John Hagee’s “Christians United for Israel” held its annual meeting in Washington, D.C., last month (July 2007). Supporters of CUFI are looking forward to Armageddon. Of course, they believe they won’t be around to experience it. God will finally fulfill his covenant promises to Israel, but not until He wipes out millions of Jews and billions of others around the world in one final judgment. No wo [...]
In the ongoing debate over Bible prophecy, a number of issues keep coming up. One of the biggest disputes is on the dating of Revelation. Was Revelation written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 or nearly 40 years later? Late-date advocates are almost solely dependent on the ambiguous testimony of Irenaeus (120–202). I deal with this bit of external evidence in my book The Early Chu [...]
Poor Michael Vick. The multi-talented quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons picked the wrong side business. Football doesn’t seem to be enough to satisfy his interests. Vick and his associates got involved in the dog fighting business. His story has made front-page news across the country. USA Today carried an editorial that read, “Window on a cruel world.” The editorial reports that “Vick and two a [...]
Dispensational author Paul Benware accuses preterists of not interpreting prophetic passages in a literal way. As an example, he points to Matthew 24:29: “But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” Since Jesus tells His questioners that this [...]
Paul N. Benware’s revised and expanded edition of Understanding End Times Prophecy includes a chapter on Preterism. This is a good sign. Preterists teach that certain prophetic passages have already been fulfilled (e.g., Matt. 24), while futurists claim that these same passages are yet to be fulfilled. The debate centers (mostly) on how specific time indicators like “near,” “shortly,” “quickly,” a [...]
With the best-seller status of books supporting atheism and attacking religion in the news, it’s remarkable to see so much talk about religion by the presidential candidates and liberals in general. Can you identify who said this?: “Science is a gift of God to all of us, and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this during a debate [...]
The place of Israel in Bible prophecy has a long history among non-dispensational theologians going back at least to John Calvin. “By virtue of this, [Paul] teaches, the Jews are the first and natural heirs of the gospel, except to the extent that by their ungratefulness they were forsaken as unworthy—yet forsaken in such a way that the heavenly blessing has not departed utterly from their nation. [...]
John MacArthur laid down the gauntlet on the issue of prophecy in his opening talk at the 2007 “Shepherds’ Conference.” He was emphatic that only dispensationalism takes the prophecies concerning the future of Israel seriously. Contrary to MacArthur, the historical record demonstrates that postmillennial Calvinists had developed a prophetic role for the Jews hundreds of years before Scofield. The [...]
A number of people have asked me to respond to a talk that John MacArthur delivered at the 2007 Shepherds’ Conference. It seemed a little out of character for MacArthur because it had a mean-spirited tone to it. It also sounded desperate, as if he has been hearing the foundation stones of dispensationalism cracking all around him. MacArthur, who believes in “sovereign election” as it relates to in [...]
Papers of Isaac Newton have surfaced that show that he predicted the end of the world would take place no earlier than the year 2060, exactly 1,260 years after the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire.[1] His calculation is based on passages that use “ 1260 days” … “42 months” … “time, times, half a time” (Dan. 7:5; 12:7; Rev. 11:2–3; 12:6; 12:14; 13:5). These periods of time are inte [...]
Atheism is a religion. It is a worldview driven by faith in a system of thought supposedly generated by a brain that evolved from a pre-biotic soup of chemicals that randomly emits electrical impulses through its gray matter. But how can the evolved mind be trusted to know anything authoritatively or claim that certain behaviors are morally right or wrong? C.S. Lewis puts it this way: “If the sola [...]
“Present your case,” the LORD says. “Bring forward your strong arguments,” The King of Jacob says. Let them bring forth and declare to us what is going to take place; As for the former events, declare what they were, That we may consider them and know their outcome. Or announce to us what is coming; Declare the things that are going to come afterward, That we may know that you are gods; Indeed, do [...]
One of the debates surrounding the “celebration” of the 400 the anniversary of the Jamestown colony is that the English “invaded” the land of a native people. It’s true; it was an invasion, an invasion of a superior worldview even if the people who did the invading weren’t always moral in the advance of that worldview. Can you imagine what the world would be like today if the invasion was the othe [...]
I’m reminded of Jim Croce’s song “Don’t Mess with Big Jim” when asked to mediate disputes with fellow Christians and their ministries: “ You don’t pull on Superman’s cape/You don’t spit into the wind/You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, and you don’t mess around with Jim.” The Bible was ahead of the song’s wisdom when it warned not to take a dog by the ears when it’s fighting with anot [...]
A series of articles have been published since the death of Jerry Falwell that encourage Christians to take a non-Falwellian approach and get out of politics. Daniel Vestal, a former Baptist pastor writes that it’s “time to unyoke Christians” and “party politics.”[1] I don’t find Vestal making the same argument to liberal Christians and their identification with the Democrat Party. It seems that o [...]
Numerous currents were coming to a head in the late seventies that few people could have foreseen, the catalyst being the 1973 pro-abortion decision.[1] Jerry Falwell became the point man for an already growing number of Christian activists and organizations. His visibility allowed the numerous and less prominent groups to gain a constituency without the attendant publicity and hassle. No one pred [...]
Jerry Falwell has made a number of transitions in his fruitful ministry. Few people had heard of Jerry Falwell prior to 1979. His Thomas Road Baptist Church was his mission in life. In a sermon delivered in 1965, entitled “Ministers and Marchers,” Falwell said: [A]s far as the relationship of the church to the world, [it] can be expressed as simply as the three words which Paul gave to Timothy—“Pr [...]
I never met Jerry Falwell. We did do a live interview together, he in Lynchburg and me in an Atlanta studio. In 1979 Jerry Falwell started the Moral Majority. To counter the influx of Christians into the public arena through this burgeoning organization and dozens of other activist groups inspired by the Moral Majority, especially in the area of politics, Norman Lear countered with his People for [...]
I received a letter from an atheist over the weekend. He claimed that it was perfectly logical to be an atheist, that he was just as moral as any Christian. I asked him this simple question: “ Given the basic assumptions of “militant atheism,” if somebody put a bullet in your brain, would that person have done anything wrong?” He responded with this: If you think that as an atheist that I do not b [...]
If you want to know when an event in the Bible is to happen, look for time indicators. Some of them are very specific: after three days, in 40 days, after 40 years, at the completion of 70 years. There are less specific time indicators like “near,” “shortly,” “quickly,” and “at hand.” These time words are at the heart of the debate between those who claim that certain prophetic events have already [...]
