New Criticism of The Harbinger: Douma, Pt. 4 The Shemitah

The other point I wanted to get to but didn't in the last post is Douma's remarks about the concept of the Shemitah as as it is used in The Harbinger.  There's a lot to say about this concept that I'm not going to get to, I just want to respond to Douma's main point.

First as usual we encounter the Dispensationalist framework which is what is making an ungodly and unbiblical confusion out of the whole discussion, when Douma objects to Cahn's applying the concept of the Shemitah to America at all, since according to that system of Bible-mangling it was

meant only for Israel.

He condemns Cahn for applying it to America, quoting page 159 of The Harbinger:

The sign of the Shemitah, given to a nation that has driven God out of its life

 Interesting that he doesn't quote the earlier part of that dialogue:

Yes, but what does it have to do with America.  Ameica has never had a Sabbath Year. 

That's correct.  It was only commanded for one nation.  But the issue here isn't the literal observance of the Shemitah or any requirement to keep it....  The issue here... is its dynamic, its effect and its consequence.... The issue is The Shemitah as a sign.

Cahn, in other words, is clearly not applying the Shemitah to America in the same sense it was given to Israel.  I don't want to get into that here except to say that I think he observed -- emphasis on OBSERVED -- somethng interesting about a pattern of seven years that actually OCCURRED in America that led to the connection with the biblical concept of the Shemitah. That is, it isn't something he took from the Bible to make it fit America, it was the other way around.

Be that as it may, for another discussion another time, Douma, having found Cahn at fault for applying the Shemitah to America at all, says 

Are you and I bound to sabbatical rest laws?  Isn't he saying as Peter did that we Gentiles have to start living like Jews?  [41:59]  How is that not a distortion of the goepsl?  Where is the criticism of that?  How is Cahn not trying to build up a wall that was taken down by Christ in Ephesians 2, the wall of separation, the Mosaic law that separated Jews and Gentiles.  Is not Cahn rebuilding that wall once again?  Of course he is.  So this is a gospel issue.  He's resstablishing the Mosaic Law and now it applies to you and I [sic].  [42:28]

No, I'm free from that in Christ.

Here can be seen one major confusion that needs to be untangled.  Douma fails to distinguish between the inheritance of freedom in Christ that we have AS BELIEVERS and the condition of the unbeliever, but also between individuals and nations.  The Harbinger is about the nation of America.  It is the NATION that is coming under judgment by God.  That will certainly affect individuals, both believers and unbelievers, but the judgment as such is about the nation and not the individuals. 

God deals with individuals individually.  That is a different thing altogether from His judgment of nations as nations. 

9/11 should have been recognized as judgment on America by anyone with any biblical sense at all, and I have to say most of the nation has no biblical sense so it's no wonder it was missed.  America as a nation is corporately in defiance of God, only too well described in Isaiah 9:10 but also given a special confirmation and emphasis by the existence of the harbingers as described in Cahn's book, and it all relates specifically to 9/11. 

But this does not in any way imply anything about the individuals who were killed on that day.  We have no way of knowing how God dealt with them and it's none of our business.  Some were no doubt believers, some weren't.  We can say that God showed a great deal of mercy in the midst of that judgment, in that relatively so few were killed when so many thousands more could have been killed.  There are miracle stories galore about that day. 

Judgment on a nation is NOT at all the same thing as judgment on individuals.

So when we think about elements of the Old Testament coming to apply to America today we have to keep the nation separate in our thinking from individuals, either believers or unbelievers.

Yes, we BELIEVERS are free from the Law in Christ, but unbelievers are not but "abide under the wrath of God" as scripture says, and nations are still corporately dealt with by the Law in the fashion laid down in scripture for Israel.  The Mosaic law is really a revelation of The Law that runs this universe.   It's no arbitrary thing.  It inexorably rules, it inexorably judges.  That is why we NEED the gospel to rescue us from it as individuals, and we can ONLY be rescued AS individuals. 

But outside the gospel The Law goes right on ruling and judging.  The Mosaic Law was the basis for Blackstone's Commentaries on the law that used to be the foundation for English and American law.  No more of course since the Bible as any kind of authority in our world has been brought down by the powers of evil.  But once upon a time The Mosaic Law was taken to be the foundation for all civilized laws in this fallen world.

THAT IS AN ENTIRELY SEPARATE THING FROM THE GOSPEL.

Cahn is NOT reestablishing the wall of separation, he is simply doing what sane intelligent Christians, unhampered by idiotic Dispensationalist presuppositions, have ALWAYS done, apply the Law to NATIONS.

The confusion in the critical attacks on The Harbinger is truly dangerous -- again, far beyond The Harbinger.  Maybe it's because of this truly unbiblical system of theology that so many pastors in this nation had no clue that 9/11 was God's judgment in the first place.   These critics, even when they think the nation deserves judgment for all the sins they can enumerate that all conservative Christians agree about, seem to be strangely unable to be SURE of it.  Well, we MAY be coming under judgment they say, or maybe we're GOING TO BE some time in the near future.  This is a terrible blindness and it's sad to think it might be theologically induced blindness.

The Harbinger again. Or why I am defending it.

Been listening to Brannon Howse's latest radio shows on The Harbinger, in which he's interviewing David James, whose book critical of The Harbinger has just come out (I'm waiting for it to arrive), and T. A. McMahon who published James' critique. It's all more of the same, but the book should be the definitive treatment of the critics' views so I'm looking forward to it in an odd sort of way.

On the morning of 9/11 I had a dream about being in the back seat of a small plane and demanding to be let out because I had a forboding about ... something. The pilot was a little girl and some time before 9/11 there had been a big story in the news about a father who let his eight-year-old daughter fly his plane alone. Sadly she crashed the plane and died. At the very least in my dream I assume she would have represented the threat of a crash. There was a man in the front passenger/co-pilot seat, however, who supposedly could have saved us, but I still wanted out. He shook his head disapprovingly at me. I was on the ground watching them fly away when I woke up to the news that the first WTC building had been hit. I was watching the TV when the other was hit.

I'm not going to say that was a prophetic dream but it's sure suggestive of something in that direction.

It has nothing to do with the dream as far as I know, but I recognized that 9/11 was God's judgment when it happened. I don't know how others could fail to recognize it. Or I've more or less figured out how, but it's still astonishing to me. Getting others to take it seriously was just about impossible. I'd talk about it on political internet forums and even conservative blogs and get denounced for it. By people who consider themselves Christians as much as by anyone else. Some Christians still aren't sure that was God's judgment or that America is under God's judgment at all. David James for one according to some things he's said.

I remember a "humorous" picture being sent around the conservative circuits of a supposed plan for a rebuilt World Trade Center, with five buildings side by side, the buildings on the ends the shortest the two next to them a bit taller and the one in the middle quite tall. All intended to show defiance to our enemies but I knew it really meant "giving the finger" to God, not just our enemies. Which is exactly the same attitude that the harbingers of Isaiah 9:10 are all about. Did anybody want to hear that? Few then for sure, I wonder how many now.

What happened to the America whose leaders would on occasions of crisis or threat call for a national time of fasting and prayer for God's forgiveness and protection? Long gone. We couldn't muster a National Christian Anything any more. If Christians these days are going to act on behalf of the nation it's going to be in spite of the nation's leadership -- though no doubt with an exception here and there in the lower ranks. We certainly don't need all the ecumenical stuff that includes the false religions, the Mormons, the Muslims, the Catholics. (Yes, the Catholics.) The crew that Glenn Beck is trying to pull together on behalf of his Mormon view of America. Much the same motley crew that Bush assembled in the National Cathedral to pray for the nation after 9/11. That set off my alarm bells for sure. That's like ASKING for further judgment against us.

