The Ongoing Dicussion on Amazon About The Mystery of The Shemitah

THE ONGOING DISCUSSION ON THE MYSTERY OF THE SHEMITAH

Below are the minutes of a debate regarding another bestselling book by Pastor and Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn titled The Mystery of The Shemitah.  In this book he outlines the historical pattern of remedial judgments visited upon America as early as the 19^th century and well into the present, showing from historical records which cannot be refuted that every major collapse occurred precisely on a precise date in the Rabbinic Hebrew Calendar in which debts are released and property changes hands.  An incredible find.

Dispensationalists, who for theological reasons argue against this because the modern Rabbinic Calendar in use since the second century CE/AD does not line up with the one with the Pre-Exilic, Post-Exilic, and the one used during the Second Temple Era, forget that God’s Sovereignty, regardless of the calendar dates used which are mere conventions of man; He has historically (as borne out by Scripture) been more than able to act within whatever framework and convention man has erected for himself to tell time and dates regardless of the alterations.

This is most evident in the progressive multiplicity of prophetic parallelisms evident in Scripture as Midrashically expounded by the New Testament Evangelists, particularly Matthew and John, in revealing the events of their day applied to precise prophecies from the Hebrew Bible to the Messiah and vice a versa.  Many of the passages they cite from the Tanakh themselves possess historical content and refer to specific historical and religious events within the Law and the Prophets that by themselves have no other meaning, but when seen through the eyes of Messianic Eschatology through the lens of the Holy Spirit of God, are given new life in the events recounted in corpus of the God-breathed writings of the New Testament.  Only those ensconced to a letter based upon a theology cannot understand or see the essence or intent of biblical prophecy, and therefore kill the intent spirit of the prophecy or teaching itself.  This unfortunately is what happens when one weds themselves to a specific philosophy based upon a theological school of thought.  The Bible is not wedded to any theological or philosophical school of thought man has invented to understand it.  It stands in its totality all by its own and is uniquely God’s inspired inerrant Word.

Jose J. Bernal (THE PEPSTER)

Systems Analyst

As a man thinks within himself, so he is.

Proverbs 23:7a

The lot is cast into the lap, But its every decision is from the Lord.

Proverbs 16:33

"Do not petition G-d to go where you are going; rather find where G-d is going and travel with Him."-- Unknown Jewish Wise Man

"I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer not neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.".--- William Penn

"It’s not failure, but the fear of failure that stops most people.”-- Philip Anschutz

"THERE IS NOTHING MORE FRIGHTENING THAN ACTIVE IGNORANCE." -- Goethe

"To anger a conservative, lie to him. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth." - Unknown Author

“I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position one has reached in life, as by the obstacles that he has overcome while trying to succeed.” – Booker Taliaferro Washington, 1856 – 1915

“ A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us. ”— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Truth is in history, but history is not the truth." - Nicolás Gómez Dávila

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CRITIC’S CLAIM: EVEN THOUGH OUR FOUNDING FATHER’S INVOKED GOD’S NAME, FREEMASONRY IS PAGAN AND IT IS WOVEN INTO THE FABRIC OF AMERICA.  THE APOTHEOSIS OF WASHINGTON IS AN EXAMPLE OF THIS PAGANISM IN OUR CAPITOL BUILDING: Any objective evaluation of America's history will reveal that although God's name was invoked by the Founding Fathers at various points, even to the point of some seeing America as a new Israel, it is equally true that the paganism of Freemasonry is woven into the very foundation of America - and this is evident everywhere one looks in our nation's capital of Washington, D.C. - to the degree that in the dome of the Capitol building, George Washington is depicted as becoming deity as he is received into heaven.

Before I continue to present my reply to this critic, I must stress and make absolutely clear right here that I do not endorse Freemasonry, or any fraternity or secret society, I have never belonged to one, nor do I ever plan on joining one, and I personally do not agree with many of the teachings and beliefs that characterize what has come to be known as modern Freemasonry. 

My father was a Freemason and belonged to two of these fraternities, and at one time, I had considered becoming a member of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry upon invitation by one of my father’s closest acquaintances; but after my spiritual conversion to faith in Jesus as Messiah, and upon my own investigations into the history, various rites and beliefs of the different orders as they stand today, I decided against it because they are at variance to my closely held personal beliefs. 

I do however, make a clear distinction between what Freemasonry has become and what it was more than two hundred years ago; what and who comprised its membership then, and how it eventually became what we know of it today.  I believe that the history of the development of Freemasonry from what it was when American society was predominantly Protestant Christian to what it later became – with influences from the humanist and neo-pagan and socialist Enlightenment – beliefs that found their way from Europe across the ocean to these shores in the early part of 19^th century society, did to American society and the fraternities and our higher education system what the Haskalah Movement did to Judaism in Europe.  Having made this distinction here, let us continue in addressing the critic’s complaints about George Washington and many of our Founding Fathers’ connections to Freemasonry and personal salvation in Jesus Christ as the Scriptures teach it.

FACT: Regarding modern Freemasonry, I agree, it has been infested and infiltrated at every level by an odd mixture of Judeo/Christian and Neo-pagan concepts and teachings, and since the early part of the nineteenth century, been infiltrated with influences from the European Enlightenment and socialist progressive secular humanism.

FACT: Additionally, Freemasonry of colonial 18th century colonial America was very different from what we see today, and the critic and many of his colleagues have a tendency to impose their conceptualization of what Freemasonry is today in a Post-Christian Post Modern America into what Freemasonry was during the era of the founding of our republic.  Colonial America was not Post-Christian, but predominantly Judeo-Christian, not only culturally, but also religiously and in practice, and America’s lodges were filled with many clergymen and members of several of the most prominent Protestant Christian denominations. 

FACT: The critic, like many of his colleagues, always see history through a Post Modern twenty-first century lens as though American society was always as it is today and its peoples, organizations, and fraternities; static and quiescent institutions populated by two dimensional characters on a cardboard stage.  They forget just how dynamic and living, free flowing, and dynamic our American forefathers were.  Like us today, they were transformative beings, who like us had dreams, aspirations, faced challenges, and while some converted spiritually, others lived lives of quiet desperation. 

FACT: The people changed, the institutions changed, even the fraternities they belonged to, evolved as well.  It is a foolish errand to equate today’s Freemasonry with the Freemasonry of the mid to late eighteenth century America; as foolish as it would be to equate today’s Post Modern/Post Judeo-Christian American culture with the Judeo-Christian-based, predominantly Protestant Christian culture of eighteenth century colonial America.  The two are polar opposites.  So too is the Freemasonry of that era with today’s, though I in no way consider Freemasonry of any era itself an ideal venue for Christians, simply because of its pantheism, which is antithetical to Christianity’s exclusiveness and uniqueness as a faith.

FACT: These critics attach so much on what organization a person belongs to, such external matters as to what denomination one belongs to, what theology they profess – Calvinism, Dispensational Theology, Armenianism, Messianic, and all of the others in between, whether one belongs to a lodge, what type of lodge, what type of fraternity, what order, etc…, things have absolutely no value and are of no consequence to the born again faith in Jesus professing believer. 

FACT: They profess to believe in Christ alone, by faith alone, for salvation and as a metric in discerning another person’s faith; yet they set up so many other markers which nullify their claim to believe in the cross alone for salvation, as they do repeatedly against George Washington, and other Founding Fathers of our republic who were Freemasons.

FACT: But the critic misses the point entirely.  He argues the point from the point of how men view and characterize other men, not how God’s Word does.  In other words, George Washington’s faith (and that of many of the Founding Fathers who like him, were Freemasons), like the faith of any other person, is brought into question because of his earthly affiliations with a fraternal order, not a profession of personal faith, but because he belonged to a Masonic Lodge and was a Freemason.  This is not a biblical assessment of another man’s faith, because it is totally devoid of the only criteria for such a judgment – Christ and the person’s relationship to Him.  Can this critic, or any other feel they can stand before God with these arguments and argue with Him that based upon these, not the cross, they do not believe Mr. Washington, and anyone else by extension – any of us – are worthy of heaven?  In fact, the Scriptures tell us regardless of the critic’s arguments, that we are not worthy of heaven.  Not a single one of us is worthy.  So, how dare the critics or anyone else stand in the place of God, and judge another, based upon his earthly fraternal affiliations, and not the cross; to criticize that person for it, when there is a huge beam of religious pretense lodged in his own eye?

FACT: In Theosis, deification denotes taking on the divine nature of God, a by-product of the new birth.  The Apostle Paul makes mention of this in his Mar’s Hill Discourse, where he declares,  “Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.  Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent.” (Acts 17:29-30)  Regarding the doctrine of THEOSIS, I defer to the following from Wikipedia the Online Encyclopedia.  I quote:

Christianity

Generally

Main article: Divinization (Christian)

Instead of the word "apotheosis", Christian theology uses in English the words "deification" or "divinization" or the Greek word "theosis". Traditional mainstream theology, both East and West, views Jesus Christ as the preexisting God who undertook mortal existence, not as a mortal being who attained divinity.  It holds that he has made it possible for human beings to be raised to the level of sharing the divine nature: he became one of us to make us "partakers of the divine nature"^[4]  "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God."^[5]  "For He was made man that we might be made God."^[6]  "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."^[7]

The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology contains the following in an article titled "Deification":

Deification (Greek theosis) is for Orthodoxy the goal of every Christian.  Man, according to the Bible, is 'made in the image and likeness of God.'. . . It is possible for man to become like God, to become deified, to become god by grace.  This doctrine is based on many passages of both OT and NT (e.g. Ps. 82 (81).6; II Peter 1.4), and it is essentially the teaching both of St Paul, though he tends to use the language of filial adoption (cf. Rom. 8.9—17; Gal. 4.5—7), and the Fourth Gospel (cf. 17.21—23).

The language of II Peter is taken up by St Irenaeus, in his famous phrase, 'if the Word has been made man, it is so that men may be made gods' (Adv. Haer V, Pref.), and becomes the standard in Greek theology.  In the fourth century, St. Athanasius repeats Irenaeus almost word for word, and in the fifth century St Cyril of Alexandria says that we shall become sons 'by participation' (Greek methexis).  Deification is the central idea in the spirituality of St. Maximus the Confessor, for whom the doctrine is the corollary of the Incarnation: 'Deification, briefly, is the encompassing and fulfillment of all times and ages,' . . . and St. Symeon the New Theologian at the end of the tenth century writes, 'He who is God by nature converses with those whom he has made gods by grace, as a friend converses with his friends, face to face.' . . .

(Apotheosis, Wikipedia the Online Encyclopedia)

Now, not everyone will agree with how God’s Word defines Theosis, but it is the transformation of the believer from his previous natural state of mind and being into what, God in His grace, created him to be before the fall; as Christ’s restorative process continues after the new birth through the indwelling Holy Spirit through God’s sanctification process during one’s life.  Theosis is possible only following a genuine new birth in Christ (1Peter 1:2-5, 23) made possible by the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1Peter 1:18-21).  There is not achievable by any other means, but by the work of the Holy Spirit indwelling the penitent and submissive born again believer who dies to self, loves God from the heart (1Peter 2:24), loves his commandments from the heart, and loves his brethren as Jesus gave us commandment to do with one another – “love each another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12, 1Peter 1:22)  The process of Theosis is best described in what the Apostle John the Beloved has written.  I quote:

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life— and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us—what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.  These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.

This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.  If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.  If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.

(1John 1:1-10)

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.  And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.  The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected.  By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.

Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard.  On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.  The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now.  The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.  But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

(1John 2:1-11)

THE MEANING OF THEOSIS ACCORDING TO GOD’S WORD AND ITS PROCESS

The aim of God’s heart is that everyone be saved, that none should perish, but that all should come to repentance. 

Equally so, His heart is that our works not be burned up, but that we may receive seed directly from the Sower of men’s hearts, and plant them for His harvest and receive His reward.  We are those laborers in those vineyards and fields.  But to be true laborers of Christ we must put Him on daily and keep Him on throughout each day. 

That means we die to ourselves – to our old nature which our bodies which await final redemption and transformation at the resurrection of the righteous of God, still war with us and we with it – our consecration to Him, so that we may live for God, and God may express Himself unencumbered by any leaven of our past – any leaven of our egos, any leaven of our pride, any leaven of our petty prejudices and biases, any leaven of man; because a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough (Galatians 5:9).  We must decrease so God may increase, just as John the Baptist said when he spoke of himself and his mission as the Lord Jesus embarked on His (John 3:30).  So it is with us.  Indeed, Paul the Apostle in the Holy Spirit writes, For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. (Philippians 1:21) 

This is the true process of THEOSIS – that we become through Him – like Him in every way that is possible while yet inhabiting these bodies, before our glorification into that which we will become at the first resurrection of the righteous in Christ (Philippians 3:21, Revelations 20:4-6). 

I praise the God of heaven, indeed the God of all Creation for this gift; the gift of true eternal life that He has given to us, and all who willingly come to His cross; who have all of their guilt and suffering released from them; God forgives their sins, removes them as far as east is from west (unlike north and south which meet, east and west never meet, but go in opposite directions, Psalm 103:12) - and remembers their sins no more (Hebrews 8:12, 10:17).

To the cross, where we find God’s mercy and forgiveness, where He has made His peace with us (2Corinthians 5:19, Colossians 1:20), where we can make our peace with Him (2Corinthians 5:20), and find our peace in Him – in Christ – in His Spirit.

To the cross, where He has ransomed us from the domain of darkness of this realm and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son (Colossians 1:13).

To the cross, where by His stripes we are healed in every way (Isaiah 53) all of our baggage we’ve carried all our lives (Matthew 11:28-30), burdens we were not created to carry (Psalm 55:22), He has taken upon Himself and removed for us (Isaiah 53:4), and given us a new spirit and removed the heart of stone from us and given us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 26:36).

To the cross, where He has and continues to fill us with His Holy Spirit of Life Eternal in Him (1John 2:25) with whom we are sealed for Him (Ephesians 1:13) so that we may continue in abiding in Him, be transformed in the spirit of our mind (Romans 12:2), and be conformed to His.

To the cross, where He removed the garments of unrighteousness from us and its filth, washed us clean – not only ritually, but sacrificially by His blood which He shed for us – and put garments of righteousness and praise over us.

To the cross, where He has crowned us with the crown of life, declared us righteous – as He has imputed to us His righteousness which He lived in perfect harmony with the Father when He walked the earth.

To the cross, where God adopted us as His own children, Christ made us joint heirs of His kingdom, and the Holy Spirit has provided for us in every way possible way in order to transform us into the likeness of the Eternal Christ who lives forevermore, amen, amen, and amen.

And there is no passage more fitting for the description of Theosis than what Paul writes in the Holy Spirit.  I quote:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.  But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

(2Corinthians 3:17-18)

Praise be His name for His indescribable gift!  Thank You Jesus, thank You Lord, Thank You Eternal Father!!!

FACT: Now with regards to The Apotheosis of Washington which is the  fresco painted by Italian artist Constantino Brumidi in 1865 and visible through the oculus of the dome in the rotunda of the United States Capitol Building, George Washington had nothing to do with his deification by Mr. Brumidi decades after his death. 

FACT: It is intellectually dishonest of the critic to misuse it here to revise American history with the personal charges he makes here regarding Washington’s personal faith.  It is equally intellectually dishonest to bring this up here, because the topic under discussion has absolutely nothing to do with THEOSIS. 

FACT: Bringing up The Apotheosis of Washington and equating Washington’s nominal connections towards 18th century Freemasonry with the Freemasonry of mid-19th century America, to use these two to connect and paint the two with very broad brushstrokes, is highly misleading.  This is because it fails to account for the changes between the two over this period, and Washington’s own personal beliefs about it. 

FACT: To use it to question Washington’s personal faith is unbiblical, because the only metric that the Bible gives to validate a person’s salvation is Christ and His cross, not one’s lifetime affiliations and associations.  If lifetime affiliations and associations had anything at all to do with personal salvation, men such as Joseph and Daniel – both who were high officials in the court of pagan kings and part of their religious monarchial order and entourage – would be lost and condemned by this critic and his associates for their associations.

FACT: Joseph was second to Pharoah in all Egypt – a Vice Monarch himself, and Daniel was the highest of the kings’ eunuchs during the reign of Babylonian and Medo-Persian monarchs.  And these are just two biblical examples we can cite here, but many others – too many to cite here – all of whom would also be at risk for the same criticisms by these critics because of their earthly affiliations. 

FACT: The critics attach great importance to these things for themselves and apply it to others, as they do here with Washington.  They may deny it when confronted, but the fact is, without realizing it, they attach a good many other requirements to personal salvation other than the cross, when they make such judgments regarding the faith of other men and use it to support an argument that has no relevance to the topic at hand, but is used by the critic’s hyper-judgmental treatment of this author’s literary work.  Bringing it up here is just another obfuscating tactic employed here to confuse the readership and lull it into believing.

FACT: An interesting sidebar which I mention anecdotally here, because it relates to the Judeo-Christian roots and nature of our republic, we have the following regarding the religious use of our capitol building.  I quote:

Early religious usage

“In its early days, the Capitol building was not only used for governmental functions. On Sundays, church services were regularly held there - a practice that continued until after the Civil War. According to the U.S. Library of Congress exhibit Religion and the Founding of the American Republic: "It is no exaggeration to say that on Sundays in Washington during the administrations of 3rd President, Thomas Jefferson, (1801–1809) and of 4th President, James Madison, (1809–1817) the state became a church. Within a year of his inauguration, Jefferson began attending church services in the chamber of the House of Representatives. Madison followed Jefferson's example, although unlike Jefferson, who rode on horseback to church in the Capitol, Madison came in a coach and four. Worship services in the House — a practice that continued until after the Civil War — were acceptable to Jefferson because they were nondiscriminatory and voluntary. Preachers of every Protestant denomination appeared. (Roman Catholic priests began officiating in 1826.)"^[29]”

CRITIC’S CLAIM: THE HEBREW CALENDAR “MAY BE OFF” BY ONE TO THREE YEARS FROM THE ONE IN MOSES’ DAY, THIS UNDERMINES THE BASIC PREMISE OF THE BOOK: His next objection is written in classic Orthodox Jewish Anti-missionary Argumentation, I quote:

“Initial research indicates that the present Hebrew calendar may be off by 1 to 3 years from that of Moses' day.  If further research reveals this to be true, then this basically undermines the basic premise of the entire book because that would mean that none of the events described by the author are actually connected to the biblical seventh year that was to be observed when the Law was given to Moses.  However, this remains to be definitively determined.”

FACT: This is the error that Ellen G. White, the founder of the 7th Day Adventists, made when she approved of Samuel S. Snow’s incorrect assumptions he made regarding the date of Yom Kippur for the year 1844 in what he believed was the Karaite reckoning for the date upon which that day fell as opposed to that which the Rabbinic Calendar marked as the day.  In an article by  Robert K. Sanders, titledDay of Atonement of the Karaite Jews in 1844, Mr. Sanders claimed that both the Rabbinic and Karaite Abib/Aviv Calendars to be identical with regards to the Day of Atonement for 1844. Mr. Snow was incorrect in his assersions, as was Ms. White, who approved them. 

FACT: The calendar that was used in Moses’ day was the Aviv Calendar of Karaite Judaism.  The modern Hebrew Rabbinic and Karaite Calendars have some differences and are calculated differently, but it was the Aviv Calendar that was used to calculate Daniel’s prophecy of Weeks and the coming of the Messiah, and both point precisely to A.D. 30 as the time of His coming.  Modern Rabbinic Judaism may be in denial of this today because of fifteen hundred years of Anti-Semitic Roman Catholic and Protestant Reform persecutions of Jews in the name of Christ, but before the advent of Christianity, there was one calendar and it was used to calculate the coming of the Messiah, which is why the Evangelists correctly record in all four Gospels the high expectations everywhere in their day of Messiah’s coming.  We will now examine these, and will see what they can show us regarding the Shemitah, since the critic brought this up.

 

ANOTHER POINT: THE SHEMITAH YEAR FALLS AT THE END OF THE SEVEN-YEAR CYCLE IN BOTH THE AVIV CALENDAR AND THE RABBINIC CALENDAR

As many people know, Rosh Hashanah which falls precisely at sundown on the 29^th day of the seventh Hebrew month of Elul; marks the Jewish Civil New Year.  But the Biblical Year  - that is – the religious one, begins with the first New Moon that appears after the barley reaches its full ripening.  This ripening is known in Hebrew as “Aviv.”  In the Law of Moses this is known as “the Month of the Aviv” which corresponds to the month the ancient Israelites were freed from bondage in Egypt which also corresponds to the time Passover (Hag Hamatzot – the Feast of Unleavened Bread) is observed (Exodus 12:2, 13:4, 23:15).  The First New Moon after the barley reaches its ripening, known in Hebrew as the Aviv, begins the biblical year.

FACT: In some biblical months the barley ripens on the twelfth lunar month, while sometimes it ripens on a thirteenth month, which is called a “leap month.”  Because of this, Rabbinical Judaism changed the system of calculation in the fourth century A.D. from one of direct examination of the ripening of crops in the land of Israel to one that is pre-calculated system which approximates the ripening of the barley.  The new system uses a nineteen year cycle which arbitrarily sets the second and third year as a leap year.

FACT: The Karaites who lived in Egypt, Syria, and in Israel, who follow the written Law of Moses and not the Oral Traditions of Rabbinical Judaism continued sending observers to the land of Israel in order to examine the state of the barley in the land; and although the Karaites of other lands could not follow the Aviv, they still understood that this was the proper method of calculating the biblical year – the biblical one. 

The method these far-flung Karaites would use for their calendars was to obtain information from Karaites returning or passing from Israel, who had observed the state of the barley, and they adjusted their calendars accordingly.  This is biblical and it is accurate.  It is the way it was done before the change, long before the advent of technology.  When the Modern State of Israel was reestablished in the land, and Karaite Jews were able to return, the practice was firmly established in their communities throughout the land.

FACT: Judaism followed the Karaite system up until the Second Century A.D., which is known as the Aviv Calendar.  One Braita – a Second Century rabbinical source from the Babylonian Talmud says the following:

“Our Rabbis taught, ‘Based on three things is the year intercalculated: on the Aviv, on the fruits of the trees, and on the moon equinox.  Based on two of them the year is intercalculated but based on one of them alone the year is not intercalculated.  And when the Aviv is one of them everyone is pleased.”

(Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 11b)

In another place in the rabbinical writings, we have the following:

“Our Rabbis taught, ‘The year is intercalculated based on [the Aviv in] three regions: Judea, Transjordan, and Galilee.  Based on two of them the year is intercalculated but based on one of them alone the year is not intercalculated.  And when Judea is one of them everyone is pleased, because the Omer (Wave-Shef) offering can only come from Judea.”

(Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 11b)

Because Karaites follow the Torah injunctions to use the physical sighting of the moon to declare new months and to set the dates of holidays, they complied and continue to comply with the biblical injunction in Psalm 104:19, where it says, “He created the moon for Mo’adim – that is for the – appointed times.”  This injunction of keeping the observed times – Hebrew Mo’adim – is found in Leviticus 23:4, where the Torah says, “These are the Mo’adim – appointed times – of the Lord, holy convocations which you shall proclaim in their appointed times (Mo’adim).”  During the appointed times of the year, led by the Hazzan (Cantor), Karaite congregations recite this Scripture from the Law of Moses, because of their adherence to its letter.  This is what Wikipedia the Online Encyclopedia says of the differences between the Karaite “Aviv” Calendar with the one used by Rabbinic Judaism:

Karaites use the lunar month and the solar year, but the Karaite calendar differs from the current Rabbinic calendar in a number of ways.  The Karaite calendar is identical to the Rabbinical calendar used before the Sanhedrin changed the Rabbinic calendar from the lunar, observation based calendar, to the current mathematically based calendar used in Rabbinic Judaism today.

In the lunar Karaite calendar, the beginning of each month, the Rosh Chodesh, can be calculated, but is confirmed by the observation in Israel of the first sightings of the new moon.^[66]  This may result in an occasional variation of a maximum of one day, depending on the inability to observe the new moon.  The day is usually "picked up" in the next month.

The addition of the leap month (Adar II) is determined by observing in Israel the ripening of barley at a specific stage (defined by Karaite tradition) (called aviv),^[67] rather than using the calculated and fixed calendar of Rabbinic Judaism.  Occasionally this results in Karaites being one month ahead of other Jews using the calculated Rabbinic calendar.  The "lost" month would be "picked up" in the next cycle when Karaites would observe a leap month while other Jews would not.

Furthermore, the seasonal drift of the Rabbinic calendar is avoided, resulting in the years affected by the drift starting one month earlier in the Karaite calendar.

Also, the four rules of postponement of the Rabbinic calendar are not applied, since they are not mentioned in the Tanakh.  This can affect the dates observed for all the Jewish holidays in a particular year by one day.

In the Middle Ages many Karaite Jews outside Israel followed the calculated Rabbinic calendar, because it was not possible to retrieve accurate aviv barley data from the land of Israel.  However, since the establishment of the State of Israel, and especially since the Six Day War, the Karaite Jews that have made aliyah can now again use the observational calendar.

(Wikipedia the Online Encyclopedia, Hebrew Calendar)

I bring this up here, because even with the single day differential between the Aviv Calendar and the Rabbinical Calendar, the Hebrew Holy Days fall on the Mo’adim – appointed times – of the Lord.  What’s more, at the end of every seven year cycle, comes the Shemitah Year, and regardless of which calendar one chooses to use, the Shemitah Year falls at the end of every seven years, or at the end of every seven year cycle.  

FACT: It is entirely irrelevant to this discussion for the critic to claim that he has been able to get Moses down to 1-3 years exactly, because the Shemitah began once more at the end of the Babylonian Captivity when the 70 Shemitahs were fulfilled, and we know the dates, thus rendering the critic’s efforts to discredit the prophetic relevance of these and the implications of the historical events tied to them outlined in the book, entirely of no consequence.  I repeat the Shemitah Year falls on the designated period regardless of which calendar one uses, because the Shemitah Year, like the Shemitah falls on the same specific day every calendar year just like other Hebrew Days.

FACT: Additionally, the 29^th Day of the Hebrew month of Elul falls precisely this year on Erev Rosh Hashanah – the night of the Eve of Rosh Hashanah!  And this Rosh Hashanah, meaning “Head of the Year,”  marks the beginning of the Jewish civil calendar.  This Rosh Hashanah will be ushering in the seventh year of the previous seven year cycle beginning Wednesday night of September 24^th, 2012, followed by Tishrei 1, 5775/September 25^th, 2014 Rosh Hashanah, but for Judaism and on the Lunar Hebrew Calendar this night will usher in the next Shemitah Year with it ending precisely on the night of Elul 29, 5776/2015, a Sunday, but of consequence is that the Sunday it will fall on will contain a Solar Eclipse – an ominous sign for the nations.  This is the night when there will occur a release of all debts – public and private, and will manifest its financial repercussions because it is the end of the seventh year – the end of the Shemitah Year – the seven of sevens!

FACT: Sunday, Elul 29, 5775, will fall precisely on September 13^th, 2015, and will usher in the end of the Shemitah Year!  Now this may be meaningless to the critic, who appears to know how to quote the Bible, and argue any point about it, but has precious little knowledge of the intricacies of Hebraic Midrashic Hermeneutics regarding the prophetic – which is why he is arguing these points here “ad infinitum” – but to those properly trained in the Hebrew Scriptures, especially in light of the New Testament, these are days and nights of incredible prophetic and eschatological significance.  Tishrei 1, 5776, which follows immediately that sundown, will be opening day for the stock market, September 14^th, 2015.  What follows the 29^th Day of the Hebrew month of Elul (the end of the Shemitah Year) and the beginning of the Jewish civil New Year – Rosh Hashanah beginning that sundown – Tishrei 1, 5776/first half of Sunday night, September 13^th, 2015 with the opening day of Wall Street the following morning, which will still be Tishrei 1 until sundown, will usher in what is known as The Shemitah’s Wake, the season that immediately follows the Shemitah’s Day of Remission and manifests its repercussions (The Mystery of the Shemitah, pp. 112).

FACT: It goes without saying that in Judaism they are known as the Days of Awe.  Ladies and gentlemen, brethren in the Lord, these days are not falling on these precise dates by a random coincidence of chance in a universe devoid of the divine Providence of an Almighty God – the Living and all-loving but just God we know as the Lord God of all Creation, the God of Israel; but precisely by His design, infinite wisdom, foreknowledge, and in His perfect will and timing, for His purposes to glorify the name of His Messiah – Jesus, for at this late hour it is His Jewish believing remnant whom He has summoned to step up, and step up they have, to warn the nation of God – Jew and Gentile – to repentance and to prepare and not be disbelieving and unprepared for what is coming.  Disbelieving brethren may question this all they want as the critic does here, but the remnant of God will not be caught unawares because of the unbelief of some and the disbelief of others.  We dare not turn away from those whom the Lord has risen up among His remnant who now warn as John the Baptist did two thousand years ago to God’s people to make themselves ready for the Lord their God.  If there is one resounding message this book has, it is to repent, turn to God through the provision of His Messiah – Yeshua/Jesus – and prepare for what is to come.  In the process of all this, to be ready for His coming.

In his polemic against The Harbinger, another critic makes gives the following opinion in a book that is chock full of just opinions passing off as biblical analysis.  I quote:

CRITIC’S CLAIM: “Furthermore, extensive internet research does not reveal any uniform conventional wisdom or consensus among economists or financial experts that seven years is a known natural economic or financial cycle.  Things are said about various cycles that range from three to ten years, and a couple of people have suggested seven, but cycles of even roughly seven years apparently do not exist.  The biblical Shemitah, however, was exactly seven years to the day.” 

