The advertising phrase “Takes a Licking but Keeps on Ticking” can be traced back to the 1950s when Timex Corporation introduced its famous watch commercial featuring John Cameron Swayze. In the commercial, Swayze subjected the watch to various tests, such as being dropped from heights or submerged in water. Despite these challenges, the watch continued to work. Check out these magazine ads. “Unusual Verified Shock Test Proves Timex Can Take a Beating Yet Keep on Ticking.” This is one of my favorites.
Prophecy Pundit John Hagee, dubbed “Dr. Armageddon,” is like a Timex watch. His prophecies take a licking, but he keeps on ticking, hoping people will forget what he said about his previous predictions. In 2014-2015, John Hagee and Mark Biltz, in Four Blood Moons, tied lunar tetrads to an imminent rapture, leveraging Jewish feasts and 1948 as a “super sign”; the eclipses passed without incident, yet their books sold millions of copies.
He issued a warning to his San Antonio congregation and international following about a “world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015.” Hagee gained international attention for a series of sermons asking, “Could 2012 be the end of the world as we know it?” These sermons were broadcast to millions of people worldwide via his organization, John Hagee Ministries and Global Evangelism Television. Here’s his latest:
The antichrist will start out making a treaty with the state of Israel. That’s for seven years. He will break that treaty in 3 1/2 years….. There will be … 21 supernatural acts of judgment that are coming on this earth. Just one of those acts will be whenever angels are released to destroy one-third of the Earth’s population in a day. What’s going to happen on this Earth will be hell on Earth, and we, the bride of Christ, are going to be in heaven. People teaching that we’re going to go through that just simply are biblically misinformed. We are members of the bride of Christ. Jesus is the blessed hope, and there’s nothing hopeful about living through seven years of hell to prove that you love Jesus. The Lord is going to take us to heaven. We’re going to miss this chaos that’s going to happen on the earth.
This is standard dispensationalism that finds the antichrist in Daniel 9:24-27 and projects a supposed treaty with Israel more than 2500 years (so far) into the future. This prophetic scenario is entirely fabricated. No verse in the Bible says the church is going to be taken off the earth before, during, or after seven years. Hagee, like all end-time “profits,” completely ignores the texts related to when Jesus would return, that is, “near” for that first-century generation (James 5:7-9). By manipulating the meaning of words like near, shortly, and about to, and retooling the meaning of “this generation,” every generation is susceptible to the deception of these false “profits.” This type of thinking puts us on the perpetual cusp of end-time thinking.
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 NowHagee also ignores the only verses that use the word “antichrist.” He’s not alone. The best thing to do when you talk about the antichrist is to ignore the verses that use the word. Some prophecy pundits will turn to the verses but ignore the timing factor. The following is from a short reel that’s making the rounds on Facebook. He argues that Jesus’ return is near: “The signs are stacking up everywhere.” This is pretty standard stuff. This person, like Hagee and others, fails to take seriously the time parameters in the Olivet Discourse. I cover Matthew 24 in my books Wars and Rumors of Wars and Last Days Madness. If you want a short version with pictures, you can get Is Jesus Coming Soon? There’s also James Jordan’s commentary on Matthew 23-25 and John Bray’s Matthew 24 Fulfilled.
I’ll give the Facebook poster credit for going to 1 John 2:18-22, where the words “antichrists” (v. 18) and “antichrist” (v. 22) are used. He points out that “antichrists” is “plural” in verse 18 and that “many deceivers have gone out into the world” (2 John 7). Many false prophets, many deceivers, and many antichrists. When? In John’s day. Does he mention anything about an end-time antichrist described by people like John Hagee? He does not.
He completely ignores the time indicators! First John 4:1 states that “many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Verse 2 states, “the antichrist, which you have heard is coming, and now it is already in the world.” The “now” was then. Let’s look at 1 John 2:18-19.
Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be evident that they all are not of us.
There were “many antichrists” in John’s day. Their appearance was evidence that it was “the last hour.” They were most likely associated with the “synagogue of Satan” mentioned in Revelation 2:9 and 3:9. Peter might have had them in mind when he mentioned the “scoffers” or “mockers” who questioned “the promise of His coming”(2 Peter 3:4), most likely pointing to the Olivet Discourse where Jesus said He would return before their generation passed away (Matt. 24:34).
Wars and Rumors of Wars
A first-century interpretation of the Olivet Discourse was once common in commentaries and narrative-style books that describe the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. There is also a history of skeptics who turn to Bible prophecy and claim Jesus was wrong about the timing of His coming at “the end of the age” and the signs associated with it. A mountain of scholarship shows that the prophecy given by Jesus was fulfilled in exacting detail when He said it would: before the generation of those to whom He was speaking passed away.
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