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.

No, the Old Testament was NOT written only for Israel but also for us

On his latest radio show, Brannon Howse discusses a meeting called Evangelical Immigration Table, in which a motley collection of evangelicals and others gathered to promote the acceptance of illegal aliens. That's a sad development in itself, but what prompted me to blog on it was the fact that they justify this action by a couple of verses in Leviticus:

Lev 19:33-34 And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. [But] the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I [am] the LORD your God.

Their take on it is ridiculous. There is certainly no call to treat illegal aliens as if they were citizens, because they are not, and as Matthew Henry points out in his commentary, the condition was that they worship the God of Israel. Idolators are not to be welcomed. Our aliens are alien not only by culture but by opposition to American values in many respects.

But that's another discussion.

The main thing I want to mention is Brannon Howse's assertion that they are wrong to base their ideology on a passage in the Old Testament for the simple reason that what was written to Israel was meant only for Israel. "We are not Israel. Let's not take verses that apply to Israel and say they apply to everybody and they apply to America."

This strange principle is one I've been encountering recently in the discussions about The Harbinger, which the critics from the very pro-Israel school of thought denounce for supposedly equating America with Israel.

It's finally become clear to me that this is really a sort of cultic point of view, perhaps even a heresy. It flies in the face of very familiar basic Christian teaching I would have thought the entire church took for granted. Of course we apply the Old Testament to ourselves and to our own times, and there's nothing odd if it turns out to specifically apply to a nation such as America either. That's how we learn that God judges nations for violations of His Law and that America is under judgment. Nobody applies it literally where it refers to the specific context of ancient Israel, but there is always an important principle we can take from even the most culture-specific lesson. This passage for instance is a good teaching against xenophobia or cultural chauvinism, an attitude that can be found in all times and places. It has nothing to do with illegal aliens who are in violation of the law.

It seems that Brannon Howse has been taking his cue on this from his friend and frequent guest, Jimmy DeYoung. He might want to consider consulting some other sources.

In 1 Corinthians 10 Paul is talking about the experiences of the Israelites and using them as an example for the church. The message is summed up in verse 11:

1Cr 10:11 Now all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.

And another relevant New Testament verse is:

Romans 15:4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

Brannon's comments on the Evangelical Immigration Table are as usual illuminating, things we need to know, but this false idea about how we are to use the Old Testament mars the teaching.

Conversation with a critic of Jonathan Cahn

Somebody who used to be part of Jonathan Cahn's church contacted me to tell me why I shouldn't be defending his book over the critics like TA McMahon. It was mostly about Rabbi Cahn as a personality and leader of a church, which as far as I can see doesn't have anything to do with the merits of the book itself, so I'm not going to comment on any of that.

[Just to be clear, of course I take such attacks on personality with a huge grain of salt. Personality clashes happen in the church as much as outside it. I don't want to discuss all that but just one hint: I believe the very personality traits that are specifically related to a person's spiritual gifts can be a problem for some people whose minds don't operate in the same patterns. That's why we're admonished to be patient with one another and submit to one another and regard others as better than ourselves. It doesn't come naturally, it can only come through the Holy Spirit.]

In any case, after hearing him out I have the same opinion about the critics and the book I already had.

He hadn't read the book but was sure the critics are right who say Cahn misused scripture. He also seems to be convinced that the harbingers must be some kind of illusion. I told him he should read the book and he said he plans to so maybe that will change his mind.

Well, Rabbi Cahn did not misuse scripture and the claims that he did don't hold water. It's absurd to suggest that he could have thought that Isaiah consciously wrote to a future America, he certainly did not equate America's covenants with Israel's or suggest any kind of replacement of Israel by America. He certainly didn't say anything to link him with the Mormon heresy of The Covenant which Jimmy DeYoung and David James have been insinuating he did. Apparently the overarching objection that leads to such nonsensical accusations is the bizarre idea that we are not to apply the Old Testament to ourselves in our time -- "It was for Israel, period." This in itself is an aberrant idea even approaching heresy. None of this got discussed with the person I'm talking about here, but these are the main criticisms of Rabbi Cahn's supposed misuse of scripture as I understand it and they're all false.

