More from Jan Markell

Just a short excerpt from Jan Markell's EAlert that spoke to me today.  You can read the rest at the link. 

Are You Weary Of Being Outraged?

 

If you're like me, you're fed up. You're disgusted that evil always seems to win! You wonder why God allows serial liars in government and elsewhere to keep prospering and even to win re-election in many places. Just being aware of the fact that we're in an Isaiah 5:20 world isn't enough: that we're likely in the midst of evil being called good.  

 

We have unspeakable atrocities going on at the highest levels. People are being silenced on Benghazi and the perpetrators are still running free. America funds one of the most evil outfits on earth: the Muslim Brotherhood. All Americans are being spied on! What I'm typing here in real time is likely being recorded somewhere. You and I are being watched and listened to as if we were criminals. Truth is, we are being watched by criminals -- the ones who are murdering the Constitution.  And soon we're going to have to trust the most corrupt institution there is - the IRS - to administer our healthcare.

 

And even if we rioted in the streets, or started a third, fourth, or fifth political party, we wouldn't see much of a change for the good. Government is supposed to serve us yet it is clearly operating the other way around and to many, government has now become a god. Just quoting the familiar verse from Proverbs 29:2, "When the wicked rule, the people mourn," is not a comfort. We want to throw the wicked bums out and cannot.  

   

...Set aside the world for a minute and let's consider the church. We're outraged that people love false teachers and that they cannot see that they are false!  We're driven nuts by the death of discernment. We watch a lot of Christians today beat up on one another probably for their own personal gain. We're sick of the religious Left deluding Christians to take their focus off of the gospel and onto global warming, immigration, and social justice. And we're even more outraged when these Christian Leftists parade around as evangelicals, but then we're saddened that the word evangelical has become so trashed.

     

..."Do not fear" is in the Bible 365 times.  Is there a message there? It is an act of faith to look at this world and not fear. Not be anxious. Not be angry. Not be frustrated. Focusing on eternal things neutralizes the attitude and the angry juices in your gut telling you that you can't stomach one more dilemma.

  
So, come quickly, Lord Jesus! 

Amen.

I'm so weary of it all I don't even feel outrage much any more, evil is just the new normal, at some point you grasp that there is little to nothing you can do about it and it's just sad. 

It's just a handful of people who even know the world is as evil as it is these days, many of the rest have a strange optimism that day by day we're getting better and better, and if there's anything wrong more often than not it's the fault of the crazy Christians and other anti-progressives. 

But yes, do not fear but look up for your redemption draweth nigh.  

End Times sadness about Israel, & about the condition of the Church

More sadness about the times we live in.  Gets to me a lot these days.  Just heard Jan Markell's weekend radio show, When Being Jewish is a Crime where she demonstrates the growth of anti-Semitism in America, really depressing stuff, and of course the usual negative attitude against Israel which is all of a piece with the anti-Semitism.  I don't share the theology of those ministries that teach that the Old Testament still applies to unsaved Israel, but I nevertheless believe Israel and the Jews are a big part of God's plan for the last days, and even if I didn't, I know Israel is not guilty of the charges the world keeps slamming against her.  It's all trumped up and that fact alone shows that God still cares about* His wayward people or they wouldn't be attracting such hatred.  They need the gospel above all of course, need to recognize their own true Messiah whom they've always rejected, that's where all our prayers should be focused.

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UPDATE 7/21:  *Feel I need to be more accurate about the hatred piling up against Israel.  Yes it certainly indicates God has His eye on her, but so did the miraculous events of their wars in which a vastly outnumbered little nation defeated the big Arab nations that tried to destroy her more than once.  There is no doubt in my mind that God is watching over Israel, and scripture indicates that when the Lord Jesus returns it will be to the Mount of Olives.  There is no doubt that Israel figures in God's end times plans. 

Nevertheless it seems necessary to try to account for the hatred in other terms as well, as God's judgment.   This is how I explain the precarious position of America in the world today after all, so much hatred around the world after a long time of being in the world's favor, the demoralization and undermining of the culture that we've been witnessing for some time and so on.  I think America has been particularly blessed by God, and in some sense also in a covenant with God because of the dedications of the land to God by early Protestant settlers, and their determination to live by God's law.  This is not the same as the covenant initiated by God with Israel but it is still a special relationship that many early Americans honored and appears to have been greatly blessed by God.  So God's judgment of America is likely to be more severe than His judgments of other nations that haven't known God. 

