Review: ‘The Paradigm’ By Jonathan Cahn

The Paradigm by Jonathan Cahn (fair use)

When Jonathan Cahn speaks, the Christian world takes notice. The messianic Jewish rabbi is most famous for The Harbinger, his 2012 book that detailed the striking parallels between ancient Jewish history detailed in the Bible and modern events that have shaped the world we live in today. The Harbinger and its follow up, The Shemitah, were both runaway best sellers.

Now Mr. Cahn is set to release his fourth book, The Paradigm: The Ancient Blueprint That Holds The Mystery of Our Times. In The Paradigm, due out September 19, Cahn has once again found a pattern in which American history seems to be replaying historical events that took place in the Middle East almost 3,000 years ago.

I have long thought that America seemed to be following the paradigm, or pattern, that the Bible described of ancient Israel. The nation was founded on the basis of God’s commandments and, while it followed and honored those commandments, it thrived. In ancient Israel, the people eventually rebelled against God in spite of the blessings that he had given them. Success became pride and pride led to sin and rebellion. I could see that America seemed to be following the same general pattern.

Rabbi Cahn takes the analogy a step further. Cahn describes how the United States, once a Christian nation, is following the pattern of allowing our success to lead us into apostasy. The parallels between modern culture and that of ancient Israel are eerily similar.

Cahn describes how the proliferation of Baal worship turned Israelite morality on its head. Marriage became separate from sexuality as prostitution became part of the worship of Baal, a Phoenician fertility god. As sex was removed from the marital bedroom, it was increasingly put on public display. As a result, culture became more coarse, crude and harsh. Even gender became subjective as male prostitutes became a part of Baal worship.

What was evil began to be viewed as good and what was good came to be viewed as evil. The remaining worshippers of the Lord came under persecution as a culture war raged for the soul of the country.

The most heinous part of Baal worship was the sacrifice of children to the monstrous deity. At first, child sacrifice was illegal, but eventually it became commonplace and was even endorsed by the government and practiced by the royal family. The obvious parallel here is the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of babies through abortion, which was encouraged by the federal government in the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  

This general parallel should be alarming enough to those who are familiar with how Israelite history ends, but Cahn goes even further. He describes specific parallels between the dynasty of the Israelite King Ahab and his wife, the notorious Queen Jezebel, and American political history over the past 30 years. The links are too numerous and specific to list here, but Cahn vividly and in detail shows how the dynasty of Ahab has been replayed in American politics with astounding accuracy.

In ancient Israel, the reign of Ahab and his son Joram represented a defining moment. As the cult of Baal grew, Israel teetered on the brink of irreversible apostasy. In Biblical history, the turning point came when the prophet Elisha anointed Jehu, a soldier in Joram’s army and a political outsider, to become king. Jehu came from nowhere in a meteoric rise to upset the status quo. In a lightning fast campaign, Jehu killed Joram, the sitting king, and his mother, Jezebel, and assumed the throne of Israel.

Cahn says that the warrior Jehu arrived to deliver the country a temporary reprieve from apostasy and ultimate judgment. Jehu’s goal was reform toward worship of the Lord, an ancient version of “draining the swamp.” In that vein, he killed the prophets of Baal as well as the members of the royal lineage of Ahab and Joram.

Cahn points out that while Jehu was used by God to temporarily halt the Israelite slide into apostasy, he was not necessarily a man of God. “Some undoubtedly saw Jehu’s rise as a calamity,” Cahn writes. “Others saw it as the answer. It was neither. It was a window.”

Cahn makes the same case for the election of Donald Trump. The Trump Administration, he believes, represents a reprieve for America from irreversible apostasy. The question is what the president and the country do with the postponement of the ultimate rejection of God and the judgment that would follow. “A political answer cannot solve a spiritual problem,” Cahn says. The only way to avert judgment in the long run is through national repentance and revival. Trump’s election may provide an opportunity for that revival.

As in his other books, Cahn offers little in the way of prophetic claims for the future. His focus is on how God is sending messages to America through the modern echo of ancient Israel’s history. He does note that the Biblical Jehu was only partially successful in “making Israel great again.” The Bible tells us that Jehu “was not careful to keep the law of the Lord” and “did not turn away from the sin of Jereboam,” worshipping the idol of the golden calves. Jehu’s false religion was of a more nationalist nature than the foreign god imported by Ahab and Jezebel, but it was still sinful.