As for the harbingers being some kind of illusion, I asked him to give me a scenario how that might be the case and he suggested that there could have been many trees downed by the falling towers so that if you focus only on a particular one you give a false impression of something uncanny that is really just selective attention. It's a reasonable suspicion if you don't know anything about the harbingers, but if you do -- certainly if you really think honestly and carefully about them -- you are going to have to admit that each of them DOES carry the uncanny implications the book claims for them. Just concerning the sycamore, its having been named after the sycamores of the Middle East which connects it with Isaiah 9:10, its placement in the graveyard of the church where George Washington and his government prayed for the nation, the same church that was the original owner of the land where the twin towers had been built and was now Ground Zero; the fact that a great public to-do was made over that sycamore, its roots being put on display as a memorial to 9/l1, then memorialized in bronze and placed beside the main sanctuary of that church which has a Wall Street address, then replaced by the same kind of tree Israel vowed in Isaiah 9:10 to replace their fallen sycamores -- there's no way this is some kind of illusory mental manipulation to make it merely appear to be significant. It simply IS significant.

He also wanted to dismiss the speeches by the politicians who quoted Isaiah 9:10 as the same sort of illusion, because lots of people could have quoted that same passage. Well, as a matter of fact, lots didn't, although lots did echo the attitude of defiance that the verse expresses. But if lots HAD quoted it that would only increase rather than decrease the indictment of America for that defiant attitude. And as I keep harping on in recent blogs on this subject, you can't treat their quoting this passage in terms of the leaders' conscious intentions and try to deny that the message was one of defiance, because merely quoting the passage straight, thinking of it as reassuring, shows that they themselves share the attitude of defiance in their heart of hearts. "We will rebuild" IS that attitude of defiance in the absence of a recognition of 9/11 as God's judgment on the nation. That's the attitude the majority of Americans had at the time, and the leaders had it too OR they would have preached the verse from an entirely different perspective: they would have preached it as pastor David Wilkerson preached it, as a clear indictment of the nation for refusing to acknowledge God's judgment in the attack of 9/11 or recognize it as a warning call to repentance of the nation's sins and rejection of God. Just as The Harbinger shows, for American leaders to quote that verse is for them to make that attitude of defiance official on behalf of the nation.

This person also said that we don't need the harbingers, the verse itself teaches us that the nation is in defiance of God, and as Christians we know it is anyway without a particular verse to tell us so. This is quite true up to a point, except that, as I recall, the majority of Christians and even pastors at the time of 9/11 denied that it was God's judgment flat out, often rather belligerently, and the messages from pulpits across the nation were about comforting the people, which is of course necessary and right in a time of disaster, but that was the ONLY message, no message of God's judgment on the nation, except by an extreme minority, who were denounced for it.

But be that as it may, you still have to explain why these uncannily literal signs or harbingers did in fact "manifest" in America as they in fact did. There is no humanly possible way they could have been engineered to occur, I don't see how they could be the product of any kind of illusion or magical thinking, and I can't think of any other explanation for them than that God Himself did it all.

One thing that the conversation at issue here did bring up for me is that I have had my own misgivings about the book quite apart from its central message, which to my mind is indisputable.

One problem is the hype I've mentioned more than once here. It still bothers me to see a Christian message I think of as coming from God packaged as some sort of science fiction extravaganza might be. If anything such a message should be understated so that its merits will shine all the brighter. Dramatizing it cheapens it or at least obscures it. Just the tone of "an ancient mystery" that holds the "secret to America's future" would ordinarily be enough of a hint to me that whatever the book is about needn't be taken seriously. It detracts from the seriousness of its message.

And although I've accepted the author's reasons for fictionalizing it -- and it is also good to be reminded that Pilgrim's Progress is also fiction -- I still have the same concern that fictionalizing it detracts from its importance and its truth.

There's no doubt that it's helped give it a wide audience, however.

McMahon did complain about its being fictionalized, but that's about as far as I'm in agreement with him about his criticism of the book.

Sneaky Mormon pretense to be Christian

Because of the clip I've linked a few times now of Jimmy DeYoung and David James accusing The Harbinger of promoting the Mormon heresy of another book called The Covenant, I listened to a Glenn Beck interview of The Covenant's author, Tim Ballard, to see what I could find out about that book. Not much really.

