The Strange Attacks on Jonathan Cahn, author of The Harbinger, spelled out on Chris Rosebrough's radio show

Chris Rosebrough is a Christian discernment broadcaster with a Lutheran point of view who is interviewing Jonathan Cahn in this program , very thoroughly covering all the ways Cahn has been slandered by his critics, falsely accused of supporting Replacement Theology, Gnosticism, Dominionism, British Israelism, Mormonism, Jewish Mysticism and various other errors, all patently false accusations if you know anything about Cahn's ministry.  It's a good corrective that is much needed.

The only objection I have to this presentation is that I agree with Cahn's critics in that I think there is a real danger of appearing to condone a program host's theology in some cases so that it isn't right to claim that every program is just an opportunity to give the gospel, which is Cahn's argument, and that there is no danger involved.   This problem gets glossed over on this program, as if it's ALL just a matter of Cahn's wanting to get the gospel out however it's possible to do so, but in some cases this reasoning doesn't hold water.

It depends on the program.  If it's a purely secular program there's no problem that I can see, because nobody expects a Christian to be in agreement with the host, but if the program host purports to be a Christian or to represent a Christian point of view, as for instance Mormons do, or of course the New Apostolic Reformation representatives do, THEN there can be a problem and it's at least naïve to deny it.  Of course there is no problem if the program host IS Christian although of a different denomination or tradition, which Chris Rosebrough is, since the gospel basics are shared by both;  the problems come in only when the program backs a theologically false position but calls itself Christian. 

Although Cahn may not personally know or support a particular teacher, simply appearing in a context where that teacher is endorsed can suggest that or at least raise questions about it that do need to be addressed.  For instance, Jonathan Cahn says he does not know Rick Joyner who is a leader of the New Apostolic Reformation, which I've discussed here before, but by appearing on Sid Roth's show, It's Supernatural, and owning Roth as a friend, who is a strong supporter of Joyner and by extension the NAR, and in general a not-very-discerning supporter of all kinds of things supernatural, he does tacitly align himself with Joyner and the NAR movement, and that is very dangerous because the NAR is an apostate movement.  All you have to do is go watch a couple of Sunday "services" at Rick Joyner's "church" on You Tube to see that he's gone way over the line into a very primitive paganism, and the signs and wonders produced in that context are far from Christian in any sense of the word.

It also makes little sense for starters to claim you are appearing on shows that clearly present themselves as Christian in order to get the gospel out since they believe they themselves represent the gospel.  The only way you could credibly claim to be doing that is if you clearly and explicitly said ON THE PROGRAM ITSELF that you have a different point of view about the gospel itself and what it means to be Christian.

Same with Glenn Beck I'm afraid.  Beck talks a strong religious line of his own that distorts the Biblical record to support his Mormon belief system.  Of course it is stupid to accuse Cahn of supporting Mormonism just because Mormons like his book, but unfortunately there is a way that his appearance on Beck's show, with Beck sounding so supportive of his book, could lend a credibility to Mormonism in the minds of many in Beck's audience who know nothing about these things, despite Cahn's beliefs or intentions.

But again, that may suggest nothing more than a kind of naivete on Cahn's part and I have no OTHER objection to either his book or his teachings as far as I know them, or his appearances on various media.   

Anyone who would like to know how Cahn has been slandered and misrepresented should listen to this broadcast which aims to cover all the bases.

End Times sadness about Israel, & about the condition of the Church

More sadness about the times we live in.  Gets to me a lot these days.  Just heard Jan Markell's weekend radio show, When Being Jewish is a Crime where she demonstrates the growth of anti-Semitism in America, really depressing stuff, and of course the usual negative attitude against Israel which is all of a piece with the anti-Semitism.  I don't share the theology of those ministries that teach that the Old Testament still applies to unsaved Israel, but I nevertheless believe Israel and the Jews are a big part of God's plan for the last days, and even if I didn't, I know Israel is not guilty of the charges the world keeps slamming against her.  It's all trumped up and that fact alone shows that God still cares about* His wayward people or they wouldn't be attracting such hatred.  They need the gospel above all of course, need to recognize their own true Messiah whom they've always rejected, that's where all our prayers should be focused.

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UPDATE 7/21:  *Feel I need to be more accurate about the hatred piling up against Israel.  Yes it certainly indicates God has His eye on her, but so did the miraculous events of their wars in which a vastly outnumbered little nation defeated the big Arab nations that tried to destroy her more than once.  There is no doubt in my mind that God is watching over Israel, and scripture indicates that when the Lord Jesus returns it will be to the Mount of Olives.  There is no doubt that Israel figures in God's end times plans. 

Nevertheless it seems necessary to try to account for the hatred in other terms as well, as God's judgment.   This is how I explain the precarious position of America in the world today after all, so much hatred around the world after a long time of being in the world's favor, the demoralization and undermining of the culture that we've been witnessing for some time and so on.  I think America has been particularly blessed by God, and in some sense also in a covenant with God because of the dedications of the land to God by early Protestant settlers, and their determination to live by God's law.  This is not the same as the covenant initiated by God with Israel but it is still a special relationship that many early Americans honored and appears to have been greatly blessed by God.  So God's judgment of America is likely to be more severe than His judgments of other nations that haven't known God. 

Israel of course represents the God of the Old Testament in a very high profile way, and the fact that they themselves don't recognize their own God but are in an apostate condition, a sinful condition, even rejecting Him outright, puts them in the position of drawing down a really terrible judgment, described clearly in the Hebrew scriptures, Deuteronomy 10 and Leviticus 26 in particular.  I also don't think we can ignore the fact that they are still under the curse they took upon themselves when they chose Barabbas over Christ and called for our Lord's crucifixion.  Jesus from the cross asked the Father to forgive them, but until they repent there can be no forgiveness.  Yet scripture says they WILL repent, the last generation will recognize Him as the Messiah and turn to Him.  But before that happens they are under God's judgment.   Again, simply on the basis of the curses in Deuteronomy and Leviticus they are under God's judgment anyway because they are in the apostate condition of having turned away from their God altogether to rule themselves.  To recognize this would be a very bitter thing for the Jews but in the end they must come to recognize it. 

God hasn't abandoned them.  He's watching over them.  Something wonderful is going to happen with them and probably not too long from now, if I understand this rightly, but before that happens scripture seems to indicate they are to go through a terrible time of judgment known as "Jacob's trouble." 

Yes, they need the gospel of their Messiah above all and we need to be praying for them.    

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Then I read a new attack on the Harbinger, the usual crazy misreading of it, the idea that Cahn thinks America was directly predicted in Isaiah's text.  What's depressing about that is that Christians can think so wrongly about anything and be so aggressive and destructive in their wrong thinking as well.  There are also Christians who accuse him of "extrabiblical revelation" and again I experience the sadness that Christians have no ability to judge these things rightly.  Extrabiblical revelation is the Book of Mormon, it's the papal teachings of Rome that contradict the Bible, it's the people who think they have the Spirit and trust whatever the "Spirit" seems to say even if it's contrary to scripture, and The Harbinger is not guilty of any such thing; it is a straightforward application of the Biblical text.  This is not some need I have to defend The Harbinger, because I've been terribly disappointed in Jonathan Cahn's alliances with false teachers and apostates and figure the book's message is compromised by that and can't do the work of influencing the nation to repentance and revival for that reason.  Despite all that I still find the main message of his book to hold up so now it just stands as God's judgment of the nation that won't be turned back.

Christians all around seem to be falling for compromises of various sorts, seem unable to apply the most basic biblical discernment to the situations we are facing these days.  It's all very sad.  Not that I consider myself safe from such errors either, all I can do is pray to be preserved from them as much as possible.

As usual there are other things on my mind I could add to this and as usual I'm not sure I have the energy to get to them.  But if I can I will.

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Meanwhile I'm due for surgery in a few weeks and hope Christians reading any of my blogs would pray for a good outcome.  Thanks.