The revival necessary for the redemption of Israel never happened. It was in the years following Jehu’s reign that the signs that Cahn described in The Harbinger began to appear. The warnings and “shakings” were ignored and, ultimately, the kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians.

In discussing Jonathan Cahn’s books, it is important to note that he never engages in replacement theology which holds that America has become a new Israel. Instead, he presents parallels that he believes God is using as warnings for America. Cahn’s core message is that America is careening toward judgment unless we change course. He urges nonbelievers to repent and believers to follow the models of Elijah and Elisha who stood strong to resist the moral decline of their country.

Some will also say that the replaying of ancient Israelite history in modern America is a series of coincidences. As the series becomes larger and more detailed, the question becomes how many coincidences are necessary to show evidence of an omnipotent God who controls events and history. At some point, the odds against the manifestation of such an improbable series of events repeating itself become astronomical.

Jonathan Cahn makes a compelling case that America is following the same pattern of disobedience and rebellion that ultimately led the kingdom of Israel to destruction. Regardless of whether you accept Cahn’s conclusion that history is repeating itself in a way that seems preordained by a higher power, it seems clear that the country is on an unsustainable path.

If America is to be saved, it must repent. And if America is to repent, it needs people like Jonathan Cahn to sound the warning.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Is Donald Trump an instrument of Bible prophecy?

As Donald Trump transitions from Republican candidate to presumptive nominee, many Republicans are falling into line to support the insurgent candidate. Part of the reason that Trump has been successful is his support from the conservative Christians. Many have questioned whether Trump’s Christian supporters know what they are getting with Mr. Trump.

While critics have pointed out that Trump is a serial philanderer who acts like a bully and has trouble telling the truth – or telling anything consistently – and who owns casinos and strip clubs, many Christians, including such notable pastors as Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham, seem more than willing to overlook Trump’s sins and board the Trump train. Some liken Trump, who claims to be a Christian but who says he has never asked for forgiveness, to the Biblical king Cyrus who allowed exiled Israelites to return to their homeland and rebuild the Jewish temple.

In contrast to Cyrus, who was a pagan and did not claim to know God, Trump claims to know God, but may be more accurately described as an apostate or heretic. When Trump asks “Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness, if I am not making mistakes?” he is in contradiction to the Bible, which says that “all have sinned.” Likewise, the Bible states that repentance and forgiveness is the only way to become a Christian. These are basic Christian beliefs.

Michael Brown of the Christian Post points out that God used the Persian king Cyrus to free the Israelites, not to rule over them. Brown notes that “rais[ing] up an idol-worshiping king to rule the nation of Israel… would have been a curse rather than a blessing.”

Trump may fit into the spiritual picture as an instrument of the Shemitah, an ancient Jewish sabbatical year that many believe figures into a pattern of judgment. Rabbi Jonathan Cahn first wrote about the Shemitah pattern in his book, “The Harbinger.” Cahn linked the seven year Shemitah cycle to financial crashes and recessions going back at least 50 years. The two largest financial crashes in U.S. history, the crashes of 2001 and 2008, were both on the last day of Shemitah years. Likewise, the oil bust of 2015 was part of a worldwide commodities crash that was linked to the Shemitah year.

In this book, “The Mystery of the Shemitah,” Cahn describes his belief that the Jubilee year, the “seventh Shemitah” would run from September 14, 2015 through October 2, 2016 and might bring dramatic change. Cahn writes that previous Jubilee years have brought momentous world changes such as the signing of the Balfour Declaration, which gave birth to the modern nation of Israel in 1918, and the capture of Jerusalem by Israeli forces in the Six Day War of 1967.

Cahn has not addressed Donald Trump, but it is possible that Trump’s rise to power in a Jubilee year signals a drastic change in direction for the United States. If Cahn is correct, God’s judgments on the rebellious United States began with the September 11 attacks. Cahn described in “The Harbinger” what he calls the “Isaiah 9:10 effect.” This is the principle that 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.”