What struck me most is how the two of them try to sound so much like mainstream evangelical Christians. No wonder there are so many Christians out there who are confused or think Mormons ARE Christians. It's sickening to listen to them when you know what Mormons actually believe and teach: about the nature of God for instance --merely a man who "became" God and now lives on another planet begetting "spirit children" who come to populate Earth, and that all Mormons are supposed to become gods just as he did. Then their idea of Jesus Christ is that he was the human son of the human God and his brother is Lucifer. The atonement of Christ in their system wasn't His death on the Cross but when he sweat blood in Gethsemane. That's why they don't acknowledge the cross as Christians do. No cross on their temple, that's a statue of the "angel Moroni" up there, who supposedly spoke to Joseph Smith and gave him the Mormon religion. They also believe that the American Indians are descendants of Jews who came to America centuries ago.

Beyond that I'm afraid I couldn't make much out of the discussion about the supposed American covenant the book is about, other than that they seemed to treat it as something individuals such as George Washington would depend on in some sort of literal way that doesn't fit with anything Jonathan Cahn wrote.

They are claiming to be Christian, though Mormons are not Christian, and they are claiming that the American Founders such as George Washington were Christian, along the same lines David Barton has been promoting for decades, which Chris Pinto has shown is false. They referred to Washington's calling for fasting and prayer for instance, which is the kind of thing that David Barton would use to convince us that he was a Christian, although at least one contemporary of his called him a Deist, and now a book has come out about the Founders that proposes classifying some of them as "theistic rationalists." They believed in a God of providence, so they prayed to him, but they generally completely denied the gospel of Jesus Christ as God Himself who died on the cross to pay for our sins.

Jonathan Cahn certainly doesn't share any of that heresy. I hope he'll answer the accusation that he agreed with Tim Ballard about the views in his book.

Harbinger criticism is totally absurd

June 24, 2013:   I'm rewriting this post because I let myself get carried away too far in the original version. 

The more I see of the attacks on Jonathan Cahn by David James and Jimmy DeYoung and T A McMahon, the more I see people straining hard to find something, anything, to pin on The Harbinger, no matter how ridiculous. While it's always right to give people the benefit of the doubt, especially when they are brothers in Christ, there is something about the absurdity of the attacks on this book that invites at least the suspicion of something less than complete sincerity going on here. It almost borders on the malicious. And this is coming from ministries that generally enjoy a good reputation and a good following among Christians.

Why? What on earth has provoked them to such extremes of denunciation of The Harbinger? It would be one thing if any of their objections made any sense, but unfortunately they seem to be largely reactions to certain words that they are unable to read in the context presented in the book and keep misreading in some preconceived context of their own.

Oh oh oh, he said that the first settlers of America made a covenant with God, yikes that means he thinks America has replaced Israel and God has given up on Israel completely! He said that Washington consecrated the nation to God in prayer, oh oh oh that means he believes America is God's nation now! Oh, and looky look, he even compared Washington's consecration of America with Solomon's consecration of the temple. Oh horror of horrors he thinks that a passage in the Old Testament applies to America today, oh that means he thinks the prophet Isaiah himself knew about America and was writing to us directly. Oh, and he doesn't even MENTION modern-day Israel, that's PROOF that America is the New Israel in his mind.

Jonathan Cahn is a Messianic Jewish rabbi/pastor you would think the ministries that enthusiastically embrace the reestablishment of israel would bend over backwards to appreciate and support. Instead of imagining a few words about America's having a covenant with God into a full-blown accusation of Replacement Theology, you'd think they'd just KNOW that the idea is absurd and try to understand the context in which it was meant.

That brief discussion between DeYoung and James that I posted at the bottom of yesterday's blog does have the flavor of a concerted attempt to destroy The Harbinger. The fact that they linked the book with the claim that it shares the perspective of a Mormon heresy in a new book called The Covenant, based only on a flimsy bit of hearsay that the author of The Covenant claimed that Rabbi Cahn agreed with his views, does not suggest charity toward a brother in Christ. At the very least they seem willing to jump to conclusions and let a terrible accusation stand against Cahn on the slightest excuse. Again, why? 

