Sam Kestenbaum and Andrew White

“Some of you have been saying you want to live in biblical times,” Cahn said, pacing behind a lectern. Then he spread his hands wide. “Well, you are.”

Sitting at the end of a sleepy drive an hour from New York City, Beth Israel may look like any common suburban church. But the center has a highly unusual draw. Every weekend, some 1,000 congregants gather for the idiosyncratic teachings of the church’s celebrity pastor, an entrepreneurial doomsday prophet who claims President Donald Trump’s rise to power was foretold in the Bible.

Cahn is tapping into a belief more popular than may appear.

A recent Fox News poll found 1 in 4 Americans believe “God wanted Donald Trump to become president.” Celebrities like televangelist Paula White and Franklin Graham have boosted the idea. The president’s own press secretary suggested as much in a January interview. And on the opening day of the Conservative Political Action Conference this month, millionaire businessman Michael Lindell took to the stage and declared Trump “chosen by God.”

He has dedicated an entire book to this very thesis, an insight he claims to have received from God. “The Paradigm: The Ancient Blueprint That Holds the Mystery of Our Times,” in fact, is only the most recent installment of a best-selling series dealing with the supposed mystical meaning behind all manner of current events. In it, Cahn likens Trump to the biblical king Jehu, who led the ancient nation of Israel away from idolatry.

With his growing stature, Cahn is also a rising figure in some quarters of conservative politics. In an email to congregants, Cahn shared his latest good news: This weekend, he is making his first trip to the president’s vacation retreat, Mar-a-Lago. He is set to address a small gathering of activists and advisers.

After worship on a recent Sunday, in a roped-off section flanked by security guards, Cahn signed piles of his books before a small crowd. At 59, Cahn cultivates a refined demeanor, rarely appearing without a signature all-black suit and tie. He laid his hands gently on one man’s shoulders and offered quiet counsel. “Be patient,” he said. “Keep praying for breakthrough.”

Gail Greenholtz, an elder member, stood near the end of the line. “Many of us consider him a prophet of our time,” she said. “A visionary.”

Michael Cooney, 58, had driven an hour to hear the pastor teach on politics and prophecy. “It’s all relevant for this moment,” he said. “He shows us that Trump was actually in the Bible.”

Central to Beth Israel’s story is the unlikely rise of its pastor, a liberal Jew transformed into an end-times evangelist. The tale is also a step into a controversial and burgeoning layer of American religion, where commerce, supernatural belief and patriotism blend freely. Daniel Silliman, a Valparaiso University professor of religion, called Beth Israel and its pastor part of a long tradition of Americans “looking to prophecy as a way to absorb the chaos” of current events. “It can make someone feel that God is working through human history,” he said, “transforming anxiety into a sense of fullness.”

The son of a Holocaust refugee, Cahn was raised in a nominally Jewish family in the New York suburbs. But from an early age, he was drawn to the more esoteric corners of belief.

He devoured the writings of Nostradamus, the Virginia psychic Edgar Cayce and far-out conspiracy theories about ancient astronauts. Cahn soon stumbled on “The Late Great Planet Earth,” the 1970s best-seller that argued doomsday prophecies of the Bible were playing out with events like the Cold War and Israel’s Six-Day War. Cahn bought the book thinking it was about UFOs; instead he was given a crash-course in Christian eschatology.

“I was just floored,” Cahn said. On his 20th birthday, after a near-death experience — and to the dismay of his Jewish father — he became a Christian.

By the 1980s, Cahn was leading outreach for a hippy-style church in New Jersey. His hair and beard grown shaggy, he led services with a guitar slung around his neck. Cahn later broke off to lead an independent congregation, Beth Israel, and built his following through a slot on Christian radio, where his messages took on an end-times flavor.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks struck Manhattan, Cahn adopted a sharp, even more apocalyptic focus.

In sermons, he began comparing the attacks to the ancient warnings of the Bible, drawing largely from the book of Isaiah, where God vows to punish the disobedient nation of Israel.

Cahn said abortion, gay rights and the perceived retreat of religion in the public square were all troubling signs that America, like ancient Israel, had lost its way.

