September is poised to be a month like none before it. There will be signs in the sky, possible financial calamity, and geopolitical milestones. The month has a lot of people talking about the prophetic significance of these events. I think there is a lot to be gleaned from what they are saying. Let’s take a look.

• The Schemitah. In the Bible, God tells the Jews to allow the ground to rest every seventh year. They are not to plant or harvest. Just like the concept of the Sabbath being a day of rest in a week, there is a year of rest in a heptad (i.e., a seven-year “decade”). When Judah, which was a nation consecrated to God failed to follow this command over the course of several hundred years, its people were forced into Babylonian exile for seventy years, one year for each missed schemitah. Messianic rabbi Jonathan Cahn has written an excellent book on the subject. Importantly, he shows how schemitah anniversaries are used by God to warn His people to get in line. I recommend his books to anyone, but here is the upshot. The events of September 11, 2001 prefigured the day of the schemitah, Elul 29 on the Jewish calendar. The first day the stock market opened after the World Trade Center Attacks was this day. Fast-forward seven Jewish years to Elul 29 in the year 2008, and you have the stock market crash that led to the great recession. Not only that, Rabbi Cahn can show that other historic crashes also occurred on Elul 29. Is God trying to tell us something? If so, we’ll see. There is another schemitah coming up on September 13, 2015.

• The Jubilee. The Bible also calls for a jubilee year after the seventh schemitah. During this time, servants were freed, land reverted back to its original holders, and debts were released. The significance of this September is that it also starts a jubilee year. And not only that, Jewish rabbis tell us it is the seventieth jubilee, and rabbinic tradition states that Messiah will come in this year.

• Appearance of the Mahdi. The Islamic messianic figure is called the Mahdi. He is to appear on the scene to usher in the End Times. DiscoveringIslam.org and the End Times Research Center have declared that the Mahdi will appear in 2015 or 2016: “Based on our numerical analysis of the Quran and Hadith, the official beginning of the End of Time and the coming of Imam Mahdi will most likely be in 2015 (or 2016).” A lot of Muslims expect him to appear during the Hadj, which in 2015 takes place on September 21-26.
• Rapture Ready. Christians who are awaiting the Rapture to signal the End of Days have noticed a striking pattern in the Bible. God gave seven specific feasts to the Jews. In retrospect, these feasts look like prophetic signs. Major events in the New Testament took place during the spring feasts: Jesus was crucified on Passover, lay in the tomb during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and rose on First Fruits. The church was born with the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Feast of Pentecost. These are the spring feasts. The logic goes like this: If prophecies of His first coming were fulfilled on the spring feasts, might not His second coming occur on the fall feasts? The next feast is Rosh Hashanah, known as the Feast of Trumpets. Interestingly, it was a feast that began only after confirmed sightings of the new moon. If the new moon fell on a cloudy evening, celebration of the Feast of Trumpets would wait until the new moon could be confirmed on the next evening. For this reason, the Feast of Trumpets was described as being a feast for which “no one knows the day or hour”. Many believe Jesus’ usage of that phrase was a direct reference to the Feast of Trumpets in the same way someone might say “when the tree is lit” to refer to Christmas in our day. Given that it is also the 70^th jubilee, many Christians are keeping a cautious eye on the sky for this year’s Feast of Trumpets on September 13.

• Major Stock Market Correction. Without knowing anything about the schemitah cycle, many stock market analysts are calling for a major correction this fall, probably beginning in September. With the China crash still weighing heavily, the market looks poised to suffer a significant downturn in September.

• Blood Moon Tetrad. There are seven times in recorded history that four blood moons fell on Jewish feast days. Most have portended prophetic events for Israel. For example, modern Israel’s birth as a nation and the retaking of Jerusalem both happened in years with blood moon tetrads falling on feast days. The next time this happens will be in 2582-2583. The fourth blood moon of this current cycle falls on September 28, 2015, the Feast of Tabernacles. Many are wondering if it will be a harbinger of a major event for Israel.

• Papal Visit. The Pope’s visit to the United States in September is historic in that he will address both the U.S. Congress and the United Nations. It is rumored that he will issue an encyclical calling for a world financial order around the time of these speeches. This would not exactly be a surprise considering the lightly veiled Jesuit communism found in his environmental encyclical this spring. It appears you can take the boy out of the Jesuits, but you can’t take the Jesuit out of the boy.

