Then the LORD will go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle (14:3). After using Rome as His rod to smite Jerusalem, God later turns on Rome in judgment. Once again, Assyria is the model: “I send it against a godless nation and commission it against the people of My fury to capture booty and to seize plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets . [...]
“For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravished and half of the city exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city” (Zech. 14:2). Six thousand Jews were murdered by Alexander Janneus (103–76 B.C.) during the Feast of Tabernacles in the early part of the first century B.C. Here’s how Josep [...]
Zechariah 14 opens with the promise that “a day is coming for the LORD when the spoil taken from you will be divided among you” (Zech. 14:1). No time is specified for when this event will take place. Should we look to our future for fulfillment or are there more proximate events that best fit the historical and theological context of Zechariah’s day? We know that four kingdoms would subjugate Isra [...]
Two new prophecy books have been published that recycle some old arguments related to an end-time battle that includes Russia, but with an Islamic twist: Grant R. Jeffrey’s The Next World War: What Prophecy Reveals About Extreme Islam and the West and Joel C. Rosenberg’s, Epicenter: Why the Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future and today’s Islamic nations. They look to the b [...]
One of the arguments used by dispensationalists against a first-century fulfillment of the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24) is their claim that only a worldwide tribulation can give meaning to prophetic events. For example, Larry Spargimino argues that “preterists feel scripturally justified in concluding that nothing more than a first-century disaster upon Jerusalem is needed to satisfy the requiremen [...]
“President Carter studied it before meeting Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat at Camp David. President Reagan spoke of it in public. President Bush has discussed it with a leading clergyman. ABC’s ‘Nightline’ has shot a story about it and is awaiting a broadcast date. The New York Times reports brisk sales of books on the topic. The subject is Armageddon and whether current events in the Middle East [...]
WorldNetDaily is running an ad that states the following: “ Readers snatch up end-times books.” Prophecy-related products continue to be popular among WorldNetDaily readers, with two books on Israel’s involvement in end-times predictions coming in at No. 2 and 3 on ShopNetDaily’s weekly best-seller list—Dave Hunt’s “Judgment Day! Islam, Israel and the Nations” and Greg Laurie’s “Are We Livin [...]
In a Sunday school class that I was guest teaching yesterday, I was asked about the significance of Isaiah 11 and its prophetic role in history. Modern-day prophetic theorists claim that the passage describes events that will take place during the “millennium” of Revelation 20. I believe Isaiah 11 has significance for what is happening in the Middle East at this very moment. While dispensationalis [...]
So the LORD gave Israel all the land which He had sworn to give to their fathers, and they possessed it and lived in it. And the LORD gave them rest on every side, according to all that He had sworn to their fathers, and no one of all their enemies stood before them; the LORD gave all their enemies into their hand. Not one of the good promises which the LORD had made to the house of Israel failed; [...]
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 [...]
David Brog has written Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State. The ten reviews I read on Amazon were quite favorable, and it is being advertised on WorldNetDaily. The fact that the Foreword was written by John Hagee, author of Jerusalem Countdown, From Daniel to Doomsday, Beginning of the End, and Final Dawn over Jerusalem, is a clear indication that the book’s thesis fits w [...]
Today’s beastly date—6–6–6—really isn’t. Our calendar is based on when Jesus was born. Most scholars believe our dating system is off by approximately five years because of certain miscalculations in determining the precise year Jesus was born. This means that the real June 6, 2006 happened about five years ago. Of course, there was a bigger 666 date: June 6, 666. Or was it really June 6, 661? All [...]
In my debate with Thomas Ice on May 26, 2006, on whether the Great Tribulation is past or future, I asked Ice to offer in evidence a single verse from Revelation that says there will be a seven-year tribulation period. Although there are lots of sevens in Revelation (the number appears more than fifty times), and lots of seven things, everything from seven churches (1:4), spirits (3:1), candlestic [...]
The Da Vinci Code has sold tens of millions of copies. It’s now in paperback and the movie hits the big screen tomorrow. Books about the book have been published as well as books against the book’s quirky theological and historical perspectives. Those ignorant of the Bible and history may be influenced by the supposed factual nature of the storyline. We shouldn’t be surprised at this since C [...]
In Charles Eric Maine’s sci-fi novel He Owned the World (1960), Robert Carson was riding the first manned rocket planned to circle the Moon and return to Earth. Ten hours after the launch, Carson knew something had gone wrong and that he was going to die in the cold blackness of space. The manned vehicle would miss its target and become a mere speck of a satellite of the Sun. Realizing the inevita [...]
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, speculation arose among some prophecy writers that Iraq was the modern revival of Babylon written about in Revelation. Charles Dyer claimed that events depicted in Isaiah 13 were being fulfilled with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait: “‘The day of the Lord’ described by Isaiah [in 13:6] refers to the tribulation period that is still to come. Babylon’s destruc [...]
For the past two months, American Vision has been trying to find someone from the dispensational position to debate the following topic: “The Olivet Discourse: Future or Fulfilled?” Some of the people we contacted had legitimate reasons for not being able to participate. Most did not. Thomas Ice, who I have debated eight times in the past 15 years, is almost always ready to debate. For this, he de [...]
In an attempt to make the Bible conform to the latest advances in technology, modern-day prophecy writers look for anything that will support their view of the end-times, even if it means reading things into the Bible that aren’t there. For example Peter and Paul Lalonde misrepresent what Revelation 13:16–18 says about the mark of the beast. In an advertisement for their This Week in Bible Prophec [...]
While cleaning up my office, I came across a cassette tape of a sermon preached by Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel on December 31, 1979. He told his very accepting audience that the rapture would take place in 1981. Russia was about to invade Israel. The former Soviet Republic had gone into Afghanistan. This was the prelude to a full-force invasion of the Middle East, Smith told his audience. Today, [...]
