The Day Jonathan Cahn gave a Prophetic sign to Fidel Castro #CCOT #JESUS REIGNS FOREVER
THE DAY JONATHAN CAHN GAVE A PROPHETIC SIGN TO FIDEL CASTRO The
story that couldn't be told until now
Fidel Castro speaking in Revolutionary
Square, 1959, after the revolution
As the ashes of Fidel Castro are now laid to rest in Santiago, Cuba,
I am at liberty to tell the story that’s waited years to be told.
In 1999, for the first time since he took power in 1959, Fidel
Castro agreed to open up the island of Cuba for the Gospel, under much control
and surveillance, and for only one month. By this he would show the world that
there was ‘freedom’ in Cuba – an evangelical celebration that would span the
island from the east, where Castro’s revolution began, to Revolutionary Square,
Havana, where he began his rule.
Word was sent to me to open the celebration with the sounding of
the shofar. I agreed.
THE MAGI PROPHECY
One week before leaving, a man from Cuba came to us. He was a
pastor who had been imprisoned on the island for his faith. He gave us a
strange word. He said we would walk the island of Cuba as the magi, bearing
gifts, and we would enter the king’s palace.
I prayed as to what word I should bring to the people of Cuba.
What came to me was the message of Jubilee. The Jubilee concerns those who have
lost their land, their family’s possession, their freedom. That was Cuba. So I
came to Cuba proclaiming the God’s Jubilee, His power to set free those in
bondage and to bring restoration.
We were told we would go
to Cuba as the magi, bearing gifts, and enter the palace of the king
But I came also with something for Fidel Castro. I purposed that
if God would open the door, I would give Castro a Bible, a letter, and a
shofar, the Trumpet of Jubilee, the vessel used in biblical times to proclaim
freedom throughout the land.
When we landed in Cuba we had to pass through an inspection with
Cuban police going over everything in our luggage. The one thing that held us
up was the Jubilee shofar. They didn’t know what it was and approached it as if
it was a dangerous weapon. I decided to take the shofar, and show them how it
worked. I sounded it. They looked stunned, but then let us go.
In the following weeks, I spoke in churches and gatherings
throughout the island to give hope and encouragement to the believers of Cuba.
In place after place, Cubans came up to me and those with me to tell us that
they saw visions of us coming specifically as the magi.
It was then that I realized the full significance of the word
given to us before we left. As the magi had come to an unlikely place to
witness the newborn life of God, so had we now come to Cuba to witness God’s
newborn presence there, a revival was about to break forth. Our gift to the
believers of Cuba was to strengthen and encouragement them in the Lord.
At the same time, as in the account of the magi, there was
opposition to that new life. There was a throne and an aging king on that
throne who was fearful that the presence of Jesus in his land would be a threat
to his regime. To the people of God, the magi’s visitation was a sign of hope
and blessing. But to the king it was a sign of alarm, something to be closely
watched, and ultimately a portent of the end of his reign.
THE JUBILEE
The month long celebration of the Gospel opened up at the
island’s eastern end as I sounded the shofar in the first public evangelical
gathering in the public squares of Cuba since the revolution. The communist
officials watching all around me inquired why I was blowing the “Jewish horn.”
Someone else was watching – Fidel Castro.
The Evangelical
Celebration of Cuba – 1999
The events were being televised throughout the island. The word
soon came back to us that Castro wanted to know “Who is this man with the beard
causing such a ruckus? And “What is this Jewish man doing in the churches?”
It turned out we were retracing the footsteps of Castro’s
revolution – but with a very different message and of a very different
revolution. I was proclaiming the Gospel and the power of God for Jubilee, for
freedom and restoration.
Jonathan Cahn opening up
the first public evangelical celebration in Cuba
As I spoke of these things, my translator, a man named Felix,
would hesitate at times to repeat them, knowing that in virtually every place,
there were secret police and informers planted in the gathering, ready to
report any word considered suspicious. And just as potentially dangerous, all
over the island, on church buildings, houses, walls, and taxi cabs there were
now posters plastered proclaiming the words ‘El Jubileo Vienne!” “the Jubilee
is Coming” or “Freedom and Release is Coming,’ above a photograph of me
sounding the shofar.
THE BOY NAMED ‘FAITH’
Fidel Castro as a boy
On the way to Havana, I picked up a book about Fidel Castro and
religion. Most people don’t’ realize that his name, ‘Fidel,’ means ‘faith.’ But
as a young boy, Fidel had begun to lose faith. He told the story of how each
year, at Christmas time, he would write a letter – to the magi. And every year
he would get a cardboard trumpet. When he realized the magi didn’t exist, he
began to lose his faith. So it all started with a boy named ‘Faith,’ who first
began to lose his faith over the magi. From this would ultimately come atheism,
a revolution, prison camps, firing squads, and years of suffering for an entire
nation – even the banning of the celebration of Christmas. And now here we
were, coming to Havana, as magi and I happened to be led to bring Fidel Castro
the gift of a trumpet – of Jubilee.
