The Mystery of the Shemitah (24 page)

The transference of mantles from the British Empire to America—a process that had begun in the late nineteenth century when America eclipsed Britain as the world’s leading economic power—now entered its second phase. The financial and economic power departing from the British Empire on one hand was pouring into America on the other. The war had caused a massive transference of global power. The center of the world’s financial realm had shifted from the Old World to the New, from the British Empire to the United States. The world’s financial center was no longer London, but now New York City—the same city that now boasted the earth’s highest towers.

Historians commonly mark the year 1917 as the beginning of America’s rise to global superpower. It was the year that America ended its isolationism, and dramatically so. It was the key turning point, when the nation unequivocally walked onto the stage of world power. At the end of the war the shattered and exhausted powers of Europe now looked to America for leadership. America had taken on a mantle it was unprepared to assume. It was now not only the strongest economic power and the world’s financial and economic center—it was now the leading nation on earth.

In the years following the war, America would seek to return to its former isolation—but there was no turning back. It had begun an irreversible rise to power that would take it to heights no nation or empire had ever known. And that ascent had begun in the Year of the Shemitah.

The ascent of America to global superpower, having begun in the midst of one world war, would be completed at the end of the next. From America’s entry into World War I to its emergence as global superpower in the ashes of World War II, the process would take twenty-eight years. Both 1917 and 1945 stand as key turning points in American and world history. They share, as well, another distinction: each is the Year of the Shemitah. America’s rise to world superpower begins with one Shemitah and will be completed with another.

In 1945 the ancient mystery will manifest with such immensity of scale and force that the First World War will pale in comparison.

Chapter 21
The REIGNING

The Fourth Shemitah and the Global Cataclysm

F
OUR IS THE
number given in Scripture connected to world kingdoms and empires. From the year America began its rise to superpower in the First World War to the coming of the Second World War, three Shemitahs had gone by. The fourth Shemitah was approaching. The world was again engaged in another cataclysm. It would be the deadliest war in human history. By the time it was over, more than fifty million lives would be lost.

The New World Order

The Year of the Shemitah would begin at summer’s end 1944. In its approach American and Allied forces would launch the invasion of Europe, “Operation Overlord” on “D-Day.” But in that same summer another event would take place, much more quietly, almost unnoticeably. And yet it would bear massive ramifications for the world. It would happen in the quiet village of Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.

The Shemitah brings about the transformation of the economic and financial realms. What took place at Bretton Woods would bring about the transformation of the global economic and financial order. It would establish such institutions as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But most dramatically it would set up a new world economic and financial order in which world currencies would be tied to the US dollar.

The wiping away of debt and the ending of the Shemitah would bring about a new financial and economic beginning. Bretton Woods would bring about a new financial and economic beginning and order for the world. America would now be the global base on which the world’s economic and financial order would rest. It was planned out in the summer of 1944, in the Shemitah’s approach. It would be ratified by the American Congress in the Shemitah’s midst, in summer of 1945. And it would begin taking effect after the war’s end, in the Shemitah’s wake.

But as the Shemitah also brings about collapse, so too Bretton Woods would do likewise. It heralded the end of the era of the British sterling’s reign in world trade and the collapse of the British Empire. A senior official of the Bank of England described it as “the greatest blow to Britain next to the war.”
¹

The Collapse of a Continent

The Shemitah began in September 1944 and lasted until September 1945. This period witnessed the war’s most intense and climactic phase. The Year of the Shemitah had again brought the collapse of powers. As American and Allied forces marched across Europe from the west and the Red Army moved in from the east, the result was one of the most sweeping collapses of power in history. The totalitarian rule that had held an entire continent in an iron grip was overthrown. The Third Reich, which sought to destroy the children of Israel, had fallen in the Hebrew year of “the casting down.”

Again the Shemitah changed the balance of nations. Again it ushered in a mass transference of power. Again it altered the landscape of history. And again there was a wiping away of what had been built up—a wiping away of governments, ideologies, armies, powers, buildings, states, cities, and sovereignties.

The Shemitah of World War II

World War II began when England and France declared war on Germany for invading Poland on September 1, 1939. But Hitler’s seizure of Europe began a year earlier with the annexation of Austria in the spring of 1938, followed by the taking of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in the autumn of 1938. Thus Hitler’s takeover of nations began in 1938, the Year of the Shemitah. It would end with his suicide and the fall of the Third Reich in the spring of 1945, the following Year of the Shemitah. It had all taken place within the seven-year cycle, from Shemitah to Shemitah.

