Bartholomew's Notes

New York Compared to Babylon; “radical Islam will be victorious” 

From WorldNetDaily (WND):

Jonathan Cahn’s bestselling book, “The Harbinger,” has been criticized for suggesting that God would judge America, beginning Sept. 11, 2001, without first providing a warning – as He did before judging Israel in Isaiah 9:10.

But a new book, promoted by the publisher as a “prequel” to “The Harbinger,” the bestselling Christian title of 2012 and 2013, and “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment,” the No. 1 faith movie of the last two years, makes the case that, indeed, there was a warning.

That shocking warning is documented in the coming “The 9/11 Prophecy” by James F. Fitzgerald, the creator of “The Watchword Bible,” the first word-for-word video production of the entire New Testament.

Fitzgerald’s WatchWORD Bible DVDs display text from the Bible along with narration, sound effects, and images. The product has been endorsed by a number of high-profile evangelical figures, including Michael Flaherty of Walden Media (“So well produced”), George Barna (“The words of scripture with great visuals!”), the late Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ (“A wonderful achievement!”), and the late Ted Engstrom of World Vision (“This marvelous apocalyptic revelation will be a blessing to hosts of people.”). The box set is distributed by “Good New Holdings of Los Angeles, headed by David Kirkpatrick, a former president of production at both Disney and Paramount”, and there are foreign language versions including Arabic and Japanese.

The idea for the project came to Fitzgerald in 1991 following a three-day fast, and his quest to complete the task was noted by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1996:

In a small office on the fourth floor of a renovated Downtown office building, James Fitzgerald is trying to do for the Gospel in the 21st century what Johannes Gutenberg did for it in the 15th century.

Just as Gutenberg’s printing press brought the Bible to millions of newly literate readers, Fitzgerald is ready to bring it to the millions who now prefer television and computers to books.

…Fitzgerald, 49, an Episcopalian, was vice president of Cornerstone Television, a small Christian network based in Wall, when he got the idea for the WatchWORD Bible in 1991. He worked at it part time until 1993, when, with backing from a handful of investors, he quit his job to work at it full time along with his wife, Betty.

Fitzgerald’s presentation of the Book of Revelation was shown at the NY International Independent Film and Video Festival in Madison Square in May 2000. According to a promotional video alongside the new WND story, Fitzgerald now says that at the time, chapter 18 of the book struck him as being particularly significant: the chapter deals with the fall of Babylon, and it occured to him that New York is a “type” of Babylon. Fitzgerald believes that this sense of the chapter’s importance was prompted by God, and that the film showing in Madison Square was actually a warning sent to the city to repent ahead of 9/11 (as further confirmation, God prompted Fitzgerald to read the Book of Lamentations the night before 9/11).

Fitzgerald presented his theory connecting 9/11 to the Book of Reveleation in a self-published e-book in 2010, entitled Out of Time: The 9/11 Prophecy and bearing the tagline:

The Lord Sent a Jonah to NYC One Year before a Prophetic Surprise Attack Began the End-Time Judgments of the Final Generation

According to a blurb on a website promoting the book (the site has since been removed):

In the year 2000, the Lord led this Jonah to see through scripture and providence that New York City would soon suffer a surprise attack in a single hour, with tall buildings falling, great fire and smoke, and many people killed. The Lord also made it clear that this imminent attack would be a prophetic sign – pointing to the events of Chapter 18 in THE BOOK OF REVELATION. The Lord then sent this Jonah and his team into the heart of New York City with His word at a time of intense speculation about the future – the Millennium year. And as the Lord would have it, His warning was not hidden in a corner. On July 9, 2000, the name of the messenger and the message were prominently posted at Madison Square Garden. Yet, hardly anyone paid attention to the prophetic words written in bright lights upon the marquee of the most famous auditorium in America…but, unlike the prophet of old, this Jonah was certain God’s judgment would happen. For New York City, unlike Nineveh, would never even hear God’s warning when it came, much less heed it.

Fitzgerald’s book included:

How the Lord revealed His imminent judgment in advance
A real-life Jonah was sent to NYC before 9/11
The Lord prepared this Jonah for this unique task his whole life
9/11 was a prophetic judgment that points to Revelation 18
9/11 was God’s great catalyst to begin the final generation
How “the beginning of sorrows” that Jesus foretold has begun with 9/11
How the first of the Apocalyptic judgments has occurred before our eyes
That the second of the Four Horsemen is now preparing to ride
How America has a major hidden role in end-times prophecy
How America must fall in this generation to make way for Antichrist
How radical Islam will be victorious in its quest for world dominion
What and who is now restraining the coming of Antichrist

One is struck by the easy conflation of personal biography, historic events, and cosmology.

Fitzgerald’s e-book appears at some point to have come to the attention of Joseph Farah, whose birther news website WND links the Christian Right to wider “Tea Party” conservativism and conspiracy-mongering. Farah showcases all manner of bizarre apocalyptic prophecy-mongers (including one author who warns of UFOs heading to the Vatican to install a “serpent savior”), but although he’s given a platform to the aged Hal Lindsey to continue expound on his 1970s anti-Soviet “Revived Roman Emperor” anti-Christ theory, Farah is much more interested in an alternative eschatology which fits better with current global conflicts and with the anti-Islam views of his target readership: this is the claim that the Bible predicts a Muslim anti-Christ, as predicted by the likes of Joel Richardson (“Glenn Beck’s End-Times Prophet“) and Walid Shoebat.

