Isaiah 9:10 The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.
Ezekiel 33:1-6
1 Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2 Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman:
3 If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people;
4 Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.
5 He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul.
6 But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand.
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn of the Beth Israel Congregation in Lodi, New Jersey, was given understanding of Isaiah 9. In July of 2005, Rabbi Cahn delivered a message before the Messianic Congregation parts of which could only be understood from the perspective of the near future events.
The scale of the attack of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001 was massive. Technology insured the continued visibility and recollection of insistent images. Was this event in New York unique in history? On the surface it would appear that it was not: catastrophic and unimaginable yes, but unique?
Rabbi Cahn describes the “Eight Harbingers of Judgment” experienced by Israel and their uncanny parallels to the events of September 11, 2001: his insights are prodigious, overwhelming and foreboding. The consequences that would befall the nation that would not hear the Watchman after experiencing the prior warning which would be a shadow of the cataclysm to come.
1. The Ashes Of Bricks
“Acts of War,” “A Day of Infamy,” “Who did this?” “Terror’s Toll,” “Nightmare,” “Freedom Under Siege,” “Under Attack,” “Second Pearl Harbor,” “A Nation in Sorrow,” “Attacks Paralyze US,” “Devastation,” “Terror Hits Home,” “Evil Acts,” “Unthinkable,” “Our Worst Day,” “War at Home,” “Darkest Hour,” “Our Nation Saw Evil,” “Oh my God!,” “Our Purpose as a Nation is Firm,” “From the Ashes,” “The Day That Changed The World.”
There has been no event that has touched the United States and the world more indomitably than the attacks of September 11th, 2001. As the images of the smoke, dust and death gorged the airwaves, the descriptions of devastation penetrated every media source. Fire, smoke, dust, ashes.
Only sources with archives of the devastation of World War II had comparable images. Berlin, London, Nagasaki, Kassel, Hiroshima, Dresden, Rouen, Naples. Images of earlier holocausts. These cities today, a generation later, reveal little of their broken past, their fallen bricks. But the bricks of Ground Zero in Manhattan were reduced to ash, with little more than dust and metal to recover. Is there a different message in these fallen bricks?
2. The Woe Of The Wills
Empowering the rulers
On Wednesday, September 12, 2001, as a transfixed nation and world waited and wondered. Expectation was high for answers and outrage: it came in through the airwaves in the Joint Response of the Nation on the Senate floor in Washington, DC. Representing the Congress and the nation and by authority as majority leader, Senator Tom Daschle addressed the world.
Recorded in the Federal Register, the words of Senator Daschle for the Joint Resolution of Condemnation for the attacks the morning of September 12th, 2001 can be read as they had been spoken:
“Mr. President, it is with pain, sorrow, anger, and resolve that I stand before this Senate, a symbol for 212 years of the strength of our democracy, and say that America will emerge from this tragedy, as we have emerged from all adversity, united and strong…
….The world should know that the Members of both parties in both Houses stand united. The full resources of our Government will be brought to bear in aiding the search and rescue and in hunting down those responsible and those who may have aided or harbored them.
Nothing, nothing can replace the losses that have been suffered. I know there is only the smallest measure of inspiration that can be taken from this devastation. But there is a passage in the Bible, from Isaiah, that I think speaks to all of us at times such as this:
"The bricks have fallen down, but we will rebuild with dressed stone; the fig trees have been felled, but we will replace them with cedars.
That is what we will do. We will rebuild and we will recover. The people of America will stand strong together because the people of America have always stood together. And those of us privileged to serve this great Nation will stand with you.”
If there are any acceptable uses for a misapplication of Scripture, it is clear from the text that Isaiah 9 is not one. The heart of the message speaks specifically to the consequences of an improper response to a first judicial incursion. The illustration is a rebuke for lace of contrition and pompousness of will. It will be demonstrated by examination of the 8th Harbinger that this very action is the most offensive of all.
Of over 31,000 verses in Scripture, the Isaiah 9:10 verse would become, for those in governmental authority, the flagship verse of the Nation and be specifically spoken by four other prominent politicians [that are in public record and related to this event].
