Jonathan Cahn - The Harbinger Companion with Study Guide

Spiritual Truths

Can we apply the Isaiah 9:10 Effect to the lives of individuals?

What happens when a person tries to solve a spiritual problem or problems that have to do with their relationship or lack of relationship with God by other means?

Mission to Apply This Week

Is there a problem or issue in your life that you’ve been dealing with for years? In light of what we’ve learned about fixing problems without repenting, does it change the way you might need to solve or resolve the problem?

What step can you take this week to solve it once and for all with God? Write it down in the space provided, and make this your mission.

Take time now to commit this to God and pray for His help and anointing.

Seal this commitment in prayer (individually, in small groups, as a class, or congregationally).

Prepare for next week (groups only): This week read, go over, and explore the next chapter, “The Uprooted.”

Write Down

1. Your thoughts, notes, and insights

2. What you believe the Lord is calling you to do

3. Your mission for the days ahead

Chapter 7

The UPROOTED

The Foundations Laid Bare

IN THE DAYS of judgment, foundations are exposed. What are the foundations on which a nation rests? How are they laid bare? What are the foundations on which we rest our lives? What is the foundation of America’s rise as the world’s financial superpower? This study explores the meaning of foundations and their exposing and the mystery that marks the day America began its rise to the world’s financial colossus.

What is a foundation? It is that upon which something else stands, rests, or is built. When the context concerns a nation, the foundation can either be that on which the nation was established or that on which the nation places its ultimate trust. It can range from the one true God to counterfeit gods, ranging from literal idols to military prowess or economic strength.

So I will break down the wall you have plastered with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that its foundation will be uncovered; it will fall, and you shall be consumed in the midst of it. Then you shall know that I am the LORD.

—EZEKIEL 13:14

In Ezekiel 13:14 God is saying that when the nation is judged, its foundation will be exposed for all to see.

The Bible gives various examples of God’s judgment of a nation that worships false gods. In the judgment of Egypt, when Pharaoh repeatedly refused to let the children of Israel go, as seen in chapters 7 through 12 of the Book of Exodus, God replied with a succession of ten plagues, each corresponding to a counterfeit Egyptian god. Taken together, the plagues exposed Egypt’s faulty foundation, revealing the impotence of its false deities. Likewise, when God judged Babylon, the gods, or that in which the Babylonians had put their trust, would be judged.

In Ezekiel 13:14 God warns Israel that He will expose her false foundations—the foundations of reliance and trust in power, alliances, false gods, false prophets, and idols. He would tear the nation down to her foundations.

The Breaking and the Uprooting

At the same time, unlike other nations, beneath Israel’s false foundations was its true and original one. God was its builder and planter. Thus, when God judged Israel, He tore down what He had built and uprooted that which He had planted. In so doing, He exposed Israel’s new but false foundation.

Behold, what I have built I will break down , and what I have planted, I will pluck up [ uproot ].

—JEREMIAH 45:4, EMPHASIS ADDED

The pattern of biblical judgment first involves a breaking down and then an uprooting. So note the resemblance to Isaiah 9:10:

The bricks have fallen . . . the sycamores have been cut down.

—ISAIAH 9:10

On 9/11 the collapse of the towers was followed by the uprooting of the sycamore tree. Recall these words of Ezekiel 13:14 above:

I will break down the wall . . . and bring it down to the ground . . .

The Rising Power

The World Trade Center symbolized America’s financial power, one that was centuries in the making and long connected with Manhattan Island. At the dawn of the seventeenth century the island was a trading post for the Dutch, who built a wall against perceived threats. The wall became Manhattan’s center of trade and commerce. Eventually the British took the island and tore down the wall. But a nearby road continued to bear the name of “Wall Street,” which became the embodiment of a new nation’s financial prowess and, eventually, the financial capital of the world.

How did this transformation happen? In March 1792 Manhattan’s leading merchants convened secretly at a hotel to discuss bringing order to the trading of stocks and bonds. On May 17 of that year they met again at 68 Wall Street to sign a document.

Buttonwood

The document was named the Buttonwood Agreement . The organization it birthed was called the Buttonwood Association , eventually renamed the New York Stock Exchange . The word buttonwood referred to a tree on Wall Street under which the merchants met.

Another word for buttonwood is sycamore .

Wall Street and American financial power began under a sycamore tree—the Sixth Harbinger, birthing a Buttonwood or Sycamore Agreement and a Buttonwood or Sycamore Association, later to be known as the New York Stock Exchange. Thus the original symbol of Wall Street and America’s rise to financial superpower status is the sycamore.

While the World Trade Center symbolized what America’s financial strength had become, the sycamore was the symbol of its original foundation. And growing in the shadow of the World Trade Center was the Sycamore of Ground Zero.

The Tree as a Biblical Sign

In the Bible God often uses the image of a tree to stand as a symbol of a nation. Babylon is spoken of as a tree, as is Assyria, as is Israel. A tree is like a nation in that it is, in effect, planted, in that it grows, in that it branches out, produces fruit, and has a lifespan. At the same time the destroying or uprooting of a tree speaks of the judgment of a nation. So the Lord would speak of national judgment in the form of the destruction of a tree:

The LORD called your name, Green Olive Tree, Lovely, and of Good Fruit. With the noise of a great tumult He has kindled a fire on it, and its branches are broken. For the LORD of Hosts, who planted you, has pronounced doom against you.

—JEREMIAH 11:16–17

The Sycamore Fallen

On 9/11 the symbol of America’s rise as a global economic superpower, the sycamore, reappeared in a different form, now fallen. A statue of the uprooted sycamore was made in bronze and placed, not at Ground Zero, but at the end of Wall Street.

So in the place where America’s rise to financial superpower began, the place symbolized and named after a living sycamore tree, now appeared the image memorialized in bronze of a sycamore uprooted, the Sixth Harbinger, the Sycamore of Ground Zero.

It was the fall of the World Trade Center—the symbol of what American financial and economic power had become—that struck down the sycamore. In like manner, the 9/11 attack caused the collapse of Wall Street and America’s economy, both immediately after the calamity and then through unleashing a myriad of reactions that would lead to the collapse of Wall Street and the American economy seven years later.

In other words, the uprooting of the sycamore wasn’t just a warning of judgment, but it was also a foreshadowing of the uprooting of America’s unparalleled financial and economic prosperity.