Saved to Serve Prophecy Again Tax Exempt
#MAGA Church: The Doomsday Prophet Who Says the Bible Predicted Trump
A charismatic pastor in New Bailiwick of jersey (who also calls himself a rabbi) leads a church fixated on end times. Earlier the apocalypse, even so, he'southward fitting in a trip to Mar-a-Lago.
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On a Sunday morning at Beth Israel Worship Eye in Wayne, N.J., a bearded pastor named Jonathan Cahn stood on an elevated platform, gazing over a full house. Phase lights shifted from blue to white every bit the bankroll band played a globe-trotting melody. 2 men hoisted curled rams' horns and allow out long blasts.
"Some of you have been saying you want to live in biblical times," Mr. Cahn said, pacing backside a lectern. Then he spread his hands wide. "Well, you are."
Sitting at the finish of a sleepy drive an hour from Manhattan, Beth Israel may look similar whatever common suburban church building. Merely the eye has a highly unusual describe. Every weekend, some ane,000 congregants get together for the idiosyncratic teachings of the church'due south celebrity pastor, an entrepreneurial doomsday prophet who claims that President Trump'south rise to power was foretold in the Bible.
Mr. Cahn is tapping into a belief more than pop than may appear.
A recent Fox News poll found one in four Americans believe "God wanted Donald Trump to go president." Celebrities similar the televangelist Paula White and Franklin Graham accept boosted the thought. The president'due south ain printing secretarial assistant suggested as much in a January interview. And on the opening twenty-four hours of the Conservative Political Action Conference this month, the millionaire businessman Michael Lindell took to the phase and alleged President Trump "chosen by God."
Mr. Cahn was alee of the curve.
He has defended an entire book to this very thesis, an insight he claims to have received from God. "The Paradigm: The Ancient Pattern That Holds the Mystery of Our Times," in fact, is but the most recent installment of a best-selling serial dealing with the supposed mystical meaning behind all manner of current events. In it, Mr. Cahn likens Mr. Trump to the biblical king Jehu, who led the ancient nation of Israel away from idolatry.
With his growing stature, Mr. Cahn is besides a rising effigy in some quarters of bourgeois politics. In an email to congregants, Mr. Cahn shared his latest good news: This weekend he is making his outset trip to the president's vacation retreat, Mar-a-Lago. He is set to address a pocket-size gathering of activists and advisers.
After worship on a recent Sunday, in a roped-off section flanked by security guards, Mr. Cahn signed piles of his books earlier a small crowd. At 59, Mr. Cahn cultivates a refined demeanor, rarely actualization without a signature all-black suit and tie. He laid his easily gently on one man'south shoulders and offered quiet counsel. "Be patient," he said. "Proceed praying for breakthrough."
Gail Greenholtz, an elder member, stood near the end of the line. "Many of us consider him a prophet of our time," she said. "A visionary."
Michael Cooney, 58, had driven an hour to hear the pastor teach on politics and prophecy. "It's all relevant for this moment," he said. "He shows u.s.a. that Trump was actually in the Bible."
Central to Beth Israel's story is the unlikely rise of its pastor, a liberal Jew transformed into an end-times evangelist. The tale is also a footstep into a controversial and burgeoning layer of American religion, where commerce, supernatural belief and patriotism blend freely. Daniel Silliman, a Valparaiso University professor of religion, called Beth Israel and its pastor function of a long tradition of Americans "looking to prophecy equally a way to blot the chaos" of electric current events. "It can brand someone feel that God is working through human history," he said, "transforming anxiety into a sense of fullness."
The son of a Holocaust refugee, Mr. Cahn was raised in a nominally Jewish family unit in the New York suburbs. But from an early historic period, he was drawn to the more esoteric corners of belief.
He devoured the writings of Nostradamus, the Virginia psychic Edgar Cayce and far-out conspiracy theories well-nigh aboriginal astronauts. Mr. Cahn soon stumbled on "The Belatedly Keen Planet Earth," the 1970s all-time-seller that argued doomsday prophecies of the Bible were playing out with events like the Cold War and State of israel'south Half dozen-24-hour interval War. Mr. Cahn bought the book thinking it was about UFOs; instead he was given a crash-grade in Christian eschatology.