It should be obvious to even the casual observer that America has not repented. During the Shemitah year of 2015, the nation rejected centuries of precedent and Biblical teachings to enact nationwide same-sex marriage. It is currently rejecting millennia of biology to claim that gender is changeable attitude. The federal government under Barack Obama is compelling hospitals to perform abortions and federal funds are being used to support groups like Planned Parenthood that perform abortions. Into this mix steps Donald Trump, a candidate who purports to fight lies with more lies.

Rejection of truth and mass delusions where people follow false prophets are foretold in the Bible. The Bible contains numerous warnings against lies as well as wicked rulers. Should we then believe that a confirmed liar like Donald Trump is sent by God to “make America great again?” If God punished Israel for its evil kings then how much more will America be punished if we choose our own evil leader?

It seems likely that the continual American rejection of God and failure to repent has brought us to a point where we must choose between two evils, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. America is literally in the position of being damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

So why do so many Christians support Trump? The answer may found in the Bible itself. Jesus himself foretold the day when “false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.” Perhaps that day is here.

Read it on Conservative Firing Line

America "racing toward judgment" as Shemitah draws to close

Jonathan Cahn / Hope of the World

As the 2014-2015 Shemitah year draws to a close, the world is once again falling into financial turmoil. The US stock market moved into correction territory last week and, in early trading this week, the Dow crashed more than 1,000 points before recovering to a mere 588 point loss. The current volatility in the market is not the only bad news of the current Shemitah, however. The Shemitah, which began last September, was ushered in with several ”shakings,” in the words of Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, who discovered the Shemitah pattern and wrote the book, “The Mystery of the Shemitah.”

"America is racing toward judgment," says Rabbi Jonathan Cahn in a video posted on You Tube. "Not one but multiple factors are converging."

The Shemitah began on September 24, 2014 with another stock market correction. CNN Money noted that the “September slump” did not last for the entire month of September. Instead, “starting on Monday, September 22, investors hit the pause button and kept hitting it for much of the rest of the month.” This coincided almost perfectly with the onset of the Shemitah.

Following on the heels of the stock market crash was a shaking of a different sort. On September 30, 2014, the CDC confirmed the first case of Ebola in the United States. Over the next few weeks, several other cases were identified around the country, prompting a state of near panic in many urban areas. The panic lasted throughout the month of October as more cases were diagnosed and the first patient, a Liberian immigrant, died. Spurring more fears, a number of medical professionals who had treated patients in the original outbreak in Africa flouted quarantines and traveled around New York and the country.

The stock market experienced a rough October as well. Both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced sharp downturns in mid-October. Although both indexes regained their losses over the next few weeks, Shemitahs have historically been marked by volatility in the markets and the current Shemitah is no exception.

 In early July, the Chinese stock market crashed after reaching a record high on June 12. On July 4, the Chinese government suspended the sale of stocks in an attempt to stave off losses. In spite of the Chinese government’s attempts to manipulate the market, the International Business Times reports that Chinese stocks lost more than eight percent of their value on what has come to be known as “China’s Black Monday.” Quartz notes that stock markets around Asia closed with sharp declines. Further, Zero Hedge listed 23 countries around the world where stock markets are currently crashing. Thomas DeMark, founder and CEO of DeMark Analytics, told CNBC that the Chinese stock market crash closely resembles the US crash of 1929 in which the stock market lost 50 percent of its value and the contagion spread around the world.

Other factors that may be contributing to the world’s economic woes are the collapse in oil prices, the Greek debt crisis and the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. Holman Jenkins wrote in the Wall St. Journal that the Greek crisis has largely been resolved without Greece having to address its core problem of deficit spending. Reform of Europe’s welfare state has been kicked down the road and Europe’s debts will continue to mount.

Martin Feldstein, President Reagan’s chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, wrote in the Wall St. Journal that some of the US market’s difficulty can be attributed to the Fed’s policy of low interest rates that dates back two seven-year Shemitah cycles to the September 11 attacks and the resulting stock market crash in 2001 on the last day of the Shemitah. The Fed kept interest rates low throughout the remainder of the Bush Administration which fed the real estate bubble that burst in 2008 on the last day of that Shemitah year. Feldstein notes that after the failure of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke promised to hold rates near zero for the long term. Low interest rates have also pushed investors into the stock market due to low yields on other investments. Recent articles have pointed out that with interest rates hovering near zero, the Fed has little room left to combat a new economic crisis and may even take rates into negative territory.

