Sunday, May 25, 2014

THE HARBINGER DISCUSSIONS CONTINUE

SIDEBAR: The following entry with my rebuttal, is presented in an updated post by the ubiquitous “RAFAEL” otherwise known by many aliases and names such as LEGMA/ANGEL/GABRIEL Suarez.  Why are there so many discussion threads?  The reason is because a reviewer who goes by various aliases, has compiled other people’s material, and copied and pasted the same material over and over and over again on all of these discussion threads, and every one of these have been answered and debunked by various reviewers, such as Lee Weeks, PCollado, Ladybug, myself, and others have addressed these false charges, misinformation, false witnesses; all of which have built urban legends around The Harbinger and Jonathan Cahn with absolutely no basis in fact. 

The person responsible for these false allegations goes by the name of RAFAEL/LEGNA/ANGEL/GABRIEL, whose real name is Angel Suarez, a member of the Prophecy Club, who claims to have been a member of Beth Israel, though I have never met him or spoken to him, or even was ever aware of his presence at Beth Israel in all of the years my wife and I have attended services at the worship center in Lodi, and now and in recent years, at the Beth Israel Jerusalem Center in Wayne, NJ. 

If Mr. Suarez was ever a member, we would know who he was, and had he attended as often as he claims, we would have most definitely crossed paths.  I have never met him, nor has he ever met me.  Not only is Mr. Suarez who goes by these aliases (why use so many aliases if one has nothing to hide?), is not only a liar and a fraud, but he has also continually borne false witness against myself and against Jonathan Cahn and the ministry of Beth Israel.  This is [a] violation of the commandment proscribing such actions and not the behavior or work of someone who is a professing born again Evangelical Christian.

I’ve learned that the biblical response to Satan is to pray to the Lord for deliverance, rely totally on Him for it, and then to hit as fast and as hard, and as often as you can after much preparation, and to do it relentlessly.  We wrestle not with flesh and blood, and “RAFAEL” is displaying all of the characteristics of a false apostle of the enemy; arguing a dead and moot point, as well as hurling unfounded and unsubstantiated accusations at me and at Jonathan Cahn, bearing false witness as he does this, breaking a multiplicity of commandments, admonitions, and counsels given in the Scriptures against such behavior, and heaping hurt upon himself unnecessarily by all of this. 

The more he gives into it, the more consumed by it he will become, and the more he will be given over to his most sensuous desire, because that is what it stems from – his sensuous inner being is getting a real high by this with each successive post, feeding his flesh, and weakening him more and more spiritually, as he continues to give into it.  It is really sad, because the more he does this, the more oppressed he will become, and the more unlike Christ he will become.  He started this the day he chose to betray Jonathan Cahn’s trust and wise counsel, and walked away from it to become an unwitting enemy of the cross.  His erratic behavior and the lunacy he displays with his posts bear this out.  I pity him.   

JB POSTED ON SUNDAY, MAY 25, 2014
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars THE HARBINGER: IS IT FACT, FICTION, OR PROPHETIC SPECULATION?, November 18, 2013
By 
RAFAEL (USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Truth about The Harbinger: Addressing the Controversy and Discovering the Facts About This Prophetic Message (Paperback)
ATTENTION AMAZON CHRISTIANS WORLDWIDE:
BEFORE YOU BEGIN READING MY REVIEW, CLICK ON MY USER NAME RAFAEL AND TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT THIS PHOTO OF MR. JONATHAN CAHN.  NOTE CAREFULLY HIS RIGHT HAND.  IF YOU ARE WONDERING WHAT THE TRUE MEANING OF THIS HAND SIGNAL OR SIGN REPRESENTS, LOG ONTO THE FOLLOWING WEBSITE: Jesus-is-Savior.com.  ON THE SEARCH BAR TYPE THE FOLLOWING: THE OCCULT MAGIC OF THE JEWISH CABALA WRIITEN BY MR.TEXE MARRS.  ALSO LOG ONTO michellesantos.wordpress.com AND READ HER ARTICLE- DEPROGRAM: ALL PEACE SIGNS ARE SATANIC LUCIFERIAN SYMBOLS.  AS A CONCERNED CHRISTIAN YOU BETTER READ THESE ARTICLES CAREFULLY. THE LENS OF A CAMERA NEVER LIE.

WRONG: Mr. LEGNA/ANGEL/GABRIEL Suarez professes to being a Christian.  I will not dispute the question.  I will however bring into question why he knowingly chooses to slander and defame a fellow member of the Christian Faith.  Yet he knows absolutely nothing about what he writes here.  It is painful to read this kind of incredible ignorance expressed here, and worse, to see it connected used to destroy another member of body of Christ in order to defame and discredit him.  It is one thing to disagree over something, it is quite another when what is being presented is an outright defamation of another.  Worse still, is when such a defamation is based entirely upon false and misleading mischaracterizations and allegations.  This is bearing false witness and it is an egregious breach of God’s commandment.  This is an abomination and it is sin.

A wise man once said "There are 3 sides to a story.  There is your side, my side and then there is the right side".  Of all the articles and book reviews I have read surrounding Jonathan Cahn's book The Harbinger, no one has done it better than Dave James to reveal the right side and the truth contained in his book "The Harbinger: Fact or Fiction.  With the expertise of an investigator and a legal counselor, Mr. James cuts through all the smoke screen and mirrors, presenting historical, theological, and surprisingly scientific evidence, to reveal the deception
behind one of the biggest HOAXES unleashed across America since a certain individual from Family Radio Stations predicted the end of the world by May 2011!  His shocking evidence demands a verdict.
WRONG: The first statement made in the paragraph above this one is nothing more than a form of feigned wisdom and pure cliché’.  If I had a nickel for every time I heard it, I’d be extremely wealthy by now.  It’s similar to the one where we’re asked what we get with two Cubans discussing something on a street corner, or two Jews, and someone says, “You get four opinions.”  It’s pure cliché’.  RAFAEL uses it here to introduce his hyperbole regarding David James with whom he is quite taken.  RAFAEL writes glowingly about Mr. James as almost containing “powers and abilities far greater than mortal man,” and then proceeds to copy and paste Mr. James’ arguments all over the Internet.  One wonders if David James will fly over to RAFAEL’s location any moment.  We’re still waiting.  But time is of the essence, we must proceed as  RAFAEL’s ecstatic and overblown descriptions of Mr. James continues into new heights as he climbs the growing mound of felgercarb beneath his feet.  Writing of David James, RAFAEL claims:

He reveals the emergence of many RELIGIOUS VISIONARIES who today are writing books, videos, cds etc to mislead the body of Christ with heresies.  As he puts it in his book, the Harbinger is a radical departure from sound biblical hermeneutics. 

WRONG:  The Harbinger is not a radical departure from sound biblical hermeneutics, because it describes in vivid detail the history and context behind Isaiah’s prophecy as contained in the ninth chapter of the prophet’s book in our Bibles.  Continuing in his idolatrous fawning of David James, RAFAEL writes:

He also reveals how the Zohar, the classical jewish mystical text of the Kabbalist and the Jewish Talmud have had a direct influence on several of Jonathan Cahn's teachings and sermons. 

WRONG: Although several people have addressed these urban legends which originated in David James’ unfortunate polemic for which he has much yet to account for; RAFAEL continues to harp the same mantra of misleading lies regarding Rabbi Cahn’s use of the rabbinical writings such as the Book of Zohar in its unwitting description of Golgotha as the well-spring of life, which is to say the place of the cross where Christ was crucified has now become the epicenter of God’s redemption.  Rabbi Cahn’s use of the Zohar as a hostile witness to show that even the rabbinic writings unknowingly corroborate the Evangelists in proclaiming the cross has been twisted by David James and his proxy, RAFAEL to mislead people into believing that Jonathan Cahn promotes the Kabbalah and teaches Jewish mysticism.  I know the man, and have sat on almost every one of his teachings for more than ten years.  He does not in any shape or form resemble the caricature David James and his proxy RAFAEL have created here.  This is an unspeakable sin that these men have committed against a brother in Christ, to bear false witness in such an underhanded manner.  It must be asked, is there no fear of God in these men!!!????  RAFAEL’s fawning continues:  

Mr. James exposes how both biblical and historical events were manipulated in order to devise all 9 harbingers with the purpose to create an ELABORATE FABRICATION of a so called ancient mystery that holds the secret to America's future from Isaiah 9:10.  As you read and progress from one chapter to the next, you will be left speechless at the mounting evidence presented by Dave James against Jonathan Cahn.
WRONG: David James takes issue with The Harbinger because he has trouble with the word “mystery” that ties the ancient prophecy to the present reenactment of the exact same pattern of judgment witnessed in ancient Israel 2700 years ago now reemerging in our nation.  It is not the prophecy that is connected to America, but the mystery of its reenactment found in the repeated patterns of remedial judgments now appearing in the nation that are playing out once again that connects all of the various elements contained within The Harbinger.  No one can manipulate this, David James is aware of this, and Jonathan Cahn certainly had nothing to do with the events that transpired as The Harbinger describes them.  They happened long before he wrote his book, and they happened as described in it.  It was not so long ago that our collective memory of the tragic events of that day and of the subsequent events that followed in the wake of that disaster years later, would be so easily forgotten.  David James simply does not understand this, and refuses to acknowledge it, and because he cannot understand it, he dismisses it altogether.

Dave James presents overwhelming evidence to refute Jonathan Cahn's claims about these 9 Harbingers under the following chapters:

WRONG:  No he does not.  In my book, The Truth About The Harbinger, I address these so-called “refutations” with clear biblical evidences to the contrary.  Read my book for yourselves, and see for yourselves just how far off the rails these criticisms are.

Chapter 10: The Ancient Mystery: the nine harbingers
Chapter 14:The Shemitah
Chapter 17: The Tenth Seal-exposes Jonathan Cahn's jewish (sic) mystical theology

Below is a synopsis of how Jonathan Cahn devised The 9 Harbingers as presented by Dave James:

1. Hedge of protection removed/breach: pure speculation-we don't know if there is or ever has been a hedge of protection.  9/11 was not the first attack on U.S. soil, it was not a military breach, and it did not weaken America's defenses in any way.

WRONG: Not only is this a form of pure twenty-first century Christianized Deistic conjecture, it is biblically unfounded just as Deism is.  The statement itself is contradicted by David James’ own book, because in it Mr. James himself describes this same biblical template in full agreement with The Harbinger.
 
“Furthermore, the promise connected with repentance not only has a spiritual component: the Lord will forgive their sins; but it also has a physical component: He will also heal their land.  God’s judgment of sin manifests itself through physical harm, whether through the forces of nature or the forces of a foreign invader, both of which bring destruction.  The promise to Israel is that God will be involved personally in the physical restoration from judgment.”

(Ibid, page 176)

This is an amazing admission on his part, because it wholly contradicts the uncertainty he tries to create as to whether or not anyone can be sure that God’s hedge of protection was lifted on 9/11 or at any other period in America’s history, and the strict limitations he tries to apply to 2Chronicles 7:14.  It crashes into those two premises and demolishes them.  David James is left arguing semantics with…himself.  He doesn’t like the use of the phrase “God lifts His hedge of protection when judging a nation,” so he describes it as he does above, which is literally the same thing.  It’s just a matter of how it’s phrased. 

