Beginning of a Book

The “Know the Time / Change Your World” post is meant to be the beginning of a book, as such it will be my last weekly post for a while, maybe a long while.  As you read “Know the Time / Change Your World” you may get a sense of where I am headed.  I intend to regularly to monitor and follow up with my Google Plus community and Blog. I will try to reply timely to anyone who posts to either. I expect I will post every so often, however, my goal is to have a book completed by early 2016 along with a 45 minute to an hour verbal and Power Point presentation related to the content of the book. I would love to hear from anyone who has questions or is interested in being a sounding board for my “Seven and Fifty” projects.

Best wishes to each of as you prepare for the Smitah year. 

Know the Time / Change Your World

 From antiquity, man’s fascination with time is demonstrated in the remarkable archaeology still visible at places like Stonehenge, the flat topped pyramids in South America, or Newgrange in Ireland. The sun, moon, and stars seemed alive to ancient man and he came up with stories, legends, gods and religions based on his imagination and his view of the changing sky.

   Today, we have a calendar which adds one day to the next in a rising numerical progression. We still pay attention to the changing seasons as we count through the twelve months of the year. The term month has a connection to the lunar cycle even though our months no longer consult the phases of the moon. We do, however, look carefully at the rotation of the Earth around the Sun and our calendar is designed to closely monitor the annual cycle.

   As each year ends, we add a digit to our yearly count; a practice that was arbitrarily started over 2,000 years ago. Another practice that affects our measurement of time is the twenty-four hour times sixty minute day. This base of sixty mathematical system has been used in one form or another since Babylonian and Egyptian times. Therefore, what we have today is a breakdown of three extraterrestrial cycles for the purposes of measuring time.

   First, the rotation of the earth equals a day which we arbitrarily broke down to twenty-four sixty minute hours. Second, the rotation of the moon around the earth, which takes twenty-nine to thirty days, we arbitrarily broke into months and then solidified them in the annual calendar which is based on the third extraterrestrial cycle we use to determine time, the annual cycle of the Earth around the Sun.     We view the annual cycle as the most important cycle since it effects our seasons of planting and harvest. (This idea apparently has its origins in the Greco/Roman period.) All of this has a certain logic to it and is normal to us. In our part of the world, much of North America, corn is planted April or May and harvested in September or October. The sun’s angle on the earth is at a very similar angle on May 1, year after year, thus giving confidence that a warm spell in late April or early May should mean that frost is over for this growing season and planting should proceed.

   That the time element of a single day is broken down as it is also has a logic; high noon or 12 o’clock, should mean the sun is directly overhead and at its zenith or highest point. (Daylight Savings Time is a whole other subject.) It seems our modern sense of time is mostly affected by the sun; its turning on its axis gives us our days and its rotation around the sun gives us our years. Our modern months are a nod to the old lunar calendar, but we rarely connect the phase of the moon to any element of time which affects our lives.

   This leaves one mysterious element of time in our modern lives, the seven day week. While all the other elements of time have clear connection to some celestial rotation, the seven day week has no anchor in an extraterrestrial cycle. Follow me for a moment; 60 seconds times, 60 minutes times, 24 hours makes a complete day, 365 days make a complete year. (Of course, every four years we have to add a day for leap year to keep things on track.) Even our months, though not tied specifically to the moon's cycle, are set up to range from twenty-eight to thirty-one days at least closely resembling the old lunar moon.

   But a week hinges on what? How did week come to be and what is its story? How did a seven day time element become so important having no celestial support?

    This is a study of those seven days; how they came to be, how they changed the world and how a little imaginative use of them can improve your life and change our world.

    The story goes that a young man was kidnapped by his jealous brothers and sold into slavery. More than twenty years later, those same brothers were standing in front of him begging for food and worried for their lives. Joseph’s story has a key element, not of seven days, but seven years; in fact two sets of seven years. One set of seven fat years and one set of seven lean years. Interestingly this story, found in the first book of Hebrew Bible, seems to echo some elements of the seven day creation story found in the very beginning of the Hebrew Scriptures. It would be difficult indeed to divorce our modern practice of a seven day week from that well know writing, Genesis chapter one.

   But if Joseph’s story implies value to seven years, could it be that there is significance not only for the seven day week which we practice to this day, but for seven years? Indeed, the foundational Biblical texts known as the five books of Moses includes instructions for not only seven days, but also seven months and seven years and also seven sets of seven years; in other words, forty-nine years to which one additional year is added to create a fifty year Jubilee cycle.

   Absolutely none of these segments of time has any obvious connection to the celestial cycles of the sun, the moon, or the stars. There is no obvious sign in the sky when these sevens begin or end. For many, it is a question that they exist or have value at all, yet the fact is, that the seven day week endures. Could it be a sign to us that the others are out there somewhere also? Could it be that though modern man often does his best to ignore a seven day week, its persistence in sticking around is telling us we need to consider the other sets of seven laid out in the ancient texts?