Every argument that is made against the book is false in every possible way. You'd think they might come up with ONE reasonable criticism, but I haven't seen it if so.

In the absence of any scriptural support, how can it be claimed with any certainty that 9/11 marked the removal of God’s hedge of protection? Furthermore, even if God ever has provided such a hedge of protection around America, is it not possible to also argue that it is still in place? There has not been another terrorist attack since 9/11—even though the motivation, intent and plotting to launch more attacks has continued to the present.

This just doesn't compute.  The "hedge of protection" is a metaphor based on the hedges built around vineyards to protect them from predators. Since up until 9/11 America had been blessed with unusual peace and security on our own soil for over a century -- not counting Pearl Harbor which is outside the main continent of America -- it's perfectly reasonable to attribute that to God's protection, for which the biblical metaphor is a hedge.

And once we have been attacked on our own soil, BY DEFINITION any such hedge of protection that had been in place has been removed. No, it's NOT "still in place" because it was removed or we couldn't have been attacked, and the nation has not made the first step toward the only thing that would bring God's protection back to us -- repentance, that is, acknowledgment and correction of the nation's rejection of Him and violations of His Law.

...in both the book and the documentary by World Net Daily, the author attempts to build the case that America’s leaders were proudly and arrogantly acting in defiance against God when they spoke of rebuilding (even though they didn’t realize it).24 This is very misleading because although standing in defiance of America’s enemies, they were demonstrably not standing in defiance of God.

This one grabs me every time I run across it and I just can't let it go. They WERE "proudly and arrogantly acting in defiance against God when they spoke of rebuilding" because that's what it means to speak of rebuilding and replanting in our own human strength, without acknowledging God's hand in judgment against the nation or calling for repentance for the nation's rejection of Him.

I may have a slightly different take on this than Jonathan Cahn does since he sharply distinguishes their own personalities and motives from the message of Isaiah 9:10. Of course they had no idea what they were doing and if they had they wouldn't have done it, but that fact in itself makes them guilty of defiance, since merely reading the verse as if it weren't an offense to God shows that their motives were defiant in spite of themselves, lacking any sense of God's judgment on the nation, any sense of a need for repentance, only the human will to rebuild.  That right there is the essence of the defiance in Isaiah 9:10 being played out in modern America.

Contrary to the objection of David James, their WANTING to reassure people or even WANTING to be in God's will not only not save them from ACTUALLY defying God in reality, their understanding the verse that way IS defiance. And really, it's a false idea of God they are appealing to, a God they assume would bless America's desire to rebuild and replant WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST HINT OF REPENTANCE, just as a majority in America at the time apparently did. David James is also appealing to this same false idea of God since he actually tries to defend Daschle and Edwards on the ground that they weren't consciously defying God. I think you could say that about most idolators and it's TYPICAL of today's denatured "bless-me-bless-me" Christianity that we just go about our idolatrous materialistic sinful self-centered lives not expecting God to judge us and not imagining that we need to repent, assuming God is on our side. The God that James and Daschle and Edwards have in mind -- even if they might deny this -- is a God who would not judge America and would not require repentance but would be easily placated by rousing renditions of "God bless America" again, just as a majority in the nation did at the time. This is NOT the God of the Bible, in fact this is idolatry, an appeal to a false God, in defiance of the true God.

Sorry, I know I'm repeating myself on this point to an extreme by now, I just never quite feel I got it said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unless we repent.

A few answers to DeYoung and David James. Harbinger is God's own message to America

(June 10 update at bottom.)

I thought at first that the comments on The Harbinger by Jimmy DeYoung on Brannon Howse's radio show were most likely impulsive and would probably eventually be retracted. I assumed that his accusation that the book promotes "replacement theology" was just too over-the-top to stand, and could only be considered at all because he hadn't read the book.

Turns out this way of thinking, wrongheaded though it is, is far more entrenched than I had any idea. I wasn't aware at that time of how rigidly held is the belief that the Old Testament was written only to Israel.

I also really didn't know much about Jimmy DeYoung. Still don't, but I'm now aware of his website, Prophecy Today, which apparently focuses on Israel and the Middle East in these end times. Today on his main page you can see that DeYoung has hosted McMahon's review of The Harbinger, which suggests he hasn't changed his mind.

