apology

OK, I'm apologizing for falling into extreme rhetoric at times and calling arguments stupid. There's no excuse for losing it like that. I apologize and pray it won't happen again.

The Harbinger again. Or why I am defending it.

Been listening to Brannon Howse's latest radio shows on The Harbinger, in which he's interviewing David James, whose book critical of The Harbinger has just come out (I'm waiting for it to arrive), and T. A. McMahon who published James' critique. It's all more of the same, but the book should be the definitive treatment of the critics' views so I'm looking forward to it in an odd sort of way.

On the morning of 9/11 I had a dream about being in the back seat of a small plane and demanding to be let out because I had a forboding about ... something. The pilot was a little girl and some time before 9/11 there had been a big story in the news about a father who let his eight-year-old daughter fly his plane alone. Sadly she crashed the plane and died. At the very least in my dream I assume she would have represented the threat of a crash. There was a man in the front passenger/co-pilot seat, however, who supposedly could have saved us, but I still wanted out. He shook his head disapprovingly at me. I was on the ground watching them fly away when I woke up to the news that the first WTC building had been hit. I was watching the TV when the other was hit.

I'm not going to say that was a prophetic dream but it's sure suggestive of something in that direction.

It has nothing to do with the dream as far as I know, but I recognized that 9/11 was God's judgment when it happened. I don't know how others could fail to recognize it. Or I've more or less figured out how, but it's still astonishing to me. Getting others to take it seriously was just about impossible. I'd talk about it on political internet forums and even conservative blogs and get denounced for it. By people who consider themselves Christians as much as by anyone else. Some Christians still aren't sure that was God's judgment or that America is under God's judgment at all. David James for one according to some things he's said.

I remember a "humorous" picture being sent around the conservative circuits of a supposed plan for a rebuilt World Trade Center, with five buildings side by side, the buildings on the ends the shortest the two next to them a bit taller and the one in the middle quite tall. All intended to show defiance to our enemies but I knew it really meant "giving the finger" to God, not just our enemies. Which is exactly the same attitude that the harbingers of Isaiah 9:10 are all about. Did anybody want to hear that? Few then for sure, I wonder how many now.

What happened to the America whose leaders would on occasions of crisis or threat call for a national time of fasting and prayer for God's forgiveness and protection? Long gone. We couldn't muster a National Christian Anything any more. If Christians these days are going to act on behalf of the nation it's going to be in spite of the nation's leadership -- though no doubt with an exception here and there in the lower ranks. We certainly don't need all the ecumenical stuff that includes the false religions, the Mormons, the Muslims, the Catholics. (Yes, the Catholics.) The crew that Glenn Beck is trying to pull together on behalf of his Mormon view of America. Much the same motley crew that Bush assembled in the National Cathedral to pray for the nation after 9/11. That set off my alarm bells for sure. That's like ASKING for further judgment against us.

At the time my impression was that a huge majority of American preachers were refusing to accept that 9/11 was God's judgment. Remember how the very few who did know it was judgment got hooted down? Like Robertson and Falwell. Wilkerson preached on it too, though as far as I recall I don't think he got attacked for it. None of these guys are among my own Christian favorites, and I have some specific theological problems with a couple of them too, but they knew what ALL the preachers in the nation should have known and didn't.

When I first learned about the Harbinger at the beginning of this year, it occurred to me that this could be God's way of making Christians notice that 9/11 was His judgment after all. It seems to be making quite a bit of headway in that direction, but it's also stirred up quite a hornet's nest among some ministries against it, not for its message of judgment though it has the effect of derailing that message anyway. For no good reason either, as I've been arguing here. Of course they think their reasons are damning and I'm not going to say they're not sincere, I'm sure they are quite convinced they are right.

Again the message of judgment comes from an outpost of the Church that wouldn't be among my favorites, but God didn't ask me. If David Wilkerson were still alive he'd no doubt recognize the truth of The Harbinger. Jerry Falwell might too. Pat Robertson has recognized it. There are some conservative evangelicals who are recognizing it as well.

God often doesn't do things the way we think He should.

God's will be done.

Glenn Beck's Ecumenical Travesty and the true Christian founding of early America

I wish Chris Pinto would write a book or somebody would write one using his material. We need his correctives to American history to sort out what was Christian in our history and what was not, and the historical perspectives he's dug up that show the REAL dimensions of the Antichrist Church of Rome. Pinto not a historian, as he's made clear, but a documentarian who accumulates his historical facts in the service of his films. We are starved for historical truth, thanks to such deceitful "histories" as David Barton has fed us over the last few decades, so historian or not Pinto's work is much needed.

