The Harbinger again. Or why I am defending it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God's will be done.

Harbinger critic DeYoung may be a false teacher to a very serious degree.

The pastor at Calvary Chapel of Appleton, Wisconsin has written
An Open Letter to the Berean Call
in response to T A McMahon's harsh review of Jonathan Cahn's book, The Harbinger.

Short of reproducing the entire article here I haven't been able to find a particular passage to highlight to get across the gist of the message. He covers a lot of ground. Unless I rethink this, all I can do is recommend that the whole thing be read at the link.

I do have something to say about one tangential point pastor Dwight made, however, about Jimmy DeYoung's theology. I've already been coming to the conclusion that he and David James and probably T A McMahon as well are at least flirting with a cultic point of view that may even be a heresy, in their insistence that the Old Testament not be applied to our own times. But beyond that, this article reveals that DeYoung has actually taught what could rightly be considered a very dangerous heresy, that those who take the Mark of the Beast can repent with impunity:

I would also like to know how Jimmy DeYoung can state in interviews and a local appearance that once a person receives the mark of the beast they can repent and become “unmarked”, because God would understand them wanting to feed their family. This was spoken by him at an event here in our area, and our women’s ministry head heard it. He has also said this on Brannon Howse’s radio program, specifically on September 28, 2011. This completely goes against the clear teaching of Scripture in Revelation 14:9-11, and in my opinion is ignoring the warning for such who do so in Revelation 22:19. He is falsely telling people that they can be saved after they take it, completely naive to what it means eternally to do so. How can this be? Can we agree that DeYoung’s unscriptural position on that is far more dangerous than anything Jonathan has written?

Well, you've got my agreement for what it's worth. This is scary stuff. The Lord is giving a test here -- Will you be faithful to Me or choose to save your own life when push comes to shove in this evil world? To save your own life, as Jesus taught, is to lose it. LOSE it. To choose any kind of comfort in this life over Him is an insult to Him and a sad failure of faith.

Christians down through the centuries have suffered and died rather than betray our Lord. John Bunyan in prison was in the position of abandoning his wife and children if he refused to obey the law [made by the Romanist king Charles II] against preaching outside the Anglican church, when recanting would have allowed him to be released from prison, but he committed his family to the Lord rather than betray Him.

Yet DeYoung would teach this bit of fleshly worldliness that God puts feeding one's family above faithfulness to Him?

Did the prophet Daniel stop his practice of praying to God when King Darius signed a decree that all must petition no-one but himself on pain of death?

For two millennia Christians have been challenged with the choice "Recant or die" -- get burned at the stake or suffer torture at the hands of the Inquisition, "Worship Caesar or die" -- get eaten by lions in the arena or burned as a human torch in Nero's gardens.

Take the Mark of the Beast or die is going to be the last challenge. It's a choice between Christ and Antichrist. Will you trust Him enough to die for Him?

Truly we live in a time of seriously compromised Christianity.

Beginning to suspect that The Harbinger could turn out in some contexts to be a divider of the sheep from the goats. Brannon Howse and others who have been accepting of DeYoung's teachings need to do some serious rethinking.

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.

Yes, The Harbinger IS a "matter of critical discernment" Pt. 2

Preamble: It seems to me that the critics of The Harbinger are responding to peripheral or accidental issues and not to the message itself, that is, they are responding to their own preconceptions rather than the book. For instance, the idea persists that this is a "Thus saith the Lord" sort of prophecy from Jonathan Cahn himself, although Cahn has made no such claim.

This can only be because the book is about a prophetic message, and it's probably wrongly imputed to Cahn as its source because these days there are many false prophets in the Christian arena. We've got the charismatic type self-appointed prophets who have lately coalesced into something called the New Apostolic Reformation, out of earlier groups such as the Toronto Blessing and the Kansas City Prophets and "Joel's Army" and others. The same names I remember from those earlier groups are showing up in the NAR.

It's understandable that the discernment or watchman ministries are on alert against this kind of false teaching, but that doesn't excuse them from failure to recognize that Cahn's message is not a prophecy that he claims to have come through himself the way these other "prophets" do.

