‘The Harbinger’ gives fanciful analysis about 9/11, national judgment

The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America’s Future, by Jonathan Cahn. Lake Mary, Florida: Charisma House Books, 2012

By Franklin Sanders

Numerous Moneychanger customers have asked me if I have read The Harbinger, and in the strongest terms recommended that I read it.

Suspicious, I never followed their recommendation. Someone gave me a copy. I read it. My suspicions were confirmed. It pushed me over the edge to speak to you even more plainly than usual.

The great evangelical distraction

This book has nothing to do with Christianity or building faith, although the author thinks it does.

Much of the world called “evangelical Christianity” follows a theological system called Dispensationalism. Although Dispensationalism was only invented in the late 1800s and only began to spread through the 1909 Scofield Reference Bible, most Dispensationalists seem utterly unaware any other theology exists. I don’t doubt their sincerity, but if you question any of Dispensationalism’s innovational ideas, like the Rapture (first appeared about 1840 or maybe 1790) or End Times or identification of the modern state of Israel with Biblical Israel or premillennialism, they are apt to write you off as a rank unbeliever and heretic, never mind that the church for almost 1900 years never believed these things or even mentioned them. Very few seem aware to Dispensationalism’s severe internal contradictions, or that it has changed and is changing  drastically over time.

Perhaps Dispensationalism ought to be called Sensationalism because it lays such great stress on interpreting Bible prophecy to the exclusion of other concerns of following Christ, and despite many prophecies having been fulfilled long ago. Dispensationalists spend vast attention, time, and money on interpreting prophecy, all of which is aimed at foretelling the future. However, they are delving into what God himself says they ought not concern themselves with, distracting them from what God commands us to concern ourselves with. Don’t take my word for it.

➤ In Matthew 24 Jesus prophesies the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple. He says all these things will happen before this present generation passes away, (v. 34, repeated in Luke 21:32 & Mark 13:30), and historically that happened in a.d. 70, about 37 years or within a generation. Whatever events these passages foretell, in verse 36 Jesus says, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”

➤  In Acts 1 as Jesus is about to ascend into heaven leaving his disciples, since they don’t yet really understand the nature of his kingdom, the disciples take one last shot at finding out what day he will come back. In verse 7 he answers them, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.” Pretty plain.

➤  In Deuteronomy 29 we are told, “The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.” Pretty plain again. “Don’t concern yourself with the secrets of God; he has revealed to you all you need to know.”

The secret decoder ring

Not content with these warnings against peering into what God has hidden, Dispensationalists are forever treating the Scriptures like a coded message that cannot be understood without the secret decoder ring. Somewhere must be some hidden key that unlocks all the prophecies and tells us what day Christ will return and whether the Antichrist of Revelation is Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, or somebody else. Generally, the daily newspaper is expected to furnish the secret code to prophecy, and therefore by comparing the newspaper with prophecy, we can decipher what prophecy really means.

All this flies in the face of how the Scriptures characterize themselves, and what the Church has always held to be true, namely, that everything necessary to salvation and obedience is revealed in the Scripture. Although there are dark places in the Scripture hard to understand, any person of reasonable intelligence and most of little intelligence at all, can read them and grasp those necessary doctrines. (John 5:39; 1 Corinthians 15:3-4; 2 Timothy 3:15; 3 Peter 3:16; Hebrews 4:12; Luke 8:11, Parable of the Sower, where the seed is the word of God; Isaiah 55:1; Ephesians 6:17; Revelation 1:16, to cite just a few.) In fact, Luke 24:27 & 45 teach that Jesus himself taught the Apostles all about himself from the Scriptures, and that Apostolic teaching has been passed down through the Scriptures. The New Testament is the not-so-secret decoder ring for the Old Testament, plainly telling how to understand it.

The ever-seductive idea of secret, hidden knowledge available only to a spiritual elite is the earliest heresy, Gnosticism or salvation by secret knowledge. Among its other heresies Gnosticism holds that God has not sufficiently revealed himself in his Word and creation, but that secret knowledge (from the Greek gnosis, knowledge) exists that only the spiritual Insiders can find and understand. The rest of you low lifes are not spiritual enough to grasp this knowledge.

Judge the tree by the fruit: Gnostics also considered everything material to be “evil” and only the Spiritual to be “good,” and so ethically ended up as wanton libertines or severe ascetics. They overlooked this, that when God created the material world he called it “good.”

