If The Road to Holocaust is unfamiliar, it is the title of a book Hal Lindsey wrote in 1989, published by secular publisher Bantam Books (666 Fifth Avenue, NYC). Lindsey claimed that if you did not believe in a pre-tribulational rapture but believed instead that God’s Word applied to all areas of life and Christians should work for that goal, then you believed it “could lead us—and Israel— to disaster.”
While going through some of my many files, I came across a folder containing letters from Dr. Gary North to Hal Lindsey regarding the publication of The Road to Holocaust that accused Lindsey of gross negligence and numerous errors. Dr. North, R. J. Rushdoony, David Chilton, Ray Sutton, James Jordan, Greg Bahnsen, and I are mentioned and smeared by innuendo and outright lies. Supposedly, I’m “the head of the Institute of Christian Government” (34). False. “It is rumored that [Greg Bahnsen] read Dr. Rushdoony’s works as a boy.” True. It’s a rumor. Rumors have no place in scholarly works. “Gary North earned his doctor’s degree in economics from the University of California-Riverside.” False. Gary North earned his doctor’s degree in history. The General Counsel for Bantam Books stated that The Road to Holocaust is an “exhaustive study of the published literature” of the above-named authors. Then why does Rousas John Rushdoony’s name read John Rousas Rushdoony in every footnote?
For a critique of The Road to Holocaust, see the book published by American Vision titled The Legacy of Hatred Continues.
The Legacy of Hatred Continues (PDF)
"Anti-Semitism." The word conjures up thoughts of Nazism, Adolf Hitler, and gas ovens. In our day "anti-semitism" is real, with swastikas painted on synagogues and verbal epithets hurled at Jews by the Ku Klux Klan and so-called "white supremacists." Purging our land of such an evil will not be accomplished by accusing someone of "anti-Semitism" when there is not a shred of evidence to support the claim. Hal Lindsey labeled anyone who did not agree with him on the issue of eschatology as "unconsciously anti-Semitic." Lies and slander will accomplish nothing.
Buy NowThe Road to Holocaust was and remains a cover for what dispensationalism teaches about the future of Israel: there will be a post-rapture holocaust of the Jews during the Great Tribulation. At the 2012 Democratic National Convention, Mark Alan Siegel, who served as the chairman of Florida’s Palm Beach County Democratic Party, knew about dispensationalism’s required holocaust:
The Christians just want us to be there [in Israel] so we can be slaughtered and converted and bring on the second coming of Jesus Christ. The worst possible allies for the Jewish state are the fundamentalist Christians who want Jews to die and convert so they can bring on the second coming of their Lord. It is a false friendship. They are seeking their own ends and not ours. I don’t believe the fundamentalists urging a greater Israel are friends of the Jewish state.
You might ask, What was Mark Alan Siegel talking about? Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, California, stated that according to the Bible, Israel is a “prerequisite” for the End Times based on Zechariah 13:7-9 and other verses. What is that “prerequisite”? Here are some examples from those who also share Hibbs’s beliefs.
• On the September 18, 1991, edition of the “700 Club,” Sid Roth, once the host of “Messianic Vision,” stated that “two-thirds of the Jewish people [living in Israel] will be exterminated” during a future Great Tribulation. He based this view on Zechariah 13:8-9.
