Jonathan Cahn's The Harbinger is one of the bestselling Christian books of 2012. The subtitle reveals Cahn's thesis: "The ancient mystery that holds the secret of America's future." This "ancient mystery" supposedly is contained in Isaiah 9:10: "The bricks have fallen down, but we will rebuild with dressed stone; the fig trees have been felled, but we will replace them with cedars." To Cahn, this verse explains 9/11, the Great Recession and the future of our nation.
His logic: America was founded by Christians who dedicated this nation to God. In return, he placed a "hedge" of protection around us. Cahn believes we removed God from our classrooms and courtrooms in the 1960s, and he views the legalization of abortion as a further step away from the Lord. In response, God removed his protection from our nation, allowing the 9/11 terrorists to attack our country.
"The bricks have fallen down" describes the collapse of the World Trade Center; "we will rebuild with dressed stone" refers to a 20-ton stone used as the cornerstone of the structure that would replace the fallen Twin Towers. The "fig trees" that were felled is connected to a sycamore tree that was destroyed on 9/11; the "cedars" that replaced it refers to a pine tree that was put in place of the sycamore. As the Isaiah passage describes a nation whose prideful self-reliance spurred God to further punishment, so our nation's refusal to return to God after 9/11 has led to ongoing judgment.
Reading the Culture Cahn links 9/11 to the Great Recession, as our government used means to stimulate the economy that led to financial collapse seven years later. He connects this collapse to the biblical "Sabbath year" (Deuteronomy 15:1-2), whereby every seventh year debts would be forgiven. In his view, the seven years between 9/11 and the fall of Lehman Brothers demonstrates the biblical import of the recession. If we do not return to the Lord, further judgments will come.
I find numerous problems with Cahn's logic. For example, if God removed his "hedge" on 9/11, how are we to understand Pearl Harbor? Washington, D.C. was burned in the War of 1812. The World Trade Center was bombed in 1993. Radical Muslims have been attacking America since 1979.
He likens the Great Recession to the destruction of the Northern Kingdom, but 1929 was a far worse economic collapse. And his method of biblical interpretation is more allegorical than exegetical. It reminds me of Jewish pesher: a passage is read for its surface meaning as well as a deeper mystical message not conveyed by the literal text.
At the same time, I am grateful Cahn calls America's Christians to repentance and spiritual renewal for the sake of our nation. However we view his argument, there can be no question his burden is biblical: "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall" (Deuteronomy 16:18). Self-reliance is spiritual suicide. Our nation's great need is for a great moral and spiritual awakening. May it begin with me—and with you
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OBERSVATIONS AND REBUTTAL FROM THE PEPSTER:
The use of Pesher is throughout the New Testament, but it is not widely known and is dismissed by Dispensationalists who hold a Cessationist approach to Biblical Hermeneutics.
It is from these circles that The Harbinger's message is being rejected en toto.
It is also from these circles that most attacks against other Christians from within the Body of Christ finds its main impetus, inasmuch as they believe they are judge, jury, and excuctioner in the name of Christ of Christians whom they have theological and doctrinal disagreements with.
They hide behind the mantle of "discernment" and "apologetics," but it masks a man-made veneer of a convenient theology that conveniently hides their own unbelief in what can be termed "miraculous."
They readily accept that the devil affects false miracles.
Yet they fail to ascribe to God the same works He has done since Prehistory, and teach that while He continues to transform lives through the power of His salvation and the efficacy of the blood of Chist; they deny His power in all other areas.
Paul warns the Church to avoid such people.
While Cahn is not a Charismatic, and disagrees with the wealth and prosperity false gospel narrative of the religious televangelists; he fervently believes, as the Scriptures teach, that the God who communicated with man since time immemorial, still does today through His written Word in the hearts of all believers, and it is through His written Word that He is now communicating with America.
That written warning finds its place within the pages of Cahn's book, The Harbinger and just as Daniel said that knowledge would increase as the times of the end draw near - the knowledge of God's Word, archeological evidences of the Bible's historicity are being unearthed every day, and knowledge is exploding.
The evidence is all around us. We are living in momentous times, and The Harbinger is evidence of that.
ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS FROM THE PEPSTER:
And now to a broader reply to the above article while we examine the true subtext of what undergirds and motivates The Harbinger's worst critics. We begin by exploring their rejection of The Harbinger as being a prophetic warning to our nation and our times.
The preceding article written by Jim Denison appears on a website titled the Denison Forum On Truth and Culture. The article appears largely favorable to The Harbinger, but the writer has problems with certain connections between events which occurred as part of God’s removing His hedge of protection over America by comparing with other historical tragedies in American history.
