Tag Archives: beast

THE POWER OF FICTION FOR PRETERISM

Revelation March 17, 2017 Comments: 2

PMT 2017-022 By Brian Godawa

If you are like me, a postmillennial redemptive-historical preterist, you have been deeply disturbed by the past huge success of Left Behind, as well as the current financial siphon of speculative novels on the book of Revelation. Is this concern because of greed or envy for the success of others? May it never be. My sadness is because I think it represents the spirit of the age: a hunger for conspiracy theories. In this world of obsession with narrative over facts, even Christians are more drawn to sensational fantasies of the end times than to the real-world glory of the Gospel in the Kingdom of God. Futurists (like Left Behinders) seem more interested in the coming of the “Antichrist” than in the coming of Christ, or rather, than in the current reign of Jesus Christ over all (Eph 2:20-22). Continue reading →

INTERVIEW ON THE END TIMES

Dispensationalism, Interpretation, Last Days, Millennial Views, Pessimism October 22, 2014 Comments: 2

Left BehindPMT 2014-128 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

An interview of me made recently for an introduction to a conference engagement.

1. People now days are fascinated with “the end times.” And with the reboot of the Left Behind series, discussions about the end times will continue to increase. No doubt, we will hear more talk about things like the 7-yr tribulation, the rapture, the mark of the beast, etc. These are key parts to the theology that undergirds the Left Behind books and movie. But what most people don’t realize is that this theology, known as Dispensationalism, is actually a relatively new way to read Scripture. That is, up until only about 150 years ago, no Christian on record ever believed some of things that is depicted in the Left Behind series. Could you comment more on this fact?

Dispensationalism arose in the 1830s in England, about the same time as Mormonism was arising in America, and not long before the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was a time of much prophetic speculation and expectation. John N. Darby created dispensationalism as a prophetic outlook that eventually became a whole theology. He fully expected the Lord’s return in his lifetime, which ended 130 years ago (in 1882). It has constantly been frustrated with wrong predictions of the Rapture, such as Hal Lindsey’s 1980 book “The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon” and his 1996 book: “Planet Earth 2000: Will Mankind Survive.” Continue reading →