God's Times & Seasons - The Shemitah Cycle/Rapture - The Seven Year Pattern of the End of the Age

Shalom, friends. my name is Chadwick Harvey, and you've reached Faithful Performance. Thank you so much for joining us as we discover the Shemitah cycle — the seven-year biblical cycle written in Leviticus 25. Understanding it will give us great insight into the times and the seasons at the end of the age, including the seven-year tribulation period and the resurrection, or the rapture. We will go through all of this in detail from the scriptures, from the calendar standpoint, from Leviticus 25, and from the broader understanding of the times and the seasons so we can see exactly what Yah is doing at the end of the age.

If we don't understand the times and the seasons, we won't understand these things. We speak about it often on this channel — the times and the seasons, the calendar, and the feast days of Leviticus 23. But if we go a step further and understand the days and the years that the calendar speaks of as well, it gives us great insight into what will happen at the end of the age and helps us understand the calculations and the timeline that Yah is working on within the seven-year, or Shemitah, cycle.

We have spoken before about the Shemitah cycle in relation to America and the trajectory this nation has been on through each seventh year. We have to realize that understanding the times and the seasons — including the Shemitah cycle — is what protects believers from being deceived. In the coming videos, we will also go through America's last sixty or so years on this cycle, as well as what we are witnessing in the Middle East with the rise of a sultan in that region.

When I say "the Shemitah," I mean the seven-year biblical cycle that the entire world is on. Consider the tribulation period — it is a seven-year tribulation. We will prove tonight that it falls on a Shemitah cycle. If we don't understand this, that is precisely where the "thief in the night" warning from Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5 applies — the command to know the times and the seasons. That command encompasses the calendar, the feast days, the Shemitah cycle, and the specific days within the Shemitah cycle as well.

One common example of partial understanding is this: people may understand the Feast of Trumpets but not the Shemitah cycle, and therefore they don't understand when the rapture or the resurrection could or would occur — depending on one's theology and eschatology. We need the full picture so we are not misled.

The Shemitah cycle is first found in Genesis 1:14–16. It says, "Then God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs and seasons and for days and years. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, and it was so. Then God made two great lights — the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night — and he made the stars also."

When we look at Genesis 1:14, we understand that the lights are for signs — that is, blood moons and solar eclipses. They are also for seasons, and the Hebrew word there is mo'ed, which means a divine appointment. That connects directly to the feast days of Leviticus 23. The word for "feast" in Leviticus 23 is also mo'ed. So you have a clear correlation between the calendar and the feast days: the calendar is for seasons, and the seasons are the divine appointments of Leviticus 23. The time is the calendar itself, and the seasons are Leviticus 23.

Now, going deeper, Genesis 1:14 also says the lights are for days and years. The "days" refer to the feast days — the new moon, the major feast days, the minor feast days, and all the important days on the biblical calendar: Passover, Unleavened Bread, Shavuot, Tisha B'Av, Tu B'Av, Rosh Hashanah, the Feast of Trumpets, Yom Kippur, Tabernacles, Hanukkah, Tu Bishvat, Purim — all of these. He is not speaking of days on the Gregorian calendar. He is speaking of his days on his calendar, just as his signs are in his sky and his seasons are his appointed times.

Then there are the years. "Years" in this context does not mean any Gregorian calendar year. It means a Shemitah year or a Jubilee year. We must become truly biblical in our thinking — stepping out of a Greco-Roman, Western mindset and into Yah's mindset. He has a calendar, specific days, specific years, signs in the heavens, and we must understand how he views all of it through that Hebrew lens so that we are not misled by what we hear today. For signs: blood moons and solar eclipses. For seasons: mo'edim, the divine appointments of Leviticus 23. For days: the feast days and minor feast days on the biblical calendar. For years: the Shemitah year and the Jubilee year.

It is remarkable that two chapters after Leviticus 23 — where Yah lays out all the feast days — Leviticus 25 speaks about the Shemitah year and the Jubilee year. The Shemitah year is every seventh year in the cycle. Just as the Lord wanted his people to rest on the seventh-day Sabbath, he also wanted them to rest a full seventh year — no work at all — and he promised to bless them three times over in the sixth year to sustain them through it. It is a beautiful blessing. Unfortunately, Israel rejected that blessing, and that rejection is one of the major reasons they were exiled to Babylon. Second Chronicles 36 states that as long as they were out of the land, the land would enjoy its Sabbaths — its Shemitahs — because they had not let the land rest out of greed and disobedience. Israel broke the Shemitah cycle continuously for 490 years — 70 times 7 — and so the Lord sent them into exile for 70 years so the land could recover its missed Shemitahs.

The blessing Moses described can turn into a curse when the command is disobeyed. That is precisely what happened. So we must recognize that Leviticus 25 describes a seven-year cycle that this world has been on since Adam. Since the very beginning, creation has operated on a seven-year cycle. And the last seven years of this age — before Yeshua returns — will be a Shemitah cycle. They will fall on that cycle.

This is not date-setting. There is a significant difference between setting dates and understanding the times and the seasons. We do not set dates on this channel. But we do speak about the times and the seasons because it is biblical — it is exactly what Paul warned the believers about. Pay attention to the times and the seasons, because otherwise you will be caught as by a thief in the night. And who is the thief in the night? The thief in the night is not the Antichrist. The thief in the night is Yeshua the Messiah.