The notion of a secret code outside the Bible to explain the Bible is foreign to orthodox Biblical interpretation (hermeneutics), because the rule is that the Bible is its own interpreter, and clearer texts must interpret darker ones. Anyway, the very notion of a prophecy too unclear to understand is foreign to the Bible’s use of prophecy. Prophecy in the Scriptures seldom makes a secret of who it’s aimed at and what it warns. Even Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s obscure dream of the giant statue in Daniel chapter two plainly points to those empires — Babylonian, Medes & Persians, Greeks, and Romans — which would rise before Christ’s kingdom, the stone cut out without hands “break[s] pieces and consume[s] all those kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.” At least, it’s hard for me to find any other kingdom that “shall stand forever.” Mankind’s kingdoms & empires come and go with tedious regularity.

Sensationalism and titillation

Slogging through this world, all of us are bound to feel from time to time that our life is boring and humdrum. The temptation to peer into the future, the thrill of knowing the secret stuff others don’t know, the buzz of knowing what will happen in the future are all distractions from Christian duty.

That’s why I say that Dispensationalism ought to be called Sensationalism, because its followers latch so quickly onto any sensational rumor, forecast, or news. They are not alone, as much of the non-Dispensational evangelical world does the same. That’s one reason that Christians so often look silly to the world, and not the good reason that the “foolishness of God is wiser than men.” Rather, Christian sensationalism often can’t be distinguished from plain old superstition.

A recent example is John Hagee’s book, Four Blood Moons: Something Is About To Change. Right, but all the change went from your hand to his. The back cover offers this lurid bait, “It is rare that Scripture, science, and history align with each other, yet the last three series of Four Blood Moons [capitals in the original – FS] have done exactly that. Are these the ‘signs’ that God refers to in his Word? If they are what do they mean? What is their prophetic significance?”

I tried to read it, but I confess at page 10 I threw it down in disgust. I will have to go to my grave, maybe even when a Blood Moon collides with the earth, not knowing the Blood Moons’ “prophetic significance” because I had not the patience to wade through Mr. Hagee’s wild speculations about astronomy, history and the Bible. Nonetheless, manifold sincere Christian people have spent valuable time (time they could have spent re-arranging their sock drawers or sweeping dust bunnies out from under the bed) and effort reading, discussing, and stirring themselves up about blood moons. Mercy.

The distraction

There is something almost prurient, almost pornographic about this morbid desire to know the future. It is all the more suspect because God out of mercy has chosen not to reveal the future to us and Christ himself has commanded us not to concern ourselves with it. Christ completes the Matthew 24 prophecy with warnings to “Watch, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come” v. 42), the parable of the wise and foolish servants (45-51), and begins Chapter 25 with the parable of the foolish virgins versus the wise virgins who hold themselves always read for the bridegroom’s arrival. Scripture makes no secret how we are to live: ready every day for Christ’s coming, not peering into the future for his timetable.

But the greatest damage the Christian suffers from this sensationalism arises from its distraction. It pulls him away from the real, arduous, and mandatory task of leading a Christian life. Oh, I understand that God abundantly gives us grace to do this, but he is also pleased to call us to embrace that grace and apply it to our lives. The great business of the Christian, the Father’s great project in us, is to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29, go look). Even as we live in the midst of this world, the Scriptures call us to mortify our flesh and lead holy lives, doing the good works that God prepared for us. (Ephesians 2:10; Titus 2:11-14)

The Church has uniformly understood this throughout history. Start with the apostles and work your way through all the early Church fathers, read Athanasius and Chrysostom and Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen, Maximus the Confessor, Augustine, Tertullian, Hilary, Gregory the Great, then throw in John Calvin, Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, a couple hundred other Lutheran divines, George Whitefield, and all the Wesley brothers as well, and you will find one unvarying, uniform call for Christians to mortify their flesh and lead holy lives.

More, you will find that rather than sponsoring prophecy conferences, Christians have always lived out their Christianity by mercy toward strangers, the poor, children, widows, and prisoners (Matthew 25:34-46). The Church invented hospitals and has always run schools – “not for profit” schools & hospitals, by the way.

Telescopic philanthropy

Evangelicalism’s focus on overseas missions always bemuses me. Those Christians overseas are starting to send missionaries to America, and right they should. Likely there are more Christians in Nigeria than in New England, and since their lives are daily risked for that Christianity, they take it seriously.

