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The Harbinger, the Inverted Tree
and Why Christians need to Discriminate very
carefully between Prophecy and Speculation |
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| Pictured:
Trinity Root - A sculpture of an inverted tree outside Trinity Church on
Wall Street “The Sephirothic tree of the Qabbalah was therefore inverted....” Manly P Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages
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The Harbinger is a best-selling book by Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, published in January 2012. The publisher’s blurb on the back cover includes the following:
"Is it possible...That there exists an ancient mystery that holds the secret of America's future? That this mystery is behind everything from 9/11 to the collapse of the global economy? That God is now sending a prophetic message on which America’s future hangs?
"Before its end as a nation, there appeared in ancient Israel a series of specific omens and signs warning of destruction – these same Nine Harbingers are now manifesting in America with profound ramifications for America's future and end-time prophecy.
"Hidden in an ancient biblical verse from the Book of Isaiah, the mysteries revealed in The Harbinger are so precise that they foretell recent American events down to the exact days...the 3,000-year-oldmystery that revealed the exact date of the stock market collapse of 2008...the ancient prophecy that was proclaimed from the floor of the US Senate and then came true...and more. The revelations are so specific that even the most hardened skeptic will find it hard to put down. Though it sounds like the plot of a Hollywood thriller – it’s real."Fact or Fiction?
The message of repentance in The Harbinger is immensely important. We should shout it from the rooftops. But there are serious problems with the way the message is presented. And if we remain silent about these problems, we are failing in our duty to examine prophetic warnings, from whatever source, in strict accordance with God’s Holy Word.
Some Americans find it very hard to accept that their nation is not mentioned in the Bible, except as one of the many Gentile nations on the earth today. Any responsible theologian who claimed that it was mentioned would be expected to demonstrate his conviction in a sound scriptural manner, in accordance with accepted principles of Biblical exegesis.
But Rabbi Cahn does not do this. Instead he expresses his opinion in a fictional format and so avoids the need for traditional, legitimate scholarship. He assumes that his readers will get caught up in the flow of the narrative and will choose to believe his thesis. This would be perfectly okay were it not for the fact that he, or at least his supporters, also want his thesis to be accepted as though its truth had already been demonstrated in a sound Biblical manner. But he can’t have it both ways. Either The Harbinger is fiction or it is fact. Since he chose to publish it in a fictional genre he is not entitled to claim that his work is anything other than speculation.
Methodology
In his videotaped talk, The Zohar Speaks (which recently was replaced by a different message but can now be seen here), Rabbi Cahn refers to the following passage from the Kabbalistic book, the Zohar, but then proceeds to quote it in a very selective way, as we shall see:
“In the Gulgalta sit thirteen thousand myriads of worlds which move on feet and lean on them. And from that Gulgalta dew drips upon Him who is outside, and fills his head every day, as it is written, 'My head is filled with dew (Songs 5:2). And from that dew which He who sits outside shakes from His head, the dead will awaken in the World to Come, as it is written, 'For a dew of light is Thy dew, and the earth shall bring forth the shades (Isa. 26:19). That dew is the light of the pale glow of the Ancient One. And from that dew exist the supernal saints, and it is the manna which they grind for the righteous in the World to Come. And that dew drips down to the field of Sacred Apples...” Idra Rabba, Zohar 3: 128b
[Quoted in The Messiah Texts by Raphael Patai, Wayne State University, 1979]He argues that the Gulgalta (skull) in the Zohar is a reference, albeit unwitting, to Golgotha (skull), the hill of Calvary where Christ was crucified. However, a plain reading of the text would strongly suggest that such an interpretation is completely unwarranted.
The Gulgalta of the Zohar is the skull or cranial cavity of the Kabbalistic godhead in which thousands of worlds exist and from which emanations project to support a messiah-type figure in the worlds below. Here is the text as quoted on YouTube by Rabbi Cahn (which I transcribed from the audio feed):“In the Gulgalta sit thousands of myriads of worlds. And from the Gulgalta drips dew and the dew fills the world and the dead will awaken in the world to come as the dew comes forth. The dew is the lights of the Ancient One. The light of the Ancient One comes from Gulgalta and as it touches the dead come to life. From Gulgalta is the light of God bringing life from the dead...”
As you can see, the differences between the actual Zohar text and the one quoted by the Rabbi are significant. I am not suggesting for one moment that the Rabbi was deliberately misleading his audience in any way, but simply showing that he did not have full regard to what the Zohar was actually saying. In his eagerness to see a connection, he found one – just as he saw a connection between the tragic events of 9/11 and a solitary verse from Isaiah.
