You Can't Make America Great by Defying God's Law

Again I'm melancholy about the prospect of any enduring good to America to come through Trump's election.  It's hugely good of course that we're free temporarily at least from a Marxist Leftist President.  Like most Trump supporters I have been experiencing much relief that he won and his sane policies are being brought into effect. 

But I have to face the fact that the obstruction being raised against his every move isn't just human evil, although it is that in any case, it must also and more importantly be understood as God's continuing judgment on the nation.  It's not so much that the opposition is winning - yet, anyway -- it's hard to tell at this point since Trump seems to be continuing to do positive things for the country, fulfilling his campaign promises, maintaining the vision that earned him the election.  But the persistence of the Leftist Islamist satanically inspired obstruction to his every move, and the continuing lies and smears in the media and the continuing baseless accusations by his opponents don't look like they are going to let up.  Though Trump's win is surely God's blessing on the nation up to a point, this constant attempt to undermine it suggests the blessing is shaky.

I think it all reflects the continuing rottenness at the core of American life that God has been judging for some time.  In my previous post I focused on the rottenness of ecumenism, religious syncretism and the presence of idolatrous religions in the ceremonies of the inauguration.  But now I'm thinking of the nation's accumulated sins.  As I've pondered Trump's policies I see that what he is doing is aimed at restoring God's blessings the nation enjoyed in years past.  But the problem is those blessings were originally built on the nation's righteousness. 

Trump's policies are all about healthy sane ways of running a government, building economic prosperity, relieving economic  burdens on the average citizen and on businesses, to increase employment, protecting the nation against various threats and so on.  This is in fact a partial list of God's blessings on a righteous nation as spelled out in the Bible, so we should probably understand Trump's policies as a humanly inspired effort aimed at undoing God's judgments which we've been laboring under for so many years.  That may seem like a good thing, seem like it must mean God is smiling on us again, but I'm not sure of that, since nothing Trump is doing changes the unrighteousness that is the reason we've been under judgment, and if that doesn't change the blessings can't possibly last long.

Righteousness exalts a nation, says the scripture.  Unrighteousness can only bring us down, and unfortunately what is today mistaken for righteousness is the exact opposite of the truth.  Good for evil and evil for good [Isaiah 7:20] reigns in our political life, seen for instance in the aggressive defense of gay marriage as a Constitutional right and the vilification of anyone who opposes it as un-American and "bigoted" and so on.

"You can't Make America Great Again by Defying God."  I found that quote somewhere on the internet a while back but can't find the source now.  I had also noted this discussion of the probable failure of Trump's policies because he described the Supreme Court gay marriage opinion as "settled law," which they say could undermine his attempts to stop illegal immigration.  It isn't directly addressing the point I'm making here, but it focuses on issues I agree need to be resolved if Trump's policies could really be a blessing to the country. 

Then yesterday I was rereading the book about Islam, Philistine (1995) in which the author, Ramon Bennett, describes some of the cultural reasons America and the West in general are regarded by Muslims as "The Great Satan."  Americans sometimes impute ridiculously psycho-social causes to Muslim hatred of us, poverty and lack of opportunity and so on, or their outrage at American military aggression, and other reasons that are only marginally relevant at best.  But there are genuine other reasons for their hatred of us, such as our huge public immorality which is being spread across the world and corrupting their societies as well as our own.

From page 61 of the book:

The United States has no moral law, although some might say it has.  God has been thrown out onto the trash heap.  Only lip service is paid to America's Christian roots by government officials;  even less by educators, and corruption is rife throughout the judicial system.  The moral has been exchanged for the immoral.

The United States pornographic industry is the biggest in the world, eaering billions of dollars annually ...

American television overflows with vulgarity, profanity, nudity, violence and murder. ... And few, indeed, are the movies that adults or youngsters can comfortably view without their minds being contaminated by sewerage packaged as "family entertainment."

The American population is ... deceived by Satan... This great nation was founded and built upon the Bible but has since gone a-whoring after other gods [which] manifests itself largely in sex for profit.

America, believing the answer to the ills of the Middle East to be simply a matter of Westernization, increases its aggressive marketing thrust into the Moslem states through the media, adding fuel to the already smoking fires of bitter hatred and boosts Islamic fundamentalism instead of decreasing it.

I tend to emphasize in discussions of Islam that their violence comes from their own sacred teachings, it doesn't need any external provocation.  Their aim to rule the world is on their books.  But by emphasizing this I think I'm wrongly ignoring that there are indeed other reasons for their hatred of the West, as Bennett outlines in the above quote.  The Left is always saying that those of us who are trying to show the dangers of Islam to the West are in fact promoting their hatred by treating the whole religion as the cause, or by ignoring the psycho-social reasons mentioned above.  This is just culturebound blindness, but there ARE reasons besides the religious call to jihad, as described by Bennett. 

In a sense we deserve the title The Great Satan.   The Left unfortunately has changed the meaning of the American Constitution to make all the abominable sins that the Muslim world hates and that God is judging us for a matter of Constitutionally protected "freedoms" and "rights."  This is how they defend abortion, pornography, the normalization of homosexuality, gay marriage, now transgender rights and so on.  THESE ARE SOME OF THE MAIN REASONS THE WEST IS UNDER GOD'S JUDGMENT.  And one of the main instruments God is using against us is the growth of Islam in the west and their violence.

Trump's policies hit his supporters as a lungful of fresh air after years of Leftist globalist attempts to sell us out to our enemies.  But if you take the perspective I'm laying out here, what Trump is doing can't succeed for long because it doesn't address the real reasons God is judging us, and all the Leftist globalist undermining of the nation should be understood as ways God is judging us.

I think I'll quote the way I just put this elsewhere:

I suspect that Trump's efforts to return the nation to sane policies may not work because the nation is under judgment by God, and until we do away with the causes of that we aren't going to get out from under that judgment. Which means causes like abortion and normalizing homosexuality and legalizing gay marriage and many other issues dear to the heart of the Left. Trump is not taking those on but focusing only on the practical projects that should protect the nation, protect it I've finally realized, from God's judgments against us. Since the Left isn't going to give an inch on its sin-liberation politics which is the main reason we are under judgment, I don't see any way for Trump's projects to succeed for long. That means we'll eventually be overtaken by Islam, which appears to be God's main instrument of judgment against us.

Trump has explicitly given in on the very issues that need to be addressed if the nation is to be made great again, when he refuses to tackle gay marriage or the LGBT movement and other reasons God is sorely displeased with us.

Avoiding all this is understandable of course because it's an aggressively defended political evil that has little chance of being reversed given its popular support, while the practical matters he focuses on are much easier to bring about.

But what this means is that our relief at the sanity of Trump's policies is misguided.  We're still under God's judgment, there's no way He's going to bless the nation beyond a temporary reprieve at best.  Is there an answer?  Very possibly not.  We may be beyond that stage.

There's always prayer.  Maybe God would listen if enough of us pleaded for a way to turn back the nation to our former goodness so that our greatness could be His gift to us again.

Europe has abandoned God, So ISIS attacks in Brussels and nobody sees the connection

Today a slaughter in Brussels by the usual suspects. Is the push for Islamic world power escalating or is it just a momentary flurry?

What can I say? I guess I can keep saying this is a spiritual problem. Politics alone won't solve it. I'm glad if the police are getting good information but that's a mercy of God He's granted fairly generously considering how He is hated in Europe. Europe is under judgment, and the great numbers of Muslims displacing the original ethnic populations is one form of that judgment. Already their loss of national boundaries to the EU should be seen as God's judgment. It's all in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

Islam is the scourge He is using, in Europe and America both. That's what 9/11 was, and it's what all the Islamist attacks in Europe are too.

Why are we under judgment? You only need to read the Ten Commandments to make a list of the sins proliferating in the West over the last few decades. We've even thrown the Ten Commandments out of our courts so you'll have to find a Bible to look them up. But the preeminent sin is our rejection of the true God.

