Revival Hope

Again I'm hoping maybe it really isn't too late to save America, to have revival that resuscitates an entire nation and pulls it back from the brink of death.

Here's where Leonard Ravenhill would have us start:

...[I]f I could, I would like to call together thousands of preachers in different countries of the world to spend a week in prayer for renewal. I would like to see them given instruction in prayer; not seminars on prayer, mind you, but exhortation to pray. We would spend the whole week praying, with periodic breaks. I believe this could be a detergent in the life of the Church. It would be a cleansing process. We could go back to our churches and perhaps stave off judgment, and God would usher in the revival that must* come. [p. 95, America Is Too Young To Die. Christian Life Books paperback]

This ought to be a prayer in itself, but I've found that I can't pray that big. I can barely pray for thousands of preachers in America myself, let alone the whole world. Which I guess means I don't have the faith for a movement that large. But wouldn't it be great if thousands of us all over the nation prayed for this to happen?

It seems right that it should start with the preachers, the pastors of churches, and the elders and deacons. That's where the revival in the Hebrides under Duncan Campbell started, with the church leaders saddened by the falling away of the young people in the community and desiring to revive them, so getting together two or three nights a week to pray, while a couple of the elder women in the congregation prayed together at home at the same time.

We need a HUGE revival in America, a nation-wide revival, and of course a world-wide revival would be even better, but Ravenhill's book is about America under God's judgment and what it would take to save the nation, and the theme of my recent posts has been the same. America is going to go under completely if the churches don't rise to the occasion and pray out their hearts for revival. The same is true of all the nations of Europe and all I can do is hope the fire would spread there too.

And please, not the kind of revival they had in Brownsville with people passing out and jerking and flailing around as if that's the whole point of revival while the word of God hardly got heard, but a revival that majors in conviction of sin and repentance first of all, at all levels of the Church from the pastors on down. That's where REAL revival always starts and that's what the nation needs, after all, if judgment is to be averted.

There always seems to be less preaching during revivals from what I've read, God Himself doing the major work of it, but there must be some preaching of the truth if there isn't going to be a flood of false doctrine taking over. People can get saved but have some very strange ideas about Christian theology and someone has to teach them.

The very best book I've found on revival is Brian H. Edwards' Revival!

[Back later to say more about this book]

How do you tell a true revival from a counterfeit?

Reading in Leonard Ravenhill this evening, a book he wrote in 1979, America Is Too Young To Die, his usual powerful exhortations to a failing church, exhortations to repentance, to holiness, to prayer, to revival. It's rich with quotations I'd like to copy out and hope I will soon. It's so sad that it's been over thirty years and America still hasn't seen revival considering that Leonard Ravenhill prayed for years for revival and preached and wrote exhortations that moved many.

But some would disagree that we've had no revivals since then. In the back of the book there are ads for other books put out by the same publishing company, all revival-oriented, some of them about genuine revivals I'm aware of that go back a hundred years or more, but some on highly questionable revivals. There is a series of books, for instance, about the "Azusa Street Revival" of 1904 which I came to believe years ago was a false revival, but now I'm going to have to repeat my research on it to convince myself again, because I find it so hard to reconcile an ad for that event with the solid Biblical position of Ravenhill -- can't the publishers tell the difference?

There's also an ad for a book on the supposed "Brownsville Revival" of the 90s in Pensacola, Florida, which I've also been convinced was counterfeit. Again I'm going to have to do more research, but I did start by finding some video of that "revival" on You Tube and it's really quite fascinating. It's the first time I've actually seen some of the phenomena I'd only read and heard about otherwise, people falling down, jumping up and down "in the spirit" and having the "jerks" and generally acting "drunk in the spirit."

Well, to be accurate, I'd seen something like it in charismatic contexts, people falling down when the leader -- usually a visiting "evangelist" -- touched them and prayed over them, but I was never convinced that was for real. None of it appeared to be involuntary -- though some of it may have been, I don't know, there was no way to tell.

I also saw some people fall down under helpless laughter at a charismatic retreat, but not the whole group, just a few. The "Laughing Revival" in Toronto was going strong during that period and it was clear the people in the group where I was were really having some kind of laughing fit they couldn't stop. I've experienced out-of-control laughter that takes your breath away and makes your sides hurt and that's what this looked like, but it went on an entire night in one case at least and maybe more and it was all attributed to the Holy Spirit.

Brownsville wasn't into laughter, but it certainly was into passing out, jerking and flailing and the like. And now I know it is very very real, whatever it is. You can see it particularly in a four-part You Tube video, the first part of which I've embedded below -- you click on a message at the end of each which will take you to the next part -- where one of the leaders/pastors is interviewing various people about their experiences in the "revival." Most of them experienced these phenomena even in the process of being interviewed -- watch the young black man as he is waiting for his turn in the second part -- and the interviewer himself almost succumbed a few times later on, his head jerking uncontrollably at times, almost completely falling down at least once. The phenomenon seems to start with small jerks of the upper body and may or may not progress to full body flailing movements and/or falling down, though some just seem to get weak in the knees and fall down without any of the other manifestations.

It appeared some were making a mighty effort to control the effects. Whatever these things are they are clearly real in the sense that the people are not intentionally doing them but it's all just happening to them. I think this is completely obvious on the film.

They call it "the power of the Spirit" and refer it all to God and Jesus. But is that what it really is?

It seems that all they talk about is the physical manifestations themselves. This is what interests them, what they come for, what suffices for "revival." They "give the glory to God" but IS God the author of all this? They seem drunk, and they love being drunk, it's obviously a lot of fun. The crowd applauds when someone falls down or shows other evidence of being "under the power" and they laugh and jump up and down in the normal voluntary emotional way to see that clearly INvoluntary stuff going on. It all reminds me of the giggles people get on various illegal drugs recognizing that everybody else is also high. Very much like that. Drunk. Stoned.

What IS this phenomenon?

The interviewees say God "really did a work" in them or something along those lines, when they were out cold on the floor, or God "healed me" and so on. But the actual content of the experience is oddly vague and scrambled or not voiced at all while the jerking and falling and whatever the feeling is that goes along with those manifestations are celebrated as what it is really about. "Give me more," more more more, says the first woman. More WHAT? Apparently just whatever the feeling is that makes her stagger and eventually fall down and not wake up until 3:30 in the morning.

Is God REALLY the author of these things? Is God glorified in such phenomena?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogSrTm598XE&feature=related

Since the people in the Brownsville "revival" clearly believe it is the work of the Holy Spirit and give thanks to God, talk about cleaning up their lives and plead the blood of Christ and the like, I don't want to come to any premature conclusions on the basis of some negative impressions but want to study it more. The test is always the fruit, as the Lord says, so what has been the fruit of Brownsville? True revivals change the surrounding community in some way and the participants in the revival go on to do meaningful Christian work. Has that been happening?

There have been many credible witnesses of former revivals that were undoubtedly true revivals who reported that such phenomena also occurred to some participants --sometimes understood in earlier times to evidence a bad conscience under conviction of sin, or a weak constitution -- but in those cases the manifestations were not made the center of the revival as they obviously were in Brownsville. So there is room, it seems, to recognize that such things may happen to some people in a true revival, but when they dominate and become the focus as if they are the whole point of the revival itself they've got to be considered at least a distraction from God's true work. I'm not completely happy with this way of sorting it out but it would be risky to assume more than this.