(David James, The Harbinger: Fact or Fiction, page 148, The Berean Call, Bend, Oregon, September 1, 2012)

FACT: This is a mouthful.  One wishes that this critic would provide the evidence for such a sweeping claim, but alas, he does not and will not.  It does not exist, but only in his rhetoric.  This critic claims that he wishes to know if there is reliable documentation for these occurrences?  Either he is willfully ignoring what is out there, or he is incompetent; but make no mistake about it, it is one or the other.  There is the possibility that he is knowingly and willfully deceptive in making this claim, knowing privately that there is no evidence for it; but I will give him the benefit of the doubt and not charge him with duplicity as he has unfairly done to Rabbi Cahn on more than one occasion, even in his book (page ).  The following can be cited as reliable sources for what is documented in The Mystery of the Shemitah. 

These critics have a way of shooting themselves in the foot, and in the process, shoot the Gospel in the eye while doing it.  This critic did it with his polemic, which he promotes here, where he used classic Anti-missionary arguments against The Harbinger, and does the same here.  As he did with The Harbinger, so he repeats his error with The Mystery of the Shemitah.  His idea that he’s discovered that the calendar system is off – from the time of Moses is patently absurd.  It is entirely irrelevant to this discussion for the critic to claim that he has been able to get Moses down to 1-3 years exactly, because the Shemitah began once more at the end of the Babylonian Captivity when the 70 Shemitahs were fulfilled, and we know the dates, thus rendering the critic’s efforts to discredit the prophetic relevance of these and the implications of the historical events tied to them outlined in the book, entirely of no consequence.

Additionally, I would ask where the critic has been since he wrote his book and I wrote mine, The Truth About The Harbinger because only now he is making his “initial” investigation of this?  Why not before?  He’s had plenty of time between his first book and now to have tackled this question.  Why now?  What has he been doing with his time that he has only now begun an “initial” examination into this topic?  

FACT: I repeat, it is entirely irrelevant to this discussion for critic to claim that the Hebrew Calendar may be off by 1 to 3 years from Moses’ day, because the Shemitah began once more at the end of the Babylonian Captivity when the 70 Shemitahs were fulfilled.  Unbeknownst to the critic, it was the Hebrew Aviv Calendar that Pre-Rabbinic Judaism used to calculate the coming of the Messiah from Daniel’s prophecy.  And the variance between that calendar and the one used today is at most a one day differential, which has no bearing on the Shemitah Sabbath Year.

CRITIC’S CLAIM: ISRAEL DISOBEYED THE SABBATH YEAR OBSERVANCES, SO GOD IMPOSED IT ON THEM AS A TYPE OF JUDGMENT, BUT GOD HAS NOT IMPOSED ON ANY OTHER NATION:The reason that God imposed a Shemitah judgment upon Israel was because they had failed to observe the Shemitah's / Sabbath years that He required of them.  However, there is no biblical basis whatsoever to claim that God has imposed a Shemitah-type judgment upon any nation that was not obligated to keep a Shemitah in the first place.  Therefore, whatever has happened to America cannot be linked in any biblical way to a Shemitah.  Furthermore, Cahn's book seems to be arguing that God has imposed a Shemitah judgment upon America repeatedly in connection with the modern Hebrew reckoning of Sabbath years.  This does not at all follow the ancient pattern that he tries to use as support for his unbiblical theory.

FACT: This claim is only partially correct, because the Scriptures make it clear that the Babylonian Captivity was primarily but not exclusively for the southern kingdom’s repeated rebellion towards God, and its continued apostasy from His Law with their idolatrous practices.  The by-product of this forced 70 year exile was that the land remained fallow and untilled for this period of time, and though Judah had long before not observed the Shemitah, during this period it did, because the land remained untilled during this period of time, and thus allowed to rest and be replenished.  As to critic’s claim that “whatever has happened to America cannot be linked in any biblical way to a Shemitah” – this is nothing but pure a Hyper-Dispensational assertion imposed here by the critic with absolutely no biblical basis in reality, because the basic premise of his argument is that God has differing weights and differing measures, and His standards change and vary nation by nation.  The burden of proof is upon the critic to prove that this is so.  We know that the Scriptures make it clear that God abhors differing weights and differing measures, and the fallacies that these create, such as the one imposed here by the critic.

The critic’s premise is that because the Law of Moses comprised of 613 commandments was exclusively given to Israel prior to entering the land it was to possess, and its covenant – the Mosaic Covenant – upon which this Law was based were exclusive to that nation – Israel – therefore the standards upon which that law – the Mosaic Law – was based were not to be universal, but exclusive to the people and nation of Israel and to the land it was about to take possession of.

This is to say and make the claim as a doctrine, that God used a set of standards in giving His Law to His people than the standards by which He judged and continues to judge other nations.  In other words, God used one standard and metric of justice and righteousness with One Nation and He used another standard and metric of justice with All Other Nations.

This is unbiblical and it is untrue, and historically and as the Apostle Paul has explained under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in Scripture, it is epistemologically incorrect.  A careful reading of Paul’s Letter to the Romans and other writings in the New Testament will show that God’s standards upon which He based and codified His Law, is universal.  But history itself bears this out.  God does not use a set of standards for one nation and then change it for another.  What His Law defines as sin in Israel is sin outside of it. 

This is why Paul could write that while Gentiles who didn’t have the Law of Moses as their guide, still kept the very standards of the Law of Moses, because God had created man with the ability to judge right from wrong and to determine for himself through free will which way he would follow.  But since all men had fallen with what Judaism calls the Evil Inclination – what Roman Catholicism calls Original Sin – and what Protestant Christianity calls the Old Sinful Nature – by inheritance; all men are sinners before God, and therefore guilty before Him with or without that Law (Romans 2).  If this were not the case, then there would not be any need of His redemption in Christ, but Paul makes it clear that the Gospel is for both Jew and Gentile, being the power of salvation for all who believe (Romans 1:16-17).  Paul ends his argument about Law and grace with the following statement:

Where then is boasting?  It is excluded.  By what kind of law?  Of works?  No, but by a law of faith.  For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.  Or is God the God of Jews only?  Is He not the God of Gentiles also?  Yes, of Gentiles also, since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one.  Do we then nullify the Law through faith?  May it never be!  On the contrary, we establish the Law.

(Romans 3:27-31)

FACT: While Paul establishes the Law by faith in and through Christ – that is the high and unobtainable moral standards and righteousness of God it represents – the Lord’s standards for all mankind, not just Jews, but Gentiles as well, as he writes in the first two chapters of his Letter to the Romans; the critic argues for the opposite and uses the separation of the Letter of the Law, which Paul says elsewhere states without equivocation in the Holy Spirit that God brought down that barrier through Christ (Ephesians 2:11-22).

But the critic argues against this in order to set up an artificial dichotomy so as to erect as another barrier between God’s dealings with His people and His dealings with the nations – two separate standards.  If the critic were not so ensconced in the Letter of the Law, but looked into the spirit of the Law, he would find that God’s standards are universal to all nations. 

FACT: The Law of the Shemitah is verifiable in agriculture.  It is an established fact that the overuse of land can drain it of its nutrients and make it arid.  With overuse fertile soil can become with time unusable dust.  This is the Law of the Shemitah at play in nature itself.  It is a natural law upon which the Law of the Shemitah is based; it is God’s universal standard; the spirit of the Letter of the Law being made manifest by the spirit of the Law – that is to say, its practical application in agriculture. 

The critic’s theology is getting in the way of a true knowledge of God’s Word and how it applies universally throughout creation.  Incorrect theology applied by the Letter that often kills the spirit of the Law, as Scripture warns (2Corinthians 3:6).

CRITIC’S CLAIM: BECAUSE THE HARBINGER WAS CLASSIFIED AS “FICTION” AND CONTAINS MANY SELECTIVE USE OF FACTS, BUT THE MYSTERY OF THE SHEMITAH IS NOT A WORK OF FICTION: while The Harbinger was classified as a work of fiction, Jonathan Cahn stated in an interview with Brannon Howse in 2012 that The Harbinger was 90% fact and 10% fiction.  One of the problems in The Harbinger is that very few of his assertions and fact-claims are documented - so a tremendous amount of primary research was needed to do fact-checking to any degree.  And, as it turned out there were many problems, not the least of which was what amounted to a very selective use of historical facts and statistics in order to make his case, as I thoroughly documented in my book, The Harbinger: Fact or Fiction?.

However, The Mystery of the Shemitah is not a work of fiction to any degree - it is non-fiction.  Yet, as noted earlier, the author literally bombards the reader with dozens and dozens of assertions and fact-claims, all with absolutely no documentation of sources whatsoever.  Unfortunately, because of the overwhelming success of The Harbinger, very few of his readers will ever take the time to do fact-checking themselves, although if The Harbinger is any indication, there are very possibly many problems in this book, as well.

FACT: There are several false claims made here by the critic, and I will address each one.  Each claim the critic makes is an objection.  But objections are not necessarily claims, but the critic uses his claims as objections, and because of this, we will address them as claims, because as the reader will see, the claims the critic makes are not legitimate objections.

CRITIC’S CLAIM BREAKDOWN ONE: “The Harbinger was classified as a work of fiction, Jonathan Cahn stated in an interview with Brannon Howse in 2012 that The Harbinger was 90% fact and 10% fiction.” 

FACT TO CLAIM NUMBER ONE: Those familiar with the critic’s primary objection of The Harbinger being a novel that contains certain facts about specific historical events know that this particular objection has been repeated countless numbers of times by The Harbinger’s critics since the book came out.  The basic premise of this complaint is the use of fictional characters engaged in fictional dialogue to help carry the narrative in the story about historical events the novel’s characters are discussing.  This objection is patently absurd.  We have examples of parable employed in the Scriptures themselves and used more than any other by Jesus Christ, to help teach the fundamental truths God wants to communicate.  The objections the critic and his small group of fellow critics continue to raise in this about this are non sequitur, because there is no written rule that mandates only non-novels can be used in describing facts and teaching truth.

CRITIC’S CLAIM BREAKDOWN TWO: “…very few of his assertions and fact-claims are documented - so a tremendous amount of primary research was needed to do fact-checking to any degree.”

FACT TO CLAIM NUMBER TWO:  This claim is entirely false.  By opening to back of Jonathan Cahn’s book, The Harbinger to the section titled NOTES, they will see for themselves that Rabbi Cahn has provided copious documentation that corroborates what he writes in his book.  Each chapter has the sources cited for the information contained therein.  For the critic to make this claim is an absurdity.  Perhaps he is hoping that most readers here do not have a copy of The Harbinger nearby and won’t verify this for themselves, or at least fool those who do not own a copy and may not be inclined to purchase one.  Furthermore, the critic’s own claim about his book is itself of little merit, because it is not the documentation that I personally object to, it’s the argumentations and inaccuracies and logical fallacies, and false claims made in it that I object to.  The critic understands as an author that even poor journalism can contain a book-load of documentation.  Documentation is meaningless of the facts a writer is making are wrong.  Let’s go to the next claim/objection.

CRITIC’S CLAIM BREAKDOWN THREE:  “And, as it turned out there were many problems, not the least of which was what amounted to a very selective use of historical facts and statistics in order to make his case..”

FACT TO CLAIM NUMBER THREE: Because it would take a volume of its own to go over every objection the critic and other critics of The Harbinger raise, I cannot go into detail about them here, but recommend that the reader obtain a copy of my own book on the matter, The Truth About The Harbinger which addresses all of these biblically and conclusively, so that the reader may get a full understanding for themselves.  As for what the critic writes here, that The Harbinger amounts to “a very selective use of historical facts and statistics in order to make” its case as he calls it; this too is incorrect. 

The Harbinger describes the historical events accurately, and as for it being selective in its use of historical facts and statistics; this too is fallacious, because the premise that criticizes a book for discussing a particular topic and no other is nothing but pure nonsense.  A book about Aeronautics will be about Aeronautics; a book about Auto Mechanics will be about repairing automobiles, and so on.  For the critic to raise this objection to The Harbinger for sticking to its subject is absolute foolishness.  Let’s continue.

CRITIC’S CLAIM BREAKDOWN FOUR: “The Mystery of the Shemitah is not a work of fiction to any degree - it is non-fiction.”

FACT TO CLAIM NUMBER FOUR: This claim is true.  Unlike The Harbinger, which was a novel containing a fictional narrative with fictional characters who engaged met at several different places in and around New York and in Washington, D.C. to discuss the elements within the story that are factual; The Mystery of The Shemitah is a book containing specific raw data and statistics containing incontrovertible proof of Intelligent Design within historical events that have rocked the economic realm for the last one hundred years.  The Harbinger is a work of fiction containing some very pertinent facts; The Mystery of The Shemitah is a work of nonfiction containing some very pertinent facts about our stock market and economy.

CRITIC’S CLAIM BREAKDOWN FIVE: “the author literally bombards the reader with dozens and dozens of assertions and fact-claims, all with absolutely no documentation of sources whatsoever.”

FACT TO CLAIM NUMBER FIVE: I agree, I would not word it so strongly.  The author could have included in his book more documentation for the charts and graphs and raw data he supplies.  This is my only pet peeve with the book.  Otherwise, I agree with its content.

CRITIC’S CLAIM BREAKDOWN SIX: “Unfortunately, because of the overwhelming success of The Harbinger, very few of his readers will ever take the time to do fact-checking themselves, although if The Harbinger is any indication, there are very possibly many problems in this book, as well.”

FACT TO CLAIM NUMBER SIX:  This claim is nothing but a fallacious assumption on the critic’s part.  Is an presumptuous assumption that the critic need not make, since others have done the homework on the topic of The Harbinger, and produced articles both for and against it.  I wrote a book which addresses the biblical aspects of the debate titled The Truth About The Harbinger, and recommend to those who wish to read more on this – both the critic’s and other critics’ objections and my answers to them – they obtain a copy of it for themselves.  It will be well worth the investment put in.  I did the study for it, having heard all of The Harbinger messages taught by Rabbi Cahn over a ten year period, long before he wrote his book based on it, and as mentioned elsewhere here, long before meeting Rabbi Cahn, I had and continue to conduct careful study as a biblical historian for almost forty years.  I have carefully studied what Jonathan Cahn teaches.

Had I had any objections to Jonathan Cahn’s teachings, I would have brought it up to him long ago.  Perhaps my only disagreement with him is that I am of the opinion that American History is full of so-called “harbingers” – warnings – remedial judgments, and that I believe that Rabbi Cahn has found nine of them, but there might be more.  For certain, more remedial judgments – warnings – harbingers of greater judgment – have appeared since 9/11, and the accelerated decline in our nation, practically every aspect of it, are evidential markers of these.  But as far as his facts are concerned, Jonathan Cahn is correct.

CRITIC’S CLAIM: THE RABBIS DON’T EVEN AGREE ON THE CALCULATIONS, WHY SHOULD WE WITH THIS BOOK? “The problem with all of the calculations for Sabbath years is that the rabbis do not agree, even in the Talmud, as to whether the Jubilee year was concurrent with the 7th Sabbath year - or subsequent to it.  The difference between the two possibilities is the shemitah year being off by 2 years for every 100 years of history.  Since no one knows when the Jubilee year is, when this is combined with the difference of opinion concerning the relationship to the Sabbath year, the bottom line is that no one knows when the Sabbath year is on God's calendar, no matter what it is according to man's reckoning.

“Furthermore, there are questions concerning the suspension of the Jubilee year after the Assyrian invasion and concerning the possible suspension of the sabbath year during the Babylonian Captivity.”

“All of the relatively few biblical texts that might give some insight as to where certain events might have happened in relation to a sabbath year are ambiguous and the various interpretations are disputed.”

FACT: This contention is invalid, because the northern kingdom had failed years before their invasion, exile, and complete obliteration and disappearance as a nation by the Assyrians to observe God’s Law, the contention that this would have any bearing at all on our discussion here is completely without merit and unnecessary.  Additionally, because there had been a suspension of the Jubilee Year after the Assyrian invasion of the northern kingdom of Samaria (Israel), this did not affect the 70 year imposed Shemitah rest on the southern kingdom during the Babylonian Captivity, and additionally, had absolutely no effect on the resuming of Torah observance during the period of Ezra and Nehemiah, when the Shemitah Year was once again observed in the land of Israel with the return of the exiles to the land.  The objections the critic presents here are of no consequence and irrelevant to this discussion. 

Once more, the critic is arguing against something that has already occurred, is well-documented, and history and the Bible attest to this.  The last time he did this, he accused The Harbinger of being false for speaking of the stock market crash of 777 points – He claimed it was really 778 points because he found one or two sources that used that number – but they simply rounded the decimal point higher - and yet he claimed that this meant it was not 777!  This is the level of absurdity that this man carries his argumentations to.  I address every one of them factually and biblically in my book, The Truth About The Harbinger.  I am also currently working on an additional work, but have not determined yet if I will publish it or post it on my website, The Pepster’s Post: A Voice in Cyberspace.  The critic dialectically poses a rhetorical question in order to deconstruct a premise by replacing it with an opposite one – and the critic is the king of the rhetorical question.  It does not matter whether or not it has merit or has any bearing on the topic, he just asks it.  He asks:

CRITIC’S CLAIM: HOW IS IT THAT GOD IS NOT IMPOSING SHEMITAH JUDGMENTS ON ISRAEL NOT DOING SO NOW?  AND HOW IS IT THAT HE IS IMPOSING THEM ON AMERICA NOW? How it is that God has not been imposing Shemitah judgments upon Israel and the Jewish people, who are obligated in the Mosaic Law to observe the Shemitah year, while at the same time, he has been imposing various Shemitah judgments upon America over the last 100 years or so, when our nation does not have any obligation to observe the Shemitah years (as rightly affirmed by Jonathan Cahn).

FACT:  The question the critic makes is a loaded question.  It is not meant to solicit an answer, but to argue a point.  This is known as a rhetorical question used in a dialectical argument against another point of view that he opposes.  It helps present his point of view without having to submit extemporaneous information – in other words – without having to prove it.  Just posing the question does that. 

It is precisely the tactic that the serpent used on Eve at the garden.  He posed the question, it solicited her answer, then he contradicted it, and in his contradiction, he called God a liar by questioning what Eve claimed God had said.  This what this question is meant to do here.  It is posed.  It is meant to solicit either a questioning thought, and with it present a counter deconstructive idea, then with the question comes the counter-thought or opposing idea. 

It does not matter whether the point it is arguing is a valid one or whether it has any merit; the object in posing the question is to make a specific point rhetorically so as to present an opposition and draw attention away from the facts.  The demonically-charged serpent didn’t ask the question to solicit an answer, but to get a response from Eve, as he worked to confuse her in the process.  He wasn’t looking for answer, as the critic is not looking for answer here.  Like the critic, he was trying to sow doubt into Eve’s mind while confusing her with irreverent details and information which followed in their conversation. 

Basically, what the critic asks here is how is it that God is imposing a Law He did not require from a Gentile nation outside Israel – the United States – while not imposing that Law upon Israel from whom He required its observance?  Good question and good point, but poor exegesis.  I’ll explain in a minute.

I want the reader to take note, here as he does in other parts of this discussion and throughout his writings on The Harbinger, the critic argues that the Mosaic Law – in whole or in part – cannot and should not be applicable outside of the theocratic commonwealth of Israel, and to do so is violation of its proper use within its historic context.  He has even argued against the use of 2Chronicles 7:14 by Christians to any nation outside of the nation of Israel based upon this theology.  

This is what he is arguing here when he writes, “there is no biblical basis whatsoever to claim that God has imposed a Shemitah-type judgment upon any nation that was not obligated to keep a Shemitah in the first place.  Therefore, whatever has happened to America cannot be linked in any biblical way to a Shemitah.”   

And, where he follows with this statement, “How it is that God has not been imposing Shemitah judgments upon Israel and the Jewish people, who are obligated in the Mosaic Law to observe the Shemitah year, while at the same time, he has been imposing various Shemitah judgments upon America over the last 100 years or so, when our nation does not have any obligation to observe the Shemitah years (as rightly affirmed by Jonathan Cahn).

FACT: The entire argument, while sounding biblically plausible at first glance, has several holes in it which we must look expose, and rebut with God’s Word properly.  Again, as we mentioned above – and you’ll notice the critic presents no Scripture as support, because there isn’t any that his arguments support – his argumentation is countered by the teachings of the New Testament, as we will as God wills show.

While the critic argues against the use of the Law as a standard and metric of measuring sin in the world; the Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Romans, argues from the Law to present the following opposite points:

All men – Jew and Gentile alike – are bound by sin (Romans 3:9), and in need for God’s salvation by grace through faith in Christ (Romans 8:1).

And in so doing, affirms its centrality in indicting man of sin because it brings the knowledge of sin (Romans 3:19-20, 7:7), making it evident that sin is producing death (Ezekiel 18:20) in the person who transgresses the commandment (Romans 7:8).

Confirms by bearing witness man’s need for salvation offered freely apart from it though witnessed by it and the prophets (Romans 3:21).

This is because since the dawn of time – since the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden, sin has been passed on from offspring to offspring (Romans 5:12). 

Indeed, King David bemoans the fact that he was conceived in sin (Psalm 51:5, Romans 7:14), and all men have sinned and fallen short of God’s grace (Romans 3:23).

In his Letter to the Galatians, Paul argues that the role of the Mosaic Law was to bring all people – Jews and Gentiles to repentance and redemption in Christ.  Using the Law as a tutor (Galatians 3:24).

The Holy Spirit convicts of sin (John 16:8), and brings the penitent to salvation in Christ using the witness of the Law and the Prophets (), to show that the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23).

Though the nations are not bound by it, the standards it represents are used by God universally (Romans 10:12-13).

Salvation, redemption, justification, and sanctification are all measured by the cross and how one appropriates it to oneself, but righteousness is measured by the standards codified in the Law of Moses and embodied in the righteousness imputed by Christ upon those who are indicted by the Law and convicted by the Holy Spirit of being violators of the Law and therefore worthy of death, but finding life in grace of God offered freely to all in Christ.  It is this standard that applies universally, just as the Great Commission applies universally, so does the Law to all nations; not as a means of salvation or justification, but as God’s metric for sin.

When Israel was about to dispossess the nations of the land it was about to enter, this is what God said to Israel regarding it and regarding those nations.  I quote:

“Hear, O Israel!  You are crossing over the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, great cities fortified to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the sons of Anak?’  Know therefore today that it is the Lord your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire.  He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you, so that you may drive them out and destroy them quickly, just as the Lord has spoken to you.

“Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you, ‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you.  It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

“Know, then, it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people.

(Deuteronomy 9:1-6)

FACT: God made it clear to His people who had the Law that He was driving out nations they were going to dispossess who did not have His Law, but were being judged and driven from the land because of their wickedness.  Not because of Israel’s righteousness, because later in this passage and through His prophets, He told His people repeatedly of their own wickedness before Him, because later in their history they had become as wicked as the nations around them, and even more so, because they once had the very Oracles of God!  Yet, by what standard did God judge the nations Israel was about to dispossess?  It was clear they had no covenant with Him, they had received no Law from Him as Israel had, and they neither knew Him or walked in His ways.

FACT: It is clear from a reading of Genesis that there was a time when some of these nations had at one time god-fearing and righteous rulers.  But several hundred years later, by the time of Israel’s exodus, they had become corrupt and wicked to such an extent that any exposure to them by the children of Israel would have had a corrosive and toxic influence upon God’s people, who already at this time had egregious sins of their own, which almost caused their extinction by God’s hand, if not for Moses’ intervention. (Deuteronomy 9:7-29)  Indeed, of those of the people who remained of those nations which Israel did not destroy, their influence upon God’s people proved to be precisely that.  As Paul writes, bad company corrupts good morals (1 Corinthians 15:33).

This is why I, like Jacob Prasch, though in every sense but this, use Evangelical language (like Paul did with the Judaizers on the Law) to communicate the truths of the Bible, I do not consider many so-called Evangelical doctrines to be truly biblically-based, but this is in the realm of Hyper-Dispensationalism, like that of these critics. 

These people have doctrinal and theological points of view that the Bible simply does not support, and I take strong issue with them on this.  Much of what is known as Protestant Christianity has one teaching or another that is not biblically sound when one compares it to the Bible and how the writers of the New Testament handle the Hebrew Bible – the Tenakh.  This teaching that stridently says, “This is for Israel, and does not apply to anyone else,” is not what the Scriptures teach.  It is a sweeping doctrinal statement that is not supported by the Scriptures. 

FACT: The codified Pentateuch forms the corpus of legal national law for the nation of Israel – its Constitution – and as such it was given to it so that it could have a structured system of governance in the land they were about to possess.  As such, if followed to the letter, it would have prevented them from falling into the abominations of the nations around them.  The problem, as Paul so brilliantly writes in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; they did not follow it, but broke that law repeatedly, and by doing so broke the Mosaic Covenant, and were punished for it by splitting into two nations, then both nations were exiled. 

FACT: The northern kingdom never returned as a nation to the land and disappeared forever, yet elements of its people did and have returned in one form or another right down to this day.  The people of the southern kingdom later did return after 70 years.  And even with these returns, there still remained significant number of Jews throughout Babylon, which is where they had a center of learning, the other in Jerusalem.  That two produced two Talmuds, the Babylonian being the more complete and authoritative in Rabbinical Talmudic Judaism.

FACT: But the point the modern Pharisees within Evangelical Christianity miss is that all of the New Testament uses the Hebrew Scriptures – all of them, in addressing church matters, and taught from the Law and the Prophets, applying what these Hyper-Dispensationalists would consider “strictly for Israel” across the board to everyone else.  There is a fundamental reason for this, and it is throughout the entire Old and New Testaments; “NOT ONE JOT OR TITTLE SHALL PASS FROM THIS LAW UNTIL ALL IS FULFILLED.  HEAVEN AND EARTH SHALL PASS AWAY, BUT MY WORDS SHALL NOT PASS AWAY.” 

FACT: Jesus said this, and Paul applied it in teaching that though the Law has been replaced because it is now in our hearts, living within us as we desire from our hearts to live for God and not sin – battling the devil and his demons daily as they continually war with us while we are still in these fallen containers (our bodies) that await being transformed into glory – Paul and all of the writers of the New Testament use the very Law that these Hyper-Dispensationalists claim is only for Israel and only under the Mosaic Covenant, to apply it to the need for ALL PEOPLE OF EVERY NATION to come to God, as the Holy Spirit uses its clear indictment of sin to bring ALL, NOT JUST JEWS, BUT BEGINNING WITH JEWS AND THEN GENTILES to repentance, throwing ourselves at the mercy God offers at the cross of the Lord Jesus.  Paul and the other inspired writers of the New Testament use a Law these others claim is only for one nation and for no other, and apply it to all of mankind, even teaching that Gentiles who do not have the Law keep the Law instinctively – what Law is Paul speaking of?  Because they keep the Law, they a law to themselves.  No one anywhere hears any place in the New Testament where any of its writers makes a theological sweeping statement that this Scripture applied only to Israel and this Scripture applies to others.  Rather, they all teach from the Law and the Prophets, and the Writings, the Tenakh, to bring God’s inspired truths to the surface, while today’s Hyper-Dispensationalists run from it, while claiming to believe in it.

FACT: The nations that inhabited the land violated God’s standards which He has set up following the flood.  The Law of Moses took those provisions and added other specific commandments to them, totaling 613 overall.  But the standards God laid down were precise, exact, and universal.  They applied to all nations then and they apply to them now.  They will continue to apply to them until the return of Christ.  

FACT: It will be on basis of Christ – the righteousness He imputes – which the Law and the Prophets bear witness to, that will be used as the standard by which God will judge the nations of the earth.  These laws are at work in every nation.  Indeed, they are embedded in the psyche of every human being; in their conscience, which Paul describes Non-Jews – Gentiles as a Law unto themselves (Romans 2:14-16).  

FACT: Because our Founding Fathers had as their foundation a Judeo-Christian worldview, they recognized these laws as the natural law originating with God, not as the humanist Enlightenment interpreted it.  Sin, therefore is sin in this corner of the galaxy as it is in any other throughout this universe.  Let me explain.

FACT: Idolatry was and always has been idolatry and God prohibits it whether from Jew or Gentile ().

FACT: Adultery is a violation of God’s Law, as it violates the sacred trust between a man and a woman whom have vowed before God their faithfulness and love to each other in the sight of God.  Why in the sight of God?  Because marriage is the only institution that God Himself established (), and forms the nucleus of what is known as the other institution He has established – the nuclear family ().  Marriage is symbolic of Christ and the Church ().  This is why anyone who attempts to alter it in any way is abominable before God, and such an act is an abomination and clear violation of God’s ongoing institution – the marriage and the family.

FACT: Theft was and always has been a violation against God and man and a sin.  It is also a breach of trust.  God prohibits both Jew and Gentile from committing it.

FACT: Lying is a violation of trust and a breach of one’s own word to another and a violation in the presence of God regardless of whether the person committing this violation is a Jew or a Gentile.  It is a sin in the sight of God.

These are all inviolable standards that come directly from God’s Word and were upheld by Moses, the prophets of Israel and Judah, and taught by Jesus and His Apostles, and hold true to this day.  Why?  Because they form the building blocks of moral living in which a civilized society is meant to live by.

In short, every one of the Ten Commandments contained within the Law of Moses, with the exception of the Sabbath injunction to rest, is applicable outside of the Hebrew Bible and is foundational teaching within the context as interpreted by Jesus and form the core of His teachings.

Yet the critic argues that these concepts which are part law and part way of life, cannot and should be applied today upon any society because they are not under the Law of Moses, and therefore to impose them is to misapply them outside of the context of ancient Israel.  This is what he argues for.

You will not find this kind of thinking in the teachings of the Apostles, nor in any of Christ’s teachings.  Indeed, just the opposite.

Now were the critic to argue that the Law of Moses is NOT foundational for salvation; that its observance DOES NOT determine one’s relationship with God, that is to say whether one is reconciled to Him or still under His wrath.. were he to say that the Law of Moses is NOT necessary for justification, NOT necessary for sanctification, NOT necessary for redemption, NOT necessary for salvation, and NOT necessary to obtain total and complete reconciliation with God through its observance; to every one of these statements I would say he is completely correct and entirely biblical.

