Projection is “a defense mechanism in which an individual recognizes their unacceptable traits or impulses in someone else to avoid recognizing those traits or impulses in themselves subconsciously. For example, someone who bullies another for being anxious and insecure may be doing so to avoid acknowledging they exhibit those same tendencies.”[1] Long before modern psychology gave a name to this practice, the Bible described it.
“Do not judge, so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and look, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye!’”
Hal Lindsey’s book The Road to Holocaust was published in 1989 by Bantam, an anti-Christian secular publishing company where he accuses. Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, first published by Zondervan in 1970, was later published by Bantam in 1973 and sold 28 million copies by 1990. Here’s a funny story that David Chilton told me in his conversation with a woman in a discussion he had with Lindsey and The Road to Holocaust. Bantam is a New York publishing company whose address is 666 5th Avenue. This was more persuasive for her than the content of Chilton’s biblical arguments against Lindsey’s claims.
It is the epitome of projection by Lindsey and some prominent dispensationalists who claim that anyone who does not agree with their position espouse “replacement theology” (see the expanded edition of my book Prophecy Wars that should be available in the next week) by accusing an eschatological position of beliefs that are inherent in his own system. The publication date of The Road to Holocaust is significant, one year after his failed 1948 + 40 = 1988 “this generation” prophecy in which he said the following.
The most important sign in Matthew has to be the restoration of the Jews to the land in the rebirth of Israel. Even the figure of speech “fig tree” has been a historic symbol of national Israel.[2] When the Jewish people, after nearly 2,000 years of exile, under relentless persecution, became a nation again on 14 May 1948 the “fig tree” put forth its first leaves.
“Jesus said that this would indicate that He was “at the door,” ready to return. Then He said, “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matthew 24:34, NASB).
What generation? Obviously, in context, the generation that would see the signs — chief among them the rebirth of Israel. A generation in the Bible is something like forty years. If this is a correct deduction, then within forty years or so of 1948, all these things could take place. Many scholars who have studied Bible prophecy all their lives believe that this is so.[3]
When Lindsey was interviewed in 1977 about his “this generation” claim in The Late Great Planet Earth, he retreated by quipping that if he was wrong, he would “be a bum.” He then went on to say in the same interview, “There are a lot of world leaders who are pointing to the 1980s as being the time of some very momentous events. Perhaps it will be then. But I feel certain that it will take place before the year 2000.” There are always “some very momentous events.”
Lindsey’s The 1980’s: Countdown to Armageddon picked up on what he said in the 1977 interview: “I believe many people will be shocked by what is happening right now and what will happen in the very near future. The decade of the 1980s could very well be the last decade of history as we know it.”[4]
Lindsey made his reputation by making predictions. Not the “day or the hour” type like Edgar Whisenant (Why the Rapture Will be in 1988) and Harold Camping (1994?), but claims were made that our generation was The Terminal Generation (1976) and The 1980s were the Countdown to Armageddon (1980). The Late Great Planet Earth was written 55 years ago! That means most of the people pushing the claim today that “Jesus is coming soon” most likely have no knowledge of Lindsey’s failed prophecies and are making the same mistakes.
The New York Times noted the following about the 1978 film The Late Great Planet Earth, “The efficacy of the film’s scare tactics is minimized by its applying biblical predictions too generally, and almost cavalierly at times…. And Hal Lindsey, who co-wrote the book upon which the film is based and who appears with Mr. [Orson] Welles as a co-narrator, speaks coolly, almost enthusiastically, about the prospect of worldwide destruction,”[5] and that would include a future holocaust for Israel.
Gary North wrote the following in our book The Legacy of Hatred Continues (PDF download is available), a response to The Road to Holocaust, that Lindsey “singles out David Chilton, me [Gary North), Rousas J. Rushdoony, and others who share our views. We are the anti-Semites. He had said this before, on an audiotape issued by his organization in 1987, which was still being issued in 1988: ‘The Dominion Theology Heresy,’ tape #217…. [H]e did not say that we are ‘unconscious’ anti-Semites, as he does in his book. He said this loud and clear: “Man, this is one of the things that’s dangerous. This is the most anti-Semitic movement I’ve seen since Adolph Hitler.’ Not ‘one of the most’—the most. Christian charity, thy name is not Hal Lindsey.”
The Legacy of Hatred Continues
We believe that Hal Lindsey is wrong in making eschatology the test of orthodoxy. As we will point out in The Legacy of Hatred Continues, the problem is not eschatology but ethics, obedience not expectations. ''Anti-Semitism'' crosses all eschatological lines, just as love for the Jews crosses all eschatological lines. Hal Lindsey fostered a legacy of hatred among his Christian brethren and among those who desperately need Jesus Christ: the Jews.
Buy NowWho was really pushing the holocaust narrative? Certainly not those who espoused “dominion theology.” It was Lindsey and his fellow dispensationalists.
• 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.[6]
• On the September 18, 1991, edition of the “700 Club,” Sid Roth, 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.
