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In a previous post, we saw how [Michael] Horton exegetically blundered in asserting that "In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus clearly abrogated the ceremonial and civil law that God had given uniquely to the nation of Israel." Horton is at again. This time he writes: In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus announces a “regime change” from the civil laws of the theocracy. This kind of interpretation of the text (I hate to call it exegesis) demonstrates that Horton still does not understand the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount was not about regime change. The...

Christian parents wonder today why the majority of their children today leave the church when they become teenagers and never come back. I’ll tell you why. A big part is due to the nonsensical hounding upon Rapture and End Times by most Christian pastors, teachers, and parents. You’ve heard the phrase, “The economy, stupid.” The modern Christian equivalent should be “The eschatology, stupid.” Your eschatology matters. What you believe about the future will determine much of how you live your life, and will affect much of your character. In times of crisis, this truth is magnified. True believers will take...

All of the following material is from Rev. Fred Klett who in turn cites other Reformed sources or authors. The Westminster Larger Catechism on the Jewish people: Has God promised anything regarding ethnic Israel? Good people are on all sides of this hotly debated topic. Among Reformed folk there are many points of view. Great men like Puritan John Owen spoke of the revival of the Jewish people and their restoration to the land. Others see the Jewish people as simply one of the peoples of the earth, certainly with a special history. What are the implications of the fact...

"This scheme has two returns of Jesus at the end of the times: one ... just for his saints and then his final return after the tribulation," Sproul summed up. Disagreeing with this view, Sproul pointed to the imagery that the Apostle Paul used in his account of the rapture in the NT book of 1 Thessalonians. "The whole point of the imagery here echoes and reflects something that was commonplace in the contemporary world in which Paul wrote – namely, the pattern and practice of the triumphal return to Rome of the Roman armies," the Reformed theologian stated. After...

On December 31, 1979, Smith told those who had gathered on the last day of that year that the rapture would take place before the end of 1981. He went on to say that because of ozone depletion Revelation 16:8 would be fulfilled during the tribulation period: “And the fourth angel poured out his bowl upon the sun; and it was given to it to scorch men with fire.” In addition, Halley’s Comet would pass near earth in 1986 and would wreak havoc on those left behind as debris from its million-mile-long tail pummeled the planet.[5] Here’s how Smith explained...

One of the key passages regarding the second coming of Christ is found in 2 Peter 3:1-18 (the entirety of chapter 3 of 2 Peter). First, let me provide you with the text of the chapter, and then my commentary on it. 2 Peter 3:1-18 This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: that ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour: knowing this first, that...

How is it possible that most evangelical critics of Harold Camping are more dangerous than the failed prognosticator? For the simple reason that it’s no longer May 21, 2011, and Harold Camping will be relegated to the dust bin of prophetic history, but prophecy prognosticators will continue to abound by claiming that Jesus is still coming “soon” even if we don’t know the “day and hour.” In nearly every article I’ve read by evangelicals denouncing Camping, they still claim that all the signs are in place for Jesus’ “soon” return. Here are some examples: Even though Tim LaHaye denounced Camping’s...

In a previous partial review of Michael Horton’s The Gospel Commission: Recovering God’s Strategy for Making Disciples, I began documenting some of his duplicities in regard to the Lordship of Christ and the meaning of the subject matter of that book. I mentioned how clearly he writes of Christ’s all-encompassing power early in the book, but then spends the rest of the book qualifying it to death. … In order to escape the meaning of Jesus’ claim to “All power in heaven and on earth,” Horton simply relegates the application of this power to a future dispensation. Much like dispensationalists,...

For nearly two centuries, prophecy writers have been predicting the near end based on certain prophetic passages. They all use the same passages! The only things that change are world events and newspaper headlines. We only have to go back to 1970 to Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth to see how popular date-setting has been. Readers were told that Israel becoming a nation again in 1948 was prophetically significant. The prophetic countdown began based on Lindsey’s claim that a “rapture” of the church would take place within 40 years (the length of a biblical generation) and the fulfillment...

I have to say I am greatly impressed by at least one part of a paragraph in Dr. Michael Horton’s new book The Gospel Commission: Recovering God’s Strategy for Making Disciples. He begins his chapters with the important recognition that Jesus’ great commission to the disciples (Matt. 28:18–20) begins with an equally great announcement—an announcement we here at American Vision have emphasized many times: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (28:18). ... As initially enthused, however, it was with equally deep disappointment that I read on as Dr. Horton spent the rest of his...

