Judgment abides on the American Church because of the Church's compromises. It's the Church that needs to repent.

Chris Pinto had a good radio show, well two shows Thursday and Friday, and I got a needed reminder from him how the election is God's judgment, on the nation yes, but first of all on the church.  This is a recognition I sometimes have clearly in mind myself but then lose for a while.  Why not talk about the merely political side of it occsaionally?  Well, that's OK, but not when I leave out the overarching picture of God's judgment.  He's sovereign, He's in charge of the election as well as everything else, it doesn't matter how Obama got into office from a human or political point of view, he got into office because God allowed him to be in office.  Nothing but nothing happens without God's willing it.

He also made the point that it isn't just a matter of abandoning God's law, important as that is, but that we've abandoned the gospel itself and that means the CHURCH has abandoned the gospel.  He referred to a recent article by Brannon Howse, which I haven't read, about the compromises true Christians have been making by joining with nonChristians for the sake of political conservatism.  That's a denial of the gospel of Christ, it's a denial of Christ Himself.  Glenn Beck is not a Christian, his beliefs are in fact what scripture calls antichrist, scripture warns us we must not have anything to do with such a person or we share in his sin.  Yet apparently true Christians, or we've assumed they are, such as David Barton, are receiving him as if he were a true Christion.  This is a denial of Christ, and if Barton doesn't soon see it and repent of it he'll only destroy his own spiritual life if he really is a Christian. 

We ought all to know that when Joel Osteen says he thinks Glenn Beck or that Mormons in general are really Christians he's compromising the gospel too, he's denying the gospel of Christ, he's speaking in the spirit of antichrist.  Are there Christians in Joel Osteen's church?  I don't know, but if there are they need to leave so as not to come under his condemnation.

Then there's that question of appearing on a program such as Beck's or at a prayer rally that includes apostates such as the one Rick Perry held a few years ago that I wrote about here, or Glenn Beck's, or a conference with the leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation who hold apostate views, whether that also compromises the gospel.  There is no doubt that Christians cannot, must not, pray with apostates and unbelievers.  That I have no doubt about.  We must not pray with Mormons or NAR members or with Catholics either.  This principle is violated all the time in many ways among conservatives who want to see the nation returned to God, including many I know to be true Christians. 

As for merely appearing on a program where you might be inadvertently giving public support to the unbelieving host, such as Glenn Beck, I've gone back and forth on this one.  I think there must be some borderline cases, or certainly cases where it is done innocently where the person does not come under condemnation, but I'm coming back to the position that this is something that only feeds the lies of Satan and should be shunned.  And I'm now including those time honored Fox shows like Hannity and O Reilly and whoever else there is Catholic, which is a lot of them, IF your message is a Christian message.  If it's just politics there's less of a problem although I even wonder about that these days.  Yes, think about it, they're Catholics and no matter how good their conservative politics by bringing a Christian message through them you are treating them as Christians WHICH THEY ARE NOT. 

I'm glad I finally got this cleared up in my own mind, I've been suffering from some confusion and oppression about these things for some time. 

So I have to step on some toes of people I happen to like and think are true Christians. 

There are bloggers who are true Christians who "host" many friends who come to comment, who are Catholics, Jews, Mormons, even one who out and out denies the deity of Christ, even treating them as Christian, even defending them against true Christians who try to tell them truth.  The reasoning is that you must be nice to everbody, they hold siolid conservative beliefs, and if you're nice to them they may come around to true Christianity because you're being a proper representative of Christ.  And occasionally the gospel may be given in rather mild terms.  Well, niceness has some place of course, but compromising the gospel for the sake of niceness is denying the Lord yourself.

And it's inviting judgment on America.  the very judgment conservatives are working so hard to push back, by all the wrong methods, methods that only invite more judgment.

Michele Bachmann was very wrong to appear with the apostate group the NAR.  I have no reason to doubt that she's a true Christian but she too needs to separate herself from those who aren't if she wants God to work through her.

Jonathan Cahn is wrong to appear on Glenn Beck, on Sid Roth, on any platform where women pastors are accepted, on any platform that recognizes NAR members, and his doing so can only defeat the very purpose for which he's doing it, to promote his book which he believes is a message from God.  Yes, I've come to believe that is the case.  I do not see the problems with the book itself that his critics claim to discover in it, I see all that as an expression of their own bad Dispensationalist theology (which I believe they need to repent of and apologize for), but I do agree with them to the extent that Cahn is compromising the gospel by his appearances on some public media and in some false church contexts, certainly Benny Hinn's show, Roth's, possibly also Jim Bakker's but I don't know enough about Bakker's current theology to be sure in that case.