But this is not what he is saying here.  He is arguing against elements of the Law being applied outside of the commonwealth of Israel.  He is arguing AGAINST its application in any shape, way, or form, outside of ancient Israel.  What’s the difference between how the New Testament treats the Law relative to grace and how the critic applies it?

What the critic raises here is a theological non sequitur.  Every example the New Testament gives to teach us about the Old Testament is taken from the Hebrew Bible.  You’ll note that the Evangelists and the Apostles do not present their arguments apart from the Hebrew Scriptures, but all of their inspired teachings are drawn from them – from the Law, the Prophets, the Writings, not apart from them.  This is the biblical approach.  And it was the Holy Spirit who authored what they wrote.  It is the Holy Spirit through the Messiah who helps in understanding all of it.  Not human intellect.  This is how one keeps from error.  It is so simple, yet so fundamental to this discussion.

Rather than moving away from the Word of God and going on their own argumentations from their own intellect and natural mind, the writers of the New Testament under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, delved deep into the Law, the Prophets, the Writings, and based their inspired writings on it.  What the critic claims is exclusive for Israel and no other nation, the writers of the New Testament apply to every nation.  The New Testament writers embraced the Hebrew Bible’s standards and correctly placed them under the cross.  The critic places a theological dichotomy that the New Testament writers do not place themselves, because it does not exist; not even for redemption, salvation, sanctification, and purification of sins, for Jew and Gentile alike, and that is the cross.

FACT: The critic already knows the answer to this loaded question of his.  It is in the pages of the Holy Bible.  The same Holy Bible he professes to believe.  It is preserved in the records of eye-witnesses who beheld the events that brought five Roman legions to the region of Judea and had them converge upon the city of Jerusalem, to destroy it and its temple, while butchering hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants, and with this action, radically put an end to Jewish religious communal life as the Jewish people had come to know it until that day. 

In the words of Peter, who wrote prophetically, The end of all things is near; therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer. (1Peter 4:7); so Biblical Judaism, and with it Jewish religious community life, everything they had come to know and love, came to an abrupt end on the Hebrew month of the 9^th of Av, in the year A.D. 70, when God lifted His hedge of protection over His nation and Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed, God’s people were sent into exile for almost two thousand years.  Second Temple Pharisaic Judaism with the temple cult of Levites and Priests and sacrifices ended, and Rabbinical Judaism was about to emerge from its ashes and predominate Jewish community life for the next two millennia.

THE CROSS IS AT THE EPICENTER OF PROPHETIC HISTORY IN GOD’S REDEMPTIVE PLAN & THE MARKER OF THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE LAW FROM LETTER TO SPIRIT

The critic would be the first to admit that with the death of the Messiah at the cross of Galgotha/Calvary, followed by His bodily resurrection from the dead, the Law as it had come to be observed by Israel under the Old Covenant, had come to an abrupt end, being replaced by a better one, one which Paul calls the Law of the Spirit of life in Messiah.  The writer to the Letter to the Hebrews writes:

Now if perfection was through the Levitical priesthood (for on the basis of it the people received the Law), what further need was there for another priest to arise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not be designated according to the order of Aaron?  For when the priesthood is changed, of necessity there takes place a change of law also.  For the one concerning whom these things are spoken belongs to another tribe, from which no one has officiated at the altar.  For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, a tribe with reference to which Moses spoke nothing concerning priests.  And this is clearer still, if another priest arises according to the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become such not on the basis of a law of physical requirement, but according to the power of an indestructible life.  For it is attested of Him,

“You are a priest forever

According to the order of Melchizedek.”

For, on the one hand, there is a setting aside of a former commandment because of its weakness and uselessness (for the Law made nothing perfect), and on the other hand there is a bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God.  And inasmuch as it was not without an oath (for they indeed became priests without an oath, but He with an oath through the One who said to Him,

“The Lord has sworn

And will not change His mind,

‘You are a priest forever’”);

so much the more also Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant.

The former priests, on the one hand, existed in greater numbers because they were prevented by death from continuing, but Jesus, on the other hand, because He continues forever, holds His priesthood permanently.  Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.

(Hebrews 7:11-23)

But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.

For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second. 8 For finding fault with them, He says,

“Behold, days are coming, says the Lord,

When I will effect a new covenant

With the house of Israel and with the house of Judah;

Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers

On the day when I took them by the hand

To lead them out of the land of Egypt;

For they did not continue in My covenant,

And I did not care for them, says the Lord.

“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel

After those days, says the Lord:

I will put My laws into their minds,

And I will write them on their hearts.

And I will be their God,

And they shall be My people.

“And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen,

And everyone his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’

For all will know Me,

From the least to the greatest of them.

“For I will be merciful to their iniquities,

And I will remember their sins no more.”

When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete.  But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.

(Hebrews 8:6-13)

On the Hebrew month of Av, the 9^th day, in the year A.D. 70, God made it evident to Israel and to the nations what His inspired Word declares above; with the cross and the power of the resurrection with its new life in the indwelling Living Messiah, that the Law upon which the Old Covenant was established, had become obsolete and had grown old and now would disappear, being replaced by the Law of the Spirit of life in Messiah (Romans 8:2).

Additionally, there is the following which follows:

For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near.  Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins?  But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year.  For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.  Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says,

“Sacrifice and offering You have not desired,

But a body You have prepared for Me;

In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You have taken no pleasure.

“Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come

(In the scroll of the book it is written of Me)

To do Your will, O God.’”

After saying above, “Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You have not desired, nor have You taken pleasure in them” (which are offered according to the Law), then He said, “Behold, I have come to do Your will.”  He takes away the first in order to establish the second.  By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Messiah once for all.

Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet.  For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.  And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying,

“This is the covenant that I will make with them

After those days, says the Lord:

I will put My laws upon their heart,

And on their mind I will write them,”

He then says,

“And their sins and their lawless deeds

I will remember no more.”

Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.  Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

(Hebrews 10:5-25)

If the critic were honest, he’d admit that now under the New Covenant, the principles upon which that Law had been established were now universal, as they had been applied to the nations; as God had judged one empire after another using the same template of remedial judgments and warnings with them as He had with Israel, and as He is doing today, and as the writers of the New Testament bear witness He will continue to do so until the return of Jesus the Messiah to this earth.  The Lord God, who abhors differing weights and differing measures and false scales (Proverbs 20:10, 23), does not change His standards from one nation to another, but judges all nations justly.

If the critic has any doubt about this, or has any questions, he is encouraged to consult the last book in our Bibles to refresh his memory.  The Book of Revelations should prove most enlightening to the critic.  And, if after reading the Revelation of Jesus the Messiah to the Seven Congregations, critic still has some nagging doubts about this, then he may consult then the prophet Daniel and all of the other prophets of the Hebrew Bible for himself, and then rest assured of God’s redemptive plan, rather than argue moot points as he does in all of his rantings against The Harbinger and now The Mystery of the Shemitah.

Commenting on the critic’s claim above, another Amazon.com savvy and biblically informed and discerning observer (LADYBUG) noted when reading the critic’s loaded question, “Because the law was fulfilled in Yeshua, Israel would not be required to observe the Shemitah either... plus the gospel is for ALL peoples and nations, not just Israel, so a worldwide imposed Shemitah would make more sense, at least in my way of thinking.  Not only that, but isn't the whole world interconnected by the global markets so that all are affected, including Israel?”

CRITIC’S CLAIM: “I am presently very carefully going through The Mystery of the Shemitah a second time and annotating all the places where such assertions are made and will be researching the fact claims in the book.  As I was reading it the first time, I just randomly checked a couple of the ‘facts’ that seemed rather suspect to me, and sure enough, my initial research indicated that both were factual errors.  However, before I come to a final conclusion on these and others, I'm going to delve into this further because I want to provide an honest evaluation and give the benefit of the doubt where possible.

“Unfortunately, The Mystery of the Shemitah, may be an even more fragile house of cards than The Harbinger was from a biblical and historical perspective.”

FACT: I must interject here that if the critic treats this “fact checking” of his as he did The Harbinger and as he has done thus far here, then we are in for quite a ride.  Get ready for all sorts of objections to pop up, even those which do not exist, but the critic is adept as making it appear as though they exist when they do not.  The only problem is that he never presents the evidence for the objections and accusations he makes, just the rhetorical questions, the logical fallacies, and the same sophistry of a trial attorney arguing a lost case.  This is no exaggeration.  What he presents here, which we’ve examined point by point, is what he presents in his book, and on his website.  The critic then switches hats, and writes the following, even providing an “escape clause” as he always does, just in case to protect himself.  But even the critic’s “escape clauses” have a bite, and he is not as gracious as he may appear to come across; for he writes and  I quote:

“Having said all this, I still commend Jonathan Cahn for his passion to call out Americans for terrible sins which so radically plague this country - and issuing a challenge to Americans to repent before it is too late.  America and Americans are more than deserving of God's severe judgment and that judgment might well be underway.  And, if Jonathan Cahn's message has gotten the attention of some, such that they have either trusted in Christ for salvation or have turned away from a life of sin, then I rejoice greatly for every one it has impacted in this way.

At the same time, God is not limited in any way, and He can use anything and anyone to accomplish His will - including books and messages that fall short of being biblical and accurate.  However, when books and messages are not thoroughly biblical and not completely accurate, they can also cause a great deal of harm in the long run.  This is my great concern - that both believers and unbelievers are ultimately going to be led astray, confused and disillusioned by sensationalist-type books such as The Harbinger and The Mystery of the Shemitah.

“Just as an FYI: For those who might be interested in a more in-depth treatment of the Shemitah theory as presented in Jonathan Cahn's first book, you may want to consider my book: The Harbinger: Fact or Fiction? - available here in Kindle and Paperback versions.”

And here you have it, ladies and gentlemen, in his own words; the actual motivation of why this critic – all claims aside – writes here against The Mystery of the Shemitah.  It is nothing better than to promote his own flawed polemic based upon his misreading of The Harbinger, and conclusions that are not borne out by the evidence of either the markets, the economic cycles going back almost a 100 years, or the clear teaching of God’s Word.  I make this evident in my book, The Truth About The Harbinger, and on my website, The Pepster’s Post: A Voice in Cyberspace, as I hope and pray that I have here on Amazon.com.

CRITIC’S CLAIM: Another critic writes: Cahn claims to be the first ever to identify a seven year economic cycle within the US economy and attempts to convince his readers that it parallels the seven year Biblical cycle of ancient Israel (which the ancient Israelite's failed to heed resulting in their punishment and banishment to Babylon by God).  This economic cycle has never been identified or acknowledged by economists, or any other experts, who would be far more qualified to identify such trends - this continues to remain the case.  He provides an endless number of facts and makes all kinds of assertions without actually providing any documentation or evidence to substantiate his claims, all while claiming the book to be 90% non-fiction.  Cahn, as patterned with his first book, has a tendency to misapply Scripture and cherry pick Biblical passages to try to build his case.  As Christians, like the Bereans, we are called to question everything and do the research.  If not, we open ourselves to being misled and deceived by accepted and authoritative sources (like Cahn has become).  We really need to be much more cautious about taking anything perceived as so-called Christian to be reliable, dependable, accurate, or even absolute.

FACT: The critic above claims for Rabbi Jonathan Cahn that, “Cahn claims to be the first ever to identify a seven year economic cycle within the US economy and attempts to convince his readers that it parallels the seven year Biblical cycle of ancient Israel (which the ancient Israelite's failed to heed resulting in their punishment and banishment to Babylon by God).  Rabbi Cahn may not be the first.  I have personally spoken with a former Wall Street economist who has conducted his own independent study on economic cycles years before Rabbi Cahn wrote his book and independent of it, who also discovered these cycles.  Using techniques and technologies available in his craft, this expert conducted a study of economic cycles going back in time several hundred years, and discovered the same economic cycles have existed through history, stretching further back into the Second Temple Era.  This was an amazing discovery that I wish to examine for myself.  Additionally, there is evidence I have provided which shows a Wall Street anylyist having also made the discovery of how the greatest stock market events occurred at precise intervals, what Rabbi Cahn Shemitahs Years.

CRITIC’S CLAIM: “This economic cycle has never been identified or acknowledged by economists, or any other experts, who would be far more qualified to identify such trends - this continues to remain the case.”     

FACT: This is just not true.  I have obtained and will post additional reports by several other economists who confirm these economic cycles, two of which wrote their discoveries years before this book was published, one finding from two years ago as well.

CRITIC’S CLAIM:“He provides an endless number of facts and makes all kinds of assertions without actually providing any documentation or evidence to substantiate his claims, all while claiming the book to be 90% non-fiction.” 

FACT: What this critic writes above is nothing but an objection, a legitimate one with which I agree, but this in no way discredits the information in it, because independent studies conducted by others before Rabbi Cahn wrote his book, corroborate these economic cycles.  To argue against their existence and then to argue the historicity of something that is a matter of history is nothing but a revision of reality by those who simply wish to find anything to argue against this author.  Take special note of one theme these critics have in reviewing Rabbi Cahn’s books; they are extremely personal and visceral in reaction to them.

CRITIC’S CLAIM: “Cahn, as patterned with his first book, has a tendency to misapply Scripture and cherry pick Biblical passages to try to build his case.  As Christians, like the Bereans, we are called to question everything and do the research.  If not, we open ourselves to being misled and deceived by accepted and authoritative sources (like Cahn has become).  We really need to be much more cautious about taking anything perceived as so-called Christian to be reliable, dependable, accurate, or even absolute.”   

FACT: These highly charged emotional comments bely not just a religious bias that clouds out all other objective analysis, but also a very personal one, since the critic here has crossed from an objective analysis to one that is extremely subjective and personal.  Of course, these personal barbs by the critic are simply factually inaccurate and not true.  This critic, like the other critics, argues against the overwhelming evidence in support of what the book says.  He is arguing against historical events and the significance of the dates they have fallen, and how it all points to an Intelligent Hand and not an uncontrollable chaos.

WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY ABOUT ECONOMIC CYCLES & COLLAPSES & WHAT AWAITS US

MICHAEL LOMBARDI – MERRYL LINCH FINANCIAL ADVISOR

Two years ago, long before Jonathan Cahn wrote his book, The Mystery of the Shemitah, Merryl Lynch financial advisor Michael Lombardi made the following observations and predictions.  He wrote to his readers:

“Yes, 2007 was the year I really turned negative on the stock market. On November 29, 2007, I sent this e-mail to my thousands of clients:

“The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and the other major stock market indices finished yesterday with the best two-day showing since 2002. I’m looking at the market rally of the past two days as a classic stock market bear trap. As the economy gets closer to contraction, 2008 will likely be a most challenging economic year for Americans.”

Months after I wrote the above, it was widely recognized that October 2007 was the top for the stock market.

I correctly predicted the crash in the stock market of 2008 and early 2009. I even wrote an obituary on the stock market in the fall of 2008 that made me somewhat of a forecasting legend.

Here’s an excerpt of the e-mail I blasted to over 100,000 of our customers on October 6, 2008:

“A Stock Market’s Obituary: It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. After a strong and courageous battle, the Dow Jones fell victim to a credit crisis and finally succumbed on Friday, October 3, 2008, when it fell decisively below the mid-point between its 2002 low and its 2007 high.”

The Dow Jones Industrials fell approximately 40% after I wrote this now famous “Stock Market Obituary,” finally hitting bottom in March 2009, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 6,440.

And finally, it was in March 2009 that I started telling my readers stocks were oversold. On March 2, 2009, I sent an e-mail to my thousands of personal followers with the subject line, “Stocks at a 12-year Low; Time to Jump In?” In that e-mail, I stated:

“There are great stock bargains developing in the small-cap market where many stocks are now trading at single-digit price/earnings multiples.”

The Russell 2000 Small-Cap Index gained about 175% from when I wrote that e-mail in 2009 to today.

I’ve spent the last few minutes telling you about my past predictions on the stock market so you have an idea of the kind of investment research and forecasts we’ve made for our customers through the years.

It’s important that you know who we are—and what we have done to accumulate a following of millions of investors—so you take what I have to say next very seriously.

“Today’s Stock Market Is Set Up for a Huge Collapse”

Our prediction is that today’s stock market is setting up for a huge tumble…a collapse that will make the stock market crashes of 2008 and 1929 look like a cake-walk.

I know. It’s a dire prediction. But we believe the makings for this collapse have already been put into place. You see…

As the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression hit America in 2008, the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve pulled out all the stops to save the economy from the abyss.

The government put money into private “too big to fail” corporations and borrowed trillions of dollars to help jump-start the economy.

The Federal Reserve did its share by taking four major steps to “save the economy at all costs.”

The Fed:

1 Brought interest rates to historic lows;

2. Made money available to big banks that were in trouble;

3. Bought U.S. Treasury bonds for the first time in history; and created trillions of dollars in new money out of thin air.

While the Federal Reserve has slowly started to reduce the amount of new money it prints each month, the damage has already been done. By keeping the money “flood gates” open for so long, five years now, we believe the Fed has inadvertently created a stock market bubble.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average moved from 6,440 in March of 2009 to over 16,000. That’s the biggest uninterrupted point gain for the Dow Jones in history—a whopping gain of more than 9,000 points.

But take the rising stock market out of the picture, and all the sudden, the economy doesn’t look that great.

In fact, current economic statistics are outright pathetic.

Corporate earnings growth has fallen back to the lowest pace since 2009.

And while the government gives us a manipulated “official” unemployment rate that sounds like it’s improving, the real unemployment rate, when you include people who have given up looking for work and who have part-time jobs but want full-time jobs, has been sitting over 12% for years.

The number of Americans on welfare is now higher than the number of Americans who have full-time jobs.

Take Social Security out of the picture and one out of every four Americans, 25% of the population, now lives below the poverty line, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.

Yes, poverty in the U.S. has reached a 50-year high.

When we look at the rest of the world, all major economies are in trouble. Japan is back in recession. China's economy is growing at its slowest pace in years. Many eurozone countries are in a depression and not coming out of it.

The bottom line: this is the biggest disconnect between the economy and the stock market in history…and it all has to do with the stock market being artificially inflated by the Federal Reserve’s prolonged massive monetary stimulus.

Understanding the Three Phases of a Bear Market

The great majority of investors can’t fathom what’s about to happen to the stock market, because they don’t understand the historic three phases of a secular bear market.

Phase One of a bear market brings stock prices down sharply. That’s what happened when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell from 14,164 in October 2007 to 6,440 on March 9, 2009—a tumble of 54%.

Phase Two of a bear market is when the bear lures investors back into stocks. The bear gives investors and analysts the false sense that the economy is improving and that it’s okay to own stocks again. The bear has done just that—a masterful job at convincing investors it’s a great time to own stocks again.

Once the vast majority of analysts and investors believe the stock market is safe again (that’s exactly where we are today), the final phase of a bear market, Phase Three, gets underway and ultimately brings stock prices back down again.”

Further down Mr. Lombardi writes:

Six Indicators Pointing to a Stock Market Collapse and What You Can Do to Protect Yourself

Our research and analysis has led us to six proven and time-tested stock market indicators that are all signaling the stock market rally that started in 2009 is about to end abruptly.

The good news is that you could protect yourself from the stock market collapse headed our way.  The better news is that, if you position your portfolio properly, starting today, you could actually make money during the next devastating down leg of the market while others struggle like never before.

I present those six proven and time-tested indicators one-by-one here, right now, so you can see for yourself why this stock market is teetering on collapse and how you can profit from its demise.

Corporate Insiders Dumping Stocks at Record Pace

Executives and insiders are selling stock in the companies they work for at the fastest pace since 2007—the same year the Dow Jones Industrial Average peaked at 14,164 before crashing all the way down to 6,440 by March 2009.

According to Maryland-based data compiler Washington Service, there were more corporate insiders dumping stocks last month than any time since 2007. NYSE public company insiders are selling stock at the rate of $10 of stock sold for every $1.00 of stock bought—the fastest selling pace for insiders in about five years—according to Vickers Weekly Insider Report.

Even more troublesome, corporate insiders’ buying of stocks in the companies they work for has dropped to the slowest level since 1992!

Historically, when corporate insiders have become such major sellers of stock, the stock market has fallen sharply lower in the weeks and months that follow.

Yes, corporate insiders selling stock at such an accelerated pace is worrisome, as it signals we are at a market top. But there is one way you can actually profit from this action as the general stock market comes down again.

2. Stock Advisor Bullishness Hits Multi-Month High

Stock advisors are more bullish today than they have been in two years. Throughout history, the stock market has done the opposite of what the majority of stock advisors expect it will do—and that’s why this contrarian indicator is so important

According to data compiler Investors Intelligence, stock market advisors are more bullish today than they have been since April 2011.

And what happened after bullishness ran so high with stock advisors in April 2011?

The Dow Jones Industrials experienced a major drop of 2,500 points from the end of April 2011 to October 2011.

I’ve been following this sentiment indicator for years. Whenever stock advisors get too bearish and believe stocks are going lower (like they did in March of 2009), the stock market does the opposite and rallies.

And whenever stock market advisors get so bullish, like they are today, the stock market always tanks.  It happened in October 2007.  It happened in April 2011.  It’s going to happen again now.

3. VIX Says This Stock Market Reminiscent of October 2007

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, often referred to as the “fear index,” sits today where it was in 2007, just before one of the worst market sell-offs in history.

The CBOE Volatility Index measures the implied volatility of the S&P 500 index options. When this fear index is down, it’s saying investors are not worried about risk in the stock market. Historically, whenever investors think there is no risk in the market, that’s when stocks turn against them.

Of all the six indicators I’m disclosing today, the VIX, as it is also often referred to, has captured every major market turn in history. And right now, the VIX is trading at the same level it did in 2007, just before the stock market collapsed.

4. Companies Propping Up Earnings with Record Buybacks

Stock buybacks are a clever way for companies to prop up per-share earnings.

In 2013, we saw more stock buyback programs than we’ve ever seen in history, with 70% of the S&P 500 companies buying back stock.

As an example, a company can make the same money this year as it did last year, but if it buys back 10% of its stock this year, last year’s earnings of $2.00 a share will become $2.20 a share this year—an ingenious way to paint a picture of earnings growth.

So, to prop up earnings, companies are buying back their company’s stock at a record pace.

The board of directors of International Business Machines has authorized IBM to buy back a staggering $11.2 billion of its stock.

Meanwhile, Apple Inc. has announced it was buying back $50 billion worth of its shares!

Bottom line: earnings growth for corporate America has stalled, so companies are buying back their stock to prop up per-share earnings.

5. Bond Funds Buy Stocks Too?

As crazy as it sounds, bond funds have gotten into the stock market action and are buying stocks too!

Under SEC rules, a mutual fund has to invest 80% of its assets in the asset type described in the mutual fund’s name. Hence, a bond fund has room to invest 20% of its fund into assets other than bonds. And while one would think bond funds, which are conservative in nature, would put any extra money they have into Treasuries or money market funds, they are buying stocks instead!

In fact, the number of bond funds that now own stocks has just hit an 18-year high.

According to data compiler Morningstar Inc., an unprecedented 352 bond mutual funds now hold stocks in their portfolios.

Just as night follows day, you can bet that once the stock market starts moving lower, the net asset values of bond funds that have invested in the stock market will drop too. And if you know anything about bonds, you know once they fall, unit holders get nervous and run for the door, putting more pressure on bond prices.

6. NYSE Margin Debt Surpasses Pre-Financial Crisis Record

To maximize their leverage and make as much money as possible from the stock market when it is rising, traders often buy stock on margin—that means they borrow money from their brokers to buy even more stock.

The New York Stock Exchange publishes statistics that show how much money investors have borrowed against the stocks they own. In July 2007, NYSE margin debt reached a record high. That means that just before the stock market crashed in 2007, investors borrowed more money than ever before to buy stocks.

Fast-forward seven years to today, and we’re there again. The amount of money investors have borrowed against stocks they own on the NYSE has reached a new record of $451 billion—surpassing the previous record set back in July 2007—and we all know what happened after that—stocks fell 40%.

Right now, investors are so convinced stocks will continue to rise, they have borrowed to the tune of $451 billion to leverage their long positions on stocks. As history has proven, whenever investors leveraged so much, stocks have fallen badly. This is an ominous and frightening indicator of what’s ahead.

Why It Will Be So Bad This Time Around

Thanks to the historic actions of the Federal Reserve, the stock market has become a bubble again. The six proven and time-tested indicators I have just talked about all point one way—to another stock market collapse.

But this time around, the after-effects of the next leg of the bear market could be much worse than what happened in 2008 and 2009, and even the Great Depression, because the Fed has run out of monetary tools to support the economy and the stock market.

The reality is that the Fed can’t lower interest rates below the zero they are at today, and the more paper money the Fed prints, the greater the risk of inflation and the higher long-term interest rates will rise, stifling the economy.

Just like 1929 and 2009, as the stock market collapsed, American consumers pulled back on their spending and the economy got back into recession. The same thing will happen now.

But this time, the government won’t be able to help us with the economic downturn because the government has no money left to bail us out!

The government is overextended. If it was a business, it would be bankrupt. The reality is the government is existing on the money the Federal Reserve prints and gives to the government to survive.

Hence, as farfetched as it may sound, the stock market crash that is about to happen will put us in a recession that will be much worse than the 2007–2008 recession.”

(Michael Lombardi, The Great Crash of 2015)

JOHN VALENTINE

Before anyone reads the articles, I’ll remind the reader that Mr. Valentine had not read The Mystery of the Shemitah when he wrote what you are about to read.

At the end of every year, in December, we convene a special New Year session of the Investment Policy Committee (IPC).   During the regular year, we have Valentine Capital IPC meetings on a weekly basis.  At the New Year IPC session, we look at where we’re going to head from an investment perspective for the following year.  The purpose of the New Year session is to look at asset allocation modeling, structure of assets, increasing or decreasing of equity exposure and bond exposure.  All these concerns are contemplated against the backdrop of the current global economic overview.  The IPC also focuses on stock selection methods, which represent one element of the overall process.  These conferences always yield tremendous perspective, which we then apply to our strategies for managing clients’ investments.  This year was no exception.  The central theme of this year’s meeting seemed to be – How to make investors feel comfortable about reentering the market.

Following nearly every bear market of the Twentieth Century has been a period of time when investors became more conservative.  Historically, the proverbially burned bear market investor has adopted a “lay back and see” attitude to his or her participation and exposure to the stock and bond market.  Erstwhile prospectors who find a “new religion” of conservatism after watching their portfolios decimated often end up the victims of a double dose of loss.  With all their remaining money on the sidelines, these gun shy, former risk-takers historically miss out on the hefty returns that occur on the next market upswing.  Initially they lost because they didn’t believe their positions would ever fall to the miserable depths inevitably brought about by the bear.  Then they lost again as their new reticence kept them out of the game when the bull came abounding back.  The New Year session of the IPC in 2003 yielded some interesting data that may help investors feel more at ease with the prospects for the future.

Using Ibbotson (the recognized industry standard for market data) as a source, we examined the ups and downs of the market from the 1920s through the present.  Within a few minutes of reviewing the data, a very distinct pattern began to emerge.  What we found was a near perfect cycle of poor market performance periods that were invariably followed by periods of significant market expansion.  We all know that the markets are cyclical and what goes up must come down.  However, what was most startling about the pattern was its frequency.  Nearly every cycle from bust back to boom transpired at roughly seven-year intervals.  The data clearly shows that bear markets beginning with the Great Crash of 1929, have materialized (with very few exceptions) every seven years.

Perhaps even more interesting to note, was that periods of great expansion occur between each 7^th year.  To illustrate, let’s begin to retrogress starting with the last market bust in 2001-2002.  The years leading up to 2001-2002 (1995 to mid 2000) marked record growth in the stock market.  Subtract 7 years from 2001 and we’re back in 1994.

1994 was a dreadful year for investments with a poorly performing stock market and a horribly performing bond market.  In fact, if you were born anytime in the last 50 years, 1994 was the worst bond market in your lifetime.  The impact of this is often lost, as most people tend to look to the performance of the equities market as an indicator of the overall strength of the investment world.  Yet the fortunes of the bond and stock markets are inexorably tied to one another and if one suffers, so too does the other.  1994 saw tremendous hikes in interest rates as Greenspan sought to slow the growth of the economy.  This action took a near fatal toll on the bond market rendering Fannie Maes and Freddie Macs all but worthless.  Many people lost their retirement savings.  Yet it is crucial to remember that the three years leading up to 1994 recorded significant growth.  Equally important is the fact that the years after the low point of 1994 saw some of the most significant growth in market history leading up to the bust of 2001-2002 (seven years later).  Seven years before 1994 brings us back to 1987.  Need I even write anything about what transpired in 1987?  In case you were living in a cave or under a rock, 1987 saw one of the worst stock market crashes in modern history.  Remember Black Monday?  Yet 1982 through 1986 are personified in the collective memory of our popular culture by Oliver Stone’s anti-hero, Gordon Gecko, uttering his famous line “greed is good!”  Seven years before 1987 (1980-1) was another bleak year for the markets.

Seven years prior, 1973 saw huge inflation and horrible performance on the markets.   Remember the gas shortage, rationing according to odd days vs. even days and long lines at filling stations?

When to Get Back In? Look to the Seven Year Cycle

No Ouija Board, Voodoo or Numerology Needed to Divine Best Reentry Time
by John Valentine

MICHAEL SNYDER ANALYSIS OF THE SHEMITAH’S CLAIMS

In different article written by Michael Snyder, without any embellishments or exaggeration, he describes how the markets have suffered their greatest drops every seven year cycle going all the way back to the Great Depression.  Here I cite his entire article for the benefit of our Amazon.com readers.  I quote:

“Large numbers of people believe that an economic crash is coming next year based on a seven year cycle of economic crashes that goes all the way back to the Great Depression.  What I am about to share with you is very controversial.  Some of you will love it, and some of you will think that it is utter rubbish.  I will just present this information and let you decide for yourself what you want to think about it.  In my previous article entitled "If Economic Cycle Theorists Are Correct, 2015 To 2020 Will Be Pure Hell For The United States", I discussed many of the economic cycle theories that all seem to agree that we are on the verge of a major economic downturn in this country.  But there is an economic cycle that I did not mention in that article that a lot of people are talking about right now.  And if this cycle holds up once again in 2015, it will be really bad news for the U.S. economy.

