the Shemitah and the Stock Market

I've blogged about the Shemitah before: the Biblical "land's Sabbath." Every seven years, the land was supposed to lie entirely fallow, and all the Jews were commanded to spend the year living off food storage and studying the scriptures. Economically, this year-long Sabbath looked like a depression. No food production, people living off what they already had. At the end of the Shemitah, on 29 Elul (the last day of the Biblical year, falling in mid-to-late September), all the economic slates were wiped clean: all debts and all credits erased. For the Jews, this was a commandment (it's in Leviticus, and I have all the scriptural links in the link above), and when they violated it they got punished with devastation for as many years as they had neglected their Shemitah observance. In modern days, Shemitah observance is not considered a commandment, but history indicates that it does constitute a time of judgment.

Honey and applies: traditional Rosh Hashanah fare.
Image here.

According to my research about the Shemitah, one would expect that shortly after Rosh Hashana in the Shemitah year, economic failure would begin. The severity would correspond with a judgment on the land. This economic pattern fits into the oft-noted and completely not-understood phenomenon of stock market failure in the month of October. This article mentions this phenomenon at the bottom.

This Shemitah, arguably the final Shemitah in the "half hour of silence" prior to the events listed in D&C 88:95, began on 25 September 2014--the day Thomas Duncan checked himself into the hospital with Ebola and was turned away.

On October 6 and 7, we had General Conference, which I thought focused heavily on spiritual preparation and being prepared to follow the prophet no matter what. I was also pleasantly surprised about the talk mentioning the importance of physical health and focusing on a healthy diet and regular exercise.

General conference. See LDS.org.

On October 8 we had a Biblical blood moon tetrad blood moon, along with a simultaneous Draconid meteor shower--symbolically indicating severe troubles ahead for the House of Israel (the lunar eclipse symbolizes enemy forces "eclipsing" Israel and the Draconids represent the unleashing of Satanic forces).

At about this same time, the Supreme Court essentially legalized gay marriage everywhere, by refusing to hear state appeals about the issue.

Daily we are hearing of new ebola cases popping up in the US and Europe, with various organizations claiming that we could hit 10,000 new cases per week in December.

And to top it all off, the stock market has been falling and falling. Examine (my emphasis):

Is Ebola going to cause another of the massive October stock market crashes that Wall Street is famous for? At one point on Wednesday, the Dow was down a staggering 460 points. It ultimately closed down just 173 points, but this was the fifth day in a row that the Dow has declined. And of course Ebola is one of the primary things that is being blamed for this stunning stock market drop. Since September 19th, we have seen the S&P 500 fall about 7 percent and the Nasdaq fall nearly 10 percent. The VIX (the most important measure of volatility on Wall Street) shot up an astounding 22 percent on Wednesday. So many of the ominous signs for the markets that I wrote about on Tuesday are now even worse. If a handful of Ebola cases in the United States can cause this much panic in the financial world, what would a full-blown pandemic look like?

Now check out this super fun graph depicting the parallel between 1929 (hint: the drop that began the Great Depression) and today:

Super fun!! Looks like we are right on track to follow in the footsteps of a really intense time. The Shemitah corresponding to this graph went from Gregorian 1930-1931. The timeline back then looked like this:

1929: Black Monday, giant stock market crash
Early 1930: stock levels went back up a bit, see graph above
June 1930: passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, linked to collapse of global trade
September 1930: Shemitah began
Late 1930: general economic deterioration
April 1931, "the year that made the Great Depression Great": deflationary spiral beginsSeptember 19, 1931: British Empire discarded the gold standard, triggering worldwide panic and the largest monthly percentage drop in stock market history--within days of the financially climactic Shemitah year's end

Timeline paraphrased from The Mystery of the Shemitah: The 3,000-Year-Old Mystery That Holds the Secret of America's Future, the World's Future, and Your Future!.

Basically, all of this is what we would expect if we looked at and compared Biblical and secular history.

The big difference is that if we really are in the "half hour of silence," and that half hour, or 21 years, really began in 2000, that would put this year as the final Shemitah prior to the Tribulation. If we thought the Great Depression was bad, I submit that theoretically the economic turbulence immediately preceding the Tribulation would be substantially more... turbulent.

21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.- Jesus, Matthew 24:21

Conclusion

Things so far as looking exactly as one would expect a mere two weeks into what may be the final Shemitah. We should not be surprised by further economic collapse. Hopefully it doesn't happen, but if it does, it will be well within the realm of what one would expect based on history and the Biblical calendars.