The Scriptures provide us with various examples throughout postdiluvian history (after the flood) of examples of God’s hedge of protection over people, families, groups, and nations.  I  will list a few of them here.

LOT AND HIS FAMILY

The first and earliest example of a hedge of protection over someone is Lot and his family.  As God is about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, He tells Abraham of what He is about to do.  Abraham asks God several times if, beginning with the number fifty until he reaches ten, by asking God if such numbers of righteous people were to be found in the city, would He destroy the cities; with God responding from fifty down to ten that He would spare and not destroy the cities if ten righteous people were found in them (Genesis 18:16-33).  Just before God exacts His judgment on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, He dispatches two angels who rescue Lot and his family and save him and his two daughters from eminent destruction by fire.  Unfortunately, as God rains fire and brimstone from the sky towards the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot’s wife turns to look at the devastation and as she does, she turns into a pillar of salt.  But, this is the earliest example of God’s direct intervention and protection of a family (Genesis 19:15-29).  It is interesting to note that God did not have a covenant established between Himself and Lot and his house, but the Scripture simply says, God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot lived (Genesis 19:29).  It is God’s grace as borne out by His faithfulness, that saved Lot and his two daughters from His wrath.  

But, the story of Lot serves to show that God provided a hedge of protection around him and around his family, a man who had no covenant with God and no promise spoken of.  Of course, we see God’s grace imparted to a Moabitess named Ruth, who history shows became the mother of Obed, and to Obed was born Jesse, and to Jesse, David, (Ruth 4:22) the King of Israel from whose throne (Isaiah 9:7) the Messiah will someday rule (Hebrews 2:8b) the nations of the earth. (Jeremiah 30:9, 18-22, Zechariah 14:9)  

EBED-MELECH THE ETHIOPIAN

Perhaps one of the most endearing stories of God’s grace from the Hebrew Bible is the story of Ebed-Melech, an Ethiopian, who was in Jerusalem at a time when all around him, he was witnessing the fulfillment of God’s prophecy to Hezekiah through Isaiah that He would not destroy Jerusalem in Hezekiah’s day (2Kings 20:16-18, Isaiah 39:5-8), and confirmed by Jeremiah during the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah (Jeremiah 20:4-5, 21:3-10).

Zedekiah was a weak and duplicitous corrupt king.  He feared his nobles and they held sway with him.  They convinced him to mistreat and imprison Jeremiah the Prophet. (Jeremiah 38:4-5)   But it was Ebed-Melech, the Ethiopian who was an official in Zedekiah’s court, who rescued the Prophet Jeremiah from the mud filled cistern (Jeremiah 38:8-13) that the evil priest Pashhur the son of Malchijah, and his son, Gedaliah, along with Shephatiah the son of Mattan, and Jucal the son of Shelemiah; the officials who opposed Jeremiah had put him in (Jeremiah 38:1, 4-6) because of the word of the Lord which Jeremiah spoke against the king of Judah and all its nobles, warning the people to flee the city, and the king to go out to the king of Babylon and make peace overtures towards him. (Jeremiah 38)
“Nebuchadnezzar went up against Jerusalem to take it by storm, taking the city and all of the rulers of Judah captive and slaying them, including King Hezekiah’s sons right before his eyes.

“But God protected Ebed-Melech, the Ethiopian, and spared his life while the armies of the Chaldeans captured and plundered Jerusalem and killed its people.  Even the ones whose lives were spared were exiled to Babylon.  However, God delivered this foreigner on that day, saying “Because you have trusted Me,’ declares the Lord (Jeremiah 39:18).  This example reveals the critical importance of remembering God’s point of view: ‘God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’ (1Samuel 16:7)

“How is it that this one foreigner who lived in the midst of Israel [Judah] found grace, while all of Israel’s leaders were either led into captivity or died by the sword?  He trusted and called upon the name of the Lord, and they did not. (Jeremiah 39:15-18)  This was a man who understood what God spoke through the mouth of the psalmist when He promised everyone:

“‘Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me.’”

– Psalm 50:15

(Jose J. Bernal, The Truth about The Harbinger: Addressing the Controversy and Discovering the Facts About This Prophetic Message, page 121, Charisma Media/Charisma House Book Group, Lake Mary, Florida, October 1, 2013)

In summarizing this harbinger, it can be confidently said that the concept that God sets and lift His hedge of protection over nations is a biblical one that is found throughout the Bible.  We see it in the parable of God’s vineyard regarding both houses of Israel – both kingdoms; the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah.  In this parable, God likens the vineyard in this parable to the house of Israel (verse 7), and his choice plant to Judah; for He prophesies, “And the men of Judah His delightful plant (verse 7), specifically the inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah (verse 7) within His personal vineyard.

There are many more, and I will provide them in a future report I am working on, but these will suffice here for now in helping us understand the proper biblical and historical context of God’s watchful eye over human lives and nations.  Few really understand it as it should be understand.  We need not look too far, as we are contending with it right here.

It is an unfortunate spectacle that in his attempt to re-write the tragic events of 9/11 to conform to his own biased personal revision of them, David James here eschews all mention of the terrorists’ acts as acts of war, yet he completely ignores the historical fact that this is precisely how our national leaders and America’s allies interpreted them to be, and these acts precipitated a full military response by the United States, Great Britain, and other NATO allied forces against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein in the Iraq War which followed, not to mention THE WAR ON TERROR.  He can argue the point until Christ returns, but it won’t change the facts.

And lest Mr. James forgets; it was not just the Twin Towers that were struck on Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, but also the Pentagon, and it is rumored that the third plane which went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, was headed for either the Capitol Building or the White House in Washington, D.C. in our nation’s capital.  The targets were not exclusively civilian targets, as Mr. James would like us to believe, but encompassed America’s three spheres of power – financial, military, and governmental.  As for the third target, the plan failed, because the intrepid passengers of 93 courageously turned on the hijackers and prevented the plane from striking its target in Washington, D.C., though it did cost them their lives that day. 

The Attack
The Mass Murder of September 11th, 2001
(From 911 Research.com)

“September 11th, 2001, saw the most deadly attack on American civilians in modern history.  The attack consisted of a coordinated series of assaults.

Regardless of whether all of the targets were civilian or some military, if these were not acts of war, then nothing is.  But the historical fact is that our nation interpreted the terrorist acts of the 9/11 hijackers to be the work of Al Qaeda which at the time was headquartered in Afghanistan and protected by the murderous Taliban, and America responded militarily to it, because our government did consider these acts of war.

2. The terrorist: The Assyrians were hardly the first one to use terror tactics-it is just a way to instill fear.  The 9/11 hijackers were not Assyrians (which is still an ethnic group that is mostly Christian).

WRONG: The Assyrians were not the first to use terror tactics, because the first act of terror was Cain’s murder of Abel (Genesis 4) in the Bible, but the Assyrians were the first to use systematic terror on a mass scale to inflict fear in the hearts of those whom they threatened to conquer and those whom they did conquer.  This is one historical aspect about them that David James misses.  This is how one website describes Assyria’s military campaigns:

“The Assyrians were also diabolically cruel, they skinned their victims alive, cut off their hands, feet, noses, ears, eyes, pulled out tongues, made mounds of heads and many more atrocities to inspire terror in those who were demanded to pay tribute.”

(Bible History, under the heading of Ancient Assyria)

Today’s ethnic Assyrians are mostly “Christian,” but this argument is a red herring, because the ancient Assyrians were pagans and not Christians.  And by the way, no one has said that the 9/11 hijackers were Assyrians, except Mr. James implies it here anecdotally in order to create the false impression that somehow this is claimed in the book.  It is not, and Mr. James knows it.

3. The fallen bricks: in Israel, fallen bricks meant the nation was leveled by the attacks.  On 9/11 there were just a few square blocks of one city.  In Israel, most buildings were made of bricks, while in America bricks were only incidental with no significance.
WRONG: The use of fallen bricks in this harbinger is thematic in nature, and therefore a metaphor of the absolute devastation that was visited to ancient Israel as well, as in the case of falling of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Ground Zero. Even their mention as harbingers or elements in Isaiah 9:10 is a metaphor of a crushed infrastructure more than a literal destruction of the entire country, because the vow pertains to a strike on the land that was limited in scope and not all compassing.  Whether the devastation was regional, local, or a city, or a hamlet, or even just a few square blocks; it is the evidence of the fallen towers and the devastation in its aftermath that brings to mind the feeling of acute despair and defiance that Israel must have felt and indeed expressed in the aftermath of Assyria’s strike upon their land.  The sense of national pride wounded and humbled, and the desire in every Israelite to defy Assyria for what they had done to them.  In the same manner, America felt its national pride wounded and itself humbled and its spirit crushed in the aftermath of 9/11.

4. The tower: Completely manufactured only using the Septuagint translation, not the Hebrew.  If one uses the Septuagint then both the sycamore and cedar harbingers disappear.
WRONG:  Mr. James completely misses the point. 

•The World Trade Center is a complex of various buildings in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States, replacing an earlier complex with the same name on the same site. The original World Trade Center was a complex of seven buildings. It featured landmark twin towers, which opened on April 4, 1973 and were destroyed in the September 11 attacks of 2001, along with 7 World Trade Center. The other buildings in the complex were damaged in the attacks, and their ruins were eventually demolished. The site is being rebuilt with five new skyscrapers and a memorial to the casualties of the attacks.

•As of November 2011, only one skyscraper has been completed; the other four are expected to be completed before 2020. One World Trade Center will be the lead building for the new complex, reaching more than 100 stories at its completion.   It became the tallest building in New York City on April 30, 2012, and is expected to be finished by 2013.  A sixth tower is awaiting confirmation. (Wiki)
(From the comments section of The Harbinger Project)

Again, it must be said that David James misses the point.  The seventy Jewish scholars who translated one of the ancient texts extent in their day of the Hebrew Bible (not to be confused with the current Medieval Masoretic Text) in writing the Septuagint Version (LXX) of the Tanakh, when translating from the Hebrew to the Greek; considered the sinful vow and Israel’s national sin attached to that vow so great that they equated it with man’s attempt to build the Tower of Babel which is why they translated this verse to include a tower more than two millennia before the events of 9/11 and the Post-9/11 pledges made by our national leaders to rebuild not the Twin Towers, but a taller, stronger tower; the One World Trade Tower at Ground Zero.  Indeed, Jonathan Cahn had nothing to do with their choice to translate “a tower” into the text of Isaiah 9:10.  Mr. James is boxing the wind here, and misses this incredible aspect of the prophecy’s translation from Hebrew to Greek altogether.  Additionally, he is so fixated on finding any fault with The Harbinger, that he forgets that the writers of the New Testament considered the Septuagint (LXX) reliable as Scripture and made good use of it.  Mr. James is also wrong regarding the sycamore and cedar, because the Greek translation buttresses these elements as valid harbingers by employing them directly as the materials used by the ancient Israelites in their defiant attempts to rebuild in the wake of the devastation brought on by the Assyrians first strike on the land in 732 B.C..

