The Mystery of the Shemitah (27 page)

Less than four months later the giant spire was placed on the tower’s pinnacle, to complete its height. In the rabbinical writings it is said that a solar eclipse is a sign of judgment upon the nations. It is not known from where the idea comes, if not derived from the scriptural references to the darkening of the sun on the Day of Judgment. But as something to note, the day they set the spire on top of the tower the sun was darkened. The tower reached its highest elevation on the day of a solar eclipse.

At the time of this writing, the tower still awaits its completion.

The Towering Harbinger

If the tower at Ground Zero is a harbinger, what is it a harbinger of? Of what does it portend?

The rising of America’s high towers have marked and paralleled America’s rising to the heights of world power and prosperity. But if the rising of a tower can bear witness of the rising of a nation, then of what does the fall of a tower bear witness? The unavoidable answer is this: it bears witness of the fall of a nation.

The same nation that was once marked by the rise of the world’s highest towers is no longer marked by them. It is now marked by their falling. And it has all taken place at the same time in that nation’s history, when the signs grow increasingly evident of the decline of its powers. And even more telling, it has all taken place when the signs of that nation’s spiritual and moral descent have grown overwhelmingly stark.

Towers, by nature, carry symbolic meaning. But rarely has a tower been vested with so much symbolic meaning as that which rose from the pavement of Ground Zero. But beyond any meaning assigned to it by its builders, the tower’s significance is prophetic. In this case the nation’s foremost tower is not simply a tower—but a harbinger—the fourth harbinger in an ancient biblical template of judgment. It speaks of a nation attempting to scale the heavens while, at the same time, descending from God—a physical rising and a spiritual fall—two conflicting realities.

The rising tower at Ground Zero was not only birthed by the ancient vow of Isaiah 9:10, but it is also its embodiment. The tower is the vow in concrete. It shouts of defiance. It tells of a nation that had once known God but then, in its blessings, turned against Him and warred against His ways. And it testifies of a people warned, shaken, and called by God to return, but who ignore the warning, who reject the call, and who attempt to beat back the effects of that shaking and rise higher than before, by virtue of their own powers, and against the ways of God.

Can such a nation again ascend to its former heights of glory while, at the same time, warring against the God of its foundation? The case of ancient Israel is a warning against such a nation’s attempt to rebuild itself stronger than before. For the tower it builds, as it was with the first tower ever recorded in Scripture, will be a harbinger of coming judgment.

Chapter 24
THAT WHICH LIES AHEAD

The Eyes of the Prophet

T
HE PROPHET GAZED
into the smoldering ruins of the holy city. He had been given warning by God and had, in turn, given warning to his nation. But they didn’t listen. They cast him into prison and continued on their course of defiance until the judgment finally came.

The year 586 BC was one of history’s turning points. Jeremiah was there to see it firsthand just as he was there to foretell it. As he now beheld the desolation of the holy city, he could not escape grappling with a mystery begun many centuries earlier in the wilderness of Sinai. The Law of Moses had foretold the day of destruction. According to the ancient words, the people would be sent into exile and the land would rest. And the time of that rest and desolation would be determined by the number of Sabbath years, the Shemitahs, the nation had broken.

As he surveyed the city of God now lying still and silent—desolate and devoid of its inhabitants—the prophet wept and pondered the mystery of the covenant. He knew that the word
shemitah
meant “the release.” And now the land had been released. He knew also that it signified “the letting fall.” And now God had allowed the holy city to fall and the kingdom of Judah itself to collapse. The prophet could now only wonder how the ancient mystery of the Shemitah could have so determined the fate of his nation.

The Mystery of the Shemitah

We now stand two and a half thousand years later, pondering the same mystery as pondered by the prophet in the ruins. We also may wonder how such an ancient mystery has so determined the course of nations, world markets, empires, and history. And as the prophet saw the mystery become flesh- and-blood reality in his own life and time when the cataclysm fell upon the land, it is now for us as well to bring the mystery home to our day and age, to see what it may hold and reveal concerning the future of America and the world.

We have seen an ancient ordinance of Scripture concerning a seventh year of rest and a Day of Remission transform into a mystery. We have observed the mystery growing larger in scope and dimensions to the point of involving the destruction of an ancient city and the exile of its people to a foreign land. We have moved forward in time to find the same mystery spanning thousands of years and operating in the modern world. We have witnessed its dynamics at work in the financial and economic realms, determining the rising and crashing of world markets, the economies of modern nations, and the greatest collapses in financial history. We have seen it coalesce with a mystery of towers, again joined to the dynamics of rising and falling. And we have watched it move on the stage of world history, determining the rise and fall of nations, the ascendancy of world powers and the collapse of empires.

The Quickening

What about the future? And why might the mystery of the Shemitah be especially relevant to our day and the days to come?

In the last two of the Shemitah’s cycles, those ending in 2001 and 2008, we have noticed a number of significant developments. First, the timing has become amazingly precise. Both of the last two greatest stock market point crashes in history have occurred on the exact same Hebrew day and the Shemitah’s exact same climactic Day of Remission and Nullification. The phenomenon appears, in its last manifestations, to have grown increasingly precise and dramatic.

