It didn't take much nerve, in my opinion. Certainly less nerve than it took Cyrus Scofield to bill himself as "Dr. Scofield" for years when he hadn't earned a doctorate or even enrolled in a doctoral program.
For my crackpot claim I need only look to his note on Revelations 1:20 in which he declares that the letters to the seven churches really mean seven coming ages of church history - without a shred of substantiating evidence from any other place in Scripture.
But let's change the tone of the discussion.
By all means, let's.
I think you'll agree that RC Sproul ( an articulate sokesman of the covenant school) would handle these discussions with tact and grace and NEVER ever slander Schofield like you did so let's not say such things.
Slander means intentionally saying something that one knows to be false. I do not believe that my statement was false - I uttered it believing every word of it.
Mr. Sproul chooses not to discuss Scofield's qualifications or personality at all, and I would agree that the most Christian thing to do would be to pass over Scofield in silence.
Now that that's behind us, I return to my original point - which is that LaHaye's publishing empire does nothing to upbuild the Church and actually tends to undermine it with sensationalism and baseless speculation.
Regarding the speculation about the time of the Second Coming -- you are absolutely right. It is silliness and very superficial. It is contrary to Scripture and does great damage to serious dispensational thinkers.
It seems that your opinion is not so radically different.
"For my crackpot claim I need only look to his note on Revelations 1:20 in which he declares that the letters to the seven churches really mean seven coming ages of church history"
Scoffield is not alone in this reasoning, as the church ages do seem line up with church history.
http://www.google.com/search?q=seven+churches+in+revelation+seven+church+ages&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
"For my crackpot claim I need only look to his note on Revelations 1:20 in which he declares that the letters to the seven churches really mean seven coming ages of church history - without a shred of substantiating evidence from any other place in Scripture."
That one is bad enough, but it's not as bad as the claim they make regarding Daniel ch. 9 that the "Prince" referenced is the AntiChrist, whereas that passage clearly is talking about the Prince being the "Prince of Peace". They gonna have some 'splainin' to do on that one, methinks.