5. The gazit stone: Israel rebuilt using gazit (which is just quarried stone), didn't just lay a gazit cornerstone-they replaced the bricks.  In America there was only a single cut cornerstone that ended up not even being used at all.
WRONG: The stone which David James mentions here was quarried out of Adirondack Granite, but it was transported to Ground Zero where on July 4th, 2004, various elected officials which included NY Governor Pataki, the Governor of New Jersey, Mayor Rudolf Guiliani, and others gathered and conducted a ceremony around the polished stone and made vows over it. 

As another website describes the ceremony and public utterances made on that day, I quote:

“The ‘Freedom Stone’ was proclaimed by New York Gov. George Pataki to be ‘the bedrock of a new symbol of American strength and confidence.’  He stressed that the cornerstone was being laid by the heirs of a ‘revolutionary spirit of defiance.’

(The Harbinger Project)

Another thing that cannot be overlooked or dismissed is the significance of what was reported at the time by the Port of Authority of New York & New Jersey.  I quote:  “The Governors and the Mayor then laid the cornerstone in the northwest corner of the site, 70 feet below street level.”   This is of immense symbolic and prophetic significance, because the northwest corner of Ground Zero is where the sycamore was struck inside the grounds of St. Paul’s Chapel in NYC on 9/11!  Here at St. Paul’s Chapel and Ground Zero we have the conjoining of two harbingers; the sycamore that was struck down and replaced with the Tree of Hope – a Norway Spruce – on the grounds of St. Paul’s Chapel, and a 20-ton solid granite block from the Adirondack mountains of NY, called the Freedom Tower Cornerstone, was laid in place on the hallowed grounds where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood – both located at the northwest corner of Ground Zero.

Also of significance is the following as described by the Innovative Stone website; the company that cut the stone and donated that granite block.  I quote:

“Initially planned as the first piece of the foundation of the building the cornerstone was eventually returned to Innovative in Hauppauge, Long Island when the plans for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center were revised.”

Both of these harbingers – The Freedom Tower Cornerstone and the Tree of Hope were located at the northwest corner of Ground Zero; one was placed and the other was planted, and now they’re both gone.  And in case the reader forget; Jonathan Cahn had absolutely no control over these events.  They happened long before he wrote his book.

6. The sycamore: The sycamore of Israel (fig-mulberry) and that in America are two completely different kinds of trees.  In Israel these fig-mulberry trees were cut down by the Assyrians all across the country.  In America a single tree (that was not a fig-mulberry) just fell because of the falling buildings.
WRONG:  First, while the sycamore in Israel is a Middle Eastern Sycamore and the sycamore of Ground Zero is a North American Sycamore, the fact remains – both trees – whether the ones that fell in ancient Israel or the one that fell at the corner of Ground Zero on 9/11; are of the same species of trees – they’re sycamore.  Mr. James is being purposely coy here in his use of words.  And regardless of whether one tree is a fig-mulberry and the other is not is immaterial inasmuch as both are of the sycamore family of trees.  David James here carries the topic the level of the absurd and bizarre arguing such points. 

This is like arguing that a Sand Shark is not “a shark” because it is not a Great White Shark.  And by the way, the sycamore of Ground Zero did not just fall by itself, as Mr. James misleadingly describes that “a single tree (that was not a fig-mulberry) just fell, only to contradict himself when he follows with “because of the falling buildings”   Well, did it just fall or was it struck and it fell “because of the falling buildings” ?  The record tells us that it was struck by debris – some say a beam from the crashing Twin Towers of the World Trade Center struck and uprooted it as is evidenced by photographs taken after it was struck.  This is how one website describes what its host calls “a miracle.”  I quote:

A Miracle

What makes the story of St. Paul’s truly amazing is that, by all logic, the chapel should not be standing today.

On Sept. 11 more than 2 billion pounds of steel came crashing to the ground. The crash was so powerful it registered on the Richter scale. Everything inside and below the WTC buildings was smashed beyond recognition.  Every window facing the Trade Center was blown out.  Every nearby building suffered damage, some beyond repair.  The destruction seemed endless.  We now know that the total amount of energy released by the impact of the planes, the explosion of jet fuel, the massive fires burning inside the towers, and finally the towers’ collapse equaled the power of a small atomic bomb.

It wasn’t until Sept. 14 that anyone was able to inspect what was left of St. Paul’s.  Miraculously, where workers expected to see a pile of rubble, they instead found a completely intact chapel.  Not a window had been broken (one was cracked).  Not an inch of the walls or the roof had been compromised.  The building’s structure was as sound as it had ever been.

Inside a six-inch layer of dust coated everything, which did wreck the pipe organ, but otherwise nothing had been damaged—with one notable exception.  The giant sycamore tree that had stood in the northwest corner of the graveyard—on the spot where the Tree of Hope now stands—had been knocked over in the collapse.

People say that tree was responsible for saving the chapel.  For a long time I resented the idea.  How, I thought, could a single tree—no matter how massive—possibly have saved a tiny building from the collapse of two skyscrapers?  Why do people always feel the need to explain away a miracle?

I found myself thinking about that tree more and more.  And suddenly I realized I’d been missing the point.

The very fact that the force of the collapse was enough to knock down such a large tree made the complete survival of St. Paul’s all the more remarkable.  It was almost as if all the power and fury of the disaster surrounding the church had somehow been directed at that one tree.  While much larger, newer buildings suffered massive structural damage, tiny St. Paul’s Chapel was barely touched, leaving it available to provide desperately needed support to those working tirelessly to clear the Trade Center rubble.  One tree, sacrificed to save the church.”

(From New York City’s Tree of Hope by Rachel Snyder)

7. The erez: The cedar of Lebanon in Israel, but a Norway spruce in America-two completely different kinds of trees.  In Israel, cedars were much stronger and much more valuable trees to be used in many different ways.  But in America a single symbolic tree, that is not necessarily stronger than the tree it replaced.
WRONG: Here David James makes attempts to say that the Cedar of Lebanon in the Middle East is a different species of tree than a Norway Spruce.  Well, of course he is partially correct; one is from the Middle East and the other is from Norway.  But both the Lebanon Cedar (its binomial name is Cedrus libani) and the Norway Spruce (its binomial name is Picea abies) are both conifers belonging to the same species.  Additionally the Hebrew word used in Isaiah 9:10 is the word "arez" which refers to a conifer type of tree, the same type of tree as the Lebanon Cedar and the Norway Spruce, because both are conifers.  More importantly, both are important timber trees.  The Norway Spruce sometimes is called Deal or Whitewood.  We use these for our Christmas Trees.  Completely missed by David James and the other critics of The Harbinger is that eerily, it was not another sycamore that was chosen to replace the fallen sycamore at the northwest corner of Ground Zero, but a conifer tree – a Norway Spruce – a conifer tree just like ancient Israelites chose to plant – in their case, the conifers available to them at the time; the Cedars of Lebanon.  Jonathan Cahn had absolutely nothing to do with their choice of tree.  Like the ancient Israelites, they chose the conifer tree to replace the sycamore.  Here again, we are faced with Mr. James claiming that the Sand Shark is not “a shark” because it’s not a Great White Shark.

Below is a List of Conifer Trees:

  • Western_Hemlock_Tsuga_heterophylia_cones_and_leaves.jpgArbutus (Arbutus menziesii)
  • Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica) *
  • Austrian pine (Pinus nigra) *
  • Bald-cypress (Taxodium distichum) *
  • Balsam fir (Abies balsamea)
  • Black spruce (Picea mariana)
  • Bristlecone pine (Pinus aristata) *
  • Canada yew (Taxus canadensis)
  • Cedar-of-Lebanon (Cedrus libani) *
  • Chinese juniper (Juniperus chinensis) *
  • Coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) *
  • Colorado Blue Spruce (Picea pungens)
  • Colorado spruce (Picea pungens) *
  • Common juniper (Juniperus communis)
  • Creeping juniper (Juniperus horizontalis)
  • Dahurian larch (Larix gmelinii) *
  • Dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) *
  • Deodar cedar (Cedrus deodara) *
  • Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii)
  • Eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis)
  • Eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana)
  • Eastern white pine (Pinus strobus)
  • Eastern white-cedar (Thuja occidentalis)
  • Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii)
  • English yew (Taxus baccata) *
  • European larch (Larix decidua) **
  • Grand fir (Abies grandis)
  • Grecian Juniper (Juniperus excelsa)
  • Himalayan Pine (Pinus Wallichiana)
  • Hinoki-cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa) *
  • Jack pine (Pinus banksiana)
  • Japanese larch (Larix kaempferi) *
  • Japanese yew (Taxus cuspidata) *
  • Japanese-cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) *
  • Lawson-cypress (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana) *
  • Limber pine (Pinus flexilis)
  • Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia)
  • Monkey-puzzle (Araucaria araucana) *
  • Monterey Pine (Pinus radiata)
  • Mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana)
  • Mugho pine (Pinus mugo) *
  • Noble fir (Abies procera) *
  • Nordmann fir (Abies nordmanniana) *
  • Norway spruce (Picea abies) *
  • Oriental-cedar (Thuja orientalis) *
  • Pitch pine (Pinus rigida)
  • Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa)
  • Red fir (Abies magnifica) *
  • Red pine (Pinus resinosa)
  • Red spruce (Picea rubens)
  • Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca)
  • Rocky Mountain juniper (Juniperus scopulorum)
  • Savin juniper (Juniperus sabina) *
  • Sawara-cypress (Chamaecyparis pisifera) *
  • Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) **
  • Serbian spruce (Picea omorika) *
  • Shore pine (Pinus contorta var. contorta)
  • Siberian larch (Larix sibirica) *
  • Sierra redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum) *
  • Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis)
  • Spanish fir (Abies pinsapo) *
  • Subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa)
  • Subalpine larch (Larix lyallii)
  • Tamarack (Larix laricina)
  • Umbrella-pine (Sciadopitys verticillata) *
  • Western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla)
  • Western larch (Larix occidentalis)
  • Western redcedar (Thuja plicata)
  • Western white pine (Pinus monticola)
  • Western yew (Taxus brevifolia)
  • White fir (Abies concolor) *
  • White spruce (Picea glauca)
  • Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis)
  • Yellow-cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis)

Time and time again, when investigated, every one of David James’ charges prove either false and erroneous, or his “facts” incorrect.  Mr. James is splitting unnecessary hairs here in order to find something – anything – that will at the very least appear to disprove The Harbinger.  What he has done repeatedly is intellectually dishonest.  Even worse, it is below the kind of behavior one would expect from a credible scholar and professing born again Evangelical Christian.