Jonathan says he is doing it to get the message of his book to as many people as possible, and he believes the message to have come from God.  But if it is from God then God must get it to the public, and Cahn knows that sometimes, forgets it at others.  Accepting invitations to publicize the book in venues that promote a compromised or blasphemous version of the gospel is a decision made by the flesh.  The only way the message COULD get out in the power he hopes for it is if he gives it completely over to God and steps out of the picture as far as his own decision-making goes.

The one thing that is absolutely necessary if we want God to withhold judgment on the nation, if we want revival, is holiness, that is, separateness from the world and especially separateness from anybody who represents a false belief in God, and it is this one thing that Christians are compromising at an astounding rate these days.  \

Whatever we do in the flesh is going to come back to us in the flesh.  If we promote revival in the flesh we may get revival in the flesh and what would that be but a work of the devil?  We can even get a phony repentance of the flesh.  If we want a true move of God Himself, our job is to DIE TO OURSELVES and to all the work we think we're doing for God and to all our aims, hopes, ambitions and whatnot, and lay ourselves at His feet to wait on Him and Him only.  THEN He may do what we are hoping He will do.  He may not, but He's ceertianly not going to do it as long as we're depending on "the arm of flesh" and compromising with His enemies.

Yes, HIS ENEMIES.  Catholics are His enemies, sorry to say but it's so, they have to come out from under that antichrist church if they believe even vaguely in the true gospel, and Mormons are even more obviously His enemies because they don't even have a shred of right understanding of the true Christ, which at least the Catholics do.

Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me.  This is what we are compromising.

Again,the nation is being judged by God BECAUSE of all these compromises among His people these days.

Do we want revival, do we want the true repentance that Cahn's book promotes?  Then we have to be ABOLUTELY uncompromising in our separateness from the world and especially from false Christians.

Holiness COSTS.  Many relationships have to go.

Oh if we would do that, cut ourselves free from our compromising connections and methods, blessings would rain down on the Church and the nation, there is no doubt. 

Another case of Dispensationalist literalmindedness? -- the Jewish food laws

Got into a discussion about the food laws God gave the Israelites, the distinction between clean and unclean and why God forbade the eating of unclean animals.   Friend has the belief you sometimes hear preached these days that these laws were given in God's wisdom for their health and nutritional value.  I've always thought that idea to be one of those physicalistic interpretations that drag God down to our level, like those ideas that try to explain the parting of the Red Sea in some naturalistic terms.  But apparently this is a common way of thinking about the food laws among Christians these days, and I'm beginning to suspect this is another piece of nonsense out of Dispensationalism.

I've understood that the food laws were one of the ways God required that the Jews be separate from the nations surrounding them, partly because those nations used unclean animals in their sacrifices but at least as a way to make a distinction between God's people and the heathen.  There may be deeper explanations than I'm aware of, but to sum up my understanding, the food laws were a "type" or a picture, or a symbol, of holiness, the holiness of God's people, kept apart from the uncleanness of the world. 

When God told Peter in Acts 10 that he was now no longer to make a distinction between clean and unclean foods because God was accepting the Gentiles into His flock, the message to my mind is that the food laws never were a mere matter of what's the right thing to eat, but symbolized something else, and again, it would have to be the separateness or holiness of God's people from the heathen.  Now that the Gentiles are being brought into the fold there is no longer a distinction between Jew and Gentile but all are one in Christ.  The distinction is now between the saved and the unsaved, believers and unbelievers.

 Here's what one source said:

Although God did not reveal the specific reasons some animals may be eaten and others must be avoided, we can make generalized conclusions based on the animals included in the two categories. In listing the animals that should not be eaten, God forbids the consumption of scavengers and carrion eaters, which devour other animals for their food.

...When it comes to sea creatures, bottom dwellers such as lobsters and crabs scavenge for dead animals on the sea floor. Shellfish such as oysters, clams and mussels similarly consume decaying organic matter that sinks to the sea floor, including sewage.

A common denominator of many of the animals God designates as unclean is that they routinely eat flesh that would sicken or kill human beings. When we eat such animals we partake of a food chain that includes things harmful to people.