The confluence of bad economic news into a perfect storm scenario is compounded by the rejection of Judeo-Christian values and morals. The 2015 Shemitah has been hallmarked by a turning away from God. The most notable example of this is the Supreme Court decision to overturn the will of the people and thousands of years of tradition to redefine marriage. By the time the Supreme Court ruled on the Obergefell case, same sex marriage had become the law in a majority of the United States. In almost every state, the redefinition of marriage was imposed by a small clique of judges and not the voters of the state.

Also in the summer of 2015, a series of undercover Planned Parenthood videos unveiled the dark world of the abortion provider. The videos revealed the callous disregard for life among Planned Parenthood employees and the stark truth that the sale of body parts from aborted babies is a vital part of the organization’s business model. In one video, a former employee of a stem cell harvesting company accused Planned Parenthood, which receives federal government funding, of harvesting the brain of a baby whose heart was still beating. Contrary to the public face of abortion in which proponents deny the humanity of unborn babies by using the euphemism “fetus,” Planned Parenthood’s employees freely refer to “babies” on the videos as they joke about the killings. Even during the murder trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell the horror of abortion has never been so clearly exhibited.

Symbolic of America’s rejection of God, a statue of Baphomet, a satanic deity, was unveiled in Detroit in July. The nine-foot tall statue was unveiled at what is purported to the “largest public satanic ceremony in history” according to Time.

A landmark event of the Shemitah that touches on both morality and policy is President Obama’s tentative nuclear deal with Iran. The deal marks not only a danger for the United States, since it fails to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but is a historic break between Israel and the United States. Since its birth in 1948, Israel and the United States have maintained close relations. The US was among the first countries to recognize the nation of Israel and the US provided valuable support to Israel during many of its wars for survival. Most notably, in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, it was resupply by the United States that helped Israel to survive a coordinated attack by its Arab neighbors.

The Iran deal changes the relationship between the two countries. Barack Obama has been more hostile to Israel than any other president. From the beginning of his administration, Obama pushed for a return to Israel’s almost indefensible pre-1967 borders. The deal with Iran will place the United States at odds with Israel as it provides financial support to the Iranians. The removal of sanctions and lack of inspections will make it easier for Iran to build nuclear weapons with which to threaten both Israel and the United States.

The 2015 Shemitah has been a momentous period. With three weeks left in the current Shemitah, which ends on September 13, there is the possibility of even more volatility and chaos. Secular analysts are predicting that the current financial unrest will continue for several months until markets find an equilibrium.

Rabbi Cahn believes that it is not too late to avert judgement. “I am led to call for a period of prayer, repentance and intercession for America, to end on Sept. 23, Yom Kippur," he says. "It is crucial the people of God come before Him now on the foundation of 2 Chronicles 7:14: 'If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their evil ways, I will hear from heaven, I will forgive their sin, and I will heal their land.”

The Myster of the Shemitah by Jonathan Cahn

What would you do if you knew that divine judgment on your country and the world was imminent? If you are Jonathan Cahn, you write two best-selling books that detail the revelations that you have received about how the United States is already undergoing judgment and has been for more than a decade. Like a latter day prophet of the Bible, Cahn is issuing his warning that September 13, 2015 might be the next key date in the ongoing series of judgments using a variety of mediums, from television to the internet, that were not available to the prophets of old.

  Cahn’s first book, “The Harbinger,” dealt with clues that linked the September 11 attacks and the 2008 financial crisis to the prophetic judgments found in the Book of Isaiah as well as to an ancient Jewish custom of forgiving all debts and letting fields lie fallow every seventh year. It is the story of this Sabbath year that Cahn expounds upon in his newest book, “The Mystery of the Shemitah,” the Jewish term for the Sabbath year.