Israel of course represents the God of the Old Testament in a very high profile way, and the fact that they themselves don't recognize their own God but are in an apostate condition, a sinful condition, even rejecting Him outright, puts them in the position of drawing down a really terrible judgment, described clearly in the Hebrew scriptures, Deuteronomy 10 and Leviticus 26 in particular.  I also don't think we can ignore the fact that they are still under the curse they took upon themselves when they chose Barabbas over Christ and called for our Lord's crucifixion.  Jesus from the cross asked the Father to forgive them, but until they repent there can be no forgiveness.  Yet scripture says they WILL repent, the last generation will recognize Him as the Messiah and turn to Him.  But before that happens they are under God's judgment.   Again, simply on the basis of the curses in Deuteronomy and Leviticus they are under God's judgment anyway because they are in the apostate condition of having turned away from their God altogether to rule themselves.  To recognize this would be a very bitter thing for the Jews but in the end they must come to recognize it. 

God hasn't abandoned them.  He's watching over them.  Something wonderful is going to happen with them and probably not too long from now, if I understand this rightly, but before that happens scripture seems to indicate they are to go through a terrible time of judgment known as "Jacob's trouble." 

Yes, they need the gospel of their Messiah above all and we need to be praying for them.    

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Then I read a new attack on the Harbinger, the usual crazy misreading of it, the idea that Cahn thinks America was directly predicted in Isaiah's text.  What's depressing about that is that Christians can think so wrongly about anything and be so aggressive and destructive in their wrong thinking as well.  There are also Christians who accuse him of "extrabiblical revelation" and again I experience the sadness that Christians have no ability to judge these things rightly.  Extrabiblical revelation is the Book of Mormon, it's the papal teachings of Rome that contradict the Bible, it's the people who think they have the Spirit and trust whatever the "Spirit" seems to say even if it's contrary to scripture, and The Harbinger is not guilty of any such thing; it is a straightforward application of the Biblical text.  This is not some need I have to defend The Harbinger, because I've been terribly disappointed in Jonathan Cahn's alliances with false teachers and apostates and figure the book's message is compromised by that and can't do the work of influencing the nation to repentance and revival for that reason.  Despite all that I still find the main message of his book to hold up so now it just stands as God's judgment of the nation that won't be turned back.

Christians all around seem to be falling for compromises of various sorts, seem unable to apply the most basic biblical discernment to the situations we are facing these days.  It's all very sad.  Not that I consider myself safe from such errors either, all I can do is pray to be preserved from them as much as possible.

As usual there are other things on my mind I could add to this and as usual I'm not sure I have the energy to get to them.  But if I can I will.

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Meanwhile I'm due for surgery in a few weeks and hope Christians reading any of my blogs would pray for a good outcome.  Thanks.

The Lincoln Assassination the work of the Vatican / Jesuits

First a brief musing on how the World Out There, or some parts of it, insists on demonizing Biblical Christians these days.  If we express our belief in the scripture's teaching that homosexuality is sin, we "hate gays" although we also recognize many other kinds of sins than homosexual sin without being labeled as "hating adulterers" or "hating thieves" or whatnot;  if we argue against evolution we "hate science" although I've never known a Christian who didn't appreciate the achievements of science, and most science has nothing to do with evolution; and if we suggest that the Vatican is a power hungry organization that still wants to take over the world, we're characterized as "hating Catholics" even though we usually work hard to make it clear we understand that ordinary Catholics have nothing to do with that.   It doesn't matter what we say, THEY know the truth and we're just ignorant dupes of religion.

When it comes to things Catholic, such as the information I've been gathering lately about how Jesuits were behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, there is no way to get even a moment's open-minded consideration of the idea, which they label as a "conspiracy theory" as if that magic label all by itself dispels the very possibility.  You even get accusations of believing in Bigfoot or the like as if there's any connection whatever.  The way these people think is hard to follow, they just leap from one category to another within some bizarre frame of reference entirely of their own, but it all adds up to an abiding bias against Bible Christianity whatever mental route they take.  About all we can glean from this is that prophecy is being fulfilled more rapidly and consistently than we might have expected only a few years ago.

