This post will be different than most of my posts as it is a review of a book which has very important relevance for modern America’s destiny and also documents the reasons why the ancient kingdom of Israel (which consisted of the ten tribes of Israel) fell and went into exile. The book is entitled The Harbinger and it is authored by Jonathan Cahn. It has been on the New York Times best-seller list.
While the book is a fictional story, it presents solid, biblical warnings (“harbingers”) to modern America within the framework of its fictional narrative. The book sees many parallels between the downfall of the ancient kingdom of Israel ruled by the ten tribes of Israel and the current decline of the Untied States of America. It also sees parallels between the ancient capital of the kingdom of Israel, Samaria, and the modern capital of the United States of America, Washington, DC. It is set in modern, post 9/11 times and sees the events of 9/11 as the beginning of a final series of warnings to the modern United States of America, a nation with a Christian heritage that is abandoning God and his laws.
I don’t want to give away the content of the book, but I will mention one of its primary points. In the aftermath of 9/11 the highest American officials cited an obscure verse from the book of Isaiah (9:10) as they expressed the defiance of the USA and its determination to rebuild better than ever after the attack of 9/11. The officials are not named in the book, but it does name their high federal governmental positions. Based on the context of the book, I believe it identified President Obama, Vice-President Biden and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle as some of the national leaders who have cited this verse in post-9/11 declarations. As the book makes clear, these leaders had no idea of the proper biblical context in which this verse was located in the Bible. That verse contains the statements of the leaders of the ancient biblical kingdom of Israel, who, after an initial invasion of Assyria in 732 BC, defiantly declared that they would rely on their own human strength to rebuild the nation and that they would not repent to God for their sins as the prophets had called them to do. Unknowingly, America’s leaders have been repeating a defiant and arrogant declaration of ancient Israel’s unrepentant leaders in the aftermath of 9/11. The book documents many other geographic and near-miraculous parallels between the events of 9/11 and the wordings cited in Isaiah 9:10.
I’ll mention just one other point. The date of the initial Assyrian invasion which struck at and weakened ancient Israel but did not yet destroy or defeat it is cited as being in 732 BC. While biblical histories and commentaries disagree on the final date of the fall of Samaria and the collapse of the kingdom of ancient Israel, one date often cited for that final collapse is 721 BC. Do the math and you will see that there were 11 years between 732 BC and 721 BC. If we can apply the parallels cited in the book to modern America, eleven years after 9/11 brings us to the year 2012, our current year. Most specifically, it would bring us to the time of September, 2012 for a major crisis if these parallels prove to have divinely-ordained significance. It would not necessarily be on September 11th as the dates on the biblical Hebrew calendar do not coincide with out modern secular calendar. The collapse may also not take the form of a complete national collapse of the USA, but it could be a “harbinger” re: the fall of Babylon the Great, the modern system of monetary and financial rulership of the USA, which is prophesied in Revelation 17-18.
This book will be especially interesting to long-time readers of this blog who know that the USA is the primary nation in the modern world which is actually composed of the descendants of the ancient ten-tribed kingdom of ancient Israel. If the author of the book, a self-professed Messianic Jew, had realized that the people of the USA actually are the descendants of the ancient kingdom of Israel, his biblical parallels would be many times more riveting and applicable. For irrefutable evidence that modern America is descended from the ancient ten tribes of Israel (most specifically the tribe of Manasseh), I urge you to order my 4-book set on the Israelite migrations throughout history or download the E-book on the same subject, The “Lost” Ten Tribes of Israel…Found! which is available at this website’s homepage for a mere $12.99. You may also access my free article, USA in Biblical Prophecy, or listen to any of my audio messages available for free at the “speeches” tab at the website’s homepage. They will give you a strong presentation about the main points documented extensively in the texts, the bibliographies and the chapter endnotes of my books.
The book, The Harbinger, warns that the USA, like any covenant nation God has founded and blessed, is now in a phase of increasing judgments from God to wake us up to the need to national repentance before ultimate national judgment falls on it. Since the book was written, President Obama has openly declared he accepts “gay marriage,” and he is the first US president to ever do so. Since God labels homosexuality as an abomination to him in both the Old and New Testaments (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Romans 1:26-28) , this is an open slap in the face from the US president to God Himself. These kinds of actions indicate America is choosing national judgment instead of national repentance.
Please understand I am making no predictions about 2012 or any other year when God’s ultimate judgment will fall on the USA and many other nations as well. However, I recommend this book to all readers of this website. I think you will find it very inspiring and enlightening.
