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.

The Harbinger under attack again

I received a note from a friend yesterday saying that a certain ministry is going to be coming out with their response to Jonathan Cahn's Harbinger in their June Newsletter. The friend had written to them to ask their opinion of the book and got this information. They also told her that they have some misgivings about how Jonathan Cahn "handled" Isaiah 9:10. That way of putting it reminded me of another review of the book that I blasted in a blog post as extremely unfair to Cahn, and made me suspect that this ministry is going to say something just as unfair.

Today I got my Understanding the Times newsletter from Jan Markell in which it sounds like she knows of this same ministry's intention to review Cahn's book and apparently in a very critical light:

Why Is This Message Controversial?
By Jan Markell
Note from Jan: In a few days a prominent "discernment ministry" is going to release their review of Jonathan Cahn's, "The Harbinger" and companion film, "Isaiah 9:10 Judgment." I have been proud to work with this ministry over the years. But if "discernment" is now tearing down a person's character and throwing a message of repentance into, "The Shack" category, then I guess I'll have to re-think whether I remain such a ministry. I guess it's true: Christians not only shoot their own, they also watch them die a death of agony. In today's world of deception, we do need ministries who tell the truth, but not in the tone of the review that will come out shortly.

This implies that what this other ministry is going to say IS the truth, just that the tone is wrong. Since she isn't naming them I won't either but it will be out soon enough, but my own suspicion is that anything that questions how Jonathan Cahn handled Isaiah 9:10 is not going to be the truth. He didn't read that passage in any unusual way, he read it according to all the main commentaries on it, which he himself quotes in all his talks and the book as well. There is NO problem with Isaiah 9:10.

There IS a problem with some people who don't read carefully and don't think. You can fault the Harbinger for a few things if you have a mind to, such as the choice to put it in fictional form, or the hyped-up advertising that has accompanied it, but if you really READ it and THINK ABOUT it the only honest conclusion you can come to is that Cahn simply RECOGNIZED SOMETHING GOD DID AND REPORTED ON IT. GOD HIMSELF used Isaiah 9:10 for HIS message to America, and Cahn was His willing servant to bring His message to our attention.

New Blog about Rome

Had to start a new blog because of the huge amount of information I was accumulating about the role of Rome as Antichrist through history. Roman Catholicism & Other Antichrists & Apostasies. I've already got a list of sources and a couple of posts up.

Jewish Christians, Pt. 3, Suspicion and Disunity in the Church: Look to the Machinations of Rome

HMore to say on the interview with Shelly and Scott Volk on Understanding the Times radio from last weekend:

After the clip was played of the traditionalist Catholic denouncing the Jews, first Shelly Volk offers the usual wrong defensive attempt to take the burden of guilt off the Jews for the death of Christ in terms of how we all killed Christ and how He chose to die and wasn't really killed anyway, and then Scott Volk quotes early church father Chrysostom who also waxed vehement against the Jews, and says he got it from a book titled The Roots of Christian Anti-Semitism by Malcolm Hay.

Having been alerted to the possibility of Jesuit deception by Chris Pinto I went looking on the internet for some clue to the frame of reference of this book and its author. I couldn't find much at first but finally I found a reviewer of the book at Amazon saying the author is Catholic and I found out it was written in 1913. As Chris Pinto has pointed out, the earlier the book the more trustworthy a history it's likely to be, especially before the 20th century and especially books purporting to expose "Christian" errors, or the devious ways of the Jesuits and Rome in general.

Scott Volk's reaction alone is enough anyway to raise a suspicion in my mind about the author's agenda in writing such a book. If it is a Jesuitical production purporting to reveal the roots of "Christian" Anti-Semitism it's most likely going to be geared to SEEM to put some of the blame on the Catholic Church by admitting at least the well-known facts about the Inquisition --and in any book written around WWII, their complicity in the Holocaust -- while nevertheless managing to shift the burden of blame to OTHER Christians or at least keep the terms vague enough that the reader isn't going to be able to make a clear distinction. Well, you know, the Protestants were just as bad really.