My Very Last Post (I Hope) on the Subject of Jonathan Cahn's book The Harbinger

June 3 UPDATE:  A good interview about the Harbinger and more thoughts about how the message is only going to fail.  

 Mike Huckabee did a radio interview with Jonathan Cahn back in March, in which Huckabee emphasizes that what makes the book important is its actual FACTS, indisputable facts.  Whatever objections people have to the book or to Jonathan Cahn himself, there shouldn't be any doubt at all that the book is a revelation of portentous FACTS that occurred in America in connection with 9/11.  These facts can only be interpreted as signs of God's judging the nation, starting with 9/11, but pointing to future judgment as well if the nation does not repent and turn back.  This is not a book of opinion or speculation or theological vagueness, it's all about observed facts, that's what makes it an important book. 

Huckabee reported that the book had sold 60 million copies as of the interview, which is a staggering number.

 Despite all its apparent success I continue to feel its impact has been compromised by Cahn's publicizing it on some very fringey charismatic venues.  People will read and marvel at it but is it going to turn the nation back to God?  See, I think it COULD HAVE, but I think that would have required that it not be associated with borderline heresies and even outright apostasies.  Besides its being publicized in this way, there have been ecumenical prayer meetings based on the book's revelation involving some conservative politicians.  Jonathan Cahn appeared at an ecumenical prayer breakfast convened to pray for the nation right after Obama's last inauguration.  He gave a great talk and I hoped that would be enough, but in the end I think simply being in an ecumenical setting for the purpose of prayer is not going to be blessed by God. 

God will not bless anything ecumenical, God will not bless anything but His true Church.  For decades now Christians have been allowing compromises that can only defeat such a message as The Harbinger.

At the time of 9/11 itself only a very few Christian leaders dared to call it God's judgment, most across the nation were denying that God would have had anything to do with it.  Then President Bush had that abomination of an ecumenical prayer meeting in the National Cathedral to pray for the nation.  All I could do was cringe.  The idea that God would hear such prayer shows a miserable loss of Christian perspective in this country.  SUCH MIXING OF HIS CHURCH WITH UNBELIEVERS AND FALSE RELIGIONS ONLY INVITES GOD'S FURTHER JUDGMENTS ON THE NATION.

Then God showed Jonathan Cahn some pretty dramatic signs that the nation is under judgment starting with 9/11, but now I fear that message is also being vitiated by keeping bad company.  DIDN'T GOD TELL US THAT HE WILL NOT BLESS WORSHIP OR PRAYER TO BOTH HIMSELF AND MOLECH?    What is Jonathan Cahn thinking?  How can his message survive such compromise?  Well, I don't think it will.  I think it's pretty clear that there are no signs of effective repentance as a result of the book, even if there may be some pockets of repentance here and there.

Really, it ought to be clear to the conservative Christians by now that their ecumenical joining in with the conservative factions of false religions over the last few decades HASN'T ACCOMPLISHED WHAT THEY AIMED TO ACCOMPLISH by such connections.  Starting back at least with the Moral Majority, has the nation been getting any better in the areas that conservatives care about?  NO!  Isn't it obvious that things have only been getting steadily worse in the areas we care about? 

WHY?  Has God become deaf?  Haven't the ecumenical political organizations been working hard enough?  Hasn't there been enough ecumenical prayer?  Oh Christian America!  No, the problem is the ecumenism itself, that you are joining with Molech to accomplish goals that God will not bless for that reason. 

Purify the Church, separate from the apostates and the false religions, strengthen the doctrines of the CHURCH, expose the false doctrines, and THEN pray for the nation. 

Or The Harbinger like all the rest of the warning signs of national deterioration and judgment is just going to be a flash in the pan and the nation is going to continue going down.  The book can even give a timetable for how that is likely to happen.  Perhaps that's its only value now.

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My Very Last Post on The Harbinger?

The way things have been going I don't think The Harbinger is going to have much more of an impact than it's already had.  I think this partly has to be due to Cahn's persistence in publicizing it through charismatic channels, which I do think is wrong, and likely to be a dead end as far as getting out the message goes if only because so many Christians object to him for that reason. 

I don't think this is a bad thing.   I think the book is a solid demonstration that the nation is under God's judgment, but I don't think it's going to open many eyes to that fact, I don't think we are going to have a revival or much of a national turnaround at all, so I think it's mostly going to stand in the end as an indictment from God to that effect. 

Perhaps there's a sort of spiritual irony involved here, that a message from God is getting bogged down in one of the apostate branches of the church.  I may be reaching for it but it's not hard to see a metaphor for our present condition in this very fact.

Be all that as it may, I still find the book's message to be solid. 

I think we could reduce the whole message of the Harbinger to its observation that a few American political leaders pronounced judgment on the nation when they quoted Isaiah 9:10 as if it were a message of hope following 9/11.  To my mind this is the most indisputable fact in the book.

Isa 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.

God knocked down our buildings but WE will rebuild.  The verse was quoted by Tom Daschle and John Edwards in reference to 9/11, and its essence "We will rebuild" was written by Obama on a beam to be raised to the top of the new Freedom Tower which is to replace the World Trade Center.  Others echoed the attitude but these three have the most official national status. 

In its biblical context it is clearly a message of a nation's defiance of God's judgment through a great calamity, and by failing to see 9/11 as God's judgment on the US, and by failing to give the appropriate call to national repentance in a time of judgment, these American leaders aligned themselves with the very same spirit of defiance by the leaders of ancient Israel which is expressed in that verse.  This defiance is the reason God says in the very next verse He is bringing the Assyrian adversary against them again. 

We almost don't need any of the other harbingers in the book to make the case, but so obtuse are some of our "discernment" people that they actually fail to see how these statements are defiant of God or how they are a pronouncing of God's judgment against the nation. 

So add to those words by the politicians the uncanny appearances in the wake of 9/11 of those other harbingers that echo the specific elements of Isaiah 9/10 and it looks to some of us like God has given us indisputable symbolic tokens of our defiance of Him that we cannot honestly deny.  A sycamore tree destroyed by the attack on the WTC, a conifer brought in to replace it, fallen bricks and a hewn stone brought in to symbolize the rebuilding. 

To me these few things are the essential message of The Harbinger that all by themselves put a seal of sorts to God's displeasure with America.   There are other factors that deepen their implications, such as the fact that the felled sycamore was on the very corner of the property occupied by the WTC, in the courtyard of the very chapel in which George Washington prayed for the nation right after his inauguration.   These factors and more are waved away by the critics as if any human being could have trumped them up. 

So I still support this book.  I don't, however, support Jonathan Cahn's associations with charismatics, some of whom are known apostates and not Christians at all.  I think this damages his reputation and the prospects for his book. 

There may be more to say but I'm going to stop here for now.

Jonathan Cahn's problematic charismatic associations versus the validity of his book The Harbinger

Update May 28:  I've been offline for a while because of computer problems.   More comments on this subject are posted in the Comments section below.

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So now I got a Comment on the Email on the Harbinger post below, taking me to task because of my continuing defense of The Harbinger..  This is a tricky problem.  I continue to believe the main message of the book itself holds up against all the ridiculous criticisms levelled against it by the critics, but at the same time I also have a big problem with Cahn's affiliations with some very extreme charismatics, appearing on their programs to promote the book and so on.   I don't find it easy to resolve these problems. 

Am I wrong to defend the book if Cahn himself does things I can't support?  Should I accept his view of it that he's willing to appear wherever he's welcome in order to promote the book, which he likens to Paul's speaking at Mars Hill?  Well, actually I don't accept that view at all.  I think there is a big difference between what Paul did at Mars Hill and Cahn's appearances with charismatics I myself reject.  Charismatics present themselves as Christians for starters, whereas Mars Hill was clearly pagan.   Some charismatics Cahn has appeared with are so out of line they can't be considered Christian any more, although there are certainly true Christians within the charismatic movement nevertheless.  

