The Harbinger II

by Jonathan Cahn

  “America was founded after the pattern of ancient Israel. And so if it turns away from God and repeats the ancient act, then judgments that came upon ancient Israel will reappear. And so of all nations of the earth, the plague centered its wrath on America.

  “Now let’s go deeper. Within America, what state above all other states has the blood of children on its hands?”

  “New York State,” I replied.

  “Far more than any other. So then what might we expect of the plague?”

  “We might expect that it would focus its fury on New York.”

  “And where in America, of all its states, did the fury of the plague center?”

  “New York.”

  “So the same state that had led the nation in the shedding of blood, the same state that killed more of its children than any other . . . now became the state in which more of its people were killed by the plague than any other . . . far more people . . . far more even than were killed in most nations.”

  “The ancient law of judgment,” I said.

  “Let’s go deeper still. On what ground in the state of New York were more children killed than on any other?”

  “New York City.”

  “Then what might we expect of the plague?”

  “We would expect it to focus its fury most specifically on New York City.”

  “And what city did the plague actually strike most specifically and most severely?”

  “New York City.”

  “More unborn children had been killed within that city than in any other city in America, far more, with numbers dramatically disproportionate to the numbers of those killed outside the city. So when the plague came upon America, it struck down more people within that one particular city than in any other city or place in the nation, far more people, and, likewise, with numbers dramatically disproportionate to those struck down outside that city. Remember what Jeremiah prophesied of Tophet and the Valley of Hinnom.”

  “That those killed on the day of judgment would correspond to the children killed in sacrifice there.”

  “And so it did. Tophet, the center of child sacrifice, would become the center of judgment, of slaughter. So if New York City is the Tophet of America, then we would expect that, of all places, the plague would focus its fury there. And so it did. America became the epicenter of the global pandemic, and New York City became the epicenter of the American pandemic . . . and of the global pandemic. The law of judgment: the abortion capital becomes the plague capital.”

  “New York City, the central ground of 9/11, and of the harbingers, and of the global financial collapse, and now of the plague . . . city of judgment.”

  “And the gate,” said the prophet.

  “Judgment begins at the gate.”

  “And do you know how most of America was infected by the plague?”

  “No.”

  “It came from New York,” he answered.

  “Most?”

  “Yes. Of all the cases of the virus in America, over half of them were traced back to New York. And what was it, half a century earlier, that also spread from New York to America?”

  “Abortion.”

  “So the sin went forth from New York . . . and then the plague.”

  “Tophet.”

  “Was there anything significant that happened in New York just before the plague came upon the world, anything that happened in the preceding year?”

  “The law!” I said. “The law that the New York legislature passed to legalize the killing of children up to the point of birth.”

  “The law that left many in shock and others calling it horrific and gruesome. The law that New York enacted with great joy and celebration. And others wondered if it would not call forth judgment.”

  “And it all happened in the year that led to the plague.”

  “Actually,” said the prophet, “it happened in the same year. The act was passed at the beginning of that year; the plague began before that year was over. So they were both set in motion in the same year. In fact, the plague was named after the year in which New York enacted its law of death.”

  “The same year,” I said, “that the governor of New York ordered the harbinger, the tower of Ground Zero, the high place of Tophet, to be lit up in celebration.”

  “Yes, they illuminated the harbinger of judgment.”

  “And judgment came.”

  “Much of the world was guilty of the ancient sin. But New York was at the forefront. And in 2019, it crossed the line. And then came the plague. Is it possible that the crossing of that line was the act that triggered what was to come? In any case, it would come to New York. And what was it that Jeremiah prophesied of Tophet? He prophesied that as Tophet had brought death to the nation’s children, so death would come back to it. So in the year following New York’s inaugurating and celebrating the death of yet more children, death would come to New York. And the governor who led that celebration of death now had to deal with the issue of death all around him. The one who had called for the disposal of human life was now forced to speak of the value of human life. And as the tower was illuminated in pink to celebrate that law of death, one year later, another tower would be illuminated in red, bearing witness to the plague of death that had come to the city.”

  “Which tower?”

  “The Empire State Building.”

  “The Empire State Building,” I said, “the same building that was illuminated with the image of Kali, the goddess of death. And now death had come to the city.”

  “There was another place,” said the prophet, “from which the plague came to America, another gate.”

  “What place?”

  “Seattle, Washington. It was there that the first official case of the virus was recorded. It is worthy of note that in 1970, Washington was one of the two states in America that followed New York in sanctioning the act of abortion and bringing it to America. Now, half a century later, it was from Washington that the news went forth that the plague had arrived on American shores. It was the case of Patient Zero. The day after the case was confirmed, newspapers around the country carried the headlines that the virus had come to America. Do you know what date appeared next to those headlines?”