   What did Joseph know? Was he just lucky? Is it just a story? Even if it is just a story, what was the story teller trying to communicate? Is it any more unusual to contemplate old words or stories and what they mean than to ponder old structures or archaeology findings and what they tell us about our ancestors?

   The Books of Moses are unique in many ways, but in their use of a variety of seven segments of time, the Hebrew Bible stands alone and seems to beg us to explore its unusual ways.

The years since Y2K

In the last fourteen years the market place has been amazing in its confirmation of the seven year cycle. In each set of seven it would have been wise to unload what was hot early in year six and be out of debt in year seven. In 2000 the internet bubble sprang a leak in March. But though out that spring and summer opportunities to move to safety where available as the Nasdaq rallied back to prices still 25% higher than they had been the previous summer. By fall however the down trend was reconfirmed and by the time terrorists flew our planes into the World Trade center and the Pentagon a year later, no one doubted that the internet bubble was over.  Enron and World Com where shown to be frauds and the whole economy was in a shambles. 

If as I believe the fall of 2001 ended a seven year cycle then the next seven years was overwhelmed by the run up of housing prices.  In the fall of 2002 prices on homes started to move up very quickly. For the first time in recent memory, to buy a home one often needed to offer more than the listing price to become the buyer, if you did not, someone else would offer more, leaving you still looking. As the 00’s ticked by the mortgage market seemed to be in full support of higher housing prices. Indeed banking as a whole was very aggressive at marketing loans for almost any item, housing or otherwise. The excesses are now well known, the exact top of the housing market is thought to be in early 2006 but serious declines did not happen until late summer of 2008 when the world’s banking system nearly melted away. Leading to some of the most non-free-enterprise actions ever taken by western governments.

The result was lower prices for not only homes but stocks and almost any other consumer item. The banking crisis would have a long term de-leveraging effect causing drag in the economy for years.

Now as we come to the end of another set of seven one has to wonder, what is the excess this time? The stock market has had a nice recovery from the 2009 lows, Housing has recovered a bit but is by no means over heated. The one thing that seems impossibly priced is interest rates. That 10 year United States Treasury bonds trade at 2.5% is remarkable. Some have argued that we are in a bond bubble.  Maybe so but I don’t see any excitement to buy 10 year bonds at 2.5%. Unlike the internet bubble or the housing bubble no one is buying these bonds with dreams of riches, rather they are being bought almost as a last resort and mostly by the Federal Reserve. Which is a whole other subject.

My point in all this is, that as I sit here in the late spring of 2014, it seems to me that this cycle may very well pass in similar fashion to the first one I observed after becoming aware of this cycle. Having discovered Deuteronomy 15 in the summer of 1991. At that time I became convinced that fall of 1994 was the end of the second cycle of seven years since the Jubilee of 79/80.

I personally made my preparations and was as far out of debt, as I could reasonably be, at that point. Selling our home and taking a rental for a few years and otherwise simply becoming very conservative until the beginning of the new set of seven years.  Interestingly the years from 1987 to 1994 where very similar to the years of this current cycle. It seemed the combination of the stock crash of 1987 and the first Gulf war had kept most excesses out of the market place and the end of that cycle passed rather uneventfully.

As I pointed out in last week’s post at this point I expect this cycle’s end to pass rather similar to 1994. But you never know and Deuteronomy’s direction to be de- leveraged is still the ideal. The one area of serious risk I see is Geo political, think about the Jubilee cycle and its 50 year pattern for a moment, WW1 started 100 years ago in the summer of 1914 and the US civil war ended in 1865, a little more than 150 years ago. Both these events created a dynamic shift in the economic picture. Of course Vietnam also started to heat up around this time 50 years ago, so some of the world events we are hearing about give me more pause than usual.

On the optimistic side the wars and shake ups we have seen in the Middle East in recent years make me hopeful that a new dynamic emerges in that part of the world which could open a new chapter for Freedom, Justice and Economic expansion for the world. 

If the fall of 2015 does pass uneventfully then I expect the next seven years to pattern 1994 to 2001 in which case some of those internet dreams may actually come to fruition. Pondering again the Jubilee pattern, in the summer of 2019 we will celebrate 50 years since man first walked on the moon. We could see some very interesting things between now and 2022    

While now is the time to be preparing for Smitah.  Once you are prepared for the Sabbatical year it is also wise to be thinking about how to participate in the next seven years. As you can see Deuteronomy 15 really can help you become a long term thinker and goal oriented. 