"I was just floored," Mr. Cahn said. On his 20th birthday, later a virtually-expiry feel — and to the dismay of his Jewish father — he became a Christian.
By the 1980s, Mr. Cahn was leading outreach for a hippy-way church building in New Jersey. His pilus and bristles grown shaggy, he led services with a guitar slung around his neck. Mr. Cahn later broke off to lead an independent congregation, Beth Israel, and built his post-obit through a slot on Christian radio, where his messages took on an end-times flavour.
Subsequently the 2001 terrorist attacks struck Manhattan, Mr. Cahn adopted a sharp, even more apocalyptic focus.
In sermons, he began comparing the attacks to the aboriginal warnings of the Bible, cartoon largely from the book of Isaiah, where God vows to punish the ill-behaved nation of State of israel.
Mr. Cahn said abortion, gay rights and the perceived retreat of faith in the public square were all troubling signs that America, like ancient Israel, had lost its manner.
Once rolling with this comparing, Mr. Cahn began seeing patterns everywhere. As the Israelites turned away from their God, they were attacked by Assyrians; America, in modern times, was also attacked by a strange regular army from the East, Al Qaeda terrorists. Later the aboriginal siege, the Israelites vowed to replant a destroyed sycamore grove with new trees; about basis zero, a huge sycamore tree was too destroyed, as the towers savage.
The supposed connections go on. Tenuous as they may seem, Mr. Cahn saw the links as compelling. His flock did too. "God revealed patterns," he said. "I called information technology the download process."
Epitome 
Mr. Cahn eventually turned his thesis into a full-length volume, "The Straw," in 2012, put out by the publishing arm of the powerhouse Charisma Media, a Christian multimedia company that also runs a daily news site. The volume climbed up best-seller lists and hovered there for months, alongside blockbusters like "Fifty Shades of Grey." He followed his debut with a companion edition and three other titles, all embellishing on the same theme of prophecies replaying today.
"None of us knew it would exist and then successful," Mr. Cahn said. "Information technology was the Lord's mitt, I believe that."
A charismatic preacher inveighing against imminent devastation is zero new. America has long been fertile ground for would-be doomsday prophets, stretching back centuries.
Matthew Sutton, a professor of history at Washington State University and the author of "American Apocalypse," said Mr. Cahn fits a unique American mold. "In cardinal historical moments, religious figures like this find a way to pace in," Mr. Sutton said. "They describe from apocalyptic theology and say, 'We have this secret noesis and tin can explain what'south going on.' It fosters this sense that God'south judgment is hanging over your head."
Among several of Mr. Cahn'southward recent predecessors of this ilk would be televangelists similar the Christians United for Israel founder John Hagee, whose books include "Can America Survive?" and Jim Bakker, the controversy-decumbent preacher who now hosts an end-times Tv program and sells disaster survival products.
Mr. Cahn brings the tradition fully into the social-media age: many of his fans first saw him on Facebook; hundreds of posts and reposts of his sermons are uploaded on YouTube, slipped into the corners of the web where esoteric religion and conspiracy theories overlap.
Into this mix came Mr. Cahn's latest book, "The Image," which could be his almost polarizing, tying his prophetic work to the ballot of Donald Trump.
The book, published in the months afterward Trump'southward win, again likens America to the ancient nation of Israel — two peoples, Mr. Cahn says, who have a unique relationship with God. He and so argues that all sorts of figures in contemporary politics have biblical counterparts. Nib Clinton and Hillary Clinton, for example, are the modern-twenty-four hours analogues to wicked Ahab and Jezebel. Trump is the warrior-rex Jehu, who took control of the nation and cast idols out of the capital. "Jehu likewise sought to drain the swamp," Mr. Cahn said.
Trump, "like his aboriginal predecessor," Mr. Cahn writes in his volume, was a "flawed vessel" being used by God. "The unlikely and controversial warrior was destined to become the new ruler of the state," Mr. Cahn goes on. "The template would ordain that Donald Trump would become the next president."
Pointing to Trump'south possible rollback of ballgame rights, appointment of conservative Supreme Court judges and the motility of the American Embassy to Jerusalem, Mr. Cahn casts Trump as a heroic figure. "Trump is offering u.s. a window for revival, a window to return to God," Mr. Cahn said. "What happened in the ballot was non about Trump but about something much college, the purposes of God."
