Jonathan Cahn - The Harbinger Companion with Study Guide

The Nation and Its Rock

This motto acknowledged God as America’s ultimate king. God ruled through His law, with no earthly king above the law any more than he was above God. This argument against tyranny led to the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, and a brand-new republic enjoying the blessings of liberty.

Examining fifteen thousand pieces of late-eighteenth-century American political literature, Donald Lutz found that the Bible was cited far more often than any other writing. America’s founders referenced it more than all Enlightenment authors combined. 6In the nineteenth century, Andrew Jackson called the Word of God “the rock on which our Republic rests.” 7Abraham Lincoln made numerous positive references to God and the Bible throughout his presidency and spoke of the judgment of God upon the nation. In the twentieth century, President Harry Truman noted, “The fundamental basis for this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount.” 8

The Head of Nations

As the Scriptures proclaim, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD” (Ps. 33:12). American history is impossible to understand without understanding its founding vision to be a city on a hill and a light to the nations. And as America sought to fulfill this vision, it was blessed more than any other nation in the modern world. By the end of the eighteenth century it had won independence from the world’s greatest military power and ratified its Constitution. By the close of the nineteenth century the United States spanned an entire continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In the twentieth century the United States became the world’s most powerful nation, both economically and militarily.

America blessed the world by sending out more missionaries, bringing in more refugees, producing more food and other essentials, creating more technological marvels, and defeating more tyrants—fascist and communist alike—than any country in history. And as America blessed the Jewish people by providing them refuge and the new state of Israel with recognition and support, God honored His pledge in Genesis 12:3 to bless those who bless His people.

The nation and its people were never without sin. But spiritual revivals kept bringing America back to God and His Word. Its first major revival was in the 1740s and led not only to the American Revolution but also to more revivals lasting well into the nineteenth century, birthing major reform movements like the drive to abolish slavery.

The Fall

From the days of the Puritans onward, America’s forerunners had warned what would happen if America turned firmly from her foundations by turning against God. About 170 years later, John Adams warned, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” 9

Yet despite these warnings, America repeated the pattern of Israel’s ancient northern kingdom and experienced an equally dramatic moral and spiritual decline. The seeds were sown nearly a century ago, as the leaders of America’s historic churches began to embrace radical skepticism and doubt the Bible as God’s Word. These seeds grew into a belief that “religion” was a private subjective matter, not an objective public concern. In 1963 the US Supreme Court decided to ban public school prayer, the first of a series of major steps taken to drive God out of the nation’s public life.

As respect for God’s Word and ways declined, so did America’s culture. The assault on the American family began with rising divorce rates and continued with skyrocketing out-of-wedlock births and finally the drive to redefine marriage, family, and sin itself. Across society the desire for ceaseless entertainment and instant gratification overrode self-discipline and values, fueling an explosion in pornography, sexual promiscuity, and drug addiction, along with the revival of pagan occult practices under the banner of New Age movements.

In 1973 the Supreme Court decreed “abortion on demand” to be the law of the land. As Israel sacrificed thousands of its children on the altars of Baal and Molech, so now America sacrifices millions of unborn on the altar of personal choice. Christians and others who protest this rising tide of apostasy are increasingly mocked, ridiculed, marginalized, and ostracized. As Israel had done thousands of years earlier, now America does. It calls good “evil” and evil “good.”

What happened to ancient Israel is now happening in America. Our nation has forgotten its godly beginnings, trusting in God’s blessings rather than the God of all blessings.

John Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, had warned precisely against this temptation with these words, “While we give praise to God . . . for His interposition on our behalf, let us guard against . . . trusting in, or boasting of, an arm of flesh.” 10

As America patterned itself after Israel in its conception, so now it follows the pattern of Israel’s fall. Today, Israel’s ancient northern kingdom is but a footnote of history. Without revival and restoration, America risks a similar fate.

WEEK 3 EXPLORE and APPLY

Reread chapter 3 of The Harbinger .

Listen to or watch the accompanying resource, The City on the Hill CD or DVD.

Read Proverbs 14:34; Psalm 33:12; Psalm 127:1; and 2 Kings 17:5–23.

Explore

How many parallels can you find between the founding of America and the founding of Israel?

Why do you think these parallels exist?

What importance did ancient Israel hold for the Puritans in establishing American society?

How central was the name of Jesus and the cause of the gospel in America’s founding?

How many examples can you find to show this?

For what reason was the American school system established?

For what reasons were universities like Harvard established?

How has America’s biblical origins and Judeo-Christian foundations made America unique?

In what ways has America fulfilled its founding vision to be a light to the world and a vessel for good?

In what specific ways has America followed the ways of God?

In what ways has God blessed America?

Look at the notes, findings, and insights you found in the study on Israel’s apostasy and fall. (See also 2 Kings 17.) How many parallels can you find between Israel’s departure from God and what has happened and is happening now in America, especially in the realms of:

Spiritual complacency

Materialism

Forgetting its foundation and consecration to God

Departing from and adulterating the Word of God

Progressively ruling God out of its life (government, culture, etc.)

No longer passing on the knowledge of God to its children

Worshipping and serving other gods and idols

Falling into and celebrating sexual immorality

Declaring good “evil” and evil “good”—Right “wrong” and wrong “right”

Increasingly warring against the ways of God

Offering up its children

Persecuting the people who remain faithful to God’s ways

Why do you think this is happening?

Spiritual Truths

Looking at the example of America’s falling away from the ways of God, what spiritual and practical truths can you find?

How can these same truths be applied to an individual?

Based now on the case of America, what truths, counsel, safeguards, and hedges can you give, and how can you apply this to your own life?

Mission to Apply This Week

What parts of this falling away in American culture are you most vulnerable to partake of or be influenced by? (Answers might include materialism, sexual immorality, complacency, idolatry, the love of money, self- centeredness, etc.)