This kind of enthusiasm may be understandable in an evangelistic forum, but it should not be accepted as a substitute for sound scholarship and careful exegesis.The So-called Secret Destiny of America
The Harbinger has caught the popular imagination, and is fêted by celebrities like Glenn Beck, because it treats America as a nation of Destiny, a nation that has been ordained by God to play a major part in His plan for mankind. Those who hold to this view – which has no scriptural basis – have actually adopted a belief that is central to Freemasonry.
Here’s the proof. most American Masons will have read, or will at least be familiar with, a work published in 1944 by Manly Palmer Hall. This highly influential scholar is widely revered as one of the greatest authorities on the Craft. His book, The Secret Destiny of America, which is little known outside of Freemasonry, sets out the remarkably ambitious plan that the top Masonic degrees have long been following for the United States. It is worth one’s while to persevere with the following excerpts from Hall’s book since they shed considerable light on what is really happening in America today:
America cannot refuse the challenge of leadership in the postwar world. Mere physical reconstruction of ravaged countries and the reorganization of political, economic, and social systems is the lesser task we will face. The larger problem and the great challenge is in how to set up a new order of world ethics firmly established on a foundation of democratic idealism...
I dedicate this book to the proposition that American Democracy is part of a Universal Plan ...
Thousands of years ago, in Egypt, these mystical orders were aware of the existence of the western hemisphere and the great continent which we call America. The bold resolution was made that this western continent should become the site of the philosophic empire...
And so it is from the remote past, from the deep shadows of the medieval world as well as from the early struggles of more modern times, that the power of American democracy has come. But we are only on the threshold of the democratic state. Not only must we preserve that which we have gained through ages of striving, we must also perfect the plan of the ages, setting up here the machinery for a world brotherhood of nations and races...
Greek mythology perpetuates the knowledge of a blessed land beyond theWestern Boundaries of Ocean. In this blessed land dwelt the Hesperides,the beautiful daughters of Night, and here also at the end of each day thesun came to rest. In popular mythology the Hesperic Isles were a kind of terrestrial paradise...
By the wisdom then of those gods who are eternally vigilant over the needs of man, the blessed lands of the west were set apart, for none of the great civilizations of the past rose in North America to overshadow the continent with the ruins of old tradition, or to set up the corruptions of old administrative policy...
The old seer [ Nostradamus] refers to this country under several names. He calls it the Hisparides, the Blessed Isles of the West. In another place he simply names it America. And his third designation of it is, the Land Which Keeps the Thursday. This last form is the most astonishing. For it refers to the unique American holiday, Thanksgiving, which always falls upon a Thursday. And this the only holiday which depends upon the day alone for its observance...
Franklin spoke for the Order of the Quest [the secret society behind Freemasonry], and most of the men who worked with him in the early days of the American Revolution were also members. The plan was working out, the New Atlantis was coming into being, in accordance with the program laid down by Francis Bacon a hundred and fifty years earlier. The rise of American democracy was necessary to a world program. - Manly P Hall, The Secret Destiny of America, 1944
Curiously, the “field of Sacred Apples” mentioned in the quote from the Zohar is the same as the “Blessed Isles of the West” mentioned by Hall and Nostradamus – where the “Hesperides” serve as guardians of the Sacred Apples. Hall also makes an unsettling reference to Thanksgiving (which falls this year on 11/22).
Let’s summarize what Hall is saying here:
America was long ago identified by the gods as the country through which a new world order would be established. The secret society system in Europe set it up with a view to covertly bringing the rest of the world into step with its agenda. This plan is not simply man’s plan, but a divine plan – a “Universal Plan” or “plan of the ages” – that is designed to create a “world brotherhood”. Under the benign supervision of “those gods who are eternally vigilant over the needs of man”, the plan is taking shape and the “world program” is coming into being.
That’s the Masonic agenda. And since high-level Masons worship Lucifer, the plan is demonic in nature. Here is how Hall himself described Masonry:
“Masonry is a university, teaching the liberal arts and sciences of the soul to all who will attend to its words. It is a shadow of the great Atlantean Mystery School, which stood with all its splendor in the Ancient City of the Golden Gates, where now the turbulent Atlantic rolls in unbroken sweep...When the Mason learns that the key to the warrior on the block is the proper application of the dynamo of living power, he has learned the mystery of his Craft. The seething energies of Lucifer are in his hands and before he may step onward and upward, he must prove his ability to properly apply energy.”- Manly P Hall, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry (1923).