At the very least I have to say that this is not the revival I'm praying for, and I specifically pray that such phenomena not be welcomed and applauded if God sends us revival, though I'm not going to say it shouldn't be expected or tolerated. If the focus isn't clearly on conviction and repentance from sin and changed lives it's just too vague WHAT it's about.

==========
Later, I'm convinced this all does come from God now, my impression after watching the video a number of times, but I'm also puzzled at the different kinds of revivals that apparently all come from God. [June 13 2012: I don't remember what made me think this was of God back then, probably nothing more than believing one or two of the participants. But as I review it now I have to go with all the misgivings I had at the time as well. This can't be from God.] Just what's on these videos makes it appear that repentance from sin was NOT part of this revival. There's more of a spirit of accusation from the pastor's wife, for instance, a complaint she had against the church, a statement about being "hurt," no sense of her own being at fault, so rather than being forgiven by God she thinks in terms of being "healed" by God, or released from a "curse" she's been under, or from a kind of imprisonment. The young black man said something about having done some bad things but he also denied that he was a bad guy and there was no spirit of repentance in him either.

This kind of thing is what I've witnessed in charismatic contexts myself -- much emphasis on healing and release, no sense of repentance. (I do have to note that the Wikipedia article on the Brownsville revival says that preaching on sin and experiences of conviction and repentance definitely WERE part of this revival, though that wasn't evident on the video above.)

But it's the great revivals in which God breaks people under conviction of sin and self-accusation that I've only read about that seem to carry God's power out to the community and affect the participants for the rest of their lives. This is the sort of revival I hope would come to America. The revival in Saskatchewan in the 70s started with repentance among the church members and I think their pastor Bill McLeod ought to be a model for all pastors today because he spent hours praying for his church every day until the revival came. This charismatic kind of thing in Florida just seems weak by comparison. The TONE of it bothers me, the giddiness or giggliness. What WAS the fruit of Brownsville?

What do the churches need to repent of?

Thinking about how Christians need to fast and pray and repent for the sake of America I was trying to determine what the main sins of the churches are -- where we should start. There are plenty of problems with America at large of course, but how much of it should be laid at the door of the churches? In a sense all of them, I believe, simply because a strong Bible-based and Spirit-led church utterly dependent on God would have prevented them from happening. I'm assuming the failure started with the church back somewhere but I don't know how to locate that point. The Deism of our Founders perhaps? The Higher Criticism that infected so many in the middle of the 19th century? Well, the churches that succumbed to that are now utterly apostate, denying the full inspiration and authority of the Bible, allowing women pastors, treating homosexuality as a normal expression rather than a sin, even having homosexual pastors. And that's just the start of it. Whole church denominations are given over to some false doctrine or another and if this isn't the Great Apostasy predicted in scripture it's hard to imagine what that would look like. There is also an amazing trend of supposedly Protestant churches treating Romanism as a true church.

But I'd like to think more about the specific sins of the churches that are still good churches, that still adhere to Biblical inerrancy for instance, that teach the true gospel of salvation by faith alone through grace alone.

Even in those churches you may hear teaching that is very soft on divorce and remarriage for instance. Studies have determined that Christians are divorced in the same proportions as the rest of the society, even possibly greater proportions. We hear these statistics and they make us sad but does anybody stop to think that this has to be because the churches themselves aren't upholding Biblical teaching on divorce and remarriage? I've thought this for some time but hardly ever hear this preached against. I found one good discussion of the problem BY A ROMAN CATHOLIC (can't find the link right now, hope I can track it down). I had to agree with him. Too bad. The Catholics do get some things right biblically which is a terrible indictment of the Protestant and nonCatholic churches.

I know of churches that are more or less Bible believing and true to the gospel that nevertheless have divorced/remarried pastors and elders and deacons, which seems to me to be clearly in violation of scripture, specifically Jesus' own teaching on the subject. Seems to me if God should bless such a church with revival He'd have to begin by convicting them of this violation and the only way it could be properly dealt with would be pretty inconvenient to put it mildly. The Israelites who had married foreign women in the time of Ezra, and even had children by them, were put through the wrenching experience of separating from them because their marriages were a violation of God's word in that case too. Sometimes repentance and restitution are messy.

But if churches want to be in God's favor, if we want revival, something like this is going to have to happen. I'm going to have to find that link and get into the specifics of this, but it does seem to me that if Christians would simply pray and honestly seek God's will instead of "leaning to our own understanding" it would be revealed to them directly, they would be personally convicted of sin in these matters and wouldn't need to hear a lot of sermons on it. Of course if they've been hearing permissive sermons that support them in their sin then they are trained in resisting the Holy Spirit for starters, and may not even listen to a contrary view of the scripture anyway.

Another issue that continues to strike me as a violation in the churches is the abandonment of the requirement for women to cover our heads in the assembly. My study of this completely convinced me that the vast majority of the churches are in violation of scripture on this point, and this is also a matter that I think an honest and protracted seeking of God's will would resolve. Not to cover our heads is to violate God's creation ordinance of man as the image of God and woman as the glory of man. In the churches this means that the glory of man is allowed to compete with the glory of Christ. This is one practice that ought to be simple and straightforward that has been made unnecessarily complicated because people just don't want to have to do this.

It ought to be clear enough from the fact that on the basis of the same scripture that calls for a woman to cover her head in church a man is required to uncover his, and we enforce that part of the directive while ignoring the other. It's not about women having long hair either because there was never a time when women did NOT wear their hair long until very recently, so Paul would have had no reason to exhort them to wear it long.

Those two issues, divorce/remarriage and the head covering, are where it seems to me the churches need to start the process of repentance.

(Not that I think it's going to happen, of course, I'm afraid I'm pretty sure that America is going to be destroyed by God's judgments because the churches will not rally to our calling, but nevertheless I hold out a small hope that I'm wrong.)

A couple of end times messages

Most recent radio talk by Brannon Howse of Worldview Weekend. This is part 2 of some revelations about Newt Gingrich's far-from-conservative politics, and he goes on to talk about how all the current crop of unacceptable Republican candidates are part of God's judgment on the nation.

Most recent email from Jan Markell of Understanding the Times: A pastor's analysis of the deterioration of Christian culture as seen in comparing the recent Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster with the Titanic disaster. The Titanic sank in an era of Christian culture that taught even unbelievers to put the weak before the strong. But on the Costa Concordia we have behavior that even barbarians would have been ashamed of -- "every man for himself" with big strong men shoving aside women and children to save themselves.

"Survival of the fittest" in action. The Man of Indomitable Will, the Antichrist, who disdains all weakness, doth slouch to Bethlehem to be born very very soon.

Just sitting here waiting for God to wipe America off the map

Now I'm disappointed with Jonathan Cahn. On the one hand he presented his prophetic vision as simple fact, as in that speech at a Messianic Jewish conference that I keep posting here, but on the other hand the book he wrote about it is written as a novel. I haven't seen it yet but that's what people say about it. I expected it to provide more detail about the facts he had discovered and maybe it does, but a novel I do not need and treating this kind of information as fiction is a horrendous offense! It turns out that Cahn himself indulges in the hype tone I mention in the previous post though I'd been saying it wasn't his doing.

And yet I still have to regard the mere facts of the matter he presents as just as uncanny and meaningful as I first found them to be. Ground Zero really is where George Washington's inauguration was consecrated by prayer by the first members of the US Government. Whether America is to be regarded as consecrated to God in the sense ancient Israel was is questionable, but Cahn's point that some form of consecration took place seems undeniable, and MUST explain why God treats us the same as He did Israel, which is clearly what is happening with the Isaiah 9:10 connections. Cahn mentions both the plaque at Jamestown and the dedication of Washington's presidency at Ground Zero as two instances in which the nation was consecrated to God. It's hard to dismiss this as a meaningless coincidence.

