Hi everybody.
My sister sent me a DVD entitled The Mystery of the Shemitah by Jonathan Cahn that I just finished watching and I'm just wondering if anybody else here has watched it or read the book by the same name and if so, then what did you think about it? If somebody else has already asked this question, then please provide me a link me to that thread. Thank you.
The thing about Cahm is he takes things that pertain to Israel and applies them to America. God never had a covenant with America, so it doesn't make sense that God would use things that pertain to Israel His Covenant People to judge America.
Like I said in another post, the only place I see in the Bible where nations will be judged is at the end of the Tribulation Period, after Israel has been judged, the nations of earth will be judged by Christ and His Church. This judgment will not be against individuals but against nations for their treatment of the Jewish people.
“For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land” (Joel 3:1-2).
The Hebrew word Shemitah means "release", the seventh year was supposed to be a rest for the land, no planting or harvesting during the seventh year. The sixth year God caused the land to produce three times what it normally would, and, this carried Israel through the seventh year and into the eighth until the harvest came. In the seventh year debtors were released from debts. Whoever they owed money to they were to release that person that was in debt to them, that's where the word Shemitah "release" comes from. It was a Sabbth year.
We all know the story how Israel disregarded the obsevance of the Sabbath year for 70 cycles or 490 years and they were taken captive to Babylon.
In Cahn's book the Harbinger he tried to make the point that the Founding Fathers going as far back as the Puritans and the Pilgrims had it in their minds to creat a New Israel on American shores, so even though God didn't make a covenant with America the founding Father's in a sense wanted to make a covenant with God and that America is only the second nation in history that was dedicated to God from the begining.
Cahn has said that it was never his intention to make it appear that America is a new Israel, yet in his book "The Mystery of The Shemitah" in chapter 7 "Fourth Key: The Secret Israel" and his second section is called "The Israel of the New World".
Since he is Jewish it's hard to imagine but it looks like Cahn is espouseing "Replacement Theology"