“Looking back, the most recent financial crisis that we experienced was back in 2008.  Lehman Brothers collapsed, the stock market crashed and we were plunged into the worst recession that we have experienced as a nation since the Great Depression.  You can see what happened to the Dow Jones Industrial Average on the chart that I have posted below...

“Prior to that, the last time that the stock market experienced a major decline of that nature was during the bursting of the dotcom bubble seven years earlier.  2001 was a year of recession for the U.S. economy and of big trouble for stocks.

“And oh year, a little event known as "9/11" happened that year.

“Seven years before that, in 1994, investors experienced the worst bond market of their lifetimes.

“The following is how Reuters recalls the carnage...

‘“The 1994 bond market massacre is remembered with horror by those who lived through it. Yields on 30-year Treasuries jumped some 200 basis points in the first nine months of the year, hammering investors and financial firms, not to mention thrusting Mexico into crisis and bankrupting Orange County.’

“Going back another seven years brings us to 1987.

“Anyone that lived through that era remembers "Black Monday" and the horrible stock market crash very well.

“The next major economic crash prior to 1987 was in the early 1980s.

“In 1980, the S&L crisis was blooming and everyone was talking about the "stagflation" that we were experiencing under Jimmy Carter.  The Federal Reserve raised interest rates dramatically to combat inflation, and this helped precipitate the very deep recession that we experienced early in Ronald Reagan's first term.

“You can read much more about the "early 1980s recession" right here.

“Seven years prior to 1980 brings us to 1973.  To many young Americans, that year does not have any significance, but older Americans remember the Arab oil embargo and the super long lines at the gas pumps really well.

“In addition, a recession began in 1973 which ended up stretching all the way until 1975.

“And those that have studied these things say that the pattern keeps going back all the way to the Great Depression.  Many correctly point out that the stock market crash which began the Great Depression was in 1929, but actually the worst year for the stock market during the Great Depression was in 1931.  And 1931 fits perfectly into the cycle.

“So we have this pattern of economic crashes occurring approximately every seven years.

“But there is an additional element to this cycle which makes it even more extraordinary.

“As Jonathan Cahn has pointed out, this seven year cycle also lines up with the seven year "Shemitah cycle" that we find in the Bible.

“For those not familiar with it, during the Shemitah year the people of Israel were commanded to let their land rest for a full year.  It was also supposed to be a time of releasing of debts.

“But for the most part the people of Israel did not observe the Shemitah year, and in the Bible that is mentioned as one of the reasons why they were exiled to Babylon for seventy years.

“The Shemitah year always begins in the fall, and the upcoming Shemitah year is going to start about a month from now.

“Will we see things happen during this Shemitah year that are similar to things that we have seen in past Shemitah years?

“For example, on September 17th, 2001 we witnessed the greatest one day stock market crash in U.S. history up until that time.  It happened on the 29th of Elul on the Jewish calendar, which is the day right before Rosh Hashanah.

“That record stood for seven years until the massive stock market crash of September 29, 2008.  That date also corresponded with the 29th of Elul on the Jewish Calendar - the day right before Rosh Hashanah.

“Will the pattern hold up in 2015?

“Well, the 29th of Elul falls on a Sunday in 2015, so the stock market will be closed.  But it is very interesting to note that there will be a solar eclipse on that day.

“And as Jonathan Cahn recently told WND, similar solar eclipses in the past have preceded major financial disasters...

“In 1931, a solar eclipse took place on Sept. 12 – the end of a “Shemitah” year.  Eight days later, England abandoned the gold standard, setting off market crashes and bank failures around the world.  It also ushered in the greatest month-long stock market percentage crash in Wall Street history.

“In 1987, a solar eclipse took place Sept. 23 – again the end of a “Shemitah” year.  Less than 30 days later came “Black Monday” the greatest percentage crash in Wall Street history.

“Is Cahn predicting doom and gloom on Sept. 13, 2015?  He’s careful to avoid a prediction, saying, “In the past, this ushered in the worst collapses in Wall Street history.  What will it bring 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.”

So what should we make of all of this?

I am sure that some of you will dismiss this as pure coincidence and speculation.

Others will find it utterly fascinating.

But one thing is for sure - people are going to be talking about this seven year cycle all over the Internet.

When they ask you what you think, what are you going to say?”

(Michael Snyder, The Seven Year Cycle Of Economic Crashes That Everyone Is Talking About September 2nd, 2014)

A WORD OF ADVICE FOR THE CRITICS

Listen, I don’t know where the critic is getting his information from, but it is not from the financial market analysts with years of experience charting and plotting stochastics (market indicators as to how well or bad a particular stock will do revealing trends in the stock market), therefore determine whether one buys that stock as it ascends or sells it before it begins its descent.  Anyone who’s never worked a day in their life in the realm of these financial markets nor charted a single graph for any financial institution, or known the intricacies of the market, who tries to argue ridiculous minutiae about the market, especially in light of its history, is chasing windmills, and boxing the air.

The problem with some people is that what they do not understand, they discard without listening to the least bit of examination to the biblical narrative and the historical trends and undercurrents these present.  This is because such a person has convinced himself, and others have convinced him, that Dispensational Theology, a modern theology, is the end all and be all of Systematic Theology.  It is not, and the first Christians were neither Roman Catholics, Dispensationalists or Protestant Reformers.  They were Second Temple Jewish Messianics who lived and taught a theology much deeper and more nuanced and older than that most of today’s Dispensationalists.

In this regard, it behooves the critic and others like him to rediscover the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints (Jude 3), this doctrine of God which predates both the teachings of the Post-Nicene Augustinian-influenced Catholic and Protestant Churches respectively.  In this manner, the stumbling blocks found along this road will be few and far between, and more importantly, one will be kept from the seduction of false doctrine.

Whether the focused theology is Calvinism, or Armenianism, or Dispensationalism – and there are many more – all have a modicum of truth in their teachings, because they all originate in one form or another from the Holy Scriptures.  But  regardless of which one of these disciplines one base their personal theology on, no one must ever confuse the theology with the Word of God.  I repeat none of these theologies mentioned here existed in the days of the early church, and they are man-made inventions, not God’s Word, and ought never to be taught as such.  To do so is to risk danger and heresy.  Sola Escritura – Scripture alone is the final authority and template of all truth, and the Holy Spirit is the Person of God who imparts knowledge of God’s Word.

I cannot speak for Rabbi Cahn here, but I personally prefer using a Progressive Dispensationalist approach to the Scriptures, but only as a means of historical grammatical application to it, and not as an exclusive literal means of systematic theological approach to ALL of them, because God’s Word is not limited to any theology, but surpasses all of them.

Additionally, it is evident that in many places, but not all, God’s Word is understood thematically using Midrash, such as where parables, types, symbols, and metaphors are used.  Midrash can only be used to shed light on teachings, not as doctrine.  This is proper hermeneutics.  It must be remembered what God’s Word teaches regarding this; the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life, just as Paul writes in the Holy Spirit, that God made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (2Corinthians 3:6).  I am almost certain that the critic is aware of this, being a seminarian.  If not, then he should be made aware of it.

IT IS TIME NOT TO SENSATIONALIZE THE END TIME SIGNS, BUT BE AWARE OF THEM & PREPARED & READY FOR MESSIAH’S RETURN

I have lived over fifty-seven years and have seen many governments come and go; good ones and bad ones.  But I have never seen any government the likes of which is this one – perhaps the most lawless and corrupt that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime.  This current regime in Washington D.C. is a reproach and a judgment upon our nation, I am convinced of that, and what the people wanted in 2012 now the people have, and there is nothing they can do at this point to stop it, because it is determined to stay in power and to bring the nation down with it if the people revolt.  The complicit two party congress is 100 per cent with this administration and it will do whatever it thinks is necessary to also stay in power.  Unless the people in masses turn out at the polls this November and vote the bulk of these people out of office for good, we are finished as a free and independent nation.

FEW ARE LISTENING TO THE VOICES OF WARNING GOD HAS LIFTED UP TO WARN US OF IMPENDING JUDGMENT IF WE CONTINUE THIS WAY

I do know however, that since the time both books have been released, and in spite of continual warnings given by key men of God whom He has raised to warn His body and the nation – men like Rabbi Cahn, Mark Biltz, Ravi Zacharias, Dr. Michael Brown, Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, Anne Lutz Graham, Dr. James Dobson, Dr. Charles Stanley, Dr. Chuck Swindoll, Dr. James MacDonald, John Loeffler, Chris Pinto, Jan Markell, Dr. Robert Jeffress, Eric Barger, Dr. Irwin Lutzer, and many others – too many to be named here – while charlatans and phony religious telemarketers appear to be increasing in number and in wealth.

THE FIRST ABOMINATION: A FALSE AND DILUTED GOSPEL – CHRISLAM – HAS REPLACED THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN ETHIC IN AMERICA

The Church and the Synagogue today is polluted with homosexual ordinations, Post-Modern liberal theology, false materialism prosperity gimmicks, and extreme hyper-pharisaic ambulance chasing heresy witch hunts, as well as more and more celebrity pastors amassing great wealth for themselves as God’s people suffer the ravages of this Depression.  Compromise is the rule of the day, even compromise of the most fundamental sacredly held beliefs our faith, as we see the Vatican and some Evangelicals, as well as some liberal Jewish denominations uniting ecumenically into a universal pantheon of faiths.  Jesus even prophetically asked if He would find the faith upon His return to planet earth (Luke 18:8).  Biblical illiteracy is now the norm in America’s Evangelical churches, and few can articulate from the Scriptures the fundamentals of their faith.  Since the truth is compromised in the name of “unity” Chrislam – a sort of synergy between Christianity and Islam is being promoted by the Post Modern and Emergent Churches.

THE SECOND ABOMINATION: “LOW INFORMATION VOTERS” KEEP REELECTING CORRUPT INCUMBENT POLITICIANS INTO OUR GOVERNMENT (WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE 2014 MIDTERM ELECTIONS)

Our government is lawless and corrupt, our national leaders self-serving and out of touch with their electorate, the electorate itself is ill-informed and misinformed, as it is over-medicated, over-entertained and bored with a multiplicity of cable channels, Internet, electronic gadgets, video games and I-Phones, and yet are the most ignorant people in memory.  The same illiterate, dysfunctional, and godless low information voter keeps reelecting the same corrupt officials election after election, and in most of our cities, have generations long political machineries which guarantee the same political dynasties keep getting elected to office over and over again. 

For decades we have been beset with individuals who have never held a job in their life, but whom once in elected to office, have passed legislation that has proven harmful to our nation’s economy and its small business, who hire the bulk of its workforce.  We are experiencing the effects directly in our pocketbooks.  Gasoline at the pump is at an all-time high; food at the grocery store and supermarket is at an all-time high; energy to keep our homes cool in the summer and warm in the winter is at an all-time high; goods and services are at an all-time high; the cost of medical care is at an all-time high; the cost of pharmaceuticals is at an all-time high, while wages, real wages have not grown in real terms in wages, except for the top one percent.

While Joe Biden admits what Obama denies and continues to neglect – the economy – admitting that “the economy is not growing because the ‘Ordinary’ people have no money in their pockets” – he misses the mark by confessing that he and the president are directly responsible for causing this problem in the first place, with the government’s onerous over-regulation and over-taxation of small and mediums sized businesses, and their complicit aid to corporations that outsource American jobs overseas; something that the complicit news media has all but ignored.  Ask the families whose loved ones lost their jobs to Asians when their departments were moved to India and China and other places – all places Obama and key industry leaders visited in preparation for this “quiet” exodus of American labor some years back.

Yes, Obama and Biden have worked very hard to make sure that the wage earner is bereft of his/her only means of earning a living – their job.  And they’ve done a grand old job of that; so good in fact, that the “official” jobless number of people in this land dwarfs the population of many nations across the planet.  What a job Obama and Biden have done to their fellow Americans!  And now, Biden wants to pretend that he is on our side, just as he’s done all through his misbegotten career.  Hogwash!  Beware of the lying politician who pays lip service to the average wage earner while stabbing him in the back by taking his job away from him through outsourcing.

Obama has never had a job in his life, never owned a business, never had to do a budget, never conducted commerce - either wholesale or retail, never paid a bill, never managed a business, let alone a corporation, even less, a nation!  How did anyone think in their wildest dreams that he would be fit to lead this nation?  How could so many people be fooled into voting for this person?  Half of our nation, comprised of what is commonly known and called “low information voters” did, and they reelected him for a second term to help him finish what he set out to do with his first – “fundamentally change the United States of America” as he promised.

A THIRD ABOMINATION: THE REDEFINITION OF MARRIAGE & AN UNLAWFUL IMPOSITION OF ANOTHER IN ITS PLACE ENFORCED AS LAW

Another abomination is now witnessed in our land.  For the first time in the history of the human race, a national leader, indeed what is called today, a world leader – the president of the United States – has publicly redefined the meaning of marriage away from the universally accepted biblical God-given model of a union of a male and a female  adult a homosexual union of members of the same sex; even overturning existing laws such as DOMA – the Defense of Marriage Act, defining and protecting under Constitutional Law the union of a man and a woman in holy matrimony.  NOT ONLY HAS THIS NEVER BEEN SEEN IN THIS COUNTRY, BUT IT HAS NEVER BEEN WITNESSED AT ANY TIME IN HUMAN HISTORY! THIS CURRENT PRESIDENT HAS BROKEN PRECEDENT WITH EVERY NATIONAL LEADER IN HISTORY, PERHAPS THOSE OF THE ANCIENT CITIES OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH!

Now this new redefinition imposed by presidential decree – otherwise known as – executive order – is being imposed by this president.  He is using the power of his presidency to unilaterally enforce acceptance of this on this society through the threat of civil action for anyone who does not comply with his mandates.  It is now being implemented and imposed by law at all levels of our federal, state, and local governments, including all branches of our military.  And because it is agenda-driven and political in nature, it is even being imposed and enforced in the private sector across this country, as major corporations rush enact this mandate on its workforce, as they fall in lockstep to the politically-correct LGBT Obama-driven Agenda.  Because of this president’s rulings, Congress Hires Its First Openly Transgender Staffer..., an unheard thing just some years ago, or at any previous time in our nation’s history.  These people are not just imposing this on the rest of the population, they’re enforcing it by law across the nation as well.  According to a Commission: the Pentagon will let transgenders into military, 15,500 secretly serve...!

A FOURTH ABOMINATION: GOVERNMENT-FUNDED ABORTION ON DEMAND, INCLUDING INFANTICDE ENFORCED AS A CONTRACEPTIVE

We continue to abort our innocents at record numbers, and have now aborted approximately  between 55 and 60 million innocents since Roe v. Wade decision by the US Supreme Court.  In recent years we have witnessed a horror in our land unseen at any other time in our history, the willful and premeditated murder of our unborn up to the third trimester, making infanticide a “normal” medical procedure across our nation.

There is more blood of innocent life on this country than in any other in history.  We have killed more unborn babies than any other nation in history.  And we have done this as the Church has stood aside and done little if nothing about it, even electing the same politicians who have compromised with those promoting it.

A FIFTH ABOMINATION BEING IMPOSED UPON OUR LAND: THE DELIBERATE & SYSTEMATIC ISLAMITIZATION OF AMERICAN SOCIETY

When Israel followed the course of the pagan nations surrounding it, the pagan nations were used in bringing judgment to its borders.  America was founded upon clear Judeo-Christian principles, but has strayed far from them, even abandoning the most basic of its moral laws.  Nations that will not follow God, pagans will invade their land.  As I write this, Sharia Law is coming to a neighborhood near you.  Yes, read correctly, Sharia Law is being imposed across the country in various municipalities controlled by Democrats and RINO Republicans whose communities have growing numbers of Muslims.  This White House has displayed a growing affinity towards Islam and Islamist causes across the planet.  A leading Messianic Jewish Evangelical leader who follows Biblical Eschatology and current trends in our nation and around the world gives some US some sobering numbers where she writes:

“Is Islam in prophecy?  There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world -- 23% of the world's population.  There are about 3,500,000 Muslims in America and 43,000,000 in Europe.  Experts suggest there are over 100,000,000 radical Muslims and that number is likely low.  There are at least 250,000 radical Muslims in America.  I live among some of them in Minnesota.  They are continually being caught in terrorist activity in the U.S. and abroad.  And they are joining ISIS on a daily basis.”

(Olive Tree Ministries: Islam and God's End-Time Plan)

When Barack Hussein Obama took his oath of office as president of the United States, he broke trust with the American people, and violated that oath, because according to a leading CIA source: Obama switched sides in America’s War on Terror.  And he and his government apparatus have become increasingly brazen in their open expressions of bias favoring Islamizing American society and culture.  A recent headline reads, Obama Praised Muslim Cleric who Endorsed Fatwa Against American Troops...  Now let me ask, when has anyone heard of a sitting American president praising a radical cleric who has declared “Jihad” – “holy war” against the troops who serve under him?  Whom does Obama serve?  What is he up to?  Who’s side is he on?  Breitbart.com has also recently reported the following.  I quote:

“On Sunday, President Obama and First Lady Michelle released a statement thanking Muslim Americans for their many “achievements and contributions… to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy.”

“The comments were made to mark the celebration of Eid-al-Fitr, a time of spiritual renewal for Muslims which comes at the end of the month-long fast of Ramadan. The Obamas said in their statement that Eid “celebrates the common values that unite us in our humanity” and “welcomed their commitment to giving back to their communities.” The International Business Times reports that during Eid, Muslims join in Islamic prayer, while saying "Allahu Akbar," or "God is Great," and feasting.

“The statement further reads that the administration “wishes Muslims in the United States and around the world a blessed and joyous celebration.” The letter ended with salutation of “Eid Mubarak,” which roughly means “blessed celebration.””

MY COMMENT: As he is not facing another election for president, Barack Hussein Obama is becoming more brazen and daring in his public statements and in his actions and behavior.  Born Again Evangelicals who study the Scriptures and have a keen sense and discernment of trends and people in our government at the time of his first election warned that though a segment of Evangelicalism had embraced Obama and were schooling him in the terminology of the Christian Right in order to woo them and gain their confidence, and presumably their votes; there was no evidence that Obama himself was a Christian, and in fact, all evidenced showed (to those who investigated his past) that he was brought up by in the religion of Islam from an early age, and identified with Islam since that time, and that his association with the radical extreme Far-Left Marxist Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, was for convenience as he was moving up in political action within the Democrat Party at the local and state level, and was active in what is known in Marxist circles as “Direct Action” – the active involvement of radicalizing a local community in protests, sit ins, boycotts, and other activities advocated by Saul Alinski, Obama’s mentor.

In fact, both Islam and Black Liberation Theology fit well with Obama’s Marxist ideology, because both could serve his purposes of deconstructing American institutions, and destabilizing whole regions across the world, particularly in the Levant, where Obama has been fomenting instability through wars of national liberation using Islam (which predominates that region) as a means to overthrow friendly governments and replace them with Islamist ones.  All of his half-hearted fulminations against Islamist extremists hide the fact that Obama’s government has been supplying those radicals with arms and money behind the scenes.

ANOTHER SIGN OF JUDGMENT: CORRUPT LEADERS AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF EVERY BRANCH OF OUR GOVERNMENT

When a nation is in the advance stages of judgment, God allows it to have leaders who reflect the general population’s apathy and antipathy towards God and His Word.  The majority of our elected officials are among the most corrupt and lawless our nation has ever known.  The barbarians are no longer at our gates, they are in our government and all across our society.

Obama does as he pleases in his presidency, while a corrupt and apathetic congress and senate sit idly by and allow him to do as he pleases, because they knew that he would use the power of the IRS – as he did against all conservative organizations across the country – to audit them and indict and bring criminal prosecutorial action against them for their corrupt activities and union with the large multinational corporations, as these fed them inside information about acquisitions they were about to make before they made them – and they would be up for charges of “insider trading” – a federal crime which would result in almost all of both houses of congress being sent to jail.  For example, there’s a news flash just across the screen.  It says, BREITBART NEWS TARGET OF IRS AUDIT...  Folks, this is not made up, it’s happening for real, and it’s happening over and over again to conservatives.

Members of both political parties are up to their ears and beyond in this, and Obama knows it and it is his leverage against impeachment.  So he does what he pleases with impunity as they sit and do nothing, and let him have his way, and the nation’s laws and institutions – which they are sworn to defend, obey, and protect – are taken down one by one by this imperial president with delusions of grandeur.

ANOTHER SIGN OF JUDGMENT: ENEMY INFILTRATION AND DEEP PENETRATION OF ALL LEVELS OF OUR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES AND MILITARY

As America continues to be penetrated on all levels by its enemies from within, its spiritual, religious, moral, institutional, cultural, societal, financial, and military decline are accelerating at more rapid paces than ever in its history.  We are witnessing not just the end of an era – the American Era – we are witnessing the end of the United States as a moral agent for good in the world, because our leaders can no longer articulate what is right from wrong as they have abandoned its friends and embraced its enemies; and while this is occurring, we are also witnessing its leadership role as an economic and military power increasingly decline and diminish right before our eyes.

It is ironic that as our government has become stronger and grown in Washington against its own people, the nation has weakened and lost its significance abroad, and this has only served this nation’s and what used to be its allies’ enemies overseas, as it sees weakness and vacillation, corruption and duplicity as hallmarks of its foreign and domestic policies.  There is no integrity or transparency with this government.

The White House is now open to people, groups, and organizations that are hostile to the interests of this nation and of its allies throughout the world, but particularly Middle East.  It now welcomes representatives of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and members of the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Anti-American and Anti-Semitic Jihadists from the Muslim Brotherhood and organizations such as CAIR (Council of American Islamic Relations) now serve as “advisors” in almost every sensitive branch of our government and military-industrial complex.  The Holy Land Foundation trial years ago revealed that CAIR is an organ of Hamas, and Hamas is part of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Members of these entities are now in key sensitive positions of this government.  Al Jazeera Television is now available to every home across this country, transmitting Pro-Jihadist propaganda across this land.

ANOTHER SIGN OF JUDGMENT: THE ECONOMY CONTINUES ITS STEEP DECLINE INTO DEEPER INFLATIONARY DEPRESSION SINCE SHEMITAH OF ELUL 29, 2008.

Though we are continuously told by this government and its government-controlled-media interests that we have been in a “recovery” since late September, 2009, there are since 2012 109,631,000 Americans on Welfare..., (besides that number, as of September 5^th, 2014 a record number of 92,269,000 AMERICANS NOT WORKING) and the numbers continue to increase, with half of the populace in the US untaxed and out of work.  Some have been out of work for so long that they are “off the radar,” and have all but given up trying to find work in this so-called “recovery.”  We are not in any recovery, but in a steep nose dive and about to crash once more.

Our economy is not expanding as, as we are being told by the government-media complex, but it is actually in contraction, and has been in steady contraction since Elul 29, 2008, the day the stock market sustained the greatest single day collapse in its history, dropping 777 in one day, and plunging our economy into recession.  Our dollar continues to decline in value.  Two years ago a twenty pound bag of rice costs $6 dollars, today the same bag of rice sells for well over $13 dollars.  Though our government continues to claim that inflation is under control and tamed, the cost of food and energy – two key areas that at one time were used as barometers in measuring inflation, but no longer are by this politically-charged corrupt government – have sky-rocketed in recent years.

A record number of Americans are continuing to lose their homes to foreclosure, while the government help is too little, too late, and has only really helped less than one percent of those affected have been able to keep their properties.  29.2 percent are in pre-foreclosure, 23.7 percent are now bank-owned, while 47.1 percent are already in Auction, with the Top 5 States leading the nation in foreclosures being:

Florida

1 in every 469

Maryland

1 in every 553

Nevada

1 in every 639

Illinois

1 in every 747

Ohio

1 in every 839

Nationwide, foreclosures are currently running at 1 in every 1203 homes are being foreclosed upon.  And if you believe things are bad in real estate, you haven’t seen the unemployment figures as of late.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ shocking new numbers reveal that 20 percent of American families do not have a single person that is working.  As one pundit put it, “So when someone tries to tell you that the unemployment rate in the United States is about 7 percent, you should just laugh.

One-fifth of the families in the entire country do not have a single member with a job.  On top of that, nearly 50 million people are actively receiving food assistance – fully one in six Americans.  Yet, the stock market hit all time highs just this week.”

ANOTHER SIGN OF JUDGMENT: OUR DISSOLVING BORDERS AS AN ASYMMETRIC INVASION OF FOREIGN NATIONALS STREAM UNIMPEDED ACROSS THEM WHILE A COMPLICIT FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ENCOURAGES AND FACILITATES THEM AGAINST ITS OWN LAWS

The signs of continued and more severe judgment are all around us; the loss of national sovereignty, the imposition of a police state, the militarization of our law enforcement and local police, an explosion of government and federal regulation, our dissolving borders, mass invasions of illegal undocumented aliens streaming into our country, while a corrupt federal government enforces a policy of non-enforcement of our already standing immigration laws, even brazenly in violations of those laws, providing safe conduct for hundreds of thousands of these illegals into our metropolitan centers across the country (key predominantly Democrat-controlled areas, as well as so-called “red states” targeted by the DNC to become blue.

OF GREATER SIGNIFICANCE TO US OUR THE DAYS WHICH ARE UPON US

The critic’s argumentations are moot, because he is denying the Intelligent Design behind these events by attempting to explain them away by every and any means possible.  Additionally, he is arguing against them having happened, when in fact they did occur on those dates!  And the ones which are now converging upon us, are falling precisely on specific Hebrew Holy Days, what is known in Judaism as the Yamim Noraim – the Days of Awe.  These days are part of the High Holy Days of the Autumn Feasts of Israel, and they denote days such as Rosh Hoshanah – the Jewish civil New Year, as well as Succot  – the Feast of Tabernacles, and Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement, in Judaism.

But more telling for informed Evangelicals and Messianics, who already are aware because of years of practice and careful study, is that the first ten days of the month of Tishrei, which usually fall in September, begin with Rosh Hashanah and end with Yom Kippur, are known in Judaism as “the ten days of repentance,” and are called Aseret Yemei Teshuva.  

On these ten days Observant Jews across the world take time to reflect upon the last year and their life and approach the Almighty for His forgiveness.  They end with Erev Yom Kippur, on the night of the Eve of Yom Kippur – or the night Yom Kippur when the Day of Atonement is ushered in.  The holiest day of the calendar year, regardless of whether one uses the civil or the religious calendar to mark their days.  This night fell on Tishrei 9, 5775 this year, the night of Friday, October 3, 2014.  

Tishrei 9, 5775/Friday, October 3^rd, 2014, is the month central to the Shemitah, which marked the seventh year at its beginning with Tishrei 1, and ended on the night of Tishrei 9, 5776/Tuesday, September 22^nd, 2015.  According to The Mystery of the Shemitah, Tishrei is the month that not only “marks the Shemitah Year at its beginning, but manifests its financial repercussions at its end.” (pp. 112)   This is very telling.

ANOTHER SIGN OF JUDGMENT: THE TETRAD OF FOUR BLOOD MOONS, THE DATES IN WHICH THEY ALL FALL, THE CONVULSION OF NATURE, AND THE PROLIFERATION OF FALSE PROPHETS AND TEACHERS ON OUR TELEVISION SETS AND RADIO

It is both fitting and providential that as we are seeing all of the above, we are also witnessing the most incredible things in nature and in our universe.  And with the substantial advances made in the fields of medicine, anthropology, neuroscience, forensics, astrophysics, and archeology, we now have incontrovertible evidence of the Bible’s historical accuracy, inspirational properties.  These advances have enabled us for the first time to accurately take measures right down to the nono-level, right into the DNA building blocks.  And with the aid of nanotechnology, we are now able to study and build a wealth of data that has confirmed God’s Word.  What appeared as myths and old wives tales to many before has now become reality with the aid of this technology as the capabilities these discoveries provide open for us a totally new world described in the pages of our Bibles, and we are able through it to understand things that only fifty years ago were distinct impossibilities.

FACT: An amazing occurrence is happening right before our eyes, allow me to describe for you so that you may get the BIG PICTURE.  Elul 29 fell precisely on the night of Rosh Hashanah, or Erev Rosh Hashanah, with the first day of the Feast of Trumpets being ushered in that evening at sundown!  On that evening Observant Jews and Jewish believer and Messianic Gentiles gathered in every synagogue, Messianic synagogue, and observant church in every nation under heaven all across this planet to usher in the year 5775 with the blast of their Shofars – or trumpets.  It fell this year on Wednesday, September 24, 2014. 

FACT: One of the marvelous signs that we are witnessing right before our eyes is the mystery of the Blood Moons.  These moons are not only occurring with two falling on specific Hebrew Holy Days this year – Passover (just passed earlier this year) and on the Feast of Tabernacles this October 8^th – Tishrei 14^th, 2014, with the next Blood Moon falling on the night of Friday, April 3^rd marking Pesach – Nissan 14, precisely on a Jewish Sabbath - SHABBAT, but will continue through to Saturday night, April 4, 2015 – Nissan 4^th, when the Feast of First Fruits (April 5th through 10th/Nissan 16th through 11th) will be ushered in (remember, the Hebrew calendar is Lunar, so the day begins at sundown).

The significance of this is that Passover which falls on Nissan 14 precedes the Blood Moon which will appear the next evening at sundown – that is, on Saturday night!  Passover ushers in the Feast of Unleavened Bread, beginning that Sabbath (Friday night) at sundown!

