Countdown To
'Disaster': 4 Months To Shemitah
As the climax of the “Shemitah” year draws
near, the man who popularized the once-obscure Hebrew word sees more cause than
ever for concern.
America is in for a great “shaking,” says Jonathan
Cahn, author of the New York Times best-sellers “The Harbinger” and “The Mystery
of the Shemitah.”
The Shemitah year began on Sept. 25, 2014, and will hit
its climax on Sept. 13, 2015. That is exactly four months away, when the Hebrew
calendar lands on Elul 29, the same biblical day of reckoning that brought
record stock-market crashes in September 2001 and September 2008.
The
Shemitah comes once every seven years and, according to Cahn, can bring
blessings or judgments. For a nation that started out dedicated to God but falls
into apostasy, each Shemitah year can bring progressively worse judgments until
the nation repents and turns back to God, he said.
Cahn remains cautious
about making any specific predictions on how the Shemitah will play out over its
final four months. He emphasizes that nobody can predict with absolute clarity
what will happen as August turns into September and September into
October.
But as he looks into the approaching storm, here are his main
concerns:
President Obama continues to foster poor relations with Israel,
reaching an agreement on Iran’s nuclear enrichment that Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu has characterized as a “bad deal” for his nation’s future
security.
America continues to slide into the moral abyss, embracing
homosexual marriages and pushing transgenderism in the public schools. A
landmark Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage is expected in
June.
At the same time Obama alienates Israel, ISIS continues to rise in
the Middle East and recently carried out a brazen attack on the U.S. homeland
with an attempted mass shooting at a free-speech event in Garland, Texas, last
week.
The FBI now says it has active investigations into ISIS
sympathizers in all 50 states. ISIS claims to have 71 fighters with targets in
15 states. It has threatened to infiltrate the ranks of refugees, which continue
to flood into the U.S. from the Middle East and Africa by the thousands every
month.
Many are coming from known terror-supporting states like Syria,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. Mosques are rising in cities across the
U.S., and the White House Task Force on New Americans is working feverishly in
cooperation with governors and mayors to lay out the welcome mat.
While
Islam is on the rise, Pew Research Center released a poll this week that found a
stark decline in the number of Americans who consider themselves Christian,
falling 8 percentage points in just seven years. Only 70 percent now call
themselves Christian, and those self-identifying as agnostic reached an all-time
high of 56 million.
Cahn sees a connection between what he calls “the
apostasy” or falling away from God and Judeo-Christian values, the willingness
to abandon Israel and the rise of Islamic terrorism.
A familiar
enemy
“The pattern revealed in ‘The Harbinger‘ could be significant
concerning America’s future,” he said.
“When ancient Israel was destroyed
in 722 B.C., the agents of its destruction were the ancient Assyrians, the same
ones who were responsible for inflicting a strike of terror on the nation years
before. Assyria was the originator of terrorism,” Cahn told WND. “America’s
first strike came on 9/11. Since America has followed the fatal pattern of
ancient Israel in defiance and apostasy, since the harbingers of judgment have
not stopped manifesting, I wondered whether this part of the pattern would also
replay.”
That pattern is this: The same forces responsible for the first
strike on ancient Israel returned years later to deliver another, more
devastating attack.
In light of this pattern, Cahn sees the rise of ISIS,
an outgrowth of al-Qaida in Iraq, as ominous.
“The agents of ISIS not
only claim the same region as that of the ancient Assyrians, but they practice
the exact same acts as savagery, mutilation of their victims, beheadings, and
the publicizing of these acts to inspire terror throughout the world,” Cahn
said. “The fact that America is now engaged again with the agents of terror, and
in the days of its deepening apostasy from God is doubly ominous.”
And
Cahn is not the only Christian leader who sees judgment on the horizon for
America. Many others, from Franklin Graham to James Dobson to Joel Richardson
have all spoken out with words of warning in recent months.
This week a
new voice, Ann Graham Lotz, daughter of the Rev. Billy Graham, added her name to
the list.
Lotz issued a “Mayday” alert for Americans to engage in a week
of steadfast prayer and intersession for the country May 15-23. She believes the
U.S. is careening headlong toward judgment “and it’s going to be ugly,” she
wrote on her website.
“Institutions will collapse. Banks will close,”
Lotz wrote. “The stock market will plunge. Planes will fall out of the sky. Cars
will crash on the road. Government in America at every level will disintegrate.
Families will be torn apart.”
Lotz even mentioned the tetrad of “blood
moons” as major signs that judgment is coming, affirming the work of pastor Mark
Biltz, author of “Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly
Signs.”
Though the pattern of the Shemitah is that it’s most dramatic
consequences tend to come at the end, Cahn believes the beginning may hold clues
to the end.
In the Shemitah of 2007-08, for example, the beginning seemed
uneventful. Yet on its opening day, there was a quiet clue that few even
noticed. The first major bank collapse in more than 100 years occurred in
Britain. This event foreshadowed the colossal collapse of the global financial
system that would take place at the end of the Shemitah year.
As the
current Shemitah began last September, Wall Street suddenly began reeling. It
quickly stabilized and then gradually continued its ascent. All concerns were
forgotten.
“Could it be a foreshadowing of the collapse of America’s
economic and financial realms?” Cahn asks.
And there are other potential
foreshadowing events that took place last September.
“An earthquake of
over 6 on the Richter scale struck America – on Sept. 25 – the very opening day
of the Shemitah. Could it be a foreshadowing of future natural disasters?” Cahn
wonders.
And the first manifestations of the Ebola virus in America took
place on Sept. 25, again on the opening day of the Shemitah.
