I'm about 80 pages into "The Harbinger" by Jonathan Cahn.
I am seriously debating whether I want to invest the time to finish. It is that uninteresting. I'm surprised by this because of all the lauding praise I've seen heaped on this book. But it just isn't doing anything for me.
The premise of the book is that the events that led to God's judgment of the ancient nation of Israel are being replayed in America, and that examining Isaiah (and theological "commentary" about Isaiah), we can draw specific parallels. The book attempts to draw a hard-line to those parallels - as if the events in ancient Israel are actually a biblical message to the United States of America specifically.
So far there are three characters: The main character; the prophet from whom he receives insight into the harbingers; and the publisher to whom the main character is relaying his encounters with the prophet. I see no sign that the character list is going to expand.
The entire book is dialogue between the main character and the prophet, or the main character and the publisher.
In a good book, the characters and the dialogue serve the story. In this book, the characters serve the dialogue, and the dialogue IS the story. There is no reason for the characters to exist except to speak for the author. The author's voice is the only voice you hear, regardless of which of the three characters is speaking. The main character exists to ask questions of the prophet and answer questions of the reporter. The prophet exists to painstakingly and annoyingly lead the main character the long-way around to the answers. The publisher exists to listen to the main character recount his encounters with the prophet. It's so ass-backwards that it comes across as amateurish in every way.
The author didn't need to make his correlations through storytelling. Rather than drawing out the storytelling, transparently making the reader wait for the "suspense" of the big reveals to play out in dialogue, the author should have just spoken for himself, and made the correlations as the author presenting documentary evidence.
... except that there is no evidence. The correlations that Cahn draws between ancient Israel and the United States are akin to reading a horoscope and shoehorning your own life into what it says. And the correlations that have taken me 80 pages of uninspiring reading to wade through could have been made more effectively in about 4 or 5 pages of straightforward analysis.
I have no problem with the notion that the Bible has many things to say about the United States insofar as the bible speaks to all men and all nations. But the lengths this author goes to to convince the reader that the bible contains specific warnings meant only for the United States does not even rise to the level of specious. It's just incredible - literally incredible.
I may finish it just to see if my opinion stays the same as the "harbingers" become more profound as they are revealed. But so far, there is no profundity. Only pablum and wasted time.