Posted on 07/24/2006 8:28:49 AM PDT by topcat54
Events in Israel are viewed by millions of evangelicals as a sure sign that the rapture is near. Again! Jerry Falwell, who stated on a December 27, 1992, television broadcast, that he did “not believe there will be another millennium . . . or another century,” has written on July 23, 2006:
It is apparent, in light of the rebirth of the state of Israel, that the present-day events in the Holy Land may very well serve as a prelude or forerunner to the future Battle of Armageddon and the glorious return of Jesus Christ.1Something similar happened in 1990. John F. Walvoord recycled and revised his Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis to fit with what was then considered to be the latest in the fulfillment of Bible prophecy in our day. The 1974 edition opened with this declaration: “Each day’s headlines raise new questions concerning what the future holds.”2 As we now know, Walvoord’s book was guided by current events and not sound methods of biblical interpretation. Described as “the world’s foremost interpreter of biblical prophecy,” in 1991 he expected “‘the Rapture to occur in his own lifetime.’”3 While Walvoord didn’t invent the prophetic speculation game, as Frank Gumerlock points out it his The Day and the Hour, he did make a ton of money playing it.
Walvoord’s book was reprinted in 1976 and then sank without a trace until a revised edition appeared in late 1990. By August 1991, it had sold 1,676,886 copies.4 It was decisively predictive based on the events transpiring in the Gulf War:
The world today is like a stage being set for a great drama. The major actors are already in the wings waiting for their moment in history. The main stage props are already in place. The prophetic play is about to begin. . . . Our present world is well prepared for the beginning of the prophetic drama that will lead to Armageddon. Since the stage is set for this dramatic climax of the age, it must mean that Christ’s coming for his own is very near.5
Not many people realized that the basic content of the revised edition was nearly sixteen years old when it was reissued in 1990. When the Gulf War ended abruptly, the book was being remaindered for twenty-five cents a copy, if you bought it by the case!
Walvoord’s failed predictions have not deterred other prophecy writers from taking up the mantle of prophetic dogmatism by proclaiming that prophecy is being fulfilled today. And what about their past failed predictions that seemed so sure at the time? They simply moved on “without ever acknowledging their mistake.”6 This is because current events, not Scripture, serve as their interpretive grid.
In 1974, Thomas S. McCall and the late Zola Levitt wrote The Coming Russian Invasion in which they stated that “the Armageddon conflict grows out of the Russian invasion of Israel.” Now that the former Soviet Union no longer has super power status, a new prophetic theory had to be invented to fit current events. Since necessity is the mother of invention in the end-time speculation business, prophecy speculator Mark Hitchcock wrote The Coming Islamic Invasion of Israel. But that was in 2002 and it’s old news. Now that Iran is threatening Israel again, prophetic publishers are looking for the next prophetic blockbuster to take advantage of the always gullible Christian market. Similar in title to Walvoord’s book that was first published in 1974, Hitchcock has written Iran—The Coming Crisis: Radical Islam, Oil, and the Nuclear Threat. How many unsuspecting readers will know that Hitchcock has traveled this prophetic road before in The Silver Kingdom: Iran in History and Prophecy published in 1994?
The only winners in the Armageddon game are the authors who tell us it’s near and the publishers who print their books by the truck load. The losers are the integrity of God’s Word and the poor souls who pin their hopes on prophetic speculations passed off as certainties that are always said to be near.
Gary DeMar is president of American Vision and the author of more than 20 books. His latest is Myths, Lies, and Half Truths.
Reprinted with permission: American Vision P.O. Box 220, Powder Springs, GA 30127, 800-628-9460.