• In Jack Van Impe’s book Israel’s Final Holocaust we learn 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….”[7]
• In his book Blow the Trumpet in Zion, Richard Booker writes: “What is this terrible tribulation that awaits the Jews? Moses said it would take place in the “latter days.” It is the last seven years of this age just prior to the coming of Messiah Jesus to earth. The Bible says this will be a time of suffering such as the world has never known…. The Antichrist will march his troops into Israel and for a short period of time will occupy Jerusalem. Every nation will support his retaliation against Israel for their disturbing world peace. The Antichrist will kill two-thirds of all the Jews. This could mean that up to ten million Jews could be killed. The Antichrist will plunder the beloved city of Jerusalem, and one-half of the citizens will be forced into exile.[8]
• In a December 2, 1984, sermon, the late Jerry Falwell said, “Millions of Jews will be slaughtered at this time but a remnant will escape and God will supernaturally hide them for Himself for the last three and a half years of the Tribulation, some feel in the rose-red city of Petra.”
• 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.”[9]
• John Walvoord follows a similar line of argument: “Israel is destined to have a particular time of suffering which will eclipse any thing 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.”[10]
• Arnold Fruchtenbaum states that during the Great Tribulation “Israel will suffer tremendous persecution (Matthew 24:15-28; Revelation 12:1-17). As a result of this persecution of the Jewish people, two-thirds are going to be killed.”[11]
• Dr. Paige Patterson, who served as president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1992 to 2003, and as president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) from 1998 to 2000, stated the following in a radio 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."[12]
Dwight Wilson, author of Armageddon Now!, convincingly demonstrates that dispensational premillennialism advocated a “hands off” policy regarding Nazi persecutions of the Jews during World War II. Since, according to dispensational views regarding Bible prophecy, “the Gentile nations are permitted to afflict Israel in chastisement for her national sins,” there is little that should be done to oppose it. I cover this in my book Last Days Madness.
If you want to read about dominion theology and the controversy that took place in the 1980s, Peter J. Leithart and I wrote the book The Reduction of Christianity: A Biblical Response to Dave Hunt that refutes so much of the junk theology that passes for biblical Christianity.
The Reduction of Christianity
We don't have to accept reduction in order to avoid seduction. We can contend for the Faith without condensing or abbreviating it. In this capably written, courteously argued and comprehensively detailed book, authors DeMar and Leithart show us how. They show us how to confront the error of "New Age" thought with the power of the truth the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Buy NowThe original subtitle was Dave Hunt’s Theology of Cultural Surrender. It’s as current today as it was when it was published.
[1] Cynthia Vinney, “Projection as a Defense Mechanism” (May 10, 2024).
[2] It may be an historic figure, but Lindsey has not shown it to be a biblical figure. Contrary to Lindsey, Whisenant, and every other date-setter, “the context of Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:32-33 gives no warrant to the idea that Jesus was using the figure of the fig tree as anything more than an illustration on how the Jews were able to tell when summer was near.” Dean C. Halverson, “88 Reasons: What Went Wrong?,” Christian Research Journal (Fall 1988), 17. For an evaluation of the meaning of the fig tree illustration, see Gary DeMar, The Debate over Christian Reconstruction (Ft. Worth, TX: Dominion Press, [1988] 2025), 143.
Contemporary date-setters use the “fig tree” as a primary indicator for imminent eschatological events. But “traditional” dispensationalists do not see it this way. Thomas Ice writes:
Dispensationalism has always affirmed that the signs of the times, the “prophecy clock,” would not resume ticking until after the rapture of the church. Therefore, no one could possibly predict the rapture on the basis of events taking place in the current church age because there are no signs relating to the rapture. The fruit of date-setting and many contemporary errors has not been gathered from the root called dispensationalism. (Thomas D. Ice, “Dispensationalism, Date-Setting and Distortion,” Biblical Perspectives, Vol. 1, No. 5 [Sept./Oct. 1988], 1. Emphasis added.)
As much as Ice might want to protest, he has just described modern-day dispensationalism: date-setting or “generation-setting” based on the “super sign” of Israel becoming a nation again. I believe a quick survey of the available literature would reveal that era-setting has “been gathered from the root called dispensationalism.”
[3] Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, [1970] 1971), 53-54.
[4] Hal Lindsey, The 1980’s: Countdown to Armageddon (King of Prussia, PA: Westgate Press, 1980), 8.
[5] Janet Maslin, “Film: A ‘Planet’ Doomed,” The New York Times (January 18, 1979).
[6] Hal Lindsey, The Road to Holocaust (New York: Bantam Books, 1989), 220.
[7] Jack Van Impe with Roger F. Campbell, Israel’s Final Holocaust (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1979), 37.
[8] Richard Booker, Blow the Trumpet in Zion (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 1985), 112, 118.
[9] Charles C. Ryrie, The Best is Yet to Come (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1981), 86.
[10] John F. Walvoord, Israel in Prophecy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1962), 107, 113. Emphasis added.
[11] Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, “The Little Apocalypse of Zechariah,” The End Times Controversy: The Second Coming Under Attack, eds. Tim LaHaye and Thomas Ice (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2003), 262.
[12] Stated on Dallas, Texas, radio program (KCBI) in a debate with me on May 15, 1991.