Cahn’s analysis of the relationship between the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the 2008 economic collapse turned up the astounding fact that stock market collapses in both years, which currently rank as the two largest stock market point crashes in U.S. history, occurred on the same day of the Jewish calendar. Even more remarkable is the fact that the Jewish date on which the markets collapsed was the last day of the Shemitah year, the day in which all debts were wiped away. This action would result in a situation much like a modern recession as the accumulated wealth of seven years was blotted out and agricultural production plummeted.

When Cahn looked back at previous Shemitah years, he found that the pattern extended even farther back into U.S. history. The Shemitah of September 1993 through September 1994 (the Jewish New Year starts in September on the Gregorian calendar used by the U.S.) saw a selloff in the bond market that swept around the world. In 1987, a stock market crash occurred that held the record for largest point drop in a single day until the post-9/11 crash of 2001. In 1980, the U.S. suffered a severe recession that lasted until 1982. In 1973, an oil shock brought on by the Arab oil embargo sparked another recession. In 1966, the U.S. experienced a credit crisis. In 1958, the Eisenhower Recession was a sharp, worldwide downturn. For more than 50 years, every Shemitah year has seen the U.S. experience financial upheaval.

In addition, the Shemitah was linked to the Great Depression as well. Although the initial stock market crash of 1929 was not in a Shemitah year, the decade of the 1930s contained two Shemitahs, 1930-31 and 1937-38. As a chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average of the 1930s shows, 1932 was the darkest year of the Great Depression. By 1937, the recovery had begun, but country experienced a second recession within the Depression.

As Cahn points out, the law of averages would dictate that there is only a one-in-seven chance, less than a 15 percent, of a recession or crash occurring within a Shemitah. When the statistics are examined, the relationship between financial upheaval and the Shemitah is far stronger than can be explained by random chance.

The Wall St. Journal’s list of the 20 largest one day stock market crashes includes 10 that are in a Shemitah year. Nine of these crashes were in Elul, the last month of the Shemitah, or Tishri, the first month of the year that follows the Shemitah (late September or October on our calendar). A further three crashes were in months that followed (November and December). The total of 13 crashes, more than half of the crashes, is far more than the 15 percent expected.

The same list also shows that many of the largest stock market gains come in the wake of the Shemitah. If the Shemitah culminates in a recession, the recovery would be expected to begin in the first months of the new Jewish year. In all, five of the largest 20 gains occurred during a Shemitah year, which is close to the random distribution. Seven of the largest gains occurred in the wake of the Shemitah. This may reflect the extreme volatility of the markets in the Shemitah. Many economists note that sudden, sharp crashes are often followed by equally quick recoveries.
Many stock market analysts have noted the tendency of the stock market to falter in the fall of the year. This correlation may be explained by the end of Shemitah, which occurs in September, and the recovery that follows.

Additionally, the National Bureau of Economic Analysis lists 33 business cycles that have impacted the U.S. economy. A comparison of the list of business cycles to Shemitah years shows that in four cases the cycle was entirely contained within a Shemitah. In 14 cases, the cycle was partly contained within the Shemitah including three cycles which completed before the culmination of the Shemitah. The 18 cycles which were linked to the Shemitah is more than half of the U.S. business cycles.
Cahn goes further. In “The Harbinger” Cahn discussed the link between the towers of the World Trade Center and an obscure Bible verse quoted by Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) on the Senate floor on September 12, 2001. The same verse, defiantly vowing to rebuild the towers, symbols of pride, was echoed repeatedly in the following years by other government officials.

Cahn relates that the World Trade Center was conceived in the Shemitah year of 1945 when it was proposed by developer David Scholz. Groundbreaking for the World Trade Center was in the Shemitah year of 1966. In the Shemitah year of 1973, the twin towers opened as the world’s tallest buildings. In the Shemitah year of 1993, terrorists exploded a car bomb in the basement garage of the north tower, killing six people and injuring more than a thousand. Seven years later, in the Shemitah year of 2001, another group of terrorists succeeded in destroying the World Trade Center. The new tower on the World Trade Center site, One World Trade Center, also called the Freedom Tower, opened six weeks into the current Shemitah on Nov. 3, 2014.

