THE LAST PART ON WHICH BIBLE IS RIGHT Lindsey may also be a popular writer because his tends to revise his predictions in the light of changing world events. Without carefully comparing each of his books, one would not necessarily realise that The Final Battle (1994) is a revision of The Late Great Planet Earth (1970); Apocalypse Code (1997) is a revision of There’s a New World Coming (1973); and Planet Earth 2000 A.D. (1994, & 1996) are both revisions of The 1980’s Countdown to Armageddon (1980). Planet Earth: The Final Chapter (1998) is the latest, but probably not the final, version in the ‘Planet Earth’ series. A good example of Lindseys prophetic revisionism concerns the future of the United States. In Planet Earth 2000 A.D. (1994) Lindsey specifically draws attention to a prophecy made in The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) as evidence of his prophetic accuracy. A comparison, however, shows that he has edited out his prediction of Communist subversion which did not occur. The Late Great Planet Earth Planet Earth 2000 A. D. The United States will not hold its present position of leadership in the western world; financially, the future leader will be Western Europe. Internal political chaos caused by student rebellion and Communist subversion will begin to erode the economy of our nation. Lack of moral principle by citizens and leaders will so weaken law and order that a state of anarchy will finally result. The military capability of the United States, though it is at present the most powerful in the world, has already been neutralized because no one has the courage to use it decisively. When the economy collapses so will the military.[[72]] The United States will not hold its present position of leadership in the western world, I wrote in The Late Great Planet Earth. Lack of moral principle by citizens and leaders will so weaken law and order that a state of anarchy will finally result. The military capability of the United States, though it is at present the most powerful in the world, has already been neutralized because no one has the courage to use it decisively. When the economy collapses so will the military. Remember folks, these words were written in 1969, not the 1990s![[73]] Lindseys particular kind of reading of history, coloured by an imaginative exegesis of selected biblical scriptures, is dogmatic, dualistic and highly speculative. The titles of Lindsey’s books show an increasingly exaggerated and almost pathological emphasis on the apocalyptic, on death and suffering.[[74]] In each Lindsey insists that biblical prophecy is being fulfilled, uniquely, in this generation and signals the imminent destruction of the world. We are the generation the prophets were talking about. We have witnessed biblical prophecies come true. The birth of Israel. The decline in American power and morality. The rise of Russian and Chinese might. The threat of war in the Middle East. The increase of earthquakes, volcanoes, famine and drought. The Bible foretells the signs that precede Armageddon... We are the generation that will see the end times ...and the return of Jesus.[[75]] Lindseys last but one book, The Final Battle, includes the statement on the cover: Never before, in one book, has there been such a complete and detailed look at the events leading up to The Battle of Armageddon.[[76]] Lindsey claims that the world is degenerating and that the forces of evil manifest in godless Communism and militant Islam are the real enemies of Israel. He describes in detail the events leading to the great battle at Megiddo between the massive Russian, Chinese and African armies that will attempt but fail to destroy Israel. He offers illustrated plans showing future military movements of armies and naval convoys leading up to the battle of Armageddon.[[77]] These will merely hasten the return of Jesus Christ as King of the Jews who will rule over the nations from the rebuilt Jewish temple in Jerusalem.[[78]] Obstacle or no obstacle, it is certain that the Temple will be rebuilt. Prophecy demands it... With the Jewish nation reborn in the land of Palestine, ancient Jerusalem once again under total Jewish control for the first time in 2600 years, and talk of rebuilding the great Temple, the most important sign of Jesus Christ’s soon coming is before us... It is like the key piece of a jigsaw puzzle being found... For all those who trust in Jesus Christ, it is a time of electrifying excitement.[[79]] Acknowledging that the Islamic world will not tolerate such a scenario, Lindsey graphically predicts the effect of a world-wide nuclear holocaust centred on Jerusalem, with the 200 mile valley from the Sea of Galilee to Eilat flowing with irradiated blood several feet deep.[[80]] ...only a tiny fraction of the world’s population will be left. Only a remnant will have survived. Many of the Jews would have been killed.[[81]] In The Final Battle, Lindsey claims, The Jewish state will be brought to the brink of destruction.[[82]] The land of Israel and the surrounding area will certainly be targeted for nuclear attack. Iran and all the Muslim nations around Israel have already been targeted with Israeli nukes... Zechariah gives an unusual, detailed account of how hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the Israel battle zone will die. Their flesh will be consumed from their bones, their eyes from their sockets, and their tongues from their mouths while they stand on their feet (Zechariah 14:12)... But Gods power is certainly stronger than any nuclear bomb... We do know God will supernaturally strengthen and protect the believing Israelites so that they will survive the worst holocaust the world will ever see. Amen.