There can't ever have been any health reason or nutritional reason for the food laws.  People have eaten pork and lobster forever without problems. When God told Peter he was no longer to regard foods as unclean that the Gentiles ate, do you think He was giving the Gentiles some kind of second rate form of salvation?  Shouldn't he have said that Peter should explain to the believing Gentiles that they shouldn't eat some of the foods they'd always eaten because they are part of a "chain that includes things harmful to people?"

Clearly not eating scavengers is symbolic of something, like touching dead bodies was also. It isn't ABOUT what's "suitable for human consumption," it never was. It was about keeping Israel separate from the unclean idolatrous heathen and their worship of demons.

The metabolic systems of the "unclean" animals clean up the stuff they eat, reduce it to its constituents, sugars, proteins, fats and so on, which happens with ALL the digestive systems of all the animals. That's why as far as mere food goes it's fine for us to eat it. Pork and shellfish are WONDERFUL foods. I wouldn't eat bugs myself but some cultures do apparently without harm and I'm not going to say they're wrong to do so even though the idea turns my stomach. Apparently it can be life-sustaining if necessary.

It's a kind of Judaizing to treat the Jewish food laws as nutritionally superior to what Gentiles normally ate. If it had anything to do with the value of the food itself then God would be at fault for depriving the Gentile believers of that supposed wisdom.

This kind of literal-minded teaching misses the whole spirit of the Bible.

Again, I'm supposing this is just another of those wrongheaded Dispensationalist "hermeneutics" that I've identified as the basis for the attacks on The Harbinger.

The Right Wing is NOT Christian. We need a new true Protestant Reformation or we're sunk

This video was posted on the "humor" thread at EvC because to them the opinions and worries of conservatives are laughable. It's a production by Right Wing Watch, who also apparently think the Right is funny. So polarized is this nation.

There's some good stuff on it, by true Christians, but what scares ME the most is how many on the "conservative" side are in fact apostates, that is, pseudoChristians like Mormons and Catholic priests, all of them antichrists by the Biblical definition of that term.  MOST of the spokesmen on the video have to be described as apostates.  This makes a HUGE difference because God is NOT going to hear the prayers of those who have such false and unBiblical views.

Such as Glenn Beck has for instance. He's a true-blue conservative, a very good spokesman for the conservative cause, but when he appeals to God he's appealing to an idol and not the true God. That is not going to do the nation one bit of good.

And there he has David Barton with him on his show, they've become good buddies. All that proves is that David Barton's Christian beliefs are strongly compromised, if not completely cancelled out.

The very fact that we had a Mormon as our Presidential candidate already gave me a case of clenched teeth. Nice guy, good family man, solid patriot, important experience that could help the economy, great Presidential looks and so on, but a voting record against core Biblical positions, although he waffled on all that which doesn't help matters, and a blasphemous idea of God. How does that help the country?

Then there was Rick Joyner, again a good spokesman for the Right but he represents an apostate Christian positiion, the New Apostolic Reformation that accepts false prophecies and so on.  Joyner even apparently approvingly, even believingly, quoted the Mormon "prophecy" that a Mormon would become President just in time to save the Constitution which was to be "hanging by a thread" when he came to the office.

It's been hanging by a thread for years, if it's still hanging at all, and really, it isn't, it was done in years ago already. 

The Neurosurgeon's "heaven" story. More credible with the science believers?

The story about a visit to heaven by this neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, Proof of Heaven, is now available at Amazon, and is also getting some positive publicity at various blogs I visit, one of them run by a Christian who should know better, but I've found for some time now that even people I do regard as true Christians in fact don't have a biblical perspetive on these things.  If it's supernatural they buy it as if all supernatural experiences must be in tune with the Bible.  What a recipe for deception!  And Satan's hordes are having a field day with this stuff.  Must be fun inventing "heaven" for the easily deceived. 

I also got an email about this one from a friend who's heavy into the New Age and will hear nothing about the gospel from me.  That alone ought to show that such experiences have nothing to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It should be obvious enough anyway from the stories themselves to anyone who has a Biblical perspective on these things.   

This particular story is written from the point of view of one who had believed the outrageous claims of materialist "science" that everything proceeds from the material so that such experiences are understood to be mere products of a disordered brain and the like. 

The following is from the Amazon Eben Alexander page:

His experience clearly revealed that we are conscious in spite of our brain - that, in fact, consciousness is at the root of all existence.

His story offers a crucial key to the understanding of reality and human consciousness. It will have a major effect on how we view spirituality, soul and the non-material realm. In analyzing his experience, including the scientific possibilities and grand implications, he envisions a more complete reconciliation of modern science and spirituality as a natural product.