My reply and comments are below the article’s, and they’re posted on his web site for everyone to read. I have also begun to post my rebuttals to The Harbinger’s critics on this site, which you can read for yourself, all of which I am including in a book I am writing addressing The Harbinger's critics.
My reply to this man’s objections, after giving it some thought is that we should not be quick to dismiss a warning’s historical and Scriptural origin’s/connections on the flimsiest of arguments of our own inabilities to connect other tragic moments in human history – the War of 1812, the American Civil War, Pearl Harbor, the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and the Oklahoma City Bombing, and every other disaster – with the prophetic.
Events, as we see in the Holy Scriptures, in both Testaments; possess both historical and prophetic linear and parallel connections. Allow me to define the meaning of linear and parallel in the context of Prophetic Scripture and its Fulfillments throughout history. A linear connection is one in which a specific prophecy is given and it has a direct bearing upon an event which will take place centuries later.
We see a parallel connection where a prophecy is given for a specific date and time in history and see it being fulfilled within the life of the prophet who gave it, or within a generation of it being given; having both fulfillment within the context of that historical event, and in a future event to take place centuries later which is totally unrelated to the prophecy in a literal sense.
We see the evidence of this in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the New Testament, as events in both Testaments are tied to one another prophetically (linear), and understood in the paradigm of two completely unconnected historical events (parallel) connected prophetically at the place where the two events converge in the specific prophecies given; sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands of years from one another.
This is perhaps the best examples of Scripture interpreting Scripture, because we see the prophecy about a historical event given and centuries later applied by the Evangelists in their Gospels and the Apostles throughout the New Testament in their letters to specific events and situations within their own lifetime.
We see the same at work about prophetic events in our future, where there are specific prophecies about specific prophetic events yet to occur in the timeline of history. We find these in both Testaments as well. As to their interpretation, there are various schools of thought on that; Amillennialist, Premilleninialists, Post Millennialists, Preterists, Pretrib, Postrib, etc…
Regardless; none of these mitigate the fact that several prophecies are applicable and interpreted throughout the Scriptures in the context of more than one historical event. Additionally, the historical events have absolutely no connection one with the other, nor can one ascertain the literal meaning of the prophecy to connect it to the second historical event fulfilled unless reading it through the pages of the Evangelists who interpret it as such.
The pages of our Bibles are filled with such examples. I’ll cite the following three examples, though it is not an exhaustive sampling, it’ll suffice for the purposes of our current discussion:
After Solomon’s reign, during the years of the divided kingdoms of Israel (Ephraim, the Northern Kingdom with its capital in Samaria) and Judah (Judah and Benjamin, the Southern Kingdom with its capital in Jerusalem), in the days of Jotham when the Syrian-Samaritan alliance had come about against Judah, and its intention was to replace Judah’s King Ahaz with their own puppet-king who would be more amenable to their wishes (II Kings 15:37, Isaiah 7:5-9)). It was during this time that the word of the Lord came to the prophet Isaiah, and he challenged King Ahaz to ask God for a sign. “To make it as deep as Sheol and as high as heaven.” (Isaiah 7:10-11) But when Ahaz refused to test God by asking Him for a sign that would help strengthen his faith, at God’s explicit command through Isaiah the prophet, he was given a sign that indicated that his enemy would soon be removed (Isaiah 7:16). The Sign? An adolescent Jewish woman who is of marriageable age would bear a son and name him Immanuel – “with us, God” (Isaiah 7:14). Now move several centuries into the future, to sometime around 6 B.C., to the time when Jesus’ mother Miriam (Mary) had been betrothed to Joseph, before they had sexually consummated their marriage; she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit, which Matthew attributes as a direct fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy to Ahaz (Matthew 1:18-25). Two distinct completely unconnected historical events connected by a single prophetic verse of Scripture whose literal sense and meaning indicate two completely different things, except when interspersed with the latter historical event, ie; Jesus miraculous conception and birth by the Holy Spirit.
Hosea, whose name is a variant of the name of the Hebrew Yeshua, which means “salvation,” lived in the northern kingdom 8th century B.C., during the reign of Jeroboam. His contemporary was Amos the prophet who also prophesied to the northern kingdom, though he was from Tekoa, a town about six miles north east of Bethlehem of Judah. Hosea the prophet describes how God loved the people of Israel as His own Son since his youth and mentions the Exodus out of Egypt as an example of how the Lord loved and cared for him (Hosea 11:1) though Israel sacrificed to Baal and bowed to graven images (Hosea 11:2). The lad Israel was a enslaved in Egypt and the Lord God brought them whom He calls “My Son” out, because He loved His people as though they were His own Son. Now move several centuries into the future, to sometime around 4 B.C., about the time of Herod the Great’s death, where in his Gospel Matthew writes that hearing news of Herod’s death (Matthew 2:19-23) Mary and Joseph return from Egypt with Jesus, applying Hosea’s prophecy of the Exodus to Jesus’ return from exile in the land of Egypt (Matthew 2:15). Two distinct completely unconnected historical events connected by a single prophetic verse of Scripture whose literal sense and meaning indicate two completely different things, except when interspersed with the latter historical event, ie; Jesus’ return to the land of Israel.