I don't know how to resolve all this, but again I'm being attacked for Cahn's appearances on charismatic venues when my main focus has been on defending the book and not Cahn himself.  I continue to believe the critics' attacks on the book are way out of line and that the book's message holds up, AND that Cahn himself does not seem to share in the charismatic excesses of the people he's been associating with. 

But here's the Comment I got and my answer to it:

Anonymous said...
Your defense of Cahn is sickening, especially in your denial of him not being affiliated with the charismatic movement. All you gotta do is YouTube him on heretic Sid Roth's "It's Supernatural" and see he is affiliated with them. Just cause he doesn't "teach" charismania, doesn't make any less in error! Especially when the Bible clearly says we are not to associate with evil doers but rather expose them! I will qoute an excerpt from Elliott Nesch:

"My concerns go deeper than mere charges of “guilty by association.” For instance, on October 24, 2011, Cahn launched his book on the Jim Bakker show. On April 5-8, 2012, Cahn was included with a team of ministers to celebrate Passover with Chuck Pierce, Peter Wagner, Dutch Sheets, Barbara Yoder, David Demian, David Schneier, Judy Jacobs, Kyle Searcy, Paul Keith Davis and Robert Heidler. Dated June 18, 2012, The Jim Bakker show announced, “The prophets are coming – the word is going out! Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, Sid Roth, John Kilpatrick, Rick Joyner, John Shorey, Bobby Conner, Cindy Jacobs.” On September 27, 2012, Cahn appeared on This Is Your Day with Benny Hinn. In a personal e-mail correspondence, I was prompted to ask Cahn if he cautions his congregation against false teachers by name and what his criterion for false teachers is. He responded,
There is distinction between believers who may speak or teach some errors in fact or doctrine, a category that basically includes every believer – And the other category where someone teaches that which clearly contradicts a foundational and central core issue of faith – that would be place them outside the gospel and would justify the label of false teacher. If giving specific identification was warranted to protect believers from falling into error as touching the latter category, we would not be averse to doing so.

I also asked Cahn about his current affiliation and position on the New Apostolic Reformation. He responded:

I have no affiliation – There are those who assume that because one speaks from a specific platform, event, venue, conference, or media outlet, this means that one is in total or any agreement with the host or platform. This is not necessarily the case. By such a standard, they would judge Paul as a pagan for preaching at the pagan platform of Mars Hill. I will go and speak from virtually any platform I can that will allow me to give the warning of The Harbinger and the message of the Gospel unhindered – Whether I agree with that person on any issue or no issue – whether that platform be Christian, secular, Hindu, pagan – or a Mars Hill – as long as I am able to use that platform to preach unhindered, I will go.

I understand Cahn’s conviction about preaching at Mars Hill if need be as the Apostle Paul. But I would compare sharing the pulpit or being a guest in association with these false teachers as equivalent to early Christians sharing a venue with or speaking in a Gnostic congregation. I believe these teachers with which Cahn is affiliating and promoting his book are those which should be called out by name, exposed and avoided. Paul warned of those who would come in the last days with ”a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away” (2 Timothy 3:5). The Apostle John said, “If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds” (2 John 10,11). Paul said, “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (Romans 16:17). These verses considered, the associations to false teachers are too close for comfort for me."

I also find it quite sad that you seem to be detouring from defending the gospel and now defend a mere man. So sad!
Friday, May 10, 2013

Faith aka Connie said...
If you are going to address me in such a personal way, you should use a name instead of hiding behind "Anonymous." I find YOUR approach to me to be on the sickening side myself.

I'm aware of the problems with Cahn's affiliations, all those you mentioned, I've already commented on them, I have named names where I've been aware of them, and in fact I don't agree with him that appoearing on heavily charismatic venues is the same as Paul's speaking from Mars Hill.

His affiliations are a problem, no doubt at all, and he does believe the spiritual gifts are still in operation. There are true Christians who do believe that, you should know if you don't.

But from my own experience in charismatic circles I don't see any of that in Cahn's basic teachings, and The Harbinger, the book, does not teach any of that. SUPPOSEDLY IT'S THE BOOK THE CRITICS ARE CONCERNED WITH, but the critics are finding problems in the book that are simply not there, and this business about his connections with charismatics just confuses the whole picture. The absurdities of the criticism of the BOOK are what I mostly address. I think the message of the book holds up, and I wish he didn't have the charismatic affiliations.

Teachings on The Harbinger

I got this in email today and it's good enough to post.  This is Part 1 of a series of teachings on Jonathan Cahn's book, The Harbinger, presented by a very articulate teacher who really gets it and knows how to present it. 

I don't know anything about Greg Sharp, except that he is a pastor at Brandon Bible Tabernacle, about which I also know nothing.  He's a standard evangelical in his concepts, rather than Reformed, and he may have some charismatic leanings, I can't really tell how far at this point, but overall really all I know at this point is that I've listened to Part One of his series and it's very well done.

I might add that he mentions a visit to Las Vegas in my very own state, and certainly I agree with his assessment of "sin city" overall, but please, there are Christians there too, Pastor Sharp! However, I bring this up because he mentioned that on his way out to the airport he passed a billboard that said something like "Lust will send you to Hell," which was the only Christian message he said he encountered on his trip, to which he said a hearty "Amen."

I'm mentioning this because a while back I happened to hear Jan Markell of Understanding the Times radio interviewing Joseph Farah of World Net Daily (Yes I have some problems with WND too but it's hard not to have SOME problems with our brethren these days but anyway).

Farah revealed that he'd recently felt called to put up billboards across the country highlighting the Ten Commandments, which have been removed from our public life over the last few decades, and the organization that he formed for this project started in Las Vegas. First report I've heard of anyone seeing the billboard was from Greg Sharp in this video. Praise the Lord! I hope Farah is able to keep putting them up across the country. And here's Part 2 of Greg Sharp's series on The Harbinger:

An Email about The Harbinger

I haven't discussed the Harbinger in some time, but an email I got about it gives me the opportunity:

I came across your blog and was very refreshed to see your posts on discernment issues. However, I am perplexed on The Harbinger issue. Are you defending that book??? Did you know Cahn is very much a part of the charismatic movement as far as his rubbing shoulders with them? Did you know you Cahn heavily endorses gnostic books such as Zohar and Kabalah?

To which I answered:

Thanks for your comment.  Yes, I am definitely defending the Harbinger, and I'm aware of all the issues you raise about it, having commented on them in various posts.  I've objected to Cahn's friendships among the charismatics but I was once a charismatic myself and I give people time to see the light on that one.  None of Cahn's own teachings carries the charismatic message although some unfairly try to pin that on him. 

As for the Zohar and the Kabbalah, no, that has been totally misunderstood.  He does NOT "endorse" those books at ALL and those who have accused him of it are greatly in the wrong and should apologize to him.  The ONLY way he uses the rabbinical writings is to discover the gospel in them, which he's good at.  The rabbis often understood the scriptures correctly, UNTIL the true Messiah came along, when they changed their tune.  Jonathan Cahn enjoys finding out how they understood the true gospel of the true Christ in spite of themselves.

Not sure why I made the remark about time to see through it, that's not really the point.  The point is that he's not a charismatic. 

Faith, with all do respect, but any "Christian" book that is a best seller, in a world that Jesus said "Hated Him first and will hate us too", smells of smoke. Cahn's affiliations with the charismatic movement ARE serious Faith, its like saying "Well Bill Johnson (a known charismatic) wrote this great book and well it takes time to get out of all that. So even though he's involved with heresy, its ok because people need time to get out."  I am sorry but that is wrong. I came out of the charismatic movement too, and they have serious serious errors, ones that cannot simply be looked at with a passive attitude. His associations with it give people the impression that its OK and its not ok!

