Rabbi Jonathan Cahn’s narrative docu-thriller The Harbinger unseals nine fateful signs, or harbingers, which document how the United States is plunging headlong down the same path taken by ancient Israel to its destruction. 

                And now America is at the point of no return. 

The evidence is too public, too uncanny, and too undeniable:  America is under judgment.

God has shown his hand in the signature event of our times, the Terrorist Attacks of 9/11, reaffirming three divine principles of history. 

Judgment is a bad word today.  No one these days wants to call out evil for what it is, because we might be labeled as haters and bigots and then nobody would like us, especially those who do evil or approve of those who do.  So we do nothing, and as a result...

Fortunately, God and the rest of His universe continue doing their thing, and are not terribly concerned about what some evildoers and scoffers in the United States of America think about his requirements.  For each one of us “is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Hebrews 9:27) in which we will give account for ourselves to God (Romans 14:12). 

This now happens to about 155,000 people daily.  The process is streamlined, efficient, and mandatory.  Your appointment is already on the calendar.  You will not get an exemption or a postponement.  You will show up on time and properly dressed, either with your attorney Jesus Christ, or on your own.  And if you elect to represent yourself in this court, all I can say is. “Good luck.

                ”God’s judgment of man… and women:  155,000 served daily.

The Bible also tells us that God is a judge of nations.  Numerous verses throughout Scripture point to God’s sitting in judgment over the nations, of meting out His justice as punishment upon nations such as Egypt, Moab, Edom, Ammon, Babylon, Assyria, and yes--- most importantly--- Israel. 

The words “punish" and  “punishment” are used over 170 times in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments.   Look it up when you get a chance, so you know that I am not making this up.  God applies punishment both to individuals and to nations, but a quick glance through these passages shows that punishment is most often mentioned in the context of national or communal disobedience, rebellion, and enmity to God’s Word.  Among the crimes cited in handing down these judgments are prostitution, sodomy, blasphemy,   disobeying the Gospel, slavery, corruption, hypocrisy, violence, murder, child sacrifice, sexual immorality, adultery, theft.

There are many more, but the message is clear:

                Nations that promote or refuse to punish the above crimes will themselves be punished.

You may wonder how God judges nations.  It’s a fair question.  Many folks have decided there will be a final day of judgment some day in the future, when every “nation” will have to appear before God and get their due.  How that will happen has always been a little vague.  For example, what will be the point of getting everyone who ever had a US passport into a single auditorium to hear God’s judgment upon America, since clearly not every American is responsible for the judgment now upon us?  So would God summon only the leaders?  And which ones?  Elected AND appointed? Down to the state or do we need to go down to the county and municipality?  How about if you held multiple offices?  Is there a double jeopardy you need to worry about if you are a leader?  Will we all send up a representative to receive our just reward or punishment?

The whole concept collapses under its own weight until we remember that God is not confined by space and time and is judging nations the way he judges people--- every day.

This answers at least three questions:

Now all this is going to be very hard to swallow if you’ve been brainwashed by American culture to believe that God loves everybody, blesses only America, and would never hurt a flea.  If that is your God, his name would be Santa Claus, and there is no way he could have created a universe this complex much less be in charge of running it, since all he does is ride around on a beat-up old sleigh giving out free stuff, and yelling “Ho Ho Ho!”    

In the words of Jesus himself to the folks who thought they were the smartest people in the room:  

        You are badly mistaken.  

But take heart, your Scriptural illiteracy is probably not your fault.  It has been a long-term goal of the legal, education, and media industries, and they succeeded.  You can reverse that by getting a Bible and reading it, cover to cover.  It is not hard to read, and it will unlock the principles of history that have been carefully kept away from you.  Better hurry up, though.  I’m hearing that reading the Bible is going to be outlawed under new “hate-think” legislation to be proposed in Congress when it reconvenes after the Presidential election.  

Even if it passes, however, I don’t see it succeeding in the long run.  The Soviet Union tried the same thing.  For a while everybody was afraid of them.   “Ooooh, they are sooo scornful of God!” intellectuals fawned.  “That must mean they are really smarter than us!”

Now very few people born after 1985 can even show you where the Soviet Union was on the map. 

So here are your takeaways:

Yes, Satan exists.  That’s another concept ridiculed and suppressed by our American elites, which is a little perplexing given our culture’s fervent belief in Santa Claus, joyous celebration of Halloween, and morbid fascination with the paranormal. 