So Scott Volk reads this book, reads the quote from Chrysostom, and concludes that "this is the nature of what is going on in the 21st century church." Not "the ROMAN Church" where it IS true, but "the church," the true Church where it really isn't true -- not to anywhere near the extent he thinks anyway, and certainly not if the proof of anti-Semitism is the misleading "replacement theology."

But I would expect a Jesuit-inspired book to try to get him to blame the nonCatholic churches or anybody nonCatholic. I'm afraid I can only guess in relation to this book, but there's obviously something askew when "the church" or "Christianity" gets blamed for what the Roman monstrosity did to the Jews -- and for that matter did to far more of the true Christians than to the Jews. Scott Volk seems to have picked up that attitude of blame from this book, or at least allowed the book to confirm what he was already feeling.

But of course perhaps not all of the disunity in the church between Jew and Gentile these days is fomented by Rome. The annoyance I felt in listening to the Volks on the Understanding the Times broadcast I explained in the previous post as

1) about their accusation that "the church" doesn't seriously enough recognize the Hebrew foundations of the New Testament

• which as I show in that post is far from describing my own observations of the PROTESTANT church (not Rome), as I was treated to a great deal of good teaching on the prophetic meaning of the Hebrew scriptures in the tabernacle and the rituals and the feasts and so on, and on the role of Israel in the last days;
• and I go on to show as well that Jesus was most probably NOT called "Yeshua" in His day because Hebrew was most probably NOT the common language of the Jews at that time, but koine Greek.

2) about an apparent false equation they make between "Christian" or "church" and "Gentile" which misreads history, especially Acts 11:26; if they are accepting Roman Catholicism as Christian, of course, then there is a lot that needs sorting out here, Romanism being the great pagan counterfeit of Christianity.

3) and about their objection to "replacement theology" which to my mind misrepresents the position of the TRUE churches that hold the view that the Church is the inheritor of the Abrahamic promise. That's the BIBLICAL view.

Not the ROMAN Church of course, the Roman Church isn't a church at all, but a monstrosity of blasphemy, fakery and presumption.

It isn't just Jewish believers, there are plenty of nonJewish Christians who are taking this position as well these days -- contrary to the idea that the church is denying the Hebrew foundations it seems to me that way too many are going too far in that direction.

Clearly the Church is made up of "the Elect," which means "the Chosen" -- how can they deny this? After Christ has come and His Church is being formed, FULFILLING the promises of the Hebrew scriptures, how can UNSAVED Israel be in any sense God's Chosen People? Yet the Volks call them that.

At one point [around 20:40] Shelly Volk gives false history to support his view: He says it's the Gentiles who came to outnumber the Jews in the Church who came to believe that since the Jews had failed, "therefore they have become the New Israel of God." Going on to say "And this of course is called Replacement Theology and it's taken on a Greco-Roman mentality rather than the Hebrew mentality."

This is simply false. Except for the unbiblical part about God having no future plans for national Israel and the Jewish people, what is misleadingly being called Replacement Theology is BIBLICAL! Paul himself called the Church the Israel of God. Paul described the Church as the Temple of God being built of living stones. Paul spelled out the inheritance of the Abrahamic Covenant by the Church, not as replacement but as fulfillment! NOT the Gentiles, but the Church, the Church that is Jew and Gentile in "one new man."

Jesus Himself is the fulfillment of hundreds of the Old Testament prophecies. He Himself is the New Israel and the Church is the new Temple of God. All this is New Testament scripture. To deny it as the Volks and others seem to be doing these days is very wrong. Shelly Volk at one point says "the ultimate end is, What does the word of God say?" [17:42 on the audio counter] But he's just misrepresented scripture by effectively denying what the word of God clearly says, that the Jews took the curse of the death of Jesus upon themselves, and both he and his son Scott go on to misrepresent the word by denying that the Church is the fulfillment of God's plan of redemption of souls and the Elect.