At the time my impression was that a huge majority of American preachers were refusing to accept that 9/11 was God's judgment. Remember how the very few who did know it was judgment got hooted down? Like Robertson and Falwell. Wilkerson preached on it too, though as far as I recall I don't think he got attacked for it. None of these guys are among my own Christian favorites, and I have some specific theological problems with a couple of them too, but they knew what ALL the preachers in the nation should have known and didn't.

When I first learned about the Harbinger at the beginning of this year, it occurred to me that this could be God's way of making Christians notice that 9/11 was His judgment after all. It seems to be making quite a bit of headway in that direction, but it's also stirred up quite a hornet's nest among some ministries against it, not for its message of judgment though it has the effect of derailing that message anyway. For no good reason either, as I've been arguing here. Of course they think their reasons are damning and I'm not going to say they're not sincere, I'm sure they are quite convinced they are right.

Again the message of judgment comes from an outpost of the Church that wouldn't be among my favorites, but God didn't ask me. If David Wilkerson were still alive he'd no doubt recognize the truth of The Harbinger. Jerry Falwell might too. Pat Robertson has recognized it. There are some conservative evangelicals who are recognizing it as well.

God often doesn't do things the way we think He should.

God's will be done.

Another off-the-wall criticism of The Harbinger, by somebody Dinsmore

Found this at Brannon Howse's Worldview Weekend site.

-Mark Dinsmore

SETTING ASIDE the "ancient mystery" of the nine harbingers (depicted as pictographic clay seals in Jonathan Cahn's fictional story), there is another "secret" message that flows in the subtext of Cahn's New York Times bestseller, The Harbinger (TH). Evaluating this hidden stream requires some historic "archaeology" but will reveal that Cahn's nine harbingers are built not on Scripture but on sinking sand.

Funny, I'm getting a sinking feeling already.

Cahn's fictional Prophet recounts the "consecration" of America by George Washington (GW) in a manner which stirs reverential awe among many Christian Patriots.

Oh maybe, but the main stirring one gets comes from the recognition of the awesome fact that America's first President George Washington and his cabinet prayed for America on the very land where the WTC was built and attacked. I guess Dinsmore is unimpressed with such an uncanny coincidence.

But early in the book, Cahn acknowledges that "those who laid America's foundations" came "long before the Founding Fathers" (p.19). This can only refer to the Pilgrims and Puritans. However, the central premise of TH-that the attack and subsequent destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11 at "Ground Zero" was prophetic-is based on Cahn's repeated assertion that divine judgment must strike "the nation's most sacred ground, the ground of its consecration" (p.198). Cahn's fictional Prophet reiterates this as a de facto spiritual law: "This, Nouriel, is a critical principle. Take note of it" (p.198).

Given this declaration, the terrorists of 9/11-guided by this "ancient mystery"-should have targeted a site commemorating the first Pilgrim landing and "consecration to God" under the Mayflower Compact in Plymouth, MA. After all, the language of this historic document is far more "sacred" and intrinsically Christian than either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. But instead, Cahn maintains that the "grounds of consecration" are adjacent to "Ground Zero" in New York.

Yeah, you could ask that, but the fact is that Ground Zero happens to be where George Washington prayed for the nation. It wasn't the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution which occurred at Ground Zero, it was Washington's prayer, and Washington was the first President of the UNITED States as a federal -- UNITED -- nation.

Aaa, just a meaningless coincidence I guess.

According to TH, therefore, the fate of the Twin Towers (and the free-fall collapse of 47-story Building 7, which Cahn neglects to mention) was mysteriously sealed on April 20, 1789-212 years prior to 9/11 (pp.199-205).

Oh fer cryin out loud. Cahn is working backwards from the amazing appearance of the harbingers that so remarkably repeat Isaiah 9:10, from their location which anybody ought to be able to recognize has historical significance for America, to the date on which the nation was consecrated by Washington's prayer at that very site, and comes to the CONCLUSION that God took note of Washington's prayer and is now giving the nation warning through the harbingers He brought about on that very site. It takes special exertion to DENY such obvious connections once they're pointed out.

The entire foundation of Cahn's nine harbingers, therefore, is built on the presumed spiritual significance and efficacy of our first president's inauguration on that historic day (pp.207,208,210,211,212).

No, it's not "built" on that at all. As I understand it, Cahn discovered this later in his investigations. The existence of the harbingers is uncanny enough but then he discovered the significance of Ground Zero as property that had been owned by the very church in which George Washington prayed for the nation. Once you recognize that fact, you'd have to go to extraordinary lengths, it seems to me, NOT to draw the conclusion that God must be making some connection here.

Sycamore tree,
echoing the sycamores of Isaiah 9:10,
uprooted by a piece of one of the towers falling on it on 9/11,
turns out to have been growing in the graveyard of an old church that once owned the property on which the WTC was built,
is celebrated by spiritually blind people in a sentimental way that in fact emphasizes its significance as a sign of God's judgment on the nation,
who even cast its roots in bronze,
then even gets replaced by the same kind of tree Israel said they'd replace their sycamores with, a pine type tree.
All at Ground Zero where America's first President prayed for the nation.

Aaa, just a meaningless coincidence.

(It would seem significant to note, however, that these three demolished towers were not public buildings; they were not federal; they were not religious. They were, in fact, private office complexes. Why would God appoint, or allow, these structures to be targeted as a direct sign of some "ancient mystery" that allegedly "holds the secret of America's future"? This unsupportable claim is, quite simply, preposterous!)

Oh I dunno, maybe because the WTC was built on land originally owned by the church where Washington prayed for the nation, and maybe because the WTC was iconic of New York City and the wealth of the nation, and maybe because some events described in Isaiah 9:10 were repeated there in the wake of 9/11.

Naaa, just a meaningless coincidence.

Throughout TH, Cahn insists that the mere utterance of Isaiah 9:10 by an elected official-either "unwittingly" (pp.63,105) or "unknowingly" (pp.111, 117)-in conjunction with 9/11, constitutes the echoing of an ancient vow (pp. 93,117)-which TH asserts are binding words of cosmological consequence for the entire United States.

What kind of obtuseness does it take to blind oneself to these uncanny significances? "Mere" utterance of the verse by two American leaders in an official capacity connected with 9/11, the very verse whose bricks and quarried stones and sycamores and pine type trees were all echoed in amazing uncanny reality in connection with 9/11? Aaaa...

As "proof" that the ungodly can (and do) prophesy over a nation in accordance with God's Word, Cahn gives the example of Caiaphas in John 11:49-53. However, he stretches this principle beyond Israel, and beyond the office of High Priest, to include any ceremonial words spoken by a common U.S. politician that might happen to include Scripture. (pp.118-19) If that is the case, then how many thousands of times have elected officials misappropriated Scripture in the past? And what forces and curses have been "unwittingly" and "unknowingly" unleashed upon our land by their rash words and vows? Words do have meaning.

What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to deny the MULTIPLE lines of connections with THESE PARTICULAR utterances? The connection with 9/11, the harbingers that are also about 9/11, the location of the harbingers on the ground connected with the earliest official prayer for the nation, the ceremonies performed to celebrate the harbingers, the fact that all the speeches expressed America's defiance of the destruction of 9/11 as God's judgment on the nation -- all things done in connection with 9/11 in a remarkable uncanny echo of the same kind of events and attitudes as described in Isaiah 9:10.

But TH clearly advances the occult Word-Faith doctrine that words have intrinsic power and spiritual effect, "whether we know it or not."

Sigh. There is nothing "occult" or "Word-Faith" about this, and no implication that "words have intrinsic power and spiritual effect," there is merely the observation that speeches given by the leaders of a nation have special import and in this case particularly special import because they quote a verse from scripture that in its original context expressed Israel's defiance of God, a verse that is echoed all over the place in connection with 9/11 and therefore also expresses AMERICA's defiance of God. It is an astute observation by Jonathan Cahn that such official declarations in connection with all the OTHER harbingers related to Isaiah 9:10 amount to prophetic statements on behalf of the nation. ALL THESE IMPLICATIONS have to have been brought about by God Himself. There is nothing INTRINSIC in words themselves.