Although Fitzgerald is not particularly known, high-profile endorsements of the WatchWORD Bible perhaps demonstrate that he has the potential to promote fears over an “Islamic anti-Christ” more widely within evangelicalism. The e-book has been withdrawn, and Farah’s WND Books has now brought out The 9/11 Prophecy. This time, though, the somewhat overwrought “Jonah” tagline has been removed, in favour of a simple “Startling Evidence the End-Times Have Begun”. A special edition of the WatchWORD Bible Book of Revelation DVD has also been produced, with WND cover branding.

A new book blurb creates a cosmic tie-in between Fitzgerald and Cahn’s Harbinger, which also been heavily promoted by WND and by Joseph Farah personally:

…Incredibly, the site of the attack – Ground Zero – had been owned by his wife’s direct ancestors at the founding of New York City, and portions had remained in the Dey family for almost a century. The were astonished: Not only had the Lord led him to foresee the surprise attack through His Word and providence, but when it occurred it occured upon the same land her Dutch ancestors had owned over three centuries before!

This was the same land, including St. Paul’s Chapel, that also figured so prominently in “The Harbinger” by Jonathan Cahn and its video documentary, “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment.” And contrary to what some critics claimed, 9/11 truly fit the Isaiah 9:10 pattern, as “The 9/11 Prophecy” proves beyond doubt. In fact, one of the critics’ chief arguments that 9/11 didn’t fit the Isaiah pattern is that New York City had no prior warning. But it did! “The 9/11 Prophecy” demonstrates this with powerful, irrefutable evidence – “The Lord sent a word …” (Isaiah 9:8). Even more importantly, 9/11 has a startling connection to the Second Coming of Christ that is also directly related to the Isaiah passage (Isaiah 9:1-7).

…Islam is destined to exercise worldwide dominion as the religion of Antichrist… who even now must be alive on earth to be of age to appear in his proper time. 

I’ve written about Cahn and his book previously: Cahn is a Messianic Jew (i.e. a Jewish believer in Jesus whose Jewish cultural identity is expressed in worship), and he has for some years been marketing himself as an expert on esoteric “Hebrew mysteries” and such.

In 2011 Cahn drew attention to the fact that in the wake of 9/11 a couple of politicians (Tom Daschle and John Edwards) had quoted a text from the Bible (Isaiah 9:10) which they thought conveyed ancient Israel’s resolution in the face of adversity, but which in original context are actually defiant but futile boasts against God’s judgement. From this, Cahn has extrapolated an apocalyptic theory about how 9/11 was allowed by God to happen because of the USA’s wickedness, and about how Biblical accounts of ancient Israel can also be applied to the USA.

The Harbinger is published by Charisma Media, and has been been heavily promoted by Charisma’s CEO Stephen Strang (one of Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America” in 2005); last year, Strang and Cahn appeared together on Jim Bakker’s television show to explain that the book itself is the result of divine provenance:

The “prophet” is a businessman from New Jersey named Hubie Synn. We mentioned him in an article in Charisma four years ago after he prophesied to football player David Tyree that God was bringing him out of obscurity and that his name was going before him. Soon after Tyree made a catch against his helmet, which has been called the greatest catch in Super Bowl history. His team won the game.

Synn emailed Strang in January 2011 to explain that he had met Cahn by chance at an airport and given him Strang’s details:

What makes it doubly exciting is that Cahn was praying for guidance at that moment in the airport as he was reading his Bible and waiting for his connecting flight. Hubie’s flight had been cancelled and as he was waiting for the next flight he felt he should give a word to a total stranger who turned out to be Cahn!

Alongside support from Strang, Cahn’s theories have been promoted by Joseph Farah, and The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment DVD was a tie-in published by WND. As a result, Cahn’s stock has rapidly risen, and he is now a regular fixture on the Christian Right speaker circuit: in January he took part in an unofficial “Presidential Inaugural Prayer Breakfast” in Washington DC (which also included a pastor who says he regularly prays for Obama’s death), and in May he was at a prayer event alongside the ludicrous Newt Gingrich. If you would like to see the Farah and Cahn in action for yourselves, they will be leading a “pilgrimage” to Israel in November 2013, at which “contemporary End-Times Insights” are promised.

I’m sure that Fitzgerald can now expect to follow exactly the same career arc.

UPDATE: WND now reports:

Today, more than a decade after the completion of “The WatchWORD Bible” and hundreds of thousands sold, WND announces it has signed an exclusive worldwide licensing deal to market and distribute this unique product.

“We hope to make the scriptures come alive for millions of people who have never had the opportunity to see and hear the New Testament literally come alive for them,” said Joseph Farah, chief executive office of WND and founder of WND Films. “We intend to use the platform of success we built with ‘The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment’ to expand the marketplace for ‘The WatchWORD Bible’ and to reduce the consumer price for this breakthrough product.”

The whole set now carries WND branding. This means that a hitherto neutral Bible product with potentially quite a wide reach will be tied directly to WND‘s paranoid and shrill political agenda and fringe apocalypticism. Joseph Farah, it should be remembered, is a Birther, and WND articles have accused Obama of everything from  masterminding the Sandy Hook massacre to sending a secret message to Muslims that he plans to continue the Jewish Holocaust. Perhaps Farah had a better distribution offer than Good News Holdings – but it’s a deal with the devil.

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