Once rolling with this comparison, Cahn began seeing patterns everywhere. As the Israelites turned away from their God, they were attacked by Assyrians; America, in modern times, was also attacked by a foreign army from the East, al-Qaida terrorists. After the ancient siege, the Israelites vowed to replant a destroyed sycamore grove with new trees; near ground zero, a huge sycamore tree was also destroyed, as the towers fell.

The supposed connections go on. Tenuous as they may seem, Cahn saw the links as compelling. His flock did, too. “God revealed patterns,” he said. “I called it the download process.”

Cahn eventually turned his thesis into a full-length book, “The Harbinger,” in 2012, put out by the publishing arm of the powerhouse Charisma Media, a Christian multimedia company that also runs a daily news site. The book climbed up best-seller lists and hovered there for months, alongside blockbusters like “Fifty Shades of Grey.” He followed his debut with a companion edition and three other titles, all embellishing on the same theme of prophecies replaying today.

“None of us knew it would be so successful,” Cahn said. “It was the Lord’s hand, I believe that.”

A charismatic preacher inveighing against imminent devastation is nothing new. America has long been fertile ground for would-be doomsday prophets, stretching back centuries.

Matthew Sutton, a professor of history at Washington State University andthe author of “American Apocalypse,” said Cahn fits a unique American mold. “In key historical moments, religious figures like this find a way to step in,” Sutton said. “They draw from apocalyptic theology and say, ‘We have this secret knowledge and can explain what’s going on.’ It fosters this sense that God’s judgment is hanging over your head.”

Among several of Cahn’s recent predecessors of this ilk would be televangelists like Christians United for Israel founder John Hagee, whose books include “Can America Survive?,” and Jim Bakker, the controversy-prone preacher who now hosts an end-times TV program and sells disaster survival products.

Cahn brings the tradition fully into the social-media age: Many of his fans first saw him on Facebook; hundreds of posts and reposts of his sermons are uploaded on YouTube, slipped into the corners of the web where esoteric religion and conspiracy theories overlap.

Into this mix came Cahn’s latest book, “The Paradigm,” which could be his most polarizing, tying his prophetic work to the election of Trump.

The book, published in the months after Trump’s win, again likens the United States to the ancient nation of Israel — two peoples, Cahn says, who have a unique relationship with God. He then argues that all sorts of figures in contemporary politics have biblical counterparts. Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, for example, are the modern-day analogues to wicked Ahab and Jezebel. Trump is the warrior-king Jehu, who took control of the nation and cast idols out of the capital. “Jehu also sought to drain the swamp,” Cahn said.

Trump, “like his ancient predecessor,” Cahn writes in his book, was a “flawed vessel” being used by God. “The unlikely and controversial warrior was destined to become the new ruler of the land,” Cahn goes on. “The template would ordain that Donald Trump would become the next president.”

Pointing to Trump’s possible rollback of abortion rights, appointment of conservative Supreme Court judges and the move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, Cahn casts Trump as a heroic figure. “Trump is offering us a window for revival, a window to return to God,” Cahn said. “What happened in the election was not about Trump but about something much higher, the purposes of God.”

Cahn has promoted his work aggressively in Christian media, appearing regularly on “The Jim Bakker Show,” “Sid Roth’s It’s Supernatural!” and “The 700 Club,” where he draws upon his Jewish background, using the title of rabbi or wrapping himself in a prayer shawl emblazoned with the Beth Israel logo.

He also has political aspirations. Cahn speaks at events in Washington alongside conservative standard-bearers like Michele Bachmann and James Dobson, where his portrayal of America as a cultural battleground falls on sympathetic ears. In 2016, he even addressed a United Nations gathering. Mike Huckabee, the Fox News commentator and former governor of Arkansas, once introduced Cahn as “soul-stirring and stunning, spellbinding.”

Cahn likes to say he is surprised by his own success, preferring supernatural explanations. When speaking, he begins slowly, but picks up pace, almost falling over his words with excitement. He also has a flair for the theatrical tale. Lounging in a back office at the church, surrounded by framed paintings of biblical landscapes, he sprinkled enchanted anecdotes in conversation.

How did he raise money for his first church? “A mysterious American Indian appeared with a check for $150,000. They called him Wahoo. God instructed him to come to me.”

How were his books received? “With the first book, a hurricane flooded our building. For the release day of the new one, my appendix exploded. People called it spiritual warfare.”