[[83]] Lindsey’s most controversial book is undoubtedly Road to Holocaust. In it, like Darby, he makes eschatology a test of orthodoxy.[[84]] He accuses those who refuse to accept dispensationalism’s distinction between the Church and Israel of encouraging anti-Semitism since they apparently deny any future role for the State of Israel within the purposes of God. This is, he claims, ...the same error that founded the legacy of contempt for the Jews and ultimately led to the Holocaust of Nazi Germany.[[85]] The purpose of this book is to warn about a rapidly expanding new movement in the Church that is subtly introducing the same errors that eventually and inevitably led to centuries of atrocities against the Jews and culminated in the Holocaust of the Third Reich... They are setting up a philosophical system that will result in anti-Semitism.[[86]] Through his many books, his International Intelligence Briefing[[87]], a monthly Middle East political journal, together with weekly television Prophecy Watch programmes, Lindsey has encouraged evangelicals and fundamentalists to support Israels right-wing Zionist agenda. Yet there is great irony here for Lindsey claims to support Israel and to refute anti-Semitism yet his ‘Armageddon’ style theology’[[88]] may actually be a self-fulfilling prophecy - leading to the very holocaust which he abhors yet repeatedly predicts. THE INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN EMBASSY, JERUSALEM From its foundation in 1980 the charter of the ICEJ has been to ‘comfort’ Israel. This has been defined as encouraging and facilitating the restoration of the Jews to Eretz Israel although the geographical extent of greater Israel is not always made clear. The embassy believes that God wants us to stimulate, encourage, and inspire Christians amongst the many nations concerning their role and task in the restoration of Israel. The Bible says that the destiny of nations, Christians, and even that of the church is linked to the way in which these groups respond to this restoration.[[89]] Those who founded the ICEJ were drawn from Western evangelical, fundamentalist and charismatic circles. According to Don Wagner, virtually the entire ICEJ leadership are dispensationalists, who, like Darby, Scofield and Lindsey, believe that the restoration of the Jews to Israel and the contemporary State of Israel is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy.[[90]] In 1985, Johann Luckoff, the director of ICEJ wrote, The return to Zion from exile a second time (Isa. 11:11) is a living testimony to God’s faithfulness and his enduring covenant with the Jewish people.[[91]] With an international staff of 50 and representatives in over 80 countries, the ICEJ has gained significant status within Jewish political circles for its lobbying of foreign governments on behalf of Israel. Based on its dispensational convictions, the ICEJ sponsors an annual Feast of Tabernacles celebration attended by around 5,000 Christian Zionists from over 70 nations. Every Israeli Prime Minister since 1980 has attended and addressed their celebration. They proudly record the testimonials of many Jewish political and religious leaders. For example, Yitzhak Rabin said: Allow me to tell you how much I, and Israel, appreciate your [presence] here in Jerusalem, especially during these difficult days. Israel has experienced through her existence many difficulties. Therefore, whenever we see people that care, that are involved, and who show this by deeds, and by words - we appreciate this.[[92]] ICEJ claim that their Feast of Tabernacle celebration is the largest single annual tourist event in Israel. In 1996, in rebutting criticism of their theological position, the ICEJ repudiated those who refused to acknowledge the central place of Israel within God’s continuing purposes: While Gentile believers have been grafted into that household of faith which is of Abraham (the commonwealth of Israel), replacement theology within the Christian faith, which does not recognize the ongoing biblical purposes for Israel and the Jewish People, is doctrinal error.[[93]] The ICEJ emphasises that contemporary events are the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy concerning Israel. They distinguish the Church from Israel, speaking in 1993 of “the former and latter rains”[[94]]. Whereas the New Testament emphasises in Ephesians 2:14 that Jesus Christ has “made the two one” so that, according to Galatians 3:28, in Christ there is now “neither Jew nor Greek”, the ICEJ insist on maintaining a distinction and superior status for those of Jewish ethnic descent who remain, even apart from faith in Jesus Christ, the chosen people, “His Jewish sons and daughters.”