Biblically Optimistic and Gospel-Based
"For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled." (Luke 21:22)
Posted on 06/30/2009 9:43:35 AM PDT by topcat54
When I wrote my article “ Why Young People are Leaving the Church” I knew it would generate some response. I was taken to task by a few Young earth Creationists (YEC) because I did not point out the dangers of Old Earth Creationist (OEC) arguments and how they create serious theological problems such as disease and death before the fall. Some OECs have attempted to answer this objection exegetically. YECists can and do disagree with OEC arguments, but they can’t accuse OECists of not appealing to the Bible to make their case (see here).
My point, however, was to argue against the claim that a church exodus among young people is the result of not teaching YECism. Such a view is simplistic, unproven, and shortsighted. I pointed out in “Why Young People are Leaving the Church” that it is factually and apologetically a mistake to imply that OECists take a compromised position on biblical inspiration, authority, and integrity as compared to YECists. It gets YECists nowhere to argue otherwise and vice-versa. I have fundamental problems with dispensationalists on the issue of eschatology, but I have never accused them of not believing the Bible.
In “Why Young People are Leaving the Church,” I argued that there are exegetical and hermeneutical inconsistencies among YECists who are dispensationalists (e.g., Henry Morris, Tim LaHaye, and Ray Comfort) and among those who speak in these churches and homeschool conventions about YECism (even though they themselves may not be dispensationalists). I contend that prophecy, because it is about the future, has a greater impact on people than does whether the earth is young or old. A person can hold to either position and not have to make a decision about what lies ahead. In fact, some creation/prophecy writers [1] claim that not to believe in a global flood is a sign that the end is near based on 2 Peter 3:3–9. Since there are many who are questioning a belief in a global flood, so the argument goes, we must be living in the last days.[2] There is no way to escape a creation-prophecy connection.
While I was writing this article, I received an email that called my attention to a blog post by Ray Comfort. A skeptic had asked the following question:
“Could anyone of you believers tell me when the end times will happen, besides soon? It seems to me that the end times have been preached by man ever since the time they created their fictional deities.”
I have to say that Ray’s answer was wholly inadequate. He is a YECist who is unaware how his prophetic views, because of the hermeneutical model he uses (dispensationalism), undermine his ability to deal with skeptics on this issue. So what he gives with one hand (creation), he takes away with the other (prophecy). I’ve seen it happen over and over again. Go here for the first in a series of responses to Ray’s answer to the skeptic Jonathan.
Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis wrote a cordial response to my article “Why Young People are Leaving the Church” in which he characterized me as claiming “that creation and the age of the earth are secondary in importance to eschatology in leading to an exodus of young people from the church.” Of course, I made no such point. They are equally important. To neglect either one is a big mistake. I’ve written extensively on creation issues, probably third behind eschatology and America’s Christian history. My emphasis has been on the ethical implications of evolution. And if we’re going on a percentage count, there is more eschatology than creation in the Bible. After analyzing, cataloging, and commenting on every prophetic verse in the Bible, J. Barton Payne concluded in his Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy that 8,352 verses out of 31,124 total verses deal with prophecy of one type or another. That works out to twenty-seven percent of the Bible being predictive.[3] Tim LaHaye declares that “one third of the Bible is prophecy.”[4]
The Synoptic Gospels must consider prophecy very important since four chapters (Matt. 24–5; Mark. 13; Luke 21) and the entire book of Revelation deal with the subject. There are many other passages as well (Acts 2:17; 1 Thess. 4:13–18; 2 Thess. 2, etc.). When compared to eschatology, the New Testament says little or nothing about how old the Earth is. In terms of load factor, eschatology wins hands down. So then, we must go “Back to Genesis” and “Forward to Revelation” with a consistent hermeneutic. This being the case, I find it difficult to understand why YECist ministries won’t deal with the inherent interpretive problems that are found among so many YECists who are also dispensational. Once a person becomes a YECist, then what? He or she is taught that Jesus is going to return “soon,” that Russia is set to invade Israel, the rapture must be “near” because Israel is back in the land, the European Common Market is about to bring forth the predicted antichrist, we’re headed for a cashless society, etc.[5] Does any of this sound familiar? It should; it’s been standard fare for more than a 100 years. How do arguments about how old the earth is counter these false prognostications? They don’t. There is a lot of evidence that shows how eschatology has been used by skeptics to question the integrity of the Bible. The internet is filled with this argument. It shows up repeatedly in debates (see here).