I did listen to the interview DeYoung did with Jonathan Cahn and David James back in April. There's also a long review of The Harbinger by David James there, which I haven't read through yet. (Also for reference, The Calvary Chapel website I linked in the previous post has lengthy articles from Jonathan Cahn, which I'm not going to reproduce on this blog, at least not all of it.)

The interview brings out the concerns of DeYoung and James about the book, such as their impression that America is treated as replacing Israel, even that Isaiah is treated as speaking directly to America, that there is an implication that prophecy continues today as it did in Biblical times, and the like. They accept that Cahn is not himself intentionally promoting such ideas but it may be that they still think the book is doing so in spite of him. That's not completely clear.

I was particularly struck by David James' arguing that Cahn misunderstood Daschle and Edwards' quotation of Isaiah 9:10. He wants to insist that Cahn missed "the intent of the heart" in those instances, and that if you listen to the whole context you see that they are intending to be in tune with God and not defiant of God. David James even said that you "would need a prophetic word from God to show that they were doing the opposite of what they said they were doing." [this is around 50:00]

This so utterly misses the point it makes it painfully clear why the majority of pastors and Christians in this nation not only failed to see 9/11 as judgment from God but were angry with those who did recognize it as judgment. David James is a seminary-trained man. What are they teaching people in those seminaries?

As Cahn goes on to make clear, the words themselves from isaiah 9:10 are the statement of defiance of God; the mere statement of intent to rebuild and replant is the statement of defiance of God. That both Edwards and Daschle quoted it without recognizing this, even thinking they were giving reassurance from God himself, even wanting to say something in tune with God, does not keep it from being a statement of defiance, merely underscores that their defiance was unwitting. Adding "God bless America" to the message only compounds the defiance.

Consciously, by vowing to rebuild and replant they are in defiance of America's enemies, not realizing that this is the same thing as defiance of God. When Governor Pataki affirmed the spirit of defiance against our enemies at the dedication of the cornerstone for the Freedom Tower, he too no doubt had no conscious intention of being in defiance of God, merely defiant of the enemies of America.

Surely the leaders of ancient Israel who originally said the same words had no idea they were in defiance of God either.

I also want to add that although Jonathan Cahn said it wasn't about Daschle and Edwards personally, not a judgment of what was in their hearts personally, this really isn't true. They quoted that passage because that same sentiment WAS in their hearts and recognition of God's hand and the call to repentance WASN'T. This attitude was shared by the majority of Americans at the time.

A vow to rebuild and replant is the opposite of an attitude of humility and repentance. That ought to be obvious.

The popular refrain in response to 9/11, "God Bless America" was itself defiance of God in that context. You don't ask God to bless a nation when He's just brought judgment against the nation. The only right response is repentance.

James also objects to the various signs or harbingers as insufficiently similar to the originals in Isaiah 9:10 to apply. The many bricks that fell in ancient Israel under the attack by the Assyrians were to be replaced by many hewn stones, whereas in America we have only the one large cornerstone brought in; in the original there were many sycomores that were to be replaced by many cedars, and the sycomore of the Middle East is a fig tree not like the sycamores of North America and a cedar is not a Norway Spruce. Etc. etc.

They seem to be straining at gnats here. They do seem to be asking for absolute identity rather than the symbolic correspondences that so effectively show God's hand. Two towers were struck, not an entire city so the fallen bricks become meaningless? One hewn stone is meaningless because many were called for in the original context, one sycamore is meaningless, one conifer is meaningless. But this completely misses the point that in America these are SIGNS that God gave in clear correspondence with the events of Isaiah 9:10 to show us His hand in 9/11, our defiant attitude and the need to repent.

The odds against such precise correspondences occurring at all in a random accidental way must be astronomical. A tree that has the basic shape of the Middle Eastern sycamore and was named after it too, both being called "sycamore," is a pretty close correspondence. A Norway Spruce isn't a cedar, but they are both conifers and the fallen sycamore COULD have been replaced by, oh, another sycamore, or an oak rather than a conifer, AND as Cahn points out, the Hebrew word erez, which is translated "cedar" refers to the whole class of conifers. {Later edit: The Hebrew word erez apparently applies to the specific class of trees with the Latin name pinacea, or pine type trees, a classification which includes the pine and the fir as well as the CEDAR and the SPRUCE.]