About the Lincoln assassination, I first learned of a Jesuit connection from the book by Charles Chiniquy, 19th Century priest who eventually left the Church of Rome.  He knew Lincoln from the time Lincoln as a lawyer successfully defended him against some false charges by his Catholic superiors.  He described all this in his book Fifty Years in the "Church" of Rome.  Now there is a book out by a Paul Serup, a Canadian who researched Chiniquy's claims over a couple of decades and ended up confirming them.  I have yet to read his book, Who Killed Abraham Lincoln? but of course I'm already well disposed toward it because Chiniquy is a credible witness. 

But you can't tell the World about this without being treated to heaps of scorn and abuse.  Don't we already know enough about the assassination?  It was all Confederate vengeance for the Civil War according to current wisdom.  The idea that perhaps the truth of who was behind it has been suppressed is just proof of "conspiracy thinking" that couldn't possibly have any merit. 

A typical taunt from this quarter goes:

When you have a letter from Pope Pius IX to John Wilkes Booth you let us know, okay?

I wonder if correspondence between Pope Pius IX and Jefferson Davis would suffice, in which the pope tacitly recognizes the Confederacy as a nation unto itself by referring to Davis as "President of the Confederate States of America," making him the only head of state to recognize the Confederacy.  Could this suggest a connection between Catholicism and the Confederacy that might then suggest a connection with the conspirators to kill Lincoln?

Then there is this quote of Lincoln given by Chiniquy, which of course is denied by Catholic apologists and therefore also denied by those who must believe all this a mere case of conspiracy thinking that has no real substance: 

This war would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits. We owe it to Popery that we now see our land reddened with the blood of her noblest sons. Though there were great differences of opinion between the South and North, on the question of slavery, neither Jeff Davis nor any one of the leading men of the Confederacy would have dared to attack the North, had they not relied on the promise of the Jesuits, that, under the mask of Democracy, the money and the arms of the Roman Catholics, even the arms of France, were at their disposal if they would attack us.”

 
Here's an interesting website, or perhaps a rather strange website, but its content is interesting.  They make the following accusations including the above quotation: 


That Pope Pius IX did plan, coordinate and deliberately instigate the conditions and actions that directly led to the American Civil War, in particular the rise of the secessionist movement of wealthy slave owners, the funding of extremists on both sides (North and South), on the political successes of Southern President Davis an in particular on the attach of Fort Sumter in South Carolina which started the conflict.

That the motivations of the Papacy were not only to sustain its last profitable enterprise of slave trade, but to actively destabilize the largest constitutional democracy in the world.

That so directly involved were the Papacy in causing the war that President Abraham Lincoln himself did write and say: “This war would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits. We owe it to Popery that we now see our land reddened with the blood of her noblest sons. Though there were great differences of opinion between the South and North, on the question of slavery, neither Jeff Davis nor any one of the leading men of the Confederacy would have dared to attack the North, had they not relied on the promise of the Jesuits, that, under the mask of Democracy, the money and the arms of the Roman Catholics, even the arms of France, were at their disposal if they would attack us.” President Lincoln.

Furthermore, the direct and constant involvement of Pope Pius IX is also evident in his attempt to prolong the war by pledging support in a letter to Confederate President Jefferson Davis in 1863 in which the Pope pledged his sympathy to the Southern cause, that there were people loyal to their cause in the North and all around the world. That when this letter was published to encourage support in 1863, it did have the opposite effect whereby of 144,000 Irishmen that enlisted, 104,000 deserted after the recognition of the Confederacy by the Pope. That because of the direct and deliberate involvement of the Vatican and Pope Pius IX in deliberately destabilizing the United States, the Roman Catholic Church is directly responsible for the death of 498,332 people because of the Civil War and the ensuing decades of misery and cost it caused. Of murder (political assassination) (1865)

That Pope Pius IX did authorize the funding and mission that resulted in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865. That John Wilkes Booth and other conspirators were recruited, funded and controlled for their mission by the Jesuit emissaries of the Pope. That on at least one occasion there was clear evidence of the connection between the Vatican’s involvement when John Wilkes Booth did spend ten days in October 1864 in Montreal with Catholic priests and several days in Toronto at St. Patrick Hall, an important meeting place for the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union. It is in Canada, that it is believed Booth was shown (never given) letters of authority from the Pope himself for the assassination mission.