‘AND EVERY MAN SHALL
RETURN’
The last stop before Havana was the province of Camiguey. It was
my translator’s last night of ministry. He had to return to America the next
day. I had no idea when I first asked him to join me that he had been born in Cuba,
and that his family lost everything in the revolution, their possessions and
their ancestral land. They fled to America where he grew up. There he came to
the Lord. His dream and prayer was that one day he would return to Cuba and to
his family’s land and his lost inheritance, and there build a church in which
he would preach the Gospel. It was ironic that as I was preaching the Jubilee
to Cuba, the restoration of every man to his ancestral land, the one
translating that message had himself lost his ancestral land in the Cuban
revolution.
That night, they took us to the place they had chosen for us to
minister in, a farm in the middle of nowhere, so much in the middle of nowhere
that they had to transport the people to us by cattle car. Before ministering,
I looked for my translator. He was wandering around the farm in a daze. I asked
him what had happened. He had just discovered that the land to which we had been
brought to minister – was his ancestral land. It was his family’s farm, the
inheritance he had lost in the revolution, the place he had for years prayed he
would one day return to.
So here on his last night, God had brought him home. It was what
I had been preaching all along throughout the land, and what he had been all
along translating – the Jubilee, the restoration – “And every man shall return
to his property.” And so his journey ended with the fulfillment of that
Scripture, and that prayer. And as for the church he had dreamed of building
there, it had already been built, and was waiting for him to enter it. That
night he preached inside the church of his ancestral land. He didn’t realize it
until that moment but he had been a sign to Cuba, all along, with every
footstep, of restoration.
The Castle by the Sea, El
Morro, Havana, Cuba
THE CASTLE AND THE STAR
We arrived in the capital city of Havana. Every day there, I
would gaze out my hotel room to see a centuries-old Spanish castle by the sea.
I was strongly led that we had to go to the castle and see what
was inside. So we did. We walked through its ancient chambers. As we turned a
corner, we suddenly beheld a massive painting that stunned us. The painting
depicted the magi. It turned out that the castle we were in was one of the
central national symbols of Cuba. And it was called “The Castle of the Three
Kings.” And in the painting, standing next to the magi was a boy holding in his
hand an object that looked like a shofar – the very thing I was now bringing to
Havana.
The magi followed a star. That was the one thing missing from
our journey. We joked, wondering if we would somehow see a star in Havana. We
decided to go to Revolutionary Square, to pray on the site on which the
evangelical gathering would take place the following day. We entered the Jose
Marti Memorial, the towering monument that marks the square. The government
official inside began to reveal that the tower had been built so that from the
sky it would form a star.
Jonathan Cahn sounding
the Jubilee shofar in front of the star monument of Revolutionary Square, the
day before the gathering
The tower was built as a star – and as the star of the magi, it
would mark the final destination of our journey – actually the final two
destinations: the square in which God’s people would gather together the
following day, and the Presidential Palace from which Fidel Castro ruled the
island. And as in the nativity account, the star would be linked to the
presence of Jesus on one hand – and an aging king and a dying kingdom on the
other. And it was then that we realized that we had been gazing at the star
every night as we looked out the window of our hotel room in Havana, ablaze
with light in the darkness, marking our final destination.
The following day we stood in the midst of the multitudes
gathered for the first evangelical celebration in Revolutionary Square. Fidel
Castro also stood there witnessing the gathering that filled the plaza that had
once been filled with Cubans welcoming his revolution to Havana. Now it was
filled for a different purpose. It was there that arrangements began that would
open the doors for the fulfillment of our mission.
THE PROPHETIC SIGN AND
COUNTDOWN
I received an invitation to enter the Presidential Palace. I
walked past the guards and was greeted by one of Castro’s assistants, who
informed me that the “Comandante” was very much aware of me and was watching my
journey through Cuba. I was brought inside and presented the gifts, the Bible,
a note with a message I had written him, and the shofar, the Trumpet of
Jubilee. Castro would later send word thanking me for the gifts. He also wanted
to know how I could be Jewish and believe in Jesus. The Central Communist Committee
also sent word inquiring into the shofar.