And while so many churches focus on overseas missions, the devil runs their back yard. Abortion has murdered over 60 million American babies since 1973. Does nobody remember that one reason Christians predominated in the Roman Empire so quickly was that non-Christians hated children? They practiced homosexuality or birth control and abortion or exposed their unwanted infants, i.e., left them on hillsides exposed to the elements to starve to death. Christians adopted these infants and raised them as their own. That and their higher fertility rate – they didn’t practice abortion or homosexuality – meant that in a generation or two the population would inevitably become Christian. But working with unwed mothers, taking care of them, raising money to support them, running adoption agencies, all these are, well, humdrum jobs compared to the thrill of prying out the future’s secrets.

Everybody complains about crime, especially Christians, and wants criminals to get stiffer sentences and supports the war on drugs. Great, but how many Christians ever bother visiting prisoners? Prisons and jails have become an industry in the United States: into the grinder’s hopper go prisoners and their families, and out of the grinder comes money for the courts, the state, and all the private contractors that feed off them – oh, and ground up human beings. America has quite literally re-instituted imprisonment for debt; the jails need to install revolving doors. Are these people stupid, drug-riddled, ignorant, and evil? They sure are, pretty much like the people Jesus came to save. Pretty much like the rest of us, but a little less apt to manage their sin. Whoa, but how much fun is dealing with prisoners when you can delve into the future’s hidden mysteries? No contest. Same thing for clothing the naked, helping the homeless, or visiting the sick: just not as exciting as pecking out the hidden knowledge.

So let me sum up my complaint: a prurient interest in secret knowledge & prophecy is nothing more than a titillation to draw Christians away from their first duty, namely, to lead deliberate Christian lives. Notice I am not saying, do these works of mercy and forget reading and studying the Scriptures and prayer and meditation. Not at all. Yet every Christian’s first duty in life is to serve where God has placed him: changing diapers, making meals, comforting and teaching children, loving a wife or husband, earning a living. All those duties in your place and station come first, and they are just as much Christian duties as prayer or Bible reading.

The Harbinger

Finally I come to The Harbinger. It is not the worst of this class of books. It has sold over a million copies and carries endorsement from famous Christian names. On the back page it has an advertisement that urges you to “Go deeper and discover more about the Events and PROPHETIC TRUTH behind the Harbinger.” In nine point type on the other side it offers nine ways you can promote the book.

It is an orgy of self-promotion.

Cahn’s book is admittedly fiction, a story of a man who gets an ancient clay seal in the mail, then meets a prophet who over the course of time reveals the secrets of eight more seals (“Harbingers”).

All this is based around the attack on New York on 11 September 2001 and Isaiah 9:10:

The bricks have fallen

But we will rebuild with hewn stone:

The sycamores have been cut down,

But we will plant cedars in their place.

Isaiah here condemns what the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel vowed after the Assyrians invaded them in 732 B.C. Rather than repenting after that divine warning, they say in pride, “The Assyrians destroyed the brick buildings, but we will rebuild in cut stone; they burned down the cheap sycamore buildings, but we will rebuild with cedar.” It is a classic example of unrepentant pride. Isaiah follows this immediately with this prophecy, whose meaning isn’t too hard to grasp:

11 Therefore the LORD shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together;

12 The Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

13 For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the LORD of hosts.

14 Therefore the LORD will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush, in one day.

Because the northern kingdom refused to humble itself and repent, God would take it away in one day. That day showed up about ten years later in 722 B.C. when after a three-year siege the Assyrians conquered Samaria and took the survivors away captive into exile. No more Israel.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Cahn discovered that on 12 September 2001 Senator Tom Daschle, speaking on the US Capitol steps in response to the 9/11 attacks, quoted Isaiah 9:10, apparently without ever bothering to check the context. On 11 September 2004 Senator John Edwards, speaking to the congressional Black Caucus Prayer Breakfast, quoted the same passage with the same approval.

Now nobody expects U.S. politicians to be great Bible scholars, but both of them, speaking in a sense for the nation, took the same vow of ancient Israel to ignore God’s warning and maintain their pride, building everything back bigger and better.

Quiet and awestruck on 11 September 2011, I remember thinking that it was fitting that God in his providence allowed the U.S. to be struck in the tower of her pride, not the buildings themselves but its financial power in the biggest financial center on the earth. It was a blow directly to imperial pride.

Without justifying terrorism in any way, I note that national repentance in the face of 9/11 was as rarely discussed as draft horse harness in a Caterpillar plant. Pride was the national response. Remember those bumper stickers that popped up everywhere with part of an American flag and the slogan, “Power of Pride”? That said it all: no repentance for us. We’ll show ‘em.

