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| J. Cahn Photo Credit: Ha Navi Gallery/ajmu |
NEW YORK – Is it possible that a 3,000 year-old text warns of a major crash of the U.S. stock market next month?
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, author of the New York Times bestselling book “The Harbinger,” has written a sequel, “The Mystery of the Shemitah,” in which he documents a historical cycle he believes portends a painful stock-market collapse that would mark the beginning of a major economic decline.
The Shemitah, or sabbath year, is the seventh year of the seven-year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah for the land of Israel.
Cahn’s warning comes as savvy investors such as Warren Buffett dump stocks of companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble and Kraft Foods, complaining of “disappointing performance.” Meanwhile, fellow billionaire John Paulson, who made his fortune betting on the subprime market meltdown, is dumping stocks from his hedge fund, Paulson & Co. He has shedded 14 million shares of JPMorgan Chase and dumped his entire stock investment in discount retailer Family Dollar and consumer-goods maker Sara Lee.
The widely read financial blog ZeroHedge.com adds to the list of billionaire investors preparing for a market crash, including Sam Zell, chairman of Equity Group Investments; George Soros; and Carl Ichan.
Cahn writes of market collapses as the “ancient mystery moves cross the globe,” from the New York Stock Exchange to major exchanges worldwide, “in one vast colossal Shemitah, nullifying, canceling, wiping clean and transforming the financial realms of nations.”
“Shemitah” also just reached the New York Times Best Seller list, placing it at 6th, just about a week after release.
If you haven’t read “The Harbinger” or seen “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment” yet, now is the time to catch up on the groundbreaking spiritual detective work of Jonathan Cahn.
It would wipe out a stock-market boom fueled by debt as a consequence of the Federal Reserve’s policy of Quantitative Easing, in which it has bought trillions of dollars of U.S. Treasury debt since the end of the George W. Bush administration.
WND has repeatedly reported that a major stock-market downward correction becomes more likely if interest rates rise as the Federal Reserve “tapers” QE borrowing with a plan to end all Fed purchases of Treasury debt by the end of the year.
“The majority of the greatest point crashes in [stock-market] history just happen to take place in a very small period of time that comes around once in seven years, which also just happens to be on the same biblical calendar for manifesting the massive financial repercussions of the seventh year,” Cahn warns.
Cahn advances his investigation by correlating a series of stock-market charts dating back to the stock-market collapse in 1973 under President Jimmy Carter with the biblical seven-year cycle, arguing it is more than coincidence.
He concludes:
The greatest financial turning points, peaks and long-term collapses of the past 40 years have taken place within the biblical Year of the Shemitah or its autumn wake.
When there has been both a financial collapse and an economic recession, the period connecting their starting points has fallen within the biblical Shemitah 100 percent of the time.
Thus, from the 40-year period beginning in 1973, every single one of the five greatest financial and economic peaks and collapses have taken place according to the set time of the Shemitah.
Cahn begins to decipher the 3,000-year-old mystery by applying the biblical admonition to keep the Sabbath a holy day reserved to prayer and worshiping God not only on the seventh day of the week – traditionally observed on Saturday in the Jewish calendar, beginning at sundown Friday – but also the seventh year in a cycle.
“During the Sabbath year, the people of Israel were to leave their fields, vineyards and groves for the poor,” Cahn notes.
“For the duration of the year the land belonged, in effect, to everyone. And whatever grew of its own accord was called hefker, meaning ‘without an owner.’ So during the Sabbath year the land, in effect, belonged to everyone and to no one at the same time.”
Cahn elucidates a biblical admonition that the last day of the Sabbath year a sweeping transformation took place in ancient Israel in which everyone who owned a debt was released and the nation’s financial accounts were wiped clean in what amounted to “Israel’s day of nullification and remission.”
He pointed out the original Hebrew command ordains that every creditor should “make a Shemitah,” which translates as a command to “grant a release.”
“The word Shemitah is most often translated as ‘the release’ or ‘the remission,’” he writes.
“The idea of a nation ceasing all work on its land for an entire year is a radical proposition. No less radical is the idea of a day in which all credit and debt are wiped away. The ramifications of these two requirements are so great that concerns arose in later generations as to the Shemitah’s financial and economic consequences. These concerns were intensified when the Jewish people returned to the land of Israel in modern times.”
Cahn concludes the Shemitah, according to biblical admonitions, “declares that God is first and above all realms of life, and must therefore be put first and above every realm. During the Shemitah, Israel was, in effect, compelled to turn away from these earthly or worldly realms and return to their spiritual.”
When God is removed from the equation, as is increasingly happening in modern, secular America, then a removal of God’s blessings inevitably follows.
“The Shemitah thus deals with a particular flaw of human nature – the tendency to divorce the blessings of life from the Giver of those blessings, to divorce the physical realm from the spiritual,” he continues.
“It then seeks to compensate for the loss of the spiritual by increasing its claims over the physical world, pursuing more and more things, increase, gain – materialism. The increase of things, in turn, further crowds out the presence of God. The Shemitah is the antidote to all these things – the clearing away of material attachments to allow the work and presence of God to come in.”
Cahn sees major stock-market downturns as fulfilling God’s law by nullifying financial accounts.
Cahn calculates the next Shemitah begins this month, Sept. 24, and ends at sunset on Sept. 25, 2015. He believes a major stock-market downturn could begin early as next month.
But he cautions on taking the dates too literally.
“Nothing significant has to happen within the Shemitah of 2014-2015,” he writes.
“The phenomenon may manifest in one cycle and not in another, and then again in the next. And the focus of the message is not date-setting but the call of God to repent and return. At the same time, something of significance could take place, and it is wise to note the times.”
Cahn’s message is that the judgment of God is inevitable for any nation like America that forgets its blessings come from God.
“The warning here is this,” he concludes. “If America continues on its present course, its place as the head of nations will fall and the American age and global order will be allowed to collapse.”