FACT: The final Blood Moon in this Tetrad (four) will be preceded by Erev Sukkot (Eve of the Feast of Tabernacles) on the evening of that Sunday - THE LORD’S DAY – at sundown on September 27^th, 2015 – Tishrei 14.

FACT: This final Blood Moon will occur precisely on Monday night the following day which will usher in THE SECOND DAY OF THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES at sundown on Monday night Tishrei 15. (Remember, the Hebrew Calendar is Lunar.  The next day begins precisely at sundown. 

FACT: Tishrei 16, the Second Day of the Feast of Tabernacles will begin Monday night at sundown.  This will be the FINAL BLOOD MOON in this Tetrad of four Blood Moons between the years 2014/5775 and 2015/5776. 

FACT: All of these are signs.  No one here is sensationalizing them by pointing these facts out about the nights they will fall on.  To someone who is uninformed about these things or misinformed about them, like the critic; they may not personally hold any significance, or very little if at all; but to any Observant Jew or Jewish believer, the nights these fall on are of great significance.  These days are called “Yamim Noraim – the Days of Awe.” 

FACT: They are not occurring by themselves, and no one has purposely manipulated them into someone’s calendar.  They are ordained from on high and by the One who holds our destiny in His providential hand of grace in the Lord Yeshua the Messiah.

FACT: Since 2000, the value of the dollar has declined by 40%, taking with it, the value of your retirement account.  While the third round of tapering is coming to an end, and the stock market is becoming more volatile each day, most economists are convinced that we're moving closer to a total market collapse worse than was seen in 2008.

A LEADING EXPERT EXPLAINS NATURAL PHENOMENON AND OCCURRENCES IN LIGHT OF GOD’S WORD

God's Pattern of Judgment

By Charles A. Clough, Th.M., M.S

Meteorologist, U.S. Army, Bel Air, Maryland

How are Biblical descriptions of God' s judgments, such as "stars falling from Heaven," "the moon turning red," and "great earthquakes" to be understood?  Do they refer to literal astronomical and geophysical events, or are they merely exaggerated forms of speech and mere metaphors?

The proper way to understand prophecies of catastrophes is to follow the apostle Peter's approach and look at the true record of God's past historical judgments: 2 Peter 3.5-7.  The universe, including all astronomical and geophysical processes, runs under the control of the Word of God rather than being the product of hypothesized natural laws: Colossians 1.17 and Hebrews 1.3; 11.3.  God has preserved in the Bible eyewitness observations which testify to sudden, precisely-designed catastrophes affecting the celestial heavens as well as planet earth.

The most catastrophic judgment ever to befall mankind was the Flood of Noah's day, which radically altered the planet and which is used in Scripture to illustrate God's future end-time judgments: Matthew 24.37-39 and Luke 17.26,27.  The flood judgment had a specific pattern:

1. The judgment came suddenly, Genesis 7.11, but only after a period of grace, Genesis 6.1-8

2. It involved the total physical environment in the heavens and the earth in ways previously unobserved, Genesis 2.5,6 and 6.17.

3. It surgically and precisely separated the saved from the lost, Genesis 6.18-21 and 2 Peter 2.5-9.

4. It included specific geophysical phenomena which manifested God's glory in supernatural fashion, Genesis 8.1 and 9.13-16; Psalm 29.3; Ezekiel 1.28 and Revelation 4.3.

God continued this pattern of judgment throughout the subsequent history of Israel:

1. The ten Exodus plague judgments consisted of suddenly occurring, intelligently directed phenomena which targeted specific objects.

2. The visible fiery pillar between Heaven and earth was the Angel of Yahweh, a Theophany: Exodus 13.21.

3. The crossing of the Red Sea featured unique meteorological and hydrodynamic phenomena: Exodus 14.21-29.

4. Joshua was aided with "stones from heaven" which hit only enemy soldiers, while solar and lunar motion ceased: Joshua 10.11-14.

5. Unusual celestial and atmospheric events occurred in the days of the Judges and Samuel: Judges 5.20-23 and 1 Samuel 7.10.

6. While David reigned, a precise 72-hour plague, which killed only Hebrews, occurred: 2 Samuel 24.10-25 and 1 Chronicles 21.9-27.

This judgment pattern is an inherent feature of God's rule as explained in the Mosaic Covenant: Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28.  It is the Biblical answer to the problem of evil.  God's determination to deal with the consequences of the fall extends not only to Israel, but also to all nations: Deuteronomy 30.7; 32.43 and Isaiah 34.  The Old Testament prophets announced coming judgments within this pattern.  Their prophecies of future judgments, therefore, use the vocabulary of these past judgments: Isaiah 10.26; 11.15; 28.21; 29.6 and Zechariah 14.4-8.

The New Testament continues the Old Testament view that God judges with awesome power.  Jesus and the apostle John repeat the familiar prophetic language of unprecedented physical judgments accompanied by Theophanies: Matthew 24.29,30 and Revelation 16.18.  The same fire, smoke, hail, thunder, plague and earthquake of the Old Testament judgments once again appear in Revelation 6 – 18.  These terms are not exaggerations nor metaphors.  They point to a final culmination in God's program of separating good from evil throughout all creation. God's past judgments thus model His future judgments.

From Tim LaHaye Prophecy Study Bible - King James Version

Published by AMG Publishers, 2000. Used with permission.

The critic and all of us should take this into consideration.  Does he really believe that all of this has no significance?  That by a freak of nature, it is just converging by chance?  That God has no role in this?  The fragile house of cards the critic has built by arguing that something THAT HAS HAPPENED has not happened and therefore will not occur – which is his basic premise when one removes the “argumentum ad nauseum” –  which is defined when person argues a non sequitur to the point of it being nauseating – using needless logical fallacies and false premises, when in fact history clearly bears evidence that it has, comes apart upon closer examination. 

I and others have taken the time to examine thoroughly these criticisms, and they’re nothing but Deistic sophistry masquerading as biblical rationale.  They are not.  The critic may be a professing Christian, but his theology is a pure Christianized Deism mixed with Hyper-Dispensational Cessationism.  

Superficially on its surface, it appears to have a form of godliness, but it denies its power (2Timothy 3:5), and Paul in the Holy Spirit admonishes Timothy (and us) strongly to keep away from people like this.  Additional to this, is his method of handling his theological disagreements with others is not biblical; because such matters are discussed privately with the other person with carefully selected witnesses on both sides,  before rushing to criticize them on that matter.  The critic, and another colleague of his are now repeating the same egregious error of not following the biblical mandate in this matter, as they failed to follow it when The Harbinger was published in 2012.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE APPLY THE CRITIC’S LOGIC TO THESE EVENTS?

If we apply the critic’s logic, then there is absolutely no way that Daniel's prophecy of the Messiah's first coming could be properly calculated.  But once again, he posits an argument without considering that what he is saying cuts off both his legs right from under him.  I warned him against this, but he stopped listening a long time ago.  But this is the same method and argumentations used by the anti-missionaries against the Messianic interpretation of Daniel chapter nine as applying to Jesus’ first coming during the Second Temple Era, which was precisely the timing of the Messiah’s appearance to Israel.  If the Messiah was going to appear to Israel, it would have to be within the window of that period, or He would not come at all.  We know He did precisely on the dot.  We know Him as Jesus.

The critic is arguing against something that has already happened, trying to argue against intelligent design behind the events in order to diminish their prophetic significance, the aim of which is to question the premise, which in his opinion does not exist, because in his thinking, these things did not happen as described in The Mystery of the Shemitah.  But, this is like asking somebody from Washington, D.C. which state they live in.

What’s more, the critic is even attacking Jonathan Cahn for not providing him with the source for the graphs used in The Mystery of the Shemitah.  This is absurd.  Talk about nit picking.  We know from The Harbinger, which was very well documented, that the critic still attacked the premise of God sending remedial judgments, even in spite of the fact that it was explained that these harbingers were the same pattern we of remedial warnings or judgments which were meant to call the nation to repentance.  Ladies and gentlemen, at the heart of this criticism of The Harbinger is criticism of biblical history, because a study of God’s Word will reveal precisely how God has dealt with Israel and the nations throughout history.  It is no different now, and will not change until the return of the Messiah.

We read in the last book of the Bible that there will be precise judgments that will fall upon the nations of the earth prior to the coming/return of Jesus.  Now, these may or may not be part of those judgments, but to argue the point ad infinitum for the sake of opposing what these books say, especially this one with its historical statistical data is like being asleep, the alarm sounding, and pressing the snooze button and going back to sleep when you need to get up.  This is the same typical scholastic arguments one hears by the revisionists who deny the Holocaust, and try to manipulate people's minds to believe the lie that it never happened.  The critic is arguing that events that have already transpired never occurred!  That is patently absurd.  Jesus warned that just before His return to earth for His Bride, the body of Christ would be comprised of ten virgins, five wise and five foolish.  The five wise will be ready for His coming, but the five foolish will not, and it is for the five wise that He is returning whom He will rapture.  The five wise will not enter His marriage supper. (Matthew 25:1-13)

There is intelligent design - that is the Providence of Almighty God - behind what this nation and the world is now experiencing, but it is a lack of understanding and the proper use of Biblical Midrashic Hermeneutics that has led these critics down the path of reviling that they have taken.  When the great persecution comes of the Church, it will come from those, who like these gentlemen, spend their days and expend their efforts branding their own brethren within the body heretics and false prophets, just as these critics have done for more than three years to Jonathan Cahn.

Because there have been opinions and claims made against this book by certain parties, there arises now a need to address these biblically and accurately, so that the reader may not come away with a jaundiced notion engendered by some professing Christian Evangelicals who often write and speak more like Post-Modern Deists than they do as professing born again Evangelical Christians in these posts.

Sometimes they appear to posit views and ideas stemming from a Hyper-Dispensational worldview which they have been led to believe is a biblical worldview, when in fact it is only the religious ideology of a 150 year old systematic theology developed by man, and not the actual doctrine of God’s Word.  There are several systematic theologies – some like Dispensational Theology which I use as a Biblical Historian – very good ones – all claiming to be the one that interprets properly the Word of God, and while all of them have a modicum of biblical truth to them to one extent or another, not a single one of them by themselves can with any measure of intrepidity claim to present the complete orb of the truth of God’s Word as only a true reading and understanding of it can attain.

WE’VE BEEN THIS WAY BEFORE: A WORD ABOUT THE CRITIC & HIS COLLEAGUES

One Hyper-Dispensationalist who is an avowed Cessationist (a toxic and dangerous brew if ever there was one), the critic, has made some rather sweeping claims and accusations here and in his book, claiming to be biblically correct, and presuming to posit the correct doctrine of God to counter what in his opinion are errors and omissions contained in The The Mystery of the Shemitah.  Well, before anyone jumps to any conclusions, as the critic might be apt to do, we will put each one of the critic’s claims and accusations to the microscope of God’s Word and see if what he has to say has any merit and is faithful to what the Scriptures teach about the topic The Mystery of the Shemitah covers.  In our examination, we will first present the critic’s claims, and then compare it to God’s Word, after which we will then posit our conclusions for each opinion he makes.  This is what follows.

Two years ago, the critic first appeared on the scene shortly after Pastor and Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn released his book, The Harbinger, and immediately set about an attempt to disprove the New York Times bestseller, and discredit its author.  He did not follow the biblical model used in God’s Word, and would have had he reached out to Rabbi Cahn before making any public statement about the book or its author.  

Instead, since that time, in concert with a small group of others who spend much of their time and expense chasing what they call “false prophets” and “false teachers” within Evangelicalism, the critics and his colleagues proceeded pall mall on a campaign of public defamation, slander, and reproach against a fellow brother of the Christian faith, as they are now doing against other Evangelicals with whom they have doctrinal differences.

In thirty-eight years of God’s grace, I witnessed discussions and taken part in debates between differing fellow Christians, and others.  Always, there has been a mutual respect and deference to the other party, recognizing their worth as God’s fellow bondservants.  After all, when it comes down to eternity, we are all saved the same way, and are equally accountable before God and to Him, especially we who teach His Word.

Never have I witnessed any abusive language or personal ad hominem jabs in these public discussions and debates; just each person contributing to the discussion their opinions in light of what they believed God’s Word teaches.  Some of the finest examples of this are the debates between Dr. Michael Brown and Rabbi Schmuley Boteach, Dr. James White, Dr. James Waldron, Rabbi David Blumofe, and Rabbi Asher Meza. 

But I have never seen anything that approaches the kind of assault that Jonathan Cahn, whom I’ve known over a period of ten years, suffered from the critic and his small group for a protracted period of over two years on radio, on the Internet, and in print. 

In fact, I have never in my lifetime witnessed anyone, who after being so egregiously wrong about what someone else teaches, who after being shown through the Scriptures and given the facts, as I and several others have attempted to do with the critic, as well as with many of his colleagues; when presented with them, turn away from them, disregard them, disregard any further dialogue, and resume to continue the errors they spread previously, but only afterwards with a greater zeal, without retracting a single error, or apologizing to the offended party for the damage done to them and their ministry, or showing any sign of remorse or repentance for what they have done.

Ladies and gentlemen, nothing personal to the critic here; but I’ve seen this in the world among the prideful unregenerate when I worked in Wall Street in the 70s, but seldom if ever can I recall this type of behavior – this kind of visceral attack by a small group of professing Christians upon another member of our faith, as I have from the critic and his colleagues; Jimmy DeYoung, Gary E. Gilley, Tommy Ice and Brannon Howse.  No, not in my lifetime, not ever before I witnessed it two and a half years ago from these men directed against Jonathan Cahn, and again here and now by the critic.  And here, once again, we are witness to some more of the same by the same person who started it all from whom originated all manner of urban legends and false witness against Jonathan Cahn, a man I’ve personally known for over ten years.  It is the critic who was and continues to be at the epicenter of the campaign mounted in 2012 by his associates, primarily based on his writings, to denounce and defame a member of their own faith.

Now, don’t misunderstand me; I have dealt very strongly – not just with the critic – but with these people, because they have not repented of this, have not retracted the lies and the slanderous unjustified comments they’ve made of Jonathan Cahn, and have not taken a single remedial action, nor made any effort to reconcile themselves with the offended party.  He has not been contacted by any of them in this regard.  It was only after repeated and great efforts by Jonathan Cahn at contacting them to discuss the matter – months into the controversy in 2012 – that they finally condescended to allow him to speak with a number of them.  Unfortunately, rather than attempt to reach a consensus of understanding, they instead used their conversations to further hammer him on the same objections they had raised before he contacted them.  So, while the critic and they may interpret what I have written about them to be harsh, they must understand that behavior such as theirs must be treated harshly because it is uncalled for, unjustified, and undignified of fellow bondservants of Jesus Christ.

SOME SOBERING OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THOSE WHO SET UP SHOOTING GALLERIES INSIDE THE CHURCH TO TARGET OTHER CHRISTIANS

Now before I conclude here, let me make this clear, I do not accuse the critic of being either a false teacher or a false prophet for mistakes he makes, he and they, like the rest of us, are only human and fallible men.  One cannot accuse another of being either of these two – as the critic and his colleagues have done to Jonathan Cahn – when the facts roundly speak against it.  To do so would be to do to him and his colleagues what I and many others have reproved and in some cases rebuked them of doing against Jonathan Cahn and other believers and their ministries.

The false teacher and false prophet knowingly teaches deception; the critic speaks out of his personal bias and or ignorance and his theological approach based upon these that he’s both acquired and developed with which he feels most comfortable, and is not responsible when being ignorant about some things while knowledgeable about others.  However, he is rather responsible and accountable to God for not listening, and believing that the topics he writes about in these discussions he knows anything about.  From what he writes here, it painfully obvious he knows nothings little about them, otherwise, he’d not waste anyone’s time arguing against events that have already taken place in precisely the order and magnitude described in Jonathan Cahn’s book, some of which I also cover in book The Truth About The Harbinger in the chapter on the Shemitah (pp. 50-55).  He would not be arguing from a Hyper-Dispensationalist point of view, because he would possess a proper understanding of the topic, and of God’s redemptive plan, and how the Law fits into all this, particularly with regards to godliness and sanctification, and personal consecration before God.

The critic, who is an avowed Hyper-Dispensational Cessationist with Deist overtones, is a product of Dallas Theological Seminary, one of the leading institutions that teach Cessationism mixed with Dispensational Theology as essential doctrine.  Now, do not misunderstand me, I personally believe that Dallas Theological Seminary is a fine institution.  My only objection the misuse by some of its alumni, such as the critic, of correct Dispensational Theology.  Another area of contention is the critic’s Cessationism.  Avowed Cessationists, and Cessationism is group of Christian Evangelicals who teach a theology that denies many aspects of the ongoing work of the Third Person of the Trinity – the Holy Spirit, work that the Scriptures make clear must be done, without whose witness such work cannot be done, for Christ has said, “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), another Scripture says:

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.  But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.  But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.  For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him?  But we have the mind of Christ. 

(1Corinthians 2:12-16).  Regarding this impartation of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle John himself, declares:

As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.

(1John 2:27)

While religious institutions have a valid place in educating and preparing many of God’s servant for the ministry; the Scriptures are clear that it is not a seminary training, but the Holy Spirit from whom God’s Word is properly taught and understood.  And so it shall be until the return of the Messiah.

Many of the people who graduate from today’s Cessationist seminaries have difficulty connecting the prophetic dots regarding what is occurring in diverse places around this planet in the skies above.  Like the critic, they simply cannot bring themselves to accept many of these as signs of the end times, if for no better reason than fear of appearing to be date-setting or sensational in their analysis.

Their concern is not unfounded, and I agree to an extent with this, but it is misplaced and too broad.  To be sure, in His Olivet Discourse, Jesus warned us not to be alarmed by the events occurring around us, as though these were signs of the end, they’re not, just the beginning of what He calls “birth pangs,” and like a woman going into a labor, these things will grow in frequency and ferocity as the Messiah’s return draws near on the prophetic time clock (Matthew 24:6-8).

I believe that people like Harold Camping and cults like the Jehovah’s Witnesses of the Watchtower Bible and Track Society have done more harm to Christian credibility than a thousand atheists for “crying wolf” so often by trying to set a date for the Messiah’s return/coming.  For example, Pastor John Hagee may be doing the cause for investigating the blood moons more harm than good, because of predictions he’s making.  He is already wrong in promoting the Dual or Two Covenant Theology, and is all but dead with regards to evangelizing lost Jews because of it.

As for “cyring wolf” once too often as some claim, or date setting; that is not what Jonathan Cahn has done with The Harbinger, and that is not what he is doing with The Mystery of the Shemitah, because there is no prediction about the return of the Messiah anywhere in its pages, though there are warnings about an impending coming collapse perhaps to take place at the end of the next Shemitah, which will begin midweek on the night of Elul 29/September 24, 2014.

In the Hebrew Calendar, Elul 29 is Erev Rosh Hashanah, the Eve of Rosh Hashanah, which ushers in the Jewish New Year of 5775.  5775 is the beginning of the last year of the current seven year cycle; it leads in the Sabbath or Shemitah Year.  Let me repeat, this is the night that ushers in the Jewish New Year, and the year that it is ushering in is the Shemitah Year; the year that falls precisely at the end of the seven year cycle, the year that historically great collapses have occurred!  Ladies and gentlemen, this is not chance, this is Intelligent Design.  Nobody is making this up.

One of the finest Evangelical Dispensationalists today who is a graduate from Dallas Theological Seminary, and whose writings are amongst the most brilliant in modern scholarship is that of Dr. Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum.  Yet one would be hard-pressed to find in any of his writings the fallacies the critic presents here and the entirety of his book.  This may be due to Dr. Fruchtenbaum’s extensive background in Rabbinic Judaism, having been raised in an Observant Orthodox Jewish home.

Whereas the critic lacks the same background, and this makes itself evident here, as well as in his other writings.  Some of what he presents can be learned by any standard seminary course, but it lacks the intricacies and nuance of a thorough Jewish education which the critic lacks.  This is not to say that the critic is not a good biblical scholar, on the contrary, he is a fine teacher of Dispensational Theology.  But there are just some things that he simply argues here which he simply does not understand, or simply refuses to.   

There are many in our Post Modern Era, who like the critic, claim to believe in the prophecies of future events in the Bible, but as Blood Red moons falling on specific Hebrew Holy Days and other signs manifest themselves – as they currently are – one is coming up specifically on the night of the 8th of October and will run through to the night of the 16th next month – the first sighting will be precisely on Erev Sukkot, or the Eve of Sukkot – the Feast of Tabernacles!

But these same brethren make every effort to explain these signs away in order to disregard them as genuine signs because we can now understand their natural origins through modern technology and science.  But the Lord Jesus in His Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:29-30a), and the Hebrew Bible prophesied that there will be blood moons prior to His return/coming in the last days (Joel 2:30-32), which Peter in his Pentecost Discourse alluded to as being partially fulfilled (Acts 2).  It does not tell us how many there will be, but simply tells us that they will manifest themselves.  We are told to expect these things, and when we see them, to look up for our redemption draws near.  The critic and his disbelieving Cessationist colleagues are now spending much time trying to debunk these as well.  The critic, is a disbelieving believer.  And a contentious one.

I know Jonathan Cahn; I know his teachings, and neither Jonathan Cahn or his teachings are anything that these people accuse him and them of being.  Make no mistake about this, these critics will be made to account for their slander and the false urban legends they have created on the Internet against a member of their own faith.

True to character, and as a witness against them.  They're unrepentant; they're self-justifying; they're quick to judge; they're quick to give an opinion without first asking the question directly to those whom they are quick to slander; they do not retract their mistakes; they do not care; and worst of all, because their conscience has been seared through like with a branding iron, they are now self-deluded and under an influence that has rendered even their powers of reasoning to be in accordance to that of Scripture.

As Jesus told His detractors, "You would have no sin, but because you say, 'We see,' your sin remains.”  So it is with this small boisterous and arrogantly self-righteous sanctimonious religious crowd of end times mockers and revilers from within our camp.  Like a pack of wolves - wolves do not travel alone, but in groups, or packs - they enter the sheepfold, and attack the unsuspecting sheep from within.  And what do the Scriptures warn us of?  That there will be those who will come into the sheepfold, who will attack the sheep.  Therefore we see, what the Scriptures say about the righteous and the wicked contrasted together in the following proverb:

By the blessing of the upright a city is exalted,

But the mouth by the mouth of the wicked, it is torn down.

(Proverbs 11:11)

Scorners set a city aflame,

But wise men turn away anger.

(Proverbs 29:8)

There is a fundamental difference between the man who encourages and builds upon the Word of God’s grace and the one who treads to do violence against others with his mouth and his keyboard in the name of “discernment: and “contending for the fatih.”  Nowhere in Scripture does it say that Christians are to contend with one another, but the contention we have is with the world, not amongst ourselves, and only those who missapply this principle, do so with great damage to their ministry, and to the ministry of others within the body of Christ.  It is a difference between two worldviews – between two kingdoms – one from the cross and the other from religious men – one from Abel, who offered a better sacrifice to God, one which was accepted by God, and the other which Cain offered and was not accepted – one which is heavenly and the other which is earthy – one which comes from God and the other which comes from man – one which is from the Holy Spirit and the other which is from demonic spirits.  The two can quote equally from God’s Word, but only one of the two is heavenly from the Holy Spirit of God, the other is natural and earthy, from man’s spirit and therefore vulnerable to Satanic influence in the intellect.

The great persecution which follows the great apostasy, will like the great apostasy, come from within the Church itself.  In fact, it is already happening.  Today we are witnessing more professing Christians attack Christian ministries – and I am not referring to the false prophets and false teachers who are now advocating Evangelicals ecumenically join with the Roman Catholic Church, or those who preach Chrislam, or the false commercialized materialistic “faith and prosperity name it and claim it” religious telemarketers on television and radio – I am referring to real genuine born again bondservants of the Lord being persecuted by these ambulance chasing heresy hunters, who spend more time looking for heresy than they do sharing the Gospel with the lost. 

These people paint with a very broad brush, and cast a wide net and drag in with the false many good genuine servants of God.  They have a zeal for God, but not in accordance to knowledge, for they do the body of Christ more harm than good by their irresponsible methods of false apologetics.  I repeat.  The great persecution which follows the great apostasy, will like the great apostasy, come from within the Church itself.

The critic is a contentious brother who has made it his objective to argue Ad nauseam and Ad infinitum as long as it contradicts the message of The Harbinger and anything else Jonathan Cahn writes or teaches.  He is very nuanced and very careful here, so he does not tip his hand, but anyone familiar with his writing will readily see that he does not pull punches when writing or speaking about other Evangelical Christians, and often uses the epithet of “false prophet” or “false teacher” when referring to them.  He’s careful not to use it here, because red flags would instantly go up in many discerning Christians about his real objectives in positing these criticisms against this author and his book.

But both in his polemic against The Harbinger and in his online postings and in interviews he’s given on radio, he has used this unfortunate epithet against other Evangelicals.  This is nothing less than irresponsible and without merit.  Anyone who attacks a member of their own faith, as these men have Jonathan Cahn, are behaving in the same way as wolves in sheep’s clothing enter the sheep pen and ravage the flock within the sheepfold.  One has to ask why these critics who professes faith in Christ – and claim to be Evangelical Christians – would make a fellow Christ-bought, blood-washed Evangelical Christian – their brother in the faith – the object of their obsessive attention to be repeatedly treated as an enemy of the faith.  This is not apologetics, and it is not discernment, it is out and out religious bigotry of the worse sort.  It is raw, it is nasty, and it is unbiblical and not sanctioned by Scripture. 

The most dangerous and damaging type of people are those who deem themselves infallible representatives of what they believe Christianity is and ought to be, and have determined themselves to be above all others; who spend their days targeting members of their own faith for having the temerity to differ with their interpretation of what “orthodoxy” is in the realm of doctrine (beyond the essential professions of the Christian Faith, such the deity and resurrection of Christ, etc.).  And these people are severe in coming down anyone in the Church who digresses in the smallest detail to their standards. 

Remember, these people know more than everyone else, possess the correct methods of interpretation, are flawless avatars of the doctrine of God, and have a purer theology than all others outside of their group.  As such, they have appointed themselves critics of other Christian Evangelicals, and by virtue of this esteem religious pedigree and privilege they claim for themselves, they alone hold in their opinion – which the reader must remember is “flawlessly perfect” – exclusive rights, privileges, and authority to anesthetize and cut off any other Christian Evangelical who does not meet their fickle approval, but of whom they, as “doctors of Theological Correctness” disapprove – thus you have the critic and his “religious alliance.”   Since Rabbi Cahn published his first book, he has become their NUMBER ONE TARGET, and the attacks against him by this group and those allied to it, have been incessant. 

This is NOT the biblical norm for disagreeing ministers and theologians of God’s Word, between any of God’s children, and God does not approve of this, as the sufferings of all of His servants throughout history has proven.  We have the example of the prophets of Israel, we have the example of the Apostles of Christ, especially the Apostle Paul.  We have the example of Christ Himself.  Why is it that in every age, there is always a small coterie within the Church and Synagogue that revels in targeting their own members for death?  Today that “death” is the death of a ministry that has been savaged by others.

Remember, they know more than you do; they alone understand and teach the Scriptures correctly; they do not make mistakes; they are above reproach; they are never wrong, etc., etc.  Does this sound familiar?  Then you understand that history has a way of repeating itself.  Every age has had religious people like this, and so it will be until the day the heavens open and the Messiah comes in His glory.

These critics have been warned several times by other Evangelicals – present company included – that they best treat these matters in a biblical manner, and discuss these things respectfully in a spirit of Christian love and amity and not contention with Jonathan Cahn, and other Christians they differ with, before rushing to judgment on topics such as these; because as farfetched as it might seem to them, there are people outside of their circle who might just possess an understanding about things they themselves lack.  

I understand that to such an august body of religious intellectuals, such a possibility appears to be remote, even humanly impossible.  In such cases, it behooves these critics to discuss these matters, studying them thoroughly as the Bereans did.  The Bereans did not search the Scriptures to destroy other Christian ministries, but to learn and confirm what Paul told them about Jesus being the Messiah and the news of His resurrection.  That is a fundamental approach that none of these critics appear to understand or even acknowledge.

Ladies and gentlemen, regarding these critics, we are witnessing Peter’s prophetic warnings he has made clear would manifest themselves in the last days.  Scoffers who would question the genuine prophetic signs preceding the return of Christ, because there have been so many charlatans in history who have set dates, and according to one of them, there have been signs like blood moons throughout history.  It is no different here.  You have a front row seat as witnesses to this in the online expressions of these critics and revilers, mockers of this Post Modern/Post Christian age; those who reproach the brethren, the watchmen God has raised up – not the phonies out there who peddle prophecy for a buck, but the genuine watchmen; who seeing danger in the horizon, as Rabbi Cahn has done, have stepped up, taken up the shofar in their hand, and sounded the alarm to call every Jew and Christian to return to God, every non believer to call on the name of the Messiah Jesus for salvation, repenting from the heart, and bringing forth works keeping with this repentance.

When a person knowingly and willingly rejects God’s message, regardless the reason for their rejection (they don’t accept the messenger, etc.) God will release them to the demonic influence that is causing the spiritual blindness in them (Romans chapter 1).  MANY but NOT ALL of these critics are the end time mockers and revilers we were warned about in Scripture, because it is they who will persecute the servants of the Most High God, and do so even now in writing; who will be used to testify against their own brethren so as to put them to death.  Think I’m exaggerating this?  Read Jesus’ words on this, and the Apostles’ repeated warnings.  The Apostle Peter prophesied of this, when he wrote:

Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming?  For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.”  For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.  But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.  The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

(2Peter 3:3-9)

Now take note of what the critic writes on his own website, I quote:

If someone like these critics can do what they do and do it with glee – every day of the week and make a living from it, thinking that they are doing God a service; what makes anyone think that the same kind of people will not someday turn against those whom they now brand as heretics and false teachers and prophets?  But take heart, because Jesus promised:

“Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

(Matthew 5:11-12)

Ladies and gentlemen, we are told in the Scriptures that we will be persecuted for our faith.  It is not much of a stretch to see the day when some professing Christians will testify against other professing Christians, even we are not already seeing it in our day.  We are reading it here in the writings of these critics.  Someone during a period of extreme persecution (like the Holocaust and during the Soviet Era in Russia, as well as nations such as Cuba and North Korea, China, and Viet Nam, as well as many African nations) in order to save themselves from execution and send someone else in their place to their death, betrayed them and did it openly and as often as they felt they had to without any remorse, and did so repeatedly to members of their own faith.  Think it through.  Read the Scriptures about the end times, and verify this, because we are now beginning to see it in our day in print.

