The Mystery of the Shemitah: The 3,000-Year-Old Mystery That Holds the Secret of America's Future, the World's Future, and Your Future!

by Jonathan Cahn

  Now and Forever

  The Bible says “now” is the time of salvation. Now is the time to get one’s life right with God. It cannot be put off until tomorrow. The only day we have is today, and the only moment, now. The time is late. Whatever is not right in your life, whatever is not of God or in His will, now is the time to rule it out of your life. And whatever God is calling you to do or be, now is the time do it, to be it, and to rule it into your life.

  The sound of an alarm cannot, by nature, be pleasant. It can’t be. Otherwise it wouldn’t serve its purpose to awaken and to warn. The Harbinger and The Mystery of the Shemitah are not only the revealing of mysteries but also the sounding of alarms. Whenever I’ve been tempted to rest from sounding the alarm, I’m reminded of God’s word to Ezekiel: If the watchman sees the danger coming and doesn’t sound the trumpet to warn the people, when the calamity comes, their blood will be upon his head. So I sound the trumpet.

  The time is late. One way or another, judgment will come. Therefore now is the time to be saved. Now is the time to do whatever one must do to get right. And for those who will answer the call, now is the time to become great.

  The alarms have gone off. The trumpets have sounded. The call has gone forth. One is left with a choice—to respond or not. The Harbinger closes with one final call—the last words of the prophet. I leave the one reading this with the same words:

  Let those who have ears to hear it, let them hear it. . . and be saved.

  Epilogue, Part 1

  ONE LAST NOTE: The BLACK SUNS (and the RED MOONS)

  The Signs and the Moedeem

  THE PHENOMENON OF solar eclipses has come up, thus far, twice. The space we have here will allow for a little more detail to be given. We have noted that the ancient rabbis saw solar eclipses as signs of judgment. The reference is found in the rabbinical writing Sukkah 29a:

  Our Rabbis taught, when the sun is in eclipse, it is a bad omen for the entire world. . . . Our Rabbis taught, “When the sun is in eclipse it is a bad omen for those who worship idols. But when there is an eclipse of the moon, it is a bad omen for Israel, since Israel reckons time by the moon and those who worship idols by the sun.”1

  Now, of course, solar and lunar eclipses are natural and regular phenomenon as determined by the relative movements of the sun, the earth, and the moon. And the rabbinical writings do not carry biblical authority. But there is a biblical basis for connecting the darkening of the sun and moon, in specific circumstances, to judgment.

  Behold, the day of the LORD comes. . . . For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be darkened in its going forth, and the moon will not cause its light to shine.

  —ISAIAH 13:9–10

  For the day of the LORD is near. . . . The sun and the moon will grow dark . . .

  —JOEL 3:14–15

  Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light.

  —MATTHEW 24:29

  Black Suns and Red Moons

  The events spoken of in these passages are not regular or natural occurrences, but apocalyptic events. Added to that, a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse cannot naturally take place at the same time.

  The Scriptures speak of the sun and the moon and the celestial lights functioning as “signs.” The Hebrew word used in Genesis 1:14 is otote; it can also be translated as “evidence,” “mark,” and “omen.” The same verse declares that they will be connected to days and years and “seasons.” But the Hebrew word translated as seasons is moedeem. Moedeem literally means “an appointment,” or “the appointed time” or “the appointed meeting.” It is the same word used for the holy days of Israel. Add to this the Scriptures’ emphasis on these celestial lights as signs of judgment and the end times, and we have to, at the very least, conclude that they may at times serve as signs of significant events.

  With regard to lunar eclipses, it has been noted that a unique series of four such eclipses are to appear from the spring of 2014 to the autumn of 2015, each on a Jewish holiday. They have also been called “blood moons” because of the red color they acquire in the midst of the eclipse. The occurrence of four consecutive lunar eclipses, each on a Jewish holiday, has taken place only six times in the last two thousand years. Three of those times have been associated with pivotal events in Jewish history: the expulsion of the Jewish people from Spain, the rebirth of Israel, and the regaining of Jerusalem.

  Is there any possible link between these occurrences and the Shemitah?

  Aside from its first six months, this series of blood moons or lunar eclipses will all take place within the coming Shemitah or its autumn wake. One lunar eclipse will take place in the Tishri that begins the Shemitah. The next will appear in the spring marking the center of the Shemitah. And the final one will take place in the Tishri that ends the Shemitah and marks its climactic wake.

  But what has often been missed is the significance of the solar eclipses in regard to their timing.

  The Black Sun and the Harbinger

  We have noted the link in timing between the darkening of the sun and the tower of Ground Zero. As the fourth of the nine harbingers, the tower already constitutes a sign of judgment. But, as we have seen, at the time the tower reached its full height, on the day the tower was crowned with its spire, the sun was darkened. The tower was crowned on the day of a solar eclipse.

  Another attempt had been made to crown the tower two weeks earlier. But the endeavor had to be abandoned because of the heavy gusts of wind at the tower’s summit that day. The date was April 29. On the anniversary of the first attempt to crown the tower, on April 29 of the following year, the sun was again darkened, another solar eclipse linked to the timing of the tower’s ascent.

