Isaiah prophesied, ‘There will be no more gloom for her who was in anguish. In earlier times He treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali with contempt, but later on He shall make it glorious, by the way of the sea, on the other side of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walk in darkness will see a great light. Those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them.’”

  “So Galilee was the first land to be broken,” I said, “and therefore, the first to see the power of God to bind up the broken and heal the crippled.”

  “Yes,” said the teacher. “Galilee, the broken land . . . and the land of the broken. And who do you find in Galilee being drawn to Messiah? The crippled, the leprous, the sick, the outcast, the sinful, the defiled, the broken. Galilee is the land where the broken find Him who came for the broken, to be touched by His hands, and healed by His touch. The people who walked in darkness saw a great light, Messiah, and in a dark land the light of God lit up their lives. What is Galilee all about? It’s about mercy, God’s mercy and compassion for the broken and crippled of man.”

  “And even for those who are broken because they fell into sin and rebellion.”

  “Yes,” he said, “even those . . . especially those.

  “And that’s all of us,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said the teacher. “We are all of Galilee.”

  The Mission: What in your life is broken or not whole? Bring it to the Messiah of Galilee. Let Him see it. Let Him touch it. And let Him heal it.

  Isaiah 9:1–2; Matthew 4:13–16; Mark 2:16–17

  Galilee

  DAY 211

  THE NINTH OF AV MYSTERY

  WHAT IS THIS?” I asked. “Or rather what was it?”

  “It was a great house,” said the teacher, “a great house of ancient times.”

  We walked through the wreckage, stones, broken pillars, and fragments of ancient pottery. He sat down in the midst of the ruins. I joined him. He took out a scroll and began to read, “‘How lonely sits the city that was full of people . . . Zion spreads out her hands, but no one comforts her . . . ’ The Book of Lamentations. The Jewish people read it every year to commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, as the armies of Babylon razed the Temple to the ground on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av. Centuries later Messiah foretold that Jerusalem would be destroyed again and the people of Israel taken captive into the nations. His prophecy would come true in AD 70 when the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by the armies of Rome and the Jewish people again exiled from the land. And it all happened on the same day, the Ninth of Av. Less than a century later came another calamity as the armies of Rome crushed the Bar Kochbah uprising, killing over a hundred thousand Jewish people, a calamity that culminated with the destruction of the city of Bethar—on the Ninth of Av. In the Middle Ages, the Crusades would wipe away thousands of Jewish people. The Crusades began on August 15, 1096—the Ninth of Av. In 1290 the Jews were expelled from England. The calamity began with the signing of the decree of expulsion on July 18—the Ninth of Av. In 1492, the Jews were expelled from Spain, with a final deadline of August 2—the Ninth of Av. The ancient mystery has manifested again and again from the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC to the Final Solution of Nazi Germany.”

  “Wasn’t all this foretold as far back as the Law at Mount Sinai?” I asked.

  “It was,” said the teacher. “And what does it reveal?”

  “God is real,” I said. “His Word is true. And we must pay it close attention.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And Messiah not only warned that this would happen, but wept because of it . . . as a shepherd weeps for a scattered flock. But His tears will cease when they return to their Shepherd and the Ninth of Av mystery comes to its end.”

  The Mission: Messiah wept for His people. Share of His heart and pray for the Jewish people, for their redemption and their return to their Shepherd.

  Lamentations 1:1, 17; Ezekiel 11:17; Luke 19:41–44; 21:24

  The Ninth of Av Mystery

  DAY 212

  THE RESISTANCE SECRET

  IT WAS EARLY morning. The sun hadn’t yet risen, and I would never have been up had the teacher not scheduled our time together for that hour. As we walked through the school grounds, we came to an open space in which several students were engaged in morning exercises.

  “Notice that one,” said the teacher, pointing to one of the students exercising with weights and straining under the pressure. “He’s lifting weights. Why?”r />
  “To become stronger,” I said.