Today's radio show, Restoring Love or Blind Delusion? is about Glenn Beck's latest attempt to blur the lines between Christianity and Mormonism and all other religions, his "Restoring Love" rally. Early colonial Governor John Winthrop was apparently made an excuse for Beck's ecumenical travesty, as the love he wrote of in his Model of Christian Charity is misused by Beck to foster acceptance of all religious beliefs as equal, whereas of course as a true Christian Winthrop would never have treated anything but the Biblical gospel as the true Christian faith, certainly not the false religion of Mormonism -- or Catholicism, or Islam etc. etc. etc. Pinto shows the antichrist nature of Beck's selective quoting of Winthrop.

Since I've been defending The Harbinger recently, I noticed that the Winthrop article has implications for this purpose. The book is often criticized for claiming that America is in covenant with God, or for supposedly equating the American covenant with God's covenant with ancient Israel.* Well, here is John Winthrop's affirmation that he did indeed believe "we are entered into covenant with" God and he does base it on God's covenant with Israel and the Mosaic law. Here is the last part of Winthrop's A Model of Christian Charity which refers to this covenant:

Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these and those accounts, upon these and those ends. We have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, and be revenged of such a people, and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.

Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "may the Lord make it like that of New England." For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God's sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.

And to shut this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deut. 30. "Beloved, there is now set before us life and death, good and evil," in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with Him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.

Tomorrow's show, more revelations of the true nature of America's founders, who were far from the spirit of the Christian colonial leaders of 150 years earlier: Jefferson was a racist and intentionally excluded blacks from the phrase "all men are created equal."

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*The Harbinger doesn't say that America is "in covenant" with God though there is definitely a special relationship with God implied. But since the critics keep accusing Cahn of making some kind of equation between America and ancient Israel's covenant with God, it seems to me, based on the Winthrop statement in preparation to found a colony in America, that if Cahn had actually made such an equation he wouldn't have been wrong, so the critics' complaints don't hold either way.

The Harbinger wars continue

Inevitable I suppose that Howse and DeYoung would answer Joseph Farah. I'm going to agree with them this far, that personal speculations ought to be kept out of such discussions, meaning Farah's speculations about pride and envy as the motivation for Howse and DeYoung's criticisms of The Harbinger, keeping to the theological contentions instead.

Right off the bat Jimmy De Young brings up what is still their central objection to the Harbinger, that

Cahn's fundamental error... is his hermeneutic.

He is quoting from an email sent to his associate David James by Dallas Theological Seminary professor Dr. Roy Zuck, affirming James' criticism which is soon to come out as a book. The email continues, explaining what Dr. Zuck considers to be wrong with Cahn's hermeneutic:

Isaiah 9:10 has nothing to do with the United States. Verses 8 to 11 are all addressed to israel. Having taught hermeneutics for years at Dallas Theological Seminary and havinh written a textook on the subject, I'm greatly bothered to see people like Cahn take a passage totally out of context. These verses don't even apply to the United States. [7:00-8:00]

De Young goes on to say that neither Joseph Farah nor Jonathan Cahn have dealt with this hermeneutical issue, which he and Brannon Howse have been questioning. As a matter of fact Cahn has addressed this allegation about his supposedly faulty hermeneutics many times, and covers it pretty thoroughly in his Response to David James:

D. James claims that The Harbinger departs from a biblical hermeneutic in that Isaiah 9:10 in context concerns Israel, not America. This claim, that he brings up several times in his critique, is based on an underlying confusion – specifically, that the book is claiming that Isaiah 9:10 is a prophecy about America. The problem is The Harbinger does no such thing. It does speak of a connection between America and Israel (not exactly a novel idea) and it does speak of a mystery from the Scriptures which has an amazing application to America. But this is light years removed from claiming that a certain Scripture is prophesying of America.

...Further, the reappearance of such ancient patterns of judgment revealed in a particular Scripture does not in any way affect the original understanding, meaning, or interpretation of that Scripture in its original context - not in any way, shape, or form..

...Further, the book includes quotes from the most respected and classical of Bible commentaries. In The Harbinger, the hermeneutic of Isaiah 9:10 is not taken one inch away from its historical and contextual bearings, nor from its original, proper, and traditionally understood meaning – not an inch, not a millimeter. The critique is groundless – based on an apparent inability to distinguish the realm of Scriptural interpretation from that of Scriptural application. The Harbinger’s hermeneutics remain absolutely sound. [my bolding]

It's been answered again and again: The Harbinger does NOT see America somehow buried in Isaiah 9:10. The Harbinger does nothing more than recognize that God has applied Isaiah 9:10 TO America, as He so often applies His word to us as we read it. In this case He applied it in a way that could make your hair stand on end, but nevertheless it's nothing more than the usual application of scripture outside its original context. The original context REMAINS the original context, God merely making use of it for another purpose, which is STANDARD EVERYDAY BIBLE HERMENEUTICS THAT EVERY BELIEVER EXERCISES WHENEVER WE READ THE BIBLE.