Isaiah 9:10 certainly does refer to the felling of sycamore trees as God's judgment on Israel, and to the planting of cedar trees or conifers as Israel's defiance of God in response. How can we possibly overlook the uncanny symbolism of a single sycamore tree in the churchyard of that same historic church being destroyed by part of a falling WTC tower and replaced by -- a conifer? And there's also the replacement of the fallen bricks with the hewn stone echoing Isaiah 9:10 as well. That too is uncanny. In doing these things America has certainly had the same attitude as ancient Israel as recorded in Isaiah 9:10 -- we'll redo and rebuild what God destroyed, and we'll do it bigger and better and stronger. The sycamore itself is now memorialized in a bronze replica of its roots, which I find spooky in the extreme, like celebrating death, in this case the death of America, what else? Unwittingly of course. And it's right beside that historic church in which our first government was consecrated.

But most uncanny of all is the attitude of American leaders who exactly echoed the spirit of the leaders of ancient Israel in their denial that this was God's judgment and their refusal to repent but instead to rebuild in their own strength what God had destroyed. There is no way to deny that parallel, there's no way to deny that this follows the same lines as Isaiah 9:10. Of course it wasn't a President who quoted Isaiah 9:10, it was merely the Majority Leader of the Senate, Tom Daschle at the time, but that IS a leader of the nation and it has to mean something. The fact that John Edwards quoted the same verse a few years later in a prayer breakfast on the anniversary of 9/11 isn't quite so telling, because he wasn't in a high position of leadership, but it certainly does at least reflect the attitude of defiance America as a whole was taking at the time, strangely unaware of its actual meaning, thinking to be speaking words of comfort about 9/11 instead. And he made that speech at a typical government prayer breakfast, an official appealing to God for the nation. Again, all this was unwitting, they all think they are comforting the nation with promises to rebuild.

But here is how that passage continues:

11 Therefore the LORD shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together; 12 The Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand [is] stretched out still. Isa 9:13 For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the LORD of hosts. 14 Therefore the LORD will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush, in one day.

Sure sounds to me like God is promising more judgment to come BECAUSE Israel didn't repent but vowed to plant better trees and build better buildings.

Some of us didn't need all these signs and symbols to know that 9/11 was God's judgment on America, or warning judgment. All you need to know is how God dealt with nations in the OT and specifically how He dealt with Israel. He TOLD them -- Deuteronomy 28 for instance -- how he would deal with them if they obeyed and if they disobeyed. Disobedience calls for the triumph of enemies and the destruction of the economy for instance -- surely this is a principle that applies to all nations, not just God's own people, although in lesser degree simply because "to whom much is given much is required." Those principles are all we should need to know to understand 9/11 as God's judgment -- a warning judgement of more to come, I should say, simply because it was such a limited event compared to what it could have been. A warning judgment to wake us up and lead us to repentance. But Americans refused to see that in it, and the biggest shame of all is that the pastors of churches all over the land refused to see it that way. Thousands of churches could have been fasting and praying for repentance in earnest except for that.

So a few years later along comes Jonathan Cahn who discovers these uncanny correspondences between a little-known verse in the Old Testament and the events and attitudes in America surrounding 9/11. This has to be God's mercy, giving us some indisputable signs to prove that He's bringing judgment against America even in the teeth of the nation's determined denial and defiance. NOW, I think to myself, how can anyone avoid the fact that America is under God's judgment? This revelation, I think to myself, ought to speed through the churches and send us all to our knees. But no, it hardly gets off the ground.

And now it turns out to be presented in some questionable forms with a questionable tone itself, and we still have no problem avoiding the truth of the situation. How much this hype has to do with our avoiding it I don't know, I just know the whole thing is incredibly sad, we are under God's judgment and we have plenty of reason to know we are under God's judgment and we are doing nothing about it.

I wish I hadn't ordered the book because I can't afford much these days and I don't need a novel. I'd like to have all the material he offers in support of this prophetic vision but the money is too much for me. And now I'm really angry that he has been treating this material this way, hyping it up as a novel, using all the spooky hokey hypy words that should not be used in reference to Biblical revelation.

Even with all that, as I said, I still believe this message is authentic at its core. The parallels with Isaiah 9:10 can't be denied. This is a strange case of amazing TRUTH being manhandled by the techniques that belong to lies. I don't know how to put all this together.

I've been disappointed in Christians' response to this. And I still am, but this problem with how the main protagonist has been treating the material does give some excuse to the churches for ignoring it. SOME excuse, though, that's all. I still think the facts themselves ought to have overridden such a reaction to the hype, if that is part of the reason it's been ignored.

So here we are, looking at a major warning of God's judgment in the events of 9/11, given to us in unmistakable signs, being ignored by God's people instead of taken to heart as it should be, as we are the only hope for the nation to escape future escalation of God's judgment, which is inevitable if we do nothing, and we ARE doing nothing. Going-on-eleven years after the event we are doing nothing despite this revelation that ought to have set a fire under us long ago.

Our state of paralysis is itself a form of judgment.

Will the next hit, whatever it is, wake us up? Probably not. We've had a few hits since 9/11 in fact, not just the Wall Street hits but some pretty heavy weather hits across the nation as well. That's certainly what Katrina was. Anybody moved to repentance? Naa, just the usual complaints against anyone who suggests it was God's judgment.

The hype around the Cahn message plus its general lack of circulation among Christians is the real mystery

I don't get it. The Jonathan Cahn study of 9/11 is convincing in and of itself, so two things are a puzzle: 1) why isn't it getting the attention and seriousness it deserves, and 2) why does there have to be all the hype around it?

On the hype question, All the stuff about "secret" knowledge for instance -- what's secret about God's word? "An ancient mystery" blah blah de blah. The Bible is full of mystery but not the kind of mystery that calls for that spooky tone of voice. It's there to be discovered by an obedient and persistent believer. And I thought that's what Cahn did in this case -- God led him to the many signs that connect 9/11 with Isaiah 9:10 -- they are there for anyone to appreciate, there's no need for the tone of breathy excitement and hoked-up drama that some treat it with.

The link above is to a publication by a Sid Roth who has a program with that tone titled It's Supernatural, on which he interviewed Cahn, and I could have put that up here too but the tone put me off so I didn't. But he's not the only one who treats this revelation that way. Even the cover to Cahn's book has that tone to it. Even the single word "Harbinger" as its title carries some of that feeling. I've simply tried to ignore that because the evidence in itself is good enough, but I have to admit that the tone of the cover detracts from the message.

That tone usually goes with something that's fake or at least exaggerated beyind its intrinsic value, but that hasn't seemed to be the case with this Bible-based information about 9/11. It's straightforward Biblical truth unless I'm missing it completely.

As for the lack of attention: Apparently this prophecy is better known among SOME Christians than I knew. At the same time it's nowhere near as well known as it should be. Googling it now I find many more references to it than I knew existed when I started posting on it, but since it strikes me as so amazingly authentic it's hard to believe it isn't well known by ALL Christians by now. How come it's only getting circulated in limited segments of the Church? I find now that Charisma magazine had it on their cover a few years ago. Is it because it's associated with that branch of the church that it's being ignored by the more mainstream churches? Does the hype tone have something to do with its being so generally ignored?

That is really unfortunate if so. It SHOULD be known to all of us and in fact be taken seriously as THE concern of the day until we have a great movement of repentance and revival based on it, which is the only right response the churches could have.

