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

The opening chapters of The Harbinger are oriented around building credibility, which serves a dual purpose of centering the narrative on Kaplan and breaking down the barrier between Kaplan as a character and Jonathan Cahn as an author. When Kaplan meets Goren, she is characterized as a woman who “neither wasted her time nor indulged those who did” (1), and her characterization is meant to lay out a measurement of Kaplan’s legitimacy. As Goren rejects Kaplan’s story initially, the reader is meant to trust her as a serious, dependable judge of information. Cahn characterizes Goren as an intentional skeptic, a character within his story that is meant to balance out the claims of his main character, Kaplan. As such, Goren is a representation of the readers who may not already trust in Cahn’s credibility, and, as Goren comes to believe and trust Kaplan, the reader is assumed to do the same with Cahn as the author. When Goren realizes that Kaplan is a respected journalist, she begins to trust him more, and Kaplan’s assertion that he may not be reliable further asserts that there is a mutual trust and credibility being built within the narrative. Paradoxically, readers will assume that only a reliable narrator would acknowledge the possibility of their failings. Further, Goren serves the purpose of emphasizing the messages within Kaplan’s story, such as when she notes that the man on the bench is the prophet, connecting information from Kaplan’s story for the reader’s benefit. If the reader did not pick up on the information in Kaplan’s anecdotes, then Goren is likely to reiterate and explain that information. She does this with an air of surprise or shock, again showing that she is slowly engaging more with the possibility that Kaplan is telling the truth and that his story is valid.

Goren, as a character, operates in tandem with the prophet at times, as a series of instances serve to validate Kaplan’s perception of the prophet as mystical or divinely informed. For example, when the prophet calls Kaplan by his first name, Nouriel, Kaplan is shocked and disturbed, and Goren interjects to validate that shock with her own sense of surprise. When one bears in mind that the prophet mailed Kaplan the seal, and that Kaplan’s name is known within journalism, it is not shocking that the prophet would know his first name. The information is publicly available, and it would have been necessary in sending Kaplan the seal. However, Goren, the trusted, dependable third-party, reacts to this part of the story by asking: “How could he have possibly known your name?” (12), implying that she, too, sees this piece of information as evidence of the prophet’s mysticism. Various elements of the prophet’s appearance and behavior further characterize him as mysterious, such as telling Kaplan: “It’s all about finding out what it’s all about” (11), which is a circular phrase meant to be intriguing. The prophet is usually staring out over the water in the park, and he is further established as having divine insight when he notices that Kaplan is standing behind him on their second meeting. Altogether, Cahn is setting up a dynamic in which the prophet is mysterious and potentially divinely informed, while Kaplan is a converted skeptic. In the past, Kaplan was not sure what to make of the prophet, but the reader knows that the present Kaplan is now trying to convince Goren of the validity of the prophet’s claims. Goren, in turn, is the new skeptic, and Kaplan is trying to convert her, just as the prophet converted him in the past.

The prophet’s connection of Israel to the United States is the beginning of the main prophecy of the novel, and Cahn ensures that the connections are apparent early on. The prophet refers to Israel’s “hedge” as “national security,” a term that has been used frequently in American political discussions since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, known now as 9/11. Following the attacks, several measures and laws were adopted in the interest of “national security,” as terrorist attacks from other nations were seen as a breach of the United States’ national sense of safety. It is doubtful Israel would have seen the Assyrian invasion in 732 BCE as a “breach of national security” in the same way the American government did of the US in 2001. This specific terminology is meant to lay the foundation for the prophet’s later disclosure that America is following the same pattern as ancient Israel, guiding the reader through the premises of the argument before making the claim. Even when making the link explicitly, the prophet steps back from a direct claim of congruence, or a claim that asserts that America and Israel are or were identical, saying: “America is America. And Israel is Israel. The one doesn’t replace the other” (19). However, the prophet asserts that America was founded on a covenant with God, that America has slowly been turning its back on God, and that the same “calamity” that Israel experienced is going to come to America soon. These claims are lined up with instances in American history, such as the banning of mandatory prayer in public schools, Roe v. Wade—a Supreme Court case that protected the right to abortion—and the popularity of pornography, greed, and “sexual immorality,” which in the prophet’s mindset is both a reference to premarital sex and to people of the LGBTQIA+ community, who have garnered more acceptance over the course of the last 70 years.