As Dave Hunt and TBC have long exposed, this is witchcraft!

No, it's a recognition of God's hand in an amazing collection of uncanny events. I don't know a thing about this man Dinsmore but if he claims to have discernment of things Christian he's WAAAAY off target.

Readers who are drawn into this mystical mindset of TH are quickly mesmerized by Cahn's droning repetition of words like "ancient...mystery...vow...sacred...ground...secret...key" and other terms synonymous with neo-gnostic religion.

I've answered this silliness before. The critics jump at words that remind them of something gnostic and completely ignore their context in this book. Cahn does not use these words in the sense the critics impute to him. There is nothing "mystical" about his use of them. These critics are letting their own preoccupations color their judgment of this book instead of THINKING -- about the context in which the book uses such terms.

Indeed, such concepts are the very essence of Masonic pomp and circumstance, as well as an integral part of the occultic "strategic spiritual warfare" practices of the NAR/Latter Rain movement. (This correlation simply proves that professing Christians are susceptible to the same ancient deceptions, resulting in aberrant and unbiblical practices, that are manifested in every era; see Ecc 1:9).

I'm afraid all it proves is that this critic doesn't know how to read objectively in context, and is imputing a completely false theology to Jonathan Cahn.

I'm putting up a post on a radio show by Jan Markell on The Harbinger later today, which I hope people will listen to. It deals with this sort of wacky criticism of the book among other things.

Given this fact, it is nonetheless cause for dismay-and shock, to many-to discover that contrary to the romantic view most of us grew up with, the United States was "consecrated" and "dedicated" not to the God of Scripture but to the god of Freemasonry.

Yes, I had this experience myself rather recently, having to recognize that the main founders of the Constitutional period were not Christians. But I believe Jonathan Cahn has answered the implication that therefore the nation was "consecrated" not to God but to the false masonic god by pointing out that the dedication itself would be what God would honor, not the person who makes the dedication.

In any case, what needs to be recognized here is the fact that the many harbingers based on Isaiah 9:10 have shown up on the very ground where this consecration occurred. This does suggest that there WAS a consecration that God recognized, that the nation's current defiance of His will violates to such an extent that He is removing His protection of the nation. It's a reasonable conclusion from the FACTS that Jonathan Cahn has collected and shown to us in his book.

The reader should understand that we are not defaming George Washington or calling his personal salvation into question through "guilt by association." No one can ultimately determine the condition of our first president's heart during the period of his admirable and sacrificial service to our country.

George Washington refused to take communion in his Anglican church which alone suggests a great deal about the condition of his heart. But again, his heart is not what determines the effect of his acting as our first President in praying that God would bless this new nation upon his inauguration, and in fact on its inauguration. The nation was in fact highly blessed by God over the years since then.

However, we can most certainly ascertain whether GW's willing participation in Ancient York Rite Freemasonry was in accordance with Scripture-and whether the Lodge's direct oversight of the very act of "consecrating" the United States was a pleasing aroma to God-or whether it was an abomination of "strange fire." (Even today, many patriots and professing Christians continue to be deceived by and through their "innocent" or "ignorant" membership in Freemasonry.)

Again, the PERSON is not the basis for God's blessing or not blessing the nation. Solomon was not exactly a paragon of faithfulness to God with all his pagan wives and concubines and idolatrous religious practices. Does that mean we are to dismiss his dedication of the temple to God as "really" to the pagan gods he also honored?

But curiously, for an author who has taken great pains to present the appearance of a factual, historical account that claims precision in the smallest detail (pp. 3,94,106,216, etc.); Cahn fails to mention anywhere in TH that our first president was himself a Freemason, sworn into office with his hand upon a Masonic Bible, with the oath given by the "Most Worshipful Grand Master" of New York Freemasonry, Robert Livingston (first Chancellor of New York City) http://www.stjohns1.org/portal/gwib.

Sad facts I also lament, but see above.

Compounding this mysterious "oversight," Cahn deflects attempts at discernment, and redirects inquiry into GW's Masonic connections: "I would suggest something else: That this rather serves to illustrate the broad-brush attacks of judgment which has [sic] become typical of many 'discernment ministries'" http://thethings2come.org/?p=506.

"Whatever Washington's other involvements may or may not have been," Cahn parries, "what does that have to do with the fact that he was part of a prayer gathering for America's future held within a church...? And how would that in any way nullify [The Harbinger]?" (Ibid.)

Seriously? Cahn discounts the political importance and spiritual significance of our first president's affiliation with, and participation in, a neo-gnostic mystery school? A demonstrably pagan, universalist cult which has permeated the United States government from Day One and has been intimately involved in its political and spiritual direction (and deception) ever since? To date, 1/3 of all Presidents, and 1/3 of all Supreme Court Justices are known Freemasons. (Can you imagine the outrage if this percentage had been Mormons instead of "Christians"?) In fact, this antichrist cult (which encompasses all faiths who believe in a Supreme Deity) has not only monopolized the halls of power in government but also in banking, business, and religious/philanthropic institutions. So, to answer Cahn's question, the fact of Freemasonry's undergirding and overarching influence in our nation's founding and "dedication" means everything.

I agree that our founding as a nation was lamentably very much something else than Christian, than what most of us had been taught, but it seems to me if you are going to stick to this way of interpreting things you still have to account for why God blessed the nation at all.

In any case, again, you have to come up with some kind of accounting for the fact that the attack on the WTC occurred on the very ground -- land that had been owned by that very church -- where George Washington and his governing body went to pray for the nation. The uncanniness of this fact can't just be swept away.

Also, that church is now screamingly apostate -- go read some of the "sermons" posted for Trinity Wall Street Church. It was most likely orthodox back in Washington's day. My own reading of this fact is that the apostasy of the churches is the main cause of God's bringing judgment against the nation now, as begun with 9/11.

As in the time of George Washington, Freemasons of all faiths still assemble in virtually every city and town in America. Like Glenn Beck and David Barton, they deem each other "brothers" and participate in "prayer gatherings within churches" (Cahn's sole criteria for judging GW). Should it not concern readers of TH that the god of Masonry invoked at GW's inauguration is not the God of Scripture? Or that its ancient, secret, binding vows supersede every other oath of office and trump biblical authority? Should it not disturb "discerners" that Masonry is quite literally a cornerstone of Mystery Babylon, whose doctrines of demons pave the way for a New Spiritual Order-one in which professing Christians, having their "eyes opened," become "wise," and bow to an Impostor (Mt 7:21-23, Jn 5:43)?

Therefore, regardless of whether or not George Washington realized the occult symbolism of "ancient secrets" in The Craft in which he participated, The Harbinger is hung by its own tongue when it declares the efficacy of ancient mysteries and spoken "vows." Because if America's consecration was performed by Masons to the Supreme Being they call "Providence," the "Almighty," the "Great Architect of the Universe," then our Lord does indeed have great cause to judge the United States.

Yes, and I'd like to see the Masons exposed once and for all and brought down, but again, why did He bless the nation at all as abundantly as He obviously did?

Not because our nation has abandoned the Masonic precepts conferred to and imparted by George Washington 223 years ago at "Ground Zero," but because it has almost universally embraced them.

Yes, but again, following this logic how do you account for the fact that God has blessed the nation at all?

And yet again, the point made by Jonathan Cahn is that the harbingers of judgment that have appeared in America, that are based on Isaiah 9:10 which speaks of a nation's defiance of God's judgment on that nation, quite remarkably showed up where George Washington prayed for the nation at its very inception. This needs to be recognized as the uncanny occurrence it is. It suggests to me that God honored that prayer despite the masonic influence, perhaps partly because George Washington DID believe in God's providence based on the nation's submission to His laws, and at least because the nation did adhere to God's laws until quite recently.