Howse and DeYoung go on to address some side issues that Joseph Farah brought up about DeYoung's end times theology. I've posted on the one allegation Farah mentions that I consider to be a serious error on DeYoung's part, the belief that it's possible to take the Mark of the Beast and then change your mind, but otherwise his dispensational theology isn't the issue in these discussions about The Harbinger. No doubt it explains something about how the criticisms of the book are arrived at, since most of the critics are dispensationalists, but then so are some of the book's defenders.

So I don't want to get more into that part of the discussion because it's mostly highlighting the differences between the theologies of DeYoung and Farah and gets away from the criticism of The Harbinger, but I do have to say it was very funny when De Young finished his lengthy exposition of his own dispensationalist pretrib theology by saying [27:28]

So that is biblical information. I gave no opinion, I gave no interpretation, I simply kept a view to the locations in God's word...

And it's quite true that all he did was refer to various verses of scripture and explain them, but he both chose the verses and explained them completely from within his own interpretive scheme as if there were no other possible way of understanding them, and that IS interpreting them. It was nothing BUT interpretation.

But again, that's a side issue. Then they go on to the issue of Cahn's being interviewed by Glenn Beck, and unfortunately I haven't heard that interview so I can't comment on it. The accusation that Cahn in any way gave the impression that he agrees with Beck's religious views hasn't been demonstrated, but I can't judge it. The idea is that it's OK to appear on a purely secular program because there isn't going to be a religious conflict, but I have to say that by their own standards Brannon's appearing on O'Reilly could be criticized in the same way appearing on Beck could be, since O'Reilly is a Catholic and why wouldn't it look like Brannon was endorsing Catholicism by that appearance? The Catholic God is not the same as the true God either; he's either the Pope or Mary or the wafer since all receive the worship due to God alone.

Then -- glory be! -- It turns out Brannon has finally read the book, or is reading it, so now he brings out some more "concerns" he has based on his reading.

On page 54 [39:47 on the audio counter] he takes issue with The Prophet's asking "Is God not able to speak through such things [meaning a Bible commentary]?" To which Brannon declares, "Dr. DeYoung, the commentaries are not inspired!" Dear Brannon: NEITHER WAS BALAAM'S ASS! Or was she, perhaps, at the moment she spoke? Meaning, God is certainly ABLE to speak through a commentary OR an ass. This is not the same thing as saying that either the commentary or the ass is inspired. Do you really think Cahn is teaching that commentaries are inspired? Do you really think any reader out there is going to get that message from that bit of dialogue? In any case all he means is that a commentary can bring out the true meaning of the scripture, he really doesn't mean any more than that. As usual Brannon and Company are oh so fastidiously straining out gnats.

But it gets worse. It gets positively blockheaded, pun more or less intended as the next complaint is from page 68 [40:00] about the Israelis' vow to rebuild their fallen buildings with hewn stone. "I don't believe that any of the towers that are being rebuilt are being rebuilt with hewn stone, are they, Dr. DeYoung?" No, me bonny lad, they're being built with steel and etc.

Isaiah 9:10 is about the INTENTION of the nation of Israel to rebuild. The intention is what reveals the spirit of defiance as they don't plan to seek God about it, aren't feeling chastened by God's judgment through the Assyrian attack, and aren't anywhere near a repentant spirit. The INTENTION is the point, not the rebuilding itself, and that intention WAS echoed after 9/11 as a twenty-ton block of hewn or quarried stone was brought in to be the cornerstone of the new Freedom Tower. Words of defiance meant to express patriotic zeal were spoken over that stone, too, rather than brokenheartedness for the sins that brought about the calamity of 9/11, rather than a call to repentance. And then it turned out they weren't going to use that stone after all so they took it away. Which it seems to me gives the whole thing even MORE of a connection with Isaiah 9:10. God had to have a hewn stone in there whether it was needed or not, so we couldn't miss his clear message that America was defiant of His judgments in exactly the same way Israel was.

Brannon, Dr. DeYoung, with all due respect, maybe, you guys are missing it completely.