That of the conspirators discovered and arrested, a number of their family did successfully escape through the direct and known assistance of the Roman Catholic priests from Montreal. That John H. Surratt (son of conspirator Mary Surratt) upon reaching Rome was appointed to the Pope's Zouave military unit but was arrested by U.S. officials and brought back to trial in Washington, D.C. in 1867.

That upon US authorities discovering the extent of the Papal involvement, it did end all diplomatic ties with the Vatican in the same year. (1867). That these relations with the US were only normalized in 1984.

Of crimes against humanity for the purpose of promoting the international slave trade : (1866) That the Holy Office upon the orders of Pope Pius IX did declare on 20 June 1866: “Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just titles of slavery and these are referred to by approved theologians and commentators of the sacred canons.... It is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given”. That this position was officially published as part of a campaign to encourage European and Latin American Catholic nations to enter the war on the side of the South to ensure the most profitable slave market for the Vatican remained operational.

Of historic false statement, moral indignity, heresy and contempt for the fundamental rights of common law (1871) 

I would like to see all this documented of course, but since I find Chiniquy credible and many others who have written similarly about the machinations of the Vatican, I don't have any reason to doubt it.  I will eventually get Paul Serup's book, hoping he's done a lot of the needed documentation there.

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Here's an earlier post I did on this subject at my Catholicism blog, including links to Chris Pinto's radio shows on the subject.
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http://xpknights.net/images/lettertoJeffersonDavispdf

http://one-evil.org/content/people_19c_pius_ix.html

Sainting a Pope, conjuring a miracle, misleading a faithful Catholic woman.

So Pope John Paul II is going to be made a "saint" according to the pagan formula of the Roman Catholic system.  It takes a recognized "miracle" to qualify a person for "sainthood" in that system.  Turns out there's a woman in Costa Rica who believes the Pope healed her of a brain aneurism she had been told would take her life probably within a month. 

She says she prayed to the late pope to heal her

Roman Catholics pray to dead people.  The Pope isn't even officially a "saint" yet but she prayed to him.  She has a shrine in her house to that Pope, something pagan religions set up to honor their gods.

The doctor who diagnosed her says he didn't give her a short while to live but rather a very small chance of bleeding in her brain, and put her on a diet to reduce this very slight risk, but he does say it's amazing that there are now no signs of the aneurism present, and it looks like this will be counted as a miracle toward the sainting of the former Pope. 

I don't have any reason to doubt her story about the healing episode itself.  I would of course doubt the source of the voices she heard and of the healing as well, assuming it can be considered a healing. 

But what most interests me is the patent paganism in the Roman Church, and how this Roman Catholic woman is so sadly misled. 

What does Roman Catholicism have to do with Christianity at all?

A Note on Recent Topics at my Woman's Head Covering Blog

Had some recent activity at my blog about the woman's head covering, Hidden Glory which hasn't been active for quite some time -- although of course I hope it gets read by some anyway.

My two most recent posts there are about how both R C Sproul and Daniel Wallace defend the head covering, but while Sproul continues to advocate it, which of course makes me very happy, Wallace has changed his mind.  He now joins with those who believe it was merely a cultural symbol of Paul's time that can be substituted with the appropriate symbol in other times and places.

I continue to believe that the head covering is one of the most important Bible teachings that Christians are misreading or ignoring to our peril or at least to the weakening of our Christian life.  I even think it may be a hidden reason for the ever-growing apostasy in the Church at large, as sin begets sin and when we fall away in one area we are more likely to fall away in others.  The head covering is unique among the ways the Church is stumbling in that it is not recognized as such at all, not taken seriously by the vast majority, treated as unimportant, that's what I mean about how it is a hidden contributor to the apostasy. 

While God has brought revival to churches that haven't honored this requirement, I rather think it might be an important element in any revival we could expect from now on, if revival is even a possibility in our current degenerate condition.

My Very Last Post (I Hope) on the Subject of Jonathan Cahn's book The Harbinger

June 3 UPDATE:  A good interview about the Harbinger and more thoughts about how the message is only going to fail.  

 Mike Huckabee did a radio interview with Jonathan Cahn back in March, in which Huckabee emphasizes that what makes the book important is its actual FACTS, indisputable facts.  Whatever objections people have to the book or to Jonathan Cahn himself, there shouldn't be any doubt at all that the book is a revelation of portentous FACTS that occurred in America in connection with 9/11.  These facts can only be interpreted as signs of God's judging the nation, starting with 9/11, but pointing to future judgment as well if the nation does not repent and turn back.  This is not a book of opinion or speculation or theological vagueness, it's all about observed facts, that's what makes it an important book. 