As God keeps saying over and over in the Old Testament: "But return to Me" and He will heal us, He will bless us, He will give us favor with the Muslims too and they will see the truth of Christ.

Europe has abandoned Christianity, and I mean Biblical Christianity, Reformation Christianity, Protestant Christianity, and America is well on its way though still lagging behind somewhat. The only salvation possible for the West is to restore it. I pray for it. May God have mercy on us all.

This is at least World War III but worse...

Thank you, Mark Levin, for telling the horrific truth:   This is World War III

“These people inside Washington – they don’t get it,” Levin said. “This is World War III. Could you imagine during World War II or World War I having these discussions? World War I, under a hideous president, Woodrow Wilson, World War II under an almost equally hideous president, FDR – did they worry about any of this stuff? Was this the national debate? The national debate was how to secure the nation and destroy the enemy and how to destroy the enemy as quickly as possible – victory, victory, victory. Do these guys even talk about victory? This entire debate is absurd.”

Syrian refugees and illegal aliens, both, spell death to America. Yes it IS war on America and nobody is trying to stop it. Except a few conservative voices who are scorned, called racist and so on. Those of us who know what's coming are helpless to do anything about it. Is the opposition brainwashed or something more sinister? I'd prefer to believe brainwashed at least in the majority of cases, but that doesn't make the threat any less dire. Their minds are destroyed by political correctness that hallucinates lambs where there are wolves and invites the wolves in to dine.

Franklin Graham is saying the same thing: Islam Has Declared War on the World. Well, they declared it a long time ago, hundreds of years ago, but fimally now they are getting their chance, and that's because of Political Correctness which is the suicide note of the west.

Supposedly, according to the politically correct revisionist history we hear everywhere now, America was founded on a kind of generosity of spirit that would in fact destroy the nation. They quote Christ against us as if He would invite Islam to the table of Christians. They quote the poem by Emma Lazarus about giving us your tired, poor huddled masses, as if all huddled masses are equal. We're supposedly treating people as guilty instead of innocent until proven so. As if this was about individuals and not about a murderous ideology. We're "haters" and "racists."

So far about eight radicals have been discovered among the refugees. But the refugees themselves are also a threat, this is what the twisted leftist mind won't recognize. They may right now be sincere seekers of asylum, not planning to attack us at the moment, but most of them are Muslims and Muslims will eventually attack us, because that's what their version of God tells them to do.  Convert or pay huge fines or die.   Even if right now there are no ISIS members among them, Islam is contrary to the whole spirit of America.  I ask again, do they "not get it" or are they motivated to do away with America? I've always thought that may be Obama's real aim.

Try to tell the PC-brainwashed that they are putting the nation in danger with their twisted version of compassion, and you get back the accusation that we're just racists who don't like brown-skinned people. This seems to me like worse than "not getting it" but perhaps the brainwashing has really been that successful.

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Trump and Carson get it. Islam is not just another religion to be protected by American rights. Islam is an ideology that wants the death of all other ideologies. Why do we have to listen to the likes of Hillary Clinton who either doesn't get it or wants to see America go down, or any of the rest of them who can't grasp that Islam is the current Hitler who aims to take over the entire world.
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As I usually do, I come back to the fact, something that Christians ought to recognize as fact even if nobody else does, that America, and the west in general, is under God's judgment and that is the reason we are being subjected to these dangers. The only solution, and it may be too late, is for a resurgence of the Protestant Christianity that built the west.  May God have mercy and hear this prayer.

Yes, Protestant. I'm sure there are patriotic Catholics too, but they are too misguided by their leaders to be trustworthy. There are American Catholic bishops who are determined to bring in these refugees no matter what other Americans think. There is a Catholic sanctuary in New Orleans that has already brought in Syrian refugees. For decades they have been providing sanctuary for the illegal aliens of the Catholic Hispanic nations. These are traitors and should be recognized as such. Patriotic Catholics should be denouncing them.

How many Christians are left in America? Mercifully God doesn't need large numbers. But we need to be praying constantly for a long time that He will protect the nation. We should also be sending missionaries to the refugees but first please Lord bring this nation back to You.

But this one is so bad, so many deluded people, so many who put evil for good and good for evil. so many enemies of Christ, this is more than just World War III, this must truly be the very last days, in which hearts will fail for seeing what is coming on the earth.

Luke 21:26-28 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.

Come soon, Lord.

Yes, Church, we could still turn America around, Yes, but it would cost. And we need a George Whitefield. Or two or three.

A great exertion, a great commitment of time, by a great number of God's people, especially the pastors, really could very possibly turn this nation around even at this very very late hour. If we dropped everything else that could at all conceivably be dropped, and that's got to be a lot more than we think we can drop, did some fasting, did a lot of praying, and tried to coordinate our efforts with one another across the nation, surely we would be a formidable spiritual army. Surely.

We all see it don't we?  The dire need of it I mean.  I open the internet to all kinds of everyday trivia, how to roast the best Thanksgiving turkey, what's the best brand of makeup, where's the best place to retire, and the dissonance makes me a bit crazy.   Maybe it creates enough of an illusion of Normal Times to put a bunch of us to sleep?    I'd love to drift away on the illusion myself, I'm not looking forward to what's coming on this nation.

When God plans to bring Revival, they say, "He sets His people to praying," so if they don't feel the urge to pray then it must not be God's will.  So what do we do, have our perfect Thanksgiving turkey, lean back and watch the nation go down under His judgment?  I guess we could, you know, if that's His will.  But how can it be His will?  Really?

I went to Sermon Audio and clicked on "Sermons by Date" just to see what was being preached this month,   Some of the titles are obscure but most look like Preaching as Usual.  Probably many good sermons for the growth of Christians, certainly the necessary work of pastors, but forgive me if I say this is not the time for that, we have a nation to save.

I know most of us have given up.  We know the nation is already under judgment but we've given up.  I guess we're not feeling it enough yet, or maybe we just can't tolerate the news so we've gone into ostrich mode, or maybe we just don't know what to do.  Shouldn't the pastors be more like the Black-Robed Regiment these days, dedicated to preserving the nation against the tyrannical foe of freedom?  Any Christians can do something of course, like Christine Weick I mentioned in a recent post, but shouldn't it be the pastors leading us?  They put together a meeting in Houston to respond to the mayor's encroachment on their freedom in the pulpit, but it was just a few hours.  Maybe it had something to do with ushering this great conservative wave into Congress, but nothing much seems to have been happening since.  We've even had the abomination of a Muslim imam "praying" in Congress since then, and also in the National Cathedral.  Not a peep out of our leaders that I'm aware of, though the usual ministries took note of it.   They send out their usual scary news stories and warnings and exhortations, but otherwise not much seems to be happening.

Some are focusing this in a different direction.  No mention of the imam in Congress but we don't really have to get upset about the National Cathedral because after all the Episcopalian Church has been apostate for a long time already, nothing unusual about having an imam there.  The idea seems to be Therefore it's nothing to get all worked up about.  Well, OK, but that's the church where Presidents have their most high-profile religious events, such as  Bush's ecumenical prayer meeting for the nation after 9/11.  This is the church that has positioned itself to be representative of the nation, so anything that calls it down for its apostasy is a good thing.

We also shouldn't just be engaged in lamenting the darkness, this trend of thought goes, but in actively doing something, and the something we should actively be doing is taking the gospel to the Muslims.   I'm not sure why this is an either/or but it seems to be.  I can agree that among all the tasks I'd list for what the Church should be doing now that we're not doing anywhere near enough, taking the gospel to the Muslims should rank fairly high.  But I put saving the nation above that myself, because if we can't save the nation the Muslims are going to rule us.  And Revival would go a long way toward accomplishing both forms of salvation.

Seems to me the important thing to keep in mind is that all this is God's judgment on the nation, it's already here, the imam in our government buildings, so many Muslims in the nation too, and saving the nation means moving God to forgive and renew us.  Starting with the Church, where judgment begins.