Then he takes on the sycamore tree on page 83 [40:45]. "It's a TOTALLY DIFFERENT TREE!" Well, uh, yeah, but they are BOTH called "sycamores" and the American version was named after the Middle Eastern version. Isn't that kind of maybe just a little bit uncanny right there? I mean, the Middle Eastern version simply doesn't grow in America but a tree called a "sycamore" certainly fills the Isaiah 9:10 bill wouldn't you say, considering that God is using it to speak to America and it works beautifully to draw the parallel with Isaiah 9:10? I mean why do we need a lesson in botany to make that connection? It's a "sycamore," the ones in Isaiah 9:10 are "sycamores." They even look similar, growing quite tall with widely spreading branches. How hard do you have to work at missing this simple point anyway?

And of course it's even worse when we get to the "cedars" that in Isaiah 9:10 are the Israelis' choice to replace the downed sycamores. At Ground Zero the sycamore was replaced by a ...a ...a SPRUCE! Hey, that's not a cedar! DeYoung says if it's really from God "it will be fulfilled in absolute detail, not a variance here or there" and Howse adds that Cahn is "stretching things." But this is, as Jonathan Cahn wrote, quoted above, to confuse the exegesis of the passage as it was written to Israel with the application of the passage to the current situation in America. We don't expect such exactness in application, how could we? They seem to be going out of their way to avoid the obvious similarity, which can be simply seen with your own two eyes: conifer trees with needles and cones. And if you do get into botany you'll find that they even belong to the same family, in Hebrew the erez, in Latin the pinaceas or the pine type trees, which include pines, firs, cedars and spruces. Imagine that! Why didn't they replace the sycamore with another sycamore or an oak or some other leafy type tree that grows in that part of the country? Why such a DIFFERENT type tree? Clearly ONLY because it is the same type of tree that was used to replace Israel's sycamores, and who could have made that choice but God Himself?

Really, this should not take all this explanation. The average reader gets it right away, it's the whole point of the book that these harbingers, as Cahn calls them, are such unavoidable pointers back to Isaiah 9:10, which is what God wants us to notice --the attitude of defiance we had about 9/11, the lack of contrition for our sins, the lack of repentance, which was the same attitude described there of Israel. They all point back to Isaiah 9:10. We had the same spirit and God is putting up signposts to to emphasize it by planting all these harbingers, the fallen bricks, the hewn stone, the sycamore, the pine type tree to replace it, all the elements of 9:10. So we'll see that we deserve God's judgment just as Israel did, and that if we don't repent and change our ways we may expect a more devastating judgment just as God brought against ancient Israel. No, He probably won't scatter us throughout the Middle East as He did Israel. Sigh. Really, guys, you do have to be a bit dense to miss this. Or afflicted with some kind of theologically induced myopia. Can't see the forest for ...

Well, I guess at least they did finally address the harbingers themselves. And of course there is no illusion here at all, the harbingers are as uncannily eerily something only God could have brought about as we simple people knew they were from the beginning. The harbingers are the message, all the rest of it is packaging!

There's more but I've got to stop so I'm going to put this much up for now.

Oh brother, and David James' book is going to come out soon and repeat this same kind of nonsense!

Musings off the London Olympics: is there any hope God would yet turn us back to Him?

I didn't get to see the opening ceremony for the London Olympics, but saw a few pictures, read a few descriptions, and if there's a video out there of the whole thing I suppose I might eventually see more. I watched the wedding of William and Kate. I'm an Anglophile, partly no doubt because my paternal great grandfather was a lithographer in London, and my mother's family were mostly English as well, but maybe more because I know a little about England's history.

The wedding of over a year ago now was full of Christian references because of England's Christian history, although it's sadly clear they've lost their Christian worldview and the Christian rituals have become for the most part empty forms. The Archbishop of Canterbury is either a liberal or a Romanist or both.

I wouldn't expect their Christian past to show up in the Olympics ceremony and I'm sure it didn't, and besides, the whole Olympics thing has a pagan origin.

I know I'm a "fanatic" to many, even to some other Christians. I think it's the only thing to be if you're truly a Christian. To be honest, I don't think I'm enough of a fanatic really, I have all the symptoms of the worldliness of most Christians these days. At least I regret them.

So I see the Queen of England at the Olympics opening, not looking very happy in her photos for some reason, don't know why, usually she's smiling in her pictures. She's supposedly the "head of the Church" of England. I wonder what that means in reality, what she really believes, what with all the liberal influences in the Church of England over the last century or so.