Huckabee reported that the book had sold 60 million copies as of the interview, which is a staggering number.

 Despite all its apparent success I continue to feel its impact has been compromised by Cahn's publicizing it on some very fringey charismatic venues.  People will read and marvel at it but is it going to turn the nation back to God?  See, I think it COULD HAVE, but I think that would have required that it not be associated with borderline heresies and even outright apostasies.  Besides its being publicized in this way, there have been ecumenical prayer meetings based on the book's revelation involving some conservative politicians.  Jonathan Cahn appeared at an ecumenical prayer breakfast convened to pray for the nation right after Obama's last inauguration.  He gave a great talk and I hoped that would be enough, but in the end I think simply being in an ecumenical setting for the purpose of prayer is not going to be blessed by God. 

God will not bless anything ecumenical, God will not bless anything but His true Church.  For decades now Christians have been allowing compromises that can only defeat such a message as The Harbinger.

At the time of 9/11 itself only a very few Christian leaders dared to call it God's judgment, most across the nation were denying that God would have had anything to do with it.  Then President Bush had that abomination of an ecumenical prayer meeting in the National Cathedral to pray for the nation.  All I could do was cringe.  The idea that God would hear such prayer shows a miserable loss of Christian perspective in this country.  SUCH MIXING OF HIS CHURCH WITH UNBELIEVERS AND FALSE RELIGIONS ONLY INVITES GOD'S FURTHER JUDGMENTS ON THE NATION.

Then God showed Jonathan Cahn some pretty dramatic signs that the nation is under judgment starting with 9/11, but now I fear that message is also being vitiated by keeping bad company.  DIDN'T GOD TELL US THAT HE WILL NOT BLESS WORSHIP OR PRAYER TO BOTH HIMSELF AND MOLECH?    What is Jonathan Cahn thinking?  How can his message survive such compromise?  Well, I don't think it will.  I think it's pretty clear that there are no signs of effective repentance as a result of the book, even if there may be some pockets of repentance here and there.

Really, it ought to be clear to the conservative Christians by now that their ecumenical joining in with the conservative factions of false religions over the last few decades HASN'T ACCOMPLISHED WHAT THEY AIMED TO ACCOMPLISH by such connections.  Starting back at least with the Moral Majority, has the nation been getting any better in the areas that conservatives care about?  NO!  Isn't it obvious that things have only been getting steadily worse in the areas we care about? 

WHY?  Has God become deaf?  Haven't the ecumenical political organizations been working hard enough?  Hasn't there been enough ecumenical prayer?  Oh Christian America!  No, the problem is the ecumenism itself, that you are joining with Molech to accomplish goals that God will not bless for that reason. 

Purify the Church, separate from the apostates and the false religions, strengthen the doctrines of the CHURCH, expose the false doctrines, and THEN pray for the nation. 

Or The Harbinger like all the rest of the warning signs of national deterioration and judgment is just going to be a flash in the pan and the nation is going to continue going down.  The book can even give a timetable for how that is likely to happen.  Perhaps that's its only value now.

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My Very Last Post on The Harbinger?

The way things have been going I don't think The Harbinger is going to have much more of an impact than it's already had.  I think this partly has to be due to Cahn's persistence in publicizing it through charismatic channels, which I do think is wrong, and likely to be a dead end as far as getting out the message goes if only because so many Christians object to him for that reason. 

I don't think this is a bad thing.   I think the book is a solid demonstration that the nation is under God's judgment, but I don't think it's going to open many eyes to that fact, I don't think we are going to have a revival or much of a national turnaround at all, so I think it's mostly going to stand in the end as an indictment from God to that effect. 

Perhaps there's a sort of spiritual irony involved here, that a message from God is getting bogged down in one of the apostate branches of the church.  I may be reaching for it but it's not hard to see a metaphor for our present condition in this very fact.

Be all that as it may, I still find the book's message to be solid. 

I think we could reduce the whole message of the Harbinger to its observation that a few American political leaders pronounced judgment on the nation when they quoted Isaiah 9:10 as if it were a message of hope following 9/11.  To my mind this is the most indisputable fact in the book.

