Jonathan Cahn answers T A McMahon

Got a nice note from Mary at Appleton Wisconsin Calvary Chapel inviting me to read a letter from Jonathan Cahn at her website about the McMahon review of The Harbinger. I'm going to quote a few excerpts from it:

The article’s other set of criticisms falls along the lines of taking issue with the harbingers or warning signs, themselves, on the basis that there are differences with their manifestation and the original text. By such logic, taken to its conclusion, one could only accept the validity of the connections revealed in The Harbinger if, on 9/11, America were attacked by ancient Assyrians, if the Twin Towers were made Middle Eastern clay brick, and if American leaders responded to the attack speaking perfect ancient Hebrew.

How true! That was such an odd comment about identity versus similarity I couldn't make sense of it. I ended up taking it to be a complaint that there wasn't enough similarity to justify the claim to correspondence between the verse and 9/11. To complain that there isn't an exact identity, however, would require the impossible.

Another comment he made answers the complaint about George Washington's non-Christian beliefs very nicely:

McMahon charges that to see a connection between Washington and Solomon and to speak of the prayers offered up on America’s inaugural day as a consecration is near blasphemy on the grounds of Washington’s non-Christian connections. This again misses the point. When the Gospel records that a prophetic word came through the mouth of Caiaphas, it wasn’t about Caiaphas, but about the word spoken. Neither is it about Washington – but about what took place on America’s seminal day. The fact remains that on America’s first day as a fully-formed nation, its first government gathered in prayer to consecrate its future to God – and did so on a most significant ground of earth.

Very good point, it isn't the priest but the office that God respects.

What Cahn observed about the dates relating to the "Shemitah" I believe came after he'd discovered the main harbingers, and took him away from Isaiah 9:10 only to demonstrate that God has His hand on America in uncanny ways beyond what anyone could possibly imagine, in this case going beyond the general warning of judgment to come to the exact timing of His judgments on the nation's economy. Here he just reminds us of what he discovered about this:

Nor would the reader begin to have an idea of the magnitude of what’s involved in The Mystery of the Shemitah. I do appreciate that McMahon notes: “Granted, the author does raise an intriguing date phenomenon” – But the reality behind this allusion is far greater than what is suggested – including the fact that the greatest financial collapse in American history happened to take place on the one day given in the Bible on which a nation’s financial accounts were wiped away – not just once – but twice – and seven Hebrew years apart, the exact time period ordained in the Bible for this to transpire – down to the exact biblical day. The work of one analyst who did a statistical study of the chances of just these two occurrences, and using the most conservative of criteria, it to come out to, at the very least, one in a million, three hundred and sixty one thousand, eight hundred and eighty-nine.

There's also no reason to think that God is through with manifesting this pattern in America so we can look forward to more to come.

Farther down the page at the website linked a letter is reproduced from Jonathan Cahn written directly to Tom McMahon, in which he mentions other critics McMahon apparently had supported earlier. What interests me particularly is the specific accusations they made of the Harbinger:

“He (Jonathan) says the United States is the Israel of the new world”

(The Harbinger depicts America) “replacing Israel in God’s plan for the future…”

It’s a novel that’s trying to manipulate the word that God has rejected the Jewish people”

“(The Harbinger claims) That God has chosen America. He’s negated all the covenants, the Abrahamic covenant, the land Covenant, the Davidic Covenant”

“Now the relationship has been taken away from the Jewish people and given to the United States”

“Replacement Theologians say that God’s promises to Israel have been taken away…This is the same principle that he is following in the book”

(The Harbinger claims) “God has put together a covenant – a special covenant relationship with the United States of America”

“In other words he’s making the statement ‘God is finished with Israel.’”

“This (Isaiah) is supposedly a prophecy of the United States”

“He is going to establish a throne, a Davidic throne… when he restores national Israel, not the United States to its place of blessing God’s program” (as if The Harbinger had anywhere said such a thing)

“It won’t be America that controls the world…”

These were the charges made and broadcasted over the airwaves by the man who wrote the paper you embraced and championed along with his partner.

With this kind of accusation coming at him it's probably a very good thing that he is a Jewish Messianic rabbi who is firmly grounded in his own belief in Israel's reestablishment on their land and belief in their future according to biblical prophecy, so he KNOWS there's nothing to such strange accusations.

I'd like to know if there is anyone out there who actually read the book who ended up with this view. I don't see how there could be but maybe I'm wrong. In order to have such a view of it you'd have to ignore -- well, most of it.