  “No.”

  “It was January 22. January 22 is the day America legalized the killing of unborn children. It was also the one-year anniversary of the day that New York crossed the line and passed its gruesome law—and exactly one year to the day that the harbinger, the tower of Ground Zero, was illuminated to celebrate that act.”

  “I have a question: Jeremiah prophesied the coming of a pestilence and a judgment that would answer to the blood of the nation’s children.

  When exactly did that judgment come?”

  “In 586 BC.”

  “586 BC was nineteen years after the nation’s first shaking, the first invasion of the enemy.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Nineteen years after the nation’s first shaking.

  “So then, could it be that the mystery ordains that nineteen years after the first shaking of America, 9/11, there would come not only another shaking but a plague answering to the blood of the nation’s children . . . in 2020?”

  “What number is it that’s contained in the name of the plague?”

  “The number nineteen . . . COVID-19.”

  “And it was nineteen years,” said the prophet. “And what happens if you open up the Book of Jeremiah and turn to the chapter marked by that same number, the number nineteen?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It leads you to Jeremiah’s prophecy of the judgment and plagues to come upon the nation for the blood of its children . . . at the end of the nineteen years. It leads you to that very prophecy.”

  “The nineteenth year, a plague called nineteen, and the nineteenth chapter that contains the prophecy of the plague and judgment of the nineteenth year . . . It’s too much to take in.”

  “And yet,” said the prophet, “there�
��s more. The word of Jeremiah concerning Tophet was connected to a prophetic act.

  Thus says the LORD: ‘Go and get a potter’s earthen flask. . . . And go out to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the Potsherd Gate; and proclaim there the words that I will tell you.’”5

  “The clay jar.”

  “So as he exposed the nation’s sin against its children and foretold the judgment that would come because of it, he was holding the jar of the potter. Then he smashed it as a sign of the coming calamity and said this:

  . . . and they shall bury them in Tophet till there is no place to bury.6

  “So if New York City corresponds with Tophet, the ground of the slain children, what would this mean?”

  “That there would be so many deaths in New York City that they would run out of room to accommodate them.”

  “And do you know what happened when the plague struck New York City?”

  “Tell me.”

  “There were so many deaths in the city that its morgues and funeral homes could not accommodate them.”

  “So what did they do?”

  “They took the unclaimed bodies to a place called Hart Island. Jeremiah’s prophecy was linked to the potter. He issued it while holding the potter’s jar, then smashed it as the sign of coming destruction. The place where he smashed it and over which he prophesied, the Valley of Hinnom and Tophet, is identified as being near the Potter’s Gate, which is linked to the Potter’s Field. So the prophecy foretelling the lack of room to accommodate the dead in Tophet is linked to the potter, the Potter’s Gate and Potter’s Field. So when New York City, unable to accommodate the dead, took them to a burial ground on Hart Island, do you know what that ground was called?”

  “No.”

  “Potter’s Field.”

  “No!”

  “Yes, they buried them in Potter’s Field, the field of the potter. And do you know what that place on Hart Island and any such place identified by those words is ultimately named after?”

  “No.”

  “The very same field that sits by the Valley of Hinnom and Tophet, the same field over which Jeremiah prophesied and smashed the potter’s jar in Jeremiah 19.”

  “It’s too much.”

  “And yet,” he said, “there’s still more. There’s only one other place in the Bible that speaks of what would happen in Tophet, the calamity and the burial of the dead. It’s another one of Jeremiah’s prophecies. It’s found in the seventh and eighth chapters of his book. In the midst of that prophecy, Jeremiah cries out in mourning, seeking an answer to his nation’s judgment. It’s there that he speaks these words:

  Is there no balm in Gilead,

  Is there no physician there?

  Why then is there no recovery

  For the health of the daughter of my people?7

  “The prophet is giving voice to his nation’s pain and calling for its healing, for a cure. The Hebrew words used in that prophecy speak of health, soundness, recovery, doctors, restoration to wholeness, physicians . . . healing.”

  “It all sounds medical.”

  “Yes, that’s the imagery being invoked.”

  “And the balm of Gilead,” I said, “what was that?”

  “Gilead was a place in Israel from which came a healing substance, an ancient medicine known for its curative powers. So in the wake of the calamity, Jeremiah was seeking a cure to heal and restore the brokenness of his people and wondering why it seemed that none could be found.