Christianity is seen as the enemy. It got in the way of Lucifer’s plan and forced the secret societies to be even more careful and secretive in pursuing their goals:
“The rise of the Christian Church broke up the intellectual pattern of the classical pagan world. By persecution of this pattern's ideologies it drove the secret societies into greater secrecy; the pagan intellectuals then reclothed their original ideas in a garment of Christian phraseology, but bestowed the keys of the symbolism only upon those duly initiated and bound to secrecy by their vows.”- Manly P Hall, The Secret Destiny of America (1944)
Note that the secret society system adopts a ‘Christian’ face – “a garment of Christian phraseology” – in order to hide itself in plain sight. It also uses severe vows of secrecy to control its members and prevent information from leaking out.
Misusing ScriptureThe Masons use their ‘Christian’ persona to hide the fact that they are steadily undermining traditional Christian values through the judicial system, socialist indoctrination, media propaganda, and in many other ways. They are also striving where possible to appropriate Biblical prophecy for their own purposes.
British Israelism is part of this agenda, the belief that the aristocratic and elite bloodlines of both the United Kingdom and the United States are direct descendants of the lost tribes of Israel and thus the ones that will inherit the promises made to Jacob and the Patriarchs in the Old Testament. Interpretations of Biblical prophecy which fit in with this agenda are highly esteemed by the Masonic fraternity. This has the dual advantage of giving a scriptural veneer to their “plan of the ages” while at the same time opposing the LORD’s will for Israel.
The 9/11 ‘prophecies’ profess to find a connection between the sycamore tree which was uprooted in Wall Street and its symbolic return some years later in the guise of a garish street sculpture outside Trinity Church. The work, an inverted tree cast in bronze and known popularly as Trinity Root , was officially installed in 2005. It is significant therefore that Manly Hall refers specifically to the occult meaning of the inverted tree:
"The Mysteries taught that the divine energies from the gods descended upon the top of the Pyramid, which was likened to an inverted tree with its branches below and its roots at the apex. From this inverted tree the divine wisdom is disseminated by streaming down the diverging sides and radiating throughout the world." – Manly P Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928)
"The mediæval Qabbalists represented creation as a tree with its roots in the reality of spirit and its branches in the illusion of tangible existence. The Sephirothic tree of the Qabbalah was therefore inverted, with its roots in heaven and its branches upon the earth. Madam Blavatsky notes that the Great Pyramid was considered to be a symbol of this inverted tree, with its root at the apex of the pyramid and its branches diverging in four streams towards the base." – Manly P Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages(1928)
The inverted or Sephirothic Tree has been exalted by magicians and occultists for centuries. For example, the works of Robert Fludd, a magus in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, include a representation of this revered occult symbol – see graphic overleaf .
While I am not suggesting for a moment that its author is familiar with the “plan of the ages” and the goals being pursued by the Masons and the Vatican, his fictional speculation about Biblical prophecy plays right into their hands. It is truly astonishing that so few Americans seem to understand the forces that control their country.
To identify Isaiah 9:10 – “The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars” – with the collapse of the Twin Towers is foolishness of a very high order. It hardly seems possible that so many Christian leaders could be taken in by this. Whatever happened to discernment? And without discernment, what hope is there for repentance? The verse in Isaiah that they should be studying is
“Hear the word of the LORD, ye that tremble at his word; your brethren that hated you, that cast you out for my name's sake, said, Let the LORD be glorified: but he shall appear to your joy, and they shall be ashamed.”- Isaiah 66:5
Only the professing Christians of a truly backslidden, rebellious nation could be moved by the fate of a sycamore tree and yet not be drawn to repentance by the awful realization that – through their indifference and flagrant hypocrisy – they have allowed more than 50 million unborn children to be murdered in their country since1973.
Copyright 2012. This paper may be distributed in any format for non-profit purposes provided no changes are made and the source is acknowledged. Ireland, 28 June 2012. For more information about the ongoing attack on true Biblical Christianity visit www.zephaniah.eu
Other articles by Jeremy James: Insights into The Harbinger
Freemasonry and the British Monarchy: Why the Queen of England Pretends to be a Christian
Proof of a Conspiracy: Globalists Speak Openly about their Deadly Agenda