The Shemitah of the Holocaust

One can give a number of dates to mark the beginning of the Holocaust. But what is known as “The Fateful Year” was 1938. It was that year that the Nazi persecution of the Jews became an official and radicalized policy of the German state. On October 5, 1938, Jewish passports were invalidated. On October 27 came the brutal first mass deportation of Jewish people out of Germany. Two weeks later came
Kristallnacht
, “The Night of Broken Glass,” when over fourteen hundred synagogues were set on fire, countless Jewish-owned shops and businesses were destroyed, and thirty thousand Jewish people were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

These events are commonly cited as the beginning of the Holocaust. It started in the month of Tishri, 1938, in the autumn wake of the Shemitah. The Holocaust would only end with the collapse of the Nazi state and the liberation of the death camps. Both would take place in the spring of 1945—in the Year of the Shemitah. It had all taken place in the seven-year cycle from Shemitah to Shemitah.

The Collapse of the Colonial Empires

In 1945 one-third of the world lived in a territory under the dominion of or dependent on a colonial power. The same year marks the beginning of the fall of the great colonial empires. The war had devastated the European powers, the conquered and the conqueror alike. From the ruins of the Second World War began the collapse of the colonial empires. The rise of the two superpowers, America and the Soviet Union, would further accelerate that collapse. The fall of the European empires would affect every continent and give rise to multitudes of new nations. The Shemitah had now brought about one of the greatest series of collapses in history. Again, it had wiped away that which had been built up. And, again, it had altered the balance of powers and transformed the landscape of nations.

The Shemitah’s End and the Atomic Age

The war in Europe had ended in the spring of 1945, but the war against the Japanese Empire continued. It was still raging in the summer of 1945. As the Shemitah neared its climactic end, so did the Second World War. With one month left to the “end of the seventh year” and the time of nullification, the greatest destructive force ever devised by man was unleashed on the Japanese city of Hiroshima with the dropping of the atomic bomb. In a blinding flash the city was wiped away. Three days later another blinding flash would wipe away the city of Nagasaki.

At 12:00 noon, Japan standard time, August 15, the Emperor Hirohito announced the nation’s surrender. The fall of the Japanese Empire would continue through the month of September with the surrender of troops from Burma to Hong Kong, from Korea to the islands of Miyako and Ishigaki. Thus the Empire’s collapse and that of the war continued through the Hebrew month of Tishri in the Shemitah’s autumn wake.

But the official end of the Second World War would come on September 2, 1945, aboard the USS
Missouri
, as the Japanese Empire issued its formal surrender to the Allies. The Second World War ended just as the Shemitah approached its end. In fact, the war would end in the Shemitah’s last week, within days of Elul 29. The proximity of the end of the global conflict to the end of the ancient seven-year cycle was 99.99 percent. And at that same moment, at the Shemitah’s peak, a new age would begin with America as the head of nations.

The Victor’s Procession

The celebration of triumph at the end of war with a victorious procession of the prevailing army goes back to ancient times. At the end of the greatest war in world history there would be several such processions. In June of 1945 a Soviet victory parade was held by the Red Army in Moscow. In July the British forces held a victory parade in Berlin.

But few processions would involve all four of the Allied armies. And there would only be one that would mark the end of the Second World War at the actual time of the war’s end. The procession took place in Berlin, the city in which the Third Reich fell and the war ended in Europe. It happened just days after the Japanese surrendered on the battleship USS
Missouri
, marking the end of the Second World War. Overseeing the victory parade was Marshal Georgy Zhukov, representing the Soviet Union; General George S. Patton, representing the United States; General Brian Robertson, representing the United Kingdom; and General Marie-Pierre Koenig, representing France.

It happened on September 7, 1945. But on the Hebrew calendar it was Elul 29, the day marking the end of the Shemitah—the very last day of the biblical cycle of seven years. The cycle had begun in 1938, the year in which Hitler’s takeover of neighboring lands had begun and the fateful year that marked the beginning of the Holocaust. It had now ended seven years later on the last day of the Shemitah with the march of the victors through the streets of the conquered city. The procession marking the end of the greatest war in history took place on the very day appointed from ancient times to mark the end of the biblical cycle of seven years, on the Day of Remission, collapse, and release.

The Cold War Shemitah

But Elul 29 not only ends one cycle—but also its end begins another. The end of the war would mark the beginning of a new age, a new world, and a new conflict to be known as the Cold War.

From the same city in which the procession of Elul 29 took place, and from the same key players who took part in that procession, the Cold War would begin. Berlin would become the symbolic center of that conflict and that era, and of the division of that world between the two superpowers.

It has been noted by more than one commentator that what happened on that Day of the Shemitah in 1945 would become a point of contention between the two superpowers, a portent of the conflict that would become the Cold War. With the absence of General Eisenhower from the procession and the West’s subsequent downplaying of the event, the day has been seen as the beginning of the end of the wartime coalition, one of the earliest signs of the ensuing global conflict, and a precursor of the Cold War—on the Day of the Shemitah.