Notes:
1. Jerry Falwell, “On the threshold of Armageddon?” (July 23, 2006): www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51180
2. John F. Walvoord and John E. Walvoord, Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1974), 7.
3. Quoted in Kenneth L. Woodward, “The Final Days are Here Again,” Newsweek (March 18, 1991), 55.
4. Press Release, “Kudos,” Zondervan Publishing House (August 1991).
5. John W. Walvoord, Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1990), 228.
6. Stephen D. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 191.
"How do you get vegetables out of your garden? By planting vegetables, of course. This is a fact almost too obvious to mention, except for the fact that most people seem to have forgotten that you reap what you sow and you harvest what you plant, "for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" (Gal. 6:7). Now if a man simply kept weeding a garden patch without ever planting it to vegetables, we would certainly have a right to call him at least a fool if he expected weeding to give him vegetables. We should, in fact, question his sanity. But this foolishness is exactly what millions of "good Americans" are dedicated to: they do nothing but pull up weeds, and they expect to harvest vegetables. How? They are always fighting the weeds which crop up in the life of America, in the churches, schools, and organizations, and this is all that millions of them do -- pull weeds. Meanwhile, the country and everything in it goes downhill. Make no mistake about it, the weeds of communism, atheism, and permissiveness must be uprooted, but what good will all this weeding do if no sound seeds are sown? The net result is simply a better patch for new weeds to sprout in. Jesus said of the man who rid himself of an unclean spirit without submitting himself to God and bearing fruit to God that such a man becomes then a dwelling place for eight unclean spirits, "and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation" (Matt. 12:45). When people are simply interested in getting rid of their weeds, their problems, and have no desire for planting seeds, for moral and spiritual regeneration, then they are only the worse off for their efforts. Before you start pulling weeds and expecting to harvest vegetables, be sure you plant seeds as well. Perhaps that church or school is only a weed patch and will not be anything more. But, above all, plant the seeds, sow the Word, establish truly Christian churches, free and independent Christian schools. Establish a Christian family life, and a godly operation in your farm or business life. The times may look bad for making a start, but there is no harvest without a planting. "He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap" (Eccles. 11:4). Men who think that they can get vegetables only by pulling weeds are crazy. Why be one of them?" -- Rev. R.J. Rushdoony
I think Smedley, who is not usually in on these discussions, may have thought xzins was a dispensationalist.
At least that's how I read the post. Things get confused sometimes.
TomSmedley -- xzins is a Methodist pastor who leans towards premil, and sometimes seems to lean toward dispensationalism, but I don't think he calls himself one.
xzins, correct me if I'm wrong.
Well, if things are getting progressively better then I guess we can do away with the Armageddon battle with all of its gore and the final annhilation of Satan and his cronies just before the great judgment seat. Whew, I can't bear to watch Steven King movies let alone the violence in Revelation, what with vultures eating all the enemy armies. Boy am I glad things are getting better. Now if only the NEA, the ACLU, the NCC, Islam, China, Korea, AIDS, etc knew about this. Of course, there is that little cryptic phrase in Rev. 16:17; "it is done!" I don't think He is saying "finally, man has brought in the Kingdom of God, let's go home"
You're confused. The error of Rome was in physical mayhem and destruction. Christ's Gospel is preached, taught, understood and learned spiritually. And that spiritual victory will continue to change the world, as it already has done.
It's the difference between a bullet and a kiss.
Second, there is no "vitriol" towards the Jews. It's the dispensational mindset that thinks God wills their destruction.
The correct Reformed view is that God wills their conversion.
And finally, any time someone challenges your belief, you yell "foul." You do not make it easy to discuss differences calmly and rationally.
I understand Jews can and do see it that way, but it is our responsibility to clarify that error.
Personally, I have many Jewish friends and we have long discussions on this topic which, we agree, have proven fruitful.
Historically, yes, I believe so. How can we expect those whom we have persecuted in the name of a supposedly anti-Torah "Jesus" to come to the true Messiah of Israel?
I don't think Paul would agree with you.
At the time he was writing, the Church had not yet separated from and started persecuting its Jewish root. The situation that we've seen for most of the last two millennia is not the same as the one to which he wrote in the mid-first century.
But I guaruntee you that if he is permitted to see what's happening on the earth, he is absolutely furious at the way in which the Gentile Church has persecuted his people, of whom he wrote,
For I could wish that myself were accursed from Messiah for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh the Messiah came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.True Christians do not kill Jews.--Romans 9:3-5
The true Christians have historically been very ineffectual at stopping the Jews from being persecuted in Christ's name. Well we should heed Yeshua's denounciation of a similar excuse by the Pharisees:
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, "If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets." Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?If Yeshua called on the Pharisees of His day, who had never bowed down to idols or worshipped any god but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to take corporate responsibility for the sins of the "false Israelites" who committed idolatry and killed the prophets, how much more should we in whom His Spirit dwells take corporate responsibility for our ancestors, literal and spiritual, who persecuted and murdered the Messiah's people in the name of Christ, thus slandering His Name to them?--Matthew 23:29-33
Tell me, was Martin Luther not a Christian when he wrote, The Jews and Their Lies?