He has been blessed with a complete recovery, and has written a book about this most powerful, life-changing story. Simon & Schuster will publish his book, entitled "Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife" on October 23, 2012. 

For more information, including video links and reading list, visit http://www.lifebeyonddeath.net 

Yes, we are conscious in spite of our brain.  I've experienced that myself as a matter of fact although I wouldn't try to persuade someone else based on my experience.  We are immortal souls.  We will live forever. 

But what you aren't going to find out from this kind of report is that there is such a place or state as Hell, which IS an afterlife after all, in which SOME will live forever if that can be called "living."  These out-of-body experiences are designed to mislead you into believing EVERYBODY is going to have this very pleasant afterlife experience.  That's obviously the purpose of them.  No Hell, no worry, just look forward to intense beauty, color, interesting creatures, forever.  THAT's the delusion in these things. 

The whole point is to deny the testimony of the Bible, a testimony given to us to lead us to truth and save us from such deceptions by the demonic hordes.  Keeping you away from THAT is their aim.  God became a man in order to die to pay for our sins so we won't have to go to Hell?  Na, there's no such thing as sin, no such thing as Hell, we like our own delusions better. 

So are Hitler and Stalin and Jack the Ripper having a nice time in one of these otherworldly paradises do ya think?

Anyway, maybe his story will persuade some of the "science"-bound to believe in the existence of an afterlife (not in the God of the Bible, of course, not in salvation from sin through faith in Christ's death on the cross in our place), just because he's a neurosurgeon I suppose, who's sort of in the science arena and may therefore be considered particularly credible for no good reason whatever. Just that he too was deceived by "science" so that makes him more credible? Something like that. So he might be believed by some who wouldn't listen to the Bible which is full of witness testimony to things miraculous and otherworldly but will listen to just anybody today with an experience.

In reality, there's no more evidence for such things from this story than there ever is, of course: You either believe this guy or you don't. That's the way it always is in the end. Unless you have such an experience yourself all you have is witness testimony. That's the way it is with the Bible and that's the way it is with ALL testimonies to anything you can't prove from material evidence or personally prove from yur own experience, such as a spiritual life apart from the body.

I just happened to write about this at my evolution blog this morning, about how faith is based on witness testimony, in response to a post at EvC (Evolution versus Creation forum), as the poster tried to dismiss faith as having no rational grounds whatever.  They simply define it out of existence.  

But as I say at the other blog, faith is believing witnesses, and you believe on the basis of judging their testimony to be credible, and you don't believe if you don't think it credible -- or just because you are one of those who won't believe anything whatever unless you can see it and touch it and feel it for yourself (or so you think, since in reality everybody believes tons of stuff on witness testimony alone).  

I found the statement at this link to be an interesting clue:

Although I considered myself a faithful Christian, I was so more in name than in actual belief. I didn't begrudge those who wanted to believe that Jesus was more than simply a good man who had suffered at the hands of the world. I sympathized deeply with those who wanted to believe that there was a God somewhere out there who loved us unconditionally. In fact, I envied such people the security that those beliefs no doubt provided. But as a scientist, I simply knew better than to believe them myself.

He considered himself to be a "faithful Christian" although he never attended church (he doesn't identify the church he feels is his either) and he doesn't give one iota of evidence that he understands anything that has to do with being a Christian, and as far as this goes he believes nothing any more Christian after his experience than before it.

Yahoo report on this story

==============================
And a followup.  Somebody posted a comment in relation to a report on this book about how a small child on leaving the gravesite of the grandmother who had doted on him suddenly looked up toward the sky and said "I'll miss you too."  That's very touching and full of implications about what the child was supposedly responding to.  Even the "Christians" at this website took it as the grandmother's saying goodbye from heaven.

Question:  Does this story in any way suggest the necessity of faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, or does it instead suggest universalism, that is, the belief that everybody goes to heaven?

The latter obviously.  No mention was made of this family's beliefs if any, just this experience.  This alone OUGHT to alert a Christian to the fact that this sort of thing is a deception for the purpose of detracting from the gospel of Christ.  We have to assume the child heard SOMETHING in order to respond as he did, and if you believe the Bible you should know it could not have been his grandmother in heaven because we don't have communication with the dead, but demons may impersonate people and they are the ones who have the motive to detract from the gospel.

Wake up, Christians!  The devils don't mind using a three-year-old to deceive sentimental souls who would not let themselves question such a supposedly tender moment. 