Cahn also discusses the seventh Shemitah, the Jubilee. The 50^th year, the year following the seventh Shemitah, was a “super Shemitah” that restored lands to their previous owners and set captives free. According to Cahn, no one today is sure when the Jubilee occurs, but there is another startling pattern. On November 2, 1917, British Foreign Secretary James Balfour signed the Balfour Declaration, which began the process of restoring a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This followed the 1916-17 Shemitah. Fast forward 50 years to June 7, 1967. This was the day that Israeli forces recaptured the city of Jerusalem in the Six Day War. This momentous event followed the Shemitah of 1965-66. This pattern suggests the possibility that these restorations both took place in Jubilee years.

If Cahn’s assumption is correct, the next Jubilee would follow the current Shemitah. The current Shemitah runs from September 25, 2014 through September 13, 2015 and the possible Jubilee would begin on September 14, 2015 through October 2, 2016.

Cahn points out the confluence of astronomical signs in the current Shemitah as well. The current Shemitah is associated with four blood moons, partial lunar eclipses, all of which fall on Jewish holidays. Additionally, there will be two solar eclipses. The first occurs exactly halfway through the Shemitah and the other on September 13, the last day of the Shemitah. Eclipses are often associated with judgment in the Bible.

Cahn makes no predictions about what to expect during the Shemitah and the possible Jubilee. As financial forecasts note, past performance is not indicative of future results. Nevertheless, the statistical correlation between the Shemitah and financial upheaval is a strong one. It may be worthy to note that shortly after the current Shemitah rang in, the stock market suffered a sharp downturn. At the same time, the US experienced a small panic over Ebola. What surprises does the rest of the Shemitah hold in store?


Read the full article on Examiner.com

Will next economic collapse start one year from today?

What if there is a pattern going back more than a decade in American history that shows that the last two economic crises occurred on a predictable seven year cycle? What if this pattern occurred at the same time as many other indications became evident, giving reason to believe that the pattern itself was not a coincidence? Would it be possible to predict when the next economic crisis would occur and prepare for it?

Rabbi Jonathan Cahn believes that he has discovered just such a pattern within recent American history that stretches back before the September 11 attacks of 2001. Cahn, the author of the best-selling book, “The Harbinger,” discovered the astounding fact that the financial crashes of 2001 and 2008 both occurred on the same day of Jewish calendar. What’s more, that date was the very day and year of the Jewish calendar on which ancient Biblical law called for debts to be erased.

“The Harbinger” gained immediate popularity, but was also the subject of fierce criticism from some theologians. Cahn had answered much of this criticism is interviews. Additionally, Jose Bernal has written a valuable book answering the critics of “The Harbinger.” Bernal’s book is “The Truth About the Harbinger.”

Cahn’s discovery centers around the Shemitah years on the Jewish calendar. The Shemitah (Sabbath or sabbatical) year was established in Deuteronomy 15:1-2 when the ancient Israelites were instructed, “At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release of debts. And this is the form of the release: Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbor shall release it; he shall not require it of his neighbor or his brother, because it is called the Lord’s release.”

The traditional day to forgive debts was Elul 29, the last day of the Jewish year. In 2001, this date occurred on September 17, the largest single day crash of the stock market in U.S. history according to rankings by the Wall St. Journal. The crash occurred as financial markets reopened in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Seven years later, the Elul 29 of 2008 was on September 29. This date superseded September 17, 2001 as the largest stock market crash as prices collapsed after the House of Representatives voted down a bipartisan plan to bail out banks with tainted “toxic” mortgage securities.

Now Cahn has released a new book, “The Mystery of the Shemitah.” Charisma News says the new book details Cahn’s new discoveries about the Shemitah cycle that extend farther back in American history more than 100 years. World Net Daily notes that the book debuted at number five on Amazon’s Top 100 list. This is in spite of the fact that Cahn fell ill as the book was published and could not go on a promotional tour.

Cahn’s theory does not merely hinge on the fact that dates on the Jewish calendar match up to catastrophic events in American history. In “The Harbinger,” Cahn points out many other parallels between recent events in the United States to events thousands of years ago just prior to the destruction of ancient Israel at the hands of the Assyrians, the ancestors of today’s radical Islamists. Cahn asserts that these specific parallels, including specific words, dates and actions, mean that God is shaking Americans in attempt to warn them about impending judgment if the country remains on its current course. The specific details of the parallels are too numerous to discuss here, but were addressed in a previous Examiner review of “The Harbinger.”