 With the whole Hebrew Roots movement growing, and I am not talking Messianic Jew, I am talking about these new cults (like Jim Staley and Michael Rood) and teach we have to go back under the law and so on, and their embrace of the Zohar and Kabalah, and Cahn being quite similar, maybe not out right, but he walks that line, I am sorry but it just doesn't seem right. I guess we all have blind spots I guess I don't know, but you seem discerning and I am just saddened that you can't discern this guy. http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/2012/harbinger-zohar.htm

Just like too, you mentioned Alex Jones, he did a documentary last year on straight evolution. And then when Christians admonished him he came out with a follow up video bashing christians. He highly esteems David Icke, a very very big theosophic new ager, the man is a wolf! My husband, who has just about walked away from God, listens to him so I know all this first hand. 

I pray Faith that you will be shown the serious errors of these things. God bless you and I will pray for you.

I guess I'm going to have to do another post on the Harbinger after all this time.   Cahn does not teach anything charismatic,  ...  , the book has nothing charismatic in it, and Berit Kjos misrepresents his teaching from the Zohar.  I agree about his associations and have written about that but that's not the same thing as BEING a charismatic.  I've also written against the Hebrew Roots movement.  You'd have a point about the popularity of the book but remember that both the Bible and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress are all time bestsellers so your point only goes so far.  Cahn is not a perfect man but overall he's been misrepresented.  

I really don't know much about Alex Jones but liked that one thing I heard.  Since I don't know much about him and have heard many negatives about him I think I'll take that down. 

Please, if you're going to pray for someone, just pray, don't tell me I'm wrong and you'll pray, that's rather insulting.

Thanks,
Faith

This is my preliminary remark on Berit Kjos' mistaken response to Cahn's interest in a phrase from the Zohar:

Isa 29:20-21	...all that watch for iniquity ..:
	That make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate, and turn aside the just for a thing of nought.

All discernment ministries do in a sense "watch for inquity" but in the case of the supposed discerning of Jonathan Cahn they've gone over the line into condemning a brother in Christ who isn't perfect but is not guilty as charged.  He has his own interests that the discerners can't appreciate.

A few remarks on a lawsuit by the publisher of Jonathan Cahn's Harbinger, against the publisher of David James' book, The Harbinger, Fact or Fiction?

UPDATE:
Reluctantly I have to agree with those who emphasize the biblical teaching against suing a brother in Christ, for any reason.  I say this "reluctantly" because I have to suppose that the publishers of The Harbinger took the scripture into account and must have come to their decision after much thought, and having followed all this from the beginning I can see how they might have been driven to such an extreme. 

I began supporting The Harbinger here before any of the criticisms emerged against it and I responded to some of the early ones, notably T A McMahon's and eventually David James', so I'm aware of how it all developed and felt from the beginning that most of it was misguided and terribly unfair, even maddeningly so as so many different accusations were made of the book from different sources.  

Nevertheless I can't agree with the lawsuit even though in my earlier post below I entertained the possibility that I might.  Those ministries like the Berean Call have to be free to say what they will no matter who they offend.  Also, while I could see suing for something like defamation since some of the criticism implied terrible things about Cahn and his ministry that in my opinion are clearly untrue, it doesn't seem right to sue for loss of financial gain from a book that has sold over a million copies already, which is a staggering statistic for any Christian book.

The only way to deal with the criticism is to leave the outcome in God's hands, but also of course try to answer it.  I wish I had it in me to do the thorough kind of critique of David James' book that he did of The Harbinger.  In fact I started to do just that a few months back, got something like twenty pages of notes together for the project and then got derailed.  The criticisms have been answered many times over, by Cahn, by me and by others, but with James' whole book out there against The Harbinger something definitive still seems to be needed.

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Earlier post:

I'd heard rumors of a lawsuit against the book by David James which criticizes The Harbinger in lengthy detail, or its publisher the Berean Call, but have been occupied elsewhere, and to be honest also avoiding the subject for some time although I knew eventually I'd probably have to address it.   The reason for avoiding it is that it would obviously bring up a lot of controversy I'd have to investigate in great detail to do it justice, and I just haven't been up to that sort of research lately. 

But now I've read the article on the subject at the Berean Call, which came out in February, and figure the time has come to begin the process of investigating the issue -- if it's still a live issue, and I don't even know that at this point. 

But I want to say just one thing about the article at the Berean Call: Overall I'd say the BC article creates a false impression by referring to so many other issues they've addressed in their ministry over the years, lumping the Harbinger with them by implication, and this is how McMahon criticized the book originally too, mostly by innuendo, which I objected to in my blog when his review came out about a year ago now.  In this current article he goes on and on with general statements about the importance of a truly biblical perspective which implies that this is lacking in Cahn's book and its supporters.  Purely by innuendo he justifies his own critique of the book without saying anything direct about it.  He did the same thing in his Foreword to James' book, making all kinds of general statements about current problems with biblical discernment among Christians without making ONE statement directly about The Harbinger itself.

The article says very little about the lawsuit itself except that it's the first time they've ever been sued by anyone they've criticized. Of course it might be possible to draw the conclusion that this is the first time they've been WRONG in their criticism, and I might come to that conclusion myself.

In my post about McMahon's original review I argued that his objections were unfounded, and eventually I came to the conclusion that what he and David James were calling unbiblical in the book was not unbiblical at all but merely a reflection of their own dispensationalist theology, and I believe that much of that theology can itself be shown to be unbiblical. 

The article,  The Demise of Biblical Discernment addresses the lawsuit in two paragraphs:

The latest issue, which we submit to you for prayer support, is a threatened lawsuit over the book we published by David James ( The Harbinger: Fact or Fiction? ). The complaint is that the author used too many quotes from the New York Times best-selling book, The Harbinger, without permission from author “rabbi” Jonathan Cahn and publisher Charisma Media Publications (CMP). The complaint further states that our use of the quotes has inhibited the sales of The Harbinger and has thus financially damaged Cahn and CMP in an amount yet to be determined. In effect, we are being told that we must limit our documentation in warning the body of Christ of the biblical errors in The Harbinger. In other words, we cannot be Bereans or like the watchman of Ezekiel:3:17-19
 without Cahn’s permission.

This is the first time in my 35 years of working with Dave Hunt and our addressing nearly every major religion, religious cult, aberrational Christian sect, unbiblical trend, religious publication, book, media production, etc., that any organization or individual has even hinted at suing us. Now, however, we are being threatened with legal action by those claiming to be in the church. More critical than the unbiblical action of a brother threatening to take another brother to court (1 Corinthians 6) is the issue of preventing the biblical evaluation of a work that is influencing hundreds of thousands of professing and confessing Christians, as well as those who don’t profess to know Christ. We have hired a copyright attorney to address the legal issues and have responded to the attorney for Cahn and CMP. Even so, we covet your prayers that the Lord will be glorified throughout the process.

Again, I don't yet know enough about the lawsuit to have an opinion about it, but my impression from the above is that it focuses on the legal limit to how much material can be quoted in a review without permission. James quoted a great deal of the Harbinger in his criticism so that he may well have violated that limit.

While I might agree that biblically it's wrong for brother to sue brother in the church, my judgment on this subject has always been for the Harbinger and against most of its critics, and specifically because of what I consider to be UNBIBLICAL criteria, particularly in the criticism from the dispensationalist camp, such as by McMahon and James, so I might in the end side with the lawsuit in this particular case.

But at this point I don't know enough to have an opinion one way or the other.

Are we ready?

It's been in the works for some time of course, this attack on the Second Amendment.  They may not have engineered the shooting itself although I wouldn't put it past them to find a way to pull it off.  They can probably count on somebody hearing from Satan and doing that without much effort on their own part.  Maybe.  Although the timing was interesting. 

And they've got lots and lots of people thinking this is a great idea to take guns away from the good guys because a drug-crazed person used a gun, of all the idiotic illogical things but that's the way these people think these days.  Feverishly up in arms even, if you'll pardon the pun, indignant as all hell itself against our right to keep and bear arms.  Poor deluded people.  And you can't say anything to them at all that they'll hear.

