The Book of Mysteries

by Jonathan Cahn

  “How valuable is this life?” he asked. “How valuable is your time on earth?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it rare or is it common?” he asked.

  “I would say it’s common as it’s what everybody has. And it’s made up of countless moments, every day, every year.”

  “So then it wouldn’t be especially valuable,” he said. “Now let’s say your time on earth is one hundred years. But time goes on for a thousand years. Your time on earth becomes rare, one-tenth of time. And what happens after a million years have gone by? How long was your time on earth?”

  “One ten-thousandth.”

  “One ten-thousandth of time, one in ten thousand . . . very rare. Now what happens when we consider eternity? What happens to your time on earth in light of eternity?”

  “It becomes once in eternity.”

  “So your life on earth becomes one-eternitieth,” he said. “How rare is that?”

  “Very,” I answered.

  “Infinitely rare,” he said. “So how valuable is your time on earth?”

  “Of infinite value.”

  “That’s correct. Your days on earth come around only once in an eternity . . . only once. Every moment you have, comes around only once in an eternity . . . and never again. Every moment is a once-in-eternity moment, a one-eternitieth moment. Therefore, every moment is of infinite value . . . infinitely priceless. Then how must you live?”

  “Appreciating every moment.”

  “Therefore make the most of every moment. For it will never come again. Whatever good you would do, do it now. Treat every moment as if it was infinitely rare and of infinite value . . . because it is. For every moment, and your life itself, comes around only once in an eternity.”

  The Mission: Whatever good you would do, do it now. Treat this day as if it comes around only once in an eternity—because it does.

  Psalm 90:10–12; Romans 13:11–14; 2 Corinthians 6:1–2; Ephesians 5:16

  I Shall Not Pass This Way Again

  DAY 289

  THE PURPLE MYSTERY

  THE TEACHER WAS holding a purple cloth and running it through his fingers as if inspecting it. He then placed it in my hands.

  “The color purple,” he said. “It was woven throughout the Tabernacle, on the veils and curtains, even in the garments of the priests. Now look at the cloth I gave you. It’s purple. It should be made up of purple threads, but it’s not. If you look closely, you won’t find any.”

  So I examined it. And as he had said, I was unable to find in the cloth a single purple thread. Instead, it was made up of tiny blue and red threads finely woven together.

  “Purple is the joining of blue and red. And if you looked at the veils of the Tabernacle, you would find the colors blue, purple, and red. The colors appear in the instructions for building the Tabernacle over and over, the same three colors and in the same order ‘blue, purple, and scarlet.’”

  “Why?”

  “The Tent of Meeting was the place of the joining, the reconciliation, the meeting of two realities, God and man.”

  “And so the colors represented God and man?”

  “Blue is the color of the sky, the heavens . . . representing the heavenly, God. So the blue is first.”

  “And the color red . . . scarlet?”

  “In Hebrew, the word for man is Adam. Adam comes from Hebrew word for red. Red is the color of the Middle Eastern earth from which man came. And scarlet red is the symbol of sin and guilt. Red is the color of man . . . So then what is purple? Purple is the joining of blue and red. And so it speaks of the joining of God to man, heaven joined to earth. But for there to be purple, it must be a total joining . . . the joining of all that is holy to all that is not, all of God to all that is us . . . to all that is you. . . so totally joined that God will appear as sin. And as that total joining drew near, the Heavenly One was beaten and mocked and made to wear a crown of thorns . . . And then He was covered with a robe. And do you know what kind of robe it was? It was a purple robe . . . a purple robe to cover the One in whom heaven and earth, God and man, blue and red . . . become completely one . . . purple.”

  The Mission: Today, join all that is red to all that is blue. Join all that is ungodly to God and God to the ungodly—so much so, it becomes purple.

  Exodus 26:31; John 19:1–6; Philippians 4:5–7; 1 Timothy 1:15

  The Purple Mystery I–IV

  DAY 290

  THE SABBATH OF AGES

  THE TEACHER HAD invited me and a handful of students to join him in his living quarters for a Sabbath meal. The sun had just set. We sat around a table filled with food as one of the students lit the two Sabbath candles and the teacher gave thanks for the meal. We began to eat.

  “What is the Shabbat,” asked the teacher, “the Sabbath day?”

  “It’s the day set apart from all other days of the week,” said one student.

  “Yes,” said the teacher. “And what else?”

  “The last day of the week,” said another. “It’s what comes at the end.”

  “And what else?” he asked.

  “The day of the Lord,” I said, “the day of rest, the holy day.”

  “And what do the Jewish people do on the Sabbath?” asked the teacher.

  “They rest from all their weekly labors,” said one of the students, “and devote the day to prayer, to the Word, to worship . . . and to God.”

  “The Sabbath holds a mystery,” said the teacher, “a shadow of what lies ahead. The age to come is the age of Shabbat, the Sabbath age. For as the Sabbath day comes at the end of the week, so the Sabbath age will come at the end of history. And as the Sabbath day is set apart from all the other days of the week, so the Sabbath age will be set apart from all other ages. It will be the Sabbath of ages, the age of the Lord, the age of rest. It is then that the nations will rest from war, and the Jewish people will rest from their burdens, and peace will cover the earth, and the lion will lie down with the calf. And as the Sabbath is Israel’s day, so the Sabbath age will be Israel’s age . . . a holy age, an age wholly consecrated to God and blessed. When Messiah spoke of the Sabbath and His relationship to it, what was it that He said?”