The critics are also imputing guilt by association, it seems to me. The book was published by Charisma House, which is connected with Charisma magazine, which is the organ of the charismatic movement, and that associates Cahn with the false prophets in their minds. Now, Cahn's Messianic Jewish frame of reference IS at least on the fringe of the charismatic movement, they DO have a prophetic bent among them, they do take visions seriously and so on. That no doubt would predispose Cahn to be alert to the harbingers he talks about, but nevertheless these are things he OBSERVED, they are not anything he invented or imputes to God's speaking through him or anything of the sort.

He also reported in a couple of interviews the experience of being approached by a man in an airport right after he'd prayed for God's leading as to how to publicize his book, and the man gave him the "prophetic word" that he was going to publish an important book and as they talked it came out that he had connections to a publisher that might be interested and put him in touch with Charisma House. Now, am I to impute that prophecy to the devil or what? I believe it came from God just as I believe the message Cahn gives us came from God. I do believe that God SOMETIMES interacts with His people this way even these days and I see no reason to doubt Cahn's report of this incident in the airport. The prophetic MOVEMENT is something else, their doctrine is far from biblical and there are many ways of recognizing them as NOT from God. We DO need discernment these days, to tell the difference between something like Cahn's experience and the false prophets. It takes a little work and the caution to avoid knee-jerk accusations based on nothing but preconception.

I'd also mention that Cahn's earliest publicity came through ministries that don't exactly inspire confidence, such as Sid Roth's It's Supernatural and Jim Bakker's program. I have to admit that those associations made me cringe too. The spooky type of hype alone from Roth's program makes me cringe. Bakker may have reformed and should be accepted as a brother in Christ but it's hard to forget his past and not regard an appearance on his show as somewhat suspect. Pat Robertson's 700 Club is also regarded as rather fringey by many. And Jan Markell mentions the public success of the Harbinger as in a class with that of Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series, which doesn't particularly speak well for the book to my mind -- unless popularity is all you want for it.

Most of these associations are somewhat fringey venues to today's discernment ministries and to a large segment of the Church.

But it's nevertheless a mistake to let that fact determine how you understand the message of Cahn's book. You still have the obligation to read carefully and think carefully about what Cahn is ACTUALLY saying.

I don't think McMahon did that, as Jimmy DeYoung didn't, as Gary Gilley didn't.

Anyway, back to the McMahon review:

The central contemporary event related to the harbingers is the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. As the fictional story unfolds, it is revealed that the harbingers of warning and judgment are directly related to a prophecy found in the Book of Isaiah. Here is where the major thesis of the book fails the Prophet Isaiah’s own challenge of Isaiah 8:20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.: the author, Jonathan Cahn, has spoken “not according to [God’s] word” but has misapplied the scriptures in an attempt to support his own ideas throughout The Harbinger.

How sad. Cahn has done no such thing.

Cahn gleans nearly all of his correlations connecting America with a prophecy made to Israel from one verse—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.. To begin with, this verse applies only to the tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, who, along with the Southern Kingdom of Judah, comprise God’s covenant people. All the way through TH , the United States is presented implicitly as a nation in covenant with God. No, God has only one covenant nation—the nation of Israel. This is a critical error of the book. Although that may be overlooked by someone eager to recognize the U.S. in Isaiah’s prophecy, one must read the entire context, which begins with verse 8 and runs through verse 21 of chapter 9.

Again, Mc Mahon, like the other critics, has the cart before the horse. Cahn did not start out with any notions of his own about America's relation to God, the implication that there is some sort of special relationship with God comes from the harbingers themselves. If God brought about these signs, planted them on American soil, planted them in peculiarly significant locations in relation to the founding of America yet, THEN the conclusion comes naturally that God Himself is saying something about His relation to America, and Cahn himself kept being astonished at what he was discovering. The main harbingers occur on the very location of the church where George Washington prayed for the nation at his inauguration, which turns out to be on the same land on which the twin towers were built, the church having owned that land originally. Cahn didn't know this in advance, he discovered it as he was looking into the various signs that so uncannily echo Isaiah 9:10.

The signs or harbingers all clearly connect to the Isaiah 9:10 verse -- though McMahon disputes this connection, which I'll get to -- and it also needs to be said that Isaiah 9:10 is not a prophecy, it is merely a description of the attitude of the leaders of Israel after God had brought judgment against them in the form of a destructive invasion by Assyria. This is then FOLLOWED by a prophecy of further judgment from God. Here's the passage:

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. 11 Therefore the LORD shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together; 12 The Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand [is] stretched out still. 13 For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the LORD of hosts.