I myself hope Christians will come to recognize the anti-Christian mentality of the most prominent of the founders of the nation, which would give us better leverage for dealing with God's judgment, but as far as The Harbinger goes, this critic hasn't succeeded in falsifying Cahn's deduction that God is warning America of judgment yet to come through the appearance of the harbingers that so uncannily reflect Isaiah 9:10. These have to be recognized as something God Himself brought about in America as a result of 9/11.

This is still what the critics have to account for.

Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, echoes the same Isaiah 9:10 spirit of defiance of God as other American leaders

According to Wikipedia,  on April 24, 2009,

Dolan visited Ground Zero, the site of the September 11 attacks, on the following April 24.[58] After reciting the same prayer used by Benedict XVI during his visit to the United States, Dolan remarked, "We will never stop crying. But it's also about September 12 and all the renewal, the rebuilding, hope, solidarity and compassion that symbolized this great community and still does."[58]

No mention of God here, of the attack on the WTC as God's judgment, as a warning of more to come, therefore of the need of the nation to repent if we are to escape further judgment. Just the usual defiance of God through assertions of hope in renewal and rebuilding, the same spirit expressed in Isaiah 9:10 which is the centerpiece of Jonathan Cahn's Harbinger.

Just thought this speech made a nice rounding-out of the so-far-unanimous spirit of defiance of God's judgment against this nation, echoing various American political leaders and most evangelical pastors in the country. No reason the Catholics should have any more discernment.  Just the usual message of hope in man rather than in God:

Jer 17:5 ¶ Thus saith the LORD; Cursed [be] the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.

Brannon Howse interviews Jonathan Cahn on "Harbinger"

Thank you, Brannon Howse, for having Jonathan Cahn on your radio program and giving him a chance to explain his "Harbinger" revelation. I hope this is sufficient to answer the misunderstandings expressed by Jimmy DeYoung about the book on a previous show.

I recognize that one doesn't necessarily have to read a book or see a movie to understand enough about it to criticize it fairly, but the more I hear about people's reactions to Jonathan Cahn's study the more I have to appreciate that it's a difficult message to grasp unless you spend some time thinking about it. Not that you have to have read the book but you do have to understand what he's actually saying, and apparently that's not easy to get UNLESS you either read the book or hear his talks.

The ways people have managed to misunderstand the message are a bit boggling. Cahn himself was boggled at the thought that anyone would accuse him of "replacement theology" but I guess it is possible to get that out of it if you don't spend enough time really thinking it through.

(I don't consider myself to be into replacement theology either, but I may be more in that direction than Jonathan Cahn is -- I certainly don't think physical Israel has been replaced by the Church, but I do think that the Church IS "Israel" in the spiritual sense, so that all who are saved and born again in Christ ARE spiritual Israel, and I believe scripture says that Abraham himself looked to a spiritual "land" -- although God certainly DID give physical Israel to his descendants. So there is no doubt yet a role left for physical Israel to bring glory to God as this wrecked and groaning planet reels to its soon-coming end -- but enough, I've posted on this recently already.)

It also seemed to me to be a handicap for Brannon Howse that he hadn't been able to read the book or find out much more about the "Harbinger" before doing the interview, as he seemed not to really "get it" for most of the interview, though maybe it was getting through to him more by the end. Cahn seems to be having to work extremely hard just to get the basics across. This message is more important than that, and I hope Brannon Howse will eventually find some time to give it some real thought.

I get that if you really believe God has given up on America you may not see the point of putting much effort into trying to understand a message which is really a call to repentance, but it seems to me that God's giving us these signs or omens or harbingers MIGHT suggest that He's still giving us time to repent despite it all.

Maybe not, maybe they are just supposed to stand as mute testimony against America just as the same signs were against ancient Israel, so that we really are doomed.

But again, God's even allowing this book to come out DOES suggest that we may still have some time IF the churches were to wake up and seek God in earnest. I personally think God's people and especially pastors and other leaders should be CALLING THE CHURCHES TO RESPOND TO THIS MESSAGE OF THE HARBINGERS WITH REPENTANCE, PRAYER AND FASTING BEYOND ANY LEVEL OF COMMITMENT WE'VE EVER EVEN THOUGHT OF DOING BEFORE, instead of sitting back and ASSUMING we're doomed. [Sigh. Feel I must add here, days later, that I'm again assailed with the doubt that this could happen without the interference of all the antichrist forces now occupying what used to be orthodox churches, even the inclusion of Mormons and the Pope, ai yi yi yi. How I wish we could have such prayer for revival and leave all of them out of it, or make prayer against them an effective part of it.]

Just have to post for the umpteenth time Jonathan Cahn's talk on this from 2005 (I'd post the most recent one but it's not available online:


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

Musings on prophecy for today (pray more and fast some and you may change your opinion on this)

Just a note inspired by the second to last post:

I know that some Christians are adamantly against the idea of prophecy in today's church, and since there is a lot of false prophecy, especially in the charismatic movement, that's a prudent view to take these days.

But think about the fact that David Wilkerson's church had been expecting some sort of disaster and the leaders called them to prayer over it for weeks before 9/11 occurred (see the video in the previous post). That's true prophecy isn't it? And you can't deny it. They were seeking God about something the leaders of the church felt was coming, for quite a while before 9/11 hit. David Wilkerson years ago wrote about a prophetic word he'd received about the destruction of New York city mostly through social breakdown, and that has not yet occurred. If it was really from God then it will eventually occur.

Believers who are deeply and consistently in prayer, in touch with God, reading the Bible, spending much time at it, DO experience God's speakings. At the very least we hear from Him on a personal level. God has spoken to me personally about my own spiritual life many times, often in correction or rebuke, alas, but very direct and personal (no, not audibly, but by a vivid impression on my spirit). I know I've had at least two dreams in my life that came from God, also about my personal situation. When it comes to external things, such as this blog is about, God does sometimes lead me and I know He is leading me, and the more I pray and seek Him the more I am likely to receive such leadings but this doesn't come in the form of visions or dreams or prophetic words, just the promptings of the Spirit. ALL Christians experience something of this leading of God, which often comes through the Bible, a particular passage just "jumping out" as you read, that has such a specific connection to something you've been experiencing or thinking about you know it was from Him.

We also sometimes have experiences of being hindered in some way, kept from doing something we fully intended to do, or on the other hand made to feel some urgency to get someplace we are going, then to find out that the hindering or urgency put us in a position we needed to be in, often to be of help to another Christian. I know many of us have had this sort of experience, and what is that but God intervening PERSONALLY in our lives? This isn't exactly prophecy but along with His leading us through His word it doesn't seem all that different from His actually making us aware of a direct message from Him. And all that COULD be said to be prophecy in a sense because it comes from God Himself. But certainly receiving a direct message must be called prophecy. It's not just "forthtelling the word" as some claim is the only form of prophecy we have today, it's a specific message for our time NOW, if only for oneself concerning something in your own very limited circle. OF COURSE IT MUST NOT CONTRADICT THE BIBLE. And again, those who spend much time seeking the Lord are the ones who are most likely to have such experiences-- and conversely, perhaps it's those who don't spend a lot of time in prayer and Bible reading who are the critics of such experiences.

The REAL problem with claims of hearing from God is when they contradict His word or are provably false. And that happens an awful lot in charismatic churches, particularly when a "prophet" comes and gives a "word" over a brother or sister in the church that doesn't pan out. The devil CAN give messages into people's minds too, and discerning the difference isn't always easy.