Nothing moves them, they can rationalize it all away.  It doesn't matter to them that crime goes up when guns are taken away, because rampant crime against law-abiding citizens is somehow supposed to be tolerable by comparison with the rare gun rampage enacted by the NON law-abiding.  We're supposed to be nice to criminals who break into our houses, not good to defend ourselves against the poor things.  Crime is called innocent, and the victim is called criminal.  Sign of the times. 

Point out what happened in World War II when guns were confiscated and Hitler was able to move in freely wherever he wanted, and they'll find some reason why Hitler didn't really care that there were guns pointing at his soldiers from every household which supposedly blows your concern to smithereens.  Point out that Americans sent guns to the Brits because they were unarmed against a possible Nazi invasion and that too gets ridiculed.  Some idea that guns can't really ward off a whole army, what a stupid idea they have about how it would all go down.  Soldiers going door to door would be seriously inconvenienced by heads of household with guns.  So without guns we can now be sure they WILL go door to door because they know they can do it.  Out at the point of a bayonet, into the back of the truck, whatever.  Or just shot dead on the spot.  Or beheaded.

I guess they have some crazy idea another Hitler isn't going to rise up in this best of all possible worlds or something like that.  It's just us Christians who are expecting that, and just around the corner too.  Soon as they take our guns.  Oh and after we've finally fallen off this fiscal cliff which has to happen eventually, so we're gunless and starving both, easy targets.  Or maybe they'll get a nice hot war going in the Middle East to destroy Israel first.  Or all three at once.  Yeah, all three.  Wonder if the deluded ones will have second thoughts then or they won't care because it will be mostly the Christians and the Jews who are targeted.  At first anyway.

The Second Amendment, indeed the Constitution itself, is "antiquated" to these twisted minds.  Let's do away with it altogether, just as we've done away with God, just as we've done away with God's laws, just as we now commit murder of the unborn and call it a right and have bestowed righteous status on just about everything else God calls unrighteous. 

This time it's the whole world under God's judgment at once though, not just America.  Certainly America is under judgment, we've been seeing that for some time now.  God even gave us Jonathan Cahn's book to make it certain in case we missed it, as unfortunately many Christians did when the WTC was attacked.  And are still missing it.  There are Christians who actually think that Cahn got it wrong about the harbingers being from God, and I particularly think of their waving away the public speeches by Daschle and Edwards and other government leaders that quoted Isaiah 9:10 as not really statements of defiance of God at all, so spiritually obtuse are some of our Christians these days.  Judgment begins at the house of God. 

So although Cahn's book goes on selling pretty well it isn't going to be the call to repentance it might have been.  We seem to be well past that possibility.  Seems now that it's just going to stand as a testimony against us, God's way of saying He did all He could to tell us what's coming and we ignored it and now it's on our head.   That's what He did through His prophets to Israel time and time again.  He's been merciful and longsuffering enough even to do it for us now and we're not hearing.  We're going down.  The sins of America are well ripe for the harvest.  Some pastors have begun prepping their congregations for possible martyrdom, which is what they should be doing. 

But the biggest catastrophe is probably going to be Europe again.  Keep your eyes on the European Union.  Something evil this way comes.

It's all in place for the finale.  All it needs is a trigger.  And then it will probably happen very fast.  When?  Tomorrow?  In a few months?  A few years?  Soon. 

I have unsaved family.  That probably bothers me more than anything else.  I don't mind dying.   Well, I must admit I'm afraid of pain, and I'm IN quite a bit of pain with arthritis these days so I know what I'm afraid of there, so I'd rather be killed quickly of course.   But it's God's call and He will sustain me through whatever He decrees.  Will he save any of them?  Am I not praying enough for them? 

"Those who know their God will do exploits" the angel told Daniel.  It would be nice to do some exploits on behalf of the Lord when all this comes down.  May God give us the necessary provision of faith for the task.

I will certainly not miss this world in which evil and good are changing places more and more every day and the vast majority of people are happy with it. 

Dispensationalists are true Christians but misled by Rome

I am aware that major players on both sides of this Harbinger dispute are Dispensationalists, and very likely Jonathan Cahn as well. 

It's one of the areas of disagreement between me and others even on my side of this issue, such as Jan Markell's ministry, and I've posted on some topics where it is a problem I have to mention, but it never is such a problem as it is with David James and the other critics of The Harbinger.  I don't know how to account for this, I can only figure there are some Dispensationalists who are theologically more rigid than others, but I'm now completely convinced that it's the critics' Dispensationalism that is the root of their attack.  

And I should say that I do not regard this as an issue to divide Christians.  Angry though I can be to see how Dispensationalist tenets are being used against The Harbinger, it's not the PEOPLE that are the problem.  I'm not dividing from Christians on this, I consider them all to be brothers and sisters in Christ and good Christians  -- merely in thrall to a truly bad theological and hermeneutical system.  

The first thing they accused The Harbinger of was Replacement Theology.  David James realizes that's not the case but he still applies his Dispensationalist assumptions to the point of claiming that Cahn has put America in the place of Israel in some sense.  This to my mind is utterly absurd and not borne out in the book, although if it were it wouldn't necessarily be an offense to my Reformed views anyway.  It's simply false, absurd.  But David James is a nice guy and a good Christian man from all I can tell, perhaps simply too good an exponent of the Dispensationalist system of hermeneutics and theology.  This is NOT personal.

I don't believe there is such a thing as Replacement Theology, that's a Dispensationalist misrepresentation of the Reformed position.  (I gather the Reformed position is called Covenant Theology but I'm not up enough on all these different categories to know quite what that means yet so I'm simply referring to the whole theological divide as Reformed versus Dispensational.)  

The very term "Replacement Theology" makes one a Dispensationalist because their main tenet is that Israel and the Church are to be regarded as separate entities, so that the Reformed's seeing the promises as all fulfilled in the Church rather than in Israel is to their mind a "replacement" of Israel by the Church.  The Reformed side believe that the Church always WAS Israel from the beginning and is the fulfillment of all the promises, there is no replacement because there never were two separate entities, and the Old Testament is entirely a preparation for the coming of the Messiah Jesus in whom all the promises are fulfilled. 

However, I'm not Reformed ENOUGH according to some of the Reformed I know, who believe that the state of Israel has NO biblical justification whatever.  Pastor Borgman's studies on these things that I recently posted are very very good, but I still end up thinking there HAS to be SOME purpose for the state of Israel in the end times, and it helps to my mind that the Protestant Reformers also had this point of view.  You never know where I'll end up if I keep studying all this but this is where I am now and where I've been for some time. 

I've been particularly influenced by Chris Pinto who gave the information that the Reformers believed there is still to be a role for national Israel, also that the Dispensationalist system of theology is part of the Roman Church's Counter-Reformation as formulated by their Jesuit attack dogs.  Also Arminianism.  They've certainly succeeded in their aim to get the onus off the Vatican as the seat of the Antichrist which was the Reformed position and in fact the position of true Christians back 1500 years or so, also succeeded in undermining formerly solid Protestant theology.  The Futurism of the Dispensationalist camp is a major coup as now everybody is looking for some personality to be the Antichrist who has nothing to do with the Roman Church, though it was the papacy itself, pope after pope after pope, who were recognized as THE Antichrist until all these new theories took over.  Interestingly, Preterism also has the same effect of taking the heat off Rome and is also a new invention by Jesuits.  If they don't get you one way they'll get you the other and the Church falls for it.

Lord willing, and if He tarries, and I live long enough, I want to pursue all these connections, learn more, and be part of the Counter-CounterReformation.

Are the Harbingers merely meaningless Coincidences?

Near the beginning of his book critiquing The Harbinger, David James has a short section on Coincidences, intending to suggest that even the most uncanny coincidences aren't to be taken seriously, of course implying that's also true of the harbingers of judgment, that they are merely the same sort of meaningless coincidences.

