Bartholomew's Notes

A man named Joe Esposito has distributed an apocalyptic paperback to members of the Oklahoma legislature. WND reports:

Esposito also told WND that while he hasn’t heard much response from the Legislature, that’s to be expected, because the lawmakers were under an intense deadline to get the state’s budget passed.

He did, however, get a personal phone call a week later from Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb.

“He was real grateful for my efforts,” Esposito told WND. “We visited, and I made the comment that it’s important the Legislature comes up with resolution or statement referring to ‘The Harbinger’ and the prayer of 2 Chronicles.”

Enthusiasm for The Harbinger is currently widespread within American evangelicalism: Charisma News reported in January:

The Harbinger, a book warning of God’s judgment on America by Messianic rabbi Jonathan Cahn will debut at No. 10 and No. 28 respectively on the New York Times best-seller list in the print paperback category and the combined print hardcover and paperback list for January 22.

Subtitled “The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America’s Future,” The Harbinger is published by FrontLine, an imprint of Charisma House. The book traces a series of detailed parallels between what has happened in the United States since the 2001 terrorist attacks—including the economic collapse—and Israel’s history after it turned away from God. Told in fictional narrative, the book unfolds how nine signs concealed in recent events reveal God’s progressive judgment.

…Cahn recently appeared on CBN’s The 700 Club, and Pat Robertson called The Harbinger a “fascinating” book and told viewers it was a prophetic word to the nation and “a read you need to make.” Scheduled additional media appearances include The Jim Bakker Show, It’s Supernatural with Sid Roth, Daystar Network’s Celebration, LeSea Network’s The Harvest Show, and several radio interviews.

WND has also put together a related documentary, The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment.

The book’s thesis is straightforward enough, as summarized by WND:

Isaiah records that Israel had known God and yet turned away from Him. Following a devastating attack by Assyria, rather than returning to God, the leaders declared “with pride and arrogance of heart” (NIV) a defiant pledge: “The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars” (Isaiah 9:10 KJV).

“The Harbinger” reveals the startling reality that beginning the day after 9/11, several American leaders began repeating that 2,500-year-old vow, word for word, in speeches across the country.

The story, though, is not “politicians pluck Bible verse out of context”; rather, Cahn appears to claim that the speeches have unleashed a supernatural force which will doom the USA:

“Having no idea what he was doing, the majority leader of the U.S. Senate [Tom Daschle] was declaring America as under the judgment of God,” Cahn gives as just one example. “It was the reenactment of an ancient mystery – and bore the most grave of consequences.”

The presence of pine trees at the redeveloped Ground Zero site is supposedly further confirmation.

Of course, we can’t know whether Todd Lamb was merely humouring a potential voter, or whether he’s truly impressed by Cahn’s book. Back in 2009, a man named Jim Barfield claimed that he had met with Oklahoma senators about a plan to find the lost treasure of the First Jerusalem Temple, and that they had given him their support.

Needless to say, whether Daschle’s ill-chosen Bible quote was simply just that, or whether it was indeed “the reenactment of an ancient mystery”, is a matter of personal opinion. However, Cahn’s book serves two purposes: it gives extra meaning to the events of 9/11 by linking them to a Biblical narrative (just as Pat Robertson and Daniel Lapin tried to do last year, with unhappy results), and it resurrects the idea that 9/11 was a judgement by God against the USA for being too liberal. When Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell took this line in the days after 9/11 they were widely repudiated; but that was a long time ago, when the reality of the massacre was still raw, and when the president was a Republican evangelical.

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