This is what the Lord Almighty says: "Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. - Jeremiah 23: 16 (NIV)
God has a plan of redemption. The Bible teaches us that He wishes none to perish but all to come to repentance. His desire is to see everyone put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is realistic however and knows who will accept this free gift of salvation and who will not. The vehicle God has chosen to bring the glorious message of salvation to the lost is the church. The church was supposed to set apart. It was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be a light set upon a hill that people suffering in the world could look to as a source of comfort and assuredness. Over the centuries however, the church has devolved off of the position God intended it to hold into the skewed caricature we see today. When the lost look to the church today they no longer see anything different. They no longer see anything holy. They see their reflection.
I say this as a backdrop to the increasing false narrative of people like Jonathan Cahn and Paul McGuire. Regarded as experts on biblical prophecy, these two men have generated a lot of buzz lately regarding our impending doom, via the second coming of Christ. Cahn has been trying to sell his book The Harbinger, which appears to be based largely on numerology. McGuire has long hosted his own program. Let us not assume any ill will on their part, instead let us turn to the false arguments they make. First of all, we do not need a prophecy scholar to tell us that we are living in the end times. The increase in wickedness is evident. The love of most growing cold is increasing. The wars and rumors of wars are coming as birth pains as are the natural disasters Jesus Had warned us about. Jesus also had little time for those who could not connect the obvious dots:
Then Jesus turned to the crowd and said, "When you see clouds beginning to form in the west, you say, "Here comes a shower.' And you are right. When the south wind blows, you say, "Today will be a scorcher.' And it is. You fools! You know how to interpret the weather signs of the earth and sky, but you don't know how to interpret the present times. - Luke 12: 54-56 (NLT)
How do we interpret the present times? We start with dismissing what is leading us in the wrong direction. Remember, the church is the chosen vehicle to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost. There are enough problems within the church to resolve without wasting our time chasing man made prophecies down rabbit holes. The first thing to dispel is this notion that America needs to "turn back" to God. The implication is that at some time this was a Christian nation, which worshiped Jehovah and at some point turned away from Him, necessitating our need to turn back to Him. Jonathan Cahn goes as far as to say that America was actually under covenant with God and equates us to Israel! This all makes for a wonderful bedtime story and might even sell a few million books but none of it is true. None of it. As a former teacher of American history I can tell you this narrative is historically inaccurate. Sure you can find some founding fathers who shared our beliefs but not all of them. Many were deists who believed in a God but not THE God. Either way to pretend that this nation worshiped Jehovah is to turn a blind eye to the atrocities of slavery, the destruction of the American Indian, the sweat shops where children worked, as well as our imperialistic designs on other countries and what we have wrought over the centuries. This is not to say that this has not been the best country to live in or that no "good" was ever done. It is just to point out that sometimes there is some blood on the apple pie and we should not pretend to be something we are not. We certainly were never under covenant with God.
The second thing we need to dispel is this notion that America is going to repent. McGuire has said recently that unless America repents of its immorality that we will see a cataclysmic event, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, or even world war three. Do they even understand the futility of what they ask?
The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. - 1Corinthians 2: 14 (NIV)
The people who Cahn and McGuire are demanding repentance from are walking in darkness! Satan has blinded them! The very things of God - such as sin and repentance - are utter foolishness to them! They do not need bombastic books threatening catastrophe - they need the Gospel. They do not need prophecy scholars who state the obvious - they need the church. They need the church to be the church again. You see beloved, it is the church that is in covenant with God. It is the church that must repent.
if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. - 2Chronicles 7: 14 (NIV)
If the people who are called by my name - Christians. I am also not sure what people like Cahn and McGuire are trying to accomplish. Delaying the second coming of Christ? God has his plans and they are in motion. There is nothing you or I can do about them except share the Gospel with as many people as possible. Why? Because that was what we are mandated to do according to Scripture.
But here is the real damage done by the likes of Cahn and McGuire - they point us in the wrong direction. There is a reason why people gravitate towards books and predictions like this. That is because they blame someone else. What Jonathan Cahn and Paul McGuire do is they point at the world and say they are to blame for the coming judgment. Now, the people in the world have their own problems when Christ returns and it will not go well for them but it was the church that was supposed to do something about it. We were supposed to be the chosen vehicle to bring the lost the Gospel, not The Harbinger. When the world looks at the church what do they see? Prosperity hucksters ripping the elderly off? Hyper-grace preachers selling an empty suit for a savior? Men in thousand dollar suits telling them this is their best life now? Preachers railing against sin while leading sinful lifestyles? The Preachers of LA? The mansions of people claiming to represent a God who cares about widows and orphans?
Or do they see Jonathan Cahn and Paul McGuire blaming the coming end of the world on them. The church needs to look inwards before it sets a course outwards. We need to stop blaming blind people for walking off cliffs and instead start examining what we are doing to prevent them from walking off the cliff to begin with. The lost do not need a prophecy scholar to tell them they are bringing about the end of the world and the church doesn't need them to tell us that the end is near. For their visions seem to be designed to sell books instead of coming from the mouth of the Lord.
Rev. Anthony.
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