I'm saying all this because I know some object to Jonathan Cahn's message as a personal prophecy and I hate to see this obviously true message being dismissed out of hand on such a basis without giving it a fair hearing. It's really not a prophecy at all, it's his observations of connections between a Bible verse and real public events that anyone can check out for himself. But the Jewish Messianic movement of which he is a part does support prophecy for today and at the end of the talk he gave in 2005 which I've linked many times, including in the previous post, he describes some other experiences only tangentially related to the 9/11 message that are prophetic in nature, that I too have some doubts about.

But the "harbinger" message remains intact no matter what you think about such spiritual gifts for today or this branch of the church or Jonathan Cahn himself. I think of him as a dedicated Christian brother myself.

God's warning harbingers to America in light of revelations about the Antichrist nature of the American founders

There is no doubt in my mind that the correspondences between Isaiah 9:10 and events associated with 9/11/01 in America are something only God could have brought about. The fallen bricks, the hewn stone to replace them, the fallen sycamore, the conifer to replace it -- no human agent could have intentionally engineered all that in some strange attempt to make 9/11 echo Isaiah 9:10. The correspondences don't even need to be as exact as they are to show that America's attitude toward God is the same as Israel's was in response to a warning judgment from God, and that unless we repent we will meet further judgment from God, more serious judgment. Some of us also didn't even need this revelation at all to know that much. But it appears that God Himself wanted to impress this on America by giving us all these omens in the context of Isaiah 9:10.

It's also important, I think, that David Wilkerson of Times Square Church preached on this same passage from Isaiah on the first Sunday after 9/11.
There are two more parts to David Wilkerson's message. Part 2 is where he quotes Isaiah 9:10.

God was speaking to America this same message in many different ways. Nobody was listening then, is anybody listening now?

But Is/Was America a Christian nation?
After I became aware of the Harbinger message I've happened to learn quite a bit about the founding of America that has somewhat altered my view of this revelation, mostly through the film Hidden Faith of the Founding Fathers by Chris Pinto. To my mind this film and others Pinto has done about the founding of America are as important as Cahn's revelation. He shows beyond a doubt that the most prominent of our founding fathers were so far from being Christians that it is right to call them "antichrists," because they denied that Jesus Christ was God come in the flesh, and even ridiculed the idea. Those founders who had this view included Thomas Paine, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.

They were clearly Deists with Enlightenment views, who believed in Providence to the extent that they thought it important to pray for God's blessings on the nation but did not believe in salvation through Jesus Christ, God Himself incarnate in human flesh, who was born of a virgin, did many miracles and died to pay for our sins. They denied all the supernatural elements of the Biblical revelation, and deified human reason above God's revelation.

Christians today have been misled by some who have sought to convince us that these men were Christians or at least intended to preserve Christian influence in the nation. We are easily misled by the fact that they believed in prayer and Providence, and at least in the case of Washington lived a highly moral life. Perhaps Adams did also, who said the nation they formed could only work for a moral people. We may rightly doubt Jefferson's personal morality and certainly Franklin's, and apparently also Paine's from what Pinto's film reveals, but we don't hear about that side of things when we are being given Adam's statement, and that and other such words taken out of context have wrongly convinced many Christians in the last few decades of a Christian influence in the making of the nation that really was not the case at all.

Not to say that America wasn't ORIGINALLY Christian, because it was. The original settlers were strongly Christian and their Christian influence continued even to the time of the founding. But by that time there was also the strong countereffect of the Enlightenment near-deification of Reason that specifically attacked Christianity, and the founding generation were particularly infected with this trend. They were also strongly influenced by Masonry which held to similar beliefs about Reason, with a strong dose of satanic occultism thrown in especially at the higher levels. Washington and Franklin were Masons, and I think also Paine.

Masons and Deists of that generation refer to "God" and to "Nature's God," promote a basic morality, and we often mistake that for a Christian mindset, especially because there are some who actively promote this equivalence. They would pray before opening Congress and they would even end a session by assembling together at a nearby church for prayer. It doesn't occur to most Christians that they would have done such things if they weren't Christian. But Pinto shows that Deism, which is really Antichrist religion, explains it all. When you become aware that all of them rejected Christ, yes, all five of them, it can be a bit like being punched in the stomach -- it was for me -- but it is something we need to know.

There were certainly strong Christian influences in the colonies from the beginning but unfortunately they were compromised and obscured by the documents that underlie the founding of America as a nation. Pinto shows that God was intentionally and specifically left out of the Constitution after much discussion in Congress.

Chris Pinto has done a thorough and believable job on this subject. I'd heard some of it from other sources before but not presented in such a credible way, making what seemed like extreme assertions without sufficient evidence to back them up. That can't be said of Pinto's presentations. Two other films about America's character can also be found at You Tube (although I'm sure Pinto would prefer you bought them from his site): The Eye of the Phoenix which should remove all those rationalizations you may have accepted about the symbolism of the Great Seal of America and other symbolism on our dollar bill as if they refer to the thirteen colonies and so on; and Riddles in Stone, which shows the masonic and pagan mentality that built Washington D.C.

I do think all that is as important as Jonathan Cahn's message. And it has altered my view of his message somewhat, at least it has raised questions. That is, he refers to the dedication of America by George Washington as if it were a Christian dedication, in a Christian chapel for one thing, and he refers to a quotation from Washington about the need for the nation to stay in obedience to God's laws in order to continue to be blessed. Now, I did sort of know that Washington wasn't a Christian, but he did pray and he did emphasize the need to be true to God's will, and it does seem fair to regard that time of prayer in the chapel at Ground Zero as a dedication or consecration of the nation to God.

And certainly all the harbingers that connect the attack on the WTC with Isaiah 9:10support the idea that God Himself is giving us a very personal warning as if He regards us as His own nation, dedicated to Him.

But knowing the mentality of Washington and the founders raises questions, and I can't answer them. Was the nation blessed for so long because we did acknowledge God even in the insufficient way of the Masons or Deists? But how could that be so if their views were really Antichrist, as they were? Shouldn't that have deprived the nation of blessings from its very beginning, since they weren't praying or acknowledging God truthfully? Did the nation succeed in being obedient enough to God's laws to keep us in His blessings for a while? Or should we consider that God's blessings were due to the Pilgrims and the original settlers, and the maintenance of a Christian worldview in the population of large, and such events as the Great Awakening which brought a resurgence of true Christianity to the nation just before the Revolutionary War? How to put all this together?

It's just a question. Things always turn out to be a lot more complicated than you first think they are. We need to know about the infidel founders of America, especially now as the last of the last days are surely about to burst over us.

But Jonathan Cahn's revelations are just as important and they should lead us to prayer for the nation. If Christians prayed as we should on the basis of his revelation, protracted prayer with fasting, huge numbers of us, surely God would turn things around. At least there would have to be a great influx into the church even if we can't save the nation.

I'm going to put up Jonathan Cahn's first talk on this subject from 2005 again. I udnerstand he did another at another Messianic convention very recently that includes much more information -- he's been tracking God's judgment on the American economy through Biblical references that are no less uncanny than the Isaiah 9:10 revelation -- but that talk is apparently only available on DVD from his ministry. And all that is in his book anyway.

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

Harbinger: A totally unfair criticism from someone who hasn't read it.

Oh brother, just listened to the Brannon Howse March 9th radio broadcast in which he asks Jimmy DeYoung what he thinks of Jonathan Cahn's Harbinger, who completely trashes the book although he says he hasn't read it himself. Moral of the story: READ IT YOURSELF BRANNON!! Or listen to Cahn's talks and interviews. There are some up at YouTube.

I had a feeling that making a novel out of that material was a big big mistake but nevertheless the book does stick to the overall revelation that Cahn gave in his various talks and does not deserve to be accused of "manipulating" the reader. The information, the correspondence between Isaiah 9:10 and events following 9/11 is uncanny and honestly presented, and Cahn is NOT making himself out to be a prophet in this, he is simply reporting on the correspondences he observed between the two events, and DeYoung MISREPRESENTED THOSE CORRESPONDENCES.