Having said all of this, I don’t believe that Ham and Beemer’s Already Gone proves what they claim. The book could have made a better case for why so many of those surveyed devalue the Bible dealing with the statistic that a substantial majority of them—859 out of 1000—attend Public Schools! One hour of Sunday school and an hour at Youth Meeting each week can’t make up for 30 hours of Public School instruction and peer associations within Public Schools. The humanists understand this, so why don’t Christians? Charles Francis Potter stated as much in 1930. He signed the first Humanist Manifesto:
Education is thus a most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday-school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?[6]Already Gone is critical of the Sunday School system (as it should be), but the real problem is five days a week, six hours each day, 10 months of the year, 12+ years of Public School which is humanistic to the core.
If these young people are typical evangelicals, the default position of most of the churches that the participants in the survey attended hold to dispensational premillennialism or some variation of it (page 167): Baptist (260), Church of God (84), Pentecostal (69), Assembly of God (66), Calvary Chapel (32), Bible Church (29), Community Church (38).[7] Christian Missionary Alliance (17), Evangelical Free Church (15), and Brethren (8). Lutherans are typically amillennial (136) as are Presbyterians (44). Both denominations hold an end-time view that is culturally pessimistic. I suspect that a majority of these young people don’t even know there is an alternative eschatological position that teaches that the majority of prophetic texts that have been taught are yet to be fulfilled were actually fulfilled in the first century. Since they attend public schools, they are aware that there is a major debate over creation and evolution. It’s a hot topic in schools, the courts, magazines, TV specials, and news reports. There’s almost no dissent among most of the churches represented in the survey on the end-time scenario made popular by writers like YECists Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye, and Ray Comfort and YECist schools like Liberty University and the Masters College. Look at the majority of prophecy books that hit the best-seller list. They are end-time pot boilers. Here’s an advertisement for the Left Behind series:
Are you ready for the moment of truth?
• Political crisis
• Economic crisis
• Worldwide epidemics
• Environmental catastrophe
• Mass disappearances
• Military apocalypse
And that’s just the beginning . . . of the end of the world. It’s happening now. Tell others about it. Spread the word. Visit www.foundthisbook.com.[8]
In a survey that Left Behind publisher Tyndale did, “More than 50 percent of respondents . . . said ‘I’m anxiously expecting his return.’” So what topic do you think is having the biggest impact on young people? The Left Behind series is a publishing phenomenon that has sold nearly 80 million copies. The books were sold in every major bookstore chain, from Costco to Wal-Mart. Seven titles in the adult series have reached #1 on the bestseller lists for The New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly. It has been translated into many languages including Chinese and Japanese. There is not a single creation book that has sold anywhere near this number or has had the influence of Left Behind. (For a critique of the Left Behind series, see my book Left Behind: Separating Fact from Fiction).
On statistic alone, I think it’s clear that prophecy has had more of an impact on Christian beliefs than the debate over the age of the earth. Here are some of the questions that should have been asked:
Endnotes
[1] http://tinyurl.com/kp3n4b
[2] For a study of 2 Peter 3, see David Chilton, “Looking for New Heavens and a New Earth” in Gary DeMar, Why the End of the World is Not in Your Future : Identifying the Gog-Magog Alliance (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2009), 177–187.
[3] J. Barton Payne, Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy: The Complete Guide to Scriptural Predictions and Their Fulfillment (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).
[4] Tim LaHaye, “Twelve Reasons Why This Could be The Terminal Generation,” When the Trumpet Sounds, eds. Thomas Ice and Timothy Demy (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1995), 428.
[5] These topics are covered in Gary DeMar, Last Days Madness and Why the End of the World is Not in Your Future.
[6] Charles Francis Potter, Humanism: A New Religion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930), 128. Quoted in David A. Noebel, J.F. Baldwin, and Kevin Bywater, Clergy in the Classroom: The Religion of Secular Humanism (Manitou Springs, CO: Summit Press, 1995), vi.
[7] As far as I can tell, there may be a denomination called “Community Church,” but it’s more likely that it fits in the non-denominational category. In the research I’ve done, many of them are dispensational. Here’s an example: http://www.biblebb.com/files/eschatology.htm
[8] http://www.foundthisbook.com/
"For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled." (Luke 21:22)
I’ll make a couple OEC arguments:
1 — The Creation story has ‘days’, which are defined by the rotation of the Earth in relation to the sun... what the days without sun or Earth? (IE it could be the metaphorical, as in “Back in my day...”)
2 — Aging has been referred to by some as a slow death, if there was no death in the garden of Eden then there might have also been no aging; that is, the age of Adam given in the lineages might have [legitimately] started when he was expelled from the garden.
2Tim.4:3
[3] For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
As if the writer of this article’s evolutionism is not bad enough, he adds Preterism to it. He subverts both ends of the Bible, Genesis and Revelation.
Repeatedly, when I was in college. I'm a Liberty University graduate. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now, though I think Jerry Falwell was a great man.
2. Does such an end-time scenario affect your view of the future 10, 20, 30, or 40 years from now? Considering what you have been taught about Bible prophecy, do you think you will be here 40 years from now?