Mitt Romney attracted some negative attention by the British press while he was there, and a snarky put-down by the Mayor of London, for some remarks Romney made about what he saw as an apparent ("disconcerting") lack of preparedness for the Olympics. I'm no particular fan of Romney, but as the frontrunning Republican candidate for President against Obama he represents America and I found myself resenting the London mayor's nastiness. Romney did run the Olympics in Utah after all, and if the task was in any way less demanding because of its location than running them in a busy city like London, one ought to expect that those who are used to running things in that city should be able to demonstrate their ability to do as well there as Romney did in Utah. In any case he should be treated with some respect for that experience. But I was also disappointed in the mayor because such snarkiness against a foreign leader is just not in the spirit I associate with England. Grace and charity are what I expect in such a situation, humility, grace and charity, not rudeness. Sure, perhaps Romney should have said nothing, but it wasn't anywhere near the rudeness of the mayor. And I'm also disappointed in Romney for changing course in response to the rudeness and saying only nice things about the London preparedness after that.

So goodbye to England's illustrious past in more ways than one. Not that its degeneration is new, it's been on its way down for decades. Too bad. England was once great. BECAUSE IT WAS CHRISTIAN. Because of its great Christian preachers, leaders, and general culture. That's the ONLY reason it was great. When it began to lose its Christian foundations it started to fall from grace. Now it's undergoing God's judgment just as America is, just as Europe is. Being overrun with Muslims is certainly God's judgment. Being attacked by terrorists is certainly God's judgment.

I don't know if The Harbinger will have much of an impact on America or not in the end but I have to believe God has sent it to us as an unavoidable proof of His displeasure with us, and a warning that if we don't turn back His judgments against us are only going to escalate. He brought down ancient Israel and they never recovered, and Isaiah 9:10 was certainly a marker or harbinger of their doom. He can do that to us as well. The harbingers the book reports on spell out our doom in an unusually literal way, as clear signs of God's speaking to America through the appearance in America of some Old Testament signs and principles, starting with Isaiah 9:10 (or Isaiah 9:8-14 to get the whole context). If we don't heed them and turn back, they will stand as testimony against the nation until it is destroyed.

Maybe God has given similar signs to England or Europe but nobody noticed them. It's possible, I suppose, though perhaps not very likely. He'd also have to give someone to notice them and bring them to the attention of the public, as He did with Jonathan Cahn.

America was once great because of our adherence to the God of the Bible and the predominantly Christian mindset of Americans. The same was once true of England, and particularly after the Reformation much of Europe. I've been for some time in a state of mourning over the great loss in both cases. America was once GOOD. Is there any of that goodness left in us after our murder of millions of our unborn, our "sexual revolution" that has violated everything related to sex that God spells out in His Word as the Law that brings blessing if obeyed, cursing if disobeyed; the great apostasy of the churches, the liberalism that gobbled up so many of them, the cults that sprang up in the 19th century (Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science), the increase in militant atheism and ridicule of God and religion?

There are those who are sure God won't send us a revival at this late stage in the history of the world. There are certainly reasons to think this could be the case, especially the apostasy itself which a revival would have to correct to be a true revival, but which could just swallow it up instead. Perhaps it's a new Reformation we really need. Mormonism is not Christianity but they want a revival. Catholicism is not Christianity but they'd certainly like to see a revival of Catholicism. Muslims want to see Islam spread. The New Agers even have their own notions that some kind of "revival" is coming, some kind of great evolutionary leap from what they see as the retrograde influence of Christianity into some wonderful new world of peace and light. Kind of what the UN envisions as well.

Christians know all this could only be the ascendancy of the spirit of Antichrist, ultimately over the whole world, and not true revival, and this is certainly what COULD happen instead of true revival at this stage in history. It would fit prophecy of course. Well, God knows, God is in charge. I still hope true revival might come and wake up what's left of the true Church and turn the hearts of the apostates to the true God. In America, in England, in Europe, where God first laid down the principles of His word through the New Testament and brought civilization where there had been nothing but the darkness of paganism and witchcraft. To which we're all now reverting if He doesn't intervene.

Defending the Second Amendment

I put this up at my other blog, Too Late for America, linking to Chris Pinto's radio show today that quotes from many of America's early leaders on the meaning of the Second Amendment, then decided it needed to be mentioned here as well because of the threat from the UN that could take away the guns of American citizens.

Chris Pinto takes us back to the founding generation of America and shows the original intent of the Second Amendment, which was the right, and the obligation, of ALL the citizens to be armed for protection of the nation, for self-protection and against every kind of tyranny. Tyranny which of course the UN represents.

Jonathan Cahn radio interview

A good interview with Jonathan Cahn by Dr. Larry Spargimino on South West Ministries Radio, two days, yesterday and today:
Wednesday July 25 program
Thursday July 26 program