I think DeYoung's review is utterly irresponsible. He completely mischaracterizes what Cahn is doing. The idea that this Messianic pastor is pushing "replacement theology" is for starters some kind of huge misreading. All he said was that America was the only other nation that was dedicated to God as was Israel, and he pointed out the dedications that were made of America to God, which is indisputable as far as I can see. And it ought to be said that we don't need to refer to those instances of consecration for the harbingers of Isaiah 9:10 to be echoed in 9/11, it's just that it helps explain why God is going to such lengths to warn us. But in any case, Cahn said nothing to suggest America REPLACED Israel.

Then DeYoung didn't know that rebuilding actually has begun at Ground Zero although that has nothing to do with the revelation anyway. It's about the INTENT to rebuild which was clearly STATED by both Israel and America -- it's that ATTITUDE that is the main correspondence between the two, which is a statement of defiance of God after God sent judgment on both. DeYoung claims he took it out of context. He did not. The context was God's judgment in both cases and the nation's defiance in response.

Also nobody claimed America is rebuilding with hewn stone, nor that groves of sycamores were cut down that were replaced by groves of cedars yet DeYoung claims that's what was said. It was not. The reference is first to a symbolic hewn stone brought in to be the cornerstone of the new Freedom Tower; second to a highly symnbolic sycamore tree on the property of Ground Zero that was felled in the event, and third, to a highly symbolic tree of the same basic type of the cedar (which has more similarities in Hebrew but to my mind is similar enough in English) that was put in its place. There was even a symbolic brick entangled in the roots of the felled sycamore tree, though there were also news reports of the wreckage of the twin towers as fallen bricks. The correspondences are symbolic and very telling, things that only God Himself could have brought about.

I hope Brannon Howse soon corrects this horrific misrepresentation.

Cahn's message does take some thought

If people would just THINK ABOUT the message of the harbingers they'd have to recognize that there's no way to discredit it. It's direct from God. People could not have done this even with the most conscious intention to do so (and nobody could have such an intention anyway because it's a message of God's judgment against America), but it's clear from the facts that nobody had a clue what they were doing as they unwittingly contributed to this message from God.

I understand that some people don't have the energy or the will or in some cases perhaps the ability to think carefully about the information that's been given, but most people ought to be able to with just a little exertion. It's a simple matter of recognizing:

that Israel was attacked by an enemy and so was America on 9/11; (Cahn gives reasons to think today's terrorists may be related by blood to those ancient Assyrians too)

Israel's buildings were destroyed and so was the WTC in America;

Israel's sycamore trees were cut down in the attack, and a highly symbolic sycamore tree in America was cut down on 9/11;

Israel vowed to replace their fallen bricks with buildings made of strong quarried stone; America brought in a gigantic quarried stone to be the cornerstone of our rebuilding project.

Israel vowed to replce their fallen sycamore trees with sturdier cedars. America actually replaced our downed symbolic sycamore with a symbolic conifer tree of the same family as the cedar.

Israel VOWED to rebuild in this way; So did America and in a highly official way too, through speeches by the Senate Majority Leader actually declaring the policy for the entire nation in response to 9/11 and by another member of Congress three years later as well, both actually quoting this very verse of scripture, misunderstanding it.

How much thinking does that take really?

And again there is lots more to this revelation that I've spelled out in earlier posts and Jonathan Cahn spells out far more systematically in his talks and his book, but I just have to keep repeating the bare basics.

HOW FAR CAN WE TAKE THE SIMILARITY WITH ANCIENT ISRAEL IN ISAIAH 9:10 TO SHOW THAT AMERICA IS ALSO GOD'S NATION?

Some will argue that America is not God's nation the way ancient Israel was, or even not a Christian nation at all, but whatever you think of those arguments the fact is that God Himself seems to be saying something rather different through these irrefutable harbingers that connect America with ancient Israel. There is no arguing with such things so clearly done by the hand of God, yet I've run across that argument being insisted upon. Which is only because the person did not think through the evidence as I say above.

If the particulars of Isaiah 9:10 that apply to both nations aren't sufficient to make the connection, the fact that Ground Zero turns out to be the very ground on which America was dedicated to God --by our very first governing body led by George Washingon-- as well as the ground where God let down His protection -- ought to open some eyes. Truly Ground Zero in many senses of the term.

It's a warning from God. Ten years have already passed during which we've already experienced economic judgment, and coming judgment continues to simmer away. Will Christians rally to the call or not?

The resistance to the 9/11 harbingers is a good sign but the church has to overcome it

The message from God through Jonathan Cahn just keeps growing on me.

This is really His direct call to His American church, what else can it be? This kind of direct irrefutable evidence of His existence and His heart for this miserable backslidden American church and sin-glutted nation as a whole just is not something He gives often in this world and it would be a tragedy if we lose the opportunity.

As someone reminded me tonight we're in the eleventh year since 9/11 and the warning to Israel of Isaiah 9:10 was followed by ten years of time to repent until God sent Assyria back to finish them off. We're already past that point, in a dangerous time as Cahn keeps saying. The southern kingdom of Judah had twenty years, perhaps that's the timing that applies to us. In any case we'll be one sorry lazy irresponsible Church if we don't spend whatever time is left to us fasting and repenting and praying our hearts out for God to show mercy. And believe me I'm talking to ME first. My bad habit of waiting for others to go first and inspire me has got to go. I know what's happening so I have the responsibility to do what I say we need to do, now. Oy.

This message has LOTS of resistance against it, some of it in the form of odd "little" things that interfere with it getting out to people. Any resistance is a sign of a call from God though. I got just about no response from those I emailed about all this a while back, either silence or excuses from Christians and unbelievers alike. To be fair, a few did respond the way I responded, and the way the audience of Jim Bakker's show responded, which is great, and they are sending it on to others, but there's still a lot of apathy which is discouraging. This message OUGHT to get us all fired up. What an opportunity! God just doesn't normally give us such opportunities as this one, such a direct irrefutable message straight from Him.

But there IS resistance and the challenge is not to give in to it, because it IS discouraging. But again, it does have to be a good sign, that this is something God really does want us to pursue because the devil does NOT like it.

The fact that it's promoted by some televangelists is going to be a barrier to some so they wouldn't even give it a chance. Even the fact that it's got all this off-putting hype attached to it, or that the book was written as a novel which can seem to undermine its authenticity, these things can prevent people from wanting to learn about it. In fact even that violin that kept playing over the message at the Messianic conference in 2005 can be a problem for some. All these things make it difficult to recommend them to people. But God likes to work through small weak imperfect things (like all of us) and such things just happen to require us to be humble if we want to hear from Him, which is exactly what He wants of us. It may be the devil adding the touches of interference, but ALL things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. He uses those who will listen and we have to humble ourselves and accept whatever packaging the message comes in. The Athenians looked down their noses at Paul "the ragpicker" and we're all ragpickers. If we're Athenians God usually can't use us.

So we're in the eleventh year since the warnings came, and the economy has already been hit hard and more is to come.

Oh Lord, wake up Your church that we may finally be the conduit of Your power and mercy to this world You made us to be. Amen.


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Just heard that Cahn had been on Pat Robertson so I'm putting up that video:

Just in case it's not clear enough here's another sketch of the uncanny correspondences between Isaiah 9:10 and 9/11/01

I've outlined the "harbingers" of Jonathan Cahn's study here already, but maybe it could use some more spelling out. I'm not comfortable with his system or the focus on "harbingers" really, just not the way my mind works I guess, so if I spell it out I come at it differently, less systematically perhaps.