Isa 9:10

The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change [them into] cedars.

God knocked down our buildings but WE will rebuild.  The verse was quoted by Tom Daschle and John Edwards in reference to 9/11, and its essence "We will rebuild" was written by Obama on a beam to be raised to the top of the new Freedom Tower which is to replace the World Trade Center.  Others echoed the attitude but these three have the most official national status. 

In its biblical context it is clearly a message of a nation's defiance of God's judgment through a great calamity, and by failing to see 9/11 as God's judgment on the US, and by failing to give the appropriate call to national repentance in a time of judgment, these American leaders aligned themselves with the very same spirit of defiance by the leaders of ancient Israel which is expressed in that verse.  This defiance is the reason God says in the very next verse He is bringing the Assyrian adversary against them again. 

We almost don't need any of the other harbingers in the book to make the case, but so obtuse are some of our "discernment" people that they actually fail to see how these statements are defiant of God or how they are a pronouncing of God's judgment against the nation. 

So add to those words by the politicians the uncanny appearances in the wake of 9/11 of those other harbingers that echo the specific elements of Isaiah 9/10 and it looks to some of us like God has given us indisputable symbolic tokens of our defiance of Him that we cannot honestly deny.  A sycamore tree destroyed by the attack on the WTC, a conifer brought in to replace it, fallen bricks and a hewn stone brought in to symbolize the rebuilding. 

To me these few things are the essential message of The Harbinger that all by themselves put a seal of sorts to God's displeasure with America.   There are other factors that deepen their implications, such as the fact that the felled sycamore was on the very corner of the property occupied by the WTC, in the courtyard of the very chapel in which George Washington prayed for the nation right after his inauguration.   These factors and more are waved away by the critics as if any human being could have trumped them up. 

So I still support this book.  I don't, however, support Jonathan Cahn's associations with charismatics, some of whom are known apostates and not Christians at all.  I think this damages his reputation and the prospects for his book. 

There may be more to say but I'm going to stop here for now.

Brannon Howse's attack on another discernment ministry: Just how should we think of a state's legalization of gay marriage?

UPDATE June 11.  Really more of a P.S.

Forgot to note that one of Howse's jibes at Jan Markell was against her apparent expectation of a dramatic sort of judgment from God for Minnesota's legalizing of same-sex marriage, which he characterized as on the order of expecting a tornado although I don't recall her saying that.  His answer was that weather is cyclical, meaning of course unrelated to God's judgments.  Can he really mean such a statement, is he thinking?  Is there any such thing as something that escapes God's sovereignty? 

Whether tornados or any other weather phenomenon is a particular judgment for a particular offense is difficult if not impossible to know, but to deny that weather is one of God's instruments of judgment is a denial of God's sovereignty over all things.   Some Christians may claim to know more specific reasons for a particular weather pattern than it's possible to know, but the basic idea can't be wrong.  God's judgments come in many forms and that is surely one of them.  For just one scripture reference, consider the famine in Elijah's day, the withholding of rain for the idolatries of Israel.

This was one of the errors made by the critics of Jonathan Cahn's Harbinger too.  All the harbingers he identifies the critics dismiss as meaningless coincidences.  Is there really such a thing as a meaningless coincidence?  I find all kinds of small and apparently meaningless coincidences in my own life and others have had the same experience, odd patterns of names or birthdates among family and friends and that sort of thing.  They are truly meaningless as far as I can tell, but this is God's universe and He probably has a reason even for those little strangenesses.  But when it comes to the harbingers that so CLEARLY reflect the scripture verse Isaiah 9:10, how can they be dismissed as meaningless?  How can Christians even believe in meaningless coincidences in a universe ruled by God?

======Original Post======

When I got back from my enforced vacation due to computer problems I had some emails waiting for me related at least tangentially to Jonathan Cahn's book. 

Brannon Howse on his May 22 radio show specifically targeted some recent comments made by Jan Markell suggesting that Minnesota's legalizing of gay marriage invites God's judgment on that state.  Brannon seems to go out of his way to target Jan, and it must be at least partly due to her support of Jonathan Cahn's book The Harbinger, which he sums up in this radio broadcast as "promoting mysticism." 

I didn't want to listen to his show but found myself obliged to.  I didn't hear both parts, however, only the first part.

