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It seems that due to one of the sillier accusations lobbed at Barack Obama during the campaign, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jones have been dragged out of the moth balls to once again repeat their tired interpretations of the apocalyptic texts of the Bible as if they were somehow new or relevant.
There are a number of ways that one could critique what these guys are saying. One way would be to point out how radically inconsistent is their application of scripture, especially since their entire argument rests on a "literal" (a concept we can and should spend some time deconstructing) reading of the Bible. One could also dismiss them entirely based on their extreme ignorance of any political categories. Please, someone ask them to define socialism!
But today I feel like picking their argument apart on the grounds that they're not saying anything that hasn't been said in regarding Dispensationalist eschatology (their particular brand of road-map for the end of the world) for at least thirty years.
That by itself isn't necessarily a bad thing because it could be seen as evidence of consistency and faithfulness to their doctrinal system. The problem, however, is that they keep pointing to current events as evidence that the Rapture (an interepretation of 1 Thessalonians 4:12 that was invented in the early nineteenth century by an Irishman named John Nelson Darby) is just around the corner.
Hal Lindsey has been doing this same kind of thing ever since he published The Late, Great Planet Earth over thirty years ago. LaHaye and Jenkins have taken advantage of that same fear and fascination with Nostradamus-type prophecies of calamity and leveraged it for immense profit. The activities of the Soviet Union were "evidence" that the Rapture would