Americanity — nationalism & jingoism

Here’s where Cahn and The Harbinger become really objectionable. Cahn identifies Israel and the U.S. as nations covenanted to God. This is, of course, simply impossible. In no way can the U.S., coming into existence after Christ, stand in the same relation to God as ancient Israel. Besides, as St. Paul says, “They are not all Israel, which are of Israel; neither because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children.” (Romans 9: 6-7). There are two different Israels, the Israel of God, those with circumcised hearts who belong to God, and the nation Israel in which they lived. Even ancient Israel didn’t have a national “Get out of jail free” card because God had chosen them as priests to the world. In no way can the United States stand in any such capacity to God. After Christ has come, all that is abolished.

Adding insult to injury, this sort of thinking melts together Christianity and Americanism into what I call “Americanity.” This is ungodly nationalism, jingoism, “My country right or wrong.” This elevates the nation to the right hand of God, and says, “We don’t need Christ, we are redeeming ourselves with our army and our financial power and our economy.” This red-hot mix of religion and nationalism is not patriotism, it is Ba’alism, worshipping the state and its power.

You can comb history and you’ll find ne’er a case where mixing Christianity and nationalism did not bring an unmitigated national catastrophe for both Church and state. In Germany, the Cradle of the Reformation, the German army in 1914 wore belt-buckles that said, “God with U.S..” Was he? They wore the same belt-buckles in 1939. Did that mean that God was with them? Was God automatically with the English when they invaded other countries to build their empire? Did their success prove God approved? Was God with the Tsar and Holy Mother Russia and the Russian Church?

Write this down, never forget it: whenever the church enters an unqualified and uncritical alliance with the state, the church quickly becomes the very junior partner and disaster results for both church and state. The Church must always maintain its independence and draw clear lines between its authority, its kingdom, and the state’s. The Church must always speak the truth of God, even to the leaders of the State where it happens to reside. Otherwise the Church becomes a contemptible justifier, sprinkling Bible verses over whatever crime the state wants legitimized.

America is not ancient Israel. America is not the Church. America is not the U.S. government. America is not immune to God’s justice.

The most the United States can claim is that it was a country Christian by culture until about 50 years ago. Most of the people were Christian, but claims that America was founded “as a Christian nation” covenanted to God are greatly and do harm to the truth.

More from the Harbinger

Clearly I object not to Cahn’s basic thesis, i.e., that God has providentially warned the United States to repent. I have no personal doubt that 9/11 or the 2008 financial crisis were just such warnings to humble pride, but not because ancient Israel or the U.S. are in any sense the same, except that with all nations on earth they are subject to God’s rule and his judgment.

The next warning: the 2008 crisis

Cahn interprets the financial crisis of 2008 as the result of the “9/11 Effect,” i.e., of policies the U.S. instituted after 9/11 such as the war on terrorism and Fed inflationist policy. While the increased spending from American imperial wars on Iraq and Afghanistan certainly hurt the economy, deficit spending and Federal Reserve recklessness didn’t begin after 9/11.

For heaven’s sake, since it was founded in 1913 the Federal Reserve System has been an immense, hideous fraud upon the public, granting to a private corporation a government license to create money out of thin air and putting a pistol to our heads to force us to accept it. Could anything be unhealthier to a nation, or more likely to undermine its morality, government, and constitution? Besides, Greenspan had already blown up a stock bubble in the 1990s that burst in 2000, then blew up a bond bubble and a real estate bubble. All this has been standard practice of the Fed’s Masters of the Universe, although admittedly since 2008 they have become excessively insane, even by Fed standards.

The Shemitah or year of release

Then Cahn finds a basis for the financial crisis in the Biblical seven year cycle of release, the year of the Shemitah or release (Sabbath year). (This is mirrored, by the way, in American bankruptcy law. Once you take bankruptcy, you can’t take it again for seven years).

First, think about the Biblical economic system. What would it look like? Every seventh year the Hebrews were to leave their land fallow, and to eat whatever came up on its own, like being commanded to take a year long vacation. That same year all debts were cancelled and all Hebrews who had been enslaved for debt were freed. That means that loans would be made only for seven years or less, and become harder to get as the year of release drew near. Every forty-ninth year (a seven of seven years) all the land returned to the families to whom it had been originally allotted when Israel entered the Promised Land. In an economy overwhelmingly agricultural where land equaled wealth, the years of release and Jubile [sic] guaranteed that debt would never build to unmanageable levels, debt slavery would not become permanent, no immense fortunes (or the political power that accompanies them) would be aggregated, and poverty would be kept to a minimum. The distribution of wealth in the Hebrew Republic would remain fairly widespread and even.