So here's the story: This rabbi/preacher Jonathan Cahn discovered that there is a verse in the book of Isaiah in the Bible that relates to what happened on 9/11, to the attitude people had about the attack, but it not only corresponds to 9/11 in that general way, but specific things mentioned in that verse became literal realities on 9/11 as well. These are literal physical harbingers and it is truly uncannily amazing that there should be such a literal correspondence between an ancient Bible verse (732 BC) and a modern event. God certainly speaks to us today through his scripture but this is the only instance I'm aware of in which the actual facts of the scripture have been manifested literally and physically in the present.

Here's the verse and this time I'm going to include the context which shows the consequences God says will follow:

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.

Isaiah 9:11-14 Therefore the LORD shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together; 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. For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the LORD of hosts. Therefore the LORD will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush, in one day.

So the first correspondence is that the people of Israel had the same attitude when they were attacked by the nation of Assyria, as America had when attacked by terrorists. They do not attribute the attack to God, do not see it as His judgment, and instead of seeing that they need to repent and turn back to Him they defiantly vow to rebuild bigger and better than before.

As a consequence of that attitude, right after that God says they will be attacked again. And as a matter of historical fact, Israel, the northern kingdom, was completely wiped out in another attack by Assyria some ten years later. The ten tribes completely disappeared, absorbed into the surrounding nations, and their former kingdom became known as Samaria. This was God's judgment against them for all their disobedience of his commandments, particularly for following foreign gods and for sacrificing their children to those gods.

Afterward, Samaria kept a distorted semblance of the Law given by Moses but as Jesus said of them when He spoke to the Samaritan woman He met at the well:

John 4:22 Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.

Judah, the southern kingdom made up of the two remaining tribes, was also warned of judgment to come, and also did come under judgment but later on, through attacks by the Babylonians. In 586 BC they went into captivity in Babylon for seventy years.

Judah's judgment came later because they had fewer sins, more obedient kings, and God had also promised that He was going to bring the Messiah Savior from them so He wouldn't completely destroy them, and it was from the tribe of Judah that Jesus was born 700 years after the events of Isaiah 9:10.

When the nation of Israel was originally formed under Moses after the Exodus from Egypt (around 1500 BC), God had given them commandments that they'd all agreed to obey and he'd also told them what would happen if they didn't obey. He promised protection and prosperity if they obeyed, but attacks by enemies, economic disaster and so on if they didn't obey. All this is spelled out in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy written by Moses, and to show this I'm going to copy out the first 25 verses of the 68 verses of Deuteronomy 28 at the bottom of this post.*

The attitude of the Israelites in Isaiah 9:10 is clearly the same attitude America had after 9/11, which anyone ought to be able to remember. Hardly anybody thought of it as God's judgment and the few who did were criticized. I immediately knew it was God's judgment and I don't know why so many other Christians didn't. They kept saying God wouldn't do that sort of thing, but the Bible ought to make it clear that nothing happens without Him. Also, it was clearly only a warning. 9/11 was bad but it could have been a lot worse, which means God isn't yet judging us as harshly as He could and He's giving us time to recognize Him and change things. It was a warning, but it's been over ten years and there's no sign of repentance from any quarter that I'm aware of, we've already had economic disasters and there's still more to come.

Even without all the uncanny harbingers the attitude expressed by Israel in Isaiah 9:10 is the same as America's after 9/11, but the uncanny harbingers did happen and what might have been merely an instructive example from scripture has become an official statement of America's defiance of God. Tom Daschle who was Senate Majority leader at the time actually QUOTED Isaiah 9:10 on the Senate floor the day after 9/11, thinking it was just a nice promise to rebuild that would make everybody feel better, not realizing it's a harbinger of judgment that states the defiance of America against God just as it stated the defiance of Israel against God. Better not quote the Bible at all than quote a passage like that.

Then three years later at a prayer breakfast also on 9/11 John Edwards quoted the same verse with the same misunderstanding of it.

In case anybody thinks they didn't misunderstand it, you can go read the commentaries at Blue Letter Bible on that verse, which all make it very clear that this is a statement of defiance against God. Both Edwards and Daschle did completely misunderstand it, and by pronouncing it in a public official way they committed America to defiance of God rather than to the repentance that verse ought to call for. Former American leaders knew better. Lincoln knew better for instance. But in our time only a very few -- who were vilified for it -- were calling it judgment and calling for repentance, everybody else was crying, "God bless America" as if God COULD bless this miserably apostate nation.

Those who don't believe in God might still think what's the big deal, but that's only possible if they aren't really thinking about it. Why did Dasche and Edwards quote that specific verse from the Bible that's ABOUT defying God and misunderstand it so completely? They could have quoted lots of verses from the Bible that really are comforting but they chose that one.

But that's just the beginning of the harbingers. Israel said they'd rebuild with hewn stone to replace their fallen bricks, refusing to recognize that it was God who had knocked down the bricks of their buildings. We brought in a huge stone weighing tons that was cut out of the New York mountains, a "hewn stone" to be the cornerstone of the proposed Freedom Tower to replace the WTC. It was just a gesture. The building wouldn't be built out of hewn stone but that hewn stone became a symbol for the rebuilding, and it's uncanny that they did it that way since that's what Isaiah 9:10 says Israel planned to do. The governor of New York made a speech over it too, also promising to rebuild what had been knocked down.

A symbolic hewn cornerstone of the defiant vow to rebuild isn't uncanny enough? Well, even more uncanny is that a sycamore tree was destroyed on 9/11, by a piece of the falling tower. It lay uprooted in the graveyard beside a little church at the corner of Ground Zero. Another symbol. The sycamores had been cut down by the Assyrian attack on Israel so a sycamore was also cut down on 9/11. It's not the same tree that's found in the Middle East but it WAS named after that tree.

And people made a big deal out of that fallen sycamore too. It appears that the church itself might have been destroyed but the sycamore protected it. They put its roots on display and a sculptor was commissioned to make a replica of those roots in bronze to commemorate the tree. That replica now stands next to the main church of which that small chapel is a part. There it stands, not recognized as the sign of judgment to come against America that it is.

AND, just as the Israelites said they’d replace their fallen sycamores, which the Assyrian army had cut down during the attack, with cedars, our fallen sycamore was also replaced by the same kind of tree, a conifer of the same family as the cedar. It was installed where the sycamore had stood, and officially named the Tree of Hope, although, again, it so clearly reflects the verse in Isaiah which is about defying God that it should really be called the Tree of Doom.

Can it be denied that all this is an uncanny playing out of the specifics of Isaiah 9:10? Every detail of it actually manifested on 9/11, the defiant attitude made official in quotes by American leaders, the fallen bricks replaced by a symbolic quarried stone, the fallen sycamore replaced by a conifer.

THEN, just to make sure that this is all God’s judgment on the nation of America, it turns out that the chapel where the sycamore had stood and where the conifer now stands was where the first government of America under George Washington met to pray for the new nation. The capital of America at that time was not Washington D.C. but New York City. Washington had just been sworn into office a few blocks away and he and his whole government walked to the chapel to spend two hours praying for the nation, essentially consecrating the nation into God's hands.

The uprooted sycamore now stands for God’s judgment that the nation has come to an end unless we turn back to Him.

Also, Ground Zero is property that was owned by that church. The attack on the WTC was therefore an attack on the original ground where America was originally consecrated to God, another sign that God is withdrawing His protection from the nation that was prayed for by Washington and his government.

Another uncanny bit of fact is that the church has a Wall Street address. The bronze sycamore root stands right next to it. It is known as Trinity Wall Street Church. God’s judgment on the American economy has already begun with stock market crashes.

And there's more: The New York Stock Exchange which is only a block from the church was originally formed from an agreement known as the Buttonwood Agreement because it was signed by the members under a buttonwood tree that grew on Wall Street. Buttonwood is another name for sycamore. (Wikipedia verifies all this). The uprooted sycamore specifically points to judgment against the American economy which is already well underway.

