Sid: My guest by way of telephone is Messianic Jewish Rabbi Jonathan Cahn of Beth Israel Congregation in Garfield, New Jersey. Jonathan recently gave a talk to the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America that I believe is so prophetic I had so many people tell me “I must have Jonathan on the show.” The title was the “Harbinger” which means the warnings. You would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to see the warnings with hurricanes, and with 911. Jonathan why doesn’t everyone see what we see?
Jonathan: [Laughing] Why isn’t everybody saved? Because man has a hardened heart. Most people… you know we have a natural bias against judgment, we want things to go on… you know people are come from the world they want to go on. Yet as we were talking about yesterday that the amazing thing is the effect of 911 was as you called it a “30 day wonder.” For about 30 days there was all of a sudden the things of the world didn’t matter anymore. There was a longing for salvation for spirituality, as you said “The houses of worship were packed across America.” It accomplished what we could not accomplish with our tracts and with all that, it happened by that. So it just shows you the power, the potential of judgment for redemption.
Sid: On yesterday’s broadcast you said “It’s important to study the pattern of sin and judgment of Israel to get insight into what is about ready to happen in America.”
Jonathan: Exactly. Yeah God gives a very clear pattern for judgment and warning on a nation when it enters this critical period before the point of no return, but just right at the door. When ancient Israel… actually it’s happened throughout history throughout the Bible. The ultimate pattern is that God pleads with a nation, He pleads again with a nation, and again, and finally He allows the bricks of the wall to come down; there to be a breaching in the walls, and an enemy to come in attack delay devastation but on a limited scale to wake up the nation. Then there’s a lull, a period of peace, and that’s the period of grace. That’s the period where the nation has the chance to make its decision to either come back to God, to return to God, to recognize the sign for what it is, or to turn away from God completely. That’s where we are right now. 911 September 11th was the beginning of judgment on one hand, or the signs and warnings and wakeup calls of ultimate judgment on the other. There are key signs in the Bible. The key scripture is in Isaiah 9 where the people of the northern kingdom had gone so much into sin God let the enemy come in make his initial attack. Then instead of repenting, what Isaiah records in Isaiah 9:8 He says “The people said in arrogance ‘The bricks have fallen, but we will rebuild with quarried stones. The sycamore has been cut down, but we will replace them with cedars.’” Now in that alone there are about 8 signs, we talked about some of them yesterday. The key thing is the rebuilding America that came on Ground Zero and it came just last year that America instead of repenting said “We’re gonna rebuild stronger higher” just like they did in Israel. They began the rebuilding with a sign of the quarried stone, that’s what has to happen. So on Ground Zero this quarried stone came and was laid down and had a big commemoration service and they announce “We’re gonna build this, it’s gonna be this freedom stone. We’re gonna build a freedom tower” they did exactly without knowing it exactly what Israel did, but there’s more. There are specific signs given, and the next sign is in that verse. “The bricks are fallen, but we will rebuild with quarried stone. The sycamore has been cut down.” Alright the next sign linked to the beginning, the dawning judgment on a nation is the cutting down, the falling sycamore tree. Now a sycamore tree we would be safe in that because it doesn’t really grow in New York City, the Biblical sycamore tree. However, on September 11th a freak event happened in the destruction. A steel beam from the north tower was hurled from the sky across the sky went through the air and struck down a nearby object, it was a tree. The next day when people went to Ground Zero they found a tree lying on the ground pierced by the beam of the falling tower. That tree that was struck down by 911 was a sycamore tree. It was the western version of the sycamore tree literally named after that out of the Bible. The sign of the harbinger of the beginning of judgment; the striking down of the sycamore tree. It’s amazing because the people there focused on this they made a big thing of it they called it “The Tree of Ground Zero.” They had a whole commemoration about it, the whole thing not realizing that it was the sign of the beginning of judgment. But there’s more, there’s another sign. It says in the scripture it says “The sycamore has been cut down, or has fallen, but we will replace it with the cedar.” Now the Biblical cedar wasn’t called cedar it was called “Erez” the Erez tree, refers to a Pine tree it’s of the Conifer family, it’s also called the Panachia tree it is a very strong evergreen tree. Now an amazing thing, 2 years after September 11th at the end of 2003 a strange site over Ground Zero. An object is being lowered from the sky into the place, into the hole, where the sycamore tree had been struck down on the very same site. That object that was coming down was a tree; what kind