New 'Harbinger' movie details America's prophetic history, warning of rebellion against God

By Brandon Showalter, Opinion writer and social commentator Tuesday, May 10, 2022

A new movie based on Messianic Jewish Rabbi Jonathan Cahn’s bestselling book, The Harbinger, which explores America’s spiritual history and destiny, will be released this week. 

"The Harbingers of Things to Come" will be in select theaters nationwide on May 12 and May 19.

“We’re at a much more dangerous time. And so, the object is to get the word out to as many people as possible to people who have not read the books or might not read the books,” he said of the film in an interview with The Christian Post, adding that he considers the movie a “trumpet call” in a critical hour for believers in Jesus and non-believers alike. 

Cahn's 2012 book, The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery that Holds the Secret of America's Future, compares the United States to ancient Israel before its destruction.

In ancient Israel, there appeared nine specific warnings and omens of national demise, the same harbingers that have appeared in the U.S. that portended significant implications for the nation's future. In September 2020, Cahn released The Harbinger II: The Return, which continued with those same themes.

The Messianic rabbi, who leads Beth Israel at the Jerusalem Center, just outside New York City in Wayne, New Jersey, further explained that the mystery of The Harbinger is that it hasn’t stopped. One of the warnings is that the U.S. has followed the pathway of ancient Israel and has continued to race away from God, particularly since Sept.11, 2001.

Yet, much of what is in the movie is not in either of TheHarbinger books and details what has come afterward. In what he described as a “prophetic explosion” on the screen, Cahn explores several sites where numerous important and mysterious events have taken place in America’s spiritual history.

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Featured in the movie are foreshadows of coming events and archival footage that the filmmakers found of politicians speaking of judgment coming on the U.S.

Cahn takes viewers to an island in Massachusetts Bay, where he explains how a mystery that has been embedded for 400 years exists as a warning to the nation, particularly what would happen if the people ever turned away from God. Viewers also go on a journey to places of great significance, including Lower Manhattan in New York City, the Supreme Court, the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and the greater Boston area. 

Cahn noted that Boston is an especially significant place in the history of the U.S. as it was where English Puritan lawyer and preacher John Winthrop declared in 1630 that the U.S. should be a shining city on a hill and that if the nation followed God’s ways, it would become the most blessed and powerful nation that has ever existed. Winthrop was one of the leading figures in founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Winthrop’s words about the trajectory of the nation have materialized, Cahn told CP, adding that “what people miss is that he also gave a warning, that if we don’t [follow God's ways], that if we turn away from God, then the judgments that came upon Israel will come upon us. And that’s exactly what is all happening.”

The land upon which Winthrop uttered those famous words is now the site of Boston's Logan International Airport, which was the starting place of American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, both of which were hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center towers in New York City on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. 

Cahn maintains that Winthrop was alluding to Moses warning the Israelites in Deuteronomy 28:49, which reads: “The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand.”

Coincidentally, Cahn recounted, the first 9/11 plane happened to have an image of a downward swooping eagle on the side of the aircraft. 

Also coincidentally, he stressed, “just a few days before 9/11, all around New York City, the appointed Scripture-reading in the synagogues was that an ‘enemy shall come from a far-away land and come like an eagle if you turn away from Me,'” he said, referring to that exact Deuteronomy passage. 

“We are in a further, more dangerous part of this template of judgment because we have not turned back from God,” Cahn explained. 

“Shakings are coming upon this land. So ... revival is the only thing that can save America. If we don’t, we, as a nation, are headed to decline, disorder and breaking apart. It couldn’t be more critical for where we are and where we are heading,” he said.  

The U.S. has been the leader on the international scene in the post-World War II era, and if it falls, the entire global order the world has known will be replaced by something else, Cahn warned.

The Messianic rabbi continued that, according to the paradigm of ancient Israel, it was 19 years between the first Babylonian strike on Jerusalem that came in 605 B.C. and when the greater shakings came upon the land in 586 B.C. occurred, when Jerusalem was conquered, the temple was destroyed, and the Jews were sent into exile. Likewise, in a modern parallel to the U.S., between the 9/11 attacks and 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic besieged the nation, was also a 19-year span. 

“God is real, and He’s still in control, but America is in trouble. It ends with a trumpet call. We need to be awake. We cannot be complacent. We need to be ready. We need to be light as it is getting darker, and we have to become brighter,” Cahn said. 

“This is not a thing to fear. This is a thing to rise to our calling. To me, this is the most exciting time for a believer [in Jesus] who says yes, full out. The time of being gray is over. It’s time to be a light in the dark.”