However, the Israelites didn’t observe the Sabbath year principle very faithfully. Through Jeremiah God tells Israel that he will exile the nation seventy years to give the land the rest they had refused to give it by the Sabbath years.

Now Cahn discovers that seven years after 9/11, namely, in September 2008, the debt crisis struck and, willy-nilly, wiped away all the debt. Oh, if only that had been the case, but unfortunately, he’s dead wrong. While some of the debt was bankrupted, the federal government just shoved most of it off onto the taxpayers’ back through bailouts and later inflation. Quantitative Easing was the perfect cover for the Fed to buy the banks’ rotten paper (bad debt, Mortgage Backed Securities) at 100 cents on the dollar, and pass the tab on to the people through inflation. Instead of debt forgiveness and restoration, we got bailouts.

Don’t think the banks were running to forgive debts, either, or were forced to. In fact, the bursting real estate bubble caught the banks red-handed in fraud, trying to foreclose mortgages they had securitized and so lost enforceable title to. Ever hear of “robo-signing”? There they were, collecting those debts, even those they had no right to collect.

Some of the debt might have been wiped out in 2008, but a year of release it hardly was. Besides, look at any graph of any kind of debt, and for decades, most of the time since World War II, it just climbs and climbs to the right. Yes, there was a dip in consumer debt after 2008, but government spending jumped right in there to make up any want of debt.

Here precisely lies the problem: the U.S. economy is still weighed down with a load of debt that can never be paid. Debt forgiveness has not yet come, but eventually it will.

The 29th of Elul

The Hebrew calendar follows the moon and not the sun, so there’s no one for one correlation between days of any Hebrew month and any Gregorian calendar month. That’s why the date of Easter jumps around from 22 March to 25 April, because it follows lunar dating. (Easter falls on the first Sunday after the full moon on or after 21 March, unless that full moon falls on Sunday, which pushes Easter off to the next Sunday).

The Year Of Release was supposed to begin on the seventh year’s last day (Deuteronomy 15:1-2), which, according to Cahn, is the 29th of the Hebrew month Elul. Coincidentially – prophetically, according to Cahn – on 29 Elul/17 September 2001, six days after 9/11, the New York Stock Exchange re-opened and suffered its greatest crash in history. In September 2008 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed and the government took them over while it let Lehman Brothers collapse but later bailed out AIG. On 29 September 2008 the U.S. congress refused to pass a bailout plan, and the stock market experienced its next greatest one-day crash in history. Coincidentally, 29 September 2008 was also 29 Elul. So exactly seven years (according to the Hebrew calendar) after the 2001 stock market’s greatest crash, it crashed again with another greatest crash.

And from this coincidence you have probably been adding seven to 2008 and coming up with 2015 and wondering if another stock-market crash will come in September of this year, right? Maybe this will be the Big One that collapses the entire economy so that we all end up digging in the flowerpots for grubs to eat.

And maybe not. Or maybe the greed and pride of the United States has already set the stage for all these events by sins stubbornly persisted in for decades. After all, there were tops in the U.S. stock market in 2000, 2007, and probably 2014 (can’t confirm that yet). Maybe it’s the tops determining the cycles, and not the crashes.

Proof that doesn’t prove

None of this coincidence confirms or builds faith. “Hope that is seen is not hope.” (Romans 8:24) “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Fact is, men suppress the truth in unrighteousness. (Romans 1:18-23). In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, Jesus says that men won’t believe even if someone were to come back from the dead and tell them the truth. Proof doesn’t prove.

Go to the point: tying a U.S. economic or stock market collapse, past or future, to some date in the Hebrew Calendar, even though on two occasions something similar happened, is exactly what St. Paul forbids in Colossians 2:16, 17:

Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.

While Cahn’s fundamental point that the U.S. is dangerously over-indebted is economically and even morally correct, tying that to a date in the Hebrew calendar is simply superstition. Since Christ has come and fulfilled all the Old Testament law, Christians are no longer obliged to observe particular ceremonial or national laws given to ancient Israel. True, in our own law we ought to observe their general equity, but not their particular details. General equity in the Sabbath year laws concerns bankruptcy relief for the poor, and reining our greed and our deadly tendency to trust stuff instead of God.

