Biblical Predictions.....Coincidence.....Or Something Else?

         I bring these three posts back because we have a blood moon coming up and one that is a part of what is called a tetrad which is explained below. Are the books Blood Moons, the Harbinger and the Shemitah biblical predictions of what is happening today or are they just coincidences because the world is indeed reeling out of control, America is spiralling downward and the relatively new state of Israel is in more danger than they have ever been in? I believe that they are neither but the concepts are biblical in that we know from the Bible that we as a people have a tendency to seek that which is not there and fail to see what truly is there.
          The following post is on Rabbi Cahn's new book The Mystery Of The Shemitah and following this are reviews on his previous book The Harbinger and the concept that several books are written on...blood moons. The majority of the church of today is in the doldrums. With little wind, we all, passengers and crew, pucker and blow into the sails at least once or twice a year and consider the sudden movement to be the work of God.
         I am a bibliophile. I love to read books. At times I like to...escape...in a book, and at other times I like to read books that speculate. What I hope never to do is to confuse enjoyment with learning for ultimately books are meant to teach.
         I read about Jonathon Cahn's follow-up book to The Harbinger... The Mystery of the Shemitah and went out and purchased it. In it he expands on one of the 'mysteries' mentioned in The Harbinger. A 'shemitah' is a biblical sabbatical year where the fields are to be fallow and debts are to be released. The word 'shemitah' means...release.
         Rabbi Cahn gives us well over 200 pages in his new book with numerous historical events that happened either at the beginning or the end or near the beginning or the end of a Shemitah year. We find great nations collapsing and others starting and many economic and Wall Street collapses in these years. Personally, I did not find the book edifying but rather profoundly tiring.
         Yes, there certainly was a seven year cycle in Israel and as Rabbi Cahn describes is somewhat recognized in Israel today, but there is something much more important that revolves around a cycle of seven....something written in stone....something essential to the church and individuals and also something lost in translation in this modern age....that would be Lord's Day, barely mentioned in Rabbi Cahn's new book that has the subtitle...The 3,000-Year Old Mystery That Holds the Secret of America's Future, The World's Future....And Your Future!
         The book does have historical content that is worth knowing, as well as biblical Jewish customs and Scriptures themselves but the theories are misdirected. One bullet blurb from the beginning of the book states "Is it possible that words of an ancient text are determining and controlling the future of the financial realm, the business realm, and the economic realm"" The answer to this is...no! Words determine nothing, rather the one who speaks the words. This seemingly minor peccadillo should be an alarm for when even sincere teachers of the Bible have erred in the past, they often have given life to the the theoretical and ascribed cause to the inanimate.
          I'll stop here because the following posts addressed the same problem.
    
The Harbinger

         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 book, 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 analyze 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.

Blood Moons.......April/15/2014

          There will be a total lunar eclipse tonight. Lunar eclipses are not rare but when four consecutive total eclipses occur they are called a tetrad. Tetrads are relatively rare. The earth has gone hundreds of years without experiencing one yet five occurred in the 20th century. Tonight's will be the first total eclipse of a tetrad. The others will occur this October, next April and next October. What makes it even more interesting is that all four occur on Jewish feast days. North America gets the front row seat in tonight's Blood Moon as NASA has named them. It will not be visible in India or that whole part of the globe.
          There is a lot of speculation from Biblical prophesy teachers on the meaning of this tetrad. My concern with this speculation is that blood moons should not be necessary to warn us of our condition and that lunar eclipses are not the only events that can turn the 'moon to blood.' (Rev. 6:12)
          Billy Graham is credited with the quote but it was his wife Ruth who uttered it. The quote was "If God doesn't punish America, he'll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah." I believe that she must have said this in the mid-1980s. I don't know about the 'apologizing' part of her statement but her intent was correct. America's fall is near complete. Our rebellion against God is so extensive that we can no longer visualize what it was like to be a God-fearing nation.
          We have sacrificed tens of million of babies through legalized abortion. Those who are born into this world in this nation are deliberately herded away from God unless the parents forcefully intervene in the rustling of their children. This alone should be a call for America's demise. Not satisfied with the results of this attack, these powers that be have moved on to attacking marriage...the uniting of one man and one woman. If this tactic is successful all children will be forced to accept and live with, in just about every aspect of their lives, this frontal assault on God himself.
          God has consequently removed His hand of protection from us. He has given us leaders who are either undiscerning, totally incompetent or corrupt on one end or viscerally hateful of America's heritage on the other. Our fascination with....ourselves....has become a tragedy abetted by technology. Our idol craving culture has long since presumed too much of God's longsuffering towards us. We are drunken with our entertainments, staggering from one venue to the next. We no longer can analyze and live on statistics fed to us by universities that have become nothing but 'puppy mills' to a culture that needs only someone to buy its clothes and trinkets.
          Yes, there is a remnant of God-fearing Americans but even much of that remnant has lost discernment in this anti-intellectual abyss we have fallen into. Jesus was asked "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming and the end of the age?" His response can be found in the 24th Chapter of Matthew and includes this "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark....."
          The ark was safety to Noah. He was in the world but he was safe. Our safety is in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, of who he is and what he has accomplished for us, and of whose we are....."but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end." (Hebrews 3:6 NKJV) This verse is followed by "Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion...."