The Harbinger Read Online Free PDF Page B

blessed not only with prosperity and power but also with peace and security.”
    “But if America turned away from God, its protection would be removed?”
    “Yes, and so it did. And so it was. Its hedge of protection was removed, and its walls were breached.”
    “Its walls were breached? When?” I asked.
    The prophet was silent, as if waiting for me to say it, or waiting for it to hit me. And then it did…all at once.
    “September 11!”
    “Yes,” said the prophet. “The First Harbinger, the Breach. The nation that had so long known the blessings of peace and security witnesses its walls of protection broken through as its defenses fail. On September 11, 2001, the walls of America’s national security were breached. It happened right there,” he said, pointing to the sky above the waters. “The second attack. That’s how it came. The most powerful nation on earth and the most sophisticated defense system ever built by man…”
    “Its wall of defense…breached.”
    “And then came the mistake,” he said. “Then came the repeating of the ancient mistake. America responded to the calamity as if it were only a matter of security and defense…and nothing more. It would strengthen its national defenses and fortify its walls of protection. There was no pausing to ponder whether there could be anything of deeper significance behind it, no asking if something could be wrong, no searching of its ways.”
    “Was God behind it?” I asked.
    “Man was behind it,” he answered. “Evil men were behind it. Up to that point they had been restrained. But that restraint would have its limits. As with the attack on ancient Israel, an attack would now be allowed on American soil.”
    “But it was planned by evil men,” I countered. “It was evil.”
    “Yes,” he replied, “but God can cause that which is evil to work for good.”
    “But what good?”
    “The sounding of an alarm to wake up a sleeping nation, to change its course, to save it from judgment.”
    “But then was God with America’s enemies?”
    “No. No more than He was with those who attacked ancient Israel. Those who do such things are His enemies as well. God was against those who attacked America and would deal with them just as He dealt with the enemies of ancient Israel.”
    “And what about those who perished?” I asked.
    “When calamity came to ancient Israel, both the righteous and the unrighteous were touched by it. Both perished alike. The judgment was upon the nation. But that the innocent and righteous also perished in those calamities was not a matter of judgment but of sorrow. But for the nation, the fact that such calamities could have happened in the first place was a matter of both warning and judgment. Each took place in its own realm. So it was with 9/11; the calamity took place in two different realms—the private realm of individuals and the public realm of the nation. In the first realm is only sorrow, and the magnitude of the calamity is secondary. And for those touched by it, the loss of one life is the loss of an entire world. The charge here is to bind up the broken, to comfort, to support, and to never forget the wounded and the bereaved. But the second realm is distinct and separate, centering not on the individual but on the nation as a whole. It’s in this second realm that the matter of judgment remains.”
    “It’s hard to receive,” I replied.
    “Could you receive it from another?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Abraham Lincoln.”
    “What does he have to do with…”
    “Do you know how many lives were lost in the American Civil War?”
    “I have no idea…thousands?”
    “ Hundreds of thousands. And Lincoln spoke of the calamity devastating the nation as the judgment of a righteous God—not on any individual but on the nation as a whole.”
    “But it’s a hard…”
    “Of course it is, as it was for Isaiah and Jeremiah and all the prophets and others who wept and cried out for their people. But if