How do we find Biblical Truth in the midst of today's doctrinal chaos

We are in a time not only of deteriorating morality and spirituality in the world, inviting God's judgment particularly against the once-Christian western nations, and in the cults and the obviously apostate churches, but questionable leanings by EVERY ministry we'd generally consider to be orthodox within the church. 

I was surprised when it turned out that the criticisms of The Harbinger seem to come predominantly from Dispensationalism, a theological system within the Church holding views not normally regarded as cause for division among Christians, but in this case being applied against The Harbinger in a surprisingly dogmatic way, as if it is THE biblical standard and all opposition to it is to be condemned as apostate.  Mostly I've found that the critics are misreading the book to hold the views they are condemning, erecting a straw man argument in other words, but nevertheless their willingness to condemn this straw man opponent of their theology is surprising. 

Normally a criticism of the sort coming against The Harbinger would expose errors based on Biblical principles common to all Christians, such as clearcut doctrinal deviations as from the Deity of Christ, which is held by the "liberal" churches and by the Jehovah's Witnesses for instance, or from a false works-based idea of salvation, which is held by Catholicism and by Mormonism.  A critique from within a theological system normally considered to be within orthodoxy would ordinarily identify that system and not take a condemnatory stance toward the other, but this is what has happened with respect to The Harbinger.   They multiply objections against the book, often with a dogmatic condemnatory thrust, but so far I haven't found a single one that sticks from a truly Biblical perspective.

Sometimes the truly apostate gets mixed up with these merely in-house differences.  I was just reading an article in The Berean Call finding fault with The Truth Project, a series of teachings on DVD I saw a couple years ago, aimed at defining a Christian Biblical worldview, taught by Del Tackett of Focus on the Family.  I found that series to be extremely well done but I fault it myself for including a Catholic priest, and McMahon of The Berean Call shows that that particular Catholic priest has his hands in the gay movement among other things, making it even worse. 

He also objects to the fact that the series was put out by Focus on the Family which also bothers me because that ministry treats Catholicism as Christian and because they promote psychotherapy concepts that shouldn't be in the church at all, and I agree with him about both.  But I don't find the psychotherapy focus in The Truth Project itself and I think McMahon is going too far there --  he thinks Tackett's saying that God has given us all a desire for "significance" amounts to an emphasis on self as in the psychotherapy framework, but I didn't hear it that way.  I hear it rather as a desire as creatures made in the image of God for something better to define our lives than this fallen world has to offer us, which seems to me to be perfectly within biblical implications. 

And beyond that McMahon objects to some Calvinist teachings in the series, even objecting to its quoting from the Westminster Confession of Faith.  Well, I consider myself to be a Calvinist so that's a plus for the series in my mind. I don't claim to know enough to argue the Calvinist-Arminian dispute beyond some basics, so I hold it all somewhat loosely and generally avoid getting into the debate.  As McMahon points out, however, there are some directions today's Calvinists go that I WOULD object to, such as Reconstructionism, which McMahon also criticizes, and their tending toward Amillennialism and Preterism.  None of these doctrines was held by the original Reformers and I reject all of them.  

I made my own attempt to grapple with Amillennialism a couple years ago, which I spell out at my blog End Times Monitor, and found it a frustrating exercise in nonsense.  To this day I still don't have a well worked out end times theology of my own.  I tend to think some things are yet future, I think for instance that there must be a role for national Israel yet to play out in the drama of Planet Earth, I haven't seen a convincing interpretion of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel that treats it as anything but a specific period of years of which 69 were fulfilled at the coming of Christ, leaving seven of them yet future, yet overall I reject Dispensationalism which treats Old Testament Israel as a separate entity from the Church. 

I like some things about Historicism, such as that it preserves the historical FACT that Roman Catholicism was recognized as the Antichrist by Bible believers down through the centuries from very early on, and that recognition has been lost with the rise of these other eschatalogical (end times) systems such as Amillennialism, Preterism and Futurism.   THAT is a major disaster for the Church it seems to me.  If there is one major mistake being made by the churches it is in treating Roman Catholicism as just another Christian denomination.  THAT's the Trojan Horse within the Church these days, the one we should all be learning to identify and eject from our midst and I strongly appreciate Chris Pinto's work toward this end. 