There is no replacement here. The Church is the fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures, not the replacement of Israel but the true Israel of God. It isn't as if the Jews stopped being the Chosen and the Church took over their role, the Church is what all the scriptures were aiming for from the beginning. It has always been the REMNANT that were God's, not the whole people of Israel. It is the REDEEMED, the FAITHFUL, who are God's. "Not all Israel is Israel." The Church is NOT Gentile, it's JEW AND GENTILE, it's the UNIVERSAL CHURCH, it's the saved out of all lands and all peoples. The Church goes back THROUGH ancient Israel through Job and Noah and all the PRE-Jewish people who put their faith in God.

NEVERTHELESS it is clear that God has continuing plans for national Israel as well and great numbers of Jews are to be saved at the very end.

Clearly there is a fear of the growing anti-Semitism in the world that is partly fueling this exaggerated Jewish emphasis in the Church these days but it is a big big mistake to hang that as a blanket judgment on the Church as that book by Malcolm Hay apparently succeeds in doing judging from Scott Volk's take on it.

As it always has, it is most likely that the majority of the true Anti-Semitism is coming from the Roman Monstrosity, and from Islam, the two legs of the soon-to-be-revived Roman Empire, the Beast that is soon to come back to life and trample down everything on this earth.

However, there is no shortage of anti-Semitism in the world, and probably the Church too. There is a spiritual mystery involved with anti-Semitism I think, it's a way God's judgment against the Jews for the curse they took upon themselves gets expressed in the world, and yet anyone who would persecute the Jews comes under God's judgment as well. We're all under God's judgment -- "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone" -- until we're saved in Christ, and that's what we must hope for all the sinners on this planet. God loves mercy over judgment. Vengeance is His, not ours.

In any case it's not right to equate anti-Semitism with true Biblical doctrine as even these Jewish Christians the Volks are doing whether they want to recognize that or not. Scripture says the Jews took the curse of Jesus' death on themselves, scripture says that the Church is the inheritor of the promises to Abraham, scripture says the Church is the Israel of God. This is fact, not anti-Semitism. It can of course be USED for anti-Semitic purposes, but the point is that this whole subject calls for careful distinctions and not the broad statements that came from this radio talk show. Names need to be named so that exactly who is being accused of what can be figured out. A Roman Catholic preaching vehemently even from true scripture against the "accursed Jews" is PROBABLY preaching anti-Semitism, but we need to know he's a Roman Catholic and withholding that information while implying the source is "Christian" contributes to the false equation of Rome the Antichrist with the true church of Christ. This whole subject is a powder keg, it has to be approached carefully and not with broad accusations.

Again, I believe there is definitely to be a role for Israel to play as the end times drama unfolds and huge numbers of Jews will be saved out of it and join the Church which IS the Israel of God.

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

Apparently it's always necessary to make the effort to avoid any implication of accusing individual Catholics of supporting the horrors of the Inquisition or the Holocaust and so on. I certainly don't have rank and file Catholics in mind when I'm talking about the evils of the Roman Church. Individuals may or may not share the mentality of the Church governors, and any individuals who don't share it or can be brought to see its anti-Biblical and anti-Christian nature, need to obey the Bible and leave the RCC. Catholic authors of books on anti-Semitism or the Holocaust or the Jesuits or whatnot COULD be seeing through the errors of their Church. The reason I suspect that Malcolm May is probably a jesuitical type defender of the Church instead is that Scott Volk seems to have arrived at the conclusion from this book that "the church," including Protestants as well as the Catholics, all equally promote anti-Semitism, which is not exactly your fair-and-balanced perspective on the history of these things. If the book really did expose the truth it should drive a wedge between the Roman and Protestant churches. That's my thought anyway.

Jewish Christians, Pt. 2, Hebrew Roots, Hebrew Names

The second topic in the interview with the Volks that I want to bring out is:

WAS JESUS CALLED "YESHUA" IN HIS OWN DAY?
Scott Volk says [11:50] "The church of the 21st century has been duped, because we've kind of Christianized the gospel" and goes on to explain that Jesus would have been known as Yeshua son of Miriam rather than Jesus son of Mary and so on, which assumes that Hebrew was the spoken language of His time and place.

But was it? WAS His name "Yeshua?"