[[95]] In 1993 they claimed: In no uncertain terms God has made known His intention to regather the scattered Jewish people and to plant them in the land with His “whole heart and soul” (Jeremiah 32:41). We believe that in the present massive wave of Soviet Jewish immigration to Israel (almost 400,000 since September 1989), the world is witnessing one of the most startling prophetic fulfilments of our time - one that should deeply touch the heart of every Bible-believing Christian and provoke him to action. Since its inception in 1980 the vision for the release of Soviet Jewry has been a vital aspect of the work of the ICEJ. Along with a growing number of Christians internationally, we have seen the Soviet Jewry issue as pivotal in God’s unfolding plan for Israel and the nations... It is an amazing fact that God, through His prophets, long ago ordained that He would use Gentiles to bring back His Jewish sons and daughters.[[96]] The ICEJ have taken their religio-political hermeneutic somewhat further than most dispensationalists and effectively reinterpreted the Great Commission. In place of proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ which is according to Romans 1:16 and 2:9-10, ‘to the Jew first’, they have substituted a social gospel serving the expansionist political agenda of the modern state of Israel. In the same sense that the first apostles were commissioned by the Lord to be his witnesses from Jerusalem to the uttermost parts of the earth, we also feel compelled to proclaim the word of Israel’s restoration, and the Christian’s response to it, to every country and in every place where there are believers.[[97]] The ICEJ has repeatedly identified uncritically and unconditionally with the position of the right wing of the Likud party, using the Bible to defend Israel’s military settlement and colonisation of Syria’s Golan Heights and the Occupied Territories despite international criticism. The ICEJ has also remained implacably opposed to the aspirations of the Palestinians for political autonomy, a shared Jerusalem, or the right of return for refugees who have lost their property and land through war or confiscation. Not surprisingly, the ICEJ is repudiated by the indigenous Christian Palestinian community, its theology regarded as nothing less than apostasy,[[98]] and “an anachronistic return to the Judaizing tendency the early church rejected at the first ecumenical council, recorded in Acts 15.”DIVERSITY AND CONTRADICTION WITHIN CONTEMPORARY DISPENSATIONALISM A new generation of younger dispensationalists among the faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary have attempted to redefine their movement as progressive dispensationalism.[[100]] Perhaps sensitive to criticisms of classical dispensationalism, they distance themselves from what they regard as the naïveté of the founders vision,[[101]] distinguishing the classical dispensationalism of Chafer and Ryrie[[102]] from Scofieldism,[[103]] as well as from the popular apocalyptism of Lindseyism.[[104]] They regard themselves as less land centred and less future centred.[[105]] Classical dispensationalism, however, remains strong within conservative circles. Ryrie is sceptical of these recent developments, and their attempt at any revisionism. He describes the position of theologians such as Blaising and Bock as neo-dispensationalist and holding to what he terms a slippery hermeneutic.[[106]] Ryrie also distinguishes what he terms normative dispensationalism from Ultradispensationalism. This latter tendency is rooted in the teaching of Ethelbert W. Bullinger (1837-1913) and his successor Charles H. Welch, who, according to Ryrie, have merely carried dispensationalism to its logical extremes. Ultradispensationalists hold for instance, that the Church did not begin at Pentecost but in Acts 28 when Israel was set aside; the Great Commission of Matthew and Mark is Jewish and therefore not for the Church; the Gospels and Acts describe the dispensation of the law; only the Pauline prison epistles, that is Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians, relate to the Church age; water baptism is not for the Church age; and Israel, not the Church, is the Bride of Christ.[[107]] Their teachings are perpetuated today by the Berean Bible Society, Berean Expositor and Berean Publishing Trust.[[108]] Like Hal Lindsey, other contemporary dispensationalist writers appear to compete with one another to present the most accurate and timely interpretation of contemporary events as they unfold. We close by noting five key writers in this vein. Billy Grahams father-in-law, Nelson Bell, the editor of the prestigious and authoritative mouthpiece of conservative Evangelicalism, Christianity Today, appeared to express the sentiments of many American Evangelicals when, in an editorial in 1967 he wrote: That for the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews gives a student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.[[109]] Charles Dyer, professor of Bible exposition at Dallas Theological Seminary, in his book, The Rise of Babylon, includes photographs allegedly showing Saddam Hussein’s reconstruction of Babylon to the same specifications and splendour as Nebuchadnezzar.[[110]] Dyer warns that this is evidence that Hussein plans to repeat Nebuchadnezzars conquest of Israel, the only Arab ever to have done so. The Middle East is the worlds time bomb, and Babylon is the fuse that will ignite the events of the end times.[[111]] John Walvoord, professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology and Chancellor of Dallas Theological Seminary, as well as the author of the million copy best-seller, Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis,[[112]] writes in an earlier book Israel in Prophecy: In the present world scene there are many indications pointing to the conclusion that the end of the age may soon be upon us... In this generation. Never before in the history of the world has there been a confluence of major evidences of preparation for the end.