[Tim Long]

"Given the 12-year gap, we are somewhere between four years before and eight years into Hosea's Third Day."

He lost me here. How did he get these dates?

[balch3]

Bishop Usher Young Earth Creation Science BUMP!!

[MineralMan]

How is Hal Lindsey News? Sounds like religion to me, not News.

[Dark Skies]

He lost me there also.

[Alex Murphy]

Ussher arrived at the date of 4004 B.C. by taking known dates in history, and calculating backward by using the chronologies of Genesis Chapters 5 and 11 and working backward. The calculations themselves were so complicated that, in the original documents, they covered more than 100 pages....Given the 12-year gap, we are somewhere between four years before and eight years into Hosea's Third Day.

"He lost me here. How did he get these dates?"

Hal Lindsey's earlier books are all based upon the dispensationalist assumption that the Tribulation and Armageddon would occur within a biblical generation (40 years, per Lindsey) of the reestablishment of Israel in 1948. While I'm not aware of Lindsey acually putting it to print, if you do the math you arrive at the conclusion that the Second Coming must occur by 1988. Lots of other people did do that math, and if you don't believe me, check out the massive wave of "end times" literature that was published in the 80s, and the dearth of it after 1989.

So however Lindsey's getting his current dates, I'm sure it's the same method that led him to believe that the world was headed for Argageddon back in the 80s....namely, via newspaper exegesis and dispensensationalism....

[Mrs. Darla Ruth Schwerin]

"Recently, a Senate committee calculated a 70 percent probability, for example, of an attack against the United States with a weapon of mass destruction within the next 10 years."

Yes, and as long as the Senate continues to do NOTHING to seal our borders, their predictions will remain accurate...

[Alex Murphy]

He lost me here. How did he get these dates?

Ah, I finally figured it out, backtracking through the article. Lindsey wants to make the case that God keeps time via the formula 1 day = 1000 years. He puts forth his actual thesis here:

We date our own calendar counting forward from Christ. So does God, which brings us back to Hosea's prophecy. "After two days will He revive us, and in the third day, raise us up," writes the prophet.

Twice in Scripture, God reveals His own reckoning of time. "For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night" (Psalms 90:4).

Lindsey's trying to establish a new standard, upon which to predict the Second Coming. The new standard assumes the 4004 B.C. creation date, assumes God measures time in 1000 year periods, and then assumes the Hosea "two days" piece is prophetic and begins with the birth of Christ.

'It was restored politically in 1948, just before the conclusion of the 'two days' since the birth of Christ, but Ezekiel's chronology says that the political revival is only the first stage of Israel's "revival."' ....So, to return to Hosea, we find the prophecy that after two days, Israel will be revived, but in the third day, they will be "quickened" so that Israel might "live in His sight."

Lindsey now date-sets the "Second Coming" date about 1000 years in the future, far ahead enough for him to avoid dying of embarrassment, should he miscalculate the date again. In other words, Lindsey knows he was wrong about the 1988 date, but doesn't want to admit it, as he spells out here:

"It is clear that God is extending His "grace period" (the Church Age of Grace) to give all men one last chance to accept the gift of pardon that He extends to them, but it is equally clear that His patience is being rapidly exhausted.

How much longer will He wait before returning for His Church and effecting Israel's national redemption at the conclusion of the Tribulation Period?

Given the 12-year gap, we are somewhere between four years before and eight years into Hosea's Third Day."

And since Lindsey's new math system now tells us a day is a thousand years, Lindsey would have us believe we're somewhere between 992 years away ("eight years into") and 1004 years away ("four years before") from the Second Coming. He just really wants us to forget about all that 1988 date-setting stuff, hence the new math.