Three Rhymes

The kingdom of God is best revealed when we work together. I felt impressed this morning to post this verse in an attempt to explain why I have been writing for the seven and fifty community since January.

"Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others." Philippians 2:4

My purpose is to improve lives by highlighting the cycle of the sabbatical year. Shmita is just one, little noticed principle of scripture that I have been fascinated with and found helpful in my daily life.  In other words, dear reader, these posts have been my way of looking out for your interests. While at the same time, they have helped me, clarifying for myself the ebb and flow I have seen during my lifetime.

I posted the below piece back in January but felt that it would be wise to post it again as we enter early summer, approaching Shavuot (Pentecost). Some of you may have missed it or are just joining us.

One of the interesting rhymes concerning time, in the creation story is the is the link or parallel of day one to day four, day two to day five, and day three to day six.

Day one; Light - Day four; Sun moon and stars.

Day Two; Separation of waters to above and below with space between – Day 5; Birds for the space above, fish for the water below.

Day Three; Bare ground and plant life – Day 6 Mammals and Humans.

This week I want to encourage you to look back over some history. Specifically early summer of this particular year in the seven year pattern.

I suggest each of you think carefully about 1986, 1993, 2000 and 2007. Give some thought to what these years and the ones immediately following them looked like for you. Rather than making decisions based on what is occurring now or what occurred in recent years consider the events of these years in in your planning.

My guess is that we are in the sixth year and as we would be wise to at least begin preparing for the seventh year which I see as starting this fall. 

However regardless if my count correct or not 1986, 1993, 2000, and 2007 all should be the same year in the count.

One additional thought; I recommend you pay special attention to 1993 as the seven year time frame that it resides in, very likely has one of the rhymes to our present seven years in the pattern of what I described in the beginning of this piece.

My thought is that fall of 1992 to fall of 1993 is the sixth year of the second, seven year cycle and that fall of 2013 to fall of 2014 is the sixth year of the fifth, seven year cycle.

And even if my count is off, there is a good chance that 1993 rhymes more with 2014 than the others.

Think about it. 

The Riddle of 1980: Was it the beginning of our current Jubilee Cycle?

In the summer of 1980, the Israeli Parliament declared the city of Jerusalem to be the undivided, eternal capital of the State of Israel, established as such by King David almost 3,000 years earlier. 

To counter the howls of international disapproval, Christians gathered in Jerusalem that autumn.  They established the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. They declared their love for Israel and celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem for the first time in response to Zechariah 14:16-19. 

Did this event in the fall of 1980 mark the beginning of a new fifty-year Jubilee cycle?  Those of us with gray hair now look back at the early 1980’s in wonder. 

Consider these new beginnings for freedom in the early 80’s:  Solidarity, a Polish non-government trade union led by Lech Walesa, arose in the Lenin shipyard in August, 1980.  It was a "camel’s nose under the tent" for the Soviet Union and would result in freedom for many people in Eastern Europe and around the world.

In her piece, “We want God”, Peggy Noonan connects the events of 1980 to John Paul’s visit to Poland a year earlier.  She goes on to cite the roles of Margret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in one of the greatest freedom movements the world has seen. 
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB122479408458463941

However, the East was not the only place experiencing new beginnings at this moment in time.  In the West also, freedom was growing and becoming more valued.  Old regulations on trucking, airlines, and other forms of transportation were modified; regulations were lifted on petroleum as well. Travel increased at considerably lower costs.  As this new mindset of freedom spread, taxes all over Europe and America were reduced.

Additionally, the computer and the cell phone began their rise in the West.  At the 1981 Comdex Show in Las Vegas, IBM presented its PC loaded with MS-DOS, complete with a 477 MHZ 8089 processor and a 5.25” 160k floppy drive. The clones of the IBM PC, the cell phone, and the internet followed shortly, changing forever our means of efficiency and communication.  Some would argue these things have not made us freer, but no one seems willing to return the technologies of the 1970’s.

Nevertheless, I believe the most significant change of this era occurred in July, 1980 when the Nation of Israel declared Jerusalem as their undivided, eternal capital, established as such by King David 3000 years earlier.  The nations of the world protested.  Thirteen national embassies in Jerusalem closed.  Resolutions condemning Israel for this action where passed at the United Nations in New York.

Then a remarkable thing happened.  In the fall of 1980, a group of Christians-- from nations all over the world--came to Jerusalem.  Waving their national flags and carrying signs declaring, “Israel, we love you”, they marched through the streets in a first-ever Christian celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem. This parade continues annually to this day.