What you call "libel," I call the simple facts of history.
If???
Life is long and history is even longer.
Are you raising good Christian children who will preach Christ risen?
I am.
God will be glorified here on earth, as well as in heaven.
Where there were once only 12, there are now millions. That's a pattern of exponential proportions. It will continue to grow until the end of history.
Christ does not say that when we see hunger we should turn away.
He says "Feed them."
We? You need to divest yourself of the collective "we" if you want a clear understanding of history. It's the trap of the liberal mind-set and you're caught up in it mightily.
Is the church of Jesus Christ the true Israel?
The allegation was not that xzins is a dispensationalist. He is. And as Sproul pointed out, so is everyone who worships the Lord on Sunday. It's like the old joke where a man asks a woman if she would sleep with him for a million dollars and she says yes. He then asks whether she would sleep with him for $20 and her response was "what to you think I am, a prostitute?" And he says, "M'am, we've already established your profession, we're just haggling over the price."
The allegation from Smedley was not that xzins was a dispensationalist, but that xzins was a gnostic. That is the statement you appear to have high fived. Perhaps you should lower your five.
Martin Luther:
First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly - and I myself was unaware of it - will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.
Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.
Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. (remainder omitted)
Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. For they have justly forfeited the right to such an office by holding the poor Jews captive with the saying of Moses (Deuternomy 17 [:10 ff.]) in which he commands them to obey their teachers on penalty of death, although Moses clearly adds: "what they teach you in accord with the law of the Lord." Thoses villains ignore that. They wantonly employ the poor people's obedience contrary to the law of the Lord and infuse them with this poison, cursing, and blasphemy. In the same way the pope also held us captive with the declaration in Matthew 16 {:18], "You are Peter," etc, inducing us to believe all the lies and deceptions that issued from his devilish mind. He did not teach in accord with the word of God, and therefore he forfeited the righ to teach.
Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let they stay at home. (...remainder omitted).
Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. The reason for such a measure is that, as said above, they have no other means of earning a livelihood than usury, and by it they have stolen and robbed from us all they possess. Such money should now be used in no other way than the following: Whenever a Jew is sincerely converted, he should be handed one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred florins, as personal circumstances may suggest. With this he could set himself up in some occupation for the support of his poor wife and children, and the maintenance of the old or feeble. For such evil gains are cursed if they are not put to use with God's blessing in a good and worthy cause.
Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen 3[:19]}. For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants.
.
.
Gee Doc, do you think that perhaps an attitude like that coming from the seat of Protestant power in Germany may have set the stage for the Holocaust? Do you think Jews might be a little reluctant to cozy up to Lutherans after reading that diatribe.
But by your definition, Luther was not a True Christian, was he?
Wow, that makes not a bit of sense. How does one's willingness to take corporate responsibility for the sins of their spiritual and physical ancestors prevent one from understanding history? This isn't about liberal hand-wringing, paralyzing, "I'm-sorry-to-be-breathing" guilt--this is about recognizing and trying to reverse the sins committed in the past in the name of Christ.
Is the church of Jesus Christ the true Israel?
No. But if you believe it to be so, then all the more you should take responsibility for the sins of your ancestors, just as God commanded Israel to take responsibility for the sins of theirs.
And as long as I'm here, from post #204:
The error of Rome was in physical mayhem and destruction.
Which came out of their spiritual corruption by the political.
It's the difference between a bullet and a kiss.
That's like saying that if Rome hadn't ordered the extinction of the Waldenses, Hugonots, et. al., it would quite all right for them to sell indulgences.
Second, there is no "vitriol" towards the Jews.
I refer you again to the link in post #206--was Martin Luther a Christian when he penned "The Jews and Their Lies" and advocated killing their rabbis and burning their synagogues? That sure sounds like vitriol to me, as did Tom's bit back in post #153 that Judaism is "a cult which preaches that our Lord and Savior is boiling forever in excrement manages to impose an anti-Christian socialist regime" or your post #177: "The Jews have always been manipulated by political agendas. That is their sad lot. Stubborness plays a large part, no?"