I've seen many different opinions on what language Jesus most commonly spoke, and Hebrew isn't the usual choice. The New Testament was written in koine Greek by various of the Lord's Jewish disciples, which makes it very clear that it was common for the Jews to speak Greek. Therefore Jesus Himself must have known Greek and that should have made Him quite familiar with His own name as said the Greek way. In fact it is likely He was fluent in Greek simply because that was the language of the whole Hellenized world since the conquest of Alexander the Great over three hundred years earlier. In fact the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek, the translation known as the Septuagint, around the second to third centuries BC because Greek had become the common language of everybody including the Jews, who were losing touch with Hebrew. It would be very odd if Jesus DIDN'T speak fluent Greek.

Did the Roman soldiers who were stationed all over Judea in those days also speak the common Greek or stick to their own Latin or what? Jesus had many encounters with the Romans, from the centurions who came to Him for healing, to Pilate. Did the Romans bother to learn the languages of the peoples they had conquered or isn't it more likely that they all shared the koine Greek?

Some claim that the people of Galilee would have spoken Aramaic which would make that Jesus' native language from childhood, and since at certain crucial moments as recorded in scripture He did speak Aramaic, this may be confirmation. At least it would imply that He was equally at home in that language as well as Greek. According to Wikipedia Aramaic has some similarities with both Hebrew and Arabic. One source I found says Aramaic is more like Arabic than like Hebrew. Jesus' name wouldn't have been Yeshua in Aramaic would it? Could it have been more like the Muslim Isa?

It is also thought by some that He would have been fluent in Hebrew because that is the language of the scriptures He would have heard in the Temple, but if the common language outside the Temple was not Hebrew then Hebrew would not likely have been spoken in any other context except the Temple or the study of scripture. He might have been well-versed in Hebrew, then, but not likely to have used it in everyday contexts. However, it's very possible that Hebrew was not even the language of the scriptures at that time, because the Greek Septuagint translation mentioned above was commonly used.

All these considerations make Hebrew the LEAST likely to have been His native language.

It's fine, I think, for Jewish believers in Christ to be interested in the Hebrew roots of the New Testament in the Old Testament, to appreciate and practice the Jewish ceremonies and holidays and so on, especially those who grew up in a religious Jewish family and studied Hebrew, and to prefer the name "Yeshua" simply because it's more Jewish and doesn't have the historical connotations of anti-Semitism they attach to the name "Jesus" -- even if it wasn't really what Jesus was called.

But too often it seems that unwarranted assumptions are made about how supposedly Hebrew Jesus and the New Testament contexts really were, and what for? Scott Volk says the Church has been "duped" and implies we've been deprived of something important if we don't think of Jesus as Yeshua. Well, now it looks to me like Jesus wasn't known as Yeshua at all. I tend to think that if He was and if it was really important, God would have made sure the New Testament was written in Hebrew. Perhaps He chose Greek partly for the very reason that the Hebrew language can easily become a sort of claim to authenticity the Jews can hold over the Gentiles, as they also tried to do with circumcision in Paul's day. For the same reason it's a good thing Latin wasn't the original language of the New Testament either, depriving the Romanists of at least one way of lording it over all the world -- with any claim to legitimacy anyway. Koine Greek had all kinds of virtues for the purposes of spreading the gospel and recording the scriptures, and the added virtue that it soon became a virtually dead language so nobody would want to fight over its claims to authenticity. All of this should make for a more level playing field for the sake of the unity of Jew and Gentile. What a wise Lord we have.

Hey, I believe that Israel is going to have a big part in the last days, I'm glad that Jews are coming into the Church in greater numbers and I look forward to their eventual inclusion in droves as scripture promises. The Lord said He'd come back to the Mount of Olives and I take that quite literally. I don't even see how it could be taken any other way.

IF there IS a significant trend of denial in the TRUE Church (not Rome) that Israel is going to play such a part in the last days, that's an extreme position that needs to be corrected. But also there is an OVER-emphasis on the role of Israel and the Jews that equally needs to be corrected. I don't see that there is really much of a "missing agenda" in the Church at all, as that radio broadcast purports to tell us. If there is, they didn't do a very good job of showing exactly where and what it involves.