He gives two main examples of extremely uncanny coincidences.  The first was the uncanny correspondences between the Presidencies of Lincoln and Kennedy exactly a hundred years apart, including the names of their Vice Presidents, secretaries and details about their assassinations. 

The other was a novel written fourteen years before the Titanic disaster, which describes an almost identical sinking of an almost identical ship and it was called The Wreck of the Titan. 

There is no doubt that those are two examples of extremely uncanny coincidences that are clearly without any useful import.  All you can do is say "Wow, that's amazing" but also "What's the point?"

But the problem in comparing this kind of coincidence with the harbingers, which so uncannily correspond with a verse in the Old Testament, is that these are not meaningless useless coincidences but highly charged with meaning that carries the weight of the Bible and God's warnings of judgment on a nation and even without them the Bible verse clearly describes America after 9/11.  We're clearly being given a warning and the harbingers set it in stone as it were.

The Gazit Stone According to David James

I've already answered this subject in general, the bricks and stones, the sycamore and the conifer.  The objection that for the harbingers in America to BE harbingers they must be more similar than they are to the originals in Isaiah doesn't hold water.  You can't expect as much similarity as is being demanded between cultures and times and climates as far apart as ancient Israel and modern New York City. 

There must be very clear similarities, of course, so that the connection between the contemporary circumstances and the passage of scripture is inescapable, but it is equivalence as defined by the different circumstances that makes for the necessary similarity, and as I argue in a recent post, the harbingers that occurred in America are really perfect in that respect as they are the best 21st Century American equivalent in each case of the event in ancient Israel. 

But James objects to the hewn stone or Gazit Stone on another ground as well. 

He starts with the usual ridiculous requirement that the new skyscraper must be BUILT WITH hewn stones, that the single twenty-ton quarried cornerstone

has the feeling of yet another stretch in the author's attempt to demonstrate a parallel that simply doesn't exist.  In Isaiah's prophecy, it is clear that in place of clay bricks being the primary buiding material, hewn stone would be used.  However, the new Freedom Tower was never to be build with stone any more than the original structures were built with bricks [p. 95].

This is New York City 2001, Mr. James, you aren't going to build skyscrapers with clay bricks or hewn stones.  Does the lack of a correspondence between their methods and ours mean God can't talk to us at all through Isaiah 9:10?  Funny, the attitude expressed in that verse so perfectly describes America's after 9/11 it seems a shame to tell us that we can't heed its so specific description and warning of judgment because skyscrapers aren't built with bricks and stones.

And then too, it is already amazing that the WTC rubble was described as looking like a pile of bricks and that a quarried stone was brought in to be the start of the rebuilding, actually part of the new structure.  Both those facts tie 9/11 to Isaiah 9:10 quite well really, and the wonderful cultural equivalcnce between the trees and the even more wonderful fact of the speeches quoting that verse really seal the deal.

But he even goes on to suggest that the fact that the cornerstone didn't get used after all somehow makes it even less of a harbinger.  Kind of totally misses the point, I'd say, as the mere fact that it was intended for the purpose and dedicated for the purpose -- with a speech said over it and all -- makes it even more of a harbinger than if it had been used, because it shows that God wanted it to be in the picture here, wanted us to notice it, record it. 

And Isaiah 9:10 is not about actually rebulding, it's about the INTENTION to rebuild, that's the attitude of defiance itself right there.  Even if nothing is built at all this defiant intention to do so is the whole point, it's what the harbingers point us back to.  That's the function of the harbingers, to show us our own defiance just as it is described in that verse, and show it to us in an unforgettable way.  

That verse would describe America's attitude even if there were nothing that could have been called a pile of bricks or a hewn stone nor any trees involved at all in the destruction of the WTC, but the fact that there were, and such literal equivalences too, really ought to show God's hand in making this connection to even the most skeptical.  The parallel is there without all the signs and harbingers, but with them it ought to be a really LOUD wake-up call even to the hard-of-hearing.

However, I'll agree with James that Cahn's explanation that the removal of the cornerstone was part of the judgment isn't a very effective answer.  I've given my own which I think is better:  the mere bringing in of the stone is the necessary equivalence with Isaiah 9:10, as it expresses the intention to rebuild as described in the verse, and it's something only God could have done.

Then James goes on to object to Cahn's way of dramatizing the hewn stone as The Gazit Stone with capitals, which he says would lead the average reader to

assume that a "Gazit Stone" was a specially named ceremonial stone that was laid when Israel embarked on a building project [p. 96].

I agree that this way of describing it assigns a special quality to it but I don't see that it does so for Israel, although it does for America, where since it is one gigantic quarried stone it seems to deserve the special designation.  This is just Cahn's love of dramatization taking over here, and I don't see it as a problem myself. 

James says, 

...[A]ncient Israel did not lay a 'Gazit Stone.'  They built or rebuilt with gazit -- it was simply the building material.

True, but nothing he quoted from The Harbinger suggests that Israel used this specially designated stone, only America, and in America where it was a single gigantic symbolic stone it seems appropriate enough to me to give it that special ceremonial title. 

It is simply not a harbinger

says James.

Why, because Cahn gave it a noble title befitting its noble role?  It's a quarried stone.  The parallel with the quarried stones of Isaiah 9:10 sure occurs to some of us, if not David James, and that's what makes it a harbinger.  For some of us at least.  If you spend all your time making the visible invisible and the material nonexistent I guess you'll have to do without the signs from God.

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.

Chris Pinto's show on The Harbinger back in January was right on

I discovered The Harbinger originally through Chris Pinto's program on January 5th of this year, and just decided I needed to hear it again after all the attacks on the book since then.

As usual I find that Pinto's perspective is spiritually more trustworthy than most, biblical and true.  What is wrong with the critics who miss it and miss it and miss it?  Pinto hadn't read the book at that time but just from some ads and reviews he correctly assesses Cahn's message.

CORRECTLY. 

The critics have missed it completely but Pinto GETS IT.  I'm glad I heard it again. 

He criticizes the "conspiracy crew" who think that by exposing the New World Order adherents they can change things.   No, he says, but Cahn has exposed what is needed:  repentance for our sins.  Nothing else is going to change America.  He also gets into the influence of ecumenism and Billy Graham as a wolf in sheep's clothing bringing the nation under judgment.

I had only one objection.  He reads the line about how God's hand "is stretched out still" to be stretched out in invitation to us to come to Him, though in context it is simply a way of emphasizing what has already been shown, that since there is no repentance His hand is still stretched out IN JUDGMENT.  The message about God's invitation to us is nevertheless probably true enough, it's just not what that particular line means.

How the deck is stacked against The Harbinger --updated

Just a little sketch off the top of my head of impressions I'm getting from my first read-through of David James' book, The Harbinger, Fact or Fiction?\

[Later: I've carefully read the first half of the book and taken many notes; the last half I've barely skimmed through, so I have to apologize for giving a wrong impression about having read the book through. To respond to this book would take a book in itself. Since I am fascinated with all this, not to mention indignant against what I see as unfair treatment of Jonathan Cahn, I may end up with the equivalent of a book.

So far, through the first half of the book, I find only a few things to make any kind of concession on:

If James is right about the Assyrians, Cahn is seriously in the wrong in connecting them with today's terrorists as he does. James makes a compelling case, that today's Assyrians are Christians, not Muslims. But Jonathan Cahn may be able to answer him from his own research, I don't know. I can't answer it myself so I have to leave it as an error in the book.

Also, I agree with James that it would have been better if Cahn had left out the reference to the Septuagint's rendering of Isaiah 9:10. Apparently he was wowed by the mention of a "tower" there, which adds a neat little confirmation to his theme, although none of today's translations from the Hebrew scriptures mentions a tower. And yes, the whole translation is different. Of course Cahn would not have referred to the whole verse if only because the harbingers all reflect today's translations. This seems to be a case where Cahn let himself be carried away by his love of drama and finding connections.