So even if Santa knows we are all God’s children and that makes everything right, how do you explain the ever more horrific violence we inflict upon each other?  Genetic disorders?  That would mean there is no standard for right and wrong--- we just forgot to take our meds--- and there is a gene for every form of behavior under the sun. 

How about something we all can understand--- like a little deadly competition?

Say you have a rival for whatever business you are in, and that rival keeps messing up your plans for getting more customers?  What do you do?  You buy him out of business, and if he won’t be bought you take him out of business.  It happens every day.  This is not rocket science, or genetic research.

It happened to Jesus.  He represented a massive threat to all overwhelming, worldwide monopoly Evil & Co. held on the minds of men.  At first, Satan first tried to buy him out.  Then he tried to take him out.  He finally had to bamboozle one of His disciples.  But he finally got Him.  Or so it seemed. 

It’s happened to every man or woman of God, before and since.  You become a target because you are messing up plans… even if you don’t intend to!

And it happens to every nation that holds up the Scriptures as its standard of moral conduct--- quotes them in their founding documents, teaches them to their children, posts them in government buildings and public schools, begins meetings and deliberations with prayer, takes as its motto In God We Trust, calls itself One Nation Under God.  

Think about Israel when they came into the Promised Land--- attacked on every side by enemies.  Why?  Because the Jews were self-righteous purveyors of hatred and bigotry?  Well yes, if that is what you call people who follow God’s commands and destroy what HE has pronounced as evil.

No, the Jews were going to mess up Satan’s plans by establishing the nation who would bring forth the Savior who would eliminate the confusing patchwork arrangement of local gods Satan had set up to literally keep everyone in the dark.  This Messiah would a universal and eternal covenant through which all mankind would come into relationship with God. 

So Israel had to be bought out, or taken out.    At first, Satan tried to first buy Israel out by offering them wives from the nations around them.  When that didn’t work he waged a forty-year war.  When that didn’t work he divided the kingdom into Israel and Judah.  Separated from Jerusalem, Israel quickly slid into idol worship and immorality and was finally destroyed and taken into exile.  Judah’s religion turned into a mere formality that emphasized ceremony and feel-good messages (Isaiah 30:9-11) over what the Lord God actually required.    Morally rotted from within, Judah fell easily to the Babylonian invaders.  The temple was destroyed, the Jews were carried off in exile to Babylon, and for seventy years the nation of Israel ceased to exist.  Until a remnant of 42,360 were allowed to return (Nehemiah 7:66) and rebuild.

Think about the United States of America.  For years a sleeper nation started by religious dissidents on a distant continent from the powerhouses of Europe, America suddenly rose to prominence as the driving political, military and industrial force for destroying the forces of world fascism and world communism.  Over the last century, more evangelistic activity and foreign missionary work has been underwritten in American dollars than the rest of the world combined.  In times of disaster, more relief workers and dollars come from the US per capita than from any nation on earth. 

We have been messing up Satan’s plans.  Why wouldn’t he want to take us out? 

He couldn’t take out the Greatest Generation in World War II, almost beat them in the Cold War, but managed to infect their flabby, well-fed offspring who, like Israel, grew complacent and arrogant in an era of endless materialism.  They, in turn, and have raised up a generation that refuses to acknowledge God of their fathers, and whose purpose is found in the gratification of one’s genitalia and orifices in every possible position and combination.  America’s internal, moral rot has transformed it within just a couple of decades from the world’s leading promoter of freedom and light of the Gospel into the world’s largest exporter of pornography, the world’s loudest advocate for sodomy, the world’s leading murderer of infants, the world’s biggest market for recreational drugs, the world’s deepest debtor nation… and very, very proud of it.

So it looks like Satan has won again.

But Principle #2 of Divine History has a converse:  any nation that has received God’s grace and protection, and then turns away to honor evil and worship death, sets itself up for God’s judgment and punishment---disaster that  comes in spite of its every effort to prevent it,  and every assertion that claims this time is somehow different.   There is just no deeper form of betrayal to God’s mind:  to accept the blessings only He can provide, and as soon as we have received those blessings, dump Him.  “Thanks God, see ya later.  We’ll take it from here!”

That betrayal unleashes a force as unavoidable as gravity.  No nation is exempt.  And America, the exceptionalist nation, is proving to be no exception.   Which brings us to Principle #3.