Interestingly, just as a side note, Norway has been deporting its illegal aliens for a while now, which means Muslims, and their crime rate has been reduced by a third as a result.  France should do the same as Muslims are trashing the city of Marseilles.  This isn't the Christian solution of evangelizing them but I'm not sure there's anything wrong with deporting criminals from a Christian point of view either.  A safe society is the responsibility of government, and ours is rapidly losing all sense of that duty.  The original Christian colonies of America had strict laws against foreign or nonChristian intrusion and influence, and the Black Regiment of pastors preached for, and then fought for, freedom in the Revolutionary War, because political freedom is necessary for all the projects of Christianity from spreading the gospel to providing a Christian moral environment. 
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I often think it's too late, and I know others think the same, that all we can do now is prepare for the disaster, for the persecutions, for horrors upon horrors to come.

But you know what, it isn't too late.  It's only too late because we aren't going to do anything, not because it isn't possible to do something.  Again, are we or are we not "Terrible as an army with banners" as the Church is called in the Song of Songs?.  Right now we don't seem too terrible, but there's no reason we couldn't come to live up to our name.  Hooray for every Christian who is doing something already, but I think it's the pastors across the nation who need to be organizing this, leading this, preaching it, exhorting it.  It would take dedication, time, stripping our lives of everything else, some fasting, a lot of prayer, a lot of seeking the Lord for guidance and wisdom, a lot of coordination with the rest of the Church, a lot of prayer for each other, for all the pastors, a lot of denouncing the sins of the churches and separating from those who are in serious error, a lot of praying for cleansing of the Church, a lot of praying against the sins of the nation after the sins of the Church are dealt with.   

I Stand Sunday wasn't enough.  We need every Sunday, and really every day, dedicated to the work that's cut out for us. 

And we need a George Whitefield.

Hey, guess what! George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were "Homophobes" and "Haters"

And they weren't even Christians! Today's Gay Rights bullies are as un-American as you can get!

I mentioned Chris Pinto's radio program on this subject in the previous post, but he got much of his information from a website called Apologetics Press on the attitude of the Founders to homosexuality.

A pernicious plague of sexual insanity is creeping insidiously through American civilization. Far more deadly than the external threat of terrorism, or even the inevitable dilution of traditional American values caused by the infiltration of illegal immigrants and the influx of those who do not share the Christian worldview, this domino effect will ultimately end in the moral implosion of America. Indeed, America is being held captive by moral terrorists. The social engineers of “political correctness” have been working overtime for decades to restructure public morality.

The Founding Fathers of these United States would be incredulous, incensed, and outraged. They understood that acceptance of homosexuality would undermine and erode the moral foundations of civilization. Sodomy, the longtime historical term for same-sex relations, was a capital crime under British common law...

...In the greater scheme of human history, as civilizations have proceeded down the usual pathway of moral deterioration and eventual demise, the acceptance of same-sex relations has typically triggered the final stages of impending social implosion. America is being brought to the very brink of moral destruction.

But none of those other civilizations had the Biblical basis we have, which makes us more morally culpable, but also gives us the possibility of rescuing the nation that no other ever had. Oh if only we could wake up and have a drastic housecleaning, a drastic selfdenying repentance of everything we KNOW is against God's word, and fast and pray in prodigious numbers for as long as it takes to persuade God to come down and turn us back from destruction.

Gay Agenda a "high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God" and needs to be pulled down by a revived Church.

Watching America being destroyed from within keeps driving me back to revival as the only possible solution.  Which amounts to saying that God is the only possible help but He isn't answering prayers for revival these days, as I've noted before.  Either He's determined on judgment as the only righteous response to our condition, or we aren't meeting His conditions for revival.

I keep hoping the latter because that at least gives us the opportunity to ponder what conditions we aren't meeting and whether we could meet them.  The ones I listed in an earlier post are probably not the full list.  In fact I can hardly believe I left out the gay agenda, because there are churches that have capitulated to that too.  The nation is suffering from every kind of Political Correctness and the Gay Agenda is the latest and most aggressive version of it, but I've been thinking of the nation's ills as those the Church is to tackle after we've cleaned up our own act.  How can we rally against violations of the First Amendment freedom of religion when we're full of offenses against God within our own ranks?  Problem is all the ills of the nation are to be found in the churches as well.    We even have "gay churches."   And all churches that call themselves by the name of Christ need to be addressed by the Church at large, meaning denounced in many cases.  I don't know if God would give just a certain collection of repentant cleaned-up churches a revival but if the point is to turn back the evils in the nation, God's judgment on the nation, I don't know how far that would go anyway.  To be effective it would have to be contagious and change minds all over the country.  Genuine revivals do have that effect, but could it happen on the scale we need it to happen?

The main symptom of God's judgment is the ineffectiveness of the churches.  The Wimp Factor as I called it a while back, our inability to act.  Not only the churches but conservatives in general, witness Congress.  It was nice, sort of, to see some pastors in Houston confronting their anti-Constitutional major, and also nice that pastors and others responded to Mike Huckabee's call to send her sermons and Bibles.  Seems to show there's still a pulse in the Church.  But it's a pretty weak pulse.  The call wasn't even for sermons against homosexuality, but that's what has to be confronted by God's word.  I wonder how many were on that topic?  My guess is not many.   Because of the Wimp Factor.

Yes, we're afraid of the gay rights people.  They're a nasty aggressive bunch.  We don't like being called "haters" and "bigots" and "homophobes" which is the tactic of Political Correctness invented by Cultural Marxism aimed at bringing down America.  And they can get nastier than that under certain circumstances.   That's why I liked the idea of pastors across the nation committing to preach specifically against homosexuality in one voice in response to the mayor's move against the Church, for strength in numbers.  It's easier to preach on a controversial subject if you know you are backed by thousands of others.    I still wish something like that had occurred.  If the sermons they sent her were against homosexuality that would maybe have a similar effect but since there is silence on that subject I assume most of them weren't, maybe all.

Chris Pinto had a very interesting radio show recently, The American Founders on Homosexuality, which makes it clear that the founding of this country included a view of homosexuality as sin, and abominable sin at that.  That's the view of the Bible and whatever individual founders may have believed about traditional Christianity, most of them were steeped in the Bible and accepted its moral judgments.   Some of the original colonies had the death penalty for homosexual behavior.  George Washington had to dishonorably discharge a soldier for attempted sodomy.  There was certainly no attitude of tolerance toward homosexuality in those days, but a couple of centuries later we're now bullied into accepting it as a normal sexual preference.

For years we've been subjected to Gay Pride parades which are in themselves a disgusting display that is hard to tolerate, but even the police are required to support the event.  We watch all this happen and don't do much, just let it all roll over us.  Well, what CAN we do?

It's like we're bound and gagged.  If one person speaks up a dozen opponents shout him down with all the PC epithets.  And now if a Christian business refuses to fill an order for something that supports the gay agenda, particularly gay marriage, they are getting sued and fined.  This is a horrendous violation of the First Amendment, a horrendous miscarriage of justice, but it's like we're so used to the reversal of good an evil, or so stunned by it, or so afraid of being targeted ourselves, we let this evil triumph.

But again I'm taken back to the need for revival.  The main reason we're paralyzed has to be that we're deep in sin ourselves, as I've started to outline.  I'm adding tolerance of the gay agenda to this list now, and certainly eliminating churches from any call to revival that endorse homosexuality as a normal lifestyle, ordaining them as preachers and so on.   Also churches that allow women pastors need to be eliminated.  Revival only comes to a biblically pure church, I'm sure of that.  It usually starts with moving people to repentance, but these are huge offenses against God that don't need some special touch of the Holy Spirit to make us aware of them. 

How many churches are free of all those offenses?  Well if you don't count my own concern about the Bible Versions and women not being required to cover our heads in church, there may be some that are free of such offenses.  Again, could we seek revival just for those churches? 