  The Black Sun and the Shemitah

  The phenomenon is not only connected to the tower, but, on certain occasions, to the Shemitah. The darkening of the sun has, at times, converged with the Shemitah’s climactic end. This does not mean that an event of significance must occur at such a time. The convergence happened in 1959 with no apparent corresponding event of significance.

  On the other hand, when the sun has darkened at the time of the Shemitah’s climactic end, it has, more than once, signaled an event of great significance—and an event that just happens to take place in the same realm appointed by Scripture concerning the end of the Shemitah—the financial realm.

  The Black Sun of 1931

  In 1931 a solar eclipse took place on September 12. It happened at the end of the Year of the Shemitah. On the Hebrew calendar the eclipse took place on Tishri 1, the same day that ends the Shemitah and that begins at the moment of the Shemitah’s climactic conclusion, at the sunset of Elul 29, the moment of financial nullification.

  Eight days after the convergence, England abandoned the gold standard and set off market crashes and bank failures throughout the world. The darkening of the sun at the Shemitah’s end ushered in the greatest monthlong stock market percentage crash in Wall Street history.

  The Black Sun of 1987

  In 1987 a solar eclipse took place on September 23. It happened at the end of the Year of the Shemitah. It took place on the exact day of that end, Elul 29, the climactic day of financial nullification.

  Less than thirty days after that convergence came perhaps the most mysterious collapse in Wall Street history. The black sun had ushered in “Black Monday,” the greatest percentage crash in Wall Street history. Again, the sun’s darkening at the Shemitah’s climactic end had brought the greatest of financial collapses in American history.

  In terms of the proportion of the market wiped away, the convergence of the Shemitah’s end with the black sun has marked both the blackest month and the blackest day in Wall Street history.

  The Coming Black Sun

  Most of the coming Shemitah will take place in the year 2015. During that year there will be two solar eclipses. The first will take place on March 20. On the biblical calenda
r, up until sunset, March 20 is Adar 29. From sunset on, it is Nisan 1. It is the precise mid-point of the Shemitah year. Thus, the darkening of the sun will mark the beginning of the sacred year, and the Shemitah’s exact center point.

  The second solar eclipse of 2015 will take place on September 13. September 13 is Elul 29—again, the very of day that constitutes the Shemitah’s climactic end, the Day of Nullification.

  As it did in September 1931, and again in September 1987, it will fall on the Shemitah’s climactic end. In the past, this ushered in the worst collapses in Wall Street history. What will it bring in this time?

  Again, as before, the phenomenon does not have to manifest at the next convergence. But, at the same time, and again, it is wise to take note.

  Epilogue, Part 2

  ONE LAST MYSTERY: The SEVENTH SHEMITAH

  The Jubilee

  ONE LAST MYSTERY—and one that reveals not only the Shemitah’s prophetic nature but also its dynamic of redemption.

  In the Bible every seventh day is a Sabbath day. Every seventh year is a Shemitah or Sabbath year. And every seventh Shemitah leads into the year called “Jubilee.” The Jubilee always follows the Year of the Shemitah.

  And you shall count seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years; and the time of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty-nine years. Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month . . .

  —LEVITICUS 25:8–9

  The word jubilee has come to mean a time of celebration or anniversary. But the English word comes from the Hebrew yobale. Yobale means “trumpet blast.” The Jubilee was heralded with sounding of the trumpet throughout the land.

  The Year of Setting Free

  As the crowning of the seventh Shemitah, or the seventh cycle of seven years, the Jubilee was something of a super Shemitah. It was the Shemitah taken to a new level. In the Year of the Shemitah the land rested—so too in the Year of Jubilee:

  That fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee to you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of its own accord, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine.

  —LEVITICUS 25:11

  In the Year of the Shemitah came release. But in the Year of Jubilee the release took on new meaning. It was not simply the letting go of land or debt. In the Jubilee, slaves and prisoners were set free. It was thus the year of liberty:

  And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants.

  —LEVITICUS 25:10

  The Year of Restoration and Coming Home

  For those in debt the Shemitah brought restoration as all debts were wiped away. But in the Jubilee the restoration involved even more:

  It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family. . . . In this Year of Jubilee, each of you shall return to his possession.

  —LEVITICUS 25:10, 13

  If one had lost one’s inheritance or the inheritance of one’s family, in the Year of Jubilee that inheritance would be given back. The Jubilee was the year of restoration, the year of reconciliation, and the year of return. In the Jubilee, if others had taken possession of one’s land, they had to relinquish it. The Jubilee saw individuals returning to their families, families returning to their ancestral homes and lands, possessions returning to their owners, and the dispossessed returning to their inheritances.

  No one today knows for sure when the Year of Jubilee falls.