I have not found even one discussion of this prophecy that questions its authenticity so that is not the reason it is being ignored. It MUST be because it's associated with the charismatic and messianic movements then, and perhaps also the tone of hype that is unfortunately laid on it?

If this isn't the reason, if there are objections to this message that I'm failing to appreciate, SOMEBODY PLEASE LET ME KNOW.

Meanwhile I'm still convinced of the authenticity and importance of this message and I'm going to put up Cahn's conference talk on it again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXei0Zb3dxM&feature=related

We don't need the hype and it detracts from the message. God's prophets didn't carry on in that tone about their revelations. It should be a straightforward reverent study of God's word. If I weren't already convinced by the evidence itself I wouldn't pursue something with that atmosphere surrounding it. At least Cahn himself doesn't treat it that way in this talk I keep linking to, although he can get pulled into it by those interviewing him to some extent.

Here's another one with that hype tone and this one tells us that America is going to end on September 30, 2015 because of something contained in this prophecy. If people believe such things why don't they have a tone of mourning and seriousness and concern to see if anything can be done to prevent such an outcome? So they think we'll just sit here with breathless excitement passing the popcorn waiting for America to go up in smoke so we can say "Wow that was amazing!" and walk out of the theater or what?

WHY ISN'T ANYBODY RECOGNIZING THAT ISAIAH 9:10 DESCRIBES A WARNING TO WHICH ANCIENT ISRAEL COULD HAVE RESPONDED WITH REPENTANCE, SO THAT IF AMERICA DID WE COULD BE SPARED JUST AS THEY COULD HAVE BEEN?

And here's another discussion of the same prophecy, and this one includes video of both Daschle and Edwards, so that's useful -- but they have to hoke it up by putting dramatic music over their speeches. BLECH.

Again, it's as if the important IMPLICATIONS of this prophecy for America are just going ignored while the uncanniness itself is being treated as something that provokes awe and wonder for their own sake.

If this message is being suppressed for such reasons, those who add the hype and those who fail to appreciate its authenticity in spite of the hype are both seriously at fault. As is anyone who judges it not on its own merits but on its association with the charismatic or messianic contexts. That's called "judging a book by its cover."

The idolatry of human feelings must be repented of, in the heaven stories and in 9/11 if we want God's blessings

Another thing I think I have to say today is that I've been realizing I haven't gone far enough on the "heaven" stories or the attack of 9/11. I've been waffling on the majority reaction of people that puts all the emphasis on the suffering people, on the boys who had the heaven experiences because they almost died so we must first of all soothe the feelings of those involved, think of it as God's mercy that they have been spared and so on, and on the victims of 9/11 RATHER THAN GOD'S CLAIMS ON US.

Yes, I know I'm committing one of the biggest sins in the eyes of the world by saying this, but I'd rather that than commit the worse sin of giving in to mere human fleshly sentimentality while slighting the Lord. If God isn't greatest in all our thoughts, if He isn't the Beloved of our hearts, if we put ANYTHING above Him, we are committing adultery/idolatry against Him.

No, the victims of 9/11 should NOT be our first consideration, though I've allowed myself to say that they should because it's the popular attitude.

God's will should always be our first consideration and in the case of 9/11 what we SHOULD have done, even those who lost loved ones, is GET DOWN ON OUR KNEES AND ASK GOD TO FORGIVE US FOR THE SINS THAT DESERVED THAT JUDGMENT FROM HIM.

And with the heaven stories, there too the feelings of the parents, and the sufferings of their children that led to their having these visions, are put ahead of the fact that the heaven stories are bogus for all kinds of reasons. They are lies and they are deceiving God's people and that is far and away what should matter to us most. It's a great sin to put concern for a family's suffering above the effect of the lies they are promoting, that influence other people against the true God. And that is what we should say to the family as well. The heaven stories are lies from the devil that mislead people about the nature of God and Christ. The devil has no compunctions about exploiting children in the service of his lies, but we shouldn't allow him to play on our feelings when the more important thing is that his lies be exposed and denounced.

Such feelings are an idolatry, and part of the reason God is allowing us to be subjected to such deceptions as the heaven stories.

We can and should commiserate in private with those who suffered in 9/11 but a public event that influences people in the wrong direction is what needs to be the target of public concern. On 9/11 preachers all over the country got up and assured everybody that this was NOT God's judgment, and denounced those few who rightly called it that. They expressed in some cases a great deal of moral indignation in the service of concern for the victims and against the concerns of God Himself who was warning us of judgment on the entire nation of America. Those pastors need to repent before God and the nation. Christians should go to the memorial services for the victims, hurt with the hurting, be a strength for those who suffer, BUT THE MESSAGE OF 9/11 IS NOT ABOUT THE VICTIMS AS SUCH, it is that there will be many many MANY more victims and the loss of a once-great nation that God had blessed mightily for years, if God's judgment warning is ignored!

THE ONLY THING THAT SHOULD BE HAPPENING AT GROUND ZERO IS SOME SORT OF PUBLIC ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF AMERICA'S DESERVING GOD'S JUDGMENT, REPENTANCE FOR OUR SINS AND PLEADING WITH HIM FOR MERCY.

Jesus said we must put nothing and nobody above Him, we must even hate our own family if they take His place in our hearts.

Human sentiment rises up against such a teaching, but human sentiment is the problem and we must not follow it.

Yes, I am repenting here of my own succumbing to the putting of human sentiment above God.

Even if the devil himself -- the Pope in this case -- preaches true morality, we cannot follow him

I've wanted to keep Jonathan Cahn's message about 9/11 uppermost on my blog, but along came this email today from an organization I thought I could trust, Traditional Values Coalition, that it turns out I can't trust, and it's important enough to comment on it here. Possibly I just hadn't looked into them far enough in the first place.

WE ARE EASILY DECEIVED IN THESE LAST DAYS. TAKE WARNING.

Here are excerpts from the message I got from them:

Today Pope Benedict XVI to the Bishops of the United States on their “ad limina” visit, expressed grave concern over the powerful new cultural currents “which are not only directly opposed to core moral teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but increasingly hostile to Christianity as such.

The Pope pleaded with American bishops, and the broader American people, to uphold and be vocal about the unchanging moral truths which are the keys to real happiness and social prosperity.

Calling on the church universal, Pope Benedict said, “With her long tradition of respect for the right relationship between faith and reason, the Church has a critical role to play in countering cultural currents which, on the basis of an extreme individualism, seek to promote notions of freedom detached from moral truth.”

Today, as we reflect on the words of this great religious leader, we also remember the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil; who put darkness for light and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” This is what we are seeing in America. A complete removal and in some case reversal of the moral truths we have known for millennia to promote and provide for the social good!

We, the Church, have a role to play in preventing the reversal of moral truths in America. ...

We join with Pope Benedict XVI in calling upon the American Church to rise up and realize the grave threats our moral witness is facing! ...

May we be that Church together.

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!! THE ROMAN CHURCH IS NO PART OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AT ALL, and true Christians CANNOT join with them! How clever of the devil to have the Pope say things that we must agree with. But joining with the Pope even on valid and important Christian concerns is NOT an option.

The true Church must repent, that's for sure, must turn back from the moral relativism and moral equivalence we've fallen into under the influence of the world. This pastor (yes, he's a pastor) is quite right that the churches have been giving moral ground, even calling evil good and good evil just as the world does, but no way can we join with a Pope on this or any other issue. No no no no no. Romanism is a major wing of the Antichrist system that is expanding daily. Let's not feed this beast.