A third point is not quite as black and white. This is Cahn's attempt to explain the removal of the gigantic quarried stone that had been brought in to be the cornerstone of the planned Freedom Tower: Cahn explains it as the frustration of America's plan in parallel with the frustration of Israel's plan to rebuild, being a second expression of God's judgment, the first being the initial destruction and the intent to rebuild with hewn stone. To my mind this all depends on whether or not this frustration of plans can be demonstrated in Israel's case from the scripture. If it can then I'd probably accept the parallel in America. But my own way of thinking about the removal of the stone is that such a stone simply isn't needed in the modern context of steel skyscraper construction, BUT that the very fact that a hewn stone was brought in AT ALL demonstrates God's hand in showing the parallel between America's attitude of defiance and Israel's as described in Isaiah 9:10.

These things are not failures of biblical hermeneutics or any kind of doctrinal failure at all, they are merely errors of historical research or excessive zeal in making connections, which seems to be Cahn's particular gift, a gift that can get out of hand.

I do believe that the rest of James' objections as he lays them out in the first half of his book can be answered.]

The rest of this post is a brief overview of the MAIN problem with ALL the critics' attacks on the Harbinger: Their strict and exclusivistic adherence to a rigid version of Dispensational Theology:

=============================================
Discernment ministries usually work to identify serious failures of Christian doctrine, such as a denial of the Deity of Christ, which is the essential problem with denial of the Trinity; or advocacy of extrabiblical revelation (anything that is taken as authoritative outside the Bible, such as the traditions of Catholicism or the Book of Mormon), prophecies that contradict scripture, imputation of works of the flesh or the devil to the Holy Spirit and vice versa.

So it's rather strange to see these ministries going after Jonathan Cahn's Harbinger with such zeal, considering that they can't identify any such violations of the orthodox faith without indulging in tortuous reasoning (which I know I'll have to demonstrate when I can get to it).

What these particular discerners find against the book is predominantly a failure to adhere to their own strict version of dispensationalist theology.

Some of the ways the critics treat Cahn remind me of a kafkaesque nightmare in which nothing makes sense, you are found guilty of violating bizarre laws you never heard of before, and anything you say on your own behalf is used against you.

Cahn denies that he considers himself a prophet. But other people refer to him as a prophet and he doesn't correct them. He considers the message of the Harbinger to be prophetic, therefore what does that make him but a prophet? MY ANSWER: I think he's denying that he's a prophet in the biblical sense, since he claims no spiritual impartation from God, but doesn't object to a more casual use of the term since after all he is the one who discovered the harbingers which establish the prophetic message.

Cahn denies any sort of belief in replacement theology, by which national Israel is replaced, in this case by America. But the book gives the definite impression that America has replaced Israel. MY ANSWER: It would only give such an impression to a zealous dispensationalist who will not allow that the Old Testament could EVER apply to ANYTHING other than Israel.

Cahn denies that he finds America in Isaiah 9:10. But the book gives the definite impression that there is such a connection between America and Isaiah 9:10. MY ANSWER: All Cahn is denying is that somehow America is implicit in the verse, not that there is a connection between the verse and America. The connection does not exist in the verse itself but occurred in America, where the same spirit of Isaiah 9:10 has been expressed in many different ways, including by those uncanny harbingers.

Cahn denies that he believes that America is in covenant with God the same way Israel was, but the book gives the definite impression that such a covenant does exist. MY ANSWER: Seeing that America has been in a special relationship with God because of our godly Puritan and Pilgrim forefathers, a relationship that was even regarded as a covenant by some of them, is NOT the same thing as claiming identity with Israel, whose covenant was initiated BY God.

Cahn should have written a different book, and a major way it should have been different is that it should have dealt with end times themes, the rapture, the restoration of Israel, the return of Christ, the final judgment. These are all dispensationalist preoccupations at the present time, which apparently absolutely preclude a book that's only about America. MY ANSWER: Cahn's book is about AMERICA.

The book James thinks Cahn SHOULD have written is a book that a deep-dyed dispensationalist would have written. In fact James suggests an interesting plot for a novel that he himself should write.

It's just not the book Cahn wrote or wanted to write. The book Cahn wrote is about America, it is not about the end times, it is not about Israel etc. etc. etc.

The dispensationalist presupposition won't let him write such a book, it must be a different book, it must be about Israel and the Antichrist and the coming new world order, it simply cannot be about America because that doesn't fit with dispensationalist expectations.

The Harbinger Critics: The Dispensationalist Connection Part 3

David James in a comment to my first post below on dispensationalism in relation to The Harbinger says there is no such thing as a dispensationalist hermeneutic. I posted there the link to this article by Thomas Ice, which I will quote here:

Dispensational Hermeneutics
By Thomas Ice.

" Consistently literal or plain interpretation is indicative of a dispensational approach to the interpretation of the Scriptures," declared Charles Ryrie in 1965. " And it is this very consistency- the strength of dispensational interpretation- that irks the nondispensationalist and becomes the object of his ridicule." [1] " Consistently literal interpretation" was listed by Ryrie as the second most important sine qua non of dispensationalism, which forms the foundation for the most important essential, "the distinction between Israel and the Church."[2] Earl Radmacher, in 1979, went so far as to say that literal interpretation "is the 'bottom-line' of dispensationalism."[3] While the ridicule of nondispensationalists has continued, there also appear to be signs of hermeneutical equivocation within the ranks of dispensationalism.

Dispensational hermeneutics, as opposed to, say, Reformed hermeneutics or Covenant Theology hermeneutics, includes major major emphasis on Israel as opposed to the Church, as the main or even exclusive object of all the Old Testament prophecies and promises. Ice discusses variations on this, but it remains true that the distinction between Israel and the Church is "the most important essential."

There is also a very interesting discussion online by John MacArthur on the subject of dispensationalism, which I hope to get to. I've been told I'm a Progressive Dispensationalist because I do at least believe that Israel has a role to play in the last days, and that seems to be more or less MacArthur's position.

So eventually I'll be back with that.

The Harbinger Critics: The Dispensationalist Connection Part 2

As David James takes care to recognize throughout his book and especially in his last chapter, Final Thoughts, in general both supporters and critics of The Harbinger share a conservative Christian mindset or worldview, generally agree on all the main discernment issues involving cultic and apostate movements, and agree on the sins besetting America that deserve God's judgment, and I'd add that, for the most part, we also agree that we are in the last days.

As James puts it:

Whatever else may be problematic concerning the rest of the book he [Cahn] is absolutely correct in his assessment that America is in serious spiritual trouble.[THFOF p.102]

He also acknowledges that Cahn has emphasized the fact that God's judgment on a nation is of far less importance than the spiritual condition of individuals, for whom the consequences are eternal.

So far so good.

He then goes on to object that, nevertheless, these ends don't justify the means.

And the first of these "means" that James condemns is, of course, Cahn's supposedly faulty hermeneutic:

Cahn has departed from a literal, grammatical historical hermeneutic, in favor of looking for hidden mysteries while engaging in allegorical interpretation and untenable speculation. In short, he has mishandled the Word of God.[THFOF p. 202]

This is, of course, what is going to have to be disputed by anyone who wants to answer David James, and, Lord willing, that's what I intend to try to do.

The fact is that the "literal, grammatical historical hermeneutic" that James has in mind is not EVERYBODY's "literal, grammatical historical hermeneutic" but only the particular hermeneutic of the dispensationalists, although James in his adherence to that theological school is not willing to acknowledge the existence of other schools. Understandably, perhaps, but it has made for quite a bit of unnecessary confusion, for me for one, in dealing with their attacks on the book.