If we don't have revival, if we don't have a waking up of the churches, if we don't get some boldness against the incredible accumulation of sins in America and the west we're just lost, absolutely lost, there is no hope.

We Need to Repent FROM the National Day of Prayer: It Can Only Bring More of God's Judgment Down on the Nation

May 1st this year is the National Day of Prayer. I used to be all in favor of this event, even went to a few of the public gatherings.  Sounds like a good idea, but I've become sadly aware that organized prayer on behalf of this nation is usually ecumenical and that isn't going to do the nation any good at all

George Bush's prayer meeting in the National Cathedral to pray for the nation after 9/11 brought together Christians and Catholics and Muslims and Jews, NOT a formula for success at getting the ear of God.  Anybody want to know why the prayers have done us no good, there's your answer.  People pray their hearts out for the nation and things get worse.  Some good ministries and good solid Christians form these groups or join these groups and don't seem to notice that even their best efforts are going unrewarded.  There were a couple of prayer meetings on the day of Obama's inauguration to his second term.  Things gotten any better?  Why aren't we paying attention to this simple cause and effect?  If we appeal to God surely things SHOULD get better. But we have to do it right. We can't pray with antiChristians and be doing it right.

Well, sure enough, the National Day of Prayer is also ecumenical, calling "people of all faiths" to pray together for the nation:

The National Day of Prayer is an annual observance held on the first Thursday of May, inviting people of all faiths to pray for the nation. It was created in 1952 by a joint resolution of the United States Congress, and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. Our Task Force is a privately funded organization whose purpose is to encourage participation on the National Day of Prayer. It exists to communicate with every individual the need for personal repentance and prayer, to create appropriate materials, and to mobilize the Christian community to intercede for America’s leaders and its families. The Task Force represents a Judeo Christian expression of the national observance, based on our understanding that this country was birthed in prayer and in reverence for the God of the Bible.

It talks about the "Christian community" and mentions "reverence for the God of the Bible" but that would include Catholics and even Muslims and Jews depending on how the phrase is understood, because the Jews are of course the people of the Old Testament, and the Muslims revere the Bible along with the Koran.  It would also include Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, cults that consider themselves to follow the Bible.

Also, we are NOT, or were not originally, a "Judeo-Christian" nation.  If we are, GOD WILL NOT BLESS US!

It also mentions "personal repentance."  Sounds good, sort of, if you don't think too much about it.  What we need is God's true people not only repenting personally but repenting on behalf of the nation, and the best place to start is by repenting of the abomination of ecumenical prayer!

How does any Christian think that God would honor prayer by people who deny the essentials of the Christian revelation?  This is like calling for prayer to Molech or Dagon along with God, but God clearly denounced all the deviations by His Old Testament people into worshiping both God and the false gods of the nations around.  Simply worshiping God without following His instructions is condemned. Yet I've never heard any pastor even mention this offense concerning the National Day of Prayer.

Although certainly the nation could be said to have begun with the original Pilgrims and Puritans who were definitely Christians, and there were many true Christians among the founding generation as well, and at that time and for some time to come the citizens of the nation were at least culturally steeped in the Christian faith, this disaster may actually go back to five of the main Founders who were NOT Christians:  Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and Paine.  I'd recommend Chris Pinto's film "Hidden Faith of the Founding Fathers" if you want to see the evidence.

There's plenty of history we could delve into, and the inauguration of this day in 1952 may have been ecumenical from the beginning, and may even have had a worse effect on the nation than the ceasing of prayer in the schools some ten years later, in fact it may have been why that happened. 

But all we really need to know is that God will not hear the prayers of those who deny Him or do not worship Him according to His revelation.  That's enough to tell us that participating in this event can't possibly benefit the nation and may actually hasten its destruction.

YOU WANT TO SAVE THIS NATION? START BY THROWING OUT THE IDOLS! STOP CONSIDERING CATHOLICISM TO BE CHRISTIAN, THAT'S THE BIGGEST MISTAKE WE MAKE.

START BY REPENTING FOR THE NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER AND OTHER ECUMENICAL SLAPS IN THE FACE OF GOD.

Harbinger critic David James totally misses the point of the defiance of God in Isaiah 9:10

Did finally start reading David James' review of The Harbinger which is pretty much an expanded version of his comments in the interview of Jonathan Cahn I reported on in the last post. I don't know how far I will get into this, but I thought I'd at least highlight his comments about Daschle and Edwards' quoting of Isaiah 9:10 again. Sorry to keep repeating myself but this seems to need to be soundly trounced. If he so completely missed that point certainly he's missed others, and maybe I'll eventually get to some of the others as well.

Israel knew that the Assyrian attacks were a judgment they had brought upon themselves. When they declared that they would rebuild, they were shaking their fists in defiance of both their enemies and their God.

I don't know, were they? israel was often in defiance of God's will with their idols and violations of the Law, but sometimes they simply rationalized it all away, not thinking much of it. Matthew Henry says they were "willingly ignorant" of God's threat of judgment, and David Guzik says they trivialized the threat, treated it as something they could overcome. Both suggest they were conscious of the threat but also denying it. But I don't think it's crucial to know for sure.

This is not what happened in the wake of 9/11. Yet, in both the book and the documentary by World Net Daily, the author attempts to build the case that America’s leaders were proudly and arrogantly acting in defiance against God when they spoke of rebuilding (even though they didn’t realize it).22This is very misleading because although standing in defiance of America’s enemies, they were demonstrably not standing in defiance of God.

This is at least incredibly naive. Simply quoting Isaiah 9:10 in a positive way is "demonstrably standing in defiance of God." Whether America was more or less intentionally and consciously defiant of God than Israel was is not that easy to determine, but Isaiah 9:10 is a statement of defiance, period. And defiant we were. All Daschle and Edwards really did was echo the nation's feelings that we were hearing every day, and Isaiah 9:10 spoke for those feelings only too well.

The defiance was very clear at the time to some of us, not many but some. The choruses of "God bless America" were to my ear clear statements of this defiance, though this was unrecognized by most, and David James in this review has exactly that same attitude himself, not recognizing the defiance but in fact insisting it wasn't defiance. America seemed to think she was acting as a godly nation by calling for God to bless us. Terrible misunderstanding. Since so many were calling on God and thought they were standing only in defiance of our enemies, to their mind as to James' mind this means they were not in defiance of God.

This is a major way we fail to recognize God's hand in events, by seeing only the human hand in them -- or the hand of Nature as it may be. But our enemies cannot act independently of God, even Satan can't act independently of God, Nature also can't act independently of God, but Christians have been so badly taught Biblical theology that this basic fact of God's sovereignty escapes the majority.

For months and years after 9/11 patriotic macho-toned cries of defiance against our enemies were raised. When I would try to point out that 9/11 was God's judgment of the nation I was hooted down and sometimes accused of siding with our enemies. Or they'd accuse me of lack of sympathy with the victims. The main objection always was that God "wouldn't do such a thing." "Our God is a good God." Always the focus is on the human side, God is ignored. I answered with references to God's judgments against ancient Israel and other peoples of that time. I quoted Amos 3:6:

If there is calamity in a city, will not God have done it?

David James no doubt also failed to see God's hand of judgment at the time, and now his blindness keeps him from getting the most basic message of The Harbinger.

The explanation of the ninth harbinger seems even more misleading. In the book, Cahn gives the impression that Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle concluded a speech on 9/12/2001 by quotingIsaiah 9:10.23 But, that was not the end of the speech. In the documentary by World Net Daily, Cahn specifically states that Daschle closes the speech with, “That is what we will do and we will rebuild, and we will recover.”24 However, this is not how the speech ended. There were two more sentences not shown in the documentary:

The people of America will stand together because the people of America have always stood together, and those of us who are privileged to serve this great nation will stand with you. God bless the people of America.25

By invoking God and thinking he was comforting Americans by using the Bible (albeit wrongly), his intent was clearly not defiance against God—it was exactly the opposite. To fail to include or mention his last two sentences is very misleading.