America's churches DO NEED TO REPENT, but Romanism IS NOT CHRISTANITY and this organization is making a HUGE mistake as unfortunately way too many true Christians have been doing over the last few years and decades. Billy Graham for instance. Evangelicals we thought we could trust but cannot.

BE NOT DECEIVED!

Here's what I wrote them:

Dear TVC:
I've appreciated your messages until now. I cannot join you in celebrating a Pope, who represents the antichrist system that the Reformers knew the papacy to be, of the institution that murdered so many true believers down the centuries, and that officially denies the truth of salvation by faith alone and keeps their office of the Inquisition alive as well. Sometimes he says things we agree with but so does the devil We should never join with him in any way, support him in any way, publicly applaud him in any way. If true Christians can't make the right moral statements apart from the Pope woe be to us. This matters more than ANYTHING else you do.

Sorry I can no longer support you.

I'm glad I received this message today, though, because as I've prayed and hoped for the churches to become aware of Jonathan Cahn's prophetic message I've also worried that the Catholic Church could run with something like this and confuse many, or the Mormon "church" or many others who falsely call themselves Christians.

There are lots of nice well-meaning people in all those organizations, sure, but they are deceived and blind, they carry the poison of antichrist, all of them, the devil presenting himself as an angel of light as scripture says.

They need to LEAVE those institutions. COME OUT OF HER, MY PEOPLE, SAYS THE LORD.

No no no no no, they deny the true way of salvation, they lead people to Hell, and they are well on their way to forming the final one-world religious system that will rule the world under the Antichrist when the time comes, which must be very very soon. If we join with them on ANY topic we happen to agree about we deny our Lord and lend support to the devil.

They are part of what the nation needs to repent OF.

WE HAVE BEEN MISSING GOD'S JUDGMENT WARNING OF 9/11 and all His judgments that have been hitting America since then too. It is judgment in itself that the churches are morally compromised as we are. It is judgment in itself that we have a Mormon as the Republican frontrunner for the Presidency, that we have a corrupted Supreme Court, that we have a miserable Leftist government in general. ALL THAT IS GOD'S JUDGMENT AGAINST AMERICA ALREADY, BECAUSE WE HAVE FALLEN AWAY FROM GOD FOR SO LONG. THE ONLY WAY WE COULD POSSIBLY GET STRAIGHTENED OUT IS IF THE TRUE CHURCHES AND ONLY THE TRUE CHURCHES -- AND HUGE NUMBERS OF THEM, JOIN IN SPIRIT AND REPENT FOR OUR SINS AND THE NATION'S SINS.

At Ground Zero God SAID He is judging America. Oh Church, wake up! Listen to Cahn's message and act accordingly. We're America's only hope.

I can only hope that there are many people out there who have heard Jonathan Cahn's message, Harbinger, and seen the importance of making it known to God's people as I also have. I have been discovering that there is a stiff spiritual battle going on over this message, just getting anyone to listen to it at all for starters and then even when they admit that it is as uncanny as I've said it is, getting them to grasp the implications of it. And I won't even mention what's going on with me personally to interfere with me. It's like there is a veil over it despite its being truly this amazingly uncanny just-about-flatly-undeniable in-your-face Message From God Himself.

I keep listening back to Cahn's message and it never fails to make me cry over what God has done and will do if we don't repent and seek His face. It makes me yearn fervently that God would use this prophecy to save the nation and I hope it would have that effect on many others as well.

There is no other hope at this point. This is SUCH a powerful uncanny direct speaking of God at Ground Zero you'd think all the patriots at least would rally to the message. Not yet anyway, this is truly a spiritual battle.

It may be there are objections people have to this, it's possible to find fault with anything if you have a mind to. Cahn is a Messianic Jew and there are reasons to object to that movement although I don't think Cahn represents any of the extreme versions of it, he sounds to me like a solid Bible-believing Jewish believer in Christ, but I know some can get all caught up in suspiciousness instead of simply listening for God's voice, Who speaks through all kinds of imperfect Christians, even through unbelievers at times, even through Balaam's ass (ok, donkey; no, leave it "ass"). Not that those examples apply here of course, Cahn is CLEARLY a true believer and deserves to be heard.

I know some object to the very idea that anyone would claim to receive a prophetic message for today, isn't the canon closed and all that and so on and so forth. Well, first of all LISTEN to this message because it's BASED on the Bible. God DOES speak to us through His word, He speaks to ALL of us through His word, the prophecy is ancient, it is merely being applied to today, it is not a new revelation, it's an old revelation applied to today, which is the way God has ALWAYS worked among Christians! And yes, we may have objections to dance as a part of worship for instance, which the Messianic churches get into quite a bit just as the charismatic movement does, and which Cahn mentions in his talk was a prophetic part of a Messianic conference, which he apparently accepts. There is also a "prophetic" or "anointed" violin playing in the background of this talk -- which can get a tad annoying at times but I've listened to it many times by now and it doesn't really interfere.

My answer to all of this is if God isn't objecting to it, if God is giving this man this amazing prophecy, humble yourself and listen to him! God is speaking through him! EVERY DENOMINATION HAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH IT BUT GOD PUTS UP WITH ALL WHO TRULY AND SINCERELY LOVE HIM AND SEEK HIM IRRESPECTIVE OF DENOMINATIONAL DIFFERENCES, AND HE IS WILLING TO SPEAK THROUGH ANYONE WHO MAKES HIMSELF AVAILABLE FOR THAT PURPOSE!

And oh it makes me weary but I suppose there will be those who will object that George Washington was really a Deist and a Mason so his prayer for the nation is meaningless or worse. What can I say. God clearly heard his prayer and the prayer of that first governing body who prayed with him.

We all should ask God to show us what we need to repent of and obey Him.

Please, whoever is reading this, hear Cahn and pray that his message would go out to all God's people, and please pray for me too. I've been praying but I'm spiritually flabby too, I need prayer that God would strengthen me to fast and pray, that would help a lot. That's what we need, all of us, all the churches in America. Oh Lord, make it happen. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, seeing Your hand in this prophecy and begging You with deep humbling -- starting with personal repentance and confession of the nation's sins -- to save our land.

============

Maybe the biggest resistance to this message comes from those who are thinking of the individual victims of 9/11. All I can do is say again this is not about the victims, this is about the nation. The memorial to the victims that has been constructed at Ground Zero isn't a problem, but rebuilding a skyscraper on the site to replace the World Trade Center is, because that directly expresses the nation's defiance of God along the very lines of Isaiah 9:10. Oh please America, oh please churches, please please wake up. God is the same yesterday and today and forever, He does not change. He judged His people Israel, and He will judge America.

=============
Later: I looked at some of the sites that report on what has been going on at Ground Zero recently. Besides the memorial and the tower that's going up, I found that they've also planted a few hundred oaks. Funny thing, soon after seeing that I was reading Isaiah -- really feel I need to get a much better grasp of God's dealings with ancient Israel than I've had -- and my eye fell on this:

Isa 1:29-30 For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen. For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water.

Of course there may be no connection, but the oak was one of the idols of the heathen that Israel adopted, therefore one of the reasons for God's judgment against them, so I had to wonder if our planting oaks has some significance in this whole scenario of judgment. I've assumed that having a memorial to the victims isn't the same thing as rebuilding the site according to the Isaiah 9:10 message, but perhaps building anything at all there without consulting God is an offense, and oaks MAY have some significance, at least as another reminder of America's falling away: our "leaning to our own understanding" rather than putting everything we do before God to discover His will.