[[113]] In their provocatively titled book, Ready to Rebuild which is about the Imminent Plan to rebuild the Last Days Temple, Randall Price and Thomas Ice summarise the theological perspective of contemporary dispensationalism toward Israel and the future. After centuries of persecution and dispersion, Jews are back in their land and pursuing the rebuilding of the Temple with increasing fervor. This fascinating, fast-moving overview of contemporary events shows why the Temple is significant in Bible prophecy and how, more than ever, Israel is ready to rebuild.[[114]] Lastly, Mike Evans, founder and president of Lovers of Israel Inc., offers biblical justification for the continuation of American support for Israel. In his book, Israel, Americas Key to Survival, he writes: Only one nation, Israel, stands between Soviet-sponsored terrorist aggression and the complete decline of the United States as a democratic world power... Surely demonic pressure will endeavour to encourage her to betray Israel. This must not happen. Israel is the key to Americas survival. For God has said of the nations who will oppose Israel, Yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted... I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curseth thee...(Isa.60:12; Gen. 12:3)... As we stand with Israel, I believe we shall see God perform a mighty work in our day. God is going to bless America and Israel as well. It is not too late. I believe this is the greatest hour to be alive, and the key is unity, standing tall, proclaiming with a voice of love our commitment to the House of Israel, and to the God of Israel.[[115]] C O N C L U S I O N Karen Armstrong is not alone in tracing within dispensationalism evidence of the legacy of the Crusades. They have, she claims, returned to a classical and extreme religious crusading.[[116]] Rosemary Radford Ruether also sees the danger of this kind of fundamentalism in its, dualistic, Manichaean view of global politics - America and Israel together against an evil world.[[117]] Kenneth Cragg comments satirically, It is so; God chose the Jews; the land is theirs by divine gift. These dicta cannot be questioned or resisted. They are final. Such verdicts come infallibly from Christian biblicists for whom Israel can do no wrong-thus fortified. But can such positivism, this unquestioning finality, be compatible with the integrity of the prophets themselves? It certainly cannot square with the open peoplehood under God which is the crux of New Testament faith. Nor can it well be reconciled with the ethical demands central to law and election alike... Chosenness cannot properly be either an ethnic exclusivism or a political facility.[[118]] The Middle East Council of Churches which represents the indigenous and ancient Oriental and Eastern Churches, has also been highly critical of the activities of dispensationalists. [They] ...force the Zionist model of theocratic and ethnocentric nationalism on the Middle East... [rejecting]... the movement of Christian unity and inter-religious understanding which is promoted by the churches in the region. The Christian Zionist programme, with its elevation of modern political Zionism, provides the Christian with a world view where the gospel is identified with the ideology of success and militarism. It places its emphasis on events leading up to the end of history rather than living Christs love and justice today.[[119]] Clarence Bass makes this assessment of dispensationalism. No part of historic Christian doctrine supports this radical distinction between church and kingdom. To be sure they are not identical; but dispensationalism has added the idea that the kingdom was to be a restoration of Israel, not a consummation of the church... In the light of this principle, it is legitimate to ask whether dispensationalism is not orientated more from the Abrahamic Covenant than from the Cross. Is not its focus centred more on the Jewish kingdom than on the Body of Christ? Does it not interpret the New Testament in the light of Old Testament prophecies, instead of interpreting those prophecies in the light of the more complete revelation of the New Testament?[[120]] Whether intentionally or otherwise, dispensationalism is being used today to give theological justification to what the United Nations regards as racism[[121]] and the denial of basic human rights; supporting the ethnic-cleansing of Palestinians from their historic lands; endorsing the building of Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories; inciting religious fanaticism by supporting the rebuilding of a Jewish Temple on Mount Moriah; dismissing moderate Jewish opinion willing to negotiate land for peace; and advocating an apocalyptic eschatology likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is therefore not surprising that among the indigenous Christians of the Holy Land especially, dispensationalism is regarded as a dangerous heresy, an unwelcome and alien intrusion, advocating an exclusive Jewish political agenda and undermining the genuine ministry of justice, peace and reconciliation in the Middle East. 12 December 2000 - Rev. Steven Sizer MORE ON PART THREE
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 06:09:06 +0000
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