Persecution is not blunt, it is very sophisticated, it is very clever, and very convincing when arguing its justification for its reproach of another.  But we are not called by the Lord to bring our brethren to open reproach, as these people do to Jonathan Cahn (and other brethren like him) and did for over a two year period on radio, in print, and on the Internet, and as can be witnessed here, continues to do without the least bit of remorse or repentance, after all, their cause is “just.”  No, this is not the biblical method of conflict resolution; but we are told repeatedly in Scripture to discuss everything privately and resolve our differences as Priscilla and Aquila did with Apollos.

I don't see any of these critics or any of the others aligned with them doing the same or anything close to this.  I was compelled by Christ to answer these accusing brethren as I did in my book, The Truth About The Harbinger, which is available here on Amazon.com, and I wish to God that its message would be carried across this nation, because we do not have much time.  Ladies and gentlemen, beloved brethren in the Lord, what I have had to do here has given me no pleasure.

But unlike these critics, I have better things to do with my time than to chase anyone to see what they do, say, or write next, in order to criticize and reproach them before the bar of public opinion.  I do not argue with their personal faith, I argue with their approach of public reproach of members of our own body of Christ.  I have no desire to prove I know anything better than anyone else, and prefer to lead a quiet life serving the Lord in peace and sharing His redemptive plan with as many as will hear it and accept it for themselves. 

These displays of religious scholastic intellectual gymnastics and parsing of words which Paul wisely admonishes us to avoid (2 Timothy 2:23-25), are exercises in futility.  People like these critics do not listen.  They don’t listen, because they’ve convinced themselves they know more and are holier than anyone else, and therefore believe their cause is just.  You understand; they’re never wrong.  So have every religious Pharisee been since before the time of Christ, and this is what He had to contend with; this is what took Him to the cross.  In short; it is the most flagrant manifestation of sin that a human being can express, because it is the religious pride of man in the face of God.  The religious pride of man opposes God, because it believes itself superior to His offer of grace.  So it was with Cain with regards to Abel, so it has been throughout history and right down to this day.

IN CONCLUSION – A FINAL WORD ABOUT CESSATIONIST DISBELIEF-BASED THEOLOGY USED IN JUSTIFYING OUR PETTY PERSONAL UNBELIEF

The reader should take note here how the disbelieving unbelief upon which these critics in their Cessationism expresses itself –  that not any part of God’s Word, which they claim is their yardstick for measuring doctrines and beliefs based on those doctrines – is cited when they present their objections, and they are left with only their own mind’s reasoning to document why they do not believe the claims made in this book.

The book has just been released, but these critics have been very quick to trash it.  It took Jonathan Cahn two years and many more, to study, cross-reference, check, double check, and verify his discoveries with those of others, in order to write The Mystery of the Shemitah.  As they had done some two and a half years ago, the critics in just a few days, have determined (before any real study of the facts), to dismiss wholesale everything the book says, and to publicly speak against it, even before personally contacting its author –Jonathan Cahn – to discourse its contents privately with him.  This is not a biblical approach to resolve a matter where there is a difference of opinion over something.  They’ve done it  it before, they’re doing it again.  No difference.

I can tell you, in all of my struggles with unbelief, I asked myself whether or not my reasoning was biblically-based or whether it was of my own personal subjective contrivance (Mark 4:24).  When my own personal subjective contrivance did not measure up and align itself to what the Word of God said, I willfully and consciously chose God’s Word over my own objections, and then I was supernaturally released to receive from God, and did immediately afterwards, and boy did I get Scripture.  This is extremely important and central to how much one can receive from God by way of revelation; because as a man (or woman) thinks, so he/she is (Proverbs 23:7).

This is a road many of these people appear to still be struggling with as they travel it on their own, and it also appears that they give their own natural human intellect too much credit for what they know God’s Word says.  This is not a good place to be, because God’s Word makes it clear that God’s ways are not man’s ways, and God’s thoughts are not mans’ thoughts, because as high as the heavens are above are, so are God’s ways higher than man’s (Isaiah 55:8-9).  We must decrease in order for God to increase in our lives and our thinking as we grow in grace (John 3:30).  We must get out of God’s way, and we must put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in regards to its lusts daily (Romans 13:14), as one puts on one’s clothes every day to go outside; otherwise we will be naked and vulnerable to the enemy’s ways.

Remember what the Lord said to the church in Laodicea?

“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:

The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this:

‘I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot.  So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.  Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.  Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.  Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.  He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.  He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”

(Revelations 3:13-22)

Most people identify the Laodicean church with apathy and complacency, being uncaring and lukewarm, which are in themselves the behavioral examples of a Christian who is on their way to becoming backslidden or is backslidden already.  But did you know the following about this Greek word?  And this will add insight into what we’re talking about here,

“Laos (Strong’s #2992, meaning “people”) and dike (Strong’s #1349, meaning “principle, decision”).  In other words, as Christ showed in verse 20, Laodiceans trust in their ability to rule themselves, judging and deciding matters to the exclusion of Christ’s rule within His Church.  God’s government only exists in His one true Church (Matt. 16:18; Eph. 1:22-23; Col. 1:18).  Jesus is the Head of the Church and the One True Mediator.  He is fully God and fully man, the only one who is able to bridge man to God.  He is the True High Priest.”

And the following from a book I recommend everyone purchase and read.  A Kindle copy is only $3.00.  This is what the Greek meaning of Laodicea means in the context of our discussion.  Take careful note here:

“In Revelation 2, God writes letters to the churches, the last one penned to the church in Laodicea. Many biblical scholars believe the Church of Laodicea is representative of the last church before the end of the age because it is the final church letter, symbolizing what “Christianity” would look like just before the return of Jesus.  Laodicea comes from two Greek words meaning “people” and “opinions or judgments”.  So the Church of Laodicea is the church of “the opinions of the people”.  Today much of what we call Christianity fits nicely into this description of the Laodicean Church.  Our opinions about God seem to matter more than what God says about Himself in the Bible, and we replace the clear judgments and teaching of God with our own subjective interpretations.”

LeMay, Michael D. (2012-05-11).  The Suicide of American Christianity: Drinking the "Cool"-Aid of Secular Humanism  (pp. 91-92). WestBowPress. Kindle Edition.

Much of what these critics present as proper exegesis and correct hermeneutics is nothing more than their own intellect and natural reasoning expressed in a form of Deism, hidden amidst “Christian sounding jargon and phrases” passing itself off as “conservative biblical teaching.”  This is not a personal subjective opinion.  Just take a look closely as how they express their beliefs and opinions, and notice how devoid of Scripture it is.  It is not biblical, and in fact, when presenting their opinion on a matter, it is plainly just that, their subjective opinion, but not Scripture. 

At the same time, take note how much of their own intellect and natural thinking is involved in what they write.  In all their bloviating, one wonders where is God’s Word?  Do you see it?  Or do you hear, read, and see something else?  Remember, the Laodicean Church believed itself rich and wealthy and in need of nothing, but Christ told it that it was because it said, ‘“I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.”’ (Revelations 3:17-18)

I’ve read on one critic’s website that the critic had previously had some bad personal experiences with Pentecostalism, as so have I.  The difference between us is that I have not allowed my theology and core belief of God’s Word be influenced by bad experiences with phony brethren or false revivals, but on what God’s Word teaches about the sign gifts of the Holy Spirit.  Unfortunately the critic did.  His theology is built on this false premise.  Unfortunately, seminary hasn’t helped him, and in my opinion, has only taken his own exposure to false Pentecostals turn up the notch against them – and I believe he already had a bias against it from the very beginning, so it didn’t take much for him to throw out the proverbial “baby with the bathwater” the day he decided for Cessationism.  This particular critic graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary.

Dallas Theological Seminary is a Mecca of Cessationism, and its approach to God’s Word is scientific, while devoid of much of the manner God’s Word ought to be read with reliance on the Holy Spirit – studying the literal, grammatical, historical portions of Scripture in its proper context, but also studying the various metaphorical and Midrashic portions, such as the various parables in both testaments, the various Midrashic examples in both testaments that do not do violence to the Word, etc… where it is applicable.  It is not applicable everywhere, but where it is applicable, it is to be used. 

Let me make that clear.  I am a Bible Historian, and I use Dispensational Theology as a valuable tool to teach biblical history.  As such, I teach it from a literal, grammatical, historical, and contextual frame where such a method applies.  So I am not advocating that a Sensus Plenior should be applied to every passage of the Bible.  That’s absurd and dangerous.  Midrash and Sensus Plenior (fuller meaning) is not doctrine and should not be used to teach doctrine, but to illuminate Scripture by teaching valuable lessons from it in parables and types, and metaphors, such as is explained regarding how the spring feasts of Israel are types of Messiah’s first coming and the autumn feasts of Israel are types of His second coming.

Most of these critics not understand that it was Midrashim used in the Targums following the Babylonian Exile, between the period of Daniel’s prophecy and the Second Temple Era that helped in developing through the centuries a strong progressive Messianic Eschatology in the Judaism of that day which helped prepare the people of Jesus’ day to anticipate that the Messiah would appear any day to them back then.  This is why you read in all of the Gospels and in the Acts how the people were looking for the appearance of the Messiah at any moment.  They were expectant because they had received successive progressive revelation into the Messiah’s coming through the many Midrash and Targums used in that era and taught in their Yeshivot and synagogues.

There is one fundamental and therefore foundational and central missing element to all of these argumentations against Midrash, as it is missing as well in their arguments for Cessationism and against Continuationism – and it is that these fail to acknowledge or even consider the ongoing work of the Third Person of the Trinity – the Holy Spirit.  This is foundational, and central to the proper understanding of the Scriptures. (John 14:16, 1 John 2:27)  The Scriptures and the Gospel cannot be understood without the Holy Spirit’s direct intervention convicting and bringing people to the foot of the cross for God’s redemptive grace and restoration.

Another webpage that contains some real nuggets into this topic about putting on the right mind has the following insights into this discussion.  I can’t quote from the whole page, otherwise I’d burden your reading with too much, so I’ll only quote the following.  Read carefully:

“I often work with people who are Christians, but people who wonder how they have allowed themselves to get into their miserable situation.  Quite often they have left their minds unprotected.  The enemy has attacked them at the point of their thoughts and brought fear, guilt, condemnation, depression, anger, and an open door leading to habitual sins.  Paul counseled the church of Ephesus to put on the whole armor of God, that they may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Ephesians 6:11 "Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil."  While most Christians put on various pieces of the armor, the one that many people omit is that of the helmet of salvation. Ephesians 6:17 "And take the helmet of salvation ...."

“The helmet of salvation is for the protection of the mind against some basic wrong thinking.  The wrong thinking is "performance oriented salvation".  The performance oriented salvation thinking is a false belief system which hinges upon one earning his salvation based upon living up to a certain standard.  The individual has been taught or has created in his mind that certain standard.  This system of beliefs entertains the concept that one has to perform to earn his salvation or to perform to maintain his salvation.

“Such a belief system is a stage for many mental, emotional, and social problems.  Often in such a belief system, the individual never really knows whether or not he is saved or can be saved.  Why?  The standard for measurement is often obscure being based upon various opinions of various men rather than the Word of God.  Even if the standard is fairly clear, the individual has no assurance that he will ever live up to it.  There is no guarantee that he has confessed and repented of every single sin.  He may have forgotten one.  He might miss a sin and still go to hell.  After all, how many sins does one have to sin in order to be a sinner?  This brings a sense of insecurity, doubt, and ungodly fear of God to the individual.

“Another difficulty in such a belief system is that even if the standards are fairly clear concerning one's actions, the sins of the heart are usually overlooked or ignored.  Jesus said that the person who looks upon a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart.  This belief system is a stage for denial of truth.  This denial is like a pebble thrown into a pond.  There is wave of denial that spreads through his life.

“If the individual for a time meets the standard, then there is an open door for pride to enter.  He can pat himself on the back and say, "Look at what I have accomplished." With pride also comes a critical spirit toward others who have yet to reach his standard.  He will look down at others and condemn them for not measuring up to his standard.  This makes for poor social relations.  Even if he pities others, the pity brings discouragement rather than encouragement.

“Furthermore, if the standard is rather low, sooner or later the individual at a weak moment will give in to some sin.  The result is either, denial, blame, or self condemnation.  Again, denial is like a cancer that spread to other area of life.  Blame is saying, "I would not have done wrong, if such and such had not happened to me."  Self condemnation often carries with it anger, depression, and hopelessness.”

PROTECTION /~For The Mind ~\

Which one of these templates would we say that these critics fall into?  It’s self-explanatory.  All of us have fallen on occasion into one or more of these, because of our own predetermined ideas that run counter to Scriptures.  This is why the reading and study of God’s Word is so fundamental to our spiritual growth and knowledge of God.  Few do this today, but depend on a weekly Pablum of the pastor’s message for the week. 

This is goal then that ought to be personally pursued; for every believer is not only to know as much as possible the doctrine of God, but to have a broad as possible insight into its application as is possible and given them to know by God’s grace.  This is only possible by the Holy Spirit and by a daily conscious decision by each believer to put on the Lord Jesus, and make no provision for the flesh.  The flesh likes to assert itself.  It can do this any number of ways, not just sexual, but it can also assert itself many other ways; pride, arrogance, anger, malice, on and on and on….

There is one central aspect of the flesh’s self-assertion, and that is, the mind.  It does it through the mind.  The mind must be the mind of Christ, not our intellect, or what we think the mind of Christ is.  The mind of Christ is the mind of Christ.  It communicates to us through and by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit using God’s Word, combining true spiritual thoughts with true spiritual words.  This is why when writing to his Second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul in the Holy Spirit wrote the following, addressing a similar matter with them – remember, this is the church that said, “I am of Paul,” “I am of Barnabas,” “I am of Cephas,” and yes, even “I am of Christ,” which he previously addressed in his first letter to them (1Corinthians 3).  But in this one, he wrote:

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.  We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.

(2Corinthians 10:3b-6)

Paul further upbraided them by writing, You are looking at things as they are outwardly. (2Corinthians 10:7)  And further on he writes, For we are not bold to class or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves; but when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding. (2Corinthians 10:12-13)  Sound familiar?  This is why the ambulance chasing heresy hunters are so dangerous to the body. 

They compare themselves to themselves, and believe everybody is below them, and therefore subject to them.  Outside of their circle, everyone else is suspect.  It has all of the markings of a cult, cultic thinking, how cults operate.  Of them Christ said, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?” (John 5:44).  When a group of people begin to believe and see themselves as having an exclusive monopoly on truth, that is fertile and dangerous ground for all sorts of mischief and contention.  What does the proverb say?

The fear of man brings a snare, But he who trusts in the Lord will be exalted.

(Proverbs 29:25)

This is the crowd of which Paul warns that when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding. (2Corinthians 10:12b)  This is the lust of the eyes, and the lust of the flesh, and boastful pride of life in practice.  It was at play in the garden, and has bedeviled the human race since.  It compels the human ego to seek to eat of the tree of knowledge in order to soar to heights untraveled before towards deification on their own terms and not God’s, without first committing and submitting it to Christ, but in acts of self-will and self-assertion, they promote one’s intellect rather than submitting it to God’s Spirit and gain insight from Him.  Some of you will understand this; some of you will not.

I do not expect many of these people to understand what I’m talking about here either.  Because they assert their intellect above all else, while claiming to acknowledge God, they no longer really do – though they make appearances to that effect – and in true reality are now under a deluding influence, which by itself has rendered them disbelieving, cynical, unbelieving, argumentative, irreconcilable, combative, and when pressed, abusive towards those with whom they disagree.  They redefine the meaning of the facts to twist them into something else while projecting the weaknesses in their arguments onto others, even using their own language and words against them by employing them within their re-written narrative of what the other person says.  They have become so adept at arguing a point that they rendered themselves incapable of accepting anything but what they define for themselves as truth.  Objective truth could be staring them in the face, but they wouldn’t and couldn’t recognize it

When a thought rises up, we have a choice; do we entertain it?  Do we discard it?  Is it from God?  Or is it from us?  Or is it from some other source other than God or us?  Is from an angel?  Is it from a devil?  Where is it from?  Does it conform to God’s written Word about something?  Or does it contradict God’s Word about it?  All of these things factor in. 

One either chooses to entertain or not entertain the thought.  I submit that in his personal struggles with unbelief, many of these critics chose a long time ago the path of least resistance, which was to approach everything from a natural scientific intellectual approach to everything.  This is for him the safest and surest way that he feels he can accept, because it is the one best known to him. 

Now let me make this clear; I’m not saying that we should throw our intellect and science out the door, because both serve as valuable and useful tools in our studies; but what I say is what the Apostle Paul says and what we learn from the Word of God, and that is that our intellect and our mind is to submit itself and its thoughts to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and His Word.  Very plain and very simple.

Nor am I advocating that we toss all discernment to the wind, change our attire and put on white linen robes, put all of our money into stocking up on five years of survival food and gear with plenty of fire arms and ammunition, and hide in some cave out in the Midwest awaiting and survive on our rations until the Messiah’s return.  Absolutely not, and it is disingenuous for the critic and any of his colleagues to make such comparisons of discerning Christians who are aware of the times we live in, as the sons of Issachar were; who because of this, found approval (1 Chronicles 12:32).  As much as the critic warns against blind religious sensationalism, I warn of the opposite – blind religious apathy and complacency.  Both are equally dangerous.

Before I leave you, consider this, how interesting that the same people, who reason and think as these critics do, who profess Christ and claim to believe in the prophetic books of the Bible and what they teach about the end times, struggle so much with the sign gifts of the Holy Spirit for this day and age.  But they have no problem reading a passage of Scripture that clearly defines those gifts as being active in the past, or in some future date, such as the two witnesses in Revelations.  The lame teaching of theirs that the sign gifts have been suspended between the Apostolic Era and the Tribulation is about as “biblically sound” as the one that Jimmy DeYoung and John MacArthur teach that those who take the mark of the beast will be able to repent of it, and be saved.  God’s Word is clear on that, for it says without equivocation the following, I quote:

Then another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.  And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.”  Here is the perseverance of the saints who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.

(Revelations 14:9-12)

The Scriptures are very clear on this.  Anything that is taught contrary to this, regardless of who is teaching it – even if it comes from the eminent Bible expositor, all of these are merely spouting the contrivances of men, yet where is critic in all this?  Why don’t’ they correct these others who are so clearly teaching heresy?  And where is the critic in this?  Why hasn’t he spoken with Jimmy DeYoung strongly on this matter?  Why don’t they come after them, but are strangely silent in the face of such heresy?  This is absolute hypocrisy and unjust weights and unjust measures, and it is an abomination to the Lord.

God bless and keep you in His grace, and be encouraged, for Jesus said that when you see all of these things, “look up, for your redemption draws near."  Yes!  Come Lord Jesus; come Moschiach Ben David!  Come and ransom your remnant.  Amen.

To the critic, I charge in the name of Christ Jesus the Lord, Rather than drag your blood-bought brother in the faith before the public, instead, mend your ways before God and speak to him softly, and privately and discuss these things.  There is no reproach in what I counsel here, but what God’s good Word teaches.  Reconciliation and not reproach.  You believe in grace?  Then practice grace towards others as God extends it to you.  Mend your ways.  Let us live by the strong admonition which follows:

To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit;

(1Peter 3:8)

Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

(Philippians 2:1-2)

One final thought before we end this review.  Thanks to the Weather Channel, one can actually see how storm trackers follow storms and tornados throughout the US, and quite often they are in mortal danger from these themselves.  One such crew got too close and paid the ultimate price, they perished in the storm as they got too close to it.

The critics are very much like many of these storm trackers, they get so close to the storm that they forget the danger they put themselves and others in, especially were they to tell their audience and those following them in the distance that the storm is a mirage or a figment of one’s imagination.  Well, it’s not.  It’s very real, and very present, and it is coming.

Let the naysayers and revilers and disbelieving brethren along with the unbelievers of our age continue in their derisions and mocking.  The hour when they will give an account for every idle word will come upon them, and then they will not be able to answer the One who judges rightly the living and the dead.

The best way of dealing with these things is the biblical method prescribed by Christ and His Apostles, and that is to be aware of the times that one lives in; be informed of these things, but not alarmed by them, understanding that they are but harbingers of the end times – signposts of what is to come – and as such know for a certainty that the Messiah is coming back, and He will protect and deliver His people.  But above all else, know for a certainty between now and that hour of His coming, all must take refuge in Him in full repentance, calling upon His name for salvation, and trusting with full and implicit faith in His ability to save us from damnation and to bring us all to God at the hour of His revealing.

CLAIM: PROLOGUE TO THE CRITIC’S ARTICLE AGAINST RABBI CAHN’S BOOK – Going back to the imposed-Shemitah: God's reason for linking judgment to an imposed-Shemitah upon Israel was because they had failed to observe the required Sabbath years.  However, there is no biblical basis for suggesting that God would impose a Shemitah-type judgment upon any nation that was not obligated to observe the Sabbath year in the first place.  Therefore, no matter what has happened to America over the last 100+ years, it cannot be linked in any biblical way to the Shemitah, even if it were true that economies tend to go through roughly seven-year cycles.

FACT: Here the critic contradicts his earlier statement regarding the Shemitah as blessing and criticizing Rabbi Cahn for pointing out how God used it during the Babylonian Exile as a curse of the Law by forcing it upon Judah for breaking the Mosaic Covenant, which we have seen from God’s Word, God said He would impose upon the people and the land were they to disobey His Law.  Here the critic admits, I quote, “God's reason for linking judgment to an imposed-Shemitah upon Israel was because they had failed to observe the required Sabbath years.”  So previously the critic claims that the Shemitah could not be imposed as a curse, where he writes and I quote, “..this theory is without merit on biblical grounds.  Rather, the Scriptures indicate that the Shemitah was a blessing in every respect with no downside whatsoever.”  Here under the same breath, the critic unwittingly agrees with the author (and contradicts himself again to make another specious argument) where he writes above and I quote, “God's reason for linking judgment to an imposed-Shemitah upon Israel was because they had failed to observe the required Sabbath years.”  We see then that the critic will even contradict his own statements in order to bring additional false presumptions to his argument which have absolutely no merit whatsoever, either biblically, or contextually.  

It is amusing how the critic presumes that say that the spirit of the Law does not apply outside of Israel to the Gentiles, by alluding to the Letter of the Law a standard that God’s Word does not itself ascribe to it, where the critic writes, and I quote, “However, there is no biblical basis for suggesting that God would impose a Shemitah-type judgment upon any nation that was not obligated to observe the Sabbath year in the first place.” 

FACT: Arguing from this point of view, if one follows its logic, there is absolutely nothing from the Law that is applicable outside of Israel as far as the nations are concerned, so that every element from the Law which the New Testament makes use of is at risk, because it cannot be applied outside of the confines that have been carefully created by the critic in his argumentation.  This is the heresy that extreme Hyper-Dispensationalism (as it is argued by the critic here) leads to.  The doctrine is inconsistent and unbiblical, and can readily be seen as false just by reading the New Testament and see the use of the Law in the inspired and inerrant writings of the Evangelists and other writers.

In examining these Scriptures, the contrary opinion becomes evident in the proper use of the Law from Paul’s own inspired writings.  In these writings, we see a very different opinion and use of the Law than that which the critic proposes.  We begin to see the Law is extremely relevant with regards to sin in all human beings, as Paul explains how the commandments contained in the Law interact with sin – where he writes that it is the commandment contained in the Law that gives life to sin.  I quote:

What shall we say then?  Is the Law sin?  May it never be!  On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “You shall not covet.”  But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead.  I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died; and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me; for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.  So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me?  May it never be!  Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.

(Romans 7:7-13)

In an online article that reproduces the writings of Carl F.H. Henry taken from his book, Revelation and the Bible, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958), pp. 137-151, we read the following which dovetails the totality of God’s Word is to be protected and defended against any and all attempts to assail it.  I recommend everyone visit this website and read the entire article for themselves.  I quote:

“The use of the terms “law” (John 10:34; 15:25; Romans 3:19; 1 Corinthians 14:21), or “prophets” (Matthew 13:35), where reference is made to passages belonging, strictly speaking, to other parts of the Hebrew Canon, indicates that the New Testament writers viewed the whole Old Testament Scripture as having legal authority and prophetic character.

“In their formulas of quotation the New Testament writers give expression to their conviction as to the eternal contemporaneity of Scripture. This is manifest in particular in the many (41) instances where the introductory verb is in the present: “He says,” and not “he said.”  This is reinforced by the use of the pronouns “we,” “you,” in connection with ancient sayings:  “That which was spoken unto you by God” (Matthew 22:31); “The Holy Spirit also beareth witness to us” (Hebrews 10:15; cf. also Matthew 15:7; Mark 7:6; 12:19; Acts 4:11; 13:47; Hebrews 12:5). This implication gains explicit statement in Romans 15:4: “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning” (cf. also Romans 4:23, 24; 1 Corinthians 9:10; 10:11).”

(Roger Nicole, New Testament Use of the Old Testament)

CLAIM: WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THEY GAIN FROM THIS BOOK, ECONOMISTS COULD RIG THE SYSTEM AND MAKE FORTUNES, THEREFORE IT HAS TO BE WRONG: If Jonathan Cahn were right about the mystery of the Shemitah, then economists almost certainly would have noticed and been writing about this precise seven-year cycle long before God "revealed" it to the author.  Tremendous fortunes could have been made by savvy investors who know how to play just such market cycles.  However, preliminary research indicates that while some economists have suggested that economies may naturally follow a cycle of a bit less than seven years to as much as ten years, there is no universal agreement on this point.  This stands in sharp contrast to the precise seven-year Sabbath cycles in ancient Israel.

FACT: Of interest here is to ask if this critic could be kind enough to furnish us with this preliminary research of his, not the forced review he posted on his website, but the raw data.  Jonathan Cahn has put together raw data and dates, this critic has not.  All he offers here are platitudes towards self-promotion at the expense of another in the form of vague claims and presumptuous declarations about God.  The speculative fallacy the critic employs here does not add to the discussion, but distract from it, and is nothing but a collection of obfuscation designed to turn the reader away from the facts contained the book, and redirect them to the critic’s forced interpretation of it.  In doing this, the critic desires to replace, as he tried to do with Rabbi Cahn’s previous work, the clear narrative of the book with one of his own, the purpose of which is to discredit what Rabbi Cahn says.  The critic just doesn’t simply disagree with Rabbi Cahn, he claims that Rabbi Cahn is in error and mishandling God’s Word.  This is the purpose, but upon closer inspection from God’s Word, the critic’s arguments fall flat, because all he offers us, as he has done before, are claims without evidence to support them.  Where is the evidence?  Present the evidence, and present it from God’s Word, not from mere arguments.

CLAIM: THE US ECONOMY HAS CYCLED 11 TIMES SINCE WWII: us economy cycle 1948 to 2012  Since World War 2, we've already had 11 recessions.  And if you go back another hundred years, you'll see the same pattern.  Those dates in red show the bottom of each recession.  Now look: how far they spaced apart?  Would you agree: another recession is inevitable?  It's only a matter of when.  In the past, recessions occurred at intervals of 7-10 years (barring a few that came a little quicker).

FACT: It is interesting that here the critic attempts to discredit the raw data by affirming it.  This indicates that he is quite capable of using any means to hone in his argument and trash the book.  The ends justify the means.  This is not intellectually honest, nor is it ethical.  It may be employed in a debate between two secular authors, but it is unacceptable among Evangelical Christians.  It is duplicitous.

CLAIM: THIS CONTINUAL CYCLING IS PREDICTABLE, LIKE HURRICANE SEASON IN THE CARIBBEAN: It's almost like summer hurricanes in the Caribbean.  We know they're going to happen.  We just don't know when and where exactly.  Fortunately, we've developed a good system of hurricane warnings.

FACT: Dittos.  But there are flukes where the hurricanes do not come in their season, such as this past season.  One recent headline on The Drudge Report reads, 3,230 Days: Record Hurricane Drought Continues....  So we are witnessing a season that is currently the exception to the proverbial rule.  The same can be said about The Shemitah, if we repent, and turn to God, and I refer here to God’s people who should be leading the nation now in this effort, not the vast number of unregenerate unbelievers who do not know their right hand from their left, and are clueless as to what’s going on with this economy, this nation, and this government.

Here are some of the recent headlines on The Drudge Report, which bear witness that there is something seriously occurring in this nation that is of biblical proportions.

Massive King fire in California continues to grow

4.2 Mag Quake Shakes Oklahoma...

Freak storm dumps 2 feet of hail in Mexico...

3,230 Days: Record Hurricane Drought Continues...

NYC Subways Fumigated After Bedbugs Found on Trains...

No End in Sight for Cannibal Crickets Eating Through Eastern USA...

SEPTEMBER SNOW IN SEVEN STATES....

Hundreds of methane plumes erupt along Atlantic coast...

SHOCK REPORT: CA drought to trigger quakes...

NWS: CA drought to intensify...

Orange farmer bulldozes orchard...

HAWAII BRACES FOR DOUBLE STORMS...

State parks shut down camp grounds...

UPDATE: 6.0 MAG QUAKE STRIKES BAY AREA...