It's very odd, it seems to me, that James thinks the inclusion of the last sentences changes anything about the message. It was already clear from the quote itself that Daschle's intent was to give a message of hope and reassurance, and ending with a compliment to the people for standing together is really just another statement of defiance against God in spite of his intentions and and in spite of James' take on it.

The emphasis on the virtues of the people, what the people can do, or in Biblical terminology, what "the arm of flesh" can do, is always a way of describing human reliance on self rather than on God. That's what the whole message of Isaiah 9:10 is about. WE will rebuild with stronger materials, WE will replant with stronger trees, WE will do this in our own strength... WE will stand together. WE are a great nation and a great people, they can't keep US down. In other words, James seems not to get what could even be described as THE most basic message in the Bible -- human reliance on human strength instead of reliance on God, and that IS the message of defiance of God. We don't need God, we can do it ourselves.

And this is all of a piece with complete blindness to the fact that God is working in ALL events ALL the time, to bless or to curse, and that we CAN'T ignore Him except at our peril. This is how we miss the most obvious act of God's judgment on the nation.

This spiritual obtuseness of His people could be a way to explain why God decided to bring these literal material tokens of His judgment into our midst, these signs or harbingers. The idea here is that if we are spiritually blinded maybe we will notice such a gracious and merciful accommodation to our weakness. Kind of how the Lord so graciously condescended to show Thomas His wounds after Thomas had refused to believe the witnesses who had told of His having risen from the dead. Sometimes the Lord will accommodate our weaknesses like this. And obviously many have understood the message in the signs or harbingers, but there are still some whose eyes aren't opened.

On September 11, 2004, then vice-presidential candidate John Edwards was speaking at the Congressional Black Caucus Prayer Breakfast. Cahn attempts to frame his speech as another unwitting act of defiance against God. However, an honest reading of the speech26 shows that defiance of God was the furthest thing from his mind.

Uh, that's what makes the defiance "unwitting" Mr. James.

However, he explains that both Daschle and Edwards were defying God without realizing it. In spite of their intentions, Cahn postulates that God was inspiring them to unknowingly pronounce judgment upon America.27

He isn't "postulating" this, he's pointing it out as something as plain as day to anyone who knows the God of the Bible. That Mr. James doesn't see it only underscores how far today's Christians are from a real understanding of the character and attributes of God.

We KNOW that Isaiah 9:10 is a statement of defiance of God. That's what the leaders of Israel were saying, this is acknowledged in all the commentaries as the tenor of that verse, and it can only be the same for anyone who quotes it today as well. It IS a statement of defiance. And again, although one might want to claim that the "heart" of the speaker is not with that attitude of defiance, in fact simply to embrace it is to have that attitude because it IS defiance. The only alternative is recognition of God's hand in 9/11 as judgment on the nation, calling for repentance. That's what NONdefiance would be, and that was the substance of pastor David Wilkerson's preaching of this very same message. He pointed out that this defiant attitude is America's attitude, and the remedy for it is repentance. THAT is the Christian take on Isaiah 9:10.

ISAIAH 9:10 IS A STATEMENT OF DEFIANCE OF GOD. It just IS. We WILL rebuild is a statement of defiance of God. It's not a matter of interpretation, there is no subtlety to it. It ignores God's hand in the attack, has no inkling of the nation's being under God's judgment, no thought about why God would have done such a thing or what we need to do to respond properly to it. It's just a bald statement of intention to come back better and stronger than ever.

Since Daschle and Edwards quoted it straight, as a simple statement of the intention of America to rebuild, they pronounced the attitude of defiance on behalf of the nation in their official capacity as representatives of the people. Unwittingly.

But how does he know that God is inspiring America’s leaders to prophecy? Unfortunately, he presents his speculation as fact. This is undoubtedly not part of the fictional storyline.

This degree of spiritual blindness is really sad. There is no "speculation" going on here at all. If America's leaders pronounce a message of defiance of God in the exercise of their elected office, while thinking that they are saying something reassuring and inspiring instead, then this is God's own doing. It's open and shut. With all the other signs or harbingers of God's doing already having been accumulated and recognized, these speeches of what is KNOWN to be a message of defiance are just further aspects of the same message GOD HIMSELF IS BRINGING TO US.

The author attempts to defend his theory by referencing Caiaphas, who unwittingly prophesied concerning the death of Christ (John 11:49-52) Cahn concludes that Daschle and Edwards intended to say one thing, but their words carried a far different meaning. However, that is not what happened with Caiaphas. His words were inspired to mean exactly what he intended. He just didn’t know how right he actually was. Once again, the author’s exposition of the biblical text does not stand up to scrutiny and the supposed parallel is simply not there.

But Caiaphas is an excellent comparison to make the point, not an exact parallel, no, but a case of a man's unwitting declaration of God's intention. His motives were NOT God's motives as he meant to murder the miscreant and take him out of the way -- he certainly didn't intend the WAY Jesus would "die for the people" saving them from their sins -- but his actual words described God's intention and stood as true prophecy. Daschle and Edwards' conscious motives were to bless the nation but God had them speak words of defiance that seal His intention of judging the nation.

Unless we repent.

Jonathan Cahn answers T A McMahon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, The Harbinger IS a "matter of critical discernment" Pt. 4

Another harbinger of warning to America is referred to as “The Tower.” Cahn seems hard pressed to make a biblical connection to a tower other than a vague reference that the main character makes when he’s asked how he would know what the Tower of Babel looked like. He replies, “I don’t, but I’ve seen pictures of it.” That inane statement aside, Babel was not a Jewish tower. Nevertheless, Cahn finds a Jewish tower that he believes fits. But he had to go to the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, for help.

This attempt to find fault with Cahn almost gets humorous.

As I understand it, the tower connection was DISCOVERED by Cahn as he delved into the scripture versions and commentaries to be sure he understood the verse correctly. He DISCOVERED that the Septuagint version of Isaiah 9:10 HAPPENED to mention the idea of rebuilding a tower. Hey, pretty uncanny don't you think? He didn't NEED a tower to demonstrate the correspondences, he had plenty already, but the Septuagint just came along and gave him a tower to add to his harbingers.

These critics keep attributing to Cahn himself what only God could have done.

Isaiah:9:10The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars. in the Greek is translated thus: “The bricks are fallen down, but come, let us hew stones, and cut down sycamores and cedars, and let us build for ourselves a tower. ” So, he has his “tower,” but not without an inherent problem for “harbingers six and seven.” Those harbingers are dependent upon a cedar replacing a sycamore tree. The Greek translation says “sycamores and cedars” are “cut down”; the Hebrew says that sycamores (plural) will be changed with cedars (plural). It would seem that Cahn can’t have both his “Septuagint” tower and his “Hebrew” replacement cedar (singular). They contradict one another. [For further explanation, refer to the TBC Extra page in this issue.]

Clearly the Septuagint mistranslated the verse IF all the other translations are correct, but the fact that it even MENTIONS a tower adds an element that ties in with 9/11 in a way that it would be hard to ignore if you're researching this verse. Blue Letter Bible doesn't show what word got translated as "tower" so there's no way to judge the choice, but does Cahn have to point out the obvious, that the translations are different?

There are numerous other problems with the harbingers, even though they are constructed subjectively and selectively by Cahn.

Just gonna repeat that this is utterly false.

Granted, the author does raise an intriguing date phenomenon related to the economic misfortunes connected with 9/11 when he attempts to link the Jewish shemitah , the Torah law of letting the land lie fallow and the forgiving of debts in the seventh year of a seven-year cycle, as a warning to the U.S.

I'm at a loss to understand why this connection finds favor with McMahon but not the stones and trees, but at last he appreciates something in the book. The dates are exact according to Cahn's understanding of Hebrew. The more he researched the more he discovered. Discovered, not selected, not subjectively made up, discovered.