  “He said, ‘The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath,’” I replied.

  “Yes,” said the teacher. “And so with the Sabbath age, the Son of Man, Messiah, will be Lord over it. And therein lies the key. Even before the coming of the Sabbath age, you can live in its blessings now. If Messiah is Lord of the Sabbath, then if you will truly make Him the Lord over every part of your life, then the Sabbath age will begin for you now. For where Messiah is Lord . . . there is the kingdom . . . and the age of Shabbat.”

  The Mission: Make the Lord of the Sabbath all the more the Lord of your life. And learn the secret of dwelling in the Sabbath age even now.

  Exodus 20:8–11; Isaiah 11:1–9; Mark 2:27–28

  The Age of Shabbat

  DAY 291

  THE DAY OF TIME AND TIMELESSNESS

  THIS TIME IT was I who led the teacher into the Chamber of Scrolls, or rather, he allowed me to go in first. I had asked him to take me there to the scroll of Isaiah. I had a feeling about something, and a question. Together we unrolled the scroll to Isaiah 53.

  “Please translate it,” I said, “literally.”

  So he began reading Isaiah’s prophecy of the Messiah who dies for the sins of others.

  “‘For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,’” he said.

  “In the Hebrew, it’s written in the future tense?”

  “It is,” he said.

  “Read more.”

  “‘He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.’”

  “What tense?” I asked.

  “The present tense,” he said, and then continued reading. “‘Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.’”

  “The tense?”

  “It’s in the past tense.”

  “How can tha
t be?” I asked. “It was a prophecy, written before the events took place. How could it be written in the past tense as if it already happened, before it happened? And how can the same event be written in all three tenses, the past, the present, and the future?”

  “Because,” said the teacher, “it is the event of God’s redemption . . . an event in which are contained the past, the present, and the future, every event of every sin . . . in the past tense and covering all the sins of the past . . . in the present tense and covering every present sin . . . and in the future tense and covering all sin that is not yet but which will be . . . It is the event of tenses and times, of past, present, and future, that no sin and no event is beyond its power to touch and redeem. For the love of God is not bound by time . . . It is time that is bound by the love of God. What happened two thousand years ago on an execution stake in the land of Judea is a mystery . . . the day of time and timelessness and yet containing all time and times in the love of God.”

  The Mission: Your future is already contained by your salvation and covered by it. Ponder this fact and, by it, be at peace and live in confidence.

  Isaiah 1:18; 53; 1 John 1:7; Revelation 13:8

  Divine Hebrew Time Travel

  DAY 292

  THE PROMISED LAND WILDERNESS

  WE STOOD AT the edge of a precipice overlooking a vast desert panorama.

  “The Israelites wandered for forty years in a wilderness like this to get to the Promised Land. One can only imagine their relief and joy when they finally reached their destination, when their days in the wilderness were over. What does the Promised Land represent?”

  “The place God brings you to . . . your destiny, the goal of your calling, the place of joy, blessing, completion, where His promises are fulfilled . . . a shadow of heaven.”

  “And what then does the wilderness represent?”

  “The place you go through to get to the place God is calling you to—the place of the journey to the place where God’s promises are fulfilled.”

  “So the wilderness and the Promised Land are two very different places, a land of hardship and a land of rest and blessing. But here’s what you need to know: The wilderness is also part of the Promised Land. In the Promised Land is the Wilderness of Judea . . . the Wilderness of the Arabah . . . the Wilderness of the Negev, which alone makes up more than half the land of Israel. Most of the Promised Land is the wilderness. The wilderness is also part of the Promised Land. Now listen,” he said. “In your life you will have wilderness, times of hardships, losses, challenges, tears, as well as times of waiting, or of simply not being in the place you want to be. Remember then this truth: In God, even the wilderness can be part of the Promised Land. In other words, the wilderness is not outside the purposes of God, nor outside His promises. It’s the place God brought you to. And God will use it to accomplish His purposes and to fulfill the calling and promise of your life. In God, even the wilderness becomes a place of blessing. And if God is with you, then your journey is also part of your destination. And your life on earth is also part of heaven’s domain. And so even while you journey on earth, you can live a heavenly life. Therefore, no matter where you find yourself, no matter what your circumstance, no matter what your surroundings, rejoice, press forward . . . and choose to live in victory even now . . . For in the end you will see it . . . that your wilderness was part of the Promised Land.”

  The Mission: Heaven is not only after this life, but within it. Live this day as the commencement of heavenly life, the beginning of heaven.

  Isaiah 35:1–10; 40:3–4; 51:3; Hebrews 11:9–10

  The Midbar

  DAY 293

  THE RUSSIAN CASE

  WE WERE GAZING up at the night sky when I brought up something I had been pondering.