  “So in the midst of the plague that devastated America, the nation and its leaders likewise desperately sought a cure. Pressure was placed on the medical industry to find an answer as quickly as possible—a medicine, a drug, a vaccine that would bring protection and healing from the pandemic. The first glimpse of hope came at the end of April when an American biopharmaceutical company announced that it had seen positive results in the testing of an antiviral medication on the virus.8 Though the initial results suggested a minimal effect, the news made headlines around the world, led the Food and Drug Administration to issue an immediate emergency authorization for the medication’s distribution, and caused the stock market to rally five hundred points. The nation was desperate for a cure.”

  “For a balm of Gilead.”

  “Yes, for the balm of Gilead, for that over which the prophet cried out—the hope of a nation that had turned from God and shed the blood of its children, the balm of Gilead . . . a cure for judgment.”

  “I remember hearing the news.”

  “And do you remember hearing of the company that was offering the cure?”

  “I heard something about it.”

  “Did you catch the name of the company that was offering the cure?”

  “No.”

  “The name of the company . . . was Gilead.”

  “No!”

  “The balm that was offered for America’s sickness came from Gilead.”

  “That’s too . . . ”

  “Its full name was Gilead Sciences. And the purpose of its existence was to produce cures, balms. And so America was placing its hope in a literal balm of Gilead.”

  “And the balm of Gilead,” I said, “was part of the prophecy that had to do with Tophet and a nation under judgment for the killing of its children.”

  It was as if I was stunned by my own words, or the reality behind them. I was silent after that, staring into the lighted signs and emptiness of Times Square but lost in thought.

  “And yet there’s more,” said the prophet.

  “I don’t know if I can take more.”

  “One more thing.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You know what the Jubilee is?”

  “A celebration that comes from the Bible.”

  “It was the year when that which was lost was restored to its original owner. It was the year of restoration and restitution.”

  “It was a good thing.”

  “Yes. But there was another side to it. If you had taken the land that belonged to another, in the year of Jubilee, that which you had taken was taken from you. The Jubilee was the reversal of what had been done since the last Jubilee. What about life?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What about a generation or nation that has taken life, life that belonged to another, life that belonged to God?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would life not be taken from that generation or nation?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When was it, Nouriel, that America first legalized abortion on demand, when it began within its borders?”

  “In 1970.”

  “The Jubilee comes every fifty years.”

  “2020!”

  “2020 was the Jubilean year of abortion in America.”

  “And what was taken . . . is taken back.”

  “In 1970, abortion on demand with no geographic limitations was initiated in New York, the act that would establish the state as the nation’s abortion capital. Fifty years later, in the Jubilean year of that act, the wrath of the plague fell on New York. And do you know when, in 1970, it all began?”

  “No.”

  “On two days,” said the prophet, “it all began on two days . . . in the building to which I took you.”

  “The New York State Capitol building.”

  “It began there with a vote in the New York State Assembly and, the following day, with a vote in the New York Senate. By those two votes on those two days, the law was passed.”

  “When was it?”

  “In April of 1970.”

  “And what were the two days?”

  “The New York Assembly passed the law on April 9, and the New York Senate, on April 10.”

  “April 9 and April 10.”

  “Fifty years later, the plague struck America and, most specifically, in the state of New York. Do you know when its fury reached its peak in New York?”

  “No.”

  “In April of 2020, the same m
onth when New York legalized the killing of the unborn fifty years earlier.”

  “From April 1970 to April 2020, fifty years to the month.”

  “As to the peak of the plague’s fury in the state of New York, the moment of its greatest impact, several organizations, including the New York Times, sought to pinpoint it. They charted the plague’s infection rate in New York, the number of new people stricken through its sevenday average. It pinpointed a specific time period. Do you know what it came out to be?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Two days . . . April 9 and April 10.”9

  “No!”

  “The same exact dates on which the state had ushered in the ancient sin by voting for the killing of the unborn fifty years earlier.”

  “Fifty years to the same exact dates!”

  “The dates that marked the completion of the Jubilee.”

  “It’s too . . .” I couldn’t finish.

  I couldn’t speak. The prophet allowed me to stay quiet until I was ready.

  “What you’re showing me,” I said, “are the signs not only of a world under judgment but of a specific nation, a nation replaying the template of judgment with eerie and overwhelming precision. I’m looking for an answer for that nation.”

  “There is one,” said the prophet.

  “I don’t see it coming.”

  “But there is one . . . even for those who have taken part in committing the ancient sin. For greater than any sin is His love . . . far greater. And far stronger than any judgment is His mercy. And for all who come to Him, His arms are open. There is hope. And it must be that darkness comes before the light . . . and that through the darkness the light would come.”

  “I’m not seeing the light in the darkness.”

  “But it’s there,” said the prophet. “There is a balm in Gilead.”

  At that, he rose to his feet. But I couldn’t move. So I just sat there in the middle of Times Square as the lights and colors displayed themselves, ceaselessly, restlessly, for no one.