‘I feel as though I have been left with a cliff hanger,’ was one response to the last Langstaff Letter on ‘The Mystery of the Shemitah.’ In the last article, I sought to summarize the heart of the message of Jonathan’s Cahn’s book of the same name.
Very briefly, in the first part of the book he examines the concept of the shemitah, which is the seventh year, a year of rest. The shemitah is to years what the sabbath is to days. He also reviews the judgement of the Babylonian captivity and the mystery of the 70 years of exile in Babylon being the result of the unkept shemitas from Israel’s past. He goes on to relate it to America. He traces the correlation of the majority of the long term collapses in stock market history as coinciding with the specific seven year cycle of the shemitah. With that as the background, let’s look at what he writes in the latter part of the book.
STOCK MARKET PEAKS, COLLAPSES & CRASHES
In the last forty years, there has been five major peaks and turning points in stock market history (1973, 1980, 1987, 2000, 2008). You need to check his books for the details. Cahn declares ‘then, from the forty year period beginning in 1973 every single one of the five greatest financial and economic peaks and collapses have converged, clustered and taken place according to the set time of the shemitah.’
He then goes on to look ‘at the greatest single day crashes in stock market history.’ As he points out ‘long term collapses tend, by nature, to be caused by long term conditions, trends and dynamics. But single day crashes are more volatile, unpredictable and susceptible to fluke circumstances and ‘chance’ factors.’ A good example of this is the Black Monday Crash of 1987. ‘Another major difference between long term crashes and single day crashes is, or course, the time frame. A long term collapse will generally involve several sessions. A single day crash will by definition involve a singe season, month and date.’
He goes into detail, examining all these crashes and asks the question, ‘Of the top five greatest percentage of crashes of the post war era, how many of them took place either in the wake of the shemitah’s climax or at the moment of climax itself? One hundred percent.’ All of the greatest percentage crashes in Wall Street history ‘all happened within a span of three days on the biblical calendar.’
He then goes on to material that is his previous book ‘The Harbinger,’ the events of 9/11 and the collapse of 2007. He points out that ‘the greatest crash in world history took place in the year of the shemitah 2008’ at the time of the shemitah’s climatic end. Again, you need to read the book to get all the details.
He then has an interesting chapter entitled ‘The First Tower’ and beginning with the tower of Babel comes up to the worlds first skyscraper – The Equitable Life Assurance Building in New York, followed later by other towers in New York, including the Empire State Building, culminating years later with the World Trade Center. ‘The towers boasted of soaring heights to which American civilization had risen.’ But the shemitah reminds a nation that all of its blessings come from God and without Him they cannot remain’ – ‘the shemitah that ended the time of the high towers was September 11.
THE FALL OF SYMBOLS
‘What once stood on the pavement of Ground Zero were not only towers, but colossal symbols of economic and financial power.’ On 9/11 that symbol came crashing down.
He finishes this section with a question ‘If the rise of a tower foreshadows the rise of America in world history, what does the fall of a tower foreshadow?’ Here Cahn examines the rise and fall of empires in the last 100 years, including the collapse of the German Empire, the Austro-Hugarian Empires, the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire at the time of the First World War. This period also marked ‘the transference of mantles from the British Empire to America.’ After the second world war, America rose up to be ‘the greatest financial power, the greatest industrial power, the greatest commercial power, the greatest military power, the greatest economic power and the greatest cultural power’ on earth. But then the towers fell, so what does this all mean?
JUDGMENT IS COMING
There is no doubt Cahn sees judgement coming on America as spelt out in the Harbinger and he offers some words of caution in a section entitled ‘The Shemitah and the Mystery of the Future.’
‘What about the harbinger of the shemitah? Could it’s mystery reveal that which lies ahead?’ Cahn writes, ‘We must be careful with regard to date-setting as to when certain events must come about. The issue is not of dates, but of the call to repentance.’
ISRAEL AND THE JUBILEES
In the epilogue (part 2), Cahn examines ‘The Jubilee’ as it relates to Israel (see Leviticus 25:10,13) going back to the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 and then to the miraculous restoration of the land, beginning with General Allenby’s victory in Jerusalem in 1917. At that time the Balfour Declaration by the British government spoke of the establishment of a national home for Jewish people. 50 years later in 1967, in the 2nd year of jubilee, Israel captured Jerusalem in the 6 day war and then, for the first time since AD 70, Jerusalem was back in Jewish hands. The liberation of Jerusalem took place in the year following the shemitah, as in the Jubilee. He finishes the book with these words.
The first restoration followed the Shemitah of 1916 to 1917. Counting forward from that time, one arrives at the seventh Shemitah in 1965 to 1966. The seventh Shemitah leads into the year of the other great restoration: that of Jerusalem. If the cycle was to continue into the future, when would the next corresponding year be? The seventh Shemitah would be that of 2014 to 2015. Thus the corresponding year would be that of September 2015 to September 2016.
Lastly, as with the other mysteries and cycles, the connection between the two restorations does not necessarily have to repeat at the end of coming cycle – but it worthy of note.
A CLOSING THOUGHT
Let me add a note. the next Jubilee will be 2065, one hundred years after Jerusalem was liberated. According to Genesis 15:13-16, a hundred years is a generation and the words of Jesus spoken in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 are that this generation would not pass away before the Lord returns. Just a thought.
So what will these Jubilee’s bring? (By the way, the next one corresponds with the blood moons) Will it be jubilee (release) or judgment? I believe it will be both. As I have declared for some time now Isaiah 60:1-2 is a vivid description of the world today. The world will get darker but the glory of God will shine in the midst of God’s people. Revival in the midst of judgment.
It is certainly a time when we should seek to understand the signs of the times and even the mystery of the shemitah.
Kairos Ministries 