After the opening post, BEL added the following to the summary:
* Rejecting The Harbinger's Claim of Divine Signs: (Note, this is not meant to be harsh, for we love and greatly appreciate Jonathan Cahn, and though airing a daily radio talk show, we don't want to be like David who became battle hardened; yet, this is meant to be direct.) The last nine minutes of audio on today's program were recorded twelve years ago at an
End Times seminar conducted in Winona Lake, Indiana only four days after Sept. 11, 2001. Bob Enyart predicted that sincere Christian authors (who love and honor God and preach the Gospel) would find a Bible passage with a few uncanny similarities to 9/11, and so would claim that therefore Al Qaeda's attack on America was a sign from God. Consider Jonathan Cahn's few parallels (which get repeated often) from Isaiah 9:10 to 9/11 events. In the audio from September 2001, Bob Enyart illustrates how easy this is to claim fulfillment of a prophetic pattern when, compared to the Harbinger, he quoted more and more significant 9/11 parallels but from Revelation 17 and 18. Bob knowingly misinterpreted the Scriptures to show how easily (and even innocently) this is done, and while Cahn's parallels get to select from events over a period of years, Bob's many more prophetic parallels were all fulfilled on the very day of September 11th.
The Internet hasn't existed for 2,700 years. Jonathan Cahn's nine harbingers are based on a quote in the Bible of men defiant against God, who, after suffering God's judgment, repeated in utter ignorance, "The bricks have fallen down, but we will rebuild with hewn stone; the sycamores are cut down, but we will replace them with cedars" (
Isaiah 9:10). If the web had been forever, a Google search would probably return countless pages recording, after attacks, utterances of that quote through Judeo-Christian history. About 18 minutes into the program, Jonathan Cahn says about Isaiah 9:10 and the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor that back then, "you don't have anyone quoting the Scripture of judgment." Perhaps, perhaps not. In the very center of the Internet's page of
Pearl Harbor Quotes we read Isaiah 9:10, not in the NIV or NASB, because those versions were translated later, but in the King James Version.
Cahn chose to present his message in a book of
fiction. Not unlike the folks who think
Star Wars is real, for many readers, Cahn's literary device blurs the distinction between truth and fiction. The requisite
suspension of disbelief necessary to enjoy the elements of the story, a wary reporter, a surprised liaison, and an unnamed prophet with curious ancient seals, works to bias the reader who emerges from the novella into the real world lacking the desire to expend the mental energy necessary for an objective consideration of The Harbinger's theological claims.
The first first harbinger (i.e., a seal in the book's metaphor) is the 9/11 attack. Cahn says at about 6:30 into today's program that a first attack is a sign of God's judgment and that God's protection will be further lifted if the nation does not repent. Bob suggests to Cahn that not unlike 9/11, Pearl Harbor suffered 3,000 casualties, about 2,400 of whom were killed. We live here, today, and so we are inclined to discount far-flung attacks over the last 2,700 years and view the world, unsurprisingly, through a our own eyes. Bob mentioned to Jonathan that years ago he had interviewed the beloved Hal Lindsey who, through a similar here-and-now-centered interpretation, suggested that the Second Coming would be in 1988 (not unlike superstitious European Christians who would panic when
pesitlence coincided with Halley's Comet, nor those who thought Jesus would return on the Y2K computer bug). We interpret our own suffering as though it were of biblical proportion, as Cahn said at about 21:40, that in addition to the harbingers (signs), America has suffered "economic collapse". Well, collapse means different things to different people. Within 48 hours of our prerecorded interview, Dow Jones reached an all time high, and at the very minute today's show began, Reuters
reported, "Housing starts point to growing economic momentum." Compare that just to even recent decimation by tsunami, typhoon, earthquake, and to the countries bankrupted, the millions slaughtered, and tens of millions ruined by war, and even to the billions in Asia and Africa who've truly suffered debilitating poverty. That's economic collapse, whereas if God brought economic santions against America, it wouldn't look like a downturn, and it wouldn't primarily hurt the poor and middle class. Given the freedom to be arbitrary, fans of Nostradmus (who apparently predicted the return, in the year 2013, of Twinkies and Ding Dongs) and
Jean Dixon point to fulfillment of prophecy.
Over a million Americans were killed in the civil and world wars. Weren't those lives worth a Bible verse? Around 25 minutes into the program, Bob agrees with
The Harbinger, in that "for Israel, being a prophet was a matter of life or death" (p. 9). Enyart then explains that today, God has withdrawn His accountability system for prophets. Jonathan did not anticipate Bob's statement that stoning a false prophet to death is no longer commanded, nor permitted, by God, as the New Testament says, that with "the priesthood being changed [by Christ], of necessity there is also a change of the law" (
Hebrews 7:12). So today, while Christians tend to forget and forgive (often without even admitting) the false prophecies of their brethren, unbelievers have long memories and stumble over our false prophecies and prophetic interpretations.
The actual parallel between Israel and America, regarding 732 B.C. and 2001, is only thematic, not divinely particular. When a nation ignores God, she becomes increasingly weak and vulnerable to destruction from within and without. Contrary to The Harbinger's emphasis (p. 19), this is true for Israel and America and for Italy, Germany, and Argentina. Christians disagree terribly over interpretation of the plain words in the Bible. Realize how loose our interpretations will then be of events! What is the meaning of a flood? An earthquake? An attack? It is God! Or perhaps it's the devil! Or was it in fact Osama bin Laden? Jesus disapproved of such interpretations of current events in
Luke 13:1-5. and when Enyart
debated D. James Kennedy's Professor of New Testament from Knox Theological Seminary, this very passage, regarding 2,000-year-old headlines of murder and a fallen tower, was central to the matter.
The Harbinger makes the important observation that, "during national judgment, both the righteous and the wicked perish" (p. 30). Then Cahn writes, thankfully, that God was not with Al Qaeda, but he claimed this as part of the prophetic pattern, in that,
God was not with Israel's enemies who attacked her. But again this is arbitrary, for there were plenty of times when God Himself orchestrated the attacks on Israel in punishment for her national adultery. Yet it is wrong to extrapolate from those extraordinary biblical interventions that, therefore, God is the one who orchestrates a molester's rape of a child, or the Holocaust. Attributing to God the designs of the wicked comes close to blasphemy, except that it is done in ignorance, although often, through negligent ignorance. Jonathan Cahn says, rightly I assert, that God was not with Al Qaeda, yet because of a degree of superstition, he then interprets defiance against Islamic terrorism as defiance against God. Is Israel defiant today against God? Yes. (Sadly, like America they are a nation of socialists who defend abortion and homosexuality.) Does that mean that Israel's defiance of Hamas is inherently condemnable? Of course not. Cahn takes a Time magazine reporter's perfectly valid quote as a double entendre, with the entire thrust of the book implying that the defiance is against God, even though it is typically explicitly stated, as in this case, that it is against Islamic terrorists. "Rebuilding Ground Zero was going to be America's statement of defiance," (p. 63, from July 1, 2008) "to those who attacked us."
In September 2001 in our End Times seminar at Winona Lake (home of a famous Bible center, Billy Sunday, and a prayer launch pad for Billy Graham's first crusade), I didn't have to stretch the details, as Jonathan does a tad, to make far greater and more substantive parallels between 9/11 and the book of Revelation. The world trade center, her sins had reached to heaven, the nations, peoples, tongues, and languages, Babylon the great, is fallen
, the kings of the earth see the smoke of her burning, standing at a distance for fear of her torment, watching the smoke of her ruin, the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury, her plagues will come in one day, death and mourning, she will be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judges her, alas, that mighty city, for in one hour your judgment has come, their commerce has ceased, no merchandising today of gold and silver, precious stones and pearls, silk and scarlet, every kind of object, of wood, bronze, iron, and marble, incense, wine and oil, flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, pork bellies, and bodies and souls of men. For in the previous week, the targets of God's wrath, New York and Washington D.C. were debating the patent rights of the tiniest innocent babies, the embryos destroyed so that their bodies could be harvested and sold, by the Israelis, to businesses around the world, while American financial interests were angered that they may not be collecting the royalties they were demanding. And on the Hudson and in the New York harbor, all who travel by ship, and as many as trade on the sea, stood at a distance and cried out when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, "What is like this great city?"
Both can't be correct, but either or both, the Harbinger and the Revelation 17-18 prophetic "parallels", could be wrong. As the above paragraph demonstrates, the more powerful and biblically extensive prophetic interpretaton of 9/11 is not
The Harbinger, but
The Revelation. And that one is certainly wrong! For one, I intended it to be wrong. And secondly, if Revelation 18 was being fulfilled before our eyes on September 11, 2001 that would mean that we are now twelve years into Revelation chapter 19, and by now, the Second Coming should have occurred. So if the strong prophetic parallel (Revelation) isn't true, the weak one (Harbinger) probably isn't true either.
Allow me to be petty. A sycamore tree and a Norwegian fir (the claimed sixth and seventh signs) do not come close to the extraordinary depth of substance and parallel between 9/11 and Revelation 17 and 18. Besides (and these are insignificant, but mentioned because such trivialities in reverse, are used in
The Harbinger to make its point. The World Trade Center wasn't made of bricks. And yes, (p. 72) New York City and America rebuilt. But so did Berlin. And Rome. And most all destroyed cities throughout history, with notable exceptions like Nineveh. Isaiah speaks of many sycamores, not one, and as Cahn acknowledges, the tree destroyed on 9/11 had the same name but it was a different kind of tree; in fact, a different species, and a different genus. And a different family, and a different order. And it was replaced not with a single pine tree but with woods of cedar. And the book embraces the invalid contradiction of freedom yet being allegedly compelled, saying (p. 86), "It takes two oars to make a boat go straight." Yes, but there is no even theoretical contradiction there. And the world isn't going straight, unless we mean straight to hell. Some of the claimed fulfillments of the prophetic pattern are really the same thing, repeated references to the attack itself and tower falling, the rebuilding, the quoting, in hubris, it is true, of Isaiah 9:10 to rebuild, as by a significant government official, who was… John Edwards?, the disgraced candidate. The 8th harbinger, coming with some peculiar justification in that spoken words are invisible, has to do with the Lincoln memorial, which is as it should be because Washington D.C. was also a target (although there was no harbinger from Shanksville, Pennsylvania, likely because that was not an actual target). A claim repeated about slavery and the civil war is that every drop of shed blood was due to judgment of God. So then why could the British end slavery without a similar judgment? (To answer that will require another prophetic interpretation.) And a biblical hewn stone did not need to be quarried from a mountain, though that added flavor to the fiction, and the cornerstone that Jonathan writes so much about, being quarried and celebrated, ended up not at ground zero but at a suburban office building, for Mayor Bloomberg et al. changed the One World Trade Center design and diverted one of the harbingers…
to Long Island.
A few words about Jonathan Cahn. We don't think that we convinced him, nor even gave him pause. Yet, at the same time, we don't think that he loves God any less than we do, nor do we believe that God approves more of us than He does of Cahn. We're just asking God to help us to our best to
rightly divide, and to urge all believers to rightly divide, the Word of Truth. The Ten Commandments judge Roy Moore publicly apologized here on KGOV.com for misinterpreting something as simple as a court ruling. When the Supreme Court upheld the partial-birth abortion "ban", Judge Moore, currently Alabama's chief justice, praised that ruling as a godly pro-life victory; we challenged him to actually read it, and he did, and so and
admitted that it was the most brutally wicked ruling in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court (and that's
saying something). So there's hope for Jonathan too
The great upside of
The Harbinger is its the theme, which is the nation's desperate need to turn to God and the horror of losing His blessing, as Jonathan quoted a Bible commentary, "The defiance of God shuts out immeasurable good" (p. 76). The book's downside though, is that many of its Christian readers will become even more superstitious.
-Pastor Bob Enyart
Denver Bible Church
(See also Bob's Writings at KGOV.com/
writings, and Bob's
End Times seminar, and his super fun verse-by-verse
study of the Book of Revelation!)