I suppose one could term your posts as being "un-veiled contempt" rather than "vitriol," if one wanted to be picky.
It's the dispensational mindset that thinks God wills their destruction.
Either you are intentionally slandering Dispensationalism, or you're too ignorant of that system to be having this conversation with. Could you please tell us which?
The correct Reformed view is that God wills their conversion.
God wills them to put their faith in the Messiah. He does not will them to be "converted" into Gentile Christians and cease keeping His Torah.
And finally, any time someone challenges your belief, you yell "foul." You do not make it easy to discuss differences calmly and rationally.
Tom (post #194) seems to think that I've done well enough in presenting my views rationally. And I don't see that I've been less than calm, cool, and collected. I've presented my views, backed them with Scripture, and you have yet to answer them other than by "argument from outrage."
Thanks for posting this article by Gary DeMar. Didja know that he has a rather new radio program, airing each Saturday from 11:AM to 12:PM Central? Go to www.GaryDemar.com and listen live. There is also an archive of past programs that anyone can listen to.
Gary recently spoke at a Bible Conference; the 6 messages that he gave at the conference have been posted on www.SermonAudio.com in mp3 format..anyone can download 'em for free; just do a search for "Gary DeMar".
These messages are rather academic, in that he does an exposition of Matthew 24; refuting the Dispensational position, while explaining the Preterist position. It's quite well done, and worth the time to listen to each message. Preterism makes so much BETTER sense than Dispensationalism; because it's SIMPLE, and Biblically based.
***Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics***
Reminds me of an old KINGSTON TRIO song, if I remember it correctly,
The Germans hate the French, the french hate the Dutch,
And I don't like anybody very much!
But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud,
That Man's been endowed with a mushroom shaped cloud,
And we know for certain that some lucky day,
Some one will set the spark off--And we will all be blown away!
the english hate the irish
the arabs hate the jews
the whole world's got its black man
in a pinch
the cowboys hate the indians
the chinese hate 'em too
the french hate everyone
but that's just part of being french
now your spaniard loves a bullfight
and your russian loves a trial
italians love his holiness
because he dresses real snappy
and the germans like a good old
fashioned war
every once in a while
and we americans love everyone
we keep the whole world laughing
yes we're just one big happy family
'neath the sun
all full of you and me and he and she
and it and everyone
oh it's a wacky zany place
that we come from
we call it heaven
please take your shoes off
don't ask no questions
are you having fun?
now the thin ones laugh at fat ones
and the smart ones laugh at fools
you know that everyone thinks
somebody else is funny
the hot laugh at the cold
the old are laughing at the new
and six-gun yassir and bokassa and
the rockefellers
laugh at everybody
still it's just one big happy family
'neath the sun
it's all full of you and me and he and she
and it and everyone
gosh it's a goofy loony place that we
come from
me/i ain't laughin'
in fact i'm leavin'
you keep the car dear
i still don't need it
don't tell the children
don't tell the germans
don't tell the rockefellers
don't tell no one
© 1975 Worthless Music (ASCAP)
BUGGMAN: "No."
And the neeners say we all have a lot in common.
I just don't get it.
Really? Where does the bible say that Jesus returned in 70 AD?
"I just don't get it."
Well it's like this. Israel is the "wife", married to God. The church is the "bride" of Christ and the marriage takes place just after the rapture when the bride has made herself ready. Those invited to the marriage banquet are the friends of the groom and bride, i.e. you don't invite the bride and groom to their wedding feast.
Hi, B.C. It's nice to see you posting. 8~)
Do you believe the church of Jesus Christ is the true Israel?
"Really? Where does the bible say that Jesus returned in 70 AD?"
Actually it was during the Bar Kokhba's revolt (132-135). That is when Jerusalem was completely destroyed and the diaspora began. Jerusalem would not be the center of religious life after that date. It was still the center of Jewish worship between 70-132 A.D., just without the Temple. Synagogue worship took its place but that was all done away with in Jerusalem after the 132 revolt.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.