It would if I bought into it. I'll be here in 40 years unless I die before then.
3. What did Jesus mean when He said “this generation will not pass away until all these things take place”? Was He referring to a future generation or the generation of His own day?
He meant the generation to which he was speaking, and he was proven correct by events in 70AD.
4. Are we seeing an increase in the number and magnitude to natural disasters, and are these signs of an approaching “rapture”?
No and no.
5. Are you aware that Bible skeptics point to Jesus’ “failed” prediction to come back within a generation (Matt. 24:34) to be incontrovertible evidence that He was not a prophet and the Bible is filled with mistakes?
Yep, and they have a point when dealing with futurists. But it was not a "failed" prediction - it came true.
6. Revelation says prophetic events given to John are to happen “shortly” (1:1) because the “time is near” (1:3). It’s been 2000 years. Do you think the Bible is mistaken? Should these and other time words (“at hand” and “quickly”) be taken literally? If they shouldn’t be taken literally, should the days of creation be taken literally since they deal with time as well?
Yes, they should be taken literally, making the second question moot (although I don't know that prophecy and history should be read the same way).
7. The Bible says, in a prophetic passage, “that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day” (2 Pet. 3:8). Could this also apply to the days of creation?
Could it also apply to other historical passages? Was Jesus in the grave for three thousand years?
8. Are you aware that 1917, 1948, and 1967 have been used by prophecy writers to determine the beginning point of when the signs leading up to the rapture will begin? How can the first two of these dates be wrong if the Bible is true?
The Bible has nothing to say about those dates.
9. Does the fact that many prophecy writers (e.g., Hal Lindsey and Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel) said the rapture would take place before 1988 have any bearing on the authority of the Bible? Does it bother you that they are still considered to be authorities and experts on Bible prophecy?
I have no idea why people listen to those guys anymore - Lindsey even said that if his predictions were wrong we should consider him a fool and stop listening to him. Of course, that was before his predictions were, in fact, proven wrong...for some reason people still take the old fool seriously. He belongs in the same category as Paul Ehrlich.
The most nonsensical statement this dispensational hater has ever made. Evolutionists are very afraid of creationists; just look at their reaction any time evidence against Darwinism is presented. They freak out and ridicule the author and construct the "you don't know how science works" thought-terminating cliche.
The statement that evolutionists fear postmillenialism fails on two counts. First, the statement itself is the authors wishful thinking that postmillenialism has provided important contributions to eschatological debate; it has not. Second, the typical evolutionist could care less about eschatological issues, let alone what postmillenialism is.
Not all preterism is the same. From Wikipedia:
Preterist divisionsThere is nothing subversive per se about preterism other than its subversion of the error of futurist dispensationalism.The two principal schools of Preterist thought are commonly called Partial Preterism and Full Preterism. Preterists disagree significantly about the exact meaning of the terms used to denote these divisions of Preterist thought.
Some Partial Preterists prefer to call their position Orthodox Preterism, thus contrasting their agreement with the creeds of the Ecumenical Councils with what they perceive to be the Full Preterists' rejection of the same.[citation needed] This, in effect, makes Full Preterism unorthodox in the eyes of Partial Preterists and gives rise to the claim by some that Full Preterism is heretical. (Partial Preterism is also sometimes called Classical Preterism or Moderate Preterism.)
On the other hand, some Full Preterists prefer to call their position Consistent Preterism [citation needed], reflecting their extension of Preterism to all biblical prophecy and thus claiming an inconsistency in the Partial Preterist hermeneutic.[27] Partial preterists may be considered heterodox because they advocate, in effect, two Second Comings, one at A.D. 70 and another at the end of the age. Full preterists, in contrast, conform to the creeds, allowing only one Second Coming.
Wheresoever the rapture and resurrection is there will the second coming be also.
Preterists - both varieties - say the whole of Christ’s Olivet Discourse, including its main theme, Christ’s second coming, was fulfilled in 70 AD. But there was no rapture and resurrection in 70 AD. Neither was there a second coming.
Preterism cannot be traced back to the original church. The patristic writers lived in close proximity to the happenings in 70 AD, some were of “that generation,” yet none of them interpret the texts preterists use to prove their theory. None of them claimed Matt. 24 was fulfilled in 70 AD.
It can be traced to the Jesuit Luis Alacazar of the middle ages. He was the first to claim the book of Revelation only related to the events of the generation in which it was written. He said there was nothing in Revelation about the future. Yet none of the Patristic writers said this - and they lived over a thousand years closer to the events at 70 AD than Alacazar.
Preterism - both varieties - is pure fiction.
Clarification:
...yet none of them (the Patristic writers) interpret the texts preterists use to prove their theory - as preterists do.
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