  “The principle of resistance. The man resists the weight by exerting his strength against it. The resistance causes him to grow stronger. And so it is with God.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “God calls each of us to grow . . . to grow in faith, in righteousness, in love, in joy, in hope, patience, peace, perseverance . . . in godliness. How do you do that?”

  “Not by lifting weights.”

  “But you do,” he said. “You grow stronger in these by doing just that.”

  “How?”

  “What causes the weight lifter to grow stronger? Resistance. And what is it that makes you stronger in these things? Resistance. When you exercise the qualities of God against resistance, it causes you to grow stronger.”

  “But with what weights?”

  “The weights are whatever goes against the motion of what must grow stronger. So that which goes against love is the weight, the resistance that enables love to grow stronger. When it’s hardest to love, and you love regardless, your love grows stronger. When your circumstances are not conducive to joy, but you rejoice anyway, your joy increases. When it’s hardest to do what is right, but you do it anyway, when it’s hardest to hope, but you hope anyway, when it’s hardest to be holy, but you turn down what is not holy, when you feel like giving up, but you keep going, and when all hell comes against you but you shine with the light of heaven, that’s when you grow stronger in God and in all these things. So don’t despise the resistance, but give thanks for it . . . and make the most of it. Use every measure of resistance to exercise the good. They are the weights of your training that you might become one of the mighty.”

  The Mission: Today, embrace the resistance. Seek out that which will challenge you, stretch you, grow you, and strengthen you in the Lord.

  Romans 5:3–5; James 1:2–4

  Pumping Spiritual Iron

  DAY 213

  THE MATRIX

  WE WERE OUTSIDE at night and, as we often enjoyed doing, looking up at the stars.

  “Your life began in darkness,” he said, “in the darkness of the womb. It was once all you knew, your entire life, your entire world. If you had been asked then to describe life, you would describe it as being dark, warm, and wet. And if someone tried to tell you that there was more to life, another life, another world, outside the womb, a world of stars and grass, of flowers and faces, of sand castles and setting suns, what would you have thought?”

  “I guess I wouldn’t have believed it. I wouldn’t have been able to fathom it.”

  “But would there be a way that you could have known that this other life, this world beyond the womb, actually existed? What evidence would you have had within the womb of that which was beyond the womb?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You,” said the teacher. “You would be the evidence...you, dwelling in darkness yet with eyes made to see color and light...with no ground to walk on, yet with feet made to run...with no air to breathe and yet with lungs made to breathe air and a voice box with which to speak into the air...with no one’s hand to hold, yet with two hands made to hold and be held by the hand of another. You yourself would be the evidence of the life beyond your life in the womb and the world beyond your world. Your very being was the evidence of a world yet to come, and yet you were surrounded by a much smaller world that was unable to answer what was within you.”

  “And this reveals . . . ”

  “When you hear of a world beyond this world and a life beyond this life, when you hear of heaven, you’re hearing of it as a child in the womb. You’ve never seen it or touched it. And yet everything within you was made to know this world and live within it... a heart made for a love that is perfect and without condition, a soul yearning for that which is eternal, a spirit longing to dwell in a place of no death, no fear, no tears, no darkness, and no evil. And yet you live in a world of imperfection, of corruption, of pain and evil, of darkness and the absence of love. And as it was in the womb, so too this world can never answer the longings of your heart or the purpose for which you came into existence. And every tear, every sorrow, every disappointment, every unfulfilled longing is just a reminder that you’re not home, and that you were made for something more, to be a child of heaven ... and that this life is only the beginning of real life and the matrix of the world to come.”

  The Mission: Take all the unfulfilled longings, needs, and desires of your life and turn them away from the worldly and to the heavenly.

  Psalm 139:13–16; Romans 8:22

  The Matrix World

  DAY 214

  THE GREEK REDEMPTION

  HE LED ME into the Chamber of Scrolls. He removed a scroll from its shelf, opened it to its beginning, and gave me a few moments to look it over.

  “Do you remember what I shared with you about the Abrahamic covenant?”

  “Those nations or civilizations that bless the Jewish people will be blessed. And those that curse them will be cursed.”