Prayer for repentance and humbling of God's people and the healing of America

O Lord God, if there is still any hope that You would restrain Your judgment on America I pray that the revelation You gave Jonathan Cahn about 9/11 be spread to all the true churches in this nation and be recognized as truly Your message to us, of both judgment and mercy. I pray that You would send a spirit of repentance to all Your people in this nation, and especially to those pastors who denied that 9/11 was judgment and a warning of more judgment to come. Lord, it is YOUR people who must humble ourselves if we are to have any hope that You will yet heal this nation. I pray it in Jesus' Name who died for us, and in whose Name this nation was founded. Amen.

Maybe...REVIVAL TOO? Well, time is running out. Here's Jonathan Cahn again

I just heard Jonathan Cahn's speech again that I'd posted below and realized that he believes the prophecy is not just for judgment but also for revival. That hadn't come through to me before. He thinks that the fact that the chapel was spared on 9/11, the chapel where George Washington and the other government leaders prayed over his inauguration as President, and that it was apparently spared by the sycamore tree that was struck by the beam from the falling tower, is a prophecy that we WILL have revival. And he thinks that the flocking to the churches right after 9/11, where they didn't hear the truth about the attack, isn't the sad failure and condemnation of America that I've been seeing in it, but should be understood as a prophecy of a real revival yet to come.

All I can say is I hope he is right. And I'm going to put up that same video again. Hear it to the end.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXei0Zb3dxM&feature=related

A problem for me is that the church in New York City, Trinity Wall Street Church, of which the little St. Paul's chapel is a part, is completely apostate, an antichrist church, and is itself a sign of WHY the nation is under judgment. But I want to believe Jonathan Cahn is right and that God is going to bring us a true revival yet, and I pray, Lord, that the revival will bring many apostate churches back to You.

Here is Part 1 of Jonathan Bernis' interview of Jonathan Cahn last weekend:



And here is Part 2 of Jonathan Bernis' interview of Jonathan Cahn today:



The speech posted above these recent interviews was given in 2005, so it's going on seven years that the suggestion that a revival is part of the prophecy hasn't materialized -- and twelve years since 9/11 itself --sorry, eleven years --== and as Cahn says to Jonathan Bernis in the interview today, we are in a particularly dangerous time right now because if anything the nation has been turning farther away from God.

I keep thinking that these revelations of God's hand in 9/11 could themselves bring people back to God. I want to try to get this information by Jonathan Cahn out to as many people as possible. If people harden their hearts against it, so be it, but this is such amazingly uncanny specific prophecy about America under God's judgment it's got to take a heart like flint not to get it.

Mourning and Hoping and Mourning for America

HARBINGER (OMEN, SIGN) OF GOD'S JUDGMENT AGAINST AMERICA: The Trinity Tree Root, from the Trinity Wall Street Church website. The picture below of the sculpture as seen from above is from the same site. Click to enlarge.

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After learning through Jonathan Cahn's study about the uncanny harbingers or omens of God's judgment on America yet to come I've been on a rollercoaster of hope alternating with despair.

These symbols left in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that so uncannily reflect Isaiah 9:10 are like God speaking directly to us, directly pronouncing judgment yet to come, but who is paying attention? A hunk of hewn stone at Ground Zero,* a bronze tribute to a dead uprooted tree (and bronze in the Bible is symbolic of judgment, said Cahn), on the property of the church where George Washington prayed at his inauguration to the Presidency -- these are God's calling cards. That church is now thoroughly anti-christ, and it has a Wall Street address. The whole shebang points to judgment against America as a nation, specifically against the American economy, and seems to explain it all as it were by fingering THE CHURCH, the apostate churches for sure but the church at large which has let the nation down by failing to be the spiritual protection we're supposed to be.

The harbingers, the omens, are symbols of human arrogance and defiance of God blithely unrecognized even by most supposed Bible believers. It's all been signed and sealed as it were by three of our political leaders pronouncing the vow of defiance against God in the very words of Isaiah 9:10 -- "we will rebuild" -- rather than humbling ourselves in the face of God's judgments against us.

Where do I get any hope out of this at all? I get it out of the fact that the symbolism IS so uncanny it seems that even the most obtuse unbeliever has to recognize it and if they recognize it then there is a chance for the repentance that is the only way the nation could possibly avoid what the omens portend.

But as I said, it's a rollercoaster and I soon fall into doubt. Even after it's pointed out and explained I know only too well that a determined resister of God can still deny it.

Of course the true churches could fast and pray in sackcloth and ashes, and confess the sins of the nation as Daniel did, but is that going to happen? Well, if something like that doesn't happen, then the judgment is inevitable.

I've puzzled and lamented for a long time about why God isn't sending us revival. Now I know for sure why we haven't had revival. Our doom is signed and sealed by our leaders, and by that hewn cornerstone* and that bronze tree root that God made sure got placed where they can't be ignored. Oh sure, they can and will be aggressively misinterpreted just as the scripture that describes them was unless Cahn's message gets out. They strike me as something like the seal of a notary, on the Ground Zero site, at the site of the apostate church. Or like the handwriting on the wall against the Babylonian king Belshazzar, only set in bronze and stone so it can't just disappear but will remain as a testimony against us. Even if the entire country were razed to the ground those symbols would most likely remain untouched,* because they are God's witnesses against us. Oh, and the "Tree of Hope" too, the Norway spruce which replaced the felled sycamore, which should really be called the "Tree of Judgment" or the "Tree of Doom."

Three witnesses against us in those icons, all reflecting the words of Isaiah 9:10, plus three of our leaders declaring our doom, also in the words of Isaiah 9:10. Isaiah 9:10 gave the reason God brought judgment against Israel and now He's allowed that very verse of the Bible to stand for His intention to bring judgment against America as well. It seems impossible that anyone could explain away the uncanny equivalence of terms and imagery but I have to remember that today's atheists don't have any problem denying the obvious.

Cahn even mentioned in the interview by Jonathan Bernis (link below) how we missed revival at the time of 9/11: After 9/11 the churches filled up, people were hurting and seeking an explanation. Instead of hearing the truth from the preachers, that this is God's judgment and the nation needs to repent and turn to Him, what they heard was all that mealymouthed denial that it was God's doing. As Cahn said, there was an opportunity for the revival we've been yearning for, right there as people flocked to the churches, and the CHURCHES BLEW IT.

Here's the link to the interview of Jonathan Cahn by Jonathan Bernis on Jewish Voice. And here is the link to Jonathan Bernis' website. There is to be a second part of the interview coming up this week, I think on Sunday. [Correction, Saturday the 14th]

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*I have asterisked mentions of the cut stone that was placed at Ground Zero, that was intended to be the cornerstone of a new building called the "Freedom Tower," because I ran across the information that two years after it was placed there it was removed. This was because of a change in plans for the rebuilding of the area. Of course its placement in the first place and the speeches over it that maintained the theme of Isaiah 9:10 in America's defiance of God still stand against us, but I was wrong when I said that all these physical harbingers based on that scripture would no doubt outlive the nation itself.

The Harbingers of Nine Eleven and the Biggest Harbinger of them all and is there any hope of turning back God's judgment against America?

I am still studying Jonathan Cahn's revelations about 9/11 in light of Isaiah 9:10 as reported in my previous post. I've begun to study some aspects of it in detail for future posts but that's going to take some time. I also want to read his book, which I ordered yesterday.