Still, Cahn
tempers his concerns, saying, “We can’t be dogmatic. God doesn’t have to do
anything more in this present Shemitah. The dynamics of the Shemitah can
manifest more strongly in one cycle and less in another.”
But, he
advises, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
‘A great shaking is
coming’
“I do believe a great shaking is coming to America – a shaking
that will involve the collapse of the financial realm, the collapse of the
economy, and a collapse even greater than these. This can take place within the
parameters of the Shemitah or beyond, but I believe they are coming,” Cahn
said.
Of the last seven cycles of the Shemitah, 100 percent of them have
been linked to collapse, he said.
“The phenomenon of the Shemitah has
been intensifying. In the last two cycles, the Shemitah’s dynamics have grown
stronger in intensity and precision,” he continued. “At the end of the Shemitah
2001, in the month of September, the stock market collapsed in the greatest
point implosion in history. The day of its collapse was Elul 29, the very last
day of the Shemitah, the same day appointed by God as the day of financial
nullification. In exact accordance with the mystery, in September of 2008, the
stock market again collapsed in the greatest point crash in world history, and
did so on the very same day, Elul 29, the day appointed in the
Bible.”
There have already been several significant events having taken
place in this present Shemitah.
As the Shemitah began, in its first week,
the news came out that America had been overtaken as the world’s supreme nuclear
power. That mantle now belongs to Russia.
“For years, I’ve warned that if
America doesn’t return to God, the American age, as we have known it, will come
to an end,” Cahn said.
Many historians believe the “American age” began
around the year 1871, when the U.S. eclipsed the British Empire as the strongest
economic power on earth.
In the second week of the Shemitah, more than
140 years from the 1871 benchmark, America’s crown was removed as the strongest
economic power on earth as measured by gross domestic product. It passed to
China last September as the Shemitah year opened.
“The American age has
come to an end,” Cahn said. “The ramifications of this change in the days ahead
will be enormous.”
Moral ‘fall’ and the race toward judgment
One
of the meanings of the Hebrew word “shemitah” is “the fall.”
“A fall can
come about in many ways,” Cahn said. “In 1973, in the year of the Shemitah, the
Supreme Court ruled to make it legal to kill unborn children. That was a fall of
a moral and spiritual nature. It was accompanied by the collapse of the
financial realm and then the economic realm.”
The current Shemitah
appears poised to usher in an equally significant moral fall. As it began in the
autumn, the Supreme Court made the decision not to defend the striking down of
gay marriage bans across the country. In the subsequent days, the number of
states that had struck down the biblical definition of marriage went from a
distinct minority, in the teens, to a distinct majority, now at 37.
In
June of this year, the Supreme Court will issue its ruling concerning
marriage.
“It will likely end the historic, traditional, universal, and
biblical definition of marriage – the sign of a nation in the midst of a rapid
spiritual apostasy and moral fall – the sign of a nation racing toward
judgment,” Cahn said. “All this has and will all take place within the
parameters of the Shemitah – ‘the fall.’”
Abandoning Israel heaps more
judgment
One of the saving graces concerning America’s fall from God is
that it has still blessed Israel, Cahn said. But the recent deterioration of
relations between the U.S. and Israel is another ominous sign, he
said.
“Abraham made covenant promises that those who bless Israel will be
blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed. But now, even in this realm,
the signs point to judgment,” Cahn said. “At the same time America is deepening
its apostasy from God, we are witnessing the worst deterioration in relations
between America and Israel in the history of both countries. The (Obama)
administration has promised to reassess its relationship with Israel and has
given an implicit threat that it may abandon the Jewish nation in future days.
If we abandon Israel or place Israel in danger, should we then be surprised if
in future days we find ourselves abandoned and in danger?”
Cahn believes
America has been blessed as much as it has blessed Israel and the Jewish people.
But if it ever turns away from that, there is no guarantee of blessings. “And to
turn away from God and Israel at the same time, is a dangerous combination,” he
said.
Cahn said he sees the American financial system as a house of cards
– and one that could collapse at any time.
“There’s no single pattern the
Shemitah must follow. In the Shemitah of 2008, it was building up, in a series
of collapses, to the collapse of the financial realm in September. In the
Shemitah of 2001, the collapse came suddenly, almost out of nowhere, with the
event of 9/11, which caused the financial realm to implode.”
In the
present Shemitah, the final day of Elul 29 will fall on a Sunday, when the stock
market is closed. The last day the stock market will be open will be the 14th
anniversary of 9/11.
“Another sign we are racing toward judgment is that
the harbingers of which I wrote about in ‘The Harbinger’ have not stopped but
have continue to manifest – at the same time the nation descends from God,” he
said.
“When I speak of a great shaking coming, some people get scared,”
Cahn added. “But we are not to fear. If we belong to God, if He’s first in our
life, if we follow Him – there is nothing to fear. On the contrary, I believe
that without a shaking, without something to intervene in America’s moral and
spiritual implosion, there would be no hope. Through shaking can come revival,
among those who will return.”
A nation can be shaken through financial
and economic collapse, through natural disasters, through man-made disasters,
through the breakdown of a nation’s order and infrastructure, or, as in the case
of 9/11, through a terrorist attack.
“When people ask, ‘How can I be safe
in days of judgment?’ Or, ‘What should I do to prepare?’ I believe it is wise to
have essentials on hand, so that if systems break down, one would be ready,” he
said. “Beyond that, the safest place to be is not the Midwest or the South. The
safest place is the will of God. And for those who are not saved, the word for
safety in Hebrew is Yeshua – the Hebrew word for Jesus. The only safe place to
be, is inside Jesus – and to get everything in your life inside of His
will.”
Jonathan Cahn's - Mystery of the Shemitah
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