In “The Harbinger,” Cahn makes the point that the September 11 attacks were similar to an early attack by the Assyrians on ancient Israel. Rather than accepting the attack as a warning and a call to repentance, the Israelites made a vow of defiance, echoed in Isaiah 9:10. Interestingly, two prominent American elected officials referenced this obscure verse in the wake of the September 11 attacks and President Obama paraphrased it in reference to the 2008 financial collapse.

Cahn goes on to describe how the September 11 attacks led to both record-breaking stock market crashes which occurred exactly seven years apart on the Jewish calendar. One of the main tools used to stave off a recession in the wake of the attacks was a cut in interest rates. With interest rates at abnormally low levels, saving was discouraged and people were motivated to take advantage of cheap loans to buy houses. The increased demand for real estate inflated a bubble that eventually burst in 2008, causing the financial crisis.

The process by which a nation attempts to defy God’s plans for judgment and call for repentance by using its own devices to resolve the crisis is referred to as the Isaiah 9:10 effect by Rabbi Cahn. The irony is that the action of the nation under judgment instead “sets about a chain of events that brings about the very calamity that it sought to avert,” as Cahn wrote in “Harbinger.”

On September 13, 2015, one year from today, will come the next Elul 29 of a Shemitah year. The Shemitah year begins on the evening of September 24, 2014 according to American calendars. September 25 is Rosh Hashanah, Tishrei 1 of the Jewish year 5775. The entire year is Shemitah, but Cahn writes in “The Mystery of the Shemitah” that “it is at the Shemitah’s end (September 13, 2015) and its wake that the most dramatic repercussions are felt.”

In a 2013 interview, Examiner asked Rabbi Cahn whether he believed that September 13, 2015 would be the date of another “shaking” or judgment. “I haven’t been led to be dogmatic concerning what may or may not happen,” he answered, “but I think it’s wise to keep our eyes open.”

In “The Mystery of the Shemitah” he goes further. Cahn points out that since September 13, 2015 is on Sunday, American financial markets will not be open that day, but “there is the possibility of a trigger event that takes place outside the time of the markets’ openings that could bring about a market collapse – as in the case of 9/11.” He also notes that the last day that markets will be open prior to Elul 29 will be Friday, September 11, 2015.

Cahn also points out that there will be two solar eclipses in 2015. The first will be on the exact center point of the Shemitah, March 20. The other will occur on the last day of the Shemitah: Elul 29 or September 13.

Nevertheless, he writes, “Nothing significant has to happen…. The phenomenon may manifest itself in one cycle, not in another, and then again in the next. And the focus of the message is not date-setting but the call of God to repentance and return. At the same time, something of significance could take place, and it is wise to note the times.”

Whether a shaking and judgment occurs in this Shemitah or not, Cahn leaves no doubt that, without repentance, it will occur. “No nation,” he writes, “can defy the ways and will of Him who is its source of blessings and expect those blessings to continue.”

Although he has no specific message on what lies ahead, Cahn does have advice for believers. He speculates that the timing of the completion of the new tower on the World Trade Center site may be of note. One World Trade Center, often called the Freedom Tower, is expected to open in 2014 after numerous construction delays. The first tower in the complex, 4 World Trade Center, officially opened on November 13, 2013.

Cahn also suggests that “it would be wise to take note of America’s crossing of key thresholds in its spiritual and moral descent.” This could possibly suggest a link to a ruling on same-sex marriage, support for Israel, persecution of Christian believers, or a variety of other issues that deal with Christianity that are being discussed in the public square today. Cahn cites “the offering of their sons and daughters in the fires of Baal and Molech” as the “sin that would bring about the nation [of Israel]’s destruction.” The parallel in the United States might be sacrifice of more than one million Americans annually through abortion.

In the end, although Cahn is uncertain about the nature of judgment as well as its timing, he writes, “I believe a great shaking is coming to this nation and to the world. I believe that this shaking will involve economic and financial collapse, though it will not necessarily be confined or limited to those realms.”

Given the current state of the American economy and the world, Americans, regardless of their spiritual beliefs, would do well to prepare for hard times.

Read the full article on Atlanta Conservative Examiner