Interestingly, the book was available the day before at Amazon but at that point I wanted to wait to order it, then yesterday it was sold out and they are having to restock! I think I know why. Rabbi Cahn --I have a problem with that title myself, he's a Christian after all, but that's what he calls himself so I'll use it -- was interviewed on a TV show called Jewish Voice with a Rabbi Jonathan Bernis, also a Messianic (Christian) Jew, which aired on the 8th (you can find it at You Tube) and Bernis encouraged his audience to get the book. It could very well be that this information is going to fly around the nation and maybe even the world very soon and they'll have to reprint the book.

I consider this topic to be of paramount importance and I want to learn as much about it as I can, and it's going to take time and right now I don't have the time to write a really thorough post about it but I want to write something. I'm not even going to take the time to include links until later.

Here's the main message I want to get across: As Cahn has reported, American leaders actually quoted the verse in Isaiah that so painfully applies to the American attitude after 9/11, which was an attitude of proud reliance on human strength in defiance of God instead of repentance, after an act of God warning of judgment to come against the nation. Tom Daschle was Senate Majority Leader when he declared that we will rebuild, thinking Isaiah 9:10 a message of hope instead of recognizing it as defiance against God. He was one of the nation's leaders. Therefore he spoke for the nation in that capacity, in other words he spoke prophetically. Just as Gamaliel in his leadership position spoke prophetically of Jesus dying for the people, also without knowing the meaning of his own words.

Likewise John Edwards was in a position of leadership when he proclaimed the same message on the anniversary of 9/11 three years later. Obama himself also said essentially the same thing seven years after Daschle's speech on the subject, but without reference to the verse in Isaiah, when he vowed that "we will rebuild" the economy, after a first stage of its collapse.

As Cahn notes, especially in the Bernis interview, that's three American leaders who pronounced a vow of defiance against God, just as ancient Israel did after God brought the first wave of judgment against them, a warning blow that was a harbinger of more to come unless they repented. Cahn makes much of the fact that it was political leaders who did this, saying that is like an official pronouncement of defiance on behalf of the entire nation.

That's three American leaders who essentially PRONOUNCED A CURSE ON AMERICA and invited more of God's judgment.

As I recall, the general attitude at the time was this same defiance. I'm surprised if President Bush didn't say something along the same lines but it would take more research than I have time for to find out at the moment. He offended God enough with his statement that "Islam is a religion of peace" and with his blasphemous ecumenical service in the National Cathedral supposedly on behalf of the nation which was itself a curse on the nation. I know that on the conservative internet forums the attitude was They can't do this to us, we are the strongest and best nation blah blah blah, with a militant tone of defiance that outdoes the vow of Isaiah 9:10 in sheer emotional belligerence at least. When they were passing around a mock "plan" for the rebuilding of the towers with five towers in a row with the middle one very tall, that looked like a fist with its middle finger extended -- wonderful "joke" -- I recognized that they were "giving God the finger." I don't know where our conservative LEADERS were but the conservative rank and file was ASKING for God to smack us down.

But back to Cahn's revelations, the pronouncements by our leaders are all backed up by the other "harbingers" of further judgment from the Isaiah verse. God brought an army against Israel and they knocked down their bricks and the leaders vowed to rebuild stronger and better. God brought an attack on the World Trade Center and American leaders fell all over themselves to announce that we would rebuild, we are the strongest nation, they can't keep us down, and so on. But GOD can keep us down and He has plenty of reason to do so.

Some of our political leaders also brought in a quarried stone and placed it at Ground Zero as the cornerstone of a new tower they called the Freedom Tower, dedicating it with speeches that further affirmed our defiance of God. The Isaiah passage said the leaders of Israel vowed to rebuild with hewn stones, or quarried stones, in place of the bricks that were knocked down. Our one hewn cornerstone is enough to symbolize our defiant attitude in exactly the spirit of Isaiah 9:10, the REAL meaning of 9/11, not what blind politicians kept promising. The cornerstone's simply standing there is testimony to American defiance inviting God's further judgment against us.

Same with the "sycomores" that were also felled in ancient Israel as part of God's warning of judgment to come. It's not the same tree but we call it a sycamore nevertheless and it was an ancient sycamore in the churchyard of Trinity Wall Street Church -- really, the churchyard of St. Paul's chapel which is a separated part of Trinity Church -- that was knocked down by a piece of one of the towers, and it became a huge symbol of the event. A sculptor who likes to sculpt tree roots took it and made a memorial to it in bronze which was placed right next to the church. It's a huge creepy spidery bronze monstrosity of tree roots. Like the hewn cornerstone of the "Freedom Tower," it has become another symbol of America's defiance of God's warning of judgment. A dead tree, its roots exposed, is a fitting symbol for judgment on our nation and it stands there in stark testimony to the truth of the situation for anyone with eyes to see. God is going to uproot us completely if we don't repent, if there is even time for that.

On top of that, it was a "cedar" tree that ancient Israel vowed to put in to replace their felled sycomores, and would you believe that our blind blind sentimental fools who are doing all these things in the face of God's warning brought in a tree of the same basic type to put in the place of the dead sycamore tree? Cahn says the Hebrew word translated "cedar" actually refers to a different tree than specifically a cedar, but it's uncanny enough that Israel used an evergreen, a conifer, to replace their destroyed sycomores, and so did we!! A Norway spruce now stands where the felled sycamore once stood.

Read the signs. There they are. Our blind political leaders mean one thing by them but God means something else. God felled the towers, God felled the sycomore, God moved the fools to commemorate the event with SYMBOLS OF JUDGMENT though they had no clue that was what they were doing!

There's LOTS MORE SYMBOLISM in this whole event that I've been discovering on my own and that Cahn probably also covers in his book, but these very pointed symbols in themselves ought to be enough to get across our dire situation as a result of our defiance of God.

All this makes me cry, I don't know about you. Here we are under judgment in a far more official way than I had any idea. I knew we were under judgment and that 9/11 was a warning judgment, and anxiety would overtake me from time to time thinking about it and thinking about the foolishness of Americans in our refusal to repent. It was a helpless feeling, the nation is hell bent on destroying itself. But it was a vague fear, and now I see that God Himself has very pointedly declared His judgment against America in these awful specific symbols that most don't have a clue how to read, and I keep thinking, IS THERE ANYTHING WE CAN DO AT THIS POINT? Is that hewn cornerstone that declares our intention to rebuild what God knocked down going to go on standing there as a testimony against us without repentance? Is that bronze monstrosity of an uprooted tree going to represent God's final curse against us or is there still something we can do?

Repentance is what is needed if there is any time for that at all, if God's judgment is not yet final and He still extends grace to us at all. But where will the will come from to repent? What American leaders are there who would stand up and repent for the vows of defiance already pronounced, or fall down publicly in sackcloth and ashes on behalf of the nation in the hope God might rescind His judgment on us?

But there is one more sign that I want to pursue concerning these harbingers, and I can't really do it justice in this off-the-cuff post, but I have to point out something I think is important that I learned from pursuing Cahn's revelations:

TRINITY WALL STREET CHURCH:

This is the biggest "harbinger" of them all, Harbinger #10 perhaps?

The church to which the sycamore belonged that was killed on 9/11, the church which replaced it with a conifer and decorated it with "holiday lights" its first year, the church next to which now stands that frighteningly symbolic monstrosity of a bronze statue of an uprooted tree, the very church in which George Washington prayed, even upon his inauguration as our first President, which therefore symbolizes the founding of our nation, the church which is bounded on one side by the downed World Trade Center (whose address by the way was simply "Church Street!!") and bounded on another by Wall Street, making it a symbol of so many elements of American life and history that to miss its significance after a little thought would take invincible obtuseness -- THAT CHURCH IS AN APOSTATE CHURCH. Go read the disgusting antichrist stuff that church stands for. I'll get links up soon but I can't take the time at the moment. That church in itself represents THE REASON THE NATION WAS JUDGED.