Our third example is even greater in contrast as we shall see. The Babylonian Exile was so seared into the hearts and minds of the Jewish people that ninety years after the tragic event, Jeremiah, who lived around the year 627 B.C. raised a loud prophetic lamentation over his people and their plight in Ramah (modern Er Ram), a settlement in the area of Gibeon and Beeroth (see Joshua 18:25) approximately five miles north from Jerusalem, where Jeremiah was released from prison (Jeremiah 39:11-14, 40:1) describing as seeing Rachel who was buried in Ramah (Genesis 35:19, 49:7, 1Samuel 10:2) barren until she gave birth to Benjamin and died as he was born (Genesis 35:18); is seen by the prophet weeping bitterly for her grandchildren (Jeremiah 31:15), whose descendants – (from Ephraim and Manasseh, sons of Joseph Rachel’s son, Genesis 30:22-24, see 48:1-2) were taken into exile into Babylon on 722 B.C. Now move several centuries into the future, to a period sometime towards the end of the reign of Herod the Great, when according to Matthew’s Gospel, Herod ordered the slaughter of Bethlehem’s children up to two years old and younger (Matthew 2:16—18). This type of brutality from Herod is attested to by Josephus and other historians of the period. Two distinct completely unconnected historical events connected by a single prophetic verse of Scripture whose literal sense and meaning indicate two completely different things, except when interspersed with the latter historical event, ie; Herod’s genocidal act of slaughtering Bethlehem’s innocents – a day that will live in infamy.
The argument of these Cessationists who posit that Isaiah 9:10’s prophecy does not and cannot be applied to the events of September 11th, 2001 and subsequent events which the Nine Harbingers characterize prophetically because the verse denotes a specific historical event; cannot be defended under the circumstances, because herein lies the duality of the prophetic.
I posit that it is the Cessationist approach to hermeneutics that is both flawed and un-Biblical, because it places the serious student of Scripture at a loss and does not allow the full interpretation of Scripture in its full historical context. Were these people to critique the writings of the New Testament as they do The Harbinger, they would brand the entire New Testament heretical, because its writers employ the very same principles Cahn does to prophecy in The Harbinger, something these people cannot bring themselves either to understand or accept.
Perhaps because I have never studied at a seminary, I am not a Dispensationist, nor am I a Cessationist; never have been, therefore I am not theologically shackled by the limitations pure Cessationism presents to the serious student of God’s Word, because these limitations contradict, and by inference negate the very prophetic nature of events yet to take place, some of which require a belief both in the miraculous, and the supernatural; I do am not prejudiced in my analysis and study of the Biblical Texts as the critics of The Harbinger are.
To say, as Cessationists do – and they have had decades to develop their theology enough to convince a good many people – that the gifts and the miraculous ceased with the Apostolic Age/Second Temple Era – denies the very miraculous nature of future historical events like the resurrection of the righteous, the rapture, the two witnesses who will call fire down from heaven in the last days, the various judgments described in the Book of Revelations, and so many other aspects of Prophetic Scripture.
And to make a blanket statement such as “miracles, the gifts of the Spirit, and signs do not occur today,” contradicts the Biblical evidence for them. I posit as I have posited many times before that the flawed but well developed theology behind this belief (Cessationism) is a convenient method of hiding a disbelief in the miracles of the Bible in this Post Modern Age of Skepticism. It is a disbelief that such things actually occur in space and time.
The preponderance of evidence in favor of the miraculous and of signs (be they from God or Satanic) fills the pages of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and those who teach others that otherwise contradict the clear text of the Scriptures themselves, because how can such events take place if indeed as they say, “God ceased operating in this manner with the closing of the cannon of Scripture and the death of the last Apostle.”
And herein lies the problem of the Cessationist. Since he cannot accept that God is the same yesterday, today, and yes forever (Hebrew 13:8), and that the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:29); the Cessationist is left struggling through muddled but clever argument and the blatant Eisegesis employed to support an un-Scriptural and therefore untenable position pertaining to the very nature of God, how He operates, why He is unchangeable – the movement of God through Pre-history, ancient history, and right down to our present day, and right into the future.
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