Mr. Cahn promotes his piece of work aggressively in Christian media, appearing regularly on "The Jim Bakker Prove," "Sid Roth'south Information technology's Supernatural!" and "The 700 Lodge," where he draws upon his Jewish groundwork, using the title of rabbi or wrapping himself in a prayer shawl emblazoned with the Beth Israel logo.
He also has political aspirations. Mr. Cahn speaks at events in Washington alongside conservative standard-bearers like Michele Bachmann and James Dobson, where his portrayal of America as a cultural battleground falls on sympathetic ears. In 2016, he even addressed a United nations gathering. Mike Huckabee, the Flim-flam News commentator and onetime governor of Arkansas, once introduced Mr. Cahn equally "soul-stirring and stunning, spellbinding."
Mr. Cahn likes to say he is surprised by his own success, preferring supernatural explanations. When speaking, he begins slowly but picks up pace, well-nigh falling over his words with excitement. He also has a flair for the theatrical tale. Lounging in a back role at the church, surrounded by framed paintings of biblical landscapes, he sprinkled enchanted anecdotes in chat.
How did he raise money for his first church building? "A mysterious American Indian appeared with a cheque for $150,000. They called him Wahoo. God instructed him to come to me."
How were his books received? "With the get-go book, a hurricane flooded our building. For the release day of the new one, my appendix exploded. People called information technology spiritual warfare."
He even presents his family life in magical terms. He has three children and describes his relationship to his Brazilian wife, Renata, as a "supernatural love story."
As Mr. Cahn's star was ascension, Beth State of israel also mushroomed in size. The congregation more than tripled over the years and outgrew its humble perch in Bergen County.
In 2008, Beth Israel moved to a cavernous old department shop a one-half-hr away and remodeled the building to resemble the white-stoned city of ancient Jerusalem, recasting the drab industrial structure as a mystical suburban billet. In the parking lot, massive Israeli and American flags billow in the breeze.
Beth Israel draws from the Charismatic movement, which has roots in Pentecostalism, and too incorporates elements of Messianic Judaism. Congregants alternating between calling Mr. Cahn their pastor or rabbi, and their place of worship a church building or synagogue.
Services are also held on Friday evenings, at the start of the Jewish Sabbath, and Mr. Cahn arrives to the edifice only moments before worship begins. By the fourth dimension he bursts on stage with a headset microphone, the crowd is fully primed. A trip the light fantastic toe troupe of women, dressed in ruby and waving scarfs, prance nearby as the crowd sways in song.
During a recent evening service, some 500 congregants gathered as helpers lit traditional Shabbat candles near the foot of the stage. Mr. Cahn dropped Hebrew into his sermon, and at times, the oversupply haltingly joined in to pronounce the strange words themselves. In a centre row, one elderly adult female pulled out a worn Bible with stickered pages, the margins filled with notes from previous lectures.
"In that location are prophecies effectually us," Mr. Cahn intoned from the pulpit. "Nosotros're in deep and nosotros're going deeper. Open your heed, caryatid yourself."
Maybe not surprisingly, equally the church's growth may take been swift, controversies around the pastor and his flock take too swelled.
Progressive groups, like the website Right Wing Watch, have been tracking Mr. Cahn's ascent for years. Others have raised questions nearly whether his messages about Trump veer from protected religious expression to political endorsement. Churches are unable to participate in political campaigns on behalf of, or in opposition to, candidates; if they practise so, they risk losing their taxation-exempt status.
Mr. Cahn shrugs at the charge. "I don't tell anyone how to vote," he said. "I say, 'You need to consult God, and this is what God says on the issues.'"
After a beat, he added, "They can read betwixt the lines."
Others object to his claims to divine insight. In particular, Mr. Cahn has attracted the attending of a network of Christian critics who meet him every bit part of a growing stream of over-the-top supernaturalism in the church building.
Tensions came to a climax in 2015, when Mr. Cahn suggested in a book and during several TV appearances that an imminent cataclysm was on the horizon.