He even presents his family life in magical terms. He has three children and describes his relationship to his Brazilian wife, Renata, as a “supernatural love story.”

As Cahn’s star was rising, Beth Israel also mushroomed in size. The congregation more than tripled over the years and outgrew its humble perch in Bergen County.

In 2008, Beth Israel moved to a cavernous old department store a half-hour away and remodeled the building to resemble the white-stoned city of ancient Jerusalem, recasting the drab industrial structure as a mystical suburban barracks. In the parking lot, massive Israeli and American flags billow in the breeze.

Beth Israel draws from the Charismatic movement, which has roots in Pentecostalism, and also incorporates elements of Messianic Judaism. Congregants alternate between calling Cahn their pastor or rabbi, and their place of worship a church or synagogue.

Services are also held on Friday evenings, at the start of the Jewish Sabbath, and Cahn arrives to the building just moments before worship begins. By the time he bursts on stage with a headset microphone, the crowd is fully primed. A dance troupe of women, dressed in red and waving scarfs, prance nearby as the crowd sways in song.

During a recent evening service, some 500 congregants gathered as helpers lit traditional Shabbat candles near the foot of the stage. Cahn dropped Hebrew into his sermon, and at times, the crowd haltingly joined in to pronounce the foreign words themselves. In a middle row, one elderly woman pulled out a worn Bible with stickered pages, the margins filled with notes from previous lectures.

“There are prophecies around us,” Cahn intoned from the pulpit. “We’re in deep, and we’re going deeper. Open your mind, brace yourself.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, as the church’s growth may have been swift, controversies around the pastor and his flock have also swelled.

Progressive groups, like the website Right Wing Watch, have been tracking Cahn’s rise for years. Others have raised questions about whether his messages about Trump veer from protected religious expression to political endorsement. Churches are unable to participate in political campaigns on behalf of, or in opposition to, candidates; if they do so, they risk losing their tax-exempt status.

Cahn shrugs at the charge. “I don’t tell anyone how to vote,” he said. “I say, ‘You need to consult God, and this is what God says on the issues.'”

After a beat, he added, “They can read between the lines.”

Others object to his claims to divine insight. In particular, Cahn has attracted the attention of a network of Christian critics who see him as part of a growing stream of over-the-top supernaturalism in the church.

Tensions came to a climax in 2015, when Cahn suggested in a book and during several TV appearances that an imminent cataclysm was on the horizon.

Leaning on arcane readings of the early books of the Bible, Cahn said that just as God visited judgments on the wayward Israelites according to a particular seven-year pattern — something called “the shemitah” — modern catastrophes might follow a similar pattern. In 2001 came terrorist attacks, in 2008 there was an economic crash. Cahn asked: could 2015 bring another disaster?

But months passed, and the doomsday date came and went. He was dismissed as a grifter.

One critic likened Cahn's prophecy project to a “fragile house of cards,” set to tumble. A Christian polemics site called Pulpit &amp; Pen denounced Cahn in several posts. J.D. Hall, the site’s founder, called Cahn “the most prominent and successful omen huckster” working today. “Pastors should warn people away from Cahn,” Hall said recently.

Cahn actually grows embarrassed discussing the doomsday fiasco. He insists he has always included disclaimers on his work and never set exact dates. Rather, Cahn wanted to warn that a cataclysm could happen, not that it would. “I always say: You can’t put God in a box.”

Still, he appears to have learned from the brouhaha, growing even more cautious about making prognostications that could fall through.

His latest book, for example, was released only after Trump had taken the White House and is largely backward-looking, giving biblical explanations to current events only after the fact.

He also declined to weigh in on Trump’s 2020 chances. “The Bible doesn’t say one or two terms,” Cahn demurred.

Meanwhile, Cahn's success has come at a private cost he seldom discusses. Though not estranged, his Jewish family never fully knew what to make of his dramatic pastoral turn. They rarely, if ever, visit the church, and he remains troubled by the idea they will not be spiritually saved. “I don’t know where their hearts are at now,” he said. “It’s not something we talk about.”

At times, Cahn appears to be a star in a show that has grown out of his control. Fans may take his project more seriously than he does himself. His debut book was originally billed as a work of fiction, for example, a nuance lost on most readers.