Also, the fact that the quarried cornerstone turned out not even to be needed in the building of the new tower at Ground Zero is treated by David James as eliminating any correspondence with Isaiah 9:10, but it ought to be recognized that it's even MORE uncanny this way BECAUSE it isn't needed. It was brought in nevertheless and dedicated to the task with the same attitude of defiance. NO stone whatever, because modern building methods don't require it, would dash the claim of similarity with Isaiah 9:10 but such a hewn stone brought in spite of its not being needed confirms it.

The main correspondence with Isaiah 9:10 is the vow of defiance, the vow of the INTENTION to rebuild. The actual rebuilding is, if not irrelevant, beside the point as far as the signs or harbingers are concerned. ALL THIS IS INTENDED TO BE SYMBOLIC and the correspondences are eerily uncanny for that purpose.

I don't think those who have such objections to The Harbinger are likely to change their minds. They've read the book and they still believe as they do.

As Jonathan Cahn ends up saying, the fact is that Christians including pastors and church leaders from many denominations across the country have recognized the importance of the message; it's had a huge and growing success and is bearing good fruit everywhere in changed lives, recommitments to the Lord, prayers of repentance and the like.

Scripture says there always have to be some dissenters for the truth to be made manifest (I'm not going to say "heretics" here).

Maybe it hasn't been said, or said clearly enough: The Harbinger is as far as I know unique of its kind. I don't know of any other message that has come so clearly from God Himself to any part of the world since Biblical times. This by itself is enough to raise questions about it, of course, but the specifics of the message are what must convince you that this is no man-invented message, this does indeed come from God. For whatever reason, God Himself IS specially blessing America with this message of warning and we'd do well not to miss it.

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June 10, 7 AM: Oh bruuuther. Just went to Jimmy DeYoung's website and found a discussion between him and David James doing their best to further trash the Harbinger as some kind of theological heresy. They are talking about another book that has come out called the Covenant which according to them does treat America as a covenant nation in exactly the same sense as ancient Israel, and they again smear The Harbinger with guilt by association.

First they don't even give the name of the author of The Covenant so it sounds for a while like it was written by Jonathan Cahn. Its author is Timothy Ballard. Then they give the hearsay that the author of The Covenant claims to have had a conversation with Cahn in which Cahn agreed with him about the content of his book. I have to seriously doubt this. There is NOTHING about the Harbinger that goes along with the ridiculous Anglo-Israelism which is apparently what the Covenant is about. If they DID talk and Cahn agreed with him about anything it could only have been with a very limited statement he made.

From the sound of it, if this little bit of information can be trusted, The Covenant IS a heresy and it's probably a heresy in more ways than one as the Google page on it shows that its author has been on Glenn Beck's show pushing the idea that America is a Christian nation along the same lines as David Barton does, who has been shown by Chris Pinto to have been misrepresenting the facts in what could almost be called a near-criminal way. Anglo-Israelism is part of Mormon lore, which would make this book doubly welcome by Beck.

Satan never sleeps. Anything to confuse and bury whatever comes from God. By now Jonathan Cahn must be aware that dozens of accusations can be made up against his book that he could never have dreamed of in a million years. Lord protect him.

What I point out in the post above about DeYoung and James' interview with Cahn ought to demonstrate that they don't know what they are talking about. James utterly misreads the message of the nation's defiance, in a very silly way, committing the same sin himself that Isaiah 9:10 reveals as defiance.

I really don't think this ministry deserves to be followed at all, but apparently they do have some popularity and unfortunately probably do need to be answered.
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Checked out The Covenant at Amazon where I found a review that blows its cover: Thinly Veiled Mormon Drivel: Beware! The author did enough research to uncover Tim Ballard's Mormon background. The reviewer is a bit too favorable toward Glenn Beck it seems to me, but all that's needed here is the revelation that Ballard is Mormon.

JUST ANOTHER BIT OF THE GREAT APOSTASY. NOTHING WHATEVER TO DO WITH THE HARBINGER.