NEAR NAPA; FELT WIDE...

STRONGEST IN DECADES...

Widespread power outages...

State of Emergency Declared...

FAULT DORMANT FOR 1.6 MILLION YEARS...

'Early-warning system' gave 10-second alert...

USGS Records 125 N Bay Earthquakes Following Napa Jolt...

Woman Killed By Piece Of Falling Gargoyle Outside Chicago Church...

100+ Quakes Following Napa Jolt...

Vineyards picking up pieces...

CLAIM: Obviously economic cycles of some duration are inevitable because bull markets don't last forever and neither do bear markets.  And that economic cycles might generally have some average length is not necessarily surprising.  However, to conclude that the mystery of the Shemitah is behind these, when the Shemitah cycle is exactly seven years, but the length of the modern cycles varies by as much as three years or more just defies common sense.

FACT: Arguing as the critic does above is like saying, “I know that by a certain hour of today, the sun will set and it will be evening.  So I must await the inevitable arrival of this pattern of sunset and sunrise, sunset and sunrise.  And on and on and on it goes.”  Well, yes; on and on and on it has gone, as documented in the book, and on and on and on it will continue to go according to God’s pre-ordained redemptive plan.

The claim made above by the critic is pure absurdity.  He does not present, as Rabbi Cahn has in his book, specific examples as evidence in support of this argument.  It must be summarily dismissed as nothing but an opinion without any foundation in fact, because it lacks evidence to support it.  Let us continue.

CLAIM: All of this raises many questions of which the following are just a few: How is it possible that God has not been imposing Shemitah judgments upon Israel and the Jewish people for two millennia, when they are the only ones ever obligated to observe the Shemitah year?

FACT: This rhetorical question assumes that God has not been imposing a two thousand Shemitah on the land of Israel, when in fact the topographical evidence points to the contrary.  For two thousand years, the land that God had given exclusively to Israel through the Abrahamic Covenant has lied uncultivated and untilled and uncared for.  In fact, according to Mark Twain, when he visited it, he said it was nothing but a malaria-infested swamp.  The critic makes broad claims and huge assumptions without foundation and presents absolutely no evidence in support of these.  Here he assumes while the Jewish people suffered two millennial exile, that God had not imposed by force (as He did during the Babylonian Exile), the Shemitah upon the land.  Here too, in the rush to criticize the book and discredit its author, the critic denies reality once more, and uses another non-sequitur to deny the reality of a land that has not been cared for in two thousand years!  The sad fact was it was only when the modern State of Israel was founded in 1948 that the land began to be cared for and tilled by the returning Jewish exiles who began to populate the region.  Today Israel is a modern marvel.

CLAIM: Why is it that, while ignoring Israel's ongoing failure to keep the Sabbath year, the Lord has been using seven-year Shemitah cycles as warnings or judgments upon America over the last 100 years or so, even though the United States has no obligation to observe the Shemitah

With no scriptural reason for anyone to think that the mystery of the Shemitah might be influencing America's economy, how could it possibly be considered to be a biblical warning?

FACT: The charge of “no scriptural support” is one the critic often makes without providing the least bit of evidence to prove his assertion.  It is neither based on biblical fact, because he has not cited the Scripture in support of such a charge, nor presented the evidence for making it; and in fact is nothing but the critic’s personal opinion which he should have reworded as such.  Lacking any evidence for the claim, this personal opinion of this critic has no merit to this discussion.

CLAIM: If the mystery of the Shemitah affects the world, does this mean that every country experiences the same seven-year economic cycles, or is it that only America suffers when even Israel does not?

FACT: This is another non-sequitur made by this critic, because he has lacked any evidence to support such a claim presented here as a rhetorical question.  Rhetorical questions are by nature simply a statement posed as a question that challenges an opposing premise that is made in leue of any evidence that supports such a challenge.  This also has no merit in this discussion, because the evidence to support it is not presented by the challenger making it.

CLAIM: If the mystery of the Shemitah is always at work, then how can it be determined when God is issuing a warning and when He is not? 

FACT: This question is purposely designed to be circular in nature while insinuating that God is not issuing a warning, an awfully big claim for a so-called conservative Evangelical such as this critic.  It is a tricky manner of posing another rhetorical question while cleverly masquerading a claim of denial regarding what is being questioned while avoiding the need to present evidence to support such a claim against it.  Cunning, mischievously cunning, and intellectually dishonest and not in the least biblical.

CLAIM: If there are no cataclysmic events connected to a particular Shemitah cycle, does that mean God is pleased with the way things are going? 

FACT: Another rhetorical circular question purposely designed to throw off the reader by making another claim against what the critic does not believe God does by presumes to ask rhetorically that if God delays or relents to exact judgment upon a nation or people in His sovereign grace, does such an act indicate that – I quote – “God is pleased with the way things are going?”  The answer is in Scripture itself, not in man’s presumptive reasoning of what he believes God does or does not do.  God, who knows the end from the beginning, anticipates such presumptuous questioning of His judgments, and through the inspired pen of the Psalmist has provided the answer to the age old question the nations have asked regarding Him, just as this critic does here.  I quote:

Why should the nations say,

“Where, now, is their God?”

But our God is in the heavens;

He does whatever He pleases.

(Psalm 115:2-3)

One common strain about the reasoning behind this critic and all of his writings is that he presumes to say that God no longer acts as He does in Scripture and as He has throughout history.  And this critic, like the others, makes bold claims for God on His behalf that there is not the least bit shred of biblical evidence for, while projecting the same to those he and they target for their criticism.

CLAIM: What is it that determines that one economic cycle might be six and a half years, while another might be eight years-and why are they not always exactly seven years so that a precise pattern might be recognized by serious believers who know the Bible well?

FACT: This is another loaded circular rhetorical questioned cleverly disguising statistics as though they were facts without providing the least bit of evidence to support it.  The critic presents non-existent metrics to bolster an argument without presenting any facts to support it, whereas The Mystery of The Shemitah provides one historical pattern after another – actual events and dates from one end of the book to the other.  Where are the historical dates and statistics provided by the critic?  Nowhere.  There is the rhetorical claim made by him here without the least shred of evidence.  This is a repetitive method this critic uses to cleverly argue against something he does not understand and denies.

CLAIM: Furthermore, although Israel was to be blessed by the Shemitah through God's faithful provision, according to Cahn's theory, America has experienced nothing but judgment related to the Shemitah.  Once again, none of this makes any sense from a biblical or logical perspective.

FACT:  The statement the critic makes above is selective cherry picking.  Nowhere does the author’s book claim that America has exclusively experienced nothing but judgment related to the Shemitah, but at its founding as its early settlers and founders as God’s Christian covenant (New Covenant) people covenanted to establish their communities and a new society according to the standards contained in God’s Word, God blessed their efforts and caused the nation founded on this land to be the most prosperous, most powerful and blessed Gentile nation in history, and like Israel is today to its people and all who love freedom, so was and is America to all who yearn to live free.  When American turned from this, as it did with slavery, God brought the Civil War between the states as His remedial judgment against her for the sins of its people.  When America became involved in a global alliance with the British Empire, and financed the Bolshevik Revolution as it fought its own wars in two fronts, as well as “making the world safe for ‘democracy’” – as part of a new alliance, only a few short years later, Hitler appeared to bring the world to war.  But in all of these things, God had His plan for His people and by 1948 a new nation was conceived in one day; the modern State of Israel.  Post-War America became fat and complacent and spoiled.  The degeneration began with the IRS tax exempt compromise America’s churches made with the government with the passing of the infamous Johnson Law.  Ten years later, school prayer was removed, ten years after that abortion was litigated into law through the Supreme Court’s infamous decision in Roe versus Wade; and on and on it has progressed, until today our beloved nation is nothing but a fading shadow of what it once was.  The Shemitah in the past 150 years has come to America as it did to Israel and as it has to every nation that has flaunted the principles codified in God’s Law.

Additionally, Rabbi Cahn’s book clearly delineates between the biblical Shemitah used by God as a blessing and the incidents where it has been used by God as judgment, and cites the relevant Scriptures as historical empirical evidence in support of this argument.  Where is the critic’s biblical evidence to the contrary?  As is with his other arguments, he posits none, because there are none.  These are nothing but purposeful willing sophistries and nothing more.

CLAIM: And finally, as noted previously: The Shemitah, being a Sabbath year and an integral part of the Law of Moses, was completely fulfilled in Christ and is no longer in operation (even it actually did affect other nations prior to the Cross).

FACT: The critic often contradicts himself, as he does above.  He spends much time arguing against the Shemitah affecting nations other than Israel, while here he tacitly admits that it has (and continues) to affect all the nations of the earth, because all one has to do is read books within God’s Word that prophecy of the various judgments which will befall mankind before Christ’s return to realize that all of these will still be at play right down to the taking up of God’s people and the return of Jesus Christ to planet earth in glory.  For the critic to argue this point in order to oppose the author is to argue against what God’s Word clearly says about the end of the days, the last days, which we are now living.  It is senseless.  And it is senseless because, all claims aside to the contrary, the theology that drives the argument is not a biblical argument; it is a pure invention of man.  Christ fulfilled the Law, He did not abolish it (Matthew 5:17), and Paul asks rhetorically, Do we then nullify the Law through faith?  May it never be!  On the contrary, we establish the Law. (Romans 3:31) But when Paul argues for righteousness found in God’s grace apart from the Law, he is not abolishing the law, but affirming the faith that has now come apart from the Law and the Prophets – from another covenant – the New Covenant at the cross, and writes, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.” (Galatians 2:21)  Paul is not arguing for the annulment or abolishment of any part of God’s Word, but that God Himself has imputed His Son’s righteousness to us, has provided – God’s indwelling Holy Spirit in us (Luke 11:13, Acts 5:32), has washed and regenerated us by His blood (Matthew 26:28, Hebrews 9:11-14, 22), and renews our mind (Colossians 3:10) – Jew and Gentile alike (Colossians 3:11); all products of this magnificent redemption of us unto salvation (Ephesians 1:3-7), because He has taken away our sin (1John 3:5) and removed it far from us, as far as east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).  East and west do not meet, they go in opposite directions.  The Law, as divine as it was and continues to be, could not do these things, but was a mere promise of a shadow of them; bearing witness of them from afar, yet also bearing witness of our sin and our guilt before God.  The sweeping theological statements, such as those posited by the critic, are the result of a misunderstanding of fundamental concepts that are at work within the redemptive work of God in us as He continues to work His purpose in every nation under heaven, having begun with Israel, continuing to every nation and tongue, with His redemptive wheel turning full circle back to His resurrected nation, Israel, and His people, the Jewish people.  Many Christians and Christian theologians struggle understanding this in its biblical essence.

FACT: When John the Baptist exclaimed to his followers as he saw the Lord Jesus approach, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” , he was referring to that part of the Mosaic Law that had established the Pascal Lamb of the Passover – a unique Hebrew Feast (Exodus 12) that Israel was told to observe on precise a Hebrew day at twilight, or as it means literally in the Hebrew “between evenings,” I quote:

“‘These are the appointed times of the Lord, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at the times appointed for them.  In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight is the Lord’s Passover.  Then on the fifteenth day of the same month there is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord; for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.’”

(Leviticus 23:4-6)

So Moses told the sons of Israel to observe the Passover.  They observed the Passover in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, in the wilderness of Sinai; according to all that the Lord had commanded Moses, so the sons of Israel did.  But there were some men who were unclean because of the dead person, so that they could not observe Passover on that day; so they came before Moses and Aaron on that day.

(Numbers 9:4-6)

The people of Israel commemorated their ancestral deliverance from the bondage of Egyptian slavery imposed over them centuries before, now taking its full significance and meaning and fulfillment in the Messiah, the Lord Jesus.  Take note, the Evangelist in the Johannine Gospel draws from the Law of Moses this unique command of God, specific to that celebration and Midrashically applies it to the crucifixion of Jesus at the cross, where he writes, and I quote:

“In the second month on the fourteenth day at twilight, they shall observe it; they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.  They shall leave none of it until morning, nor break a bone of it; according to all the statute of the Passover they shall observe it.  But the man who is clean and is not on a journey, and yet neglects to observe the Passover, that person shall then be cut off from his people, for he did not present the offering of the Lord at its appointed time.  That man will bear his sin.

(Numbers 9:1-13)

John applies a Midrash to this part of the Law of Moses in the following manner to show its literal fulfillment in an event he was an eye-witness to; an event that bears absolutely no literal resemblance to the passage described in the Book of Numbers the Ninth Chapter; an event (the crucifixion) where there is no literal lamb that is being eaten in a literal meal in a literal home someplace, only within the place where God has chosen to place His name (Deuteronomy 16:4-6) – Jerusalem, celebrated only by Jews once a year in the month of Nisan, commencing on a specific day in a specific fashion for seven days hence, as described within this codified Mosaic Law given exclusively to Israel (as the critic is fond of reminding us) .  I quote:

Then the Jews, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.  So the soldiers came, and broke the legs of the first man and of the other who was crucified with Him; but coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs.  But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out.  And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe.  For these things came to pass to fulfill the Scripture, “Not a bone of Him shall be broken.”  And again another Scripture says, “They shall look on Him whom they pierced.”

(John 19:31-37)

From this one incident that John beheld, the Holy Spirit gave him insight into the witness of the Law of Moses (Numbers 9:12) and the Prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 12:10), which he applied Midrashically to those two passages from the Hebrew Bible to the event he bears witness to in his Gospel narrative.  Hyper-Dispensationalism would condemn such use of the Old Testament as it does to The Mystery of the Shemitah.  This type of dichotomy placed on God’s Word is nothing but a Post Modern Hyper-Dispensational Twenty-First Century Theological Contrivance in order to discredit somebody else’s literary work that is reaching hundreds of thousands for Christ.

It is in the context of John’s Gospel drawing from the Law of Moses, that John the Baptist made his exclamation about Jesus being “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”  But note, John DID NOT SAY, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of Israel,” but “BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD (FROM A HEBREW FEAST THAT ONLY ISRAELITES COMMEMORATE GIVEN ONLY TO ISRAEL UNDER THE MOSAIC LAW) WHO TAKES AWAY THE SINS OF THE WORLD!”  This is the proper application of Torah to fulfillment, not the extreme theologies development from fundamental misunderstandings and Gentile Anti-Semitism having old roots in Supersessionism that crept into parts of the Protestant Reformation, now finding new life in extreme Hyper-Dispensational Theology – although the critic has not realized this aspect to it.

CLAIM: CONTEXT IS THE ONLY THING IN UNDERSTANDING A BIBLICAL PASSAGE: Discernment Tip: Context isn't the main thing-it's the only thing.  Always take care to understand any passages cited to support a given point in their original context.  Of course there is the literary context of the text itself, which includes the verses leading up to and following the passage being considered.  However, just as important is the historical context, which includes the author, the recipients, the time period in history and various cultural factors.

FACT: The statement made above is true.  But what does one apply it to a parable?  To metaphors and types?  To thematic examinations of entire passages of Scripture where the history is not being discussed so much as the application of the passage to a given personal situation where God speaks directly to that situation, and what He is saying has nothing to do with the literal, grammatical, and historical application of Scripture; for example in such situations as the didactic and epistolarian application of such a given passage to address a situation? 

In such cases the literal context and content of such a passage bears little or no resemblance to the situation it is being used for, intended to teach a certain moral code or behavior to address it.  Christians will often cite a passage of Scripture which jumped at them from their Bibles which God used to speak directly to a personal matter.  But I cite this here by way of illustration and not to say that God’s Word is to be used in this manner for teaching doctrine, but rather that the potential God’s Word possesses is limitless.  God’s Word has many applications.  When taught as history, one must follow the literal, grammatical, and historical context and not read into its content something that is not there.  But when used to teach object lessons, the historical content and context of the passage is not being studied for its history, but for its thematic lessons applied to a specific situation applicable because of the object lesson given addresses directly a matter of personal import to the individual.  Only God’s Word has that kind of power and authority.   That is why the writer to the Letter to the Hebrews describes it in this manner.  I quote:

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

(Hebrews 4:12)

CLAIM: ONLY ISRAEL WAS GIVEN THE REVELATION AND COMMANDMENTS CONCERNING THE SABBATH YEARS THROUGH MOSES: In the case of the Shemitah, the historical context is supremely important.  The revelation and commandments concerning the Sabbath years were given specifically and exclusively to the nation of Israel.  They were the recipients of the revelation given to the author who is Moses.

FACT:  The critic forgets the purpose that God gave His revelation to Israel and the purpose Israel came into being; was so that His nation would bless the entire human race as protectors and keepers of the living oracles of God (Act 7:38), and with the progressive revelation of the prophets of Israel (see immediately below), the image of the Coming One – the Messiah, Blessed be He – the Lord Jesus Christ, would make His appearance to His people for whom they needed to be prepared by these writings and declarations made long before His appearance.  And the significance of this appearance and of Israel’s to those who would come after.  For the Scripture says:

As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow.  It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things into which angels long to look.

(1Peter 1:10-12)

And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”  Jesus answered them, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted.  For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.  Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.  In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says,

‘You will keep on hearing, but will not understand;

You will keep on seeing, but will not perceive;

For the heart of this people has become dull,

With their ears they scarcely hear,

And they have closed their eyes,

Otherwise they would see with their eyes,

Hear with their ears,

And understand with their heart and return,

And I would heal them.’

“But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.  For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”

(Matthew 13:10-16)

Indeed, the Gospels and the Pastoral Letters of the New Testament bear witness from the Hebrew Scriptures in their totality of the Messiah and God’s redemptive plan through Him for the human race (Matthew 24:27, John 13:18, 19:28) right down to the things which would transpire and what people would do before they happened (Matthew 26:56), without which there would be absolutely no point of reference either for Israel or the nations (Romans 16:26, Galatians 3:8)!  This the critic forgets when he presumptuously argues against God’s use of His own standards codified in His own Law regarding judgment and redemption; Israel and the nations.  He totally forgets this.

In fact, it is in the totality of the Hebrew Scriptures – Torah, meaning "Teaching", the Pentateuch (meaning five) – also identified as the Five Books of Moses), Nevi'im – "the Prophets,” and Ketuvim – “the Writings" — thus called the “TaNaKh” – also called "Miqra" which literally means "that which is read” – when properly read and understood through the indwelling Holy Spirit; that divine revelation into the God’s Word is possible because it is imparted by the indwelling Spirit of God.  Without the Holy Spirit-led study of God’s Word, and using just raw human intellect, Eisegetical errors become a serious danger to contend with and are commonplace.  This finds its expression when such attempts are made by even Christians (such as this critic does here) in applying Eisegetically-based Hyper-Dispensational Deistic argumentations presented as correct theology and doctrine.  For the Christian, it is a willful choice how they approach this; by natural intellect or in the anointing of the indwelt Holy Spirit, but it is a choice.

CLAIM: THE SHEMITAH LAWS WERE GIVEN EXCLUSIVELY TO A SPECIFIC PEOPLE AND WERE LIMITED TO A PERIOD OF TIME WITH A CLEAR BEGINNING AND ENDING: Furthermore, the period in history was the era of the Law of Moses, which extended from the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai in the middle of the 14th century B.C. to Christ's death on the cross around A.D. 30.  So, the Shemitah laws were given exclusively to a specific people, during a limited period of with a clear beginning and ending, with no indication whatsoever that there was an underlying mystery affecting the nation or that God would use a mystery of the Shemitah when dealing with any other nation but Israel.

FACT:  This is a pure Hyper-Dispensationist Fallacy.  Were any of the writers of the New Testament to use this argument and apply it to the Law or the Prophets, or any other part of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), we would have no New Testament today, because there would not be a single application under this man-invented rule the critic presents here, that would allow anything to be learned or applied to the events which have transformed our lives. 

FACT: The cross itself would have absolutely no basis outside of Israel for the Gentiles; who were not given the sacrificial system, were not given the Law upon which that sacrificial system was based, were not given the worship of God as the Israelites were given under the Abrahamic Covenant, which God made exclusively with Israel and with no other nation under the Mosaic Covenant codified in the Law; and giving us from the Law ample examples of the divine architecture of heaven in the building of the sanctuary and regulations of worship (Hebrews 9), we can go on and on from there.  I’ll repeat this and cannot overstress it enough, without these elements contained within the Law, there would be absolutely no point of reference for anyone to the value and efficacy of Messiah’s death on the cross of Calvary for us.  So, it is not limited to one nation, or to one era, but it has great significance to this day, because of the Messiah who has come to fulfill it.  Yet there are many aspects of it in its fall Feasts that are yet to be fulfilled Eschatologically, therefore much of the Law still in several aspects are still at play.  It is fallacious to argue against this reality as the critic does. 

FACT: This is pure Hyper-Dispensational heresy being taught as mainline “Christian” doctrine.  Hyper-Dispensationalism may use Christian terms because those who promote it are themselves from within the Dispensational faction in the Church, but its extreme interpretations of Scripture is the antithesis of sound Christian doctrine and does a great disservice to Dispensational Theology.  No self-respecting Dispensationalist would agree to it, just as they would not agree to Dual Covenant Theology, another extreme expression of Hyper-Dispensational Theology. 

FACT: The critic’s argument falls flat from there, because it is based on the fabrication the critic himself sets up as his own law to apply to the premise of the author’s book.  In doing this, he argues against the entire writings of the New Testament, because it is filled with citations it uses as hallmark of the Christian Faith applicable not only to Israel, but to the nations as well.  Therefore we read Paul writing, not in the intellect and religious reasoning of men, but in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, who does not contradict itself, for Scripture cannot be broken; the following:

You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.  All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

(2Timothy 3:14-17)

CLAIM: AMERICA DESERVES JUDGMENT, BUT JONATHAN CAHN’S BOOK IS BIBLICALLY FLAWED: SUMMARY: The Mystery of the Shemitah has significant problems that should give pause to anyone who takes the Word of God seriously.  While America is definitely deserving of God's judgment and a call to repentance is definitely in order, the foundational premise of this book is biblically flawed from the outset.  The Shemitah (Jewish Sabbath year) was an obligation given specifically and exclusively to the nation of Israel and there is no biblical support whatsoever for the idea that God would either require the Shemitah year of any other nation or that He would impose a Shemitah-type judgment on a seven-year cycle on any nation, including the nation of Israel.  Furthermore, none of the assertions and fact-claims in the book concerning economic trends and financial statistics is documented whatsoever, raising the question of exactly where did the author get any of his information.  The burden of proof for such assertions should never be on the reader if an author is to be taken seriously.

FACT: While I must objectively agree with critic’s objection here about the lack of documentation in Pastor and Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn’s book, The Mystery of the Shemitah, but I disagree with his premise that the book in his words, “has significant problems that should give pause to anyone who takes the Word of God seriously.”  Allow me to explain why.  This critic is known for throwing these statements out there, but without anything to offer as evidence for his assertions.  He is free to make such claims as often as he likes, but one would wish he would present some solid biblical evidence in support of what he says.  He does not.  He only argues the point, leaves it there, and goes on to the next.  I do not know what is more insulting; that he would do this, or that he expects us to accept what he claims against Rabbi Cahn’s well-researched and compelling book at face value.  Please spare us. 

Additionally, the objection to the “lack of documentation,” in other words, the source of the graphs and data compiled, organized, described, and explained in Rabbi Cahn’s book, The Mystery of the Shemitah, is what the critic complains about here, because it’s not that he wants to know where Rabbi Cahn got his information – that goes without saying – the reason he brings this up is in order to present an objection to the book; any objection will do, as long as it is an objection.  Were Rabbi Cahn to present to him his source/s, instantly there is no doubt in my mind, that the critic would scour the Internet, travel the world, and inquire in the most unlikely places, any scrap of what in his mind would be “evidence” to contradict the information in order to discredit The Mystery of the Shemitah.  Although this is a valid objection, it is not at the heart of what this critic opposes Rabbi Cahn’s book.  There is a lot of history behind his objections and much personal bias involved in it against the author by this critic.  I have followed this critic and others like him for two years, and there is more to this objection than what he presents here.

Long before Jonathan Cahn wrote his books, I spent over thirty-five years studying Biblical Eschatology as well as Biblical History and Biblical Archeology, independently of Rabbi Cahn’s teachings and long ago reached the same conclusion Abraham Lincoln reached in his reading of the Bible; and for that manner, almost every statesman we have ever had, all of whom, in one form or another, bear witness either in their private journals, personal correspondence with associates and family members, or in their public statements that “the judgments of the Lord are just,”, and we have ample illustrations by way of examples throughout the Scriptures, in both testaments, that God does not deal with unjust weights and unjust measures regarding His nation or the nations of the earth; nor does He with individuals, but what He requires of one, He does of the other.  If this were not the case, then we would not preach the Gospel, which is calling all men everywhere to repentance and salvation in Christ.  It is the cross that is at the epicenter of history, and God’s redemptive plan in it precedes history.

Because of this, I readily recognized a biblical principle, contested by the critic over an of semantics, that Jonathan Cahn teaches, which reflect the biblical template of remedial warnings, or judgments as Abraham Lincoln called them, followed additional remedial judgments – or harbingers as Rabbi Cahn calls them – increasing in frequency and severity with each ignored warning, until a nation either repents (as the Ninevites did with one warning), or continues in its demise into total self-destructive depravity towards its extinction by God’s judgment for its sins.

FACT: Jonathan Cahn is biblically correct where he writes of two of what he calls “keys” to understanding these remedial judgments or warnings, which he calls “harbingers,” which I call elements – two keys or essential elements in recognizing the judgments of God.  He describes it thusly.  I quote:

“The mystery of The Harbinger reveals an ancient template of national judgment now replaying in modern America.  This template reveals a specific progression from the moment of the nation’s first shaking in the form of an enemy strike, to the day of its destruction.  Two of the keys involved in this progression are these:

1.   “If the nation rejects the first shaking and warning it of judgment, there will come another, and another, until the nation either returns to God or descends into the full end of judgment.

2.    ‘“The Isaiah 9:10 Effect’ – The attempt of a nation to defy the course of its judgment, apart from repentance, will, instead, set in motion a chain of events to bring about the very calamity it sought to avert.”

(Jonathan Cahn, The Mystery of the Shemitah, pp. 136-137, Charisma Media/Charisma House Book Group, 2014, Lake Mary, Florida)

In his prophetically powerful little book, titled, A Prophetic Manifesto, this is how Dr. David R. Reagan describes what Rabbi Cahn is writing about in his own words.  I quote:

The Steps to Destruction

“The first chapter of Romans reveals how God deals with a rebellious nation.  He will step back, lower the hedge of protection and allow evil to flourish.  The first result of this action will be the outbreak of a sexual revolution which occurred in this nation in the 1960’s (Romans 1:24-25)

“If the nation refuses to repent, God will take a second step back, lower the hedge again, and a plague of homosexuality will be unleashed (Romans 1:26-27).  That happened in our nation in the 1980’s, and it accelerated in the 1990’s.

“If the nation continues in its sin with no sign of repentance, God will step back a third time, lower the hedge again, and the society will be delivered over to a “depraved mind” that will result in its destruction (Romans 1:28-32).

“The time has come for God to deliver us over to a depraved mind — to deliver us from judgment to destruction.  We have reached the point of no return, which is identified by the biblical prophets as the point where “the wound cannot be healed” (Jeremiah 30:12, Micah 1:9, and Nahum 3:19).

Our Prophetic Type

“Only one other nation in history has been as blessed as ours, and that was ancient Judah.  Like us, they rebelled against the God who had blessed them so richly.  And as with us, God sent prophets to call them to repentance.  When they refused, He hammered them with remedial judgments.

“When they persisted in their rebellion, God delivered them from judgment to destruction, allowing the Babylonians to conquer them and take them away from their homeland into captivity.  The fate of Judah prompted two of the saddest verses in the Bible:

Part 1: The Death of America 17

“The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them again and again by His messengers, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place; but they continually mocked the messengers of God, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, until there was no remedy.

(2 Chronicles 36:15-16)

“We may experience a temporary revival, as ancient Judah did when the righteous king Josiah succeeded the monster king Manasseh (2 Chronicles 34-35).  But when Josiah was killed, the nation plunged right back into spiritual darkness and soon ceased to exist (2 Chronicles 36).  Evil had simply become too ingrained in the fabric of the nation.

“Like ancient Judah, our fate is sealed. Our collapse will be just as sudden and overwhelming.  Why should God treat us any differently?  We can be assured that He will not.”

(Dr. David R. Reagan, A Prophetic Manifesto, pp. 16-17, Lamb & Lion Ministries, McKinney, Texas, May, 2012)

Dr. Charles A. Clough, Th.M, M.S. is cited by White House correspondent Bill Koenig on how the principles which govern God’s standards as codified in the Mosaic Law given to Israel as its Constitution at Sinai as it embarked upon its journey to possess is inheritance as a nation, governs the patterns of judgment in human history.  As it is with all things; it begins with Israel, but it ends with the nations; this is the biblical pattern of God’s redemptive plan in human history and it is the pattern of His judgments which fall into that plan. (Acts 17:26-28, Romans 2:9-16)

God’s Pattern of Judgment

Meteorologist and Bible teacher Charles A. Clough, Th.M, M.S. gives us his insights in the article below. For more information on Charles, click here for his bio.

“The proper way to understand prophecies of catastrophes is to follow the apostle Peter’s approach and look at the true record of God’s past historical judgments (2 Pet. 3:5-7). [Emphasis added.]

“This says, “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” (2 Pet. 3:5-7, KJV, emphasis added)

“The most catastrophic judgment ever to befall mankind is the flood of Noah’s day which radically altered the planet and which is used in Scripture to illustrate God’s future end-time judgments (Matt. 24:37-39; Luke 17:26-27).

“The flood judgment had a specific pattern:

“1. The judgment came suddenly (Gen. 7:11), but only after a period of grace (Gen. 6:1-8).