The more esoterically inclined might find the use of five “We Will’s” as an echo and progression of the five, “I Will’s” of Isaiah 14…but this context is at the fall of Lucifer, before the creation of Adam, and before the enmity of the seeds of Genesis 3:14.
In the years following the 2001 event, each of the five leaders in the line of Presidential Succession for the former and current administrations would follow the resolve of the majority leader’s precedent with a pledge to rebuild from this event, apparently unaware of Isaiah 5.
A haunting undertone is found in the 1851 English Translation of the Greek Septuagint by Sir Lancelot C.L. Brenton translates Isaiah 9:10:
◦ The bricks are fallen down, but come, let us hew stones,
◦ and cut down sycamores and cedars,
◦ and let us build for ourselves a tower.
To date, at the sites of the totally destroyed buildings, one new tower has been completed, World Trade Center Tower 7.
3. The Arrogance Of Defiance
On the day of the 911 tragedy, Rudy Guiliani, the mayor of New York City punctuated the resolve of the city. "We will rebuild: We're going to come out of this stronger than before, politically stronger, economically stronger. The skyline will be made whole again."
Seton Hall University Professor A.D. Amar described the devastation as, “A scene that no movie has captured,” correctly determining that, “America will rise out of it. We will build new Towers, larger than the ones we lost to these cowards.”
The Freedom Tower
“What I want to see built is the World Trade Centers stronger and maybe a story taller. And that's what everybody wants. ‘The New York Post’ came out today strongly. ‘The Wall Street Journal’ yesterday in their editorial came out strongly for that.”
Lower Manhattan Info reveals details of the construction project, initially scheduled for completion in 2011:
Rising from its square base -- which will be constructed of impermeable concrete and steel -- the redesigned Freedom Tower will taper into eight tall isosceles triangles, forming a perfect octagon at its center. An observation deck will be located 1,362 feet above ground and there will be a square glass parapet at 1,368 feet, the heights of the original Twin Towers. From these, an illuminated spire containing a television antenna will rise to a final height of 1,776 feet.
4. Quarried, Not Brick The Freedom Stone
"Today is indeed, a momentous day. Today we take 20 tons of Adirondack granite - the bedrock of our State - and place it as the foundation, the bedrock of a new symbol of American strength and confidence. Today, we lay the cornerstone for a new symbol of this city and this country and of our resolve in the face of terror. Today we build the Freedom Tower.”
The polished and inscribed garnet flecked stone was lowered by a crane into a 5 story, 70 foot deep cavity to rest above the earlier foundation. Rich in historic and ceremonial significance, cornerstones are often associated with unspoken dualistic motives, but reminiscent of a similar event at Babel, “The Freedom Stone” was removed on June 23, 2006, purportedly for design conflicts. A more specific explanation was given in July, 2008. Detailing the circumstances, Michael Daly of NY Daily News wrote:
“…What ensued was senseless squabbling, near-criminal incompetence and bald-faced lies, all of which constituted a betrayal of the murdered innocents the stone purported to honor…We arrive at this Fourth of July with that 20 tons of disgrace sitting in the Long Island lot.”
The unity and selflessness so abundant two years earlier, was once again deteriorating. Things were back on track on Wall Street, the good times began to roll again.
5. Poking a finger in the eye of God
Repeatedly Scripture and commentaries record defiance as the highest insult against the Most High God. Senator John Kerry, in his statement before the United States Senate on Wednesday, September 12, 2001 remarked:
“…And I believe one of the first things we should commit to - with federal help that underscores our nation's purpose – is to rebuild the towers of the World Trade Center and show the world we are not afraid - we are defiant.”
On the day the cornerstone was laid, then New York Governor, George Pataki again insisted: “Today, we the heirs of that revolutionary spirit of defiance, lay this cornerstone.”
6. Rooted and grounded, Ground Zero in bronze
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn reveals the significance of the harbinger of the sycamore:
The Bible records the sycamore tree as being a sign of judgment. It even says in Egypt the sycamore tree was struck down as a sign of judgment. On September 11th, a freak event happened in the devastation: a steel beam from the North Tower was hurled from the sky. As the Tower fell, it went through the air and struck down an object: it was a tree.