Cahn goes into all of this in his talk and in more detail in his book. I don't see how anyone could recognize all this and deny that there is a God who did it all, a God who is talking to America through all these events and through these amazingly manifested symbols that echo His word to ancient Israel when they too had gone astray and come under judgment.

So there's my sketch of Cahn's revelation of the "Harbingers." He actually goes into more in the book, involving the timing of our economic collapse in terms of other parts of the Law of Moses, so if this isn't already uncanniness overload I recommend reading about that too.

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*And here's part of Deuteronomy 28 about God's promises to Israel if they obeyed and warnings of what would come if they didn't:

Deu 28:1 And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe [and] to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: [Surely we can say that God did bless America in this way in the 20th century]. And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God. Blessed [shalt] thou [be] in the city, and blessed [shalt] thou [be] in the field. Blessed [shall be] the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed [shall be] thy basket and thy store. Blessed [shalt] thou [be] when thou comest in, and blessed [shalt] thou [be] when thou goest out.

Deu 28:7 The LORD shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways. The LORD shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in his ways. And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee. And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee. The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow. And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do [them]:

Deu 28:14 And thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, [to] the right hand, or [to] the left, to go after other gods to serve them. Deu 28:15 But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee: Cursed [shalt] thou [be] in the city, and cursed [shalt] thou [be] in the field. Cursed [shall be] thy basket and thy store. Cursed [shall be] the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Cursed [shalt] thou [be] when thou comest in, and cursed [shalt] thou [be] when thou goest out.

Deu 28:20 The LORD shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me. Deu 28:21 The LORD shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to possess it. Deu 28:22 The LORD shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish. Deu 28:23 And thy heaven that [is] over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee [shall be] iron.

Deu 28:24 The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed. Deu 28:25 The LORD shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.

The IRREFUTABLE revelations of "Harbinger" have to overcome some obstacles to get the hearing it deserves

First, these harbingers ARE irrefutable.

There really is an uncannily precise correspondence between the words of Isaiah 9:10 and the events in America of September 11th, 2001 --and afterward. Just as a matter of fact, the verse obviously applies to 9/11 even without the uncanny correspondences, but they seal the deal in a way that ought to convince the most adamantly skeptical.

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

Isaiah 9:10 really is about the defiance of a nation against God's judgment and the next verse is about the inevitable continuing judgment that will follow. All the commentaries on this passage give this understanding of it.

American leaders really did quote Isaiah 9:10 after 9/11, mistaking it for an encouraging word of promise that the nation would rebuild, rather than the act of defiance against God it is. The verse refers to fallen bricks or buildings and the cutting down of sycamore trees as God's act of judgment against the idolatrous nation, really his warning of judgment as it was light compared to what could have been, just as 9/11 was light compared to what could have been. Instead of repenting the nation of Israel simply vowed to rebuild and replant bigger and better. And so did America.

After 9/11 some reporters described fallen bricks in the devastation, but the simple fact of fallen buildings is enough to tie the event to the Isaiah passage. A stone was quarried from the New York mountains to be the cornerstone of the projected "Freedom Tower" which was to replace the WTC, and ceremonially installed with words of defiance echoing the attitude of Isaiah 9:10. That's the hewn stone that Isaiah 9:10 pictures as the act of defiance.

There was also a western version of the sycamore tree that was uprooted by a falling piece of one of the towers. The sycamore became an icon in people's minds. Its roots were put on display to commemorate 9/11 and later a bronze replica of those roots was installed beside the church to which the sycamore had belonged. You can find pictures of this on the internet. The address where it is located also happens to be Wall Street.

The fallen sycamore really was replaced by a conifer of the same family as the cedar, and that tree also became an icon, dubbed the Tree of Hope.

This is all highly ironic since the Isaiah passage these things are so closely following without anyone's intention is all about defiance of God and the determination to do things our own way. This was the predominant sentiment about 9/11 by everybody involved, and is to this day. Anybody hear any calls to repentance for the sins that brought about God's warning judgment? The very few who even called it God's judgment were vilified.

The harbingers don't stop there. It turns out that the sycamore tree was planted in the churchyard of the very chapel where George Washington and his first governing body prayed after his inauguration as our first President. The capital city of the nation at that time was New York City, not Washington D.C.

Oh and there's more than that too, involving Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange, also involving the very property of the World Trade Center. Go listen to Jonathan Cahn's talk I've posted two or three times in recent posts below, or get Jonathan Cahn's book "Harbinger." He fictionalized the story of how the correspondence with Isaiah 9:10 was discovered, using fictional characters, alas, but all the true facts are there.

I do have to report that I finally read Cahn's book, took me a while to get to it but I read it over the weekend and finished it this morning. I can't say I'm happy that he chose to put it in fictional form, and I can only hope that it won't be a problem for many figuring out what parts are fiction and what parts reality, but overall for me it didn't detract from the message itself so I've finally accepted his decision to do it that way. At least it gave him the opportunity to present the material in a measured way so that we have time to digest each part before being hit with the next. There are a LOT of parts to this revelation, each as uncanny as the previous, and anything that makes it easier to assimilate has to be welcomed. As characters in the book say: "The point is to get the message out to as many people as possible (p. 248)." If the fiction mode accomplishes that I have to be all for it.

Later: It occurred to me that maybe this could be considered a literary form for the orderly presentation of a complex subject rather than a novel. A teaching device. Seems to me something like this has been done in history, though I have to admit I don't know where or by whom or what it would be called.

In the book he gets to the subject of the church's responsibility, and here's what he says about what believers need to repent of:

From their apathy, from their complacency ... their compromises with darkness ... their omissions ... their serving of other gods ... their sins committed in secret ...their withholding of life ... and their failure to fulfill their call (p. 224).

The job of unpacking that statement would bring out every category of sin we need to face.

====================
I'm certainly no supporter of the charismatic movement, or of televangelists either, so it does put me in an uncomfortable position to be so strongly convinced of Jonathan Cahn's revelation of the meaning of 9/11 as God's judgment on America, because those are the contexts in which his message is being promoted, while the rest of the churches apparently either don't know about him, or, perhaps, reject what he has to say. I really don't know how he is being received outside those contexts, though, it could be simply that they aren't hearing his message at all. I just know that my own attempts to get his message out to others have mostly been met with silence.

I didn't even know that Jim Bakker was on television again, or that he had a second wife, that's how out of touch with the world of televangelism I've been. But his program aired a series of interviews with Jonathan Cahn just last month, and Bakker says he was one of the few who recognized early on that 9/11 was God's judgment on America and took a lot of criticism for it.

The interviews are rather choppy, frequently interrupted, and at times repetitive but pretty much all the material does get covered by the end, and it's more up-to-date than the Messianic conference speech I keep linking. The Biblical connections concerning judgment on the economy are staggeringly uncanny, but much too detailed for an economically-challenged person like me to keep track of. You just have to hear it for yourself.

Here are the Bakker interviews, again with the warning that they may be frustrating to watch: Part #1 Part #2 Part #3 Part #4 Part #5 Part #6

Getting the message out to as many as possible is Bakker's desire and that makes me very happy as it's my own desire too. I've been experiencing much resistance but he's gained a large audience for it, praise the Lord. There do seem to be obstacles to getting it out in general, though, which is to be expected about such a message. At first I thought this message is so just plain IRREFUTABLE it should spread like wildfire through the churches and we'll all be humbled and turn from our wicked ways, a great revival will engulf the nation and America will be saved. Turns out that as usual that's ridiculously optimistic and in reality we have a spiritual battle on our hands if we want God's kingdom to advance in this world. Rabbi Cahn describes various ways he's been in spiritual battle over this in these interviews.

This message needs to break down all the walls and get to EVERYBODY.

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."