The Mystery of the Shemitah Make Ref. to Book- J. Cahn
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Mountainside UMC Sermon Notes September 14, 2014
The Mystery of the Shemitah – Make ref. to book- J. Cahn
Exodus 23:10-11
What if God were trying to speak to us today, to our nation and our world through our economy how might it sound? Consider..
Exodus 23:10-11“For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops,but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.
Over three thousand years ago the God of Creation spoke to a man named Moses and gave him the laws for his people the Israelites to keep and follow so that they might live well, prosper, be fruitful and be a blessing to all the people of the world. Moses wrote down these laws that are given to us in Scripture. One of those laws had to do with a term known as the Sabbath. Most of us are familiar with the use of the term related to God resting on the seventh day of creation and according to the Ten Commandments he called every individual to rest on the seventh day and to cease from labors and on that day you are not to do any work.
In addition to God calling individuals to cease from work, God also commanded his people to give the land from which they produced their crops a rest and it was to take place once every Sabbath year or once every seven years. So for six years they would plant and reap a harvest and then they would store up enough food so that on the seventh year, the crops, the land would rest and there would be no planting or harvesting for the entire Sabbath year called the Shemita. This act of a Sabbath for the land had two purposes. The resting of the land allow the ground be restored and renewed. The land itself would observe a Sabbath, the fields would lie fallow, the vineyards untended. The fields, the groves, the vineyards were to be left open for the poor. For the duration of the year the land, in effect belonged to everyone and no one at the same time. It was called hefker or “without owner.”
If that wasn’t an incredible enough command for God to give his people, he added one more element to this which was recorded in Deuteronomy 15:1-2 At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to a fellow Israelite. They shall not require payment from anyone among their own people, because the Lord’s time for canceling debts has been proclaimed.
“At the end of every seven years” refers to the last day of the Sabbath year. Elul was the last month of the Hebrew civil year and the twenty-ninth day was the last day of Elul. So on Elul 29, the very last day of the Sabbath year, a sweeping transformation took place in the nation’s financial realm. Everyone who owed debt was released. And every creditor had to release the debt owed. So on sunset of Elul 29 all credit was erased and all debt was wiped away. The nations financial accounts were in effect wiped clean.
This was also known as the shemitah a term that covers both the seventh year and the last day of that year. The Shemitah cleanses and wipes away, ends imbalances, levels accounts, and nullifies that which has built up in the previous years- a massive cleansing of the financial and economic slate. The Shemitah required the people to release their attachments to the material world.
Now there was one more command related to Shemitah called the Jubilee. Leviticus 25: 8,10 &13 8“‘Count off seven sabbath years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years. 10Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan. 13“‘In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to their own property. So in addition to the erasing of all financial debts every seven years, at the end of Seven Shemitah’s or at the end of 49 years, in the 50th year everyone was to be restored to their original land and property and clan.
Therefore the Shemitah that happened every seven years combined with the Jubilee that happened after every seven Shemitah’s was a reminder that God is the source of all blessing, spiritual and physical alike. But on the flip side of this when God is removed from the picture, the removal of the blessings will ultimately follow. The Shemitah thus deals with this particular flaw of human nature- the tendency to divorce the blessings of life from the Giver of those blessing and divorce the physical realm from spiritual.
Needless to say and most of you already know this that after God led his people out of slavery and into Egypt, 40 years with Moses in the desert, then into the promise land and eventually raising up David as the most powerful king in the most powerful kingdom in the world, Solomon his son comes to rule and he begins to lead Israel into continual descent toward removing God out of their culture and nation. Solomon began relations with foreign wives who brought in their foreign gods. They began worshiping foreign gods. They sacrificed their children in furnaces that worshiped Molech. They became obsessed with worshiping idols related to sex and sexuality. Violence became the norm. They removed any knowledge of the Scriptures, the traditions, the teachings of Scripture out of their life.. Obsessed Idolatry. Thank goodness nothing like that is taking place in America. Right? God isn’t being driven out in our nation in any shape form or fashion today.
Even though God clearly warned Judah/Israel to repent they ignored God and eventually the Assyrians to come in and attack Israel and later Babylon attacks Judah and hauls them into captivity in 586 B.C. and Jerusalem falls and the land finally receives a Sabbath. Israel & Judah are judged. Jerusalem and the land of Israel lies in rest for 70 years. Where this nation of people had driven God out of their lives and the Shemitah from their land, now it would return to them. What they had refused to observe freely would now come upon them by force. It would come back not as a form of blessing, but of judgment.
They had driven the Shemitah from the land. Now the Shemitah had returned and they themselves were driven out. They had removed God from their lives. Now their blessings once from God would likewise be removed from their lives, and their lives from their blessings. This law stands – We reap what we sow.
Now the big question, what does this have to do with us today? Is there are correction between recent world history and the history of our own nation and this command to keep the Sabbath and the reality of the Shemitah? Has history been and will history continue to repeat itself based on the reality of the Shemitah related to United States and the world. Let me first highlight this Scripture.
Amos 3:7 Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his planto his servants the prophets. Let’s take a little walk through recent history of the last 100 years and see what possible clues that God may be using his Scriptures and trying to warn America of things to come.
If we go back 100 years the upcoming Shemitah on the Jewish calendar begins in the fall of 1916 through the fall of 1917. Did anything significant happen in that season?
SLIDE 1
1916-17 - “Crisis of 1916-1917” Stock Market Crash.