Sure, it's all our sins, it's the officially sanctioned murder of 50 million Americans through abortion, it's the destruction of the institution of marriage which God ordained, not just by the favorable attitude to "gay marriage" but also by our easy divorce laws and the rampant disregard of marriage in the common occurrence of unmarried cohabitation, single parenting and the like, and it's our "freedom" of pornography and other twistings of the original American concept of freedom, all of which Cahn briefly mentioned, and much much more, and all the movements that have brought us to this pass, the influence of "Postmodernism" of "Secular humanism" of "Cultural Marxism" and on and on and on.

But IT'S THE APOSTASY OF THE CHURCH that is the first and foremost reason for America's fall. Among all the symbols Rabbi Cahn unearthed in his study of 9/11 this one overshadows them all. The church that should uphold God's will has rejected Him and the particular church at Ground Zero with its downed sycamore and its bronze harbinger of this nation's death OUGHT TO BE RECOGNIZED AS SYMBOLIZING THE FOUNDATIONAL EXPLANATION FOR THE WHOLE DISASTER.

Christians ought to be praying against the apostate churches more than against all our other sins. JUDGMENT BEGINS AT THE HOUSE OF GOD!!!

Instead of -- or along with -- doing prayer walks around fortune-telling parlors and abortion clinics, DO PRAYER WALKS AROUND THE LOCAL APOSTATE CHURCHES, around the cult "churches" too, the Mormon churches, the Jehovah's Witnesses and so on. Catholic churches, apostate churches like Trinity Wall Street, Joel Osteen's church. DENOUNCE THEM TO GOD. Ask God to free their captives.

There's plenty more to say about all this but I had to get this much said in the little time I have at the moment. Back later.

God's Judgment on America prophesied in 9/11: Scripture linked to 9/11 in the most amazing uncanny ways

I knew 9/11 was God's judgment on America, but I was one of few it seems. I heard a few sermons that said the same thing, notably David Wilkerson's, but they were in the extreme minority while most preachers were trying to deny that God would have had anything to do with it. I also saw symbolism in the event, the World Trade Center clearly symbolizing the wealth of the world but America's wealth in particular because the WTC is in America, so it is a clear warning that God will judge us through economic disaster; and the Pentagon symbolizing our military, being a sign that He will judge us by weakening us against our enemies. Seems to me both are clearly underway.

9/11 was a big event in that it was the first time (OK, first time in a very long time) we'd been attacked on our own land, but it was a tiny event compared to what it could have been. It was clearly a warning, God saying "repent or there will be more to come."

Did America repent? No, we sang loud choruses of "God Bless America" effectively denying that we had anything to repent of or that God was trying to tell us something. What happens when a nation ignores God's warnings of judgment? Judgment keeps coming. America has not repented and clearly we are looking at far far worse yet to come.

Yesterday I was listening to some of Chris Pinto's recent broadcasts and found one where he is discussing a book about September 11th in light of Biblical prophecy of God's judgment on Israel, a judgment echoed in uncanny ways in the 9/11 attack. This is the Chris Pinto broadcast for January 5, 2012, A Prophetic Warning about the book by Jonathan Cahn, The Harbinger.

The book is wrapped around Isaiah 9:10:

The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change [them into] cedars

He finds 9 "harbingers" of God's judgment in that passage which all apply not only to Israel at the time but to 9/11 in the most uncanny ways, but the main similarity is that both Israel and America defied God's judgment instead of repenting, vowing to replace the bricks that had been knocked down with stronger hewn stone, and the sycamores with stronger cedars, thus inviting further judgment from God.

Cahn reports on two speeches by American leaders concerning September 11th, Tom Daschle and John Edwards, in which this passage from Isaiah was quoted as supposedly an encouragement to rebuild after September 11th. David Wilkerson received this very same passage as the topic for his first post-9/11 sermon at his Times Square Church. He knew it was about God's judgment and what happens when a nation defies God's judgment, but Dasche and Edwards had no clue, both taking it to mean the very opposite of what it means. Same with most of the rest of America.

Jonathan Cahn lays out the whole scenario in all its amazing uncanniness in this presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXei0Zb3dxM&feature=related

Isaiah 9:8 The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel. 9 And all the people shall know, [even] Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria, that say in the pride and stoutness of heart, 10 The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change [them into] cedars. 11 Therefore the LORD shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together; 12 The Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand [is] stretched out still.

Listen to Jonathan Cahn as he connects this passage with amazing "coincidences" that occurred in relation to September 11th at Ground Zero that perfectly reflect this passage in Isaiah. It is clearly a passage about judgment on Israel, but the people of Israel defied the judgment. God knocked down the bricks of Israel (and the twin towers of NYC) and instead of acknowledging the rightness of God's judgment and repenting the leaders of the people said "We will rebuild" and do it even better, with stronger stones and stronger trees. So God's hand "is stretched out still" in judgment, since they did not repent, and further judgments are prophesied.

Hear it to the end. Did you know that the very founding of our nation is intimately connected with the area known as Ground Zero? I didn't until I heard this.

It is hard for me to believe that anyone could hear all the amazing uncanny details Cahn unearthed in his prophetic study of 9/11 and not come to recognize that there is a God who oversees the smallest details of life on this planet and is definitely judging America and still (I hope) waiting for the nation to repent.

Isa 9:13 For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the LORD of hosts. 14 Therefore the LORD will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush, in one day. 15 The ancient and honourable, he [is] the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he [is] the tail. 16 For the leaders of this people cause [them] to err; and [they that are] led of them [are] destroyed. 17 Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows: for every one [is] an hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand [is] stretched out still. 18 For wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up [like] the lifting up of smoke. 19 Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his brother. 20 And he shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied: they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm: 21 Manasseh, Ephraim; and Ephraim, Manasseh: [and] they together [shall be] against Judah. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand [is] stretched out still.

Interesting radio interview of a professor about his testimony to be repeated today at 9:30PM Pacific

Heard a wonderful interview on local Christian radio with a Welsh pastor and seminary professor about a blog piece he wrote describing his conversion to Christ forty years ago. Wonderful testimony. I identified completely. Out of nowhere, out of a completely nonChristian life, a complete ignorance of Christianity, God found him through a book sent to him by a friend -- John Stott's Basic Christianity -- and converted him through that book even before he ever met another Christian. Then when he first read the Bible some time later he immediately "knew" it was the word of God. Same as I did. That's the Holy Spirit. I love testimonies like this.

This was on Pilgrim Radio on the interview program, His People, and there will be a repeat of this broadcast later today if anyone wants to hear it, at Pilgrim Radio.com., at the link above, at 9:30 PM Pacific time (12:30 AM Eastern).

This is the program list page for today at Pilgrim.

So of course I had to find his blog piece and here it is.

Also, here is a page about him at at Reformed Theological Seminary where he is a Visiting Professor. There is a video on the page where he talks about his objectives as a teacher and pastor.

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By the way, if you tune in to Pilgrim Radio half an hour earlier you can hear the daily program Reader's Choice where today they are near the end of the reading of the book A Heart for Freedom by Chai Ling who was a leader of the Tienanmen uprising in China. I've missed most of the reading of this book but what I've heard has been very inspiring.