The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery that Holds the Secret of America's Future

These chapters conclude the presentation of the harbingers, and they provide a transition point into the remainder of the novel. The opening of Chapter 11 marks Goren’s full acceptance of the prophet as legitimate, specifically Kaplan’s retelling of the prophet’s message, as she checks that her employees have left for the day. The purpose of this inclusion is to again cement the idea that Goren, who is supposed to be a skeptic, is totally absorbed into Kaplan’s story. Goren provides for the reader a representation of The Balance Between Faith and Reason. She interjects again in Chapter 12 to express disbelief that John Edwards quoted Isaiah 9:10 at the Congressional Black Caucus Prayer Breakfast, as well as to check that Kaplan has been fact-checking the prophet’s claims. Goren’s question on why anyone would proclaim the “vow” of Isaiah 9:10 assumes acceptance of the commentary that concludes the verse to be an expression of arrogance and defiance of God.

However, as with the Israelites that expressed the sentiment of rebuilding in ancient Israel, the sentiment itself is not a defiance against God, but a promise to rebuild and remain strong. Logically speaking, as well, quoting a Bible verse at a Prayer Breakfast seems to make sense, and so, as a skeptic, one would not be surprised to hear of a politician quoting a Bible verse about rebuilding after an attack at a Prayer Breakfast on the anniversary of that attack. However, Goren now also believes that Isaiah 9:10 is a direct vow to defy God, and so, as with Kaplan, the idea that a politician would openly call for God’s judgment on their own nation seems ludicrous. Though Goren does not interject when the prophet reveals to Kaplan that the Senate majority leader also quoted Isaiah 9:10 on September 12, 2001, the day after 9/11, the reader can assume that this is because she has accepted Kaplan’s initial response. Kaplan explains to Goren the same reasoning that the prophet presents to him, that there is no broader, human intention behind the harbingers, only the will of God. This, as with the general reliance on divinity in the prophet’s explanation of events, resolves the situation into one where predestination, or fate, acts as the justification for each individual action and combines Predetermination and Free Will in Prophecy.

The prophet aligns himself with this reasoning through statements like “The Almighty…has His own purposes” (111), which is his response when Kaplan expresses disbelief that “No human hand direct it” (111), referring to the harbingers. Cahn is culminating the presentation of the harbingers as a necessary, predestined set of events following God’s will and mirroring God’s will as it regarded ancient Israel. For example, the detailed explanation of how a prophecy can come from one who is not a prophet, as it does with the Senate majority leader who “was prophesying by virtue of his office” (118), implies through the term “inspiration” that all elements of the harbingers perpetrated by human beings are actually perpetrated by God. Just as the speaker is “inspired” to quote Isaiah 9:10, so, too, were John Edwards, Osama bin Laden, the donors of the erez tree, and the people behind the Freedom Stone and Freedom Tower. The prophet is combining free will and predestination through the word “inspiration,” and the implication would be, as well, that the prophet is acting through inspiration in his interactions with Kaplan, and that Kaplan is acting through inspiration with Goren.

For the prophet, this inspiration explains an element of his mystique, adding in a divine component to his behavior that explains instances in which he disappears or appears in locations that have not been previously discussed. His appearance at the Lincoln Memorial, for example, is divinely inspired. In addition, this pattern explains how Goren and Kaplan both cease to be skeptics when presented with the seals, as they, too, are divinely inspired. The critical conclusion of this paradigm, then, would be that Cahn’s novel is also the result of divine inspiration, combining, again, the components of the prophet and Kaplan’s story within an overarching understanding of the novel as a written work by Cahn. The conclusion of these chapters rests on the assumption that the reader, like Kaplan and Goren, is following the concepts of the prophecy, which raises the question of what to do next. Kaplan, like the reader, wants to know what can be done moving forward to avoid the judgment that fell on ancient Israel.