“2. It involved the total physical environment in the heavens and earth in ways previously unobserved (Gen. 6:17, 2 Pet. 2:5-6).

“3. It surgically and precisely separated the saved from the lost (Gen. 6:18-21, 2 Pet. 2:5-9).

“4. It included specific and geopolitical phenomena that manifested God’s glory in a supernatural fashion (Ps. 29:3, Gen. 8:1; Ezek. 1:28; Rev. 4:3, Gen. 9:13-16).

“God continued the pattern of judgment throughout the subsequent history of Israel.

“The Lords past judgments are a pattern and model for future judgments

“The judgment pattern is an inherent feature of God’s rule as explained in the Mosaic Covenant (Lev. 26 and Deut. 28). It is the Biblical answer to the problem of evil. God’s determination to deal with the consequences of the fall was not only for Israel but for the nations (Deut. 30:7; 32:43; Isa. 34).

“The Old Testament prophets announced coming judgments within previous judgment patterns.

“Their prophecies of future judgment, therefore, used the vocabulary of these past judgments (Isa. 10:26; 11:15; 28:21; 29:6; Zech. 14:4-8).

“The New Testament continues the Old Testament view that God judges with awesome power. Jesus and the apostle John repeat familiar prophetic language of unprecedented physical judgments accompanied by Theophanies (Matt. 24:29-30; Rev. 16:18). [Emphasis added.]

“The online dictionary Theopedia explains that a theophany is “an explicit appearance of God to a person.  In a sense, the story of Jesus on Earth is one long theophany (John 14:9), but the term is generally reserved for dramatic, short-lived, supernatural experiences of God [emphasis added].”

“The same fire, smoke, hail, thunder, plague and earthquake of the Old Testament judgments once against appear in Revelation 6-18.

“God’s past judgments thus model his future judgments. [Emphasis added.]

To read the full article in Good News For Israel, click here.

The following is how God’s Word describes it.  I quote:

“At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it.  Or at another moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to build up or to plant it; if it does evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will think better of the good with which I had promised to bless it.

(Jeremiah 18:7-10)

This principle of repentance following a harbinger – a remedial judgment – a warning from God – which God honors is illustrated beautifully in the Book of Jonah.  Although Nineveh was not given a choice; it was not told to repent or die, but it was given a warning that in forty days it would face God’s judgment.  Here is the account as the Scriptures have recorded for us:

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you.”  So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.  Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days’ walk.  Then Jonah began to go through the city one day’s walk; and he cried out and said, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”

(Jonah 3:1-4) 

Destruction was eminent and there appeared on its surface as there was nothing for these people to do but await what appeared to be their fate – destruction and death for their sins.  After all, this was a foreign nation without a covenant with God and with no Law given by Him to speak of.  What could they expect, but eminent judgment?  They knew of no prior precedent where the God of the Hebrews, to their knowledge, spared anyone outside of Israel, especially after being given a prophetic death sentence with no recourse for repentance and salvation. 

According to the mindset and thinking of The Harbinger’s critics, under such circumstances and for this reason alone, there was nothing to do but await death.  There was no reason for these people to accept the word of a Hebrew prophet, because they had no covenant with his God, and no Law by His God to govern them, and therefore no pact with the God of the Israelites, a conquered people under their iron rule.  They had every reason to believe that the God of the Hebrews had abandoned them, and that they (the Assyrians) now had His favor. 

In the mind of The Harbinger’s critics, there was absolutely no reason that God should have any regard for these people and impose on them any of His standards codified under His Law given to His nation – Israel.  After all, this is what they argue about even regarding Solomon’s prayer in Deuteronomy 7:14, and other extreme form of Hyper-Dispensationalism. 

In fact, according to their reasoning, as expressed by these critics of Rabbi Cahn, the Mosaic Law had no legal jurisdiction over them or any other nation but only Israel, and therefore there would be absolutely no reason for God to send one of His prophets to deliver to these Gentiles a rebuke regarding something that according to Paul in Romans when sin, takes its opportunity through the commandment to produce in these Gentiles every kind of behavior God’s Law considers a violation of such commandments contained within the Law; for apart from the Law sin is dead.  Yet, sin took its opportunity to give life to the commandment contained in that Law, and it (sin) brought God’s judgment on this Gentile nation, just as it did to God’s people who had such a Law both codified and given to them at the onset of the Mosaic Covenant. (Romans 7:4-13) 

Yet this people who had no prior knowledge of God, who did not read the Scriptures of the Hebrews, who had no existing covenant with God, and who worshipped false gods of their own; was visited by a Hebrew prophet with a word from God.  This word, compelled its citizenry to repent of sin in sackcloth and ashes.  Here is the account as the Word of God gives it:

Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.  When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth and sat on the ashes.  He issued a proclamation and it said, “In Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing.  Do not let them eat or drink water.  But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth; and let men call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands.  Who knows, God may turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger so that we will not perish.”

(Jonah 3:5-9) 

And God (who heals on the Sabbath, who Himself rested of all work on the seventh day from creation) Himself set this precedent for the day He codified it into His Law, and Whose universal principles of grace apply to every nation under heaven – overlooked the sins of idolatry committed in ignorance at that time (Acts 17:30), and in His forbearance, God passed over their sins (Romans 3:25) – relented and spared the capital city of the Assyrian Empire (Jonah 3), because God is not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (2Peter 3:9).  This is how the biblical narrative describe what God did when these heathens turned to Him:

When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them.  And He did not do it.

(Jonah 3:10) 

So God called out to these people with His prophet – a people without His Law to speak of, yet here they demonstrated the keeping of the Law, as Paul writes, by exhibiting from every person – from the greatest to the least – the Law of God through their sincere repentance of sin, and humbling that few Christian Evangelicals today – yes, us – even display in our dealings with God and with one another, and towards outsiders.

It is clear about the judgments of God with regards to all nations – in keeping with His standards which do not change from nation to nation – for it says:

Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a disgrace to any people.

(Proverbs 14:34)

Time and again, we see throughout the Hebrew Bible, examples of these, all of them nations both blessed and judged by the God of Israel, who had no covenant with Him, had no law to speak about, and were as it Paul describes them in this way:

remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. (Ephesian 2:12).  But what does the Scriptures declare?  I quote:

Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

(1Corinthians 10:11)

And:

For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example, because we did not act in an undisciplined manner among you.

(2Thessalonians 3:7)

And the Apostle Paul continues, writing:

not because we do not have the right to this, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you, so that you would follow our example

(2Thessalonians 3:9)

And the Apostle Peter writes:

For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps

(1Peter 1 Peter 2:21)

CLAIM: JONATHAN CAHN BUILDS UPON THE CONCEPTS HE INTRODUCED IN THE HARBINGER: In this book, Jonathan Cahn builds on concepts he presented in The Harbinger, particularly those in the chapter titled in that book.

BACKGROUND: In the Law of Moses, God required that his people, the Children of Israel, cease from their work on the seventh or Sabbath day of each week.  During the time that they were in the wilderness, God provided a double-portion of manna on the 6th day each week, so that they would not have to work on the Sabbath, even if it only meant gathering food for that day.

In addition to the Sabbath day, the Lord also instructed them to observe a Sabbath year, during which the Israelites were to allow the land to rest from planting and harvesting.  And not only was it an agrarian cycle, but it was also an economic cycle as lenders were required to forgive or "release" (the meaning of Shemitah) borrowers from the obligation of repaying their debts.  In order to prevent the collapse of Israel's economy and to provide for their need for food during the entire seventh year, God actually tripled the harvest in the sixth year to carry them through.

However, over time, as the Israelite men disobeyed the Law concerning marrying wives from the other nations where idolatry and the worship of false gods was practiced, these foreign wives brought their idolatrous practices and pagan worship into the nation of Israel.  The result was that the worship of the one true God was abandoned and the Law of Moses was largely ignored.  Consequently, Israel failed to observe the Sabbath year for 70 cycles - meaning a period of 490 years.

In judgment against this pervasive sin, God used the merciless Babylonian empire as His agent of bringing judgment upon Israel because they had turned from Him.  Furthermore, the Babylonians carried most of the nation of Israel into captivity - a captivity which lasted for 70 years - one year for each cycle of seven years that the nation had forsaken the Shemitah or Sabbath year.  Thus through this God-imposed Shemitah, with the Israelites in captivity, this allowed the land of Israel to rest for the same number of years that the Israelites had failed to allow the land to rest voluntarily.

COMMENT: In his commentary above under the context titled BACKGROUND, the critic above is historically correct, therefore there is nothing to add to this, but to commend him for a correct historical backdrop to this discussion.  This is one of only two places where I agree with the critic, but it has to do more with contextual than theological reasons, as we shall see.  Would that the what follows had been the same, but alas, this is perhaps wishing too much from this critic.  Let’s continue.

CLAIM: BOTH THE HARBINGER AND THE MYSTERY OF THE SHEMITAH MAKE CLAIMS ABOUT HEBREW SABBATH YEARS: EVALUATION: The premise of The Mystery of the Shemitah is that not only does the Shemitah explicitly and exclusively involve the nation of Israel, but that the "mystery of the Shemitah" is such that it is woven into the very fabric of history and the order of the creation and therefore can and does affect other nations and even the world through various calamities, including natural disasters, wars and financial crises - just as happened to Israel.

As such, Jonathan Cahn claims that God continues to follow the same seven-year cycle, based on the Hebrew calendar, and that just as He imposed a Shemitah upon Israel as a judgment of 70 years of captivity in Babylon because they turned from God, He will also impose a Shemitah upon any nation that turns from Him and when this happens that nation will suffer an economic crash and other cataclysmic events.

Just as in The Harbinger, Cahn claims that America has experienced just such calamities over the last many decades, with the most recent cluster beginning with the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001.  Furthermore, he claims that the mystery of the Shemitah has been working in conjunction with what he calls the Isaiah 9:10 Effect, and manifested itself with the precipitous fall in the stock market on the last day of the Hebrew month of Elul in both 2001 and 2008 - which, admittedly are exactly 7 years apart on the Hebrew calendar.

In addition, the author goes back in American history many decades and tries to demonstrate that the mystery of the Shemitah has been at work and that many financial crises have happened in at least roughly the time-frame of a number of these Sabbath years.

FACT: The first premise made the critic is patently false because The Harbinger and The Mystery of the Shemitah both describe historical events that are a matter of both public record and history.  They are not claims, as this critic describes them.  They are events which have actually happened on the dates described in these two books.  The critic is arguing against events that have actually happened!  

Additionally, THE MYSTERY OF THE SHEMITAH collects specific events which occurred on specific dates with specific historical national and global repercussions on the economies of this nation and those of the major powers in the last 150 years.  It is no speculation, it is not prognostication, it is not even empty claims, all of which the critic tries to impute to the author as having made.  He is wrong.  The critic argues against what has already happened, how it happened, when it happened, and why it happened without knowing a single thing about it.

The evidence incontrovertibly speaks for itself of against these historical events being claims as this critic says, and as matters of public and biblical record, they are easily verifiable if the person is serious enough to do it and not take this critic’s word for it.  The critic’s use of calling historical events falling on a precise dates and bringing precise results “claims” is utterly preposterous and uncalled for, unnecessary, and highly misleading. 

No one in their right mind calls a historical event falling on a precise date with exact and precise results “a claim” unless their intent is to discredit the information by misleading others about a topic.  Where’s the evidence that it is a claim?  I challenge the critic to show it.  There is none, because these events happened and they fell precisely on the dates given in these two books, and happened precisely as the books described them, with the precise results given in the narrative of both works.

The Harbinger is written in the form of a novel that describes a biblical pattern of judgment that has repeated itself in just about every great civilization in history, but the book focuses on how this specific pattern of judgment befell the northern kingdom of Israel, headquartered in Samaria, in 732 B.C. when the prophet Isaiah rebuked and pronounced judgment on the nation for vowing – as he describes it – “in pride and in arrogance of heart” (Isaiah 9:9) ) to undertake a rebuilding and recovery program after a limited first strike on the land was made by Assyria.  This rebuilding, replanting, and recovery effort was done without accounting to God in repentance, or giving Him any mind, much as our leaders today have done today.

FACT: The full strike occurred ten years later in 722 B.C., when the Assyrian Empire invaded Damascus, overran the northern kingdoms’ defenses, and exiled almost the entire population to the east, to the cities of Halah and Habor, on the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. (1Kings 17:6)  The Assyrians then resettled the land with Gentiles from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sephar-vaim; who then mingled with what was left of the Israelites to produce what became known as the Samaritans. (2Kings 17:29)

FACT: The Harbinger breaks the various parts of this judgment down to its elements – nine specific warnings – harbingers – that manifested themselves in the land, and describes according to the summary parts contained within the biblical text as they are described in the vow made by the ancient leaders of Israel and how historically these played out, and their subsequent results.  This vow was pivotal to their fate, because in pronouncing it, they unwittingly pronounced their own judgment, which Isaiah uses to prophesy God’s judgment on them and the land.

The Harbinger then takes the reader to the present and describes in exact detail and precision how the same pattern of judgment has befallen the United States.  It documents thoroughly the biblical history contained in Isaiah’s prophecy and the prophetic events that are now a matter of public record available regarding the same patterns of warning and judgment that are now repeating in our land today, in the same recurring pattern of warning and judgment as they occurred in ancient Israel.

CLAIM: AMERICA IS SUBJECT TO THE SHEMITAH AND THE BOOK BOMBARDS US WITH A DELUGE OF ASSERTIONS AND CLAIMED FACTS CONNECTED TO THE SHEMITAH WITH NO FOOTNOTES, However, before one gets too excited or becomes too convinced that "Cahn has done it again" (as some have put it), a number of things need to be considered.

Among the many problems with both The Harbinger and the Shemitah, the three that immediately come to the reader's attention are 1) Cahn mistakenly identifies the Shemitah as a universal principle that can affect any and all nations, 2) he wrongly identifies America as being a parallel to the nation of Israel in that he says it is a nation once dedicated to God and his purposes, but which has turned from God and is therefore subject to the "the mystery of the Shemitah," and 3) one of the most egregious errors for a work of non-fiction, Cahn bombards the reader with a deluge of assertions and claimed facts concerning financial and economic trends, building programs, and calamitous events which he connects to the Shemitah - but does so without any footnotes or any citations of source material whatsoever.

FACT: Again, because the critic above does not understand biblical prophecy, he believes that it is simply prediction and then fulfillment, and that’s that.  What’s more, because of a type of Hyper-Dispensationalism, not his fault, this is what he was taught and has come to believe personally, he does not see any application of Israel as an example or template for any nation, so he makes the sweeping presumptuous statements one reads above.  Of course, the critic is in error theologically, though he does not realize it, because the error forms an integral part of his theology, and because he attaches such importance to this particular brand of theology as vital to his faith, his theology is to him his faith.  In light of this, it is understandable how he can arrive at such incorrect conclusions, and then make opinions just as equally incorrect which support them, without providing any biblical evidence in support of his arguments.

FACT: What the critic forgets here is that The Mystery of the Shemitah is a sobering analysis of historical trends that have occurred in time and space which all have fallen precisely during specific Hebrew days.  It has absolutely nothing to do with whether we or America are under the Mosaic Law; it has to do with God’s providence and His universal standards applicable to every nation under heaven. 

FACT: The nations which were dispossessed of the land of Canaan had no covenant with God or law to speak of, yet they were dispossessed for their sin.  So it is that God’s Word speaks of every nation under heaven that it is righteousness that exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.  Thus, it is God’s standards of which His Law illustrates, but which predates it, which govern the course of nations and kingdoms through history and right up to this day and beyond it until the Messiah returns. 

This is missed by critics such as he.  Additionally, his statement above that America is “is a nation once dedicated to God and his purposes, but which has turned from God and is therefore subject to the "the mystery of the Shemitah," as the critic asserts above, he claims is patently false and incorrect.  Well, he is wrong.  There is no place in the Scriptures where God judges the sin of any nation differently than His own.  Nowhere. 

FACT: The critic’s assertions above are entirely unbiblical and therefore erroneous, because God’s standards for righteousness are just and equal and applicable to every nation under heaven.  A codified Law given under a temporary covenant does not change that, just as it does not change the promise of grace given to Abraham who preceded it (Galatians 3:17).  The principles within that Law are eternal and universal as it applies to sin and judgment righteousness and rewards. 

FACT: God does not deal in unjust weights and unjust measures.  That is an abomination to Him.  America was originally founded as a society patterned by its founders – the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock – after the biblical pattern of the nation of Israel.  It is matter of historical record that the Puritans and the Pilgrims were devout Christians and they structured their communities after the Bible.  So, the critic is wrong here as well.

FACT: The critic’s third opinion above is pure hyperbole, because rather than using such charged and provocative language, he could’ve simply said, as I do, that he wished Rabbi Cahn had provided his sources for the many graphs and charts and historical data he cites in his book.  In that I agree, but I do agree with using hyperbole to make that point.  It’s not necessary.

FACT: BUT THE CRITIC’S COMPLAINTS AND CONTENTIONS BELY AND TOTALLY IGNORES THE UNCANNY JUXTOPOSITION OF THE EVENTS TO PRECISE HEBREW DATE THE SHEMITAH FELL WHEN THE CALAMITIES TOOK PLACE.  He cleverly sidesteps this, because he would have to present evidence to show that these events did not occur on the dates they did, and this would require a total revision of history by this critic in order to do it, because THE EVENTS HAPPENED PRECISELY AS DESCRIBED IN THE BOOK AND ON THE EXACT DATES MENTIONED.  That no critic can over-write and undo.  They happened. 

CLAIM: THE BIBLE DOESN’T SUPPORT OR HINT THAT GOD IMPOSES A SHEMITAH UPON ANY NATION BUT ISRAEL: There is not the slightest biblical support - and not even a hint that God expects or will impose a Shemitah upon any nation but Israel.  There are no commands nor are there any examples whatsoever in the Scriptures that this is some sort of universal principle woven into the fabric of the Creation.  Beyond this, in an appearance on the Jim Bakker show in August, Jonathan Cahn stated that when he was writing The Mystery of the Shemitah, "the revelations just came" to him from God, placing him in the position of essentially claiming to receive new revelation from God such that he is functioning as a prophet (my words, not his).  This is significant because he is claiming to have discovered and is now revealing a mystery that has been neither seen nor expounded before he started doing so.

FACT: The statement the critic makes above is like all of the rest he makes here.  He lays a claim but does not present evidence for the claim he makes.  He expects the reader to accept what he says at face value without any biblical basis for it.  It is interesting how the critic here argues against something which, according to the critic, Jonathan Cahn says in The Mystery of the Shemitah has never been seen or expounded before.  Yet without realizing it, the critic argues against something that he himself has never seen before he read The Mystery of the Shemitah, not realizing that what he is arguing against had not been expounded until Jonathan Cahn wrote his book by his own admission!  First, the critic complains against the author, or presumably any Spirit-filled Evangelical Christian making a discovery that has not been made before; then he complains that he (the critic) hadn’t made it, so in his thinking, it can’t be true.  This is pure absurdity.  Not only is it pure absurdity, but it is the height of religious hubris.  The prophets Daniel and Joel have prophesied would occur in the last days.  We are in the last days.  But unfortunately the critic himself is an avowed Cessationist, and as such he does not believe in biblical revelation into the Scriptures such as that claimed by this author.  Now here is a question that I would pose to the critic for saying, I quote,  

“Jonathan Cahn stated that when he was writing The Mystery of the Shemitah, "the revelations just came" to him from God, placing him in the position of essentially claiming to receive new revelation from God such that he is functioning as a prophet (my words, not his).  This is significant because he is claiming to have discovered and is now revealing a mystery that has been neither seen nor expounded before he started doing so.”

This is what I would ask this critic, “Where does it say in Scripture that since the ascension of the Messiah two thousand years ago,” (and the advent of the Holy Spirit and His commencement of “falling upon all flesh” – that is to say, not limited to just prophets, kings, priests, and a select few within Israel – but beyond Israel and upon the nations of the earth all who come to the Israel’s Messiah – I might remind the critic) – “since when or where does the Scripture say that the Holy Spirit will not impart knowledge, insight, and understanding into previously sealed books of the Bible at these last days?” 

Daniel is clear about this.  In fact, it was the Protestant Reformers and many who preceded them, who were persecuted by the Catholic Church, using similar arguments as the critic does here with this author; men whom God the Holy Spirit enlightened with the revelation that salvation is through Christ alone, by faith alone, and not through the institution of the Roman Catholic Church.  To claim here that such revelation is not possible is to deny the very foundation that Protestant Christianity itself stands upon.  Such are the heresies in Cessationism combined with Hyper-Dispensational thinking that leads to such sweeping claims without any biblical foundation whatsoever.  But even in the first century, such men were found in the Church, for Jude describes them in this way, I quote:

These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage.

(Jude 1:16)

They appear a certain way to their peers, whom they wish to make a good impression upon, but inside them is a pathological darkness they have allowed after crossing barriers God has set up in the human conscience, and a point is reached where they no longer listen to the voice of God, but justify everything they do and say because they have the approval of their peers, who by now have taken over the integral part of God’s Spirit in them, whom the person listens to more than he does anything or anyone else, yes, even God.  When a person finds the opinions of others of more importance than they do God’s, then they’ve crossed that line, and their conscience is seared; their frontal lobe recedes, and they are operating on pure intellect fed by dopamine induced psychosis.  By then, there is no more conscience, because what little of it is left no longer operates normally.  This the Romans One Syndrome.  And this is how Paul describes it:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.

(Romans 1:18-19)

When the truth is willfully suppressed by “the little white lies” and “the stretched truth” becomes “the truth,” with each successive selective bending to justify the act or the claim, the dopamine-induced rush, feeds the need for more and greater and more sweeping claims, leading for more and more of the same until the inhibitors which could’ve and would’ve prevented any further crossings themselves are mollified and the person out of their own will surrenders to the pathology whatever it may be.  It can be of a religious nature, such as here, or anything else that induces the person to sin greater and greater with each successive breach of the conscience and transgression of the commandment, leading to sin and eventually causing the person to become totally reprobate.  Thus we read the following:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.  For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

(Romans 1:20-23)

The Scripture above deals with the pathology of idol worship and animalistic religious practices of the ancient and modern pagan, but it applies to all types of pathologies and aberrant sinful behavior in people, and the effects these have on the human mind, body, and spirit, their mental, emotional, and physical health.  There comes a point of no return.  Here is what Paul describes in the following part, and take note, the person whom he describes once knew God, but has ceased in some way to acknowledge Him – that is to say, that person has stopped listening to Him (acknowledging Him), and now listens to other suggestions either of Satanic origin or of human origin or conjured demonically in his mind as he begins to undergo increased demonic oppression.  The most extreme examples of this is Schizophrenia and dementia.  Paul writes:

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.  For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

(Romans 1:24-25)

When the opinions of other men become more important and take precedence over God’s Word and His opinion, a person then become idolatrous towards to whomever they give the importance or adoration to.  It can be religious or it can be a non-religious, but it is idolatry, and it does not honor God. 

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

(Romans 1:26-27)

In the case above, Paul is tackling the sin of the deviant lifestyle of the homosexual, transsexual, and Lesbian – what is popularly known today as the LGBIT lifestyle that our society and our government promotes today.  But again, the pathology can by anything that puts a barrier between the person and God.  Let us continue.

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

(Romans 1:28-32)

Now let me be clear about this, I am not saying that this critic or any other are in the advance stages of what is described above.  I mention it here, because anyone can allow themselves over time to become this way, and suffer the consequences for it in their lives.  I interject here, because what you have just read above has had destructive effects on families, on ministries, on occupations and careers, and with relationships.  This is what Paul refers to when he warns us not to be slaves to sin any longer, but to be slaves of righteousness.  I quote:

What shall we say then?  Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?  May it never be!  How shall we who died to sin still live in it?  Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?  Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.  For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.  For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.  Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.  For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

What then?  Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?  May it never be!  Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?  But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.  I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.  For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.  Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed?  For the outcome of those things is death.  But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(Romans 6:1-23)

For example, the critic claims now that it is not about the author, Jonathan Cahn, just about the issues.  Not true.  The highly charged personal language the critic used from the onset belay a more sinister agenda than just the issues.  While in the very beginning it might’ve been altruistic, there were many hurdles and barriers that the critic and his colleagues crossed many times long go, which have dulled the sense of conscience enough to the point where it is indistinguishable to them between the two. 

So in their minds, and in the present case, in the critic’s mind, there is absolutely nothing wrong with his approach – though he has been told many times by several mature Bible-believing Christians that it is unbiblical – he believes it to be completely biblical, especially since he is encouraged by this group of people he puts great stock in to continue in these activities, rather than seek not the counsel of men, but of God’s Word on these matters, and listen to the voice God put in him, which with each successive blow, has become weaker and weaker and smaller and smaller, as his rush gets greater and the need for the “fix” increases with each barrage of attack he presents against this particular author and those who defend him.

Recognizing what I do above, a more objective reviewer than the critic on Amazon.com felt compelled to address this critic in the following manner, I quote:

Hi Mr. James,

Come on now at least be fair in your criticism.  There are literally hundreds of books written about Daniel 9 which claim Ezra and Nehemiah are contemporaries of "Artaxerxes" Longimanus and all of them provide less evidence for that assumption than Mr. Cahn does for his belief.  It must be admitted that the "Artaxerxes" assumption is magnitudes more important to our eschatology beliefs than anything Mr. Cahn has written.  If we insist on pulling the mote out of Mr. Cahn's eye wouldn't it be best to first address the beam in our own?

Warm regards,

William Struse

IN CONCLUSION:

The critic gives no slack.  He criticizes Jonathan Cahn for writing The Mystery of the Shemitah,, then criticizes him because it didn’t exist before he wrote it!  Can you believe this guy!!!????  This is typical of this critic, as he does here, so he does everywhere else he writes on any topic regarding anything Jonathan Cahn teaches or has written.  This is pure lunacy and absolute sophistry, masking an unhealthy obsession this critic has with this author and has had it for almost three years.

I have reached the conclusion about this man that because he is now defending his credibility, rather than retract the false charges and false witness against this author, and going after those who posted the Anti-Semitic diatribes about Jonathan Cahn being a Kabbalist and an Occult New Ager who dabbles in mysticism and a teacher of Gnosticism, rather than pursuing these people and asking them to retract these falsehoods against Rabbi Cahn, the critic and his band of "trusted men" did absolutely NOTHING AT ALL to stop this, and this went on for over two years. 

Now he's out again, arguing against events that have taken place as described in Jonathan Cahn’s book, to argue Hyper-Dispensationalism against any portion of the Mosaic Law having any relevance for the born again Christians!  I repeat, the cross itself has finds its most impressive types, allegories, and metaphors in the sacrificial system codified and contained within the Mosaic Law! 

The Feasts of Israel are all prophetic metaphors of God's various dispensations in His redemptive plan throughout history!  The moral code contained within the commandments govern the universe.  The priesthood within the Law is a type of the Messiah's priesthood.  I can go on and on and on, and the nations who did not have the Law or covenant with God have historically been judged as He has judged His people!  God does not met out justice with differing weights and differing measures.  This is pure nonsense.  Where does such dichotomy exist in the New Testament?  It does not.  Indeed the Apostles do not cite the Law of Moses to teach, "You’re a Jew.  This is for you.  You’re not a Jew, but a Gentile, this is not for you.  This is for you, and this is not for you."  On the contrary, Paul goes to the Law and from the Law preaches the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, because he uses the Law to teach that by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified in his sight.

Not only this, but I've said it before and I'll say it again; we will all be going to Jerusalem during Sukkot and dwell in Sukas there every year, and Ezekiel is very clear about the sacrificial services being reestablished in the Third Temple Messiah will build.  And guess what?  Without the sacrificial system derived from the Law, there is absolutely NO MEANING TO THE CROSS OUTSIDE OF ISRAEL, because IT WAS THE SACRIFICAL SYSTEM THAT BORE WITNESS AND STILL DOES ABOUT THE CROSS.  THE MOSAIC LAW AND ITS SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM ESTABLISHED GOD'S MANDATED REQUIREMENT AND CLEAR STIPULATIONS AS TO HOW HE IS TO BE APPROACHED BY MAN AND WORSHIPPED.

In the Torah, God uses His Law to say, "Here is how you will worship Me," because IT IS THROUGH THE CROSS OF CHRIST THAT WE HAVE ONE ACCESS TO THE FATHER – BOTH JEW AND GENTILE - the only access, through faith in Jesus the Messiah.  Who was on the cross?  Jesus.  By what rubric is His sacrifice measured and given worth?  By the Law.  Toss out the Law and claim that it is irrelevant outside of Israel, and there is no meaning to the death of an obscure itinerant RABBI in a tiny middle eastern country at a tumultuous period in human history for non-Jews.  But put in the Law of Moses taught properly under the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God, in its proper context and purpose, and the death of this obscure RABBI, including Who He was, why He was, why He came, Who He came for, What He accomplished, and what He fulfilled and is yet to fulfill; all find its answers.  Think it though.  Without the Law, the cross is meaningless!!!

Now we have Hyper-Dispensationalists setting up religious dichotomies in their extreme theologies in order to establish a false Anti-Christ premise such as the one critics of this book are attempting to apply to The Mystery of the Shemitah.

Consider these things, because the method that every New Testament writer used when teaching from the Hebrew Scriptures, did not use the arguments this critic and other Hyper-Dispensationalists like him use, but cited the Law.  Were the writers of the New Testament to be writing the Scriptures today, they would be savaged by people the critic and others who attempt to apply a 150 year old literal method of interpretation across the board, as they do with everything else, in order to apply their anathemas across the board to other members of their faith with wanton abandon and total disregard to what the Scriptures say about those things. 

The writers of the New Testament did not flee from the Law, but taught argued from it and used it when it was necessary.  Paul wrote more than any other writer about the Law of Moses, and from the Law of Moses; yet nowhere will one find the arguments that the critic makes in what Paul wrote.  Nowhere.