A Modern Woman's Perspective On The Kingdom of God on Earth


April 1, 2012

Isaiah 9:10

Sundays are for worshipping the Lord.  This blog will give honor and glory to my Father in Heaven.


"The bricks have fallen down,
but we will rebuild with hewn stone;
the fig trees have been felled,
but we will replace them with cedars."


      This Scripture from the Book of Isaiah is at the center of a new book called The Harbinger.  Written by Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, the book explores a 3000-year-old prophecy that was given to the people of Israel by the prophet Isaiah, and that we see manifested in America today.
      Ancient Israel was warned of coming destruction because they had turned from God's ways and abandoned their relationship with the Lord;  they rejected His principles, upon which their nation was founded.  
     They ignored the warnings of such prophets as Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah and Isaiah, and branded them and anyone who called them to repentance as troublemakers; dangerous; enemies of the state.  The nation of Israel grew deaf to those trying to save them from judgment.  Sound familiar?
     They began wandering away from their covenant with God in small, subtle ways.  It took hundreds of years, but it started by merging their faith with the faith of other gods; promiscuity and sexual perversion were tried and then accepted as commonplace; profanity and greed became a part of the nation's culture; they even offered their children as sacrifices to other gods.
     So God removed the hedge of protection that He had placed around them.  Once that protection was removed, enemies could penetrate their boundaries, breach the land, and enter the gates.  The book contends, and I agree, that until we understand what happened to the ancient Israelites, we won't understand what's happening to the United States of America.
     God removed His hedge of protection and the ancient kingdom of Israel (the 10 northern tribes) was attacked by the Assyrians.  They were forced to relocate to the far parts of the Assyrian empire.  They were assimilated and lost their identity.  (The southern kingdom of Judah became the ancestors of modern Jews, and therefore the state of modern Israel). 
     Instead of turning back to God and repenting of their sins, the few remaining ancient Israelites declared, in arrogance and defiance, the recorded verse in Isaiah 9:10.  They vowed to rebuild on their own, without including God.  Rabbi Cahn asserts that this is exactly what we did after 9/11.
     Like ancient Israel, we have slowly, then brazenly, driven God out of our national life.  We took Him out of our schools; out of our courthouse squares; adopted promiscuity and same-sex marriage; the "F" word is habitual and a standard part of our vocabulary; Greed, with a capital "G" is worshipped as a false idol; we have merged our faith with other faiths (Chrislam?); and we may not literally lay our children down on altars of sacrifice, but a safe guess of the number of abortions since Roe v. Wade in 1973 is over 54,000,000.  And Christians are increasingly labeled "intolerant" and dangerous to the culture?
     Rabbi Cahn shows that our own hedge of protection was removed on the morning of September 11, 2001.  The enemy was able to easily penetrate our boundaries, breached our safeguards, and entered our gates without a problem.
     And like the leaders of ancient Israel, on the very next day, September 12th, our national leaders boldly, and defiantly, quoted this exact verse from the floor of the Senate!   Through the remainder of the book, Cahn shows us how the nine harbingers (or warnings) that were given to ancient Israel have been manifested in America.  The book reads like a novel, but the warnings are real.....and true!
     Our God is the same God that yearned for the Israelites to return to Him.  He yearns for us, too.  Will we heed the warnings?  Will we turn back to Him?  Or will we find ourselves as "lost" as the 10 tribes of ancient Israel?  I pray we answer these warnings with repentance and remorse, and ask God to once more bless this nation..... before it is too late!

     

14 comments:

  1. Very good post. Very true. Very sobering.

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  2. On abortion: right now there are 39 women (39 women for the 39 years Roe v. Wade has been law) are walking from the largest Planned Parenthood center in North America to the steps of the Dallas courthouse where the law was passed. It is a 21-day walk, over 270 miles. They are on day 16. They are walking to make their voices heard, give an awareness of what abortion really is, and praying the whole way that God will overturn this injustice. Amazing group of women. http://backtolifemovement.com/

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    1. Thanks for letting us know about this! I'll be checking out the website immediately, and I applaud these ladies. This is not about judging women who have chosen this procedure for all the varying reasons, but about protecting all the unborn children in our future. They are God's miracles!

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  3. Pastor Maury Davis of Cornerstone Church here in Nashville just did a month long series on this topic. Here is the link https://members.cornerstonenashville.org/main/sermondetail/4716
    It was every Sunday in March. I have bought the book and will be reading soon. I would like for my small group discuss this topic. However some are far to liberal minded.

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    1. You have a great pastor! I am encouraged when I hear that pastors will speak about relevant events from the pulpit. Too often our churches spread the Gospel of Grace, and completely ignore that the Gospel of the Kingdom includes Judgment, as well. If the Church is to survive what Satan has planned for us, then we MUST pay attention to ALL the Scripture and heed the warnings. There are some great videos on Youtube of Rabbi Cahn explaining his book and the harbingers, according to Scripture. We have watched them in our small group, and they might be something to consider for your group.

