The Jubilee Song of Freedom.
By Percy T. Magan
When the children of Israel permitted the Lord to work out his own plans for them, peace and happiness filled their borders. Every fiftieth year they hallowed the year of jubilee, and the jubilee years were the most joyous in the annals of Israelitish story. “Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession. AND YE SHALL RETURN EVERY MAN UNTO HIS FAMILY. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you. . . . In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession. And if thou sell aught unto thy neighbor, or buyest aught of thy neighbor’s hand, ye shall not oppress one another.” Now the trumpet of the jubilee was to be sounded “on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement.” The day of atonement was the day on which sins were blotted out. The year of the jubilee was the time when debts were blotted out. And the time during which they should become free from sin and free from debt could not help but be a time of jubilee in Israel. Had the Lord had his own way about it, man never would have sinned. It is equally true that had God had his own way about it, man never would have known what debt is. Consequently it was fitting that freedom from sin and freedom from debt should go hand in hand. To borrow—to be in debt—was not contemplated in the system of political economy that God laid down for Israel. “Thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow,” were the words of Jehovah. But if they did borrow; if, on account of sickness, calamity, or any other poverty-producing reason, they failed to follow this wise mandate, then the year of jubilee provided an infallible plan of redemption for the borrower. For in that year every man was to return unto his possession, every man unto his family. Every vestige of oppression, one of another, was to cease. The plan of God in this matter was complete and perfect. It provided for absolute release: “If thy brother be waxen poor, and hath sold away some of his possession, and if any of his kin come to redeem it, then shall he redeem that which his brother sold. And if the man have none to redeem it, and himself be able to redeem it; then let him count the years of the sale thereof, and restore the overplus unto the man to whom he sold it; that he may return unto his possession. But if he be not able to restore it to him, then that which is sold shall remain in the hand of him that hath bought it until the year of jubilee: and in the jubilee it shall go out, and he shall return unto his possession.” The remnant church is now living in the antitypical day of atonement, in the time when sins are being blotted out. We are living in the time when the loud cry of the third angel is to sound; when the latter rain is to fall; when the “jubilee song of freedom is to be sung throughout our borders.” When the notes of the “jubilee song of freedom” rose from the lips of Israel’s hosts, it was because a real experience had taken place in their lives. It was because they had a definite knowledge that their sins had actually been forgiven, and their debts of every name and nature had been blotted out. Thus they stood free and clear before God and man. From this a lesson is to be learned for these last times. The remnant church live not only in the antitypical day of atonement, but also in the great antitypical year of jubilee. As men and women watching and waiting for the coming of our Lord and Master, we will sing “the jubilee song of freedom,” only as our sins are forever washed away, and our debts of every name and nature wiped out to be again no more. All of this must be to us a real, live experience—a fact in our lives. To-day we stand confronted with the burning questions, Have we sins to be blotted out? Have we debts to be wiped out? We do have both of these. How stands the case? Almost, if not quite, every one of our larger enterprises and institutions is loaded down with debt, fettered with obligations, which it finds almost impossible to meet—chained, manacled, and muzzled, on account of the sums of money which it owes. You and I know all this. We have known it to a greater or less extent for several years. We pray for our institutions, for our publishing houses, our sanitariums, our colleges and academies, for the General Conference Association, and the Foreign Mission Board. Some of us nearest to the institutions, stand aghast with bated breath, as we see them toil under their burdens, in their desperate attempts to go forward and do their God-appointed work. Year by year this state of affairs is becoming worse and getting more intolerable. God himself is calling upon us to stop and seriously consider where it will end. Thank God, the Lord himself has set his hand to it that his work shall go free. This is destined to be one of the most remarkable movements of the latter days of our work. The Lord is now speaking through his servant the prophet upon this matter. He himself is moving in the matter, and he is calling upon all those who love him, the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, to move in unison with him.