This tyranny of the immediate has even impacted the Roman church. For all of the rhetoric about Rome being Rome and never changing, the fast-tracking of John Paul II to sainthood, along with said late Pontiff's own predilection for making saints as often as some of us order take-out pizzas, would seem to indicate a certain affinity with the need for immediate gratification or significance that is such a part of modern consumerist life. Rome has in many ways led the way on the personality cult of the contemporary church rather than resisted it. That it does it with more...

That is exactly what postmillennialism believes about the victory of the Gospel. History will see the progressive triumph of the Gospel not only over individuals, families and churches, but also over nations, cultures, and governments. Nation after nation will submit to Christ; they will change their customs, mores, and legal systems to reflect the Law of God. More and more the Gospel will change the hearts of men but also their institutions and their societies; more and more the Biblical worldview will become the operational worldview for the powers and authorities in the land. The church will experience its ups...

Joel Richardson believes the Bible teaches “that the biblical Antichrist is one and the same as the Quran’s Muslim Mahdi.”[1] As I mentioned in a previous article, there’s nothing new about making Islam the end-time bad guy when it comes to prophetic speculation. It has a long history, something Mr. Richardson seems not to be aware of or, if he does know about it, he’s not telling his readers. Francis X. Gumerlock makes this historical observation about Islam and end-time conjecture: In A.D. 637, the Moslems captured Jerusalem, and soon afterward built a mosque on the Temple Mount. One chronicler...

Like [Hal] Lindsey and many who preceded and followed him in pronouncing their generation as “terminal,” [Jeff] Lasseigne is constrained by his dispensational hermeneutic to offer a worldview that is really an “upper-world worldview”: Or as John MacArthur said, “Man’s efforts to bring about a better world . . . amount to little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic to give everyone a better view as the ship sinks” (196).[3] The “rapture” has been a convenient escape hatch for Christians. When times worsened, the “rapture” was preached with great vitality. Millions were assured that before all hell...

Michael Horton is Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary in Escondido, California. He has written a number of popular books on a variety of subjects. His latest book is The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way published by Zondervan in 2011[1]. Horton promotes a two-kingdom worldview that is similar to the cultural and civil quietism found in Lutheran theology. P. Andrew Sandlin offers this short analysis of the cultural and political consequences of the view: Unlike the Reformed tradition [of which Horton claims to be an advocate], the Lutheran alternative has consistently maintained...

Nobel Prize winning Biochemist Christian de Duve, a professor emeritus at New York City’s Rockefeller University and 1974 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, warns that “natural selection has resulted in traits such as group selfishness being coded in our genes. These were useful to our ancestors under the conditions in which they lived, but have become noxious to us today.” Rape and killing the weak were also useful, and with no God, perfectly “moral.” ... It’s humorous to watch atheists try to build a case for a moral universe without God. The latest popular attempt is...

I applied for a free prophecy through his site and was told “Thank you for connecting with the Master Prophet and requesting your free prophecy. You will receive a letter from me within the next 7 days, containing your personal prophetic word as spoken to me by the Holy Spirit. God Bless You.” I suppose my prophecy will show up next week. If what I hear is to be believed, he will soon be looking for several hundred dollars for any further personalized prophecies. ... So all-in-all, it seems that Jordan is just another in a seemingly endless line of...

I think believing that the Antichrist is Muslim can be a big danger and a trap because I believe the real Antichrist comes into power through the wars against Islamic fundamentalism. So those who fall into the trap of making an Islamic Beast might actually help create the platform for the Western Beast Antichrist to stand on and rise to power and take over the world as the world’s savior from Islam.

Who would have thought that the Berlin Wall would come down, or the Soviet Union would collapse, or atheistic Romania and other Eastern Bloc countries would break free from the Soviet orbit? The question is, What will fill the vacuum? If Christians aren’t ready to lead in this area, then we’re going to have years of unrest. Until Christians engage the culture in a comprehensive way with the “whole purpose God” (Acts 20:27) all we’re going to see in the next few decades is hand wringing. We need a new generation of the “sons of Isaachar,” “men who understood the...

I’m beginning to see that prophetic speculation is taking place on the fringes of the Christian publishing industry. Of course, you will still find the occasional prophetic pot-boiler. Mark Hitchcock writes a couple of prophecy books a year. They are mostly exercises in “newspaper exegesis,” driven more by current events than the Bible. Consider these three, all to be published in 2009: The Late Great United States (Multnomah), 2012, the Bible, and the End of the World (Harvest House), and Cashless: Bible Prophecy, Economic Chaos, and the Future Financial Order (Harvest House). How do you go from The Late Great...