But first, your takeaways:

God is slow to anger, and quick to forgive.  I wish I could be more like that.  I see the utter contempt with which He and His people are being treated by this nation, and my blood boils.  I want to call down fire from heaven, but He is infinitely patient, and willing to wait until there is absolutely no other alternative.  I have to admit I am very glad He is in charge, because if I was in charge, I wouldn’t be alive to write this!  

Scripture tells us that the children of Israel were enslaved and mistreated in Egypt for four hundred years (Genesis 15:13).  Four hundred years is as long as there has been a continuous English-speaking settlement in America.   Imagine an oppression God had done nothing about since Jamestown was founded.   Four hundred years is a lot of beatings, a lot of murders, a lot of rapes, a lot of children left out to die. 

Then God sends Moses and Aaron to the scene.  And what does He do?  He gives Pharaoh ten chances!

I would have called in an air strike on the palace.

Instead, God brings on ten plagues that literally dismantle the kingdom, piece by piece.  Pharaoh does not seem to get what is happening but his subjects do, and urge him to let the Israelites go before they become a snare to him.   But it is too late.  Pharaoh is already hooked on whatever the Israelites mean to him, and he cannot let go, even though he admits he is sinning against God!   Four times he repents, four times he reneges on his promise to let God’s people go. 

The final time this happens, he has just summoned Moses to lift the darkness from the land, but then changes his mind about letting them leave with their flocks and herds and then this happens: 

Pharaoh said to Moses, “Get out of my sight! Make sure you do not appear before me again! The day you see my face you will die.” 

 “Just as you say,” Moses replied, “I will never appear before you again.”  Exodus 10:28-29

Pharaoh’s threat to kill God’s prophet Moses, who would only be outranked by Jesus Christ Himself, was the point of no return for Egypt.  Their fate was now final and irrevocable, and Moses knew it.  Pharaoh would never submit to God and let Israel go until all of the Egyptians’ firstborn were slain, and Pharaoh’s armies were drowned in the sea. 

Once a nation has passed the point of no return, all warnings from the Lord cease, leaving only a certain and fearful expectation of punishment. 

 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Hebrews 10:26-31

 Egypt continued to sin after they had been warned by God through Moses.  Three times they repented, and reneged on their promise to let God’s people go.  Then God gave them a fourth opportunity.  They repented again, reneged again, and told Moses if he ever showed up there again they would kill him.  That was it.  There was no turning back.

So what about America?

Since 9/11, the United States has moved along a predictable trajectory from complacence, to arrogance to open rebellion.  Recent headlines make it clear that our political, legal, intellectual, academic, and creative elites not only publicly despise God, but are clearly determined to remove all mention of Him from the public square, and severely punish any person who would conduct their lives in accordance with Scripture.  

And God has been out there just as publicly—in the fallen bricks, in the economic collapse, in the brazen defiance, in the rising tower, and the emaciated cedar tree at the corner of Church and Vesey—His Hand is now against this country for continued self-deception, humiliation, downfall, and destruction…unless we turn back.

America is just one step away from the point of no return. 

That step, a mere decade earlier, would have been unthinkable.   It is also something so childishly simple that one can only ask--- in the context of the massive shift towards a society that calls evil good and good evil, and holds up darkness for light and light for darkness--- why it hasn’t happened sooner.   But that is how God works with nations.  He gives them every possible chance to repent, until there is no other alternative than punishment.

What is that point of no return?

Only one takeaway:   

Next, The Tenth Harbinger and America's Point of No Return

 What you’ll learn here:

·         Three principles of divine history:  a) God judges nations; b) Every nation founded on scripture is sabotaged by Satan; c) God warns a nation when it forsakes Him, until that nation goes past the point of no return

·          About 155,000 people die every day, most from natural causes. God judges every one of them.  Wonder how he gets done so fast?  Must be only one question, and it must be a Yes/No answer, no multiple choice. AND…no essays!

·          Anyone who declares him/herself for Christ messes up Satan’s plans.  His response is either to buy them out or take them out. Which is he trying to do to you?

·         Any nation that has received God’s grace and protection, and then turns away to honor evil and worship death, sets itself up for God’s judgment and punishment,  There is just no deeper form of betrayal to God’s mind:  to accept the blessings only He can provide, and as soon as we have received those blessings, dump Him.

·         America is just one step away from the point of no return, beyond which there is no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.

·         Nations that persecute God’s people don’t have very good track records, and tend not make good long term investments

·          Just because God loves everybody doesn’t mean He wouldn't hurt a flea.