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    2. We do not attend Pator Davis' church. We have been remodeling my wifes mothers house to lease to a young couple and were watching Cornerstone on tv on Sunday mornings to supplement our missing church. We attend a SBC planter church that meets in a bar/ restaurant and has a lot of Belmont and Vanderbilt students, several young couples and some sage couples like my wife and I. Our small group is a mix that is why I caution at bringing this subject up. I firmly believe we are in the endtimes and we are seeing biblical prophecies being played out. This is why we prep and prepare.

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    3. Ohhh...Belmont....that explains a lot about the "liberal minded" part of your original email. I have some very dear young people in my life who attended Belmont for one year, but had to make the decision to leave after finding out the culture just did not jive with their Christian beliefs. I was so proud of them that they decided to attend a different college that supported a Christian belief system. I, too, believe that we are in the endtimes. The apostate Church is alive and well, and false teaching abounds. I fear for this younger generation that will fall away because they are too willing to buy into what their professors and the PC culture tells them is right. We all need to prep, prepare and PRAY!

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    4. I read the book in 2 days while on vacation right before Memorial Day. I went to a small Baptist Church in Apalachicola, Florida the Sundaay after I finished reading Saturday evening. The pastor opened the service with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance and his sermon was from Revelation 19 about end times and America turning from God. It was chilling. In fact I am getting chills writing this. I have been working on a prayer project for 8 years. I know now what God has called me to do concerning prayer and America returning to God. I will be launching my website July 4th, 2012 and I will be sending you a link. Please be prayerful as God leads me through this time.

      Pray without ceasing asking God to Bless America.

      philc, nashville,tn

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    5. You most definitely have my prayers! And thank you for being faithful to God's calling in your life! It is so easy to ignore the promptings, or to think you're not good enough. But it is SO pleasing to God when you follow through on some thought he has put into your head. I am really looking forward to your website! We need more places that people can go to re-connect to the God of the Universe. Thanks for doing your part!

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  4. I have a question for you, that I mean in the friendliest of ways possible: Can you find anywhere in scripture that says Sundays are for worshiping?

    Of course, we all know that the original sabbath was on Saturday, and most of us know that it was changed to Sunday sometime after Jesus's resurrection. We've been told that the scripture that talks about not judging other believers in respect to holy days, etc. is telling us we can say any day we want to say is the sabbath.

    What I didn't realize for most of my life was that since God said to keep the sixth day as a sabbath, the Jews have been keeping track of the days of the week ever since then. So we do know which day is the sixth, and that's the day God said to keep. As we all know, God didn't change it in the New Testament; it was changed by a Roman emperor to satisfy the pagans. Aren't we supposed to obey God rather than men? Just food for thought!

    Thank you for your great blog!

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  5. To be honest with you, I have struggled with this myself. I cannot find in Scripture where it specifically says that Sunday is the day for worship. The early Church, which was largely Jewish, met on the Sabbath, which was Saturday. This is attested to throughout the Book of Acts (Acts 13:13-14; Acts 17:2). Then, through Paul's ministry, Gentiles became part of the early Church. Some Christians believe the early church began meeting on Sundays soon after Christ rose from the dead, in honor of the Lord's resurrection, which took place on a Sunday, or the first day of the week. But where did that designation come from? I am increasingly convinced that this was due to the Hellenization of the world through Greek influence, and then as you say, the Romans. The Spirit is also telling me to adhere strictly to the words of the Bible --- do not add or take away. For me, that means gaining knowledge about what God imparted to the Jews; they are the roots of our faith, and I am feeling a longing to uncover the true interpretation of Scripture. I'm not sure if I answered your question, but I can tell that we are sharing the same desire to know God's heart.

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  6. Hi, I'm anonymous from the last comment, and Lisa T from the recent one about my pastor asking me to stop scaring people with talk about the end times.

    I learned in church years ago, when very young, that Saturday was the real sabbath and it was changed by Constantine. When you're at the age I was, you just accept what you're told - that we observe sabbath on Sunday now and that's just the way it is. Years later, I would sometimes wish there was a church in my town that did observe the sabbath on Saturday, because apparently God didn't change it and no one else had the right to.

    A few years ago, my sister-in-law said someone noticed her necklace which was a cross on a star of David, and told her about a Messianic congregation in town that had free Hebrew classes. I was already learning Hebrew on my own and jumped at the chance to learn in a class for free. To make a long story short, we now attend this congregation, and have learned so much about the Jewish roots of Christianity. At first I was vehemently against any notion of following the laws of God, thought the idea was heretical. But the more we studied, we found that there are different ways to interpret the verses that we thought did away with the law, and now it does appear that we ARE supposed to obey the law. The Bible makes more sense to us now in so many ways.

    If you're thinking about going to a Messianic church, be careful though because there are some groups that are way off base, including the "sacred name" movement.

    I will pray for you to learn what God wants for you to learn.

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    1. Lisa, I do believe in knowing more about our Jewish roots, but always making sure that it does not stray from what the Holy Spirit is revealing to me, and does not contradict the Message of the Gospel. I am lucky enough to have some very good Messianic friends in Jerusalem and we are coming to knowledge that our Lord wants us to comprehend.... we come from the same root and Yeshua's plan is for us to come together as His Bride. We are learning from each other and it is such a blessing!

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