New Criticism of The Harbinger: Douma Pt. 2

Usually I'm up for taking on the critics but this one makes me really really tired.  Maybe it's no worse than the others, maybe it's just my current frame of mind, but I listen to this stuff, I read the notes, and it's such a muddled mess both logically and theologically the task of hacking my way through it just makes me weary. 

And there's Brannon Howse saying if this one doesn't convince us there's something doctrinally, theologically and biblically wrong with The Harbinger that's some kind of final proof of our failure of discernment.  Deep deep Sigh.  Is there any hope of showing someone with that wrongheaded a perspective on all this that HE's the one with the discernment failure here?  And that thought makes me really really REALLY tired.

Well, where to start.  I think I'll start by saying that this whole excuse for a critique is so ABSTRACT it reminds me of a Marxist treatise.  Really.  Ever read one of those?  Never touches down to earth, just flies along about ten feet off the ground trailing paragraphs of Terminology, words that have no anchor in reality, just in Theory.  Very sophisticated-sounding Word Salad.  You don't dare ask what it MEANS because then you'll REALLY be lost.  Here we have a wonderful display of those words I called somewhere back a ways  "trigger words," that apparently awaken red-alert Suspiciousness in certain theological camps and launch virtual nuclear warheads of this earnestly "concerned" undecipherable gobbledygook.  

Oh I HOPE I'll be up to responding PROPERLY to this eventually.  I've got LOTS of notes.  I'll just publish this much anyway and add to it later.  Lord willing.

A New Criticism of The Harbinger: Douma

Apparently the criticism of The Harbinger isn't going to stop soon. Here comes another attack on the book, aired by Brannon Howse on his Worldview Weekend program.

Today Brannon plays a powerful presentation by Pastor Eric Douma of Twin City Fellowship. Days before Jonathan Cahn appears in the Twin Cities, Pastor Douma is warning of the dangerous theological issue with Cahn’s book. Pastor Douma has done his Biblical homework and lays out point by point the serious theological errors of Cahn’s book. After listening to this program if someone can still defend Cahn’s book and theology then I think we have to seriously question their discernment and commitment to the authority of Scripture not to mention their lack of ability to study the Bible in context. Be sure to listen and post to your Facebook page.

Here's the whole sermon, Can The Bible Ever Mean What It Never Meant? / Case Study: The Harbinger, at the site of Eric Douma's church Twin City Fellowship.

I'm only halfway through it and I feel like screaming and tearing my hair out.  I know this is REALLY unhelpful, but take it as a sign that I hope to come back and do my best to show the absolute nonsense of this unfortunately all too typical critique of The Harbinger.

It's like they're all focused on the minutiae of words, taking them apart under a microscope with a tweezers to find errors that don't exist. OK, yes, I know that's unhelpful. Sorry. I hope I can do something more persuasive later.

Good grief, the devil is busy these days, inventing problems with this book, but he's also been tripping me up.  It's my own fault, I haven't been watchful enough.  The Lord says we must lose our lives and I've been trying hard to save mine.  Not my physical life I hasten to add, though perhaps my physical wellbeing, plus inconveniences and ego stuff I end up having to apologize for.  Devil knows I'm susceptible to all that but I can't blame him, just have to be more watchful and prayerful.  Watch, pray, stand.  If you don't watch and pray you don't stand.

CATHOLIC PRIEST CALLS FOR AN END TO THE VATICAN AS CONTRARY TO THE TRUE FAITH

Chris Pinto covered this article by a priest on his radio show today and I reported it on my other blog about Catholicism. Seemed worth a headline here as well.   Distinguishing between the power structure of Rome and the average Catholic's faith has got to be a good start.  Then when they go on to get the true gospel of salvation by faith alone figured out, HALLELUJAH!

Chris Pinto's show on The Harbinger back in January was right on

I discovered The Harbinger originally through Chris Pinto's program on January 5th of this year, and just decided I needed to hear it again after all the attacks on the book since then.

As usual I find that Pinto's perspective is spiritually more trustworthy than most, biblical and true.  What is wrong with the critics who miss it and miss it and miss it?  Pinto hadn't read the book at that time but just from some ads and reviews he correctly assesses Cahn's message.

CORRECTLY. 

The critics have missed it completely but Pinto GETS IT.  I'm glad I heard it again. 

He criticizes the "conspiracy crew" who think that by exposing the New World Order adherents they can change things.   No, he says, but Cahn has exposed what is needed:  repentance for our sins.  Nothing else is going to change America.  He also gets into the influence of ecumenism and Billy Graham as a wolf in sheep's clothing bringing the nation under judgment.

I had only one objection.  He reads the line about how God's hand "is stretched out still" to be stretched out in invitation to us to come to Him, though in context it is simply a way of emphasizing what has already been shown, that since there is no repentance His hand is still stretched out IN JUDGMENT.  The message about God's invitation to us is nevertheless probably true enough, it's just not what that particular line means.

Timely encouragement

Sometimes you lose heart for what you thought was your calling, lose your sense of direction and need a light back to the path. But then the Lord brings just exactly the encouragement you need.

I've received two or three bits of needed encouragement recently, but one in particular was so especially effective I'm going to quote some of it here as a reminder to me if nothing else, and maybe even an encouragement to someone else. You never know:

A 'reformed' position breathes out of your writing, Connie, this is why I took to your blogs so much, finding the whole thrust of your position trustworthy.

Even if you express nothing beyond defense - which is the primary task - there is something in your writing which speaks for yourself and more importantly for the 'reformed' faith. But after all that, it is the passion for truth and the love of the Lord that drives us on....

My personal advice, for what it's worth, would be: go back to your writing on the Harbinger, which you are good at, and enjoy it again, free from niggling 'concerns' which are hindering. ... you cannot, as said, hide your 'reformed position', even if you do not state it, it breathes out of your writing!

...so, write according to your conscience ...No worries, keep going and be happy that the Lord has smiled upon you. ...Smile back at the Lord and love the work he gives you.

Thank you, my lovely sister in Christ.

I would hope my thinking is Reformed in essence and it makes me SO happy to see that someone else with a Reformed perspective appreciates it, and it does release me from some heaviness that has been slowing me down recently. 

Back to work!

Does The Harbinger say America is IN Isaiah as the critics claim?

A major objection to The Harbinger by the critics is that "Cahn has demonstrated that Isaiah 9:10 is also about America." And what they mean by that is that America is actually IN the verse as written by Isaiah. They claim that Cahn must have this view although Cahn has denied it. Why would he deny it if it's something he believes? This can only be a strange misreading.

I've never heard of anyone ever before having such a notion of something in the present having actually been written in a Bible verse, never seen any examples of such a thing, but somehow the critics see it in The Harbinger. Apparently it is possible to misread the book this way despite the lack of precedent and despite Jonathan Cahn's denials, and perhaps some have done so who are favorable toward the book as well as the critics. This would be a mistake but perhaps it's possible to make this mistake because of the way some statements are worded.

Here are a few examples from a list of statements in ads for the book and by fans and critics of the book, both, that the critics claim say that America is IN the prophecy. As I read the whole list, with the exception of one, and a couple that are questionable, they all say only that Isaiah 9:10 also applies to America. And again, since Jonathan Cahn says that is how he intended it, I would assume that most people read it as he intended it. Perhaps I can conduct a survey of sorts to test this eventually.

Anyway, here is the list, minus context and links, just the words that are in dispute:

...a pattern of American leaders fulfilling an ancient biblical prophecy and a curse of judgment on the U.S., according to the best-selling Christian book of 2012 and the No. 1 faith movie.

The "ancient biblical prophecy" is NOW applied to America where it is being fulfilled, there is no need to read this as assuming that America was included in the original prophecy.

There are also physical proofs that Isaiah's prophecy is against America ...

Yes, the prophecy AS APPLIED TO AMERICA NOW, IN THE PRESENT, not that the prophecy as written by Isaiah had America in mind. There is no need to read it that way.

[Ad for the book] Is There An Ancient Mystery that Foretells America's Future?

Yes, it foretells it once you've applied it TO America. Again, there is no need to read this as America's future being foretold in the original prophecy as written by Isaiah.

...the preciseness with which America has fulfilled the verses in Isaiah ...

Again it seems to me obvious that this means "the verses as applied to America."

Read here of a mysterious, coded prophecy hidden in a small passage in the book of Isaiah the prophet.

Over and over it's as if words are being taken in a far too literal sense when they were intended in a more poetic or dramatic sense. In this case the meaning is "hidden" in Isaiah only in the poetic sense that once you know how perfectly it fits America, once you've already applied it to America, then you can say, Yes, in a sense this was "hidden" in that passage all this time, but that doesn't mean it was written into the passage or that Isaiah had it in mind. That passage is going to apply to many nations over the centuries, not just America. None of them is written into the verse and yet they are all in a sense "hidden" there.

And here is the main one that does seem to put America literally into the verse:

These two questions are asked all over our land. "Where is America in the bible"? and "Where is America during the end times."?... Isaiah 9:10 provides us swith much of the answer...

Yes, a person COULD read some of these statements to suggest that America was IN Isaiah, or that Jonathan Cahn thinks so. He's denied that and again, there is no reason he should deny it if he actually believes it and intended it in the book.

No, it's the critics who are reading it that way and not even imagining that it can and should be read as I'm presenting it. At the very least, not to take Cahn's word for what he intends these expressions to say shows a very ungracious attitude to the person who should know how these phrases should read.

There's more of this I could add here and may later.

Brannon Howse now consorting with infidels who dare to say that God judges America according to His word to Israel?

Brannon Howse, who has been a major enemy of The Harbinger for all the wrong reasons I've been writing about here, hosts a number of Christian programs at his Worldview Weekend website, one of which is Dr. Erwin Lutzer's, who today has a program on How God judges nations.

Guess how God judges nations? According to Pastor Lutzer He judges all nations according to His instructions to the nation of ISRAEL. Lutzer refers to Deuteronomy, Jeremiah and Amos as his sources for the ways God can be expected to judge AMERICA.

Wasn't it THE major complaint of those Brannon Howse hosted against The Harbinger that Cahn had wrongly applied God's words written exclusively to Israel to America?

Shouldn't Brannon Howse be raking Lutzer over the coals as a false prophet just as he did Cahn? Shouldn't he repent of sharing a platform with such an apostate teacher? Every opportunity he gets he says something of the sort against Cahn.

The Harbinger says nothing that isn't in keeping with Dr. Lutzer's sermon despite the critics' suspicions. The vast majority of people who read it understand it in the sense of Dr. Lutzer's teachings. How the critics get anything else out of it is the puzzle.

You owe Cahn a major major apology, Brannon, as do all your critic friends such as T A McMahon, Jimmy DeYoung and David James.

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Heard from someone who tells me this is a straw man argument. That is simply not true. The critics are using the straw man arguments, by insisting that Cahn is advocating Replacement Theology or reading America into Isaiah 9:10 or equating Israel's covenant with God with the covenants made by American founders, all of which are false. A straw man is a false argument you impute to your opposition so you can shoot it down. That's what they are doing with these false arguments. The truth is that The Harbinger is saying what Dr. Lutzer is saying about how the Old Testament also applies to America or any other nation.