Giving the Trumpet of Jubilee to Fidel Castro was a biblical
reminder of the power of God for freedom, and a prophetic sign that His power
was greater than the bondages of man. The Cuban revolution had caused millions
of Cubans to lose their land, their homes, their ancestral possessions, their
inheritances, and their freedom – the very thing the Jubilee touches and
undoes. It had all begun as the Batista government collapsed and Castro and his
guerillas swept into the city of Havana at opening of 1959.
But the Jubilee Trumpet was linked to a mathematical formula to
the ending of bondage The Jubilee contains a very specific countdown: “You
shall count off seven sevens of years – seven times seven years – so that the
seven sevens of years amounts to a period of forty nine years. Then you
shall sound the trumpet….” (Leviticus 25)
What happens if one takes the biblical countdown of Jubilee and
applies it to Castro’s reign, starting with the year 1959, the moment Cuba lost
its freedom? Count “seven sevens of years, seven times seven years – so that
the seven sevens of years amounts to a period of forty nine years.” And to what
does that bring us? It brings us to the year 2008. Did anything significant
happen in 2008? 2008 was the year that ended the rule of Fidel Castro. His
entire reign, from 1959 to 2008, comprised the seven sevens of years, the 49
years of the countdown, ordained by God of the Jubilee – to the release of
bondage.
Castro Resigns Presidency of Cuba, After 49 Years February 19, 20083:26 PM ET Tom Gielten NPR’/News Headline from February 19, 2008 ‘a period of 49 years’ (Leviticus 25)
Funeral for Fidel Castro,
Revolutionary Square, Ruler of Cuba 1959-2008
What if one gets even more specific – to days and dates? What if
we begin the countdown from the specific day Castro came to power and count a
Jubilee of years and a Jubilee of days, seven sevens of years and of days.
Castro’s reign began specifically on New Year’s Day, January 1, 1959 in the
wake of Batista’s fleeing the island. If one starts the countdown from that
day, January 1, 1959, and counts a Jubilee of years and a Jubilee of days,
seven times seven years and seven times seven days, the countdown culminates on
February 19, 2008. Was there anything significant about that day? After nearly
a half century, the rule of Fidel Castro came to its end on February 19, 2008,
the exact day. On the day of release, Castro was released from power, and Cuba
was released from his reign.
The poster that appeared
throughout Cuba: Jonathan Cahn sounding the Jubilee Trumpet and the prophetic
words “The Jubilee is Coming”
When I asked the Lord for what word I was to give to Cuba, when
I proclaimed the Jubilee throughout the communist nation, when I gave to Castro
the Trumpet of Jubilee, and when the posters were plastered throughout the
island proclaiming “El Jubileo Viene!” “The Jubilee is Coming!” behind it all
was a mystery and a precise prophetic countdown to the end. The Jubilee was
indeed coming, and it would come for Castro’s rule at its biblically appointed
time. His reign would be timed to the end of the 49th year and to the 49th day,
and not a day longer – the mathematics of the release from bondage ordained
three thousand years earlier. That day would bring the most enduring iron grip
of power held by any man over any nation in modern history to a definitive end.
THE OTHER KING
I have sometimes wondered since then, when Fidel Castro looked
at the Jubilee Trumpet I gave him, did he ever realized its significance. I
pray that before he left this life he turned back to the One from the boy named
“Faith” once turned away, and found forgiveness for his sins.
In the Biblical account, the aging king Herod dies, but the new
born life of Bethlehem, the life of Messiah, goes on – to overcome kingdoms and
change the world.
Cubans lining up to enter
the Jose Marti, ‘star’ monument, Revolutionary Square
As I watched the thousands of Cubans paying their last respects
to their aged leader, as they lined up to enter the Jose Marti Memorial, I
wondered if they realized that they were heading to a star. Fidel Castro’s
funeral took place at that same star monument which marked the destination of
our journey and which, as the star of Bethlehem had marked for the magi, had
marked for us both the ending of a dying kingdom, and the birth of God’s
presence, the light of hope, a light shining in the darkness.
Castro has passed away, as did King Herod, and as do all the
kings and rulers of this world, and as do all those who, as Castro once did,
tried to stamp out the Gospel. But the revival that began under Castro’s rule
has not been stamped out. For kings and kingdoms, rulers and tyrants, all pass
away, but the name of Messiah remains.
Cuban believers
worshiping their king – Jesus
Castro has died – but Jesus lives. And as the dictator’s ashes
were laid to rest in the city of Santiago, the presence of Jesus was and is as
alive throughout the island as much as it ever was. It is even at this moment
transforming the lives of Cubans in a way that Castro’s revolution, with all
its guns and powers of state, never could. The Jubilee that began on our visit
to the island has not stopped, but continues.
The King lives … and the Revolution goes on.
– Jonathan Cahn
Comments
Post a Comment