Leaning on arcane readings of the early on books of the Bible, Mr. Cahn said that only as God visited judgments on the wayward Israelites according to a particular 7-year blueprint — something called "the shemitah" — modern catastrophes might follow a similar design. In 2001 came terrorist attacks, in 2008 there was an economic crash. Mr. Cahn asked: could 2015 bring another disaster?
But months passed, and the doomsday appointment came and went. He was dismissed as a grifter.
One critic likened Mr. Cahn's prophecy project to a "delicate house of cards," prepare to tumble downwards. A Christian polemics site called Pulpit & Pen denounced Mr. Cahn in several posts. J.D. Hall, the site's founder, called Mr. Cahn "the most prominent and successful omen huckster" working today. "Pastors should warn people away from Cahn," Mr. Hall said recently.
Mr. Cahn actually grows embarrassed discussing the doomsday fiasco. He insists he has always included disclaimers on his work and never fix exact dates. Rather, Mr. Cahn wanted to warn that a calamity could happen, non that it would. "I always say: Y'all can't put God in a box."
Nonetheless, he appears to have learned from the brouhaha, growing even more than cautious about making prognostications that could fall through.
His latest book, for example, was released simply subsequently Trump had taken the White House and is largely astern-looking, giving biblical explanations to current events simply after the fact.
He also declined to counterbalance in on Trump'south 2020 chances. "The Bible doesn't say one or ii terms," Mr. Cahn demurred.
Meanwhile, Mr. Cahn'south success has come at a private cost he seldom discusses. Though not estranged, his Jewish family never fully knew what to make of his dramatic pastoral turn. They rarely, if ever, visit the church, and he remains troubled by the thought they volition non be spiritually saved. "I don't know where their hearts are at at present," he said. "It's not something we talk about."
At times, Mr. Cahn appears to be a star in a evidence that has grown out of his control. Fans may accept his project more seriously than he does himself. His debut book was originally billed as a work of fiction, for example, a nuance lost on most readers.
"At commencement, people started to call me a prophet, and I would stop them and say, 'No, no,'" he said. "Simply information technology always made for an awkward moment."
Instead, he stopped correcting them. It was simply easier. "So, sometimes, I don't say annihilation," Mr. Cahn said. "I let information technology exist."
Still, his book series marches on. The latest installment, titled "The Oracle," is due in September. Like the others, it concerns biblical prophecies, with Trump once more making an appearance.
On a Friday evening this winter, deep into the government shutdown over the border wall, Beth State of israel was packed, even though a snowstorm had been forecast. 1 man plucked a plaintive melody on a guitar as Mr. Cahn wound upward the service, inviting the crowd to bow their heads. He guided the them in a soothing prayer.
"Shut your eyes," he said. "If you haven't been built-in again, today is your twenty-four hours."
In that location were murmurs through the room. Mr. Cahn concluded and then gently reminded the crowd about the booths in the back. Congregants could buy shawls, jewelry and apocalypse-themed calendars. Books were for sale, he said. New members could even get a souvenir re-create, signed free of charge.
Afterward worship, congregants gathered nigh the canteen, where steam rose from platters of rice, beans and soup.
Several worshipers described how they once attended other, more mainline churches before discovering Beth State of israel. Some still take a home church elsewhere but come here for a supplemental dose of mysticism. Bob Keene, a 68-year-sometime school-bus commuter, described the entreatment. "Learning well-nigh prophecy puts me at ease," he said. "The bug I'm having, the things I'm going through, those are also part of God'southward plan."
Roxanne Mangal, a middle-aged woman in a flowery blouse, joined the table. She said the pastor had healed her of a terrible illness. Joining Beth State of israel also brought wealth. "My income tripled," she said. "Information technology quadrupled."
Now she wanted to show Mr. Keene a more than contempo miracle she'd seen, captured on a cellphone photograph, no less. After President Trump had moved the United States Diplomatic mission to Jerusalem — the bailiwick of nifty excitement at the church — she believed she saw the New York skyline calorie-free upwards in heavenly sparks. "God did that," she said, thrusting the telephone forward.
"Hmm," Mr. Keene said, looking at the photo politely. "I thought it was a sunset at first."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/nyregion/trump-preacher-magachurch.html
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