Mc Mahon, along with some other critics, disputes that the harbingers Cahn points to have anything to do with Isaiah 9:10, but at least from Cahn's point of view he kept DISCOVERING what seemed to him to be uncanny correspondences, and I agree, and I'll spell this out when I come to it.

Cahn flip-flops between God’s judgment and God’s warning, giving the latter more emphasis as he promotes the idea that if the U.S. will heed the warning and repent of its evil ways and turn back to God, restoration and blessing will follow. Although that principle is true for every individual who turns to Him, Cahn picked the wrong passage of Scripture as a hopeful warning for America. In fact, the entire context of Isaiah:9:8-21 [8] The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel.

First of all, Cahn did not PICK this passage of Scripture, he NOTICED it while seeking God for understanding of the 9/11 event; he NOTICED that it was pregnant with meaning related to September 11th. This is how the Holy Spirit operates in all God's people, to bring His word that bears on a particular circumstance to our attention.

Second, apparently a big part of McMahon's objection, as it was for Jimmy DeYoung, is in the fact that Isaiah was talking specifically to Israel, as if Jonathan Cahn, a Messianic Jewish pastor, could have overlooked that obvious fact. This adamant insistence that the passage can have no other reference EXCEPT to ancient Israel seems to blind those holding it to how God Himself used it in reference to 9/11.

Cahn wasn't the only one to see the connection between the verse and 9/11. Pastor David Wilkerson of New York's Times Square Church felt God gave him this same verse for his message on the Sunday after 9/11 -- which message is available at You Tube. Some of the "harbingers" that Cahn identifies are speeches that were given by American political leaders that quote this very verse in relation to 9/11. It's absurd and misleading to say that Cahn somehow CHOSE this verse from which to hang a tale of his own invention.

McMahon apparently thinks that his point will become clearer if he quotes the entire passage from Isaiah:

[9] And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria, that say in the pride and stoutness of heart, [10] The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars. [11] Therefore the LORD shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together; [12] The Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. [13] For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the LORD of hosts. [14] Therefore the LORD will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush, in one day. [15] The ancient and honourable, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail. [16] For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed. [17] Therefore the LORD shall have no joy in their young men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows: for every one is an hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. [18] For wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke. [19] Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his brother. [20] And he shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied: they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm: [21] Manasseh, Ephraim; and Ephraim, Manasseh: and they together shall be against Judah. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

is a prophecy of judgment of the most devastating kind. God declares that He will send Israel’s enemies to “devour” them (v. 12), destroying her corrupt leaders and lying prophets (vv. 15-16), and “for all this,” His anger would not subside, and in His wrath He would not show them mercy. The carnage would result in civil wars among the tribes of Israel—brother against brother—with utter destruction, starvation, cannibalism (vv. 19-20), and finally captivity by her enemy. Even so, “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out [against Israel] still” (v. 21).

No “warning” is even hinted at in these verses.

NO WARNING? This is Isaiah telling Israel that because of their attitude of defiance toward God's first bringing of the Assyrians against them, His anger is not turned away and more judgment is coming. That's not a warning? Surely we can say from other passages of scripture that IF the Israelites repented of the evil doings described then God would relent of His intention to destroy them, a destruction which is prophesied in great detail here. This all later DID happen to Israel BECAUSE they ignored the warning, terrible consequences as he points out.

But even if it isn't a warning to Israel, but a simple prophecy that all these judgments WILL come upon her, if the same attitude of defiance that Israel had is also demonstrably true of America in response to 9/11, WHICH IT IS, are we to say that America is not being warned EITHER and that all we have to look forward to is the same kind of destruction? Is that what McMahon is saying? He could be right, if so, since there doesn't seem to be much of a move in the direction of repentance in the country even now, but that doesn't change the fact that there are uncanny correspondences between Isaiah 9:10 and America's response to 9/11, and at the very least those who do see the correspondences can take warning from them:

Isa 26:20 Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.

The context of THAT verse is God's judgment of the entire world, which can't be far off now and of which His judgment on America is no doubt to be a small part.

To be continued in next post.

