Misunderstanding Israel and America - A Critique of The Harbinger and Dispensational Theology

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to American Family Radio’s Bryan Fischer as he said, “Only two nations in history have ever had a direct covenant relationship with God, Israel and America.”  

He claimed that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were America’s covenant documents with God. He was making this claim in the context of promoting Jonathan Cahn’s book, The Harbinger. As soon as I heard him say those words, I thought to myself, “That’s the AFA heresy right there. That’s the whole problem with their theology!”

 In the list of top-selling Christian books, right along with Todd Burpo and Sarah Young (books I have reviewed and critiqued elsewhere in this blog – here and here), stands The Harbinger by Jonathan Cahn. This book takes readers to Isaiah 9:10 as a prophecy of the judgment of God against America on 9/11/2001. Cahn point out that “The One-Year Bible” published in 1985, puts Isaiah 9:10 on Sept. 11th: 

“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.
But the Lord raises the adversaries of Rezin against him,
and stirs up his enemies.” – Isaiah 9:10-11, ESV

First of all, before I go any further, any time an author starts playing “numbers games” or hidden-code tricks with the Bible (“secret prophecies”/ citing page numbers from “The One-Year Bible”), run the other way! This is not a responsible way of handling the Bible.

The basic “prophecy” behind the book rests on Cahn’s ability to string together random events and coincidences and read them into the text of Isaiah 9:10. This is called “eisogesis,” when you read into a text a meaning which is not there. 

FACT: No responsible Bible scholar would assert that Isaiah 9:10 anything to do with America whatsoever. 

The Harbinger has been heavily promoted on American Family Radio (AFR). I listen to AFR regularly, as they sometimes have some good things to say. However, when they start talking about The Harbinger or the theology of Israel & America which underlies both this book and much of AFR’s message, I get pretty irritated.   Continue at Jason A. Van Bemmel

Who Is John Bunyan?

The most popular novel in the history of the world was written in prison by a man whose humble beginnings and arduous life reflect the One he lived for—Jesus Christ (The Portable Bunyan). John Bunyan, who never received more than a second grade education, impacted Christian thinking and English literature so profoundly that he was able to transcend the cultural and religious framework from which he wrote and influence a universal audience (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners).

The Drunken Tinsmith

John Bunyan was born in England in 1628, entering into the broader historical context with “the final phases of the Reformation movement still fresh in the minds of the people” and the Puritan pilgrimage to America dawning in the near future. John’s father was a tinker (a tin smith), providing a meager life for his family and training his son to follow in his footsteps. At the age of sixteen Bunyan lost his mother and two sisters, after which his father married for the third time.  Keep Reading >>>

ON DANGEROUS READING: A Warning Against The Reading of Novels, Fiction, and Other Poisonous Literature

"Now, all works of fiction are full of scenes of imaginary distress, which are constructed to impress the sensibilities. The fatal objection to the habitual contemplation of these scenes is this, that while they deaden the sensibilities, they afford no occasion or call for the exercise of active sympathies. Thus the feelings of the heart are cultivated into a monstrous, an unnatural, and unamiable disproportion.[2] He who goes forth in the works of active benevolence among the real sufferings of his fellow creatures will have his sensibilities impressed, and at the same time will have opportunity to cultivate the principle of benevolence by its exercise. Thus the qualities of his heart will be nurtured in beautiful harmony, until they become an ornament to his character and a blessing to his race. This is God's "school of morals." This is God's plan for developing and training the emotions and moral impulses. "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." [James 1.27.] And the adaptation of this plan of cultivation to the laws of man's nature shows that the inventor is the same wise Being who created man. It is by practicing this precept of the gospel that man is truly humanized. But the beholder of these fictitious sorrows has his sympathies impressed, and therefore deadened, while those sympathies must necessarily remain inert and passive, because the whole scene is imaginary. And thus, by equal steps, he becomes at once sentimental and inhuman. While the Christian, whose heart has been trained in the school of duty, goes forth with cheerful and active sympathies in exercises of beneficence towards the real woes of his neighbor, the novel reader sits weeping over the sorrows of imaginary heroes and heroines, too selfish and lazy to lay down the fascinating volume and reach forth his hand to relieve an actual sufferer at his door."   Read the rest HERE

See Also:

The lost art of thinking in today's entertainment-saturated, image-driven postmodern society

Christian Romance Novels: A Wise Caution