• Hal Lindsey described the judgment against Israel in AD 70 as a “picnic” compared to a super-holocaust that will lead to the slaughter of two-thirds of the Jews living in Israel.[1]
• Kay Arthur, another dispensational author, has stated publicly that what lies ahead for Israel will make Hitler’s Holocaust look like “a Sunday school picnic.” In her novel, Israel My Beloved, the heroine is standing before a future scene where the Valley of Jehoshaphat is littered with the dead based on her understanding of Zechariah 13:8-9 that only a third of Israel will survive “the fire just as Zechariah promised” during the future Great Tribulation will Israel is the target of God’s wrath: “Auschwitz was nothing compared to this…. I’ve watched as men, women, and children writhe in agony—an agony beyond the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the pogroms. Beyond the horrors of Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz—all the death camps combined…. We have experienced an agony beyond any horror the human mind can envision . . . beyond even Hitler.”[2]
• Let’s not forget Jack Van Impe’s book Israel’s Final Holocaust where he wrote that when the prophecy clock starts ticking again after the “rapture,” it “will be traumatic days for Israel. Just when peace seems to have come, it will be taken from her and she will be plunged into another bloody persecution, … a devastating explosion of persecution and misery for Israel….”[3]
• Consider what Thomas Ice wrote in his article “What do you do with a future National Israel in the Bible,” an article that no longer seems to be available: “The Bible also indicates that before Israel enters into her time of national blessing she must first pass through the fire of the tribulation (Deut. 4:30; Jer. 30:5-9; Dan. 12:1; Zeph. 1:14-18). Even though the horrors of the Holocaust under Hitler were of an unimaginable magnitude, the Bible teaches that a time of even greater trial awaits Israel during the tribulation. Anti-Semitism will reach new heights, this time global in scope, in which two-thirds of world Jewry will be killed (Zech. 13:7-9; Rev. 12). Through this time God will protect His remnant so that before His second advent ‘all Israel will be saved’ (Rom. 11:36).”[4]
• Charles Ryrie wrote in his book The Best is Yet to Come that during this post-rapture period Israel will undergo “the worst bloodbath in Jewish history.”[5]
• John Walvoord followed a similar line of argument: “Israel is destined to have a particular time of suffering which will eclipse anything that it has known in the past…. [T]he people of Israel … are placing themselves within the vortex of this future whirlwind which will destroy the majority of those living in the land of Palestine.”[6]
• Dr. Paige Patterson said this in a debate I had with him some years ago: “The present state of Israel is not the final form. The present state of Israel will be lost, eventually, and Israel will be run out of the land again, only to return when they accept the Messiah as Savior.”
Prophecy Wars: The Biblical Battle Over the End Times
There is a long history of skeptics turning to Bible prophecy to claim that Jesus was wrong about the timing of His coming at “the end of the age” (Matt. 24:3) and the signs associated with it. Noted atheist Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) is one of them and Bart Ehrman is a modern example. It’s obvious that neither Russell or Ehrman are aware of or are ignoring the mountain of scholarship that was available to them that showed that the prophecy given by Jesus was fulfilled in great detail just as He said it would be before the generation of His day passed away.
Buy NowHow do preterists interpret Zechariah 13:7-9? Many of them claim that the events leading up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is the fulfillment. Unlike dispensationalists, Jesus issued a warning to leave the city and head for the mountains outside Judea (Matt. 24:16-20). It was a local judgment that where the Romans were the antagonists. It could be avoided by leaving Jerusalem. It was not a national conflagration. In Luke’s gospel, we find the following:
But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is near. Then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those who are inside the city must leave, and those who are in the country must not enter the city; because these are days of punishment, so that all things which have been written will be fulfilled. Woe to those women who are pregnant, and to those who are nursing babies in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land, and wrath to this people; and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled (vv. 20-24).
Jesus warned the people to leave, while dispensationalists get excited when Jews return to Israel, where two-thirds of them will be slaughtered. It’s a dispensational predicted inevitable “road to holocaust.”
[1] Hal Lindsey, The Road to Holocaust (New York: Bantam Books, 1989), 220.
[2] Kay Arthur, Israel, My Beloved: A Novel (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1996), 433
[3] Jack Van Impe with Roger F. Campbell, Israel’s Final Holocaust (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1979), 37.
[4] Thomas Ice, “The Israel of God,” The Thomas Ice Collection. An article with the same title does not include his comment that compared to the Holocaust under Hitler, “that a time of even greater trial awaits Israel during the tribulation.” Click here to read.
[5] Charles C. Ryrie, The Best is Yet to Come (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1981), 86.
[6] John Walvoord, Israel in Prophecy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1968), 107, 113. Also quoted in Timothy P. Weber, On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 149.