Go here for pictures of the 2013 event:  http://feast.icej.org/media/photo-set/feast-of-tabernacles/2013

At the same time--in the fall of 1980--these Christians established the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem to let the state of Israel know they had friends in the world.  Link here for the history of ICEJ http://int.icej.org/history

Learn this riddle: The people whom Jeroboam tried to keep from returning to Jerusalem 2,700 years ago for the Feast of Tabernacles are now back; they are in Jerusalem annually, celebrating freedom at the Feast of Tabernacles, declaring a love for Israel and a Son of David as their king. (1 Kings 12)

The world changed in the seventh month of 5741 (September, 1980).  It will never be the same again. The die is cast and each cycle of seven years brings us closer to the culminating event.  With one eye on 1980 and another on what I expect is the upcoming Jubilee of 2029-2030, watch and be a part as your world changes to reflect the visions of the Hebrew prophets.   

In defense of a Fiftieth year Jubilee

First, I am going to suggest we take the reading of the text at face value.

 ‘You are also to count off seven Sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven Sabbaths of years, namely, forty-nine years.  You shall then sound a ram’s horn abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land.  You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family. Leviticus 25:8-10

The most simple reading of the text brings you to the logical conclusion that the 50^th year is a Jubilee and after the Jubilee you start with a new count in year one. This view is consistent with the view of the classical Rabbis. (Those teachers of whom we have record of before the Romans destroyed the temple in 0070)

I also count Noah’s story as evidence.

Lamech lived one hundred and eighty-two years, and became the father of a son.  Now he called his name Noah, saying, “This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed.” Genesis 5:28-29

When Noah was born they said” This one will give us rest” six hundred years later he survived the flood

“Now Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of water came upon the earth.” Genesis 7:6

And the text tells us he went out, on to his own land, in the six hundred and first year.

“Now it came about in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first of the month, the water was dried up from the earth. Then Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked and behold, the surface of the ground was dried up. In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. Then God spoke to Noah, saying, “Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives with you.” Genesis 8:13-5

I expect Noah was born on a Jubilee and that is why they named him Noah (which means rest) and exclaimed “this one will give us rest” and I expect he was in the ark during a Jubilee six hundred years later and went out onto his own land in the first year after the Jubilee. For all this to work the Jubilee calendar obviously needs to be 50 years.

Jeremiah has something for us as well. The 70 year exile he predicted also give us useful evidence.

Therefore He brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans who slew their young men ….Then they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all its fortified buildings with fire and destroyed all its valuable articles. Those who had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon… to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept Sabbath until seventy years were complete. 2 Chronicles 36:17-21

As Judah goes into exile in the 580’s BCE, Jeremiah pronounces seventy years of exile because the Sabbaths had been ignored. If you consider that each 50 years should have had 8 sabbatical years, seven Shmitas and one Jubilee then a mathematical calculation could be set up to establish how long it was since these things where in practice (70/8) X 50 = 437.5 years since the Sabbatical years where kept. Add 437.5 to 582 BCE and you find yourself in the approximate time frame of Saul and David. I am not trying to be exact here I am just pointing out that if the sabbatical years where kept if at all was very early in the united monarchy and it very quickly fell out of use. Indeed Ezekiel 20 gives us the sense that Sabbath keeping was never done very well.

If the Sabbatical years where not kept for over 400 years while Israel and Judah where in the land then it is very unlikely that Sabbatical years were kept during the exile or the very stressed years of the returned exiles under Ezra and Nehemiah and the later occupation of the Greeks and Romans.

So if this is the case then, it was over one thousand years since the abandonment of Sabbatical years that Yeshua (Jesus) shows up on the scene. I believe that this story from Luke has some information for us.

And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed,
To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”

And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. ²¹ And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke 4:18-21

The passage Yeshua quotes is from Isaiah 61 and goes on to talk about the restoration of the land to the people of Israel. (see Isaiah 61:4 below) This language can only be Jubilee correlated as the return of the land is only at the 50 year Jubilee. (see Leviticus 25) Land does not return to its original owners in the other seventh years.   

Then they will rebuild the ancient ruins,
They will raise up the former devastations;
And they will repair the ruined cities,
The desolations of many generations. Isaiah 61:4

I contend that Yeshua was re-establishing the date of Jubilee and that this event had to happen in the late 0020’s or very early 0030’s. I expect it was the fall of 0029.

Can I prove it? No, but it seems to fit what we see in the modern market place.

I intend to be generous here to all other points of view but our focus is to be looking for rhymes, parallels and patterns. If the evidence leads us to another conclusion so be it, we need to be sure that we are not trying to force round pegs in square holes.

Interestingly as of this moment the modern rabbinic count is the same as what I have proposed here but in 2029-2030 their count will become year one, in contrast to what I see as a fiftieth year. As a result for the next 15 years our counts for Shmita agree. This may be a very wonderful opportunity to work together to restore Shmita.

A Jewish group called Hazon is doing their part to remind the world of Shmita you can find them hazon.org/shmita-project