No matter what one conjectures regarding the significance of a stock market crash occurring on the first day of shemitah, the shemitah itself has no bearing on anyone or anything other than the nation of Israel.

Yup, clearly this is the preconception, the biased mindset that makes it impossible for McMahon to see what is really going on here. The scripture applies ONLY to Israel, THEREFORE Cahn MUST HAVE made up these connections, and that mindset leads McMahon to magnify the trivial differences and overlook the obvious similarities that make the harbingers so uncanny and revealing of God's own handiwork.

It has never applied to the Gentile nations, either in actual practice or figuratively in Scripture. To superimpose a connection with America is just that—a superimposition.

The degree of uncanniness is so far beyond such a supposition it OUGHT to wake anybody up out of it and make it plain as day that God for whatever reason -- whether you believe the scripture was written only to Israel or meant to apply to the Church or the future -- for whatever reason God Himself is here applying it to America. You don't need to assume that America is a covenant nation in the same sense as ancient Israel was, or that God is making any equation between the nations beyond the fact that He's clearly decided to make His law of the shemitah apply in America today. For whatever reason!

Attempting to rationalize away the amazing connections that Cahn has unearthed in fact reminds me of the thinking of the extreme "replacement theology" camp, the very kind of thinking the Israel-only people such as McMahon deplore, where because of their preconception that all the Old Testament references apply now only to the Church they have to deny or rationalize away the plain fact that Israel is back on their ancient land. They seem to be blind to the fact that various scriptures can be better applied to Israel's reestablishment in fulfillment of prophecy than to the Church, and that their being a center of world attention and especially world hatred sure does look like that verse about God's making Jerusalem a "cup of trembling" to the world at the time of the end, AND that in the various wars in which they were attacked by their Arab neighbors there's very good reason to see the hand of God on their side, even something like miracles. ALL THAT is ignored by the "replacement theology" camp, dismissed as mere accidents of history, as if there ever could be such a thing, or even treated as a work of Satan, as if Satan had any reason to want Israel reestablished, or as if God couldn't keep Satan from any project if it didn't fit with His plan.

This is really the same kind of dismissive thinking as McMahon is doing with all the uncanny connections Cahn has discovered, making what is clearly God's own work into mere inventions of his own.

Another imposition from Cahn’s imagination is his suggestion that the inauguration of George Washington in New York City was a “consecration” of America to God similar to Solomon’s consecration of the Temple in Jerusalem. To even compare the two verges on blasphemy, especially because history reveals that much Masonic ritual was involved, as well as the “works-salvation” doctrine of Masonry contained in Washington’s speech. It was more suitable to the god of the Masonic Lodge, the Great Architect of the Universe, than to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God of the Bible.

Well, has God specially blessed America with unusual peace and prosperity as we've all thought for so long, or not? If so, to what do we attribute that fact? If the nation was consecrated to Satan which is what a purely Masonic consecration would be, why has the nation been so favored down the centuries, as recognized by the whole world? Is this to be attributed strictly to the Pilgrim founding and the fact that we've been a Christian nation by population and general philosophy up until recently?

We don't know what was prayed in that chapel. What about the men who accompanied Washington? His whole cabinet were with him. Did they pray in the name of Jesus? There were more true Christians in the government even then than Deists, although it is true that the big name Founders were Deists and Unitarians. Nevertheless Washington himself regularly attended a Christian church. And although thanks to Chris Pinto I now understand that Washington was a Deist* and not a Christian I also know that we've been indoctrinated to believe that the Founders WERE Christians and you can't fault Cahn if he believed that, you can't accuse him of blasphemy if he believed the propaganda that the whole American Church has believed for decades now and honestly assumed that the prayers were in the name of Christ.

Part of the dilemma in criticizing The Harbinger is that if the foundational error in it is not acknowledged (that America has some sort of covenant with God,

There is nothing "foundational" about the apparent relationship GOD HIMSELF seems to be owning between Himself and America by simply giving us these harbingers! It's a CONCLUSION that must be drawn FROM them. Not a BEGINNING point but a CONCLUDING point.

Cahn DISCOVERED that God had given us these signs or harbingers. In thinking about them and following up with further research he discovered that Ground Zero where they all occurred turns out to be land that originally belonged to the church Washington and his cabinet prayed in, a church that was then most likely a true Christian church, although it is now apostate (you can read their teachings at the Trinity Wall Street Church site).

But I repeat: these are all uncanny correspondences Cahn uncovered. That's a pretty dramatic historical coincidence to try to sweep away as if it were meaningless.

and that there is a direct biblical correlation between Israel and the U.S. in the events of 9/11 and following), that opens the door for the acceptance of the book’s many fallacious ideas.

Again, this correlation with the verse was DISCOVERED BY CAHN. The connections are just THERE, he merely DISCOVERED them. If he went too far trying to understand God's mind in interpreting the prayer in the chapel beyond what is warranted, and I personally don't think he did -- he certainly said nothing to imply he believes that America is a covenant nation in the same sense that Israel was and when asked if he does he denies it -- but if he did misinterpret to some extent you still have to acknowledge that:

Only God Himself could have directed the beam that felled the sycamore tree which so uncannily echoes the verse in Isaiah, in the graveyard of the church at Ground Zero where George Washington and his cabinet prayed for the nation after his inauguration as our first President;

Only God could have directed the memorializing of its roots in bronze (which sure looks like a harbinger of God's intention to uproot the nation to me) and had it placed at the main sanctuary of that church on Wall Street a few blocks from the Stock Exchange;

Only God could have directed the replacement of the sycamore by a tree of the same type as a cedar, you know, a tree with needles and cones;

Only God could have planned the correspondence between the uprooted sycamore tree at Ground Zero and the Buttonwood tree (another name for sycamore) under which the agreement that began the Stock Exchange was signed, known as the Buttonwood Agreement, which ought to give you chills as you contemplate what this must mean about the future of the American economy;

Only God could have directed the bringing in of a quarried stone to be the cornerstone of the new building even though it turned out not to be needed, if only for the purpose of talking to America through Isaiah 9:10;

Only God could have had New York Governor Pataki express a version of the attitude of Isaiah 9:10 in his speech over this cornerstone -- a declaration of defiance in so many words;

Only God could have directed Tom Daschle and John Edwards to read Isaiah 9:10 as their message of supposed reassurance to the nation after 9/11;

Only God could have directed David Wilkerson to preach that same verse after 9/11 as His message of judgment instead of reassurance;

Only God could have directed the journalists to describe the rubble as a pile of bricks;

Only God could have directed the placement of the twin towers on land owned by a very old church that goes back to the founding of the nation, where the first President of the United States went to pray with his cabinet right after his inauguration.

Only God could have directed the timing of the events of the fall of the American economy to occur on dates He gave to ancient Israel concerning THEIR economy.

I mean, COME ON, Mr. McMahon. You are letting preconceptions blind you to the simple uncanny FACTS here.

This creates a perception of “credibility” simply by entering into a dispute over them. Even so, because most of them are so obviously wrong, pointing any one of them out to someone enthralled with the book may still be helpful. Some of these things are addressed in other parts of this newsletter and will be touched on in our future issues as questions arise.

Seems to me once you've made the mistake of attributing to Cahn what only God could have done, accused him of predetermining his facts when all he did was follow them out and research them and interpret them after the fact, once you've got a mind to make the minor details into a major indictment, you can't correct your course and you therefore end up accusing this honest Messianic Jewish pastor of enormities out of your own imagination.

He goes on but I think I'll end this here and probably finish up in one more post.

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

*"Deist" may not be the right description of Washington or the others: Today [June 8]both Chris Pinto and Brannon Howse were talking on their radio shows about a new book that's out, Religious Beliefs of America's Founders, by Gregg Frazer, who is on the staff of John MacArthur's church and Master's College. As he studied the writings of the Founders he came to the conclusion that not only were they not Christian, they were also not Deists as that term is defined. He invented a new category, theistic rationalism, he thinks fits better for some of them.