  “And the law of reciprocity,” said the teacher. “That which they do to Israel will be done to them. It was Greek civilization that waged an all-out war against God, the Bible, the Law of Moses, the covenant, and everything that was biblical and Jewish. They set up idols of the Greek gods in the Temple of Jerusalem and throughout the land of Israel and commanded all the Jews to worship them. Any Jewish person caught observing the Law of Moses was to be put to death. Scrolls containing the Word of God were burned. It looked as if the biblical faith would be destroyed. But against all odds, the Jewish people drove out the Greek invaders and the Temple of Jerusalem was restored.”

  “Chanukah,” I said.

  “Yes, Chanukah. But the Abrahamic covenant decrees that what you do to Israel will be done to you. In the first century AD, the message of the Jewish Messiah and salvation went forth from Israel to the nations . . . and especially to the Greeks. As Greek civilization had once attempted to eradicate Jewish civilization, it was now Jewish civilization that transformed Greek civilization. As Greek paganism was used to replace the biblical faith, it was now the biblical faith that would replace Greek paganism. As the Greeks had left the Temple of Jerusalem desolate, now the temples of the Greeks and their gods would be abandoned as Greek men and women turned to faith in the God of Israel. And as the Greek language was used to erase the revelation of Scripture, now the Greek language would be used to bring forth the revelation of Scripture to the world.” At that, he began reading from the scroll: “‘Biblos Genesis Iesous Christos Huios Dahvid Huios Abraham.’”

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  “‘The Book of the Genealogy of Jesus Christ Son of David, Son of Abraham.’ The very fact that the New Covenant Scriptures are written in Greek bears witness of this truth: All that the enemy has used for evil and to destroy, God will use for good, and to preserve, and to save . . . in this world . . . in Jewish history . . . and in your life . . . everything. Therefore . . . do likewise.”

  The Mission: What part of your life has the darkness attacked? Take that very thing and use it to for the purposes, the salvation, and the glory of God.

  Genesis 12:1–3; Matthew 1:1; Romans 8:28

  The Chaldean Secret of World History I–III

  DAY 215

  GOD IN THE IMAGE OF MAN

  ON THE DAY of His death,” said the teacher, “Messiah was arrested, beaten, bound, scourged, abused, mocked, humiliated, degraded, stripped naked, nailed to a cross, put on display as a blasphemer and a criminal, cursed, judged guilty, and condemned to death. It all happened on Friday, the sixth day. It was on the sixth day that God made man in His own image. Now it was again the sixth day. And it all happened in reverse.”

  “What do you mean, ‘in reverse’?”

  “On the sixth day God made man in His image. So on the sixth day . . . man made God in his image.”

  “How?”

  “On the sixth day, the day of man’s creation, God caused man to bear the image
of God, an image of glory and perfection. So on the sixth day, the day of man’s redemption, man caused God to bear the image of fallen man, as one who had fallen, as one found guilty, and as one cast out. All that was the image of man’s fall. So God was judged as a blasphemer because blasphemy was the sin of man. Man passed judgment on God, because man himself was under judgment. As God had made man in the image of God’s glory, man now made God in the image of man’s guilt and degradation. As God had made Adam in His image, it was now Adam making God in the image of Adam, as one who had transgressed, under judgment and condemned to death, cursed, and separated from God. When you look at the cross, you are beholding God in the image of man.”

  “Why did God allow Himself to be so abused and degraded?”

  “God allowed Himself to bear the image of man, that man might again be allowed to bear the image of God. God allowed Himself to bear the image of fallen man, that man might bear the image of the risen God. So make it your aim that your life would become a reflection of His life, your nature a reflection of His nature, your works a reflection of His works, and your heart a reflection of His heart. Allow Him to make you and form you into His image. For God bore your image in His death, that you, in your life, could bear the image of God.”

  The Mission: Messiah, in His death, took upon Himself your image. Now take upon yourself His image. Live today in the image and nature of God.

  Genesis 1:26–27; Matthew 27:27–37; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:13

  The Sixth Day Revelation Mystery

  DAY 216

  DODEKHA: THE DIVINE LOVES