  AD 70: The Loss of Zion and Jerusalem

  The year was AD 70. The war had begun four years earlier. It now reached its climactic moment. Jerusalem was under siege by the Roman army led by Titus, son of the newly crowned emperor Vespasian. Inside the city were chaos, division, and famine. Finally the Roman forces broke through the walls. The Temple was set on fire. Jerusalem fell. Countless thousands of its inhabitants were killed. Tens of thousands were enslaved.

  Forty years earlier the Galilean rabbi Yeshua, later known as “Jesus,” had prophesied that Jerusalem would be destroyed and the people would be taken captive into the nations. His words had come true. The Jewish people had lost their homeland and their most prized earthly possession, the holy city of Jerusalem. They would wander the world for almost two thousand years from nation to nation—oppressed, persecuted, and hunted down, as their land lay desolate, barren, and forbidding.

  Strangers in the Land and Prophecies of Return

  But biblical prophecy foretold that in the end times God would gather the Jewish people from the ends of the earth and bring them back to the land of Israel, their ancient homeland, and to Jerusalem, their holy city. The return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is the central event of end-time prophecy. For much of the past two thousand years the idea of such a return seemed an impossibility.

  Jewish people had been scattered to the ends of the earth, many having no intention of returning to their ancient land. And the land of Israel itself was in the hands of others. In AD 70 the land was taken by Roman armies. Centuries later it would be in Byzantine hands. The Byzantines were conquered by Arab armies who now claimed the land for Muhammad and Allah. Then came the Crusaders, and after them, more Muslim armies. In the fifteenth century the land fell to the Ottoman Turks, who ruled it into the twentieth century.

  A Change of Empires

  In the nineteenth century, revival swept through England. One of the fruits of that revival was a love for the Jewish people and the nation of Israel. Exemplifying that love was the prayer one English boy was taught by his mother to include in his devotions:

  O Lord, we would not forget Thine ancient people, Israel; hasten the day when Israel shall again be Thy people and shall be restored to Thy favor and to their land.1

  It so happened that in the early twentieth century the British Empire was drawn into a war that would involve the Ottoman Turkish Empire, the power that, at the time, ruled over the land of Israel.

  During the war the Ottoman Empire crumbled, and British forces led by General Edmund Allenby entered the Holy Land. The British would take the city of Jerusalem without a fight. Allenby was the boy who had prayed every night for God to restore the Jewish people to their ancient homeland. Now it was he who, as a British general, was the key instrument in bringing it about. For the first time in two thousand years the land was in the hands of a power sympathetic to the Jewish people.

  The Restoration of the Land

  One month before Allenby’s victory in Jerusalem the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, which stated:

  His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object. . . . 2

  The Balfour Declaration marked a turning point in the restoration of the Jewish people to the land of Israel—the first such turning point in two thousand years. For the first time since the Roman Empire drove the Jewish people into exile, a major power had opened up the land of Israel for the establishment of a Jewish homeland and the return of the Jewish people.

  The Mystery of the Shemitah and the Restoration of Zion

  The Jubilee largely centers on the restoration of land to the dispossessed. There could never have been a greater or more momentous Jubilee for the Jewish people with regard to the restoration of the land than the issuing of the Balfour Declaration. Why is this significant here? What does it have to do with the mystery of the Shemitah?

  The Jubilee must take place in the year following the Year of the Shemitah. It must begin in the autumn, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, following the end of the Shemitah, in the Shemitah’s autumn wake. Allenby entered Jerusalem on December 11, 1917. The Balfour Declaration was issued one month earlier on November 2. Less than two months earlier, on September 16, 1917, the Year of the Shemitah had reached its conclusion. Thus the Hebrew year beginning in September 1917 and lasting until September 1918 const
itutes “the year after the Shemitah.”

  Whether 1917 was the actual calendar year of Jubilee or not, we cannot say. But with regard to the two-thousand-year exile of the Jewish people from their land, it was certainly a prophetic Jubilee—a mega-Jubilee, a Jubilee of ages. And it happened to take place in the year following the Shemitah, as ordained in the ancient decree concerning the Jubilee.

  The Jubilee is to be a year of restoration. After two thousand years, in the year 1917, the first official act of restoring the land to the Jewish people took place. In the Jubilee each one is to “return to his possession.” In the same way, in 1917 the door was opened for the Jewish people to return to their possession, the land of Israel.

  In the year of Jubilee, if others had taken possession of one’s land, they had to relinquish it. Likewise, in 1917 those who had possession of the land given to Israel had to relinquish. So it was that the Ottoman Turkish Empire gave up the land. They represented two thousand years of foreign rule over the land now coming to an end.

  In the Jubilee each one is to “return to his family.” So in 1917, with the opening of the land of Israel, Jewish people from all over the world came home and returned to their family.

  In the Jubilee one returned to one’s ancestral home and land. In 1917 the door opened the door for the Jewish people to return to their ancestral home, to the land of their forefathers, to their inheritance.

  In the Year of Jubilee the captives are set free. In AD 70 the Jewish people were led captive into the nations. In 1917 the door opened for the ending of the nearly two-thousand-year exile, the ending of the captivity—for the captives to be set free—the Jubilee.