of tree? It was a Panachia tree, the same exact tree mentioned in the Bible. The actual kind is a sister tree to the Cedar of Lebanon, the same thing spoken about. So they actually replaced the sycamore, you’d think they’d do it with another sycamore tree, instead they did it exactly according to the pattern of judgment. They replaced it with a cedar or Erez tree, which then they had a big ceremony around it and christened it and said “This is all part of our hope and all that.” Now that would be enough but there’s more. The ultimate sign here is of the scripture is that Israel had been chastened by the Lord, when He allowed that attack to come there response was to defy Him. It took the form of the leader saying “Listen the Lord may have struck down the bricks, but we’re gonna rebuild stronger with the quarried stone. He may have struck down the sycamore tree, but we’re gonna build stronger with the Cedar tree.” Well the actual sign is the words from the leaders themselves making this vow, and they made it right after the Assyrian army had come in. Well this is amazing, the word of this scripture… you know after 911 the next day September 12th, it was the morning of September 12th, the nation was just kind of reeling from the shock of it and the government issued its first response that morning. It was given by the head of the United States Senate representing the congress and the people it was democratic majority leader Tom Daschle. He said this he said “As the response of the nation as 3000 years ago it was done in Israel” this is what he said from United States Senate; this is in the records of Congress from Capitol Hill. Floor statement of Senate Majority leader, morning of September 12th, “It’s with pain anger resolve that I stand before this Senate a symbol for 212 years of the strength of our Democracy. These attacks were on our freedom…” He goes on and on, but then at the end he says this “I know there’s on the smallest measure of inspiration that can be taken from this devastation. But there is a passage in the Bible, from Isaiah, that I think speaks to all of us at times like this. ‘The bricks have fallen down, but we will rebuild with dressed stone; the fig trees, or the sycamore, have been felled, but we will replace them with cedars.’ That is what we will do. We will rebuild.” Here out of the mouth of the government of the Senate Majority Leader are the actual words. He thought they were words of encouragement he didn’t realize what he was doing…
Sid: No his aide gave him something out of context. It was just the opposite of what he meant.
Jonathan: Exactly. The thing is it was exactly. It was the exact verse of all the verses in the Bible. I mean most believers don’t even know this verse, but to choose this verse, and this is before he didn’t even realize he could not have realized this is a prophetic statement. Like Caiaphas when he made his prophetic statement without knowing what he was saying, one man should die for the nation. He’s saying this not realizing that actually that morning they discovered a sycamore tree struck down. They would actually fulfill this by replacing this 2 years later. That they would actually rebuild with a quarried stone, they would do everything he said. He didn’t realize this was the sign of the nation that is at the dawn its judgment. Unfortunately it is also a sign of the nation saying “We are not going to return” It’s the government saying… he was voted out of office after this, but the fact that that was the statement God had the very words. Actually it was repeated by John Edwards who was running for Vice President and just on the anniversary of 911 last year (2004) he used the same scripture. He based the whole… on his talk he had the same scripture without realizing that he was pronouncing judgment on America.
Sid: That is so phenomenal. Most Christians didn’t even understand that. How did God show this to you?
Jonathan: Well… [Laughing] One thing was 2 years before the event the Lord did something, before 911, did something before 911did something prophetic, which I want to share with you before the week’s over. He started revealing these things about it one thing after another. I happened to walk by, I was at Ground Zero and I saw where they had that tree and I said “There’s something about this tree down there. There’s something Biblical.” I started looking and all of a sudden that verse came up. I put it onto the internet expecting to find things about the Biblical verse and all of a sudden it turned up in the annals of congress on September 12th. Had no idea… that was after I already saw these were the signs of judgment. The more I looked into it the more it was one sign after the other every single thing. The leaders didn’t even realize the words they were saying from when they laid the stone at Ground Zero, they didn’t realize what they were say or when they said this from Congress. It’s God giving a sign to those who will hear, those who will listen. It’s not only to the na… I mean it’s to the nation, but it certainly was for His people because He said “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and turn from their evil ways.” It’s for us to lead any revival that’s gonna take place. We have to take this seriously, we are on limited borrowed time.
Sid: We’ll pick up here on tomorrow’s broadcast.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth