The Mystery of the Shemitah (32 page)

In Israel’s war of independence Jordanian forces had seized the ancient city of Jerusalem. Now in the first days of the Six-Day War Israel appealed to Jordan to stay out of the fighting. But Jordan joined other Arab nations in attacking. On June 7 Israeli troops approached the ancient city of Jerusalem held by Jordanian troops. General Mordechai Gur announced to his commanders:

We’re sitting right now on the ridge and we’re seeing the Old City. Shortly we’re going to go into the Old City of Jerusalem, that all generations have dreamed about. . . .
³

Jerusalem Returned

The Israeli paratroopers entered the Lion’s Gate and made their way through the cobblestone streets of the ancient city. They advanced toward the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. It was the first time that Jewish soldiers were seen in biblical Jerusalem since ancient times when the Romans destroyed it. They reach the Western Wall, the holiest site of Judaism. There, looking up at the massive stones above them, the soldiers stood in awe, many of them in tears. Spontaneously they began reciting the ancient Hebrew prayer of the
Shehechianu
:

Baruch Atah Adonai, Elohenu Melech Ha Olam Shehechianu, V’Kiemanu, V’Higianu Lazman Hazeh.

(Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has sustained us, who preserved our lives, and who has enabled us to reach this day.)

They were then joined by Rabbi Shlomo Goren, who sounded the shofar at the Western Wall to proclaim its liberation. Goren spoke to the soldiers gathered at the wall:

The vision of all generations is being realized before our eyes: The city of God, the site of the Temple, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, the symbol of the nation’s redemption, have been redeemed. . . .
⁴

The moment is epic. For the first time in two thousand years, for the first time since the calamity of AD 70, Jerusalem is in Jewish hands; the Holy City is restored to the Jewish people and the Jewish people to the Holy City. The moment is prophetic, a keystone in biblical end-time prophecy.

The Mystery of the Shemitah and the Restoration of Jerusalem

The Jubilee is largely focused on being restored to one’s land and inheritance. Every year, on Passover, the Jewish people would conclude the ceremonial meal by saying, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Now they were there. Apart from the restoration of the land itself, there could hardly have been a greater restoration for the Jewish nation in two thousand years of history than the restoration of Jerusalem. What does the restoration of Jerusalem have to do with the mystery of the Shemitah?

As we have seen, the Jubilee must take place in the year following the Year of the Shemitah. The Israeli soldiers entered the Lion’s Gate on June 7, 1967. The year before this and the Six-Day War was the Shemitah. For the first time since the calamity of AD 70, Jerusalem was back in Jewish hands. The Shemitah began on September 27, 1965, and ended on September 14, 1966. The liberation of Jerusalem took place in the year following the Shemitah, as in the Jubilee.

As with the granting of the land of Israel for a Jewish homeland, the regaining of Jerusalem was a prophetic Jubilee, a Jubilee lifted up in prayer by Jewish people all over the earth for almost two thousand years, a mega-Jubilee. And as in 1917, again it took place in the year following the Shemitah.

The Jubilee is the year of liberation. In the same way, now, after almost two thousand years Jerusalem was liberated by her children.

The Jubilee is about redemption. In the same way, that which took place in 1967 was seen by Jewish people all over the world as a pivotal moment of national redemption.

The Jubilee is the year of restoration. So in 1967 Jerusalem was restored to the Jewish people and the Jewish people to Jerusalem. In the eyes of the Jewish people, a greater restoration could hardly been imagined.

In the Year of Jubilee each one is to “return to his possession.” Jerusalem was given to the Jewish people by God. Now they had returned to their possession.

In the Year of Jubilee those who had taken possession of one’s inheritance have to relinquish it. In 1967 Jerusalem was relinquished by Jordanian troops, and the people of Israel entered the gates of the inheritance that had been promised them by God.

In the Year of Jubilee the people return to their ancestral homes. In 1967 the Jewish people returned to their ancestral home of Jerusalem. The fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 marked one of the greatest days of loss in Jewish history. Now what had been lost was restored—the Jubilee.

Finally, in the Year of Jubilee the shofar, the ram’s horn, is sounded throughout the land, signifying freedom and restoration—thus the name Jubilee. In 1967 not only was Jerusalem restored to the Jewish people, but also at the moment of its restoration, the ram’s horn was sounded at the Western Wall to signify freedom and restoration.

The Mystery of the Two Restorations

So here we have two of the most pivotal events in Jewish history, each a prophetic Jubilee, and each taking place in the year following the Shemitah, as does the Jubilee. Here are two of the greatest events of restoration in modern Jewish history, each representing the restoration of the Jewish people to their land, each representing a return, a relinquishing, a coming home, and the redemption of an inheritance—and both are linked to the Shemitah.

It all began in AD 70 when the Jewish people lost Jerusalem and the land of Israel. By the best reckonings, the period between the autumn of AD 68 and that of AD 69 was the Year of the Shemitah. That means that the destruction of Jerusalem and the loss of the land of Israel took place in the year following the Shemitah. So too each of these two calamitous losses would be reversed, redeemed, and restored in 1917 and 1967, and each likewise taking place in the year following the Shemitah.

The Seventh Shemitah and the Time of Restoration

But there’s more to the mystery. It is not only that both events take place in the days following the Shemitah, as did the Jubilee; it’s also the timing between the two. The Jubilee cycle is one of seven periods of seven years—seven Shemitahs. The fiftieth year is counted also as the first year of the next seven-year period. Otherwise the cycles of the Shemitahs and the Jubilees would break apart. Thus the cycle of redemption is forty-nine years.