Beyond that obvious glaring mistake, it's like there's no such thing as a pure ministry anywhere these days.  I could list all my own beliefs and objections to various systems of thought just as many others could and I think I'm right just as they think they are right.  So in my opinion McMahon gets some things right, lots of things right overall, even in his criticism of The Truth Project but also gets some things wrong.  The Truth Project gets most important things right in my opinion but does get a few things wrong and that Catholic priest is no SMALL thing that's wrong with it, although I don't find that it affects what the series actually teaches, and overall its doctrine remains creditable in my judgment.  Take out the priest, take a clear stand against Romanism, and psychotherapy too, and get some other ministry than Focus on the Family to sponsor it and I wouldn't have any objections to it. 

It's rather like The Harbinger perhaps, in that there is nothing doctrinally wrong with it although it has some associations that should rightly raise some eyebrows.

Some comments I wrote at Dave James site

Dave James said at his site Biblical Integrity.org

“However, much of the understanding and application of Cahn’s “insights” into Isaiah 9:10 have not been revealed by God as even a cursory study of the passage clearly demonstrates.
I show this in great detail in my book.”

Hello Dave,
Cahn has offered no special “insights” into Isaiah 9:10, he reads it as all of us read it, as a description of Israel’s attitude of nonrepentance after God’s first wave of judgment against them by the Assyrians.

All Cahn did was notice that this verse describes America’s attitude after 9/11, that various American politicians even quoted it in connection with 9/11, thereby declaring the same attitude of nonrepentance it describes of Israel, and that certain physical “harbingers” also appeared in America that emphasize the same message:   That America is in defiance of God, refusing to acknowledge that we are under judgment and that 9/11 was judgment, a first warning judgment so that if the nation doesn’t turn back to Him there is to be more to come.

It’s all in the meaning of the Isaiah passage itself and its undeniable application in America.

I really have no clue what more God could have done to impress on us the understanding and application of that verse in relation to America than He has done in the ways Cahn has pointed out. You seem to be asking for something impossible, in fact I have no idea what you ARE asking for it’s so strange to my thinking.

=====
One more thing, you make far more of the idea of the first American settlers’ having a covenant with God than Cahn does. You claim in your book (p. 58) that “there would be no basis for the book or for any of Cahn’s major ideas” without the belief in such a covenant relationship with God. That is simply not true. God brings ALL nations under judgment, and the evidence that America is under judgment is present whether or not we had a covenant.

And as usual you just run roughshod over Cahn’s endless denials of all the critics’ accusations, in this case his denial of this very thing where you quote him saying (your book p. 67) “…America has been blessed. But the idea that this necessitates such a covenant, or that God entered into such a covenant, is never claimed anywhere in the book."

This is true, but it doesn’t seem to matter what Cahn says or anybody else says, you remain convinced of your own view of it which you are apparently willing to assert no matter what anyone else says.

You go on from that quote to cast suspicion on Cahn’s lack of certainty whether we’re in covenant with God or not. But he clearly has no basis for certainty and was acknowledging that. We know the Puritans and Pilgrims wanted to live as in covenant with Him, they committed themselves to Him, they had the “aim…to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ” in America. They considered themselves under covenant but there is not one hint that this was the same KIND of covenant Israel had and it would be stupid for anyone to make such a claim. The Bible is clear that God initiated THAT covenant.

To call America the “new Israel” does not have any implication of replacing Israel, merely following Israel. And a desire and sincere effort to follow God even after the pattern of the Laws God gave Israel would PROBABLY be honored by God. Cahn says as much. There is no certainty, there is no covenant like Israel’s, but there was a way that America was dedicated to God that DID make it unique among nations and I for one find it compelling that all that DID put America on a special footing with God.

NOT THE SAME AS HIS COVENANT WITH ISRAEL.

===
Today Oct 15:

What happens is if you take the Reformed approach, the it becomes a theological hermeneutic rather than a literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutic. Rather than allowing the text to speak for itself, our understanding of a particular theological issue can get imposed back on the text so that we say “this is what it really means” when the writer would never have understood that meaning in a million years. This completely undermines the idea of the perspicuity of the Scriptures.

 I recently posted a couple of talks at my blog on Reformed hermeneutics by [a local] pastor in which he discusses this and makes what apparently is a standard Reformed argument that the OT writers did in fact understand that they were writing of Christ, so that the surface meaning isn't all there is to it even in their minds.  

He starts from Jesus' and the disciples' own interpretations of the OT, who of course ought to be authoritative --  or do you claim they got it wrong about the OT? 

He also refers to a "grammatical historical" hermeneutic by the way and gives some reasons why "literal" doesn't work. 

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.