8. The utterance: In Israel there was a defiant spirit directed toward the Assyrians and God, ignoring God's direct warnings by the prophets he had sent over and over to his chosen people.  In America there was no intentional, prideful, arrogant defiance of God.
WRONG:  This statement is not true.  When the ancient Israelite leaders made their vow, they unwittingly pronounced a curse upon themselves and their nation and consigned their fate and their nation’s fate to God’s judgment by vowing “in defiance and arrogance of heart” against Israel’s enemies – the Assyrians – that they would rebuild, replant, and recover.  Their defiance was that they did not recognize God in this strike, just as our own leaders didn’t, and the defiance they expressed against their enemies – the Assyrians, they expressed against God, because they were His tool of judgment against the wayward, sinful, and idolatrous northern kingdom.

The United States has been in increasing defiance of God and the Judeo-Christian underpinning of this republic over a generation.  Since the passing of the infamous Johnson Amendment that created a change in the U.S. tax code made in 1954 which prohibited tax-exempt organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates, America has declined spiritually, morally, socially, and religiously, and become a nation that has embraced what it once considered reprehensible and sin.  I need not cite here the decline; my book The Truth About The Harbinger does this very well, as does The Harbinger.  But consider the following regarding the vows made, and let me remind those reading, Jonathan Cahn had no control over this, because these events occurred long before he wrote The Harbinger.

What is strikingly amazing is that unwittingly three American leaders from the highest levels of our government (and several others during those days) on three separate and unconnected occasions – two of which commemorated the tragic events of Tuesday, September 11th, 2001 – all quoted from this exact same vow from Isaiah 9:10 and used it as the nation’s pledge in our nation’s capital, inside the halls of congress as America’s official policy, and set the course the nation would follow for its foreseeable future.

The first of these occurred on Wednesday, September 12th, 2001 with Senate Majority Leader Thom Daschle’s speech, the second occurred during a prayer gathering of the Congressional Black Caucus on September 11th, 2004 in which Senator John Edwards (who was John Kerry’s running mate for the White House) gave his speech and quoted directly Isaiah 9:10 and making it America’s pledge to rebuild, replant, and recover, and the third time was when newly elected President Barack Obama gave his first official speech as president before a joint session of both houses of congress on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009, when he pledged the nation with this vow.  In applying these words directly from this vow quoted by Isaiah, these leaders invoked God’s judgment on this nation. 

The Congressional Record for the 107th Congress records that on Wednesday, September 12th, 2001, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D, South Dakota) spoke in the following manner during his Floor Statement on a 'Joint Resolution of Condemnation for the September 11, 2001.  I quote:

"Mr. President, it is with pain, sorrow, anger, and resolve that I stand before this Senate, a symbol for 212 years of the strength of our democracy, and say that America will emerge from this tragedy, as we have emerged from all adversity, united and strong. ... The world should know that the Members of both parties in both Houses stand united.

“The full resources of our Government will be brought to bear in aiding the search and rescue and in hunting down those responsible and those who may have aided or harbored them.  Nothing, nothing can replace the losses that have been suffered.  I know there is only the smallest measure of inspiration that can be taken from this devastation.

“But there is a passage in the Bible from Isaiah that I think speaks to all of us at times such as this:

'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.'

“That is what we will do.  We will rebuild and we will recover.

“The people of America will stand strong together because the people of America have always stood together.  And those of us privileged to serve this great Nation will stand with you.”

Three years later during a prayer breakfast held by the Congressional Black Caucus on September 11, 2004, Democratic Candidate for Vice President John Edwards (D, North Carolina) also uttered the same vow and unwittingly pronounced the same curse upon America by citing the same verse.  I quote:

"Good morning. Today, on this day of remembrance and mourning, we have the Lord’s word to get us through. 'The bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place.' ... And let me show you how we are building and putting cedars in those three hallowed places - the footprints of the Towers, the Pentagon, and the field in Pennsylvania. ... Walk with me through this day.

“And you will see that while those bricks fell and the sycamores cut down, our people are making those cedars rise. ... Each time that bell tolls, it calls us to a greater purpose.  It calls us to never forget.

“It calls us to do the Lord’s work here on earth. And it calls on us to always remember that when we walk through this day together - the cedars will rise, the stones will go up, and this season of hope will endure."

The defiance?  The leaders were unanimous, the nation was unanimous, and they all spoke this vow and pledged themselves to do it without giving honor to God or even acknowledging Him in any way.  It is ironic that despite the religious nature of this vow from the Bible, not one of the leaders who repeated this vow and pledged the nation to it, thought to invoke the name of God or to seek His guidance in prayer for His blessings, solace, and protection during this very special period.  Perhaps it was President Obama who best summarized the nation’s attitude with these words from this same speech:

“The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation.  The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach.  They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth.  Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure.  What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more.”

(Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery
Address to Joint Session of Congress
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009)

As one Internet blogger observed correctly:

“What the two senators spoke were not words humbling a nation. They spoke a rally cry on behalf of a nation.”

(Ray Gano, Israel - America - Isaiah & God's Judgment Pt 3- The Curse… Sycamores and Cedars)

Another website summarizes America’s defiant attitude towards Christ very well.  I quote:

“In a spirit of defiance, America confidently continues to walk in the counsel of the ungodly…stand in the way of sinners…and sit in the seat of the scornful (Psalms 1:1).”

(The Harbinger Project)

9. The vow: In neither case was the statement "we will rebuild" a biblical vow, it was just a statement.  Beyond that, how many ways can someone say "we will rebuild?" And how many Bible verses talk about rebuilding?  It is no big coincidence that Isaiah 9:10 was used (although wrongly) because what other verses could be used if someone wanted to give hope from the Bible concerning an attack that destroyed buildings?  It is not like they just picked one out of 30,000 verses as Cahn says-it is basically one out of one.  There is no mystery in that.
WRONG:  I’m certain that after three years of mulling this over, and reading what has been written by me and others regarding this topic, Mr. James has finally developed the cap to his argument against the vow as described in The Harbinger.  He rhetorically asks “how many ways can someone say "we will rebuild?"  And how many Bible verses talk about rebuilding?”  Well, if Mr. James had been reading his Bible, he needn’t had gone too far in order to find accounts of rebuilding; for they are found in two other books of the Bible, the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah; and there is a lot that can be drawn from either of those books, as well as Ezekiel, and many other places throughout the Scriptures.  Because of an acute impairment of their spiritual cognitive ability to properly process information, due to a very strong deluding influence (See Romans 1:21-22, 24a, 26a, 28-32, 1Timothy 4:1a, 2), The Harbinger’s critics are unable to recognize and therefore appreciate the uncanny choice of three independent national leaders, who in varying ways commemorating the same national tragedy, used the same prophecy of Isaiah – the same vow – as a rallying and defiant cry of national pride and pledge in their vows “to rebuild, recover, and come back stronger.”  Oh, and by the way, The Harbinger doesn’t call this a mystery, it is David James who infers that it does when in fact, it does not.  He’s correct in saying, There is no mystery in that,” but someone needs to remind him that neither does The Harbinger call that a mystery.  It is disingenuous for him to infer here that it does.

The original intent of these pronouncements of this vow of ancient Israel’s defiance was to allay the nation’s hurt, but they were used on all occasions as a rally to united behind America’s rebuilding and recovery efforts.  In so doing, these leaders unwittingly applied and took legal ownership of the vow for America, by declaring, “This we will do,” and “We will recover, we will rebuild, and we will come back stronger.”  

According to the Scriptures all matters, whether civil (Deuteronomy 19:15-21), religious (Matthew 18:15-17), interpersonal (2Corinthians 13:1), as well as legal (1Corinthians 6:1-7), and matters of capital punishment (Numbers 35:30, Deuteronomy 17:6, Hebrews 10:28) are settled on the testimony of two (John 8:17) or three witnesses. 

If there are more such utterances, such as in this case, being that this vow in one form or another has been repeated by public officials on various occasions connected to 9/11, there is a greater preponderance of evidence that what we have here is prophetic in nature inasmuch as it directly connected to the nation’s rebuilding and recovery efforts without a single mention of God or repentance though His Word, and specifically this verse of Isaiah is repeatedly invoked without knowing that those who’ve uttered it and applied it to the nation’s public policy following this tragedy have unwittingly pronounced a curse upon this nation.  As the of Our Lord confirms, “But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.  For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matthew 12:36-37)

In doing this, as the highest elected officials in the nation, these leaders and public figures pronounced upon themselves and the nation at our nation’s capital, and in various ceremonies at Ground Zero ancient Israel’s vow of defiance, sealing its future destiny.  Since that day, they each one of these politicians have been disgraced and are out of office, the third will go down in history as an unmitigated failure, while the nation he presides over has collapsed as a military power, and its economy and that of the world it once led is in ruins.  Additionally consider also the following. 

As Dr. David R. Reagan observed in his seminal work America the Beautiful?, I quote:

“…I had been so disappointed by our nation’s response to the 9/11 attack.  I had hoped it would drive us to our knees in repentance and would serve to turn our hearts back to God.  Instead, it seemed to provoke primarily an outbreak of patriotism.  Let’s get one thing clear: patriotism is an exercise in pride.  God did not allow the 9/11 attack in order to bring about a revival of prideful patriotism.  He is calling this nation to repentance, not pride.  Our pride is what has gotten us in trouble.  He wants to see us humble ourselves before Him and repent of our sins.  Thus far, we seem to have missed that message.  Here’s how a pastor friend of mine in Northern Ireland expressed the situation to me: ‘God used 9/11 to set off an alarm clock for America.  But I fear that the response has been one of rolling over, hitting the snooze button, and going back to sleep.”

(Dr. David R. Reagan, America the Beautiful?, page 170, Lamb & Lion Ministries, McKinney, Texas, 2009)

This is the defiance and the pride of man, and its clearest manifestation is the increased degeneracy that has overtaken every aspect of our society – from the religious to the political, from the halls of congress to the Post-Modern churches which dot our land – in every aspect, Post-9/11 America has become the new Babylon as our government now enforces upon its citizenry the redefinition of marriage and promotes government-sponsored abortions and infanticide, as well as openly embraces the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Trans-sexual agenda in our government, our businesses, our schools, and yes, even many of our churches.  You want evidence of defiance?  Here is your evidence.

As another Internet writer correctly observes:

“NO ONE is saying that a defiant attitude against the Islamic militants is wrong.  Instead, it is the lack of recognition that God withheld his protection because of a disregard for Him and the ‘spirit’ of misplaced defiance that we can do whatever we want without seeking God.  It would be akin to a criminal in jail deciding he would break out to be free from justice - never acknowledging or repenting for the crime that put him there.”

(Monday Freakout: Tom Daschle and John Edwards Proclaim Judgment judgment Over America, 9/19/2011 12:35:00 PM)

“In an interview Rabbi Cahn gave recently, he explained it this way, “Before God judges a nation, He sends warning, but America, like Israel, has not responded with repentance, but with defiance.”

(From a review of The Harbinger)

10. The Shemitah: This was only for Israel and God wiped out the country after they failed to observe the Sabbath year for almost 500 years. America is not obligated to this and what has happened in America is not the tiniest fraction of what happened to Israel.  It is not even remotely close, this is most half of the book, but it is elaborately manufactured out of nothing.
WRONG:  From White House correspondent Bill Koenig: There have been some very interesting possible connections between the state of the US economy, the Jewish fall feasts this year, and the Torah readings of Nov. 1, 8 and 15.
(Thanks to Dr. Elliot Snyder of Dallas for the Wall Street and fall feast connections and Pastor Mark Biltz for the Noah/Cheshvan connection to this Saturday’s G-20 Summit in Washington and the Torah readings.)
Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) began at sundown on Monday, Sept. 29, and ended at nightfall on Wednesday Oct. 1, 2008.
Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year. As such, it is a time for Jews to review the mistakes they made in the past year and to resolve to make improvements in the upcoming year.
On Rosh Hashanah, Jews listen to the shofar blown during lengthy prayer services, eat holiday meals, and do no work. After repenting for bad deeds through prayers, they symbolically cast off sins through the tashlich ceremony.
Rosh Hashanah is both a solemn and a happy day. It is a time for introspection, asking for forgiveness, giving forgiveness, resolving to do better, remembering God is King and Judge, and praying for a healthy and happy year to come. Those observing the Jewish New Year are solemn in their repentance but happy in their confidence that God is merciful and good.
The stock market crash of 2008
In 2008, Rosh Hashanah began on the evening of Sept. 29, while Yom Kippur began on the evening of Oct. 9.
On Rosh Hashanah eve in the U.S. (Sept. 29), the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed down a record-setting 777.68 points. Israel was already celebrating Rosh Hashanah at the time of the record Dow close.
Dr. Elliot Snyder wrote:
Seven is the number of God, and 777 could represent "Holy, Holy, Holy." This is God's signature, the manner in which the angels praise the Sovereign God in Isaiah 6:3. This is also reflected in 7-Seal, 7-Trumpet and 7-Bowl Judgments, in the events of things to come as outlined in Revelation 6:19! I believe the Rosh Hashanah shofar was a heralding, proclamation or announcement of God's weighing our nation in the balance beginning at the start of the 10 Days of Awe. The judge is entering the courtroom.
The eyes of the financial world were fixed upon the 777-point drop, the largest single one-day point decline in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), although not the largest percentage drop.
Other peculiarities on the opening bell and gavel of 9/29/08 and 9/30/08 for the NYSE
There was an anomaly at the opening bell when there was no opening bell! At 9:30 am ET a mechanical bell should have rung. As the CNBC countdown to the opening reached zero, there was puzzlement at the podium as the bearer of the gavel awaited the opening bell in vain. After about a minute, even without the bell, trading began.
The next morning, the bell worked. CNBC had made a big deal over the bell having never failed to ring before; it had failed on the morning of 9/29. On 9/30 the bell worked at 9:30AM; however, with the camera fixed upon the podium, there was no one manning the gavel!
——
Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement) began at sundown on Wednesday, Oct. 8, and ended at nightfall on Thursday, Oct. 9.
Yom Kippur, literally "Day of Atonement," is the holiest day of the Jewish year.
After the Israelites alienated God by worshipping the golden calf, Moses ascended Mount Sinai to ask God for forgiveness. While Moses was on the mountain, the Israelites repented by fasting. On the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei (Yom Kippur), Moses descended Mount Sinai with the second tablets. Thus, on the first Yom Kippur (approximately 3,500 years ago), the Israelites succeeded in atoning for their sins and restoring their covenant with God.
Why is Yom Kippur important?
Yom Kippur is observed eight days after Rosh HaShanah (the Jewish New Year). Jews believe that on Rosh HaShanah, God inscribes all of their names in the "books"; and on Yom Kippur, the judgment entered in these books is sealed. Yom Kippur is, essentially, the last chance to demonstrate repentance and change God's judgment. On Yom Kippur, one's fate for the coming year is sealed.
Dow falls 678.91
Dr. Elliot Snyder wrote:
On Yom Kippur eve in the U.S. (Oct. 9), the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed down678.910 (6, 7, 8, 9, 10!) The odds of this precise sequence arising are 1:99,999.
Following the 10 Days of Awe, on the Day of Atonement or Judgment, God sent another numerical message through the fall of the stock market. Specifically, God has judged the nation in accordance with the Noahic law. This is spelled out in the second table of the Ten Commandments – specifically, 6-10* — by the Dow falling exactly 678.910. As the sun had already set in Jerusalem, God was telling us that we have been weighed in the balance of the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th commandments and found wanting. God has spoken for all with eyes to see and ears to hear!    
Our nation is not being judged for idolatry, blasphemy or failure in Sabbath observations, but rather for murder, adultery, stealing, lying and covetousness.
——
The Days of Awe refers to the ten days between the first two Fall Feasts of Israel, Rosh Hashanah (or the Feast of Trumpets), and Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement.
The sound of the trumpet shofar ushering in Rosh Hashanah and the Days of Awe is a call to a searching of our souls and thorough examination of our thoughts, deeds and intentions for the past year. This begins a time of God's evaluating the life of each member of the House of Israel, culminating on the 10th day with Yom Kippur, the day of final judgment, and hopefully, atonement.
The just verdict was to be pronounced on the Day of Judgment, Yom Kippur!
One of the worst seven-day declines in Wall Street history occurred during this year's Days of Awe
Chronology – Sept. 29–Oct. 10
Sept. 29: U.S. House of Representatives rejects mammoth $700 billion bailout plan. Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) drops 777.68. (Rosh Hashanah began that evening; it had already begun in Israel at the close of Wall Street.)
Sept. 30: Wachovia Bank teeters on collapse, starts negotiating with Citigroup for takeover deal.
Oct. 1: U.S. Senate adopts massive bailout plan, adding sweeteners to get House acceptance.
Oct. 3: Wells Fargo Bank and the fourth largest U.S. bank, Wachovia Corp., announce merger.
Oct. 3: The largest government intervention in capital markets in U.S. history clears the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming law with President Bush's signature. The bailout was for $700 billion.
Oct. 6: Responding to global credit fears, the Dow finished below 10,000 for the first time since October 2004. After a day in which stocks dropped as deeply as 9,600, the market rebounded, finishing the day at 9990.47.
Oct 9: The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 678.910 points, or 7.33 percent, at 8,579.19. It's the first time since May 2003 that the Dow traded below 8,600. The steep sell-off capped the Dow and the S&P's biggest seven-day decline since the October 1987 market crash, and the NASDAQ’s worst seven-day decline since December 2000. Over the seven days, the Dow shed almost 21 percent and the S&P 500 nearly 22 percent. The steep declines came on the anniversary of the Dow's all-time closing high above 14,000.
"With no visible sign of restoration of normal credit movement, that is shaking investor confidence that the banking system at this point still has a long way to go before it gets fixed," said Frederic Dickson, senior vice president and market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co., in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
Oct. 10: The central barometer of the U.S. economy, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended one of its worst weeks in history.
The United States is experiencing a rapid moral decline … Americans are being impacted by inept leadership in Washington … The world says the US is responsible for the worldwide financial contagion, Bush denies it …The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) collapse directly corresponded to this year's Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur …One of the worst seven-day declines in Wall Street history occurred during this year's Days of Awe … The Torah readings of the last three weeks correspond to the political news in Israel and the US and world financial news … Saturday's G-20 Financial Summit in Washington of the world's top economies falls on Cheshvan 17, the day Noah's flood began 4,113 years ago …

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE FOOLISHNESS OF TRYING TO DISMISS OR DIMINISH THESE EVENTS & THEIR SIGNIFICANCE

David James is chasing windmills here, and upon close examination of his claims, it becomes evident that he’s boxing the wind as well.  These occurrences, like The Harbingers, do not happen at random, and cannot be dismissed as mere coincidences, as David James does here; nor can they be, as some critics have alleged, trumped inventions forced to appear like some great power were behind them.  Jonathan Cahn did not manufacture any of it, and it becomes clearly evident when one scans the record of the events which The Harbinger describes.  They happened, and they happened just as described, and they happened beyond the control or influence of man.  Additionally, they happened precisely as described by The Harbinger on the date exact dates given.  These things cannot be ignored, nor can they be dismissed so easily, and those who do, do so at their own peril.  And more important, they cannot be manufactured at will, they did happen.

America and all of Western Europe have not heeded these warnings, but have grown worse in their collective defiance of God and their violation of the clear teachings of the Bible.  What we are seeing express itself here is another sign of the days we live in.  We are in what the late Francis Schaeffer called a Post-Christian America.  It is a period in our history and world history where we are witnessing two amazing fulfillments of Christ’s prophecies occur right before our eyes – a great apostasy rise within the church with the ordination of unrepentant practicing homosexuals, bisexuals, and lesbians to the ministry, open support for Liberation Theology and its more radical variant, Black Liberation Theology, and the so-called Social Gospel of Marxist community organizing, of from which the current occupant of the White House emerged.

The rise of Post-Modern liberal Christianity within Mainline Evangelicalism, and a growing biblical illiteracy among God’s people that has resulted in the election of the first openly pro-abortion, pro-LGBT, pro-Palestinian/Anti-Israel president in American history.  According to the Barna Group, “In the 2008 election, 42% of all born again adults voted for Barack Obama. The born again vote represented 40% of his aggregate support in the general election.”  It is not biblically-minded Evangelical Christians who voted this man into office, it was illiterate Word of Faith/Name it and Claim it Evangelicals who helped him get elected in 2008 with the help of such “stalwarts” as T.D. Jakes, Jim Wallis (Sojourners magazine) and others whom they follow and whose word they venerate more than God’s Word which they barely read if at all.

As Western Civilization has progressively rejected the teachings of the Bible, we have begun to witness what some have termed the Romans One Effect.  It is a section of Scripture in the New Testament Book of Romans, the first chapter, where the Apostle Paul describes what happens to people who reject the biblical precepts God has ordained for mankind.  I quote:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.  For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.  For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.  Amen.

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

(Romans 1:18-32)

We are seeing popular culture within Western Civilization reject the Bible for the heresies of the New Age Movement, the Occult and pagan and neo-pagan beliefs, and Islam, and something that is called Chrislam, a syncretism of Christianity and Islam.  The Harbinger describes some of the remedial judgments God has brought to bear upon mankind in these end times, and David James and his handful of colleagues can argue against them all they want, it does not change the fact that they did in fact occur just as described in the book, nor does it change the fact that we are still experiencing some of them to this day as our flailing economy and America’s diminished status as a world military and economic power has continued its steady decline since the events of 9/11.  These are incontrovertible facts.

What occurred on on Elul 29, 2008 was not a fluke, it was not a coincidence, and it was not something that someone invented out of their imagination, but the various elements that surround the economic collapse of America were too numerous to be any of the above, and well beyond the influence and control of man. 

It is a matter of record and an unmistakable and undeniable fact that America’s economic collapse occurred on the Hebrew month of Elul 29, eight years to the day of the first crash following September 11, 2001.  To try to dismiss it or explain it away is the epitome of foolishness.  It is like attempting to explain away the damage left behind from a hurricane or a tornado on a city it has struck in vain attempts to deny they happened.  David James attempts to do this, and gives it his best effort, but falls far short of the mark.  This is because he is attempting to grasp the wind in his fists and convert it to water while not dropping a single drop.  

David James can try to deny it as best he can, but the evidence is all around US and it has since spread virally around the world.  America is now a second-rate power, according to this headline: PAPER: America's Superpower Status Ebbs Away...  and we are told now that the Treasury now taking 'final extraordinary measures'...  Someone is woefully wrong about all this as the evidence continues to build up and America’s prophetic timeline and her degeneration and the degeneration of the church escalates even more every day. 

David James makes pointless unbiblical arguments to distract from the facts of what happened.  The events surrounding 9/11 and the crash of our economy and the ensuing Global Great Recession/ Second Great Depression, all from which we are still reeling under, in one way or another, did not occur in a vacuum or by mere chance and happenstance as Mr. James would like US to believe.  These are biblical signs of remedial judgments against this nation and those of Western Civilization, and it appears that they have not run their course, but have only begun.  People like David James and “RAFAEL”  here can deny them, but their pedantic expressions of disbelief does not change the fact that they have happened.  Jonathan Cahn had nothing to do with them, and they occurred long before he wrote his book.

It is most unfortunate that we must bear to read the type of mocking and derisive expressions of not just disbelief, but rank unbiblical unbelief opinionated by a fellow Evangelical Christian.  There was a time, not too long ago, when such opinions expressed in such a manner came from outside the church.  It extremely distressing to see it manifest itself within the confines of what is today mainline Evangelicalism, and from a conservative Evangelical like David James. 

It is even more astonishing, that though Christ has made it clear in His Olivet Discourse in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel narrative, that in the last days – which according to Peter’s Pentecost Discourse in the second chapter to the Lucan Acts narrative (Acts 2), also affirmed in several places within the corpus of the New Testament writings; began two millennia ago on Pentecost, A.D. 33, in that era (the Apostolic/Second Temple Era); that we will witness and should expect various signs – both from God and its Satanic counterfeits – it is astonishing to hear from, of all places, within some of our ranks, this type of Deistic reviling make its expression here. 

It is worse, when a conservative Christian Evangelical employs Hegelian Dialectics to cleverly deconstruct and deny actual historical occurrences as nothing more than happenstance and coincidences, and blasphemously claim them as the figment of someone’s imagination!  These are the exact methods used by Anti-missionaries against Jews who’ve accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Messiah!  It is most distressing to see it here and from cover to cover in David James’ book.  This is why I wrote The Truth About The Harbinger as a biblical corrective to the Scholastic Deistic Post-Modern opinions cleverly masked as biblical conservatism we see express itself in David James.  We can expect such expressions from outside of the church, but in light of what the Scriptures teach regarding the end times just before Christ’s eminent return, we should not tolerate it being passed off and accepted as “biblical” from some elements within the body of Christ. 
 
SIDEBAR: The following part is copied and pasted here by “RAFAEL” from another post, directly from Gary Gilley’s unfortunate and unfounded Internet article, addressed and rebutted on The Pepster’s Post: A Voice in Cyberspace in the article titled: A Reply To Gary Gilley's Review on The Harbinger - Updated.  I include elements of my rebuttal here.  I have also biblically addressed the writings of other critics of Rabbi Cahn’s book in The Truth About The Harbinger and on my website. JB

Cahn determines that this text in Isaiah contains a mysterious prophecy directed not to ancient Israel but to modern America.

WRONG:  No he does not.  Nowhere does The Harbinger say that the harbinger’s mystery “prophecy directed not to ancient Israel but to modern America.”   This also is not true.  There is no place in this book where this statement is made, but what it does say is that the same pattern of warning and judgment that befell ancient Israel two thousand seven hundred years ago is repeating here in modern America.

At this point the author massages /MANIPULATES Scripture, American history and current events in an attempt to prove that God's judgment on the United States has been hiding in these verses from the day they were given by Isaiah, but have now been unlocked by the careful investigation of Cahn. (IN OTHER WORDS MR. CAHN HAD TO PERFORM THEOLOGICAL GYMNASTICS BEYOND OLYMPIC PROPORTIONS IN ORDER TO ACCOMPLISH THIS FEAT). Nothing could be further from the truth and, even more importantly, once someone decides they can cherry-pick verses at will, change the meaning of these texts to fit his theories and use random hermeneutical methods, anything can be "proven." However, very few people will recognize what Cahn has done, and fewer still will do the hard work of investigating his interpretations.
WRONG:  The critic began his article agreeing with Rabbi Cahn that America is under serious judgment and is in need of repentance, or face severe chastisement for its sins.  But here the critic attributes a statement to Jonathan Cahn and his book than neither he or his book ever made, and that is “that God pronounced exacting judgment on America and that judgment is found in Scripture, specifically Isaiah 9:10-11.”

Jonathan Cahn has never said “that God pronounced exacting judgment on America and that judgment is found in Scripture, specifically Isaiah 9:10-11,” nor does The Harbinger make this statement.  But it gets worse.  In the next line, we read:

“Cahn determines that this text in Isaiah contains a mysterious prophecy directed not to ancient Israel but to modern America/”  No he does not.  Nowhere does The Harbinger say that the harbinger’s mystery “prophecy directed not to ancient Israel but to modern America”   This also is not true.  There is no place in this book where this statement is made, but what it does say is that the same pattern of warning and judgment that befell ancient Israel two thousand seven hundred years ago is repeating here in modern America.  But Mr. Gilley’s review deteriorates further.  Next he writes:

“At this point the author massages Scripture, American history and current events in an attempt to prove that God's judgment on the United States has been hiding in these verses from the day they were given by Isaiah, but have now been unlocked by the careful investigation of Cahn.”  No he does not!  Neither Scripture is massaged, or history altered one bit to prove anything, and Mr. Gilley’s cynical and snide comments is below a servant of God.  His contemptible remark that Rabbi Cahn has massaged Scripture and altered American history and current events “in an attempt to prove that God's judgment on the United States has been hiding in these verses from the day they were given by Isaiah, but have now been unlocked by the careful investigation of Cahn,” is unfounded and unnecessary, and had Mr. Gilley not gone on hearsay, but read the book himself, he would have discovered that the charge is baseless, because The Harbinger nowhere massages Scripture, alter American history, or do anything with current events, or make the claim “that God's judgment on the United States has been hiding in these verses from the day they were given by Isaiah, but have now been unlocked by the careful investigation of Cahn.”  This is a complete fabrication on Mr. Gilley’s part, assumed by him because this is the false narrative that was given him by one of its critics.

With regards to his last comment, he writes: “Nothing could be further from the truth and, even more importantly, once someone decides they can cherry-pick verses at will, change the meaning of these texts to fit his theories and use random hermeneutical methods, anything can be "proven."  Well what Mr. Giley here claims for The Harbinger is false, and therefore, this applies to his statement, “Nothing could be further from the truth,” and his unfounded charge that somehow Jonathan Cahn cherry-picked Scripture.  I suggest to Mr. Gilley, if he wants to get the facts about this book, that he’d read it first before he “flies off the handle” like this, and discredit himself for criticizing a book he has not read.

He next writes: “However, very few people will recognize what Cahn has done, and fewer still will do the hard work of investigating his interpretations.”  Well, Mr. Gilley, when and where did you do your investigation, because every charge you make here has no basis in reality, and if had been intellectually honest, and had read the book for yourself, you would not be making these absurd charges against it.

This next statement, Mr. Gilley tips his hand, and discloses where he obtained the disinformation he writes here.  He next writes: Here is where David James has greatly benefited the body of Christ.  He has carefully, graciously and thoroughly analyzed the claims found in The Harbinger and found many of them lacking biblical support and historical accuracy.  James has written this book not merely to expose error but to keep God's people from being led astray by false teachings and improper hermeneutical approaches to Scripture.  I believe he has accomplished these goals in The Harbinger: Fact or Fiction?.

Unfortunately, this is not what David James has done, because I and others have examined his book from cover to cover, and have posted here, and in other discussion boards our findings.  I would recommend everyone reading this post, to go to my website; The Pepster’s Post: A Voice in Cyberspace, where I have several articles I’ve posted after thoroughly examining Mr. James book, and comparing what it says about The Harbinger.  I would also strongly encourage Mr. Gilley to purchase a copy of my book, THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HARBINGER where I address all of these questions that The Harbinger’s critics have brought up the last nineteen months.

Here is where David James has greatly benefited the body of Christ. He has carefully, graciously and thoroughly analyzed the claims found in The Harbinger and found many of them lacking biblical support and historical accuracy. James has written this book not merely to expose error but to keep God's people from being led astray by false teachings and improper hermeneutical approaches to Scripture.  I believe he has accomplished these goals in The Harbinger: Fact or Fiction?.
WRONG: Unfortunately, this is not what David James has done, because I and others have examined his book from cover to cover, and have posted here, and in other discussion boards our findings.  I would recommend everyone reading this post, to go to my website; The Pepster’s Post: A Voice in Cyberspace, where I have several articles I’ve posted after thoroughly examining Mr. James book, and comparing what it says about The Harbinger.  I would also strongly encourage Mr. Gilley to purchase a copy of my book, THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HARBINGER where I address all of these questions that The Harbinger’s critics have brought up the last nineteen months.

David James often accuses those who’ve rebutted his criticisms as “straw man arguments,” but in reality the only “straw man arguments” have been those Mr. James presents to defend an untenable position of having been discovered to have completely misread a book, mischaracterized its author, and written a polemic against it replete with wholesale misleading conclusions that have been used by this small group of critics to publicly slander and libel Pastor and Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn as a practitioner of the Occult, who teaches Kabbalah, is a New Age Gnostic who is into Jewish Mysticism, and is a false prophet and false teacher who promotes Freemasonry, British Israelism, and every aberrant theology out there from “the prosperity gospel” to “name it can claim it,” to NAR – New Apostolic Reformation, to Dominion Theology, to even Supersessionism (Replacement Theology) and Mormonism. 

In short, because of the slanderous manner that Mr. James has written about Jonathan Cahn, Rabbi Cahn has been subjected to the most vicious vilification I have ever witnessed any Evangelical Christian be subjected to in my lifetime.  What makes it most egregious is that it has been done to him by about ten people who profess themselves to be members of his own faith – Christian Evangelicals.  But make no mistake about it, this controversy began and was hatched when Jimmy DeYoung contacted David James to voice his private concerns about The Harbinger and asked him to read the New York Times bestseller so he could interview Mr. James as his guest on his radio show, Prophecy in the News which he did on January 7th, 2012.  The two men were quick to trash the book, without having discussed it with its author, and began the trend that quickly degenerated into the worst vilification of a mainline Evangelical Christian minister by members of his own faith in recent memory.

One is reminded of the Apostle Paul’s description of the ill-treatment suffered by fellow servants of Christ like himself in his day, and to this day.  I quote, and it says, by glory and dishonor, by evil report and good report; regarded as deceivers and yet true; as unknown yet well-known, as dying yet behold, we live; as punished yet not put to death, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing all things.

(2Corinthians 6:8-10)

SIDEBAR: In his continued and relentless slander against Jonathan Cahn, Mr. Saurez, who appears to be acting as a surrogate for Mr. James appears to be playing the role of the tuning fork to see what responses can be anticipated to be presented to rebut the continual multitudinous rantings presented by “RAFAEL” on behalf of Mr. James and other critics of The Harbinger.  Below, “RAFAEL” quotes from an article written by Cessationist Vander Lugt.  To expect Mr. Dan Vander Lugt to give us a precise and correct biblical perspective on the prophetic is like expecting the Watchtower Bible and Track Society to immediately discard its heresies and its Jehovah’s Witnesses to all of a sudden begin to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ as it should be shared by all Christians, and to begin using correct biblical hermeneutics. 

SIDEBAR & REBUTTAL: As can be expected from Rafael/Gabriel/LEGNA/ANGEL SUAREZ, member of the Prophecy Club, but appearing here as an avowed Cessationist, he cites three articles, but contributes nothing to this discussion, inasmuch as it has nothing at all to do with The Harbinger, nor my book, The Truth about The Harbinger: Addressing the Controversy and Discovering the Facts About This Prophetic Message, in which the contentions presented by one David James are summarily addressed biblically and laid to rest.  Any questions about this?  Just get a copy of my book, and read it for yourselves.  Now let’s address the articles at hand.

The following are three separate articles written by Dan Vander Lugt of Radio Bible Class, an Evangelical Christian ministry that is Cessationist in theological outlook pertaining to many of the sign gifts of the Holy Spirit as described in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, chapters 2, 12, 13, and 14.  I will address only those portions which are relevant to our discussion, inasmuch as Rafael, has now appeared to fully embrace a Cessationist theology, no doubt due to his exposure to this pernicious doctrine that was originally developed by the Protestant Reformers to combat the abuses of Roman Catholicism’s use of false signs and wonders to validate its claims regarding the veneration of the saints and their worship of Queen of heaven and all its hosts in violation to the commandments of God. 

Many of the arguments presented below are the classic Cessationist arguments used to convince people that God no longer works as He is described working in the Bible from Genesis to The Book of Revelations.  It is ironic that the same people who embrace this unbiblical theology also claim to believe that the Holy Spirit still convicts the world of sin and Christ still saves, but eschew many of the other attributes and works of the Holy Spirit because they artificially tie them to the writing of the New Testament and the closing of the cannon of Scripture – two entirely independent events that have never been attached to the prophetic in any place of the Old or New Testaments. 

The contention is a purely man-made theological one expressed and advanced primarily by Reform Theologians, becoming increasingly popular in the seminaries of the late twenty and early twenty-first centuries.  It is a pure theological contrivance with absolutely no biblical basis whatsoever, because there is no Scripture that declares the end of the work of the Holy Spirit at any particular time since His advent forty days following Christ’s ascension to the right hand of God.  Indeed, in his Pentecost Discourse, Peter when quoting Joel 2, prefaces in the Holy Spirit, his discourse and citation of Joel’s prophecy with the words,

“And it shall be in the last days,’ God says,
‘That I will pour forth of My Spirit on all mankind;
And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
And your young men shall see visions,
And your old men shall dream dreams;
Even on My bondslaves, both men and women,
I will in those days pour forth of My Spirit
And they shall prophesy.”

(Acts 2:17-18)

Describing it thusly with these words, but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel (Acts 2:16), and after testifying of the Lord Jesus as Messiah, Peter buttresses his discourse with the following, “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear” (Acts 2:33), because  not only was he testifying of Christ’s resurrection, but also describing the phenomenon witnessed by those thousands of Jewish spectators from many lands that day, hearing the Gospel spoken in their native tongues, as Peter explained to them concisely what was occurring right before their eyes.

Now consider that if in Peter’s day, it was considered by those first believers to be the last days, for we witness this here and throughout the entire New Testament in various places, then in context two thousand years ago, the day of which Peter spoke in his lifetime signaled the beginning of the End Times, with the possibility that its end could well be in our day.  But of one thing we are assured, that what Peter referred to as the gift of the Holy Spirit falling on all who come to faith in Christ – from his time to this very day – for the Scriptures teach that we are sealed with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13), as He is given as God’s pledge to us of His salvation (Ephesians 1:14), and in the absence of any Scripture indicating that this has ended – for it has not, inasmuch as the Holy Spirit is essential for the new life in Christ, as the Scriptures teach that if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. (Romans 8:9b), therefore to have the Lord is to have the Spirit, and the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him (1Corinthians 6:17); then we must also understand that this great gift comes with many ministries which God assigns to each individual bondservant of Christ in order to serve effectively in the body of Christ, as it says, to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good (1Corinthians 12:7). 

To declare that any aspect of this work or any ministry is no longer active in this day and age as it was during the Apostolic/Second Temple Era – with the exception of the ministry of Apostleship of those who walked and talked with Christ and were direct recipients of His teachings – with this exception, all of the other gifts and calling of God continue to work effectively in the individual believer in accordance to his/her calling by God through the same Holy Spirit.  Today, there is the exception of those who are called out (APOSTOLOS) to do missionary work for the Gospel, but these are apostles inasmuch as they are called out, but they are not of those who were eyewitnesses of Christ and His resurrection.  These bear witness of the power of that resurrection life and the need for repentance in Christ, calling upon His name for salvation.

Although Cessationists try to connect them; none of the continued ministries and works of the Holy Spirit were in any way connected with the completion of the cannon, and if they had been, Paul would have made this clear here and elsewhere, but he does not.  It is a pure Reform theological invention created to deter Roman Catholics and rebut their claims to any every miracle without checking its sources to see if they were from God.

The offices and ministries and gifts connected to these by the Holy Spirit had no bearing on the cannon of Scripture then just as they do not now, but worked parallel to it, as is evidenced by the various prophets that lived during that era of which we read about in passing, almost anecdotally in the passages of Luke’s Acts Narrative, and in some of the letters of the Apostles to the various congregations of the Roman World, and the various prophetic gifts we still witness today active in the body of Christ as the Holy Spirit continues to bear witness of Christ in the average believer through the exercise of these gifts and ministries, as Paul describes them (1Corinthians 12:4-10), But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills (1Corinthians 12:11).

Nowhere is there a single mention of the writing of the New Testament, or the cannon of Scripture, neither here or anywhere else.  Its connection to the gifts as made by Cessationists is a pure invention with wide-ranging implications for the church regarding the effective work of the Holy Spirit and effective service for God in the Holy Spirit.  Those who deny the Holy Spirit’s role in this and any work connected to His ministry as described in Scripture here by Paul, deny the witness of Christ that He has left for the church to be effective witnesses of His.  We are told to look out for this because it is a form of antichrist – as it says without equivocation – the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son (1John 2:22), and we see in John’s day that many antichrists had made their appearance (1John 2:18).  In denying the various ministries and gifts of the Holy Spirit, and by extension, the works related to those ministries and gifts, the Cessationist denies both the Father and the Son, because he denies the essential work of One of the Persons of the Godhead who is still active to this day and will be so until the return of Jesus Christ. 

Anyone who denies the Holy Spirit and any aspect of His work, also denies Christ, and if Christ is denied, then so is the Father.  To do this is a work of Antichrist.  Indeed, we are admonished to  Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward (2John 1:8), why?  Because this pernicious teaching puts risks putting the one who falls for it into a spiritual death spiral resulting in many works for the Lord and the blessings resulting from them in both serving and being served never seeing the light of day.  Paul even warns Timothy in his last letter to him to beware those who exhibit a form of godliness, although they have denied its power, he warns, Avoid such men as these. (1Timothy 3:5).  It is obvious that Cessationists deny a very important part of what God provides to empower us not only to live godly lives, but to be effective witnesses of His, and to minister according to God’s specific calling on our lives.

Cessation theology was created to combat Mariolatry and the excesses of false miracles, signs and wonders connected to it, but when it is applied to the teachings of the Bible in order to claim all miracles and sign gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased with the Apostles, it borders and is a tacit denial of the Godhead and therefore a denial of Christ.  It is a damnable heresy, and must be refuted at every opportunity.  There is absolutely no biblical basis to believe it, and much less to teach it as a legitimate theology. JB

Dan Vander Lugt How Serious is False Speculation About Prophecy?

Evangelical Christians agree that the biblical canon has been established. Anyone who claims to have a prophetic word must demonstrate its validity from Scripture. According to 1 Corinthians 14, any supposedly prophetic statement must pass two tests. First, verse 29 states that after two or three speak a prophetic message, the others are to "judge." In other words, the prophetic message must not disagree with the knowledge of God's Word and of truth held by other members of the assembly.

JOSE J. BERNAL: This is true.  The Scripture specifically gives the following instruction when receiving prophecy:

Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment.

(1Corinthians 14:29)

On the basis of this statement alone, Cessationism as a theology must be rejected, because it teaches a doctrine that denies the continued effective work of One of the Persons of the Trinity, and therefore in doing this, it denies Christ.  One cannot deny the continued work of the Holy Spirit without denying the evidence for that work in the sign gifts of the Holy Spirit relational to the various ministries described by Paul throughout his letters whenever they are mentioned.  (See 1Corinthians 12, 13, 14)  Without the essential role of the Holy Spirit in the prayer-life, thought-life, walk, ministry, and service of the believer, the following cannot be experienced, and according to Paul here, this is an essential element of this new life in Christ.  This is how he describes it in the Holy Spirit.  I quote:

For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.  For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?  Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.  Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.  But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.  For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him?  But we have the mind of Christ.

(1Corinthians 2:10-16)

Dan Vander Lugt Second, verses 37 and 38 demonstrate that just as the apostle Paul submitted his words to the examination of the Corinthians upon the basis of their knowledge of the Word of God, any prophecy that is given must be judged by the standard of the truth already known to the church of Christ.  In other words, no completely new truth will be revealed, but rather the prophet will expound and explain truths already accepted and recognized by God's people. Any "prophecy" that conflicts with Scripture is assumed to be false.

JOSE J. BERNAL: The claim made above as an interpretive contrivance interpolated into the meaning of the passage in question in order to present a Cessationist teaching into the passage that it does not contain.  When Mr. Vander Lugt writes,  “the apostle Paul submitted his words to the examination of the Corinthians upon the basis of their knowledge of the Word of God,” he forgets that when Paul wrote the passage in question, which Mr. Vander Lugt claims was being examined upon the basis of their knowledge of the Word of God, there was no New Testament cannon in existence for them to validate Paul’s words, as Mr. Vander Lugt claims here, but only the Hebrew Scriptures.  The Word of God which existed in their day was the cannon of the Tanakh – the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint (LXX), of which the Evangelists and all others made good use of throughout the New Testament as they wrote it.  But there was no template but the Hebrew Scriptures of what is known as the Old Testament, and this is why Paul wrote these instructions, not what Mr. Vander Lugt tries to interpolate here.

When Paul wrote what is today in our Bibles Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter fourteen, he wrote it as a blue print of instructions, containing commandments – which is why he wrote the things which I write to you are the Lord’s commandment (verse 37) – in case there might arise any doubt as to whether these were just instructions made by Paul or actual commandments of Scripture; not what Mr. Vander Lugt tries to read into it.

This is what the passage in its entirety says without the theological contrivance put to it by Mr. Vander Lugt.  I quote:

If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which I write to you are the Lord’s commandment.  But if anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized.
(1Corinthians 14:37-38)

Paul was not prophesying here and submitting his “prophecy” to the Corinthians for them to evaluate and to judge as to whether or not it was “God’s Word” as Vander Lugt claims, but he was writing God’s instructional commandments on how to conduct an orderly church service where the gifts of the Holy Spirit are in evidence.  Big difference from what Mr. Vander Lugt is trying to say here for Paul and for Paul’s Corinthian readers.

Dan Vander Lugt Evangelicals also know how seriously the Old Testament viewed false prophecy. It provided two tests to determine whether prophets were true or false.  Deuteronomy 13:1-3 states the first. If a prophet calls upon the people to "go after other gods," he is to be considered false, even if his prophecy is fulfilled.
If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, "Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them," you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul (nasb).
The second test has to do with the prophet's accuracy:
When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him (18:22).

Deuteronomy 13:5 and Deuteronomy 18:20 explicitly state the punishment for false prophets: They shall be put to death.

JOSE J. BERNAL: Mr. Vander Lugt is correct here, but what he says is misapplied in the following statements when he attempts to attach to the Scriptures above a Cessationist theology.

Dan Vander Lugt Yet although many evangelicals are wary of anyone claiming to be a prophet, some are dangerously naive about prophetic speculation.  Many of those who would never claim to be a "prophet" (See the ATQ article, Do the Same Kinds of Prophets Exist Today as in Biblical Times?) don't hesitate to claim authoritative insight into the meaning of prophecy.  While they would never say, "Thus saith the Lord," they seem to imply that they know what God was saying through the prophet.

JOSE J. BERNAL:  Mr. Vander Lugt again forgets that this is the cornerstone of correct biblical hermeneutics without which expository theology would be a distinct impossibility and would not exist.  Without a proper exegesis, God’s prophetic word cannot be properly read, and if it is not properly read, it cannot be understood.  But even more important is the fact that essential to this is the leading, teaching, and direction of the Holy Spirit in Christ without which the Bible remains a closed book.  As Paul writes:

But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ.

(2Corinthians 3:14)

Again, this is why Paul writes elsewhere:

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God.

(1Corinthians 2:12)

As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.

(1John 2:27)

Of whom is John writing about here?  Of the ever present Spirit of God indwelling every born again believer (John 14:17).  And John knows that it is the Person of Holy Spirit who imparts an understanding of the knowledge of God as He testifies of Christ in the reading of His Word (John 15:26).  The Lord Jesus Christ was the first to speak of this, when He said:

“But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.”

(John 16:13)

Another sign of the Holy Spirit is an acute and meticulous attention to God’s Word and what it says.  As John describes it in the Holy Spirit where he writes:

We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us.  By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

(1John 4:6)

So the matter of the study and reading and understanding of the Scriptures is not one of human speculation, but of what the Holy Spirit of God discloses from God’s written and infallible Word.  This is not a matter of contention and shouldn’t be for any Christian, because this is what the Scriptures teach regarding the role and relationship of the Holy Spirit to God’s written Word.

Dan Vander Lugt The purpose of all prophecy-including prophecy about future events-is to encourage us to examine ourselves, repent, and turn from our evil ways. Sometimes prophecy describes a future event to give hope, sometimes it warns of judgment, but in every case the goal of prophecy is spiritual renewal.  Prophetic speculation, on the other hand, is mostly concerned with linking contemporary events to biblical prophecy.

JOSE J. BERNAL: Again Mr. Vander Lugt ties a Cessationist spin onto the discussion in a vain attempt to claim that interpretive expository work conducted within the context of a proper and correct hermeneutic is more speculation when reading prophecy.  The purpose of the prophecy and role of the prophet who pronounces it varies from situation to situation within Scripture.  Generally, it is dealing with sin and rebellion, but it differs in situation, because in one instance we see it applied to a king, in another to a nation, and in another to a prophet.  It is not static, but fluid, and has nothing to do with speculation, because Peter writes in the Holy Spirit the following description of its nature.  I quote:

So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.  But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

(2Peter 1:19-21)

Dan Vander Lugt To say this contemporary event is a fulfillment of that prophecy is to claim a kind of prophetic authority.  It is a form of "speaking in the name of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 18:22), and just as in the case of false prophecy, it has serious consequences.  Scripture and history show that prophecy pertaining to future events is ambiguous before the events occur. (See the ATQ article Can We Know if Current Events are Fulfillment of Prophecy?) Previous historical attempts to predict future events on the basis of biblical prophecy have been disastrous. (See the ATQ article How often in the History of the Church have People Mistakenly Believed They Were Acting in Fulfillment, or Observing the Fulfillment of Prophecy?  Under the heading How Often Have People Misapplied Prophecy?)

JOSE J. BERNAL:  True, but again, it is misapplied here, because no one is claiming in this discussion that they have a monopoly on prophecy or the prophetic.  The Harbinger is not prophecy, nor is it an interpretive work of prophecy, expository theology, or Eschatology, but simply a description of historical events within the tapestry of God’s prophetic will, and a resounding call to repentance for God’s people.  This argument above, and the one which follows, misapplied.

Dan Vander Lugt Believing we belong to a small group that understands how prophetic events are unfolding can lead to unintended results, including pride, isolation, and diminishing concern with truth and reality.  It can transform one's interpretation of prophecy into an idol, a false god.  If enough people are influenced, false speculation can lead to its own "fulfillment"-the satanic opposite of legitimate prophecy-accompanied by self-righteousness, fanaticism, and violence.

JOSE J. BERNAL: This is correct.  It has happened in US history quite often in the 19th and 20th centuries, and there are still lunatics out there – false prophets – who claim one thing or another.  One thing that marks them as phonies beside the obvious facts of the heresies they preach and their idolatrous attention which they call on themselves from their followers and not to Christ.

Dan Vander Lugt This is what happened in Israel in 70 and 135 AD.  False prophecy and false prophetic speculation about Messiah led to the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman armies.  The fact that many Jews were convinced that Messiah would free Israel from the Roman yoke made them vulnerable to the influence of fanatics. (See the ATQ article How often in the History of the Church have People Mistakenly Believed They Were Acting in Fulfillment, or Observing the Fulfillment of Prophecy?  Under the heading How Often Have People Misapplied Prophecy?)
The same tendency can be seen in those today whose interpretation of prophecy allows them to ignore basic issues of justice and morality while calling for unqualified support for Israel in the modern Middle East, military action, the initiation of new wars, and even the use of nuclear weapons.

JOSE J. BERNAL: Mr. Vander Lugt is only partially correct here.  The seminal years of 70 and 135 A.D. were pivotal years for Judaism.  On the Hebrew month of Av, on the ninth day, in the year 70 the Temple and city of Jerusalem were destroyed by the invading Roman legions.  In 135 A.D. a messianic pretender, Shimon Ben Kosibah, who was renamed Bar Kochba (after the Messianic Star that would come out of Jacob from Numbers 24:17) by Rabbi Akiba – ironically, one of Rabbinic Judaism’s greatest and most beloved sages – the Messiah.  Ben Kosibah/Bar Kochba led a final revolt against the Romans.  Bar Kochba and his movement were crushed and what was left of Jerusalem was leveled to the ground, and all Jews were banned from entering the city.  The Romans named the city Aelia Capitolina and the long exile of Israel followed.

Historically, there were many messianic pretenders during the Second Temple Era, and there would be many more at least 50, as Christ warned all of His followers would emerge, but Israel’s partial hardening and its failure to recognize Messiah’s appearance, all working within the sovereignty, foreknowledge, and providence of God’s prophetic and redemptive plan, is the reason for its exile.  This is clearly what the Scriptures teach.

Dan Vander Lugt It is no wonder that the New Testament discourages speculation about when Jesus Christ will return and specifically states that He will return at a time no one expects (Matthew 24:36-50; 25:13; Acts 1:7; 1 Thessalonians 5:2; 2 Peter 3:10).

JOSE J. BERNAL: These statements are correct, but only partially, and can be misleading at that.  I’ve heard this many times before over the last thirty-eight years in God’s grace.  I say it can be misleading, because in a section of His Olivet Discourse, Christ does outline for His generation the signs they were to look for, and in another section He describes also for us in detail the signs that will precede His coming and eminent return, including those of the end of the age. 

Make no mistake about it, we are to look with clear discernment for those signs, as He has instructed us to do, not speculate about them, or as David James and others do, try to explain them away as mere happenstance and astronomical peculiarities.  Just because a sign can be scientifically understood and explained with modern science, doesn’t invalidate its unique significance as a valid sign.  The Shroud of Turin, for example, could not be fully studied and evaluated for its archeological value and authenticity until the late Twentieth Century, where forensic science, powerful computers utilizing the latest technologies in micro-electronics and photography coupled with sophisticated programs, and the powerful electron microscope; all designed specifically for the close examination of artifacts such as the Shroud down to the molecular level, could unearth for us the significance of this unique ancient relic as evidence of the most important event in history – the bodily resurrection of the Jesus the Messiah.  While such a phenomenon could be partially understood and explained with modern science and technology, it does not in the least invalidate the miracle of Christ’s unique and miraculous resurrection, but lays it out for us to appreciate and behold through the proper application of the scientific disciplines.

Dan Vander Lugt Jesus Christ and other inspired writers not only warn us against speculation concerning the hour of His return, but they imply such speculation prevents serious preparation for His return (Matthew 24:43-44; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6; Revelation 3:3).

Whether it manifests itself in apathy or fanatic violence, false prophecy and false speculation about prophecy is dangerous. Those of us who get caught up in the destructive practice of prophetic speculation not only lend support to the principalities and powers of evil, but also sow seeds of disillusionment and rebellion against the gospel and biblical revelation. Mark 9:42 declares: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea" (nkjv).

JOSE J. BERNAL: These statements are in general principle correct.  False prophecy and speculation about prophecy, such as Harold Camping’s, are extremely dangerous.  There is no commandment in Scripture that tells us to sell everything, stop every activity, and move to the mountains and wait for the return of Christ there.  We are also not to become complacent or apathetic, misunderstanding God’s patience and forbearance of us to be His delay, as though whether He returns in our lifetime or a hundred years from now, we should not conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of His calling and lose all hope and anticipation in our hearts.  Whether He comes in the clouds or on our death bed, Christ is coming for us, and we must live in full expectation of both. 

But, none of this has anything to do with The Harbinger, or my book, The Truth About The Harbinger; because neither The Harbinger or The Truth About The Harbinger contains speculation, nor is either book prophecy, nor does either book make any predictions, nor do they teach Eschatology, but both do contain a simply a call for God’s people to repent and call upon the Lord Jesus for His grace and forgiveness.  While I appreciate Mr. Vander Lugt’s admonitions, I do not appreciate RAFAEL’s misuse of them in his continue attempts to discredit a legitimate call to repentance, and defame Rabbi Cahn and myself.  Such a thing is prohibited and not sanctioned by God’s Word, and it is a misuse of it. 
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