Apparently Jan said that many Christians are now worried about Minnesota's coming under judgment for the legalization of same sex marriage, and Brannon quotes her saying "Now with homosexual marriage as a reality many Christians, solid pro-family type people -- we don't know where to run to."  And Brannon felt some need to criticize her for that, something that is really a common feeling many Christians have these days as we see the nation around us, and indeed the whole world, coming under judgment.  "We don't know where to run to."  Brannon felt some need to say that this isn't what Christians are called to, we're to expect persecution and tribulation in this world and so on and so forth. 

Well, he's right about that of course, but is he right to pillory Jan Markell for merely expressing something that so many of us are feeling these days?  I might point out a couple things that contradict his view: one, that God did allow the Waldensians to escape persecution for long periods by hiding away in the valleys of the Alps, and two, there is a proverb that says the prudent man foresees calamity and hides himself.  God also promises to hide the faithful from His wrath.  Sure, maybe in this case, in these last days, it may simply be impossible to find any earthly place to hide, but that's another subject.  We may be approaching a time when all we have is God Himself as our hiding place and that has to be a good thing for our spiritual health and growth.  Yet as we see judgment coming great numbers of Christians these days quite naturally cast about for a place to be safe from it, and it seems to me a lack of charity and grace to take a person to task for such a feeling. 

The main point Brannon keeps hammering away at, again specifically targeting Jan Markell but also "the religious right" in general, is the specific focus on gay marriage itself.  He is at pains to argue that homosexuality is only one of many sins that God judges, and that America is under judgment for a whole slew of sins, also that homosexuality itself IS God's judgment.  And again, he's right about all that, but I'd say he's also wrong in spirit in his focus on Jan Markell.  For one thing I seriously doubt she isn't aware of all the other sins the nation is being judged for, and I know she is aware of the sins of the church in particular because many of her own radio broadcasts focus on those.  Brannon's needling refrain about "discernment ministries that don't discern" is again, a lack of charity and grace toward another Christian, utterly undeserved that I can see.   There isn't any Christian or discernment ministry that we can expect to be perfect, we are all going to have our own blind spots and make mistakes to one degree or another, and there's nothing wrong with disagreeing with each other on such points that I can see, in fact it's necessary.  But Brannon has gone over the line here.

Beyond charity, Brannon is just wrong in his judgments of this issue.  Seems to me the reason so many of us focus on the gay marriage issue is that it IS the last offense on that list in Romans 1 that Brannon makes so much of, it's kind of the straw that broke the camel's back.  For two reasons:  one because it is the end result of the list of sins mentioned in that scripture, showing we've reached a sort of state of perfection of sin as it were, and two, because in this particular case it is an OFFICIAL sin, a sin officially committed by the State of Minnesota itself.   In this it compares with the nation's legalization of abortion, for which we've been under judgment for years.  The fact that there are many practicing homosexuals in the state or the nation does not necessarily amount to the level of God's judgment on the state or nation, but when it is LEGALLY legitimized by the State itself THEN I think we are quite right to see that as an invitation to God's judgment in a more direct and immediate way than any accumulation of the sins of the people themselves at least up to a certain level.  I have to suppose this is what Jan is responding to.  It's not, as Brannon keeps putting, it, uh oh homosexuality is in itself some special sin that invites judgment, as if we're ignoring all the other sins of the nation or state, but uh oh now we've gone and OFFICIALLY waved this violation of God's law in God's face and He's not going to be able to overlook that for long. 

Oh yes, America is under God's judgment, has been for years, and the growth of support for homosexuality as per Romans 1 clearly demonstrates that we've reached the end of the trail of judgments from God, and oh yes, homosexuality is in itself God's judgment, as is the proliferation of sins of all kinds.  But because it IS the end of the trail of an accumulation of sins and judgments over years, and because it is now officially endorsed by the State of Minnesota, discerning Christians have very good reason to expect a more dramatic expression of God's judgment.  There is nothing wrong with such an expectation. 

Brannon's broadcast is a good compendium of the sins for which we can expect judgment, it has that virtue, but I have to say that it comes off as some sort of nitpicking vendetta against Jan Markell and that is reprehensible. 

He also slams her in passing for her support of Jonathan Cahn's book, The Harbinger, which is probably the main reason for attacking her as he does, but I'm planning another post on that subject so I'll leave that for now.