Begins in 9/16-hits low 12/17 – 40% loss
- U.S. Enters World War I – 70 MM serve-15 MM die
- Falling of Four Empires – German/Second Riech
Austro-Hungarian – Ottoman – Russian czars
- Beginning of “sunset” of British Empire
- U.S. begins it’s rise as a Superpower-ends isolation
- The Balfour Declaration- Israel returns-“Jubilee”
Now Four is the number given in Scripture connected to world kingdoms and empires(book of Daniel and Revelation). What would happen if we moved forward four Shemitah’s? Four Shemitas 4x7 = 28 which would take us to… 1944-1945 which is the end of World War II.
SLIDE 2 1944-45 End of World War II
So here we are in 1945 and you have another global cataclysm. You have the shaking of the world. When you reach the peak of the Shmitah, you also get the peak of World War II, summer of 1945. You're approach the Shmitah's day of nullifying things, the day of wiping out. Unleashed on the world is….SLIDE 3
1944-45 End of World War II
The Atomic Bomb
Atomic warfare comes on at the end of the war. It's like this crescendo. The war ends in the last week of the Shemitah, this whole seven-year period. And when, actually in Berlin, the allies have a victory parade celebrating the victory in Europe and Asia, that parade took place on September 7, 1945 which in the Jewish Calendar is Elul 29 the last the day of the end of the Shmitah. Now one more mostly unknown event took place in 1945. SLIDE 4
1944-45 End of World War II
The Atomic Bomb
Proposal for “World Trade Center”
In 1945 David Scholtz, a real estate developer and former governor of Florida, first proposes a concept for a "world trade center" in Lower Manhattan to encourage port and maritime activities in New York. So what is the big deal on this? Prior to the late 1800’s the tallest buildings in the world were usually churches that built stone based structures. In the late 1800’s steel skyscrapers took over the skyline. Throughout history the countries with the tallest towers were usually had the most powerful economies and militaries in the world. In the late 1800’s the (1871)United States surpassed Britain’s economy and built the tallest buildings in the world. The Empire State building completed in 1931 after 410 days of construction (contrast that to 14 years One World TC) was the tallest building in the world from 1931 until it was surpassed by the World Trade Center towers in 1970. All during the years when the United States had the tallest towers in the world we were also the dominant economy in the world and the U.S. Dollar was the worlds currency.
So there is this parallel between the tallest towers and being the world’s most powerful and prosperous nation. From 1945 let’s go another Four Shemitas forward. 4x7 = 28. This brings us to 1973. A number of important events took place in 1973. The first is that the World Trade Center Twin Towers are completed and the ribbon cutting ceremony takes place April 4, 1973. Interestingly the construction for the towers took started 7 years earlier at the previous Shemitah in 1966. Israel 1966(7 Shemi-JubileeII-Jerus)
SLIDE 5
1973 - WTC Twin Towers Opening Dedication
- Abortion is legalized
- Vietnam ends – U.S. withdraws losing its
first war in the 20th century
- Major world-wide stock market crash begins
The day that Nixon officially ended U.S. involvement in Vietnam considered America’s first military loss is the same day(August 15) that victory over Japan was declared exactly 28 years earlier.
A note about The World Trade Center twin towers. They were built to be the tallest towers in the world in and in some way an expression of America’s economic greatness in the world’s stage. Yet, the Twin towers were quickly surpassed by the Sears towers and both the Sears and the Twin Towers were both surpassed by the Petronas Tower in Malaysia, the Taipei tower in Taiwan and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Towers speak of the greatness and dominance of a nation or culture however the Shemitah speaks of releasing, letting go or letting fall. Towers speak of pride and the Shemitah is a message of humility, and falling away.
Now from 1973 lets go forward 4 more Shemitah’s and we land at 2001. What happened in 2001? SLIDE 6-7& 8 The twin towers were attacked and fell on 9-11 they didn’t just fall over or were damaged, they were destroyed. It resulted in the closing of the New York Stock Exchange for the rest of the week. Pentagon/93
The Stock Market then re-opened on September 17, 2001 the first day of trading was the greatest single point drop in recorded history up to that date. On that day the market dropped 684 points which converted into percentage points is a 7%. September 17, 2001 on the Jewish calendar is Elul 29 the last day of the Shemitah and the exact day of the cancelling of accounts according Deut15
Seven years later in 2008 – September 29, 2008 the stock market fell to its next greatest point drop in current stock market history by falling 777 points in one day. September 29, 2008 on the Jewish calendar is Elul 29 the exact day for the end of the Shemita year and the cancelling of accounts. Could God be trying to get the attention of a nation that is aggressively throwing him out of every school, business, institution and pushing out the influence of the teachings of Scripture entirely out of our culture? Could be!
If the evidence of the timing events related to the Shemitah’s aren’t convincing enough then possibly the events that have taken place since the 9-11 of 2001 in America and the parallel events of God warning ancient Israel during their time of rebellion is rather compelling. I can’t go into great detail in a few minutes and I highly recommend reading The Harbinger by Jonathan Cahn.
In the book, Cahn recounts the history of Israel leading up to its fall in the 8th century B.C. and parallels it’s history to the events that have taken place in the United States since 9-11. There are nine what he calls “Harbingers” that I believe help us see that God is trying to reach out and call us to repentance in a way that is in my opinion and millions of others very clear and very startling.
The First Harbinger: The Breach.
For a couple hundred years God sent prophets to warn Israel of their rebellion against him but they ignored them. In 732 B.C. God sent a final warning by temporarily removing Israel’s hedge of protection, by permitting a limited invasion of Assyria.