Will America’s Growing Apostasy Provoke Prophetic Judgment?

When President Barack Obama made an inscription on the highest beam of the One World Trade Center, New York Times best-selling author Rabbi Jonathan Cahn says the president may have sealed America’s fate.  

“We remember. We rebuild. We come back stronger,” the president wrote during a visit to ground zero during the summer of 2012.

Cahn, author of The Harbinger and The Mystery of the Shemitah, calls the inscription a vow and links it to God’s coming judgment.

“The president went down to ground zero and they showed him the tower and the beam that’s going to be the final beam on the tower,” Cahn said during the recent Prophecy in the News conference in Orlando, Florida. “They told him to inscribe words on the beam … What does he put in there? He writes in modern American prose … the vow of Isaiah 9:10—the vow that brought judgment to (ancient) Israel.

“When Israel did it and the leaders spoke this vow, it brought judgment and it was only eight Hebrew words. Well, the president wrote eight English words that match the eight Hebrew words that are the highest words in America. On that tower are the words of defiance.”

In The Harbinger, Cahn traced a series of parallels between what has happened in the United States since the 2001 terrorist attacks—including the economic collapse—and Israel’s history after it turned away from God. Told as a fictional narrative, the book unfolds how nine signs concealed in recent events reveal God’s progressive judgment on America. In The Mystery of the Shemitah, Cahn probes the seven-year biblical cycle known as the Shemitah, asking whether the end of the Shemitah in September could bring economic calamity to America or war in the Middle East.  

At the conference, Cahn told about 1,000 people in attendance that God’s judgment isn’t solely connected to the president’s actions, but to the nation’s apostasy from God through the slaughter of unborn children and the “accelerated destruction of marriage.”

“You know Israel was destroyed for offering up its children,” Cahn says. “Well that began in America in 1973, the year of the Shemitah. It looks like in June of this year we’ll cross another milestone. It will happen in the year of the Shemitah—another ominous thing as it ends the biblical definition of marriage.

It’s all part of the Shemitah, a seven-year cycle of restoration and judgment that began in September 2014 and goes through this September. In the Bible, it’s a time for all debts to be wiped out, as well as an opportunity for God to reveal his judgment.

The parallels to biblical Israel are eerie, and to Cahn, it falls into place with America’s attempt to rebuild its foundation—not on God but on itself. This was all proclaimed yet again by the president in his recent State of the Union address which followed the same pattern of Isaiah 9:10.  

“You’re the people I was thinking of six years ago today, in the darkest months of the crisis, when I stood on the steps of this Capitol and promised we would rebuild our economy on a new foundation,” the president said in the 2015 State of the Union address. “And it’s been your effort and resilience that has made it possible for our country to emerge stronger.”

Meanwhile, more than 57 million children have been aborted and dozens of states have redefined marriage—potentially fulfilling prophecies of the last days:

“Brothers and sisters, we are witnessing things that are unprecedented not just in American history, but human history,” Cahn says. “These are the days of the apostasy. You are no longer speculating on prophecy; you are now living in prophecy … The time for compromising and playing around is ending.The time for carelessness with God has ended. It’s time to go from being a prophecy people to become a prophetic people. All these things are coming together.”

Cahn believes people should get ready for the coming shaking of God’s judgment.

“It can involve the collapse of power, the collapse of nations, the collapse of prosperity—the changing of world order,” Cahn says.

Despite the gathering signs, Cahn issues caution, noting, “You cannot put God in a box.” Cahn says nothing has to happen by September or even during the “Super Shemitah” of 2015-16—the year of Jubilee marking the end of seven Shemitah cycles. Whether it comes within the parameters of the Shemitah or beyond it, Cahn believes a “great shaking is coming to America and the world.”

“Does the fact of shaking mean there is no hope?” Cahn asked the crowd. “No, I believe it’s the opposite. If there was no shaking, I believe there would be no hope for America because if you look at the way America is going that’s what she wants. I believe we have so deafened our ears, this culture has so deafened itself, that it’s going to take a shaking if there is going to be a revival.

“I believe one of the reasons why He led me to write The Harbinger and The Mystery of the Shemitah is because He wants the dots connected when this comes. Will there be judgment or revival? The answer is there can be both and in fact there can be revival through judgment. But we have to be ready. The hour is late.”

Did you like this article? You’ll enjoy Rabbi Cahn’s books, The Harbinger and The Mystery of the Shemitah, as well as The Harbinger DVD. Purchase them here.