11 Sep HAVE WE MISSED THE MESSAGE OF 911?
It was late summer of 2012, and I was skimming through emails about to delete one from an organization I didn’t know, when God said , “No, open it and listen.” An hour later I sat there stunned; having heard for the first time the string of prophetic events that have played out since that tragic day the towers fell in New York City. Jonathan Cahn, a messianic rabbi from New Jersey had gone to ground zero, where the Lord had drawn his attention to a fallen Sycamore tree, telling him there was something there he needed to search out. God never leaves His people without a word to help them make sense of difficult times. The word given to Cahn came from the book of Isaiah, to help him wrap his head around the devastation. Unknown to Cahn, the same word was given to David Wilkerson, the pastor of Times Square Church, who preached it with tears to his congregation, as smoke was still rising from the ruin. (1) This same word appears in the One Year Bible for September 11, which hundreds of thousands of believers opened to read that morning.
The Lord has sent a message against Jacob, and it has fallen upon Israel. All the people will know it—Ephraim and the dwellers of Samaria. With pride and arrogance of heart they will say: “The bricks have fallen, but we will rebuild with finished stone; the sycamores have been felled, but we will replace them with cedars.”
11The LORD has raised up the foes of Rezin against him, and joined his enemies together.
Isaiah 9:8-11
It is a passage referring to Israel, whose growing unbelief was causing her to lose her relationship with Him, He sent a warning to those He loved, by lifting the hedge of His protection, allowing her enemies to come in with a limited strike, so that she might return to Him. It was eerily sobering to see how we were following the example of ancient Israel, who refused to humble herself, but responded defiantly in the arrogance of her national pride, vowing to come back stronger than before.
The day after 911, Tom Daschle stood before Congress as the Senate majority leader to deliver our response as a nation. Of all the Bible verses he might have referred to, he chose Isaiah 9:10, not realizing that he was making the same defiant vow as ancient Israel. On the third anniversary of 911, John Edwards, who was running for the Vice Presidency, built his whole speech on Isaiah 9:10, not realizing how much of that prophetic word was already being fulfilled in astonishing parallels. The torn up roots of The Sycamore of ground zero was made into a bronze sculpture, by those who did not realize that an uprooted tree is a Biblical picture of a nation destroyed. They didn’t know they were fulfilling the scripture when they planted a cedar in the Sycamore’s place… a cedar that would be called The Tree of Hope, but it would sicken and die. But the most powerful evidence for me, is the Biblical principle that when God judges a nation, the ground of consecration becomes the ground of destruction. When King Solomon consecrated the temple to God in Jerusalem, God warned him
But if you turn away and forsake the statutes and commandments I have set before you, and if you go off to serve and worship other gods, then I will uproot Israel from the soil I have given them … And when this temple has become a heap of rubble,all who pass by it will be appalled and say, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’ And others will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the LORD, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them—because of this, He has brought all this disaster upon them.’ ”
2 Chronicles 7:19-22
On the day he was inaugurated, George Washington’s first act as President was to walk from where he was sworn in to St. Paul’s Chapel a short distance away, where he with the Senate and the House of Representatives went to their knees, consecrating this nation to God. Our capitol at that time was not Washington, D.C. but New York. And the chapel where he dedicated our nation to God stands on the corner of ground zero. The ground of our consecration became the ground of destruction. The chapel survived the devastation, in part, because of the sycamore that stood between it and the flying debris from the towers.
God speaks in a language that everyone can understand, if they want to. He has been warning America of the danger of her destruction in the orchestration of unfolding events falling on specific days, whose spiritual meaning is tied to the history of the Jewish people, the Hebrew Calendar, and the Bible. To read any of Cahn’s books is to realize that no one could make this stuff up, the stunning unfolding of “coincidences” far exceeds the possibility of chance., The author of history, who cares for us so deeply that He is continuing to warn us of our danger, is clearly the God of the Bible.
What is God after? He wants the most urgent prayer of our souls to be that HE would rid us of everything artificial, sinful, hypocritical, unfeeling, and out of touch with Him. He wants us to see how far we have fallen, to stop blaming others, and to reach out for Him as our only hope. He wants us to walk in what He is working out. The “Christian” culture we have taken such comfort in is rapidly falling away, leaving only those who are radically in love with their savior. Far from being dark, I believe that what lies ahead is a bright return to what we have lost. I’ll close with a quote of Jonathan Cahn from his book The Oracle,
The church must decrease in worldly power that it might increase in the power of God. …
“It means the return to the Book of Acts … the return of true disciples, apostles, and messengers of God, the return of the radical and revolutionary witness that once stood distinct from the world and shined into the darkness the light of God. It means the return of the power that once broke down ancient walls, made kingdoms shake, opened prison doors, set captives free, turned the world upside down, changed the course of human history, and overcame all things.
“That,” said the Oracle, “is the ancestral possession of this faith. That is its inheritance and its Jubilean return. Each shall return. So too the faith. . . So too it must return to its own possession.”
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1 David Wilkerson: The Towers Have Fallen But We Missed the Message