Good one, Ivan! Hope you don't mind if I use your post as a springboard to expound on your excellent point (I'm just in that kind of mood today.)
Well, y’know, this is another one of those “position papers” (for lack of a better phrase) that gets foisted on a nervous public every few months.
It has all the (now classic) elements:
--The end is near because terrible things are happening in the world. When was this not the case?
--A whole laundry-list of “abominations” to make the author’s point.
--Cherry-picked Bible-verses offered as “proof.” (Every quoted Bible verse is taken out of the larger context, because the Bible is a very big book.)
--Hal Lindsey is trotted out again, ostensibly in the hopes that those old enough will have forgotten that we were supposed to have suffered Armageddon years ago.
--The “ancient astronauts” will return.
--Terrorist atrocities will continue (DUH!)
Notice how we capitalize the world "Earth" these days, as the environmental movement and its Mother Earth Gaia worship permeates every aspect of our lives. (We also capitalize “Jupiter.” So what? And “Gaia” gets its greatest publicity from the cartoon “Captain Planet,” brainchild of Ted Turner, a recognized nut-job that even Jane Fonda can’t abide anymore.
Modern Israel has been in a state of perpetual war since its founding in 1948. An earlier doomsayer generation predicted its destruction 30 years later. Hmm. 1978?
Depending on your age, you’ve seen, heard or read again and again of various cultist groups claiming to predict – to the day – when the world will end.
As each predictive group has been proven wrong by the continuous ticking of the clock, they tend to retreat into vapor. (Lindsey now needs the Internet to keep preaching: his 1970’s book-sales are way down.)
Faith is important in this ephemeral world, but until we reach the afterlife (whatever that may be) all we have at our disposal is the human spirit. Personally, I’m a little tired of “spiritual experts” who have been – their noses in the air – haranguing me since childhood to just give it up and believe in them (books now available at Amazon-dot-com.)
The world will end when God decides it should. Not when Hal Lindsey or Anthony C. LoBaido says it should. We can each read a hundred or a thousand books about it, but none of us will be any better able to speak for the Creator than we are right now.
But that’s part of the allure of this stuff, isn’t it? It would feel really good to truly believe that you are privy to divine information that the average schmuck will never be, because he hasn’t read the same books.
“But he can’t be a man
‘Cause he don’t smoke
“The same cigarettes as me.”
Mick Jagger
Satisfaction
And books there are. Dozens and dozens of them, all capitalizing on the desire and gullibility of those with nothing better to do than to be among those "in the know" as to what the mind of God is.
Hal Lindsey became a very wealthy man being absolutely, completely, and totally wrong.
I've read some of Hals books. I have also read several posters who have said how wrong he is. I have asked several of them, and now ask you, to post specific quotes from his books that are false, just so I will know. From my readings he tried to make educated conclusions but I don't recall him ever giving a specific date since "no man can know".
If you answer this with other than a flame, you will be the first.