Thinking that ties two stock market crashes to a date on the Hebrew calendar is on a par with astrology. Worse yet, it obscures the horrible bondage of debt. The Scripture uniformly and urgently orders us to avoid debt, and denounces taking usury (interest) from the poor as equal to taking a bribe. Yet paycheck discounters and car title loan companies charge the American poor as much as 760% a year! Mercy, credit card companies charge up to 30%. Even if you have no moral objection to usury, any blind man can see that loans at these interest rates can never be paid off, and only ensnare society’s most helpless members in an inescapable cycle of debt slavery.

But lift up your eyes one level. American consumer indebtedness, borrowing to satisfy “the lust of the eyes”, exists at every level. Average U.S. household credit card debt stands at $15,611, counting only those households carrying debt. Average American mortgage debt is $155,192. Average student loan debt is $32,264. Overall, American own $11.74 trillion in debt, an increase of 3.3% 2013 to 2014, owes $882.6 billion in credit card debt, $8.14 trillion in mortgages, and $1.13 trillion in student loans (up 8% from last year). http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-card-data/average-credit

Does the Scripture “The borrower is the lender’s slave” mean anything? If so a large chunk of the American population are slaves. Which begs another question: who are the slave owners?

No secret

In Deuteronomy 28 Moses, inspired by God and addressing the Hebrews before they cross into the Promised Land, enumerates the blessings God will pour down on them if they obey him and don’t serve other gods. Then he lists the curses he will send on them. These are instructive and seem to be listed in increasing severity. Failure to heed one judgment brings another, more severe judgment.

➤  Pestilence

➤  Drought

➤  Defeat before enemies

➤  Lying unburied as a corpse

➤  Loss of everything started – wife, children, house, crops, land.

➤  Children carted away as slaves to a foreign land

➤  Crop failure and famine

➤  Foreigners among you will rise above you and you will fall very low.

➤  The foreigner shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you the tail. (I did not make that up. Look at Deuteronomy 28:42, 43)

➤  Because you wouldn’t serve God with joy & abundance, you will serve the enemies God sends against you in hunger, thirst, & nakedness.

➤  Foreign invasion and defeat, and cannibalism during their sieges.

➤  Exile in captivity. You’ll be slaves that no one wants to buy.

About the future

Frankly, that’s more than I want to know about the future. That’s warning enough for me. And I have a question for all those people who keep saying, “If American doesn’t repent, God will judge her.” What exactly do y’all think George Bush I, Bill and Hillary Clinton, George Bush II, and Barack Obama are? What is the Federal Reserve? What is financial oppression? What is “too big to fail, too big to jail”? What are mega-corporations? What is perpetual war? What is an invasion of immigrants? What are prodigious tornadoes and hurricanes and earthquakes? What is the forbidding of prayer in public? What is government-sponsored promotion of homosexuality? The legalization of abortion? Why does America have the largest prison population in the world? Why are most Americans debt slaves?

If these are the blessings, I hope I die before the curses come.

One last word about economic collapse, since that is the implied “prediction” of The Harbinger: 29 Elul in 2015 draweth nigh. Does that mean the economy will collapse in September 2015?

That’s like my prophesying that boys and girls will fall in love this year – pretty safe. All the pieces are in place for a stock market collapse and economic and monetary turmoil. The fuse is set, all it needs is a match.

But does that really matter, since life in this world is always surrounded by threats of disaster? If all those sincere Christian people who spend so much time worrying about economic collapse would instead spend that time figuring out how to prevent their own household economy from collapsing, maybe they wouldn’t wind up sitting in the basement on 50 lb. bags of beans with a .45, waiting for the marauding hordes to break down the door. Maybe instead they could find ways to rebuild their local economies and communities by serving their neighbors, and make a prosperous living for themselves and jobs for others? Maybe, just maybe, they could begin applying their Christianity to the economy and show their repentance by building a new, just, and harmonious economy that doesn’t live as a debt-leech on its neighbors but produces something useful.

Maybe then they would be so busy doing things that truly build Christ’s kingdom that they wouldn’t have time to read those titillating books. Maybe they wouldn’t even need ’em.

Used by permission. Franklin Sanders is publisher of The Moneychanger, a privately circulated monthly newsletter that focus on gold and silver and the application of Christianity to economics, culture and family life. F$149 a year in paper money. We have subscribed to this newsletter for more than 20 years, and consider it a must read. Franklin is an active trader in gold and silver (he’ll swap your green Federal Reserve rectangles and give you real money in return). He trades with savers and investors outside Tennessee. Subscribe to his daily price report and market commentary on the website.