The dispensationalists in dealing with The Harbinger have uniformly presented their own theology as THE only biblical theology, as in this following statement from James:

Although praise of The Harbinger has come from across an extremely broad theological spectrum, the comparatively little criticism the book has rewcweived has been from a relatively small group who share a clear set of mutually held biblical and theological commitments. [THFOF p. 204]

And these shared commitments are in fact the tenets of dispensationalism, though he'd apparently rather give the impression that the shared views are the only or the only right "biblical and theological commitments."

Among those who have serious concerns about The Harbinger and Cahn's views, the common ground they share is not their opposition to the book, but rather a firm commitment to a biblical hermeneutic, as well as the theology and view of the prophetic Scriptures that flow from that. [THFOF p. 204]

In other words, this biblical hermeneutic is THE biblical hermeneutic and there is no other.

He does then go on to acknowledge that many of the book's supporters share the same hermeneutic and theology, although he's almost acknowledged what I have come to think IS the main reason for the division between the book's supporters and its critics, which is the dispensationalism of the critics despite the fact that there are also supporters who share their dispensationalism.

This does require me to account for why dispensationalists themselves also divide on this book. My first, provisional, explanation is that the book's supporters are not adhering rigidly to a formal dispensationalist theology or hermeneutic as the critics are, but rather reading the book in a much more natural way, which would keep them from falling into the utter absurdity of accusing the book of anything remotely along the lines of Replacement Theology for instance. A second, provisional, answer is that the supporters' dispensationalism is of a less extreme kind to begin with. I don't know if this is true and probably can't prove it one way or the other.

David James asks the question what accounts for the differences even among the dispensationalists --or again, as he so tendentiously puts it, among those who have "a firm commitment to a biblical hermeneutic" -- but his answer seems to be the usual dispensationalist assumptions versus those who to his mind DON'T have "a firm commitment to a biblical hermeneutic:"

Those who have opposed The Harbinger tend to uniformly do so on the basis of a number of factors. One major concern is that The Harbinger gives the distinct (and wrong) impression that America has been elevated to a status in God's program that has been reserved for Israel alone. [THFOF pp. 204]

This is pure dispensationalism, which is so rigidly committed to viewing the Old Testament as exclusively to "Israel alone" that even arriving at an application of Old Testament principles to one's own life is brought under suspicion, let alone a nation or anything in the contemporary world, which is treated as a flat-out unquestionable unmitigated failure of proper biblical interpretation. You'd think this method of interpretation was somehow decreed by God Himself the way they talk about it. And he goes on in the same vein:

This impression is deepened, at least in part, due to what is seen as a problem with the hermeneuticl principles used to interpret Isaiah 9:10 (and the Old Testament in general). This has led to further concerns about how passages that were given specifically to Israel have been applied to New testament believers, as well as to the United States, which is a Gentile nation. Ultimately this has resulted in differences between the two sides over the correlation and application of Isaiah 9:10 and other passages to recent events going back to September 2001 and even back to the founding of America. The Harbinger supporters do not seem to share these concerns. [THFOF pp. 205]

That is absolutely correct, we do NOT share those concerns. Those concerns are strictly an artifact of the wrong hermenetic of dispensationalism. The wrong hermeneutic is theirs, not Jonathan Cahn's, even if he thinks himself a dispensationalist, and I don't know how far he goes in that direction.

Dispensationalism is not only simply ONE school of biblical interpretation, it is regarded by some Christians of other theological persuasions as HERESY. At least at certain extremes there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is definitely heresy. Two dispensationalist teachers who are connected with and promoted by Brannon Howse, who has been a major promoter of the criticisms of The Harbinger, do go that far into heretical versions of dispensationalism, Jimmy DeYoung and John Whitcomb, and I've brought up their heretical views on this blog before.

Clearly there is much more that needs to be said about dispensationalism in connection with The Harbinger, which will probably be the subject of posts yet to come as I continue to address David James' critique. I would suggest that if you abandon at least the most extreme dispensationalism, half of the objections to The Harbinger would just go up in smoke. At least half.

More to come.

The Harbinger Critics: The Dispensationalist Connection

Just had a theological/hermeneutical ton of bricks land on my head. As it were.

I've noted before that dispensationalism has been guiding some of the criticism of The Harbinger, but I managed to forget that and focus on the separate arguments. While taking note of its influence to some extent I was hoping to avoid getting into such a thicket of theological controversies.

Now it's hitting me that it is this system of theology, or system of hermeneutics, that is THE basis of the attack on The Harbinger. This came as a depressing realization as I've been grappling with David James' book. Unfortunately it looks like I'm going to have to get into it to some extent, and even a small extent is already far beyond where I wanted to go with such questions.

Why is it there is such a divide among conservative Christians on The Harbinger? James asks that question and I found myself coming to the conclusion that it's somehow because the critics all share a theology, a theology that I don't share and that apparently the average reader doesn't share either. But I wasn't yet understanding just WHAT theology that is.

James, who is very saddened by the disagreements on this book among conservative Christians, also attributes it to theological differences, in his last chapter, but he doesn't name the theologies in question.

It took a while for it to sink in. Ah yes. Dallas Theological Seminary. Ah yes, look at who the critics are. James, DeYoung, Howse, McMahon, Thomas Ice, Roy Zuck.

Dispensationalists. Of course. Why did "Replacement Theology" ever come up at all, and why is it still an issue in some form or other? All that stuff I keep wanting to call stupid and so on, that keeps missing the point of The Harbinger, is dispensationalism.

THAT's the cause of the huge divide. Even though many of the book's defenders are also dispensationalists to one degree or another.

And I'm going to have to deal with all this, like it or not. I've collected some links. My work is cut out for me.

More later.

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.

Glenn Beck's Ecumenical Travesty and the true Christian founding of early America

I wish Chris Pinto would write a book or somebody would write one using his material. We need his correctives to American history to sort out what was Christian in our history and what was not, and the historical perspectives he's dug up that show the REAL dimensions of the Antichrist Church of Rome. Pinto not a historian, as he's made clear, but a documentarian who accumulates his historical facts in the service of his films. We are starved for historical truth, thanks to such deceitful "histories" as David Barton has fed us over the last few decades, so historian or not Pinto's work is much needed.

Today's radio show, Restoring Love or Blind Delusion? is about Glenn Beck's latest attempt to blur the lines between Christianity and Mormonism and all other religions, his "Restoring Love" rally. Early colonial Governor John Winthrop was apparently made an excuse for Beck's ecumenical travesty, as the love he wrote of in his Model of Christian Charity is misused by Beck to foster acceptance of all religious beliefs as equal, whereas of course as a true Christian Winthrop would never have treated anything but the Biblical gospel as the true Christian faith, certainly not the false religion of Mormonism -- or Catholicism, or Islam etc. etc. etc. Pinto shows the antichrist nature of Beck's selective quoting of Winthrop.

Since I've been defending The Harbinger recently, I noticed that the Winthrop article has implications for this purpose. The book is often criticized for claiming that America is in covenant with God, or for supposedly equating the American covenant with God's covenant with ancient Israel.* Well, here is John Winthrop's affirmation that he did indeed believe "we are entered into covenant with" God and he does base it on God's covenant with Israel and the Mosaic law. Here is the last part of Winthrop's A Model of Christian Charity which refers to this covenant:

Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these and those accounts, upon these and those ends. We have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, and be revenged of such a people, and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.

Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "may the Lord make it like that of New England." For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God's sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.

And to shut this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deut. 30. "Beloved, there is now set before us life and death, good and evil," in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with Him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.

Tomorrow's show, more revelations of the true nature of America's founders, who were far from the spirit of the Christian colonial leaders of 150 years earlier: Jefferson was a racist and intentionally excluded blacks from the phrase "all men are created equal."

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*The Harbinger doesn't say that America is "in covenant" with God though there is definitely a special relationship with God implied. But since the critics keep accusing Cahn of making some kind of equation between America and ancient Israel's covenant with God, it seems to me, based on the Winthrop statement in preparation to found a colony in America, that if Cahn had actually made such an equation he wouldn't have been wrong, so the critics' complaints don't hold either way.