“At first, people started to call me a prophet, and I would stop them and say, ‘No, no,'” he said. “But it always made for an awkward moment.”

Instead, he stopped correcting them. It was just easier. “So, sometimes, I don’t say anything,” Cahn said. “I let it be.”

Still, his book series marches on. The latest installment, titled “The Oracle,” is due in September. Like the others, it concerns biblical prophecies, with Trump again making an appearance.

On a Friday evening this winter, deep into the government shutdown over the border wall, Beth Israel was packed, even though a snowstorm had been forecast. One man plucked a plaintive tune on a guitar as Cahn wound up the service, inviting the crowd to bow their heads. He guided the them in a soothing prayer.

“Close your eyes,” he said. “If you haven’t been born again, today is your day.”

There were murmurs through the room. Cahn concluded and then gently reminded the crowd about the booths in the back. Congregants could buy shawls, jewelry and apocalypse-themed calendars. Books were for sale, he said. New members could even get a gift copy, signed free of charge.

After worship, congregants gathered near the canteen, where steam rose from platters of rice, beans and soup.

Several worshippers described how they once attended other, more mainline churches before discovering Beth Israel. Some still have a home church elsewhere, but come here for a supplemental dose of mysticism. Bob Keene, a 68-year-old school bus driver, described the appeal. “Learning about prophecy puts me at ease,” he said. “The problems I’m having, the things I’m going through, those are also part of God’s plan.”

Roxanne Mangal, a middle-aged woman in a flowery blouse, joined the table. She said the pastor had healed her of a terrible illness. Joining Beth Israel also brought wealth. “My income tripled,” she said. “It quadrupled.”

Now she wanted to show Keene a more recent miracle she’d seen, captured on a cellphone photo, no less. After Trump had moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem — the subject of great excitement at the church — she believed she saw the New York skyline light up in heavenly sparks. “God did that,” she said, thrusting the phone forward.

“Hmm,” Keene said, looking at the photo politely. “I thought it was a sunset at first.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/nyregion/trump-preacher-magachurch.html" id="dfb486ab-e2f7-30b1-ac57-344c4c95e8e1">The New York Times</a>.

On a Sunday morning at Beth Israel Worship Center in Wayne, New Jersey, a bearded pastor named Jonathan Cahn stood on an elevated platform, gazing over a full house. Stage lights shifted from blue to white as the backing band played a drifting melody. Two men hoisted curled rams’ horns and let out long blasts.

Preaching the Gospel According to Trump

<h1>Stage lights shifted from blue to white as the backing band played a drifting melody. Two men hoisted curled rams’ horns and let out long blasts.</h1>

“I was just floored,” Cahn said. On his 20th birthday, to the dismay of his Jewish father, he became a Christian.

“The Paradigm,” published in the months after Trump’s win, again likens the United States to the ancient nation of Israel — two peoples, Cahn says, who have a unique relationship with God. He then argues that all sorts of figures in contemporary politics have biblical counterparts. Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, for example, are the modern-day analogues to wicked Ahab and Jezebel. Trump is the warrior-king Jehu, who took control of the nation and cast idols out of the capital. “Jehu also sought to drain the swamp,” Cahn said.

Some observers object to Cahn's claims to divine insight. In particular, he has attracted the attention of a network of Christian critics who see him as part of a growing stream of over-the-top supernaturalism in the church.

Cahn actually grows embarrassed discussing the doomsday fiasco. He insists he has always included disclaimers on his work and never set exact dates. Rather, Cahn wanted to warn that a cataclysm could happen, not that it would. “I always say: You can’t put God in a box.”

And Cahn’s admirers remain true. On a Friday evening this winter, Beth Israel was packed, even though a snowstorm had been forecast.

Roxanne Mangal, a middle-aged woman in a flowery blouse, said Cahn had healed her of a terrible illness. Joining Beth Israel also brought wealth. “My income tripled,” she said. “It quadrupled.”

On a Sunday morning at Beth Israel Worship Center in Wayne, New Jersey, a bearded pastor named Jonathan Cahn stood on an elevated platform, gazing over a full house.

Preaching the gospel according to Trump

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Sam Kestenbaum and Andrew White

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Preaching the Gospel According to Trump

Preaching the gospel according to Trump