At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to a fellow Israelite. They shall not require payment from anyone among their own people, because the Lord's time for canceling debts has been proclaimed. You may require payment from a foreigner, but you must cancel any debt your fellow Israelite owes you. - Deuteronomy 15: 1-3 (NIV)
We have listened to the hype and fear mongering for over a year now. Hucksters and false teachers lined up to line their pockets with the monies of gullible Christians. We heard fanciful tales of the stars aligning perfectly for only this one time in our lifetime. From dual covenant false teacher John Hagee's blood moon nonsense to Jim Bakker constantly selling "prepper" supplies so you can survive the coming apocalypse, we have seen it all. In the middle of it however is the flavor of the decade of the false prophet realm, Jonathan Con. I refuse to spell his name any other way than this truth. He has done nothing but con Christians for years now, starting with his numerology based book The Harbinger in 2012. Capitalizing on the success of that book, Con took one chapter of it and made another book, "Unlocking the Mystery of the Shemitah."
Except there was no mystery to unlock, just books to sell. Money to make by making merchandise of the sheep of the Lord. And so many bought into it. So many I know personally. Distracted by the notion that someone has figured it all out. The secret codes of God! The return of the Lord! Except, that goes against Scripture:
"But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left."Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. - Matthew 24: 36-42 (NIV)
But we are not keeping watch at all. Instead we are looking to snake oil salesmen to tell us something the Bible has already said no man will know. While it is like the days of Noah, the Shemitah has absolutely nothing to do with it. It never has. What exactly is the Shemitah? In ancient Israel it was designed to be a year of rest for the land and debt cancellation for the people. It occurred every seven years. Never mind that history shows that Israel barely kept the Shemitah. Now, centuries later we are expected to believe that America has to? That is the Con-job in his latest book. He takes a portion of the Mosaic covenant and tries to apply it to the Church in America. Then he seeks to browse through history and find events he can point to that overlay onto his pre-designed theology.
In order to accomplish the first part, Con relies heavily on the current believed dominionist theologies in the church today. This notion that America is a Christian nation under attack from worldly secularists and religions known to be hostile towards us. This sense that we ought to bring God back, as if He left. Back into the classrooms. Back into the schools. Back into the courthouses. Back into the White House. Con latches onto this widely held false belief and simply infers that this means we have turned from God as Israel did so many times in the Bible. Look how often God had to discipline them! Watch out! That's coming for us too if we do not repent and turn back to God! The problems with this are many and quite frankly embarrassingly obvious if Christians would simply look. The problem is not sight but the desire to see. America was never under covenant with God beloved. Not only that but we were not even close. Were we more religious when the country was founded? Sure but so was most of the world. Thomas Jefferson rewrote the Bible to remove all references to the deity of Jesus Christ. Many of the founding fathers were deists and a couple were even atheists. They were escaping religious persecution, not looking to set up a theocracy.
Even if somehow you refuse to understand American history, let's take this from strictly a biblical perspective. The key verses are speaking about the Shemitah. Creditors canceling debts. Not requiring payments. But who does it specifically apply to? Israelites! You shall cancel the loan made to a fellow Israelite. You shall not require payment from anyone among their own people. As if God knew this would not be enough for the con artists He gets very specific when telling us that repayment CAN be required from foreigners! Do you get that! The Shemitah does not apply to foreigners! It does not apply to us. Yet that did not stop Jonathan Con from hawking his book for the past two years. He told of how this year's Shemitah will end on the last day of Elul and how history reveals great financial calamities that are harbingers for us today. Since the magic number here was seven, Con just went back every seven years and looked for something bad he could then overlay on top of this system as proof. This works no matter what the number is. The con is in giving yourself an entire year to play with. What year has passed by that does not contain something horrible either culturally of financially? But the existence of bad things, even in numerological patterns does not infer causality, nor predict the future. Plus, Con ignores all the positive things that may have happened in those years. Preying on people's fears is easy with this much room to manipulate. The bad things Con has been pointing out have been related to the stock market. That every seven years there has been market crashes and that it is all culminating in this year's Shemitah on the Day of Elul. God has once again shown Jonathan Con to be false.
Because tomorrow is the Day of Elul and since it is a Sunday the markets will not open. The last chance Con had was yesterday but the Dow Jones closed up over 100 points. Oops. It is the end of the Shemitah as we know it and I feel fine. What actually happened is several months ago financial experts started predicting that this September might see a catastrophic financial event. It is not prophecy to say this country is in trouble. That we have a debt crises and a wage crisis. That we have a problem with the value of our currency. Eventually there probably will be a dramatic implosion in our markets but it will have nothing to do with an ancient cycle of leaving ground fallow for a year while canceling debts that Christians today are not required to keep. Con and his cohorts like John Hagee saw the predictions and jumped at the opportunity to look prophetic. They always leave themselves plenty of outs. Con routinely reminds people that he is not a prophet even though he does not discourage people from calling him one. He constantly makes predictions with absurdly long time frames and simplistically broad requirements. "Something bad will happen in the next 18 months" is not a prophecy nor a prediction. It is simply a statement of probable fact. The best is the baked in "Godly" out. When "something bad" does happen the Con-man takes a victory lap but if nothing happens he bows his head solemnly and speaks about the "sovereignty of God." What a perfect scam.
Beloved, it is things like this that take our eyes off of Jesus Christ, damage the witness of the Gospel to the lost, and ultimately only serve the devil. Next up on the Con-Calendar is the final lunar eclipse of the so called "tetrad of blood moons." This is scheduled for September 28, 2015. So in another 16 days God will debunk another liar and scam artist in John Hagee. We do not need Hagee nor Con to tell us that we are living in the end times. The signs of the times are evident. Not just in the world but in the great apostasy currently occurring within the church. That we get so distracted by the twinkle of false doctrinal tinsel. We seem to try and focus on Jesus but then a theological squirrel is caught out of the corner of our eye and we go chasing it down whatever rabbit hole the false teacher wants to drag us down into. We must stop because Jesus is coming back soon. Just not because of the Shemitah, four blood moons, or the impending year of Jubilee. We know He is coming back because His Word tells us so. Just like it also tells us that no one will know the hour. No matter how many books he sells.
Rev. Anthony.