  “I was thinking,” I said, “of the Abrahamic covenant. And I was wondering about the case of Russia, and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union didn’t bless the Jewish people. Yet it was one of the world’s two greatest powers.”

  “It’s not a mechanical formula” he said, “or one in which every repercussion must be instantly manifested. But let’s look at it. In the late nineteenth century the Russian czars and the czarist government embarked on an all-out war against the Jewish people living in Russian lands. They instigated mass uprisings of violence against them called pogroms. They sought to drive the Jews out of the land or else murder them. But the Abrahamic covenant decrees that what you do to the Jewish people shall be done to you. And as it had been done to the Jewish people . . . mass uprisings began in Russia against the czar and the czarist government, and overthrew them. Russia was now communist, the Soviet Union. But under Soviet rule, antisemitism continued, and the Jews of Russia were oppressed and treated as a captive people. So the Soviet Union was itself as a captive civilization. Then in the Second World War, the Soviet Union warred against Hitler, the enemy and destroyer of the Jewish people and was critical in his defeat and in liberating the Jewish people from the concentration camps. So it had blessed the Jewish people militarily . . . ”

  “So the Soviet Union was blessed militarily . . . to become a superpower.”

  “Yes, but within its borders, the Jewish people were still oppressed . . . ”

  “So according to the Abrahamic covenant they would be blessed militarily and yet cursed and oppressed domestically.”

  “And that is exactly what happened. But then, in the late 1980s, the Soviet Union ended its oppression of the Jewish people and granted them freedom to leave. And it just so happened that at that very same time Russia and Eastern Europe were released from the oppression of communism. ‘I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.’”

  “Amazing,” I said, “a promise given to a Middle Eastern tent dweller determining the rise and fall of superpowers.”

  “Because the God of that tent dweller is real . . . and faithful. And when He gives His Word, you can depend on it. It is stronger, much stronger, than kings and superpowers.”

  The Mission: Ponder this fact: the Word of God is stronger than powers, even superpowers. Today, live accordingly, and use that power for victory.

  Genesis 12:3; Deuteronomy 7:9; Jeremiah 16:15

  The Chaldean Secret of World History I–III

  DAY 294

  THE INEXPLICABLE EQUATION

  USING A STICK, the teacher began drawing letters and symbols in the sand, first a zero, then a plus sign, then an X, then an equal sign, and then the letter A. 0+X=A. “It’s an equation,” he said. “The zero will stand for a life and a movement brought to nothingness, that of the Jewish Rabbi Yeshua. His followers had believed that their leader was the Messiah. But it all came to a traumatic end with His public execution on the cross. They were demoralized, traumatized, in mourning, broken, and fearing for their lives. If ever a movement was crushed, it was this one. But then something happened. The crushed and broken followers of the crucified Rabbi were transformed into the most confident, unbowed, unafraid, and overcoming people the world has ever witnessed. Their despair was replaced by hope and their mourning by an unconquerable joy. Their fear of persecution entirely vanished, as did their fear of death. They became unstoppable, and they changed the course of world history.”

  He pointed to the A and continued, “The A represents all that took place after that transformation, an Alpha, for the new beginning. So what happened? How do you go from 0 to A, from death and total crushing devastation to the overcoming of the world? From mourning to joy? 0 plus X equals A. It is X that changes everything. So, what is X?”

  He paused for my answer. I remained silent, so he continued. “Let’s do the math: X must be the opposite of 0. 0 is death. And the power of X must be greater than the power of 0. So the power of X must be greater than death. And as 0 was a real and historical event, so X must be an equally real and historical event. It is X that turns mourning into joy and nullifies the fear of death. And it is X that is the overcoming of 0. So X must equal nothing less than the overcoming of dea
th. So what is X?”

  “The resurrection,” I said.

  “Yes, X can only equal the resurrection. For only the resurrection could bring them from 0 to A, from death and from the tomb to the new beginning so powerful it changes the history of the world. There can be only one answer. X equals the empty tomb, the risen Messiah. And if you’re in Messiah, then you have the same equation over your life, and the same power, the power to turn the end into the beginning, death into life, despair into hope, and mourning into joy. And when you find yourself broken and at your end, it will be that power by which you rise up... and overcome the world. It is that power alone that explains the equation of your life and that will bring about the equation of your victory—the power of X.”

  The Mission: Apply today the power of X. Do what you could not have done and live what you could not have lived except by the power of X.

  Acts 4:7–33; Romans 8:10–15; 1 Corinthians 15:3–8; 1 John 1:1–4

  The Resurrection Factor

  DAY 295

  THE SECRET NAME OF GOD

  WE SAT ON the bottom ledge of my window looking out at the star-filled night.

  “God has a name,” said the teacher, “a name that has to do with you, and you only, a secret name that only you know the meaning of.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When Jacob wrestled with God, God asked him for his name. And when he spoke it, God changed his name from Jacob to Israel. But did you know that Jacob also asked God for His Name that night?”

  “And what was the answer?”

  “It doesn’t say. But soon after the encounter, Jacob would reveal the Name of God. He would build an altar and call it El Elohai Yisrael. El Elohai Yisrael means God, the God of Israel. What was he saying?”