• Palestinian State. At the UN session attended by the Pope, there will be a vote for Palestinian statehood. Prior attempts have been blocked with the veto power of the United States. This time, the President says we will abstain. This is significant because it bisects Israel and leaves it nearly defenseless in the region. Many modern-day prophets believe they have been told in no uncertain terms by God that if America divides Israel, He will divide America. Many have seen very unsettling visions of earthquakes ravaging our country, particularly in the New Madrid fault line along the Mississippi.

• Congressional Deadline for Iran Deal. The deal will come up for Congressional vote in September. There is the distinct possibility that we will be seeding an escalation of nuclear arms in the Middle East, the most politically volatile region of the world.

• Jade Helm. Conspiracy theorists have made much of the Jade Helm military exercise taking place in several states along our borders. In effect, the army is practicing urban warfare in American cities. This is in strict violation of a long-standing proscription against the use of the military inside the United States. Conspiracy theorists wonder whether it is just an exercise, or if the military is preparing against an undisclosed threat, such as ISIS attacks from across the border. In any event, Jade Helm ends on September 15, 2015, so if it is more than just an exercise, we’ll know soon enough.

• CERN. The much-vaunted large hadron collider is about to make history this September. Already the massive machine is cycling up for subatomic particle collisions at unheard of energies. The collision energy this time will be around 13 TeV (tera-electron volts). This is nearly twice the power used to find the Higgs boson, or God particle, and may replicate conditions very close to the Big Bang. Nobody is sure what the scientists will find. Some think this energy level may be enough to shred the fabric of time/space, opening a door to other dimensions or other universes. Sergio Bertolucci, CERN’s Director of Research and Scientific Computing, has said, “Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through.” Yikes! Legendary scientist Stephen Hawking has warned that collisions at this great energy could create black holes. Some scientists say such microscopic black holes would immediately evaporate. Hawking doesn’t sound so sure in his warning. We should know when the first collisions occur on September 23, 2015.

• Climate Chaos Comment. A lot of people are keyed into a strange utterance by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on March 13, 2014. Standing with U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, Fabius announced work on the next UN climate conference to be held in France at the end of this year. The remark that has everyone buzzing? Mr. Fabius said, “We have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.” And you guessed it, folks, the 500 days are up in September. Was he speaking of some undisclosed environmental event poised to occur soon? Personally I don’t think so, but he may have been referring to the drafting of draconian new environmental protection standards to be presented at the meeting later this year.

• Newton’s Figment. As it turns out, Sir Isaac Newton, the “father of modern science,” was an avid Bible scholar who wrote at great length about the timing of the end of days. His writings were discovered in the Library of Congress just a few years ago. While toted as a figment of his imagination 300 years ago when he wrote them, his calculations and interpretations of the prophet Daniel from the original Hebrew show a potential date for Christ’s return at September 23, 2015, which just happens to be the Jewish Feast of Atonement. Crazy times, huh?

So what does it all mean? I don’t know, but as an author whose subject matter deals with alternative history and topics that have been termed, “conspiracy theory”, I am intrigued. Of course there are those who say such theories are fear porn, but I’m not so sure. When I pick my head up and look outside of the day-to-day, I’m forced to take a hard look at the world and a hard look at my life with Christ. Dare I say there are improvements I can make in my relationship with Jesus and my service to the world? Does such a look behind the headlines force me to do better? To keep my eyes on the prize? You bet. So I think such wonderings and ponderings are beneficial if for no other reason than to help me focus on more than the upcoming football season and who will be on Dancing with the Stars.

If you find any of this interesting, you may also be interested in how we got to the place where all of these events seem to be converging at this particular point in time. Take these intriguing ideas and combine them with unforgettable characters, and you have the This Generation Series. Check out Precipice at http://amzn.to/1CQOgpT and Pentecost at http://bitly.com/1G3D3SD.

As for me, I’ve got one eye on the sky and the other buried in my computer trying to wrap up Penance, the third book in the series, and a book that speaks to the theology underlying the This Generation books. If nothing of Biblical significance comes from the events in September (Remember, we can’t put God in a box.), then I want to leave the month reinvigorated to move ahead in my Christian walk. But for now, I’ll contemplate and write … wake me up when September ends!