Book Review: “The Paradigm”

Jonathan Cahn has a third home run in his writing of “The Paradigm”.  The book is a gateway book that actually helps to set the stage for his third book “The Harbinger”, which was also an out-of-the-park volume.  Both books are fictional, but there’s so much Scripture involved that they feel factual.  Most of the information shared in both books is factual and can be confirmed through reading of the Scriptures and through Internet searches.  It’s hard to call the historical fiction because the history shared in both books is less than fifty years old in many places…but history it is.  While “The Harbinger” refers to events around 9-11-2001, “The Paradigm” is going to take us back to the Old Testament reign of Ahab and Jezebel, comparing their governing to recent principles in our own immediate history…and it’s a fascinating comparison.  There is little to “contrast”…because Cahn has found the stories to be almost identical in scope, purpose and ending.

By way of explanation, the author helps lay the foundation of the book by explaining that a paradigm is like a blueprint or model.  Examples and patterns are shared to show the bigger picture.  A template can be formed, a prototype, that can be used.  For instance, if a home is built in one state in America, and EXACT REPLICA of that home can be built in another state using the blueprint or paradigm to re-engage everything that’s needed to show the homes are for all purposes identical.  Cahn is going to first build the blueprint of an Old Testament story and then show its paradigm in more modern history…and the likenesses between the two will be both fascinating at best and completely creepy in their ungodlike similarities.

There are four major players in the Old Testament rendering: 1) Ahab, 2) Jezebel, 3) Joram, and 4) Jehu.  Each will have a powerful influence in the lives of the Hebrews, the Jewish nation living and waiting for the coming Messiah.  While Ahab is a Jew, he disobeys God and marries a woman who is not a Jew.  His decision to do things his way will destroy the Hebrew camp and bring down the wrath of God eventually.  Jezebel comes for a major port city in Egypt, and brings with her the practices of “city living” into a community of Hebrews who live to farm and sell by trade.  She considers her husband’s people “bumpkins”, and treats them as if they were less intelligent, very socially inept, and old-fashioned and ridiculous in their beliefs that there is One True God.  She will use her powerful influence on her husband, inside the realms of the political arena and to change the spirit and will of the Hebrew people.  She will introduce Baal and other gods to the Hebrews, bringing their idol forms straight into the camp.  She will introduce child sacrifice as an acceptable form of worship to those gods.  She will goad and mock her husband to spur him into acts of unrighteousness, and even commit those acts when he refuses to do so.  After Ahab pays by death for the sins he’s committed against his people, his son Joram takes over the kingdom, but Jezebel still plays an important role in leadership.  Eventually Joram is taken out of the picture by a “warrior leader”…someone who appears to come out of nowhere and is nothing more than a fighter…used to getting his own way…crass, rude, belligerent, but able to get the job done.  It is Jehu who gives the nation of Israel a final chance to straighten up their act or bring down on themselves the full outpouring of God’s anger.  Each story is told in detail:  days and months in office, major plans and accomplishments fulfilled in office, major failures in leadership, major abominations towards the God of Israel, and their ultimate ends.  Their stories are fascinating, angering, frightening, diabolical in many senses, and for this Christian angering, frustrating and heart-breaking.  The also more clearly show are the father of perdition works in the hearts of people who are not guided by God’s tenets.  It’s a clear picture of sin vs. righteousness, dark vs. light, deceit vs. truth and love vs. hate.

I don’t want to share who the modern day doppelgangers are for these four people.  There will be a powerful couple in politics, and almost more powerful “son” in spirit who replaces them, and then a warrior who rides in from the west to turn America upside-down.  This book was published in 2017, and I was astonished at the amount of detail about recent elections was contained in its writings.  The book does NOT tell what’s going to happen next, but it does find a paradigm for the follow up of the modern story.  There was a great prophet named Isaiah who comes on the scene in the Old Testament, and for this paradigm to be completely true, such a prophet will have to arise in America.  The author suggests that the job may be too big for one prophet and calls for all Christians to step up to the role of becoming a modern-day Isaiah, with all the blessings and complications he withstood.  It’s time for a study of the life of Elijah if we’re to understand our roles in the coming months and years before Christ’s return.

I highly recommend this read for Christians who are mature in their faith, have basic knowledge of the Old Testament and the principle players in Jewish history (if you know the names of Ahab and Jezebel, you know enough.  Cahn will provide the details so that you know them much better by the end of the read.)  This is a book about them, but it’s also a book about YOU.  You will be challenged by this book to understand the role you’ve now been given in the history of saving God’s people… of bringing more into the kingdom of God before He releases his wrath on a nation that is refusing to accept His ways and His tenets.

I found NOTHING in the book that contradicts what Scriptures teach.  I’m very careful these days to put into my mind only that which honors God and contains truth.  The world is doing an easy job of filling my mind with junk and lies and distractions.  If you want a book that calls you back to paying attention to what’s happening in the political news and how it lines up with Biblical prophecy, this is the book for you.  Reading this book takes the edge off the false news…helps us to see the truth amid the biased reporting of almost every news station in America.  I have a love/hate relationship with the news…I love knowing what’s going on in the world…I hate with the broadcasters “spin” the news or present it from a one-sided angle.  But I know that what’s happening in this nation and around the world is showing us the road map straight to the second coming of Christ.  The signs are there.  The warnings are coming.  The prophecies will be fulfilled.  I will be ready.  Will you!