So how many years separated the two Hebrew years of restoration—the Hebrew year in which the British Empire restored the land to the Jewish people, and the Hebrew year in which Jerusalem was restored to Israel in the Six-Day War? The Hebrew year of the first restoration was September 1917 to September 1918. The Hebrew year in which Jerusalem was restored was September 1966 to September 1967. The time separating the two restorations comes out to exactly seven periods of seven Hebrew years—forty-nine years—the same number of years appointed in the Bible in between restorations. It is the biblical number given for the restoration of one’s land, one’s possessions, and one’s ancestral home. In other words, it is exactly that which happened to the nation of Israel in a cycle of forty-nine years.

Both 1917 and 1967 were epic years in Jewish history and end-time prophecy. Each involved the changing of sovereignty over the land. Each involved those in possession of the land being forced to relinquish it, the Ottoman Turks in 1917 and the Jordanian army in 1967. Each involved and came about through war, World War I in 1917 and the Six-Day War in 1967. Each involved fighting in the land of Israel. Each involved the restoration of an ancient people to their land and to their ancestral inheritance.

The first restoration followed the Shemitah of 1916 to 1917. Counting forward from that time, one arrives at the seventh Shemitah in 1965 to 1966. The seventh Shemitah leads into the year of the other great restoration: that of Jerusalem. If the cycle was to continue into the future, when would the next corresponding year be? The seventh Shemitah would be that of 2014 to 2015. Thus the corresponding year would be that of September 2015 to September 2016.

Lastly, as with the other mysteries and cycles, the connection between the two restorations does not necessarily have to repeat at the end of the coming cycle—but it is worthy of note.

For MORE INFORMATION . . .

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The Mystery of the Shemitah
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Jonathan is the leader of the Jerusalem Center/Beth Israel, a worship center made up of Jews and Gentiles, people of all backgrounds, located in Wayne, New Jersey, just outside New York City.

NOTES

Chapter 3
The Mystery of the Nine Harbingers

1.
Isaiah 9:10, my translation. Since the original Hebrew of Isaiah 9:10 contains greater meaning than any single translation can render, throughout
The Harbinger
the words of this particular verse were translated and expounded upon directly from the original Hebrew. The New King James Version, renders Isaiah 9:10 in this way: “The bricks have fallen down, / But we will rebuild with hewn stones; / The sycamores are cut down, / But we will replace them with cedars.”

2.
Washington File, “Text: Senator Majority Leader Daschle Expresses Sorrow, Resolve,” September 13, 2001,
http://wfile.ait.org.tw/wf-archive/2001/010913/epf407.htm
(accessed July 1, 2014).

Chapter 7
Fourth Key: The Secret Israel

1.
GreatSeal.com
, “First Great Seal Committee—July/August 1776,”
http://www.greatseal.com/committees/firstcomm/
(accessed July 2, 2014).

2.
Gabriel Sivan,
The Bible and Civilization
(New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Book Company, 1974), 236. Viewed online at Google Books.

3.
See, for example, John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity,”
http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/charity.html
(accessed July 7, 2014).

Chapter 9
The Fingerprints of the Mystery

1.
Jonathan Cahn,
The Harbinger
(Lake Mary, FL: FrontLine, 2011), 163.

Chapter 14
The Shemitah and the Great Recession

1.
Cahn,
The Harbinger
, 136.

Chapter 17
The Four Towers

1.
Cahn,
The Harbinger
, 199–201.

Chapter 21
The Reigning

1.
Gideon Rachman, “The Bretton Woods Sequel Will Flop,”
Financial Times
, November 10, 2008,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0b3da1e6-af4b-11dd-a4bf-000077b07658.html#axzz36POxAKZz
(accessed July 3, 2014).

Chapter 23
The Last Tower

1.
Mary Bruce, “‘One Today’: Full Text of Richard Blanco Inaugural Poem,” ABC News, January 21, 2013,
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/today-richard-blanco-poem-read-barack-obama-inauguration/story?id=18274653
(accessed July 3, 2014).

2.
Ibid.

Epilogue, Part 1
One Last Note: The Black Suns (and the Red Moons)

1.
See Judeo-Christian Research, “The Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah,”
http://juchre.org/talmud/sukkah/sukkah2.htm
(accessed July 15, 2014).

Epilogue, Part 2
One Last Mystery: The Seventh Shemitah

1.
Edmund Allenby, as quoted in
God’s Little Devotional Book for Students
(N.p.: Honor Books, 2003), 281. Viewed online at Google Books.

2.
The Avalon Project, “Balfour Declaration 1917,” Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/balfour.asp
(accessed July 3, 2014).

3.
Jewish Virtual Library, “The Six-Day War: The Liberation of the Temple Mount and Western Wall,”
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/1967lib.html
(accessed July 3, 2014).

4.
SixDayWar.org
, “1967: Reunification of Jerusalem,”
http://www.sixdaywar.org/content/ReunificationJerusalem.asp
(accessed July 3, 2014).

ABOUT the AUTHOR

J
ONATHAN
C
AHN
CAUSED
a stir throughout America and around the world with the publication of his first book,
The
Harbinger
, which became an immediate
New York Times
best seller. The book brought him to national and international prominence and countless appearances on television and in the media. Long before the book, he was known for opening up the deep mysteries of Scripture and for teachings of prophetic import. He leads Hope of the World ministries, an international outreach of teaching, evangelism, and compassion projects for the needy. He also leads the Jerusalem Center/Beth Israel, a worship center made up of Jews and Gentiles, people of all backgrounds, just outside New York City, in Wayne, New Jersey. He is a much sought-after speaker and appears throughout America and the world. He is a Messianic believer, a Jewish follower of Jesus. For more information, to find out about over two thousand other messages and mysteries Jonathan has given, for free gifts, to be part of, or to contact his ministry, write to: