Messianic Rabbi and author Jonathan Cahn sees an America that is in dire trouble. So do I. According to his popular book The Harbinger; September 11th, 2001 was a judgment upon America, a judgment with a lot of biblical meanings behind it emanating from Isaiah 9:10. Along with a judgment there is a warning to America to return to God or experience utter destruction. In his novel, Rabbi Cahn takes what he sees as a very distinct, specific and detailed message for Israel in Isaiah, and applies it every bit as particularly to America. He presents this to us in story form, the story of a man and a modern day prophet. Thus Isaiah's prophesy to Israel, a prophesy of impending catastrophe, is being repeated with us...brick for brick, sycamore for sycamore and cedar for cedar, and will end with total collapse if we do not repent. Rabbi Cahn takes the reader step by step from the collapse of the twin towers to the rebuilding efforts since then and even well beyond that national disaster to the 2008 economic collapse and even back to the inauguration of George Washington. He sees us doing exactly the same thing that the Israelites did upon their first defeat at the hands of the Assyrians, that being... arrogantly proclaiming that they will merely rebuild while ignoring the reasons for God's hedge being taken down in the first place. The book would not have had the reception that it did if there were not a number of very interesting similarities that make it appear as if America is indeed written into the Isaiah prophesy right next to Israel. Some Evangelicals will believe the thesis of the book on face value. Others will criticize mixing newspaper headlines and Bible prophesy. I'm not concerned here with this aspect, important as it is. My concern is this: it seems as if every year there is one Christian book that consumes the evangelical community, for example, The Shack or Heaven Is For Real. It becomes the Christian's Super Bowl.....the big experience of the year. At best it's a waste of time and at worst, as in the case of these two books, it is unbiblical nonsense. The problems with this type of Christian culture vary. To simply read Rabbi Cahn's novel for enjoyment is one thing but we go well beyond that. The novelist, the television evangelist and the user-friendly mega-church become the teachers of pot luck theology and whats more, over time, we have become such that our minds learn mostly from the spectacular and the visual. We no longer analyse or examine. Neither are we learning through experience, rather through enjoyment. Has reading the book changed anyone? Or has it merely fulfilled a need embedded in today's Christian for the sensational? What it might do is prepare the unbeliever to view America's troubles in a different light but at what cost to the Christian. There was a wildly popular Christian novel published in 1986 written by Frank Peretti and titled This Present Darkness. Light reading over a few days is one thing but this book actually had Christians circling neighborhoods and praying away territorial spirits. The cover of Rabbi Cahn's book has the subtitle the Ancient Mystery that holds the Secret of America's Future. That America is abandoning God and faces His wrath should hardly be a secret to the Christian. A simple ploughman, if I might use that archaic term, knows that, as might even the flamboyant heretic reaching tens of millions through a television ministry. This book might be an urgent call to dinner but where's the beef? There is no meat in The Harbinger...none. Many Christians, myself included, saw 9/11 as a consequence of our rebellion to God and were sorely disappointed that we all, myself included, so easily and so quickly returned to the business at hand...money and trivialities! The Book of 1st Samuel, early on, tells of Israel's defeat at the hands of the Philistines. Along with the prophet Eli's two evil sons, Hophni and Phinehas, Israel calls for the Ark of the Covenant to be brought to the battlefield, for surely the presence of the holiest object in Israel would insure victory. It did...for the Philistines! Here then is another similarity, to me anyway, between Israel of the Old Testament and America; It's as if we are calling for the Ark when we proclaim America to be anything beyond a nation favored with blessings by God, for His purposes. Sometimes it's just presumption and other times it is total blindness on what is happening in America and why we are unravelling. It's possible to call on God in times of distress as if we were putting a talisman around our neck. Evidence of this distortion of prayer can be seen in many high profile teachers who not only totally misconstrue what the state of Israel is today but toss the Gospel of Jesus Christ out the window in attempting to save God's Chosen People. Let me conclude where I began, in agreeing with Rabbi Jonathan Cahn....America is departing from God....God's protection is departing from us.....and we could care less.
Heaven Is For Real...The Premise Of The Book Isn't
Heaven Is For Real...The Premise Of The Book Isn't
Well, I'm way behind on this one, but not too disappointed to have been so. A few days ago I heard about the new book sensation, Heaven Is for Real. I picked it up and read it in little more than an afternoon. I went to the New York Times Best Seller list and in some sort of Freudian Slip I went to fiction and started scrolling backwards. Well, I was back into February and no Heaven Is For Real. Then it dawned on me...non-fiction, for I had trouble even putting the book into that category. Indeed, according to what I then read, it had been Number 1 for 12 weeks and has only slipped to Number 2 this past week. What can I say? It's sad that this is what Christians read, what they so easily fall for, what they are totally unprepared to discern. For those not familiar with this book, as I wasn't until three days ago, a pastor's son has an out-of-body experience on the surgery table and is taken to heaven. This loving father is certainly sincere but he also erred in discernment of what happened. There are two ways to address this, the first being to list the ways that the book is not Scriptural but I think that it's more important to address this genre of Christian literature. You're probably not too happy right about now, if you have read this far, but if you can read on a little bit further I'd like to give you some things to at least think about. You wouldn't want this story to be true! If it was legitimate, then maybe the hundreds of similar stories that came before it could be legitimate also and even if only a portion of them were legitimate you would then be living a Christian existence where personal testimony, experiences, imagination, the paranormal and even chicanery would rule. You would have given up our bulwark of strength in the reasoning mind that God gave us and of reading God's Word under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and this for a mess of pottage. You would have given up order and precision for the chaos of emotive evidence. When I was about 16 years old, a man came up to my friend and I at a shopping center and showed us some very nice watches.... supposedly they were inventory that he was trying to get rid of...right! Well I bought one and it worked perfectly for about the same number of weeks that Heaven Is For Real was Number 1. The book will be gone soon, possibly they will make a movie of it, but then another incredible story will come along. I have another thought to ask you to consider; I submit to you that, on a scale of excitability, all the thrills that you may have had reading this story.....no, I'll even go further than that...even if you could take the trip that this little boy supposedly went on, the excitement of thoroughly understanding even one doctrine on the sovereignty of God as it relates to our own salvation, of a lost sinner deserving of condemnation but pardoned through absolutely nothing in or of ourselves, it would make that trip even less than trivial, to be discarded for the real joy of seeing Jesus through the eyes of faith! Friends, this is not a discerning age for the world or the church. Maybe you think that it is and we are just fine. J. I. Packer once commented, to the best of my memory anyway, that the term giants when used to describe the Puritans was inaccurate for they were normal men, it was only that we are a church age of Pygmies that we see them as giants. Please do not take my statements to where I never would take them, that being that there is nothing valuable being done in the church today for there is. One need go no further than missionaries of the gospel, than servants who give and give and give with no concern for their own well being, than pastors who literally wear out dealing with the challenges of this age, than the faith shown by you and multitudes of others in living in a world that mocks its Creator and rejects its Savior, but we are also called to handle the Word of God correctly. A glass can only hold so much liquid, our time can only be portioned out on so many things and this age is a candy store of diversions, a haberdashery of excuses to wear and a fitness club to make us think that we are healthy. Jeremiah told us to seek ye the old paths (Jeremiah 6:16.) Even the wonderful authors of today mine the works of those who came before us. One has to mine gold or at least pan for it. It doesn't usually wind on Best Seller lists.