Just in time for your summer reading

After almost a quarter century of tinkering with the idea, I have finally written the book!

Official release date is September 29, 2015, however, I will have advance copies in early June.

I have posted Chapter One at my new web site: http://7and50rhymes.com/

If you want an advance copy let me know by dropping me an email at barry@7and50rhymes.com

Paperback Retail $17.99, Hardcover TBD

Expect Anything

“I am not good at predictions, especially about the future”

I have no idea who originated this quote, but it is a favorite of mine. As we head toward the end of year seven this fall, what is really happening around us will become even more obscure. On the time scale of seven years we are now at the furthest point from the "Divine Light" which came into our situation in year one, six plus years ago, and the “Divine Light” we know is coming in the upcoming year one is still hidden from us.

Fourteen years ago at this point Muhammad Atta and his boys where learning about big airplanes and Ken Lay and Jeffery Skilling where still cooking the books at Enron.

Seven years ago the banking industry was still handing our liar loans and Bernie Madoff was still using creative accounting to keep his Ponzi scheme afloat.

So what is happening now? We have no idea.

Twenty-one years ago there was no financial crisis but instead the new set of seven years kicked off the best six economic years this country has ever seen. Remember Fed Chair, Allen Greenspan calling it "irrational exuberance" . Greenspan made that remark in 1996, the markets did not stop going up until March of 2000, spring of year six, by the way.

So what should we be doing? What does rest look like in a Year Seven? Do we just sleep a lot? I don’t think so, remember slaves where to be set free, land was to remain un-plowed and at the very end of the seventh year debts where to be forgiven. 

I think it’s a time of tinkering, doing those little things you thought about over the last few years that would improve your performance. Take the time to read a book, Take a class, try to make a prototype of that idea you had a while back. Write out your point of view on a subject you care about, it is likely you don’t even know what you really think about something until you write about it.

If you have gotten yourself into a good, restful, place this is a great time to help someone else who may be having a difficult time.

Recently in speaking with a fellow businessman about what to be doing at this juncture, I described the position we are attempting to be in as we enter year one as the equivalent of a football linebacker before the ball is snapped. Having no idea which direction the play may go, the player in a completely balanced stance is ready for anything. This is exactly the purpose of the seventh year, to be ready for anything.

In the end it may appear you predicted the future. But that is not the case you simply will be ready to go any direction when the Divine Light reveals what is really going on.

Happy Tinkering  

Charisma Magazine?

This is so amazing!
I have been expecting something like this for a long time, but now that it has happened it almost takes my breath away. Charisma Magazine of all places calls for a return to God's calendar!
So Happy! 
Enjoy,

http://www.charismamag.com/blogs/standing-with-israel/21053-it-s-time-to-get-on-god-s-calendar

Better days ahead?

This past Wednesday the 27th of August was the first day of the Hebrew Month of Elul, the sixth month, if you start a count at Nissan, the month of Passover.

By the way there is a great smart phone app out there for converting dates from the modern calendar to the Hebrew calendar produced by appstudio.

Therefore it’s the sixth month of the six year in what I count as the fifth, seven year cycle. If that sentence means nothing to you, reading my previous posts #1, #10 and #11 may help.

I want to focus on what we observed in the last six years. There can be no doubt now that this seven year segment, which started in the fall of 2008 and is slated to end next fall, has bitten a lot a people just as you would expect from the birds and fish of day five. It often seemed like buzzards and sharks were the order of the day.

As always some of us were at the right place at the right time and caught some of that explosive new life but for many, this has truly been a difficult six years.

Regardless what situation you find yourself in now, this is not the time to panic. Consider Noah’s story about the birds. He had survived a great tumult, but was anxious to find out when things would get better. Sound familiar?

The text tells us that;    

The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible. After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.  Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground.  But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark.  He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark.  When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him. Genesis 8:5-12

So let’s walk this through, you can make the case that the story is telling us that the birds begin to fly from Noah’s ark the 10^th day of the eleventh month, 40 days after the tops of the mountains where seen on the first day of the tenth month. The eleventh month can be considered a fifth month if you count the seventh month as a new beginning, just as the Hebrew calendar counts the seventh month, Tishrei, as the first month of the annual year. (I know this is a difficult concept for westerners to get in our heads, you are going to have to study it. There are plenty of sources out there to explain it)

So 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 could be thought of at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I understand this is may seem a reach, but is it not logical that a month with so much information about birds, would have a fifth day connection?

Therefore the indication is that the raven left the ark on the tenth day of the month of birds, month five.  As each seven days pass the indications improve. Of course right from the start the raven has no problem, he has plenty of carrion to cleanup, so his food needs are taken care of immediately. The next bird sent out is a dove which needs vegetation. The dove soon returns as it cannot find even a perch. Interestingly the third time a bird is sent out, the dove stays out till evening and returns with vegetation, an olive leaf. (New life in the third) The fourth time Noah sends out a bird, the dove does not return indicating the dove has found food and shelter.

Therefore the implication is that in a fifth day pattern, if things have been bad, they begin to improve slowly as the fifth segment of time moves along. I feel strongly that this is exactly what I have seen in the last six years, in other words in my view the events of the fall of 2008 seem to have started a day five like, pattern for this seven year segment which ends next fall.  

Thus I expect the business climate will continue to slowly improve as we begin this last year of the fifth set of sevens. Things are still volatile, the buzzards and the sharks are still out there but now the doves also start to find places to rest and feed.

There you go. How about that for an alternative way to read the Bible?

Gather what you can as you prepare to remember the economic reset which should happen next fall. If you find yourself a long way from where you wish you were, as we head to the end of the seventh, take some comfort in the indication that things are improving and from this passage out of Zephaniah.

“I will gather those who grieve about the appointed feasts—
They came from you, O Zion; The reproach of exile is a burden on them.  

Zephaniah 3:18 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Zephaniah has given me a lot of comfort over the years with these words. Clearly the prophet is commending those who grieve the appointed times, he recognizes that often we cannot do all that we wish we could in regards to following all the revealed instruction about the appointed times. 

Zephaniah is telling us that living in a place that ignores these things is a burden on those who wish to follow the instructions concerning the appointed times.

That would be us.

Always remember, timing matters. But God looks on the Heart! 

”Mystery of the Shemitah”

Hi Everyone.

It’s been a while since I posted, my book’s first draft is up to 58,000 words so we are getting there.

I wanted to let you know about another book coming out by Jonathan Cahn called ”Mystery of the Shemitah”. It comes out September 4 you can read parts of it on Amazon.

I have no idea what his ultimate conclusions are and take no responsibility for them but thought I should let you know about his work. I have seen him speak and he is a dynamo!

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.