Yes, The Harbinger IS a "matter of critical discernment" Pt. 3

Preamble: Two things:

One: I feel I should say that I used to getthe Berean Call, in the mail, the newsletter put out by Dave Hunt and T A McMahon, and I still appreciate their ministry overall. I stopped taking the newsletter when they started attacking Calvinism, often in a mean-spirited way, which I see from their online archives they are still doing as of this current issue. Now I'm objecting to their take on Cahn's book as well. Nevertheless, they've always had important biblical insights into the growing apostasy in the church, the occult and the New Age, Roman Catholicism, and events shaping up in the world in fulfillment of prophecy, and I learned a lot from them over the years.

Two: As mentioned in the previous post, I've begun to suspect that the MAIN reason for the strong reaction against Jonathan Cahn's Harbinger is the adamant insistence that God's word to Israel can ONLY be to Israel, which is for some reason strongly held by many of those who believe that national Israel is going to figure prominently in the end times. I believe that also, but I do believe that much of God's word to Israel is also to the Church which is spiritual Israel, something that the Israel-only people adamantly deny. And the New Testament also leads us to anticipate that the Church will in the end times receive a huge influx of what is now natural Israel as they come to recognize their true Messiah and are born again --a great increase that has already been happening in recent decades -- until then they are not God's Chosen People. And again, no, this is not a "replacement" of natural Israel, the Church was always the true Israel God was shepherding down through the millennia, made up of the redeemed, His faithful followers.

In any case, again, the story of the harbingers is about something that only God Himself could have set up, not something that relies on anyone's understanding of how to apply the scripture.

But on to more of McMahon's review:

Cahn’s isolation of Isaiah:9:10 The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars. and his symbolic interpretation of that verse to make it fit the September 11, 2001, jihadist attack on the U.S. is preposterous. (It’s also very odd that nowhere in the book is Islam or the term “Muslim” mentioned.) Nevertheless, as tragic as 9/11 was, what reasonably discerning person would see this as comparable to Isaiah’s account of God’s judgment on the Northern Kingdom of Israel?

The reasonably discerning person who would see it this way is someone who had noticed that God Himself apparently makes that comparison. That's the answer here over and over again. Again, Cahn was not the only one to notice the applicability of this verse to 9/11, as I pointed out in the last post.

Cahn was making no comparisons with the degree of devastation except to note that in both cases this is a first attack that could have been much worse and that if repentance does not follow, much worse will come. Otherwise he merely noted what others had noted, that Isaiah 9:10 is a perfect description of America's attitude after 9/11 just as it was ancient Israel's attitude, an attitude of defiance against God, a refusal to accept the attack as God's judgment and call for repentance: We aren't going to repent, we are going to rebuild and replant with sturdier materials, sturdier trees, and make it harder for our enemies to do such damage to us again. We, we we.

This is the crux of the message, the attitude of defiance in the face of an act of judgment from God and McMahon seems to have missed it completely. As David Wilkerson recognized, it very well describes America's attitude after 9/11. Very few pastors in America, very VERY few, would even recognize the attack as God's judgment at all, even saying God wouldn't do such a thing, even criticizing those few who did recognize it as God's judgment. No calls to repentance, just calls to assert our strength as a nation, just assertions of pride and patriotism, calls to God to bless America but few calls to God to change our hearts and have mercy on us.

It occurred to me after writing this to go to the Berean Call to see what message they gave in the wake of 9/11, and it was certainly not a call to repentance. It was a warning about the terrorist foundations of Islam. There is probably a clue here as to why some can't see 9/11 as a judgment from God. Of course most Americans at that time had no knowledge of Islam at all and the Berean Call was always on top of that information. In fact it was from their ministry that I got a book a few years before 9/11 that showed Islam's designs -- in Muslim leaders' own words -- against Israel and all "infidels" in the world [This is the book Philistine by Ramon Bennett]. People then needed to be made aware of Islam as a real threat in the world, and to some extent we are more aware, although there are many who still insist on the politically correct view of it as just another religion that should be granted the same freedoms as all others.

The idea that God would use terrorists to judge America seems to be hard for people to wrap their minds around. But God used Israel's enemy Assyria as His instrument of judgment against His people, and Babylon and other pagan nations. If we've been attacked, as Christians we should have learned -- FROM the Old Testament -- that these things don't just "happen," that God is behind everything, that this is how he punishes nations through history, and the need for repentance should be the first thought that comes to our mind. There was a time in America when Christians immediately recognized this. Even some US Presidents whose Christian faith might be questionable seemed to understand it. No more. Today's Christians have been corrupted by the unbiblical "gospel" that's all about "blessings" and rarely about sin and judgment, and the false teaching that "our good God wouldn't do such things." So America will get judged again and they'll deny God had anything to do with it again, and along will come the next Antichrist ...

Knowing Islam's motives isn't going to help us if God is against us. But if we repent and turn to Him we can count on Him to restrain Islam and give us protection from our enemies. If the nation doesn't do this, at least individuals who understand the truth can do it.

Anyway, The Berean Call missed God's hand in 9/11 just as the majority of Christian ministries in America did at the time.

Furthermore, even a cursory review of American history will bring to mind far more devastating events than 9/11, from Washington, D.C. being burned and sacked in the War of 1812, to the Civil War, to Pearl Harbor, to the debacle in Vietnam, etc. Ignoring such events, Cahn zeroes in on the devastation of “Ground Zero” as verification that God has removed His “hedge of protection” from the United States. How Cahn decides what events of contemporary history God is using for His very specific purposes is troubling. Are they Cahn’s own prophetic insights or just his speculations? If the former, he is on very tenuous ground.

It's not all that complicated. The "hedge of protection" surrounds continental America. Perhaps Cahn can be faulted for not considering Pearl Harbor as an earlier breach of the hedge, and for not including even earlier attacks on American soil, but at least the context IS foreign attacks on American soil and not American participation in foreign wars and not our own civil war. America has been RECOGNIZED as specially blessed in that we have been spared such attacks, certainly in the last century, while Europe and other parts of the world have suffered much devastation to their own lands. Maybe Cahn should have spelled all this out more clearly, but I had no trouble knowing what context he had in mind and I don't know why T A McMahon didn't.

The idea is that this was NOT a great devastation, but a first warning attack (since Pearl Harbor, or the War of 1812 should I add?). Although the attack on Israel was more devastating than 9/11, still it was nothing like what was clearly going to come upon them as a result of their defiance of God's hand in the first attack -- which is what the full passage in Isaiah 9 is clearly saying.

There are other ways God's judgment can be seen on America besides such direct attacks anyway, such as the invasion of illegal aliens, the great destruction in floods and hurricances over the last decade, and the increase in the very sins that are bringing further judgment, the huge slaughter of the unborn for instance that's been going on since 1973, and all the other violations of God's Law that Christians are always enumerating and protesting. And it probably all goes back to the basic abandonment of our Christian roots in the Puritan and Pilgrim founders of the nation before there was a nation, our abandonment of the gospel as the foundation of national life, which sadly should be largely attributed to the ANTI-CHRISTIAN mentality of the Founders of the generation that fought the Revolutionary War and wrote the Constitution, to us Christians who have perpetuated the errors of that generation. But that's another story.

But the context of The Harbinger is violent attack on national soil, and it seems fair to regard this as a breach of the hedge of protection that kept us from attack through the 20th century, again not counting Pearl Harbor. But if you don't want to accept the idea that this was a first breach of the protecting hedge, at least you have to recognize that America has never repented for the sins that have been accumulating God's judgments against us, and that the uncanny correspondences between Israel's defiance of God in response to attack and the American defiance in response to 9/11 signs and seals God's judgment of America in an amazingly graphic way. That's what The Harbinger is really all about. We missed it when the twin towers were hit so God has sent us some amazingly literal signs to wake us up and a book to point them out to us spiritual dunderheads. Are we going to wake up or not?

