Jonathan Cahn has a distinctive nonfiction style, of finding historical patterns and matching them, quite compellingly, to current events. In this case, he compared the “paradigm” of an Old Testament set of individuals to a parallel set of modern-day individuals (though I’m not sure this is the correct usage of the word — or at least it isn’t my understanding of it). Specifically, he highlighted a number of parallels between the compromised King Ahab and the evil Queen Jezebel from 1 Kings to Bill and Hillary Clinton (and boy, I immediately wondered, could they sue him for libel, or is this still considered protected free speech? I guess it must be…) He further compared Barack Obama to their son Joram, the successor to Ahab, and compared Trump to Jehu, the brash outsider who took everyone in ancient Israel by surprise. The parallels range from what each character stood for, their personalities, their relationship to the God of Israel, the causes they championed, the scandals connected with them, and–most surprisingly–the exact lengths of their “reigns,” as well as the timing within their time upon the national stage when various events took place. I didn’t go back to 1 Kings to see if Cahn was right about all of it, but if he was, it certainly is eerie.
My question is, what’s the point, though? If all of those events line up so precisely, why? It would imply that there is some supernatural something (a paradigm, perhaps) at play, but since humans all have free will–as Cahn doesn’t dispute, and even makes a point of this on numerous occasions–then how does this happen first of all, and second, why would God orchestrate such a thing?
He doesn’t answer this question; he leaves that to the reader to decide. Even though it was a compelling read, I only gave it four stars, because I was still left with a sense of, “Okay, so what?”
My rating: ****
Language: none
Sexual content: none
Violence: none (except what’s in the scriptures)
Political content: TONS (of course, by the nature of the topic)–though it’s the opposite of woke.