Second, the phenomenon of the last two cycles was begun and triggered by one of the most dramatic events of modern times: 9/11. If it were not for 9/11, the ancient mystery would not have manifested. If it were not for the exact timing of 9/11, the timing of the stock market crash of 2001 would not have happened when it did at the time and in the exact hours of the Shemitah’s climactic conclusion.

Third, the amazing precision of the Shemitah’s last two occurrences are connected to the manifestation of harbingers, prophetic signs concerning the judgment of a nation—namely, America. Combine this with the fact that the Shemitah, in Scripture, manifests as a sign of national judgment—and we have a convergence of alarms.

Since we are dealing with the issue of judgment, our first question must be this: What has happened to America in the time of these last two cycles in which the phenomenon has intensified?

The Deepening

Though in the wake of 9/11 Americans gathered in houses of worship across the land and it appeared as if there would be a national return to God—it never came. In place of the revival was a spiritual and moral apostasy that was unprecedented in its scope and accelerating pace. There was now increasing talk concerning the end of “Christian America.” Polls noticed a growing departure from biblical ethics and values. The turn was most pronounced among the younger generation, portending a future of even greater moral and spiritual departure.

In the fall of ancient Israel the nation decided it could rewrite morality and change what was good and evil, sin and righteousness—so too in America. What had once been recognized as right was now attacked as evil, and what had once been recognized as sin was now celebrated as a virtue. Morals, standards, and values that had undergirded not only the nation’s foundation, but also the foundation of Western civilization and civilization itself, were increasingly overturned, overruled, and discarded. And those who would not go along with the change—who merely continued to uphold that which had once been universally upheld—were now increasingly marginalized, vilified, condemned by the culture and the state, and persecuted.

And not only did the blood of unborn children continue to flow, as it did in ancient Israel, but the number of those killed was now well over fifty million, a population of many Israels. The nation’s moral descent had now reached the point where the government was seeking to force those who held to God’s Word to go against that Word, punishing resistance with fines, damages, and condemnation. Any deviation from the new ethics of apostasy was swiftly punished. At the same time, the name of God increasingly became the object of attack, mockery, and blasphemy.

The Dark City on the Hill

It seemed as if every day a new threshold of apostasy and moral descent had been crossed. America was in moral and spiritual collapse and rapidly transforming into the dark opposite of the “city on a hill,” the “holy commonwealth” it had been founded to be. It had now entered the territory of ancient Israel’s apostasy—a nation to which the prophets cried out:

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.

—I
SAIAH
5:20

And that was the point. America, having been formed after the pattern of ancient Israel, was now following in the course of Israel’s apostasy. Thus it could be no accident that the same harbingers that appeared in the last days of ancient Israel were now reappearing in America. And each of those harbingers was warning of a coming judgment. Worse than that, America was responding to those warnings with the same defiance as had ancient Israel before judgment fell.

The Tipping Point

If one begins to tip over an object, a clear point is reached when one no longer needs to expend more energy or effort. The object is on the edge, and the slightest push will send it over. The edge of its falling is the tipping point. Once the tipping point is reached, the object will fall by itself with accelerating force. When a tipping point is reached, the dynamics change. Things accelerate. So it is with a nation.

It was at a critical tipping point in America’s descent from biblical morality that
The Harbinger
was released. Before God brings judgment, He warns. Since that time, the nation’s apostasy from the ways of God has not lessened but has dramatically accelerated.

The Harbingers Unstopped

The Harbinger
reveals the replaying of an ancient mystery of national judgment in twenty-first-century America. The mystery involves specific signs of warning given to ancient Israel in its last days now manifesting in America. That would be enough. But the mystery has not stopped. Since the release of the book, the mystery has continued. The harbingers have continued to manifest. And that which was written or foreshadowed in the book has been coming true. What does it mean?

The continuation of the harbingers signifies that the nation’s defiance of God has likewise continued. In other words, the progression of the harbingers reflects the progression of the apostasy—and thus the nation’s advance to judgment.

To Whom Much Is Given

The mystery presented in
The Harbinger
leads to an unavoidable question:

If America has followed in the same apostasy of ancient Israel, witnessed the manifesting of the same harbingers of judgment that appeared in ancient Israel, and responded to the warnings given with the same defiance with which ancient Israel responded, how then can it escape suffering the same judgment suffered by ancient Israel?

Some would object that other nations have exceeded America in all of these sins. But so it was in the ancient world. There was no shortage of examples of other nations that had exceeded Israel in all of the sins for which its judgment would come. But there was a major difference. God had revealed Himself to Israel. He had sent to the nation His Word, given them His law, revealed to them His ways. And He had blessed them with peace, prosperity, and protection.

It is written, “To whom much is given, from him much will be required” (Luke 12:48). Israel was given much. And much was required. The standards were higher and the judgment, when it came, more severe. So too has America been given much. The Word of God has filled its culture, and the blessings of God have filled its land. No nation in the modern world has been given so much blessing. But to whom much is given, much is required. If America has been given much, then much will be required. And its sins must be severely judged.