Yes, The Harbinger IS a "matter of critical discernment" -- and the critics are the ones missing it

Here's the review of The Harbinger my friend told me was coming, from the ministry of Dave Hunt and T A McMahon, the Berean Call. Perhaps it's not the same one Jan Markell was referring to since it doesn't mention The Shack. Maybe there is yet another smear of the book yet to come. That's certainly what this one is, as objectionable as the remarks by Jimmy DeYoung on Brannon Howse's radio show a while back that I blogged on here, and the review by Gary Gilley I also blogged on.

Well, no book can expect 100% positive reviews, but this one is getting the wrong kind of criticism in my opinion.

The Harbinger-A Matter of Critical Discernment
McMahon, T.A.

He starts out criticizing it as a work of fiction and I'm not going to object to that. I'll only comment that since I came to the book after hearing a number of interviews and talks on the subject by its author I probably responded to the fictive element in a different way than someone would who comes to the book without that background. I didn't like the idea that Rabbi Cahn had chosen to fictionalize what was in reality a very dramatic story anyway, and I worried that it would lose too much of its true meaning that way. He did explain that he chose to do it that way to get it a bigger audience than it might otherwise have had, and apparently he was right. He regards this as a message from God, as do I, and he was looking for a way to reach the most people with it.

As fiction it can't compete with the work of gifted novelists, but that's not the point of it. The fiction is meant to be a vehicle for the revelation. Whether it works or not -- well, it may not work as one might hope, but it's better than I had originally hoped. It may be that it loses something important in reaching a greater number of people. On the other hand, there are reports of people coming to Christ through it, and that sounds like pretty good fruit to me.

On the other hand, although TH is a fictional account that invites subjective criticism, it makes numerous claims regarding actual signs or harbingers from God—which it attempts to justify by supporting them with Scriptures. God’s Word, however, is not fiction. That subjects TH to factual evaluation, because the Bible is God’s objective truth. Therefore, we can challenge Cahn’s claims objectively by searching the Scriptures to see if they indeed are true

We're off to a bad start here. No, it does not "attempt to justify" the signs or harbingers from God by scripture, the scripture itself brought the harbingers to Cahn's attention, the scripture itself has dictated the whole story. I don't know if this is a problem in the book or a problem in the reviewer's mind, I suspect the latter. I've already begun to expect that this review is going to be more an exercise in the author's preconceptions than a fair representation of the book itself.

Then he goes on to quote scripture in a very insinuating way that prejudges Jonathan Cahn. For the sake of space I was going to leave it out but it shows the judgmental mental set of this reviewer so I'll include it:

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.(Acts:17:11) As Isaiah wrote, “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to [God’s] word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah:8:20)... Jesus reinforced Isaiah’s exhortation in His prayer for believers to His Father: “Sanctify [meaning ‘set them apart’]...through thy truth: thy word is truth” (John:17:17).

To use scripture this way is to imply things about Jonathan Cahn that he has not shown to be the case, and they are terrible implications of terrible spiritual failure. This amounts to "accusing the brethren" it seems to me.

The clarion call of The Harbinger , which seems to be quite sincere and is one with which all Christians might agree, is that the American people must repent of their evil ways and turn to God in truth. Amen to that! The major problem, however, is the way that the fictional story attempts to encourage such repentance. It declares that God has sent signs—nine harbingers—to the United States as a wake-up call that the country might take heed, repent, and thus ward off His impending judgment. If Cahn is mistaken about the harbingers and multitudes believe what he asserts, then he has led them astray. That is a serious issue and would identify him as a false teacher. Teaching God’s people wrongly carries a “greater condemnation” (James:3:1My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation.).

As with the other critics of the book, McMahon imputes the motive to call the country to repentance to Cahn himself, failing to see that he derives it from the harbingers themselves which he recognized through Isaiah 9:10 as God's own doing. He also implies that Cahn invented the harbingers or imposed them on the Bible text, without considering that nobody could have such a motive. Either they are there or they are not. Nobody's going to make this stuff up, it wouldn't make sense. And as he has already done, he's as good as calling Jonathan Cahn a "false teacher." I wonder what God thinks of Christians who haven't done their homework carefully enough and falsely call others false teachers.

Sometimes "discernment" ministries are irresponsible and undiscerning.

I have to break here, will continue in the next post.