Dispensationalists are true Christians but misled by Rome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are the Harbingers merely meaningless Coincidences?

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

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

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

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

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

Some more background on Dispensationalism

I'll never master all this theological stuff, I can hardly keep most of it in mind for any length of time.  But once again I feel a need to TRY to get a better understanding of this pernicious doctrine called Dispensationalism, in this case because it's the main source of the criticism of The Harbinger.  If it weren't for this sort of discovery, of how a theological system can so unfairly assault other Christians and bring suspicion on valid biblical reasoning from another theological system, I'd so much rather just forget all this stuff.

But anyway, as I'd heard many times but never really checked out, it's fair to call Dispensationalism a JESUIT PLOT.  The link above gives a historical sketch, and includes this summation:

Through the espousal of Jesuit Futurism by J. N. Darby and his followers, some one thousand five-hundred years of orthodox Christian prophetic history was discarded. Rome wants everybody to believe that the interpretation placed on Bible prophecy concerning anti-Christ has nothing whatever to do with the Roman Church. The Papacy wants us to believe that when Rome fell prophetic fulfilment halted, and will continue to be fulfilled from the time of the supposed Rapture

Some quotes from some anti-dispensationalists from that same site:

"My brother, I am a constant reader of my Bible, and I soon found that what I was taught to believe did not always agree with what my Bible said. I came to see that I must either part company with John Darby, or my precious Bible, and I chose to cling to my Bible and part from Mr. Darby." George Müeller (1805–1898)

I am quite convinced that all the promises to Israél are found, are finding and will find their perfect fulfilment in the Church. It is true that in time past, in my expositions, I gave a definite place to Israél in the purposes of God. I have now come to the conviction, as I have just said, that it is, the new and spiritual Israél that is intended. G. Campbell Morgan (1863-1945)

Dispensationalism is a device of the enemy, designed to rob the children of no small part of that bread which their heavenly Father has provided for their souls; a device wherein the wily serpent appears as an angel of light, feigning to "make the Bible a new book" by simplifying much in it which perplexes the spiritually unlearned. It is sad to see how widely successful the devil has been by means of this subtle innovation. A. W. Pink (1886-1952)

It is mortifying to remember that I not only held and taught these novelties myself, but that I even enjoyed a complacent sense of superiority because thereof, and regarded with feelings of pity and contempt those who had not received the "new light" and were unacquainted with this up-to-date method of "rightly dividing the word of truth." For I fully believed what an advertising circular says in presenting "Twelve Reasons why you should use THE SCOFIELD REFERENCE BIBLE," namely, that: "First, the Scofield Bible outlines the Scriptures from the standpoint of DISPENSATIONAL TRUTH, and there can be no adequate understanding or rightly dividing of the Word of God except from the standpoint of dispensational truth."

What a slur is this upon the spiritual understanding of the ten thousands of men, "mighty in the Scriptures," whom God gave as teachers to His people during all the Christian centuries before "dispensational truth" (or dispensational error), was discovered! And what an affront to the thousands of men of God of our own day, workmen that need not to be ashamed, who have never accepted the newly invented system! Yet I was among those who eagerly embraced it (upon human authority solely, for there is none other) and who earnestly pressed it upon my fellow Christians. I am deeply thankful, however, that the time came (it was just ten years ago) when the inconsistencies and self contradictions of the system itself, and above all, the impossibility of reconciling its main positions with the plain statements of the Word of God, became so glaringly evident that I could not do otherwise than renounce it. Philip Mauro (1859-1952).

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Ex-Catholic-Priest Richard Bennett is a great source of knowledge about the history of Catholicism and its plots against Protestantism.  In this talk he only mentions Dispensationalism briefly, as one of Catholicism's plots so it's not a study of that theology itself, just a confirmation of how it serves Rome. 

Roman Catholic Counter Reformation, Antichrist, Dispensationalism, Jesuits, Islam ...

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The following links are to a series of teachings by Pastor Borgman I may have heard when he gave them though I'd forgotten most of it if so.  It's very thorough but although he mentions that it was a Jesuit who invented it to get Rome out from under the label of Antichrist, he doesn't pursue the implication that Rome is still plotting against the Reformation and succeeding.

