Is it possible that a 3,000-year-old text holds the secret to explaining the growing panic on Wall Street and the reason behind a more than 1,000 point dip in the U.S. stock market since Sept. 25?
And could that same ancient text provide the key reason behind a more serious collapse of the stock market looming in September 2015?
Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, the author of the New York Times bestselling book "The Harbinger" has written a sequel, "The Mystery of the Shemitah," in which he decodes an ancient biblical mystery of a seven-year cycle he believes determines stock market peaks as well as turning points and crashes. In the book he forewarns of painful rollbacks in stock values that mark the beginning of major economic declines once every seven years as measured on the Hebrew calendar.
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Cahn’s warning comes as savvy investors like Warren Buffett dump stocks of blue-chip companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble and Kraft Foods, complaining of "disappointing performance," while fellow billionaire John Paulson, who made his fortune betting on the sub-prime market meltdown, is dumping stocks out of his hedge fund, Paulson & Co. He shed 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 added to the list of billionaire investors preparing for a market downturn – a list that already includes the names of Sam Zell, chairman of Equity Group Investments, George Soros and Carl Ichan.
Cahn writes of market collapses as the "ancient mystery moving across the globe," from the New York Stock Exchange to major stock exchanges worldwide, "in one vast colossal Shemitah, nullifying, canceling, wiping clean, and transforming the financial realms of nations."
The Shemitah was also known as the year of "release" in biblical times, when Israel was required to let its farm land lie fallow and forgive the debts owed to creditors. It is described in Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 15, among other Old Testament scriptures.
A major stock market collapse in September 2015, prefigured by the current stock market decline, is compatible with the cycle Cahn predicts, as God imposes a Shemitah on a stock market boom fueled by debt as a consequence of the Federal Reserve’s policy of "Quantitative Easing," which is the name it gives for printing trillions of dollars through the purchase of U.S. Treasury debt.
The more debt that an economy has to work out, the more severe the downturn, a financial expert warned in a recent report by WND.
WND has repeatedly warned that a major stock market correction becomes more likely once interest rates rise in response to the Fed chair "tapering" or pulling back on QE borrowing, with its stated goal of ending all Fed purchases of Treasury debt by year-end.
"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 theory by tying a series of stock market crashes dating back to 1973 under President Jimmy Carter with a biblical calendar still followed by observant Jews. This calendar, which most Christians are not familiar with, unlocks the secret of the seven-year cycle of stock market collapse occurring during the months of September-October. Cahn believes it would be foolish to dismiss this recurrent pattern, found in the Old Testament of the Bible, as mere coincidence.
He concludes:
- The greatest financial turning points of the past forty years have been connected to the Shemitah or in its wake 100 percent of the time.
- The greatest financial turning points, peaks, or long-term collapses of the past 40 years that have taken place within the biblical Year of the Shemitah or its autumn wake is 100 percent of the time.
- Where 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 of the turning point 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.
- 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 to the seventh day in a week – traditionally observed on Saturday in the Jewish calendar, beginning at sundown on Friday – but also to 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 explains a biblical admonition that the last day of the Sabbath year a sweeping transformation took place in ancient Israel in which everyone who owed 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 says the original Hebrew command ordains that every creditor should "make a Shemitah" that 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 that 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 lost in the market collapse.
Cahn calculated the next Shemitah began at sundown on Sept. 24, and will end at sunset on Sept. 13, 2015, and he predicted that the stock market could begin to fall as early as October of 2014, a fall that is already underway.
But he cautions against taking these 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 our 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.”
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