For many, selectivity on Cahn’s part creates some of the most compelling assertions in the novel. Again and again, as G. Richard Fisher of Personal Freedom Outreach has noted, “Cahn is playing on the old mistake of saying [that] similarity means identity.”

Huh? Good grief, the ingenuity with which the critics find ways to fault Cahn is staggering. "Playing on?" I don't even think I know what this person is trying to say.

The nine harbingers are selectively (and erroneously) taken from Scripture and are then given life by the comparison to similar things surrounding 9/11, which are then identified with Isaiah:9:10The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars..

Uh, Cahn NOTICED that American leaders quoted Isaiah 9:10 word for word in exact imitation of the attitude of the leaders of ancient Israel reported in that verse, he didn't "select" these incidents from some range of possible similarities; and he NOTICED that there were uncanny echoes of the specifics of Isaiah 9:10 in fallen bricks, a hewn stone, a fallen sycamore tree, a cedar-type tree to replace it -- he didn't "select" these things, they jumped out at him as the uncanny similarities they IN FACT ARE.

That’s the faulty method. Fisher explains, “Similarity is not identity. A $100 bill is similar to monopoly money, which is paper, has numbers on it, and is referred to as money.” To attempt to tie them together beyond that similarity, like paying a bill with monopoly money, will have embarrassing consequences at least.

Oh good grief. Identity? All Cahn did was NOTICE certain SIMILARITIES. Where is anyone getting the idea that he's insisting on some sort of identity between Israel and America? They ask, Does he think America is also a covenant nation as Israel was? No, he doesn't think that, he's answered whenever that comes up. And he's never said anything to imply any other sort of identity either.

I have thought it might have been most effective if Cahn had simply told the story exactly as he himself experienced it, from the point where he first noticed each event that ties into Isaiah 9:10. Each discovery of these correspondences must have struck him as a revelation of the finger of God. Instead he opted for a more artificial arrangement of the information, probably partly to maximize the drama, but also perhaps to organize the material step by step in relation to the scripture verse, since he probably didn't discover all the parts of it in such an orderly fashion. But who knows.

Isaiah:9:10The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars. cannot be identified with America and 9/11, and that’s all one has to understand in order to reject Cahn’s book

. Sigh.

Yet, for those enamored with The Harbinger and still not convinced of its serious biblical problems, consider a few of the harbingers themselves (there’s not enough space here to evaluate all of them).

The sycamore and cedar trees are mentioned in Isaiah:9:10The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.: “The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.” The passage uses sycamores as a metaphor for weaker trees being replaced by stronger, taller cedars in an act of arrogant defiance by the Israelites, who will not submit to God.

Cahn points to a singular sycamore and what he refers to as a type of cedar tree (actually a Norway Spruce) that replaced it at Ground Zero as harbingers connected to Isaiah:9:10The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.. Although there is a similarity , it takes a great deal of subjective wrangling by Cahn in his attempt to make it match Isaiah’s prophecy. The context does not allow Cahn’s claims.

Sigh. Newspapers described the rubble after 9/11 as a pile of bricks. Similarity. A gigantic hewn stone was brought in to be the cornerstone of the new Freedom Tower -- it wasn't even needed for the building, which makes the event even more uncanny. Similarity. Quarried stone. Symbolic reflection of the scripture verse. A single sycamore tree in the churchyard of the chapel where George Washington prayed for the nation after his inauguration was skewered by a piece of one of the falling towers and uprooted, a tree named after the sycamores of the Middle East. Similarity. Symbolic. A conifer type tree -- yes, not a cedar, a Norway Spruce, but very similar in type to a cedar (technically, the Hebrew word for it is "erez" which refers to the pine tree class, which includes the cedar, the pine, the fir and the spruce) -- was brought in to replace the fallen sycamore.

OK, here, let me SHOW the similarities with the trees:

Middle Eastern Sycamore, Ficus Sycomorus:


North American Sycamore:


Cedar of Lebanon:


Norway Spruce:(below)


Granted: I could have used representatives of each tree type that would show more differences than similarities but this comparison calls for the similarities to be emphasized, and certainly there are similarities enough to justify the connections Cahn made -- NOTICED not invented.

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

According to Wikipedia,  on April 24, 2009,

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

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

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

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

God's Warning Harbingers to America Are Getting Recognition and Packing Salvation Power

I'm so happy! So why am I sobbing? Tears of joy. SO good to hear Jan Markell's interview of Jonathan Cahn that aired yesterday that I just got around to listening to this afternoon. This was one of her programs she felt needed to be extended so there is also a Web Bonus to listen to.

I'm so glad that she gets it. She marinated in it for days, she says, in order to fully grasp the message. She understands it, she appreciates it, she knows it's from God and very far from an invention of Jonathan Cahn's, so she was able to conduct the interview with insight and clarity.

But also I was SO glad to hear about how the information is being received. Not only did the book Harbinger get onto the New York Times best seller list but reports have been coming back of people being saved through it.

That's how it first hit me, as a tool to bring people to the Lord. I sent it to friends and family for that reason. I found, however, that I had to be a bit of a bully to get them to think it through so its message could be appreciated, although even after they saw how uncanny and God-wrought it had to be they still balked at stepping past that recognition into belief. Nevertheless, the hope I felt when I first heard about it is now rekindled.

This IS God's work. Everything about it is God's work and that above all has me crying tears of joy. God is doing all of this.

Jonathan Cahn is simply God's chosen vessel for this work. The story itself is about physical omens and signs in the real world that uncannily reflect a Bible verse that relates on many levels to the attack on 9/11. These omens or harbingers point to God's will for America, the judgment He's going to bring if we don't heed His warning, but also the hope He must have for us that He would give us such a direct intervention as this one.

These are signs, omens or harbingers that only God could have brought about, but God also saw to it that the book got published, Jonathan Cahn doing nothing at all to promote it. I'd heard the story before about how God sent a man for that purpose, but this implication of it came through more clearly in this interview than before. This is the story of Cahn's being in an airport and praying to God that since this is His work He must make it known to people, and immediately after praying a man sitting near him strikes up a conversation and tells him that he's going to publish this important book and points him to a publisher. This got described in the Web Bonus part of the interview.

THAT IS HOW PROPHECY DOES HAPPEN THESE DAYS. This is a TRUE prophecy. God DOES still talk to us through prophecy. Those who dismiss out of hand the possibility of such communications from God have closed themselves off from one way God relates to His people even today. Yes, there are all kinds of abuse of claims of prophecy. If an "angel" appears onstage with the "prophet" or is invoked by the "prophet" y0u can be sure he's not hearing from God but from an evil spirit. And people who have experienced true prophetic words may have an unfortunate tendency to fall into the flesh and try to MAKE it happen and mistake their own daydreams for God's speakings.

Yes, that happens, but the TRUE direct communications from God ALSO happen. We just have to stay alert and true to God's word and pray for more discernment.

It was also good to understand how Cahn came to write the book as a novel. He understood from scripture that it is wise to present knowledge in an attractive form and that changed him from his first writing of it as a straight description to creating a fictional structure as its vehicle, and he said that from that point the writing flowed easily.

This too had to have come from God, and this choice is no doubt why it made the best seller lists and why UNbelievers as well as believers are reading and appreciating it. I'm SO happy.

THIS IS ALL GOD'S WORK. God Himself wrought the signs of America's judgment that Jonathan Cahn is telling about, God directed Cahn to the best method of presenting it, God sent a prophet to direct him to a publisher, and God got it onto the best seller list and into mainstream stores rather than just Christian stores.

THANK YOU, LORD. May this revelation you have so mercifully sent to us through Jonathan Cahn save many people. (Even America too, for a while yet, please?).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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