The Origins of Dispensationalism

The Spread and Influence of Dispensationalism

The Teaching of Dispensationalism

Of particular interest to me in the third of this series was Pastor Borgman's observation that Dispensationalism engenders an attitude of suspicion toward those who don't believe as they do, which is what I've been noticing about the attitude toward Jonathan Cahn.  And again, it's not that I'd be completely in favor of Cahn's theological system either, as I have my own objections to elements of the Messianic movement, but overall he's completely within orthodoxy as far as I can tell from his book and information at his site, and the suspicion creates doubts that are undeserved and unfairly poison people's minds against him.

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You can find arguments against all this of course, even calling this point of view a conspiracy theory and so on. 

"Heaven" stories believed because the Bible is undermined?

I got this message today on that same post on the Heaven stories that still attracts so much attention:  "Counterfeit "heaven" stories deceive even Christians...":

I disagree about the author of this articles position about ' scripture being enough' for true Christians. I work hard to stay in the word, but there are often times I am challenged or am unable to interpret the meaning of a passage or a chapter. There are numerous translations which change meanings slightly. If a good person is motivated to pray more, to accept Christ or to perform works for others, then why is it impossible to believe that God is using it as a tool to reach people. The bible is a collection of historic stories written over hundreds of years. Why cannot the 'stories' be continuing to evolve? I don't think you can believe Jesus Lives and say that his word is unchanged since his death?

I don't know what branch of the Church this person belongs to but if he/she is in a standard evangelical/Bible-believing church this is a very sad message.

I didn't say God can't use these stories to reach people, I'm sure they can be used for that purpose just as so many other things can be, but that doesn't make them true in themselves.   The problem is that these stories teach a false Christ so you can't say that they lead people to "accept" the true Christ. 

But what is most distressing about this comment is the way the Bible is treated as something that could continue to evolve rather than the foundational truth it is.  Truth can't "evolve" in the direction of something that contradicts it and that's what these stories do.  Yes I certainly CAN say His word is unchanged since He lived on this earth.

This comment also suggests exactly what I've been trying to get across on my blog about the Bible versions, The Great Bible Hoax of 1881.  It is only too clear that at least for some people the many different "translations" only lead them into distrusting God's word, and I suspect they have some of that effect on all of us even if we don't go as far as this writer does.

I feel a terrible sadness when I hear a good sermon preached quoting from one of the newer Bibles, because of the lack of sensitivity to the problem of confusing the listeners among other things. 

In Isaiah 9 just for an example, "But His hand is stretched out still" in the KJV becomes "But His hand is still stretched out" in one of the newer translations and nobody recognizes that that simple little change, so inoffensive, so merely more in our own style, contributes to the undermining of trust in the Bible, and to the problem in the churches of a confusion of tongues, and the very fact that such a LITTLE change was made is an affront in itself to God and to His people.   

I had to live in this problem for a while before that became clear to me so I can't expect anyone to recognize it just on the basis of my say-so, but how I wish I could.  This is the biggest most destructive Trojan Horse within the Church there has ever been, and its armies are devastating the people of God and hardly anyone notices.

Another "Heaven" Lie

Yikes, more of this out-of-body stuff that supposedly proves the reality of "heaven."  This is one from Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who had such an experience and of course wrote a book on it, Proof of Heaven.  It's not out yet but Amazon has a page on it started.

http://www.amazon.com/Proof-Heaven-Neurosurgeons-Journey-Afterlife/dp/1451695195/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349964774&sr=1-1&keywords=proof+of+heaven

The demons are working awfully hard promoting this particular deception these days. 
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If you know and believe the Bible you should be able to spot these reports as false, but those who reject the Bible may fall for them.

Notice that they NEVER give the gospel of Jesus Christ, that He is God incarnate who died for our sins. They give an otherworldly experience and often a false idea of God and Jesus -- that is, false according to the Bible.

As a Bible-believer I know these stories are deceptions.  I believe they are real, however, in the sense that they are actual experiences of a real spiritual realm these people are having, and not hallucinations or tricks of the mind. But Heaven isn't the only spiritual realm, and demons are very clever at deceiving people.

Jesus died for your sins and ONLY those who are saved by believing in Him, saved by the blood He shed on the cross to pay for our sins, saved by faith alone in Christ alone through grace alone, can expect to see Heaven or the new earth.

These illusions are all designed to deceive unbelievers into thinking they, and everybody else, will go to heaven. It's an evil lie concocted by the demons, or fallen angels.   Unfortunately some Christians believe this stuff too and contribute to the deception.  Really depressing. 