The uprooted sycamore at St. Paul's Chapel
…and strange, eerily, the people made a display of it, not realizing what it was in the Bible… and put it on display, its roots exposed…not realizing, as if to draw more attention to the sign. And a sculptor was commissioned to make a cast of it. He poured metal into the cast: he cast it into bronze, the Biblical metal of judgment…an image of the fallen sycamore to be displayed on Wall Street.
The significance of the bronze sycamore root sculpture is chilling. In May, 1792, twenty-four stock brokers met underneath a buttonwood tree, along Wall Street in New York City. The Buttonwood Agreement would be birthed as the golden calf of commerce, the bull of the New York Stock Exchange, but would be delivered, uprooted and cast in bronze.
The buttonwood tree is more familiar as the American sycamore. This memorial on Wall Street would come to represent the riches of a nation uprooted, overturned, judged and displayed in bronze: and yet another idol.
Bronze sculpture of the Sycamore, Steve Tobin
7. The Tree of Hope
Rabbi Cahn continues:
On the same Ground Zero, you had three [physical SIGNS] of the harbingers. But there’s one more, there is the cedar tree, the seventh harbinger is the cedar tree, the arez tree….’the sycamores are fallen but we will put cedars in their place...’
…Two years after September 11th …a strange site was seen on Ground Zero, a crane, a different crane, was lowering a different object… the object was being lowered to a place where there had been a hole in the ground, it was being laid over the place where the fallen sycamore tree had been struck down...It would have been natural to replace the sycamore tree with a sycamore tree, but the Scripture says ‘we will replace it with an arez [cedar] tree…The object lowered was an arez tree, a conifer tree, the same as the cedar of Lebanon…
He pauses at this point: …
Now that would be enough, but there’s actually more:
…In Hebrew parallelism…a verse is often matched with a verse that rhymes in thought and so it matches the fallen bricks and the fallen sycamore together and they were both found the day after 911 in the ruins.
And then there are the two others, which are the cedar tree and the hewn stone. They are together because they both are lowered by cranes, they both had a ceremony surrounding them… they both labeled these icons: one was called the “Tree of Freedom,” the other was “The Tree of Hope.”
[At] the ceremony, as the tree was coming down to where the sycamore was, there was a clergyman there….he said:
We are gathered here today on holy ground. Ground hallowed by its witness to the dust, and death and destruction of September 11th. The ground is sanctified by our presence here as we dedicate this Tree of Hope in witness the divine within each of us.
It replaces a sycamore tree destroyed on September 11th 2001 by the collapsing Towers. Our prayer is that this Ground Zero Tree of Hope will be a sign: a sign of the indomitable nature of human hope. As we walk this hallowed ground, may this Tree be an icon of hope, a symbol.”
The ceremonial planting of the cedar Tree of Hope took place on November 22, 2003. The inaugural lighting ceremony was held the following week.
8. The Ultimate Harbinger Is The Vow
The words of the rulers in the wake of destruction.
Rabbi Cahn continues:
At the end of November of 2003, the tree came down to replace the sycamore. Seven months later, the quarried stone came down on the ruins of Ground Zero…..two months after that was complete, there was a Presidential election and the Democratic candidate for Vice President was John Edwards.
He was speaking in Washington DC at a gathering, it was September 11th, the third anniversary of the devastation. And since it was a prayer breakfast he chose a Scripture which he linked to the events of September 11th. These now are his words on September 11th [of 2004]. Listen: Washington DC.
“Good morning. Today on this day of remembrance and mourning, we have the Lord’s Word: [Listen]
• ‘The bricks have fallen, but we will build - with dressed stones:
• the sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place….’
Of all the thousands of Scriptures he could have chosen, he chose this one obscure verse from Isaiah, which even most Believers don’t know, not realizing what he was saying: it was a Scripture of judgment – marking it, he linked it to September 11th and said that it was the Lord’s Word to us…. not knowing this, [he] then he based the whole speech on this scripture. He goes on to say:
“Let me show you how we are building and putting cedars in those three hallowed places, the Towers, the Pentagon and the Field. Walk with me through this day and you will see that while those bricks fell and the sycamores cut down, our people are making those cedars rise.”
And he closed with,
“Each time that bell tolls it calls us to a greater purpose. To never forget: it calls us to always remember that when we walk together this day that the cedars will rise and the stones will go up.”