A teaching on Hermeneutics from the Reformed perspective, specifically opposing Dispensationalism

Since I've identified Dispensationalism as the source of so much of the craziness the critics of The Harbinger are bringing against it, in an effort to get a better grip on the theological issues I've been listening to a series on hermeneutics from a Reformed perspective and skipped to the two parts that clearly apply to this question. 

This is a series by a local pastor, in fact the pastor of the church I'd be attending if I were attending church, and I have to give lots of caveats here because he doesn't agree with me about some things so I don't want to make it appear that there's some kind of accord that doesn't exist.  I simply strongly appreciate this particular teaching and am learning from it.   I'm already basically Reformed in my thinking, but this particular teaching deepens that perspective a great deal.

As for The Harbinger I have no idea what Pastor Borgman thinks of it, if he even knows about it, and it could well be that he would have many objections to it.  

I'm also aware that a Reformed perspective probably doesn't accord with Jonathan Cahn's theology either, which I've felt all along even as I've been defending his book.  But this isn't a problem with The Harbinger's interpretation of Isaiah 9:10, which is pretty simple and straightforward.  The only reason Dispensationalism is an issue is that it is apparently the basis for some of the objections of this particular camp of critics that I've been arguing against, who fault Cahn's interpretation for supposedly denying the state of Israel its biblical preeminence according to their theological system. 

This elevation of Israel as the main object of the Old Testament is precisely what the talk linked below answers.

Hoping that covers all necessary caveats, I want to recommend listening to these talks at the links, the first one titled

Hermeneutics: Apostolic Exegesis - How the NT interprets the OT

Toward the end of the talk [about 1:07:40], he says this: 

So what do you have [referring to Luke 24]?  You have Jesus interpreting the Old Testament in a way that pointed to ... Israel? 

To who?  To Himself!

You should be really thankful that I'm completely out of time because this is a soapbox issue for me.  To read the Old Testament as if it points us to the nation Israel, either in the past, the present or the future, is to miss the divinely appointed purposes of the Old Testament.  Jesus said the whole thing was about Him.  It all points to Him.

And here's the following talk that continues the same theme:

Hermeneutics: How do Jesus & the Apostles Interpret the Old Testament

Pastor Borgman did a series on Isaiah some years ago, and this is the sermon on Isaiah 9

Why this discussion cannot be cordial

I'm realizing the Harbinger critics are dangerous.  They are branding Cahn as pretty much a heretic -- everything from false prophet to mystic -- based mostly on their own false Dispensationalist assumptions, and anyone who defends him comes under the same suspicion.  There is no way to have a theological discussion with respect on both sides because failure to meet their standards brands you a heretic.  If by their standards you are supporting "extrabiblical revelation" although their judgment of what this amounts to is false, you won't be able to escape being convicted of that charge, and the charge of violating Sola Scriptura along with it.  Their arguments are NONSENSE but they are far from seeing their error and they have a fair amount of influence.  Listen to the call-ins on Brannon Howse's show, go read the comments at Dave James' site.  Their fans just ape their conclusions and accuse their opponents of all manner of serious doctrinal deviations without justification.

 The divide between the supporters of The Harbinger and its critics is astonishing to say the least.  Just about every single point James makes that he thinks shows serious doctrinal issues in The Harbinger hits me for one as an outrageous twisting of truth, an absurdity, a piece of insanity.  Yet, again, I keep realizing these guys BELIEVE what they are saying.  I'd never have guessed it was possible to have such adamantly entrenched positions among Christians on both sides of an argument like this.

As I discovered some time ago, much of the difference is due to the critics' Dispensationalism.  How much I haven't quite figured out yet, but the major argument that Harbinger doesn't give the right weight to Israel and the Old Testament comes from that theological camp.  I don't know what theology Cahn follows, but I consider my own to be basically Reformed and nothing in his book is a problem for me theologically. 

Maybe the most offensive attitude of the critics is that they pronounce judgment from the standard of their own system as if it is THE biblical system and there is no other.  THAT is REALLY offensive.  Cahn just IS commiting hermeneutical error, period, although there are conservative biblical hermeneutical systems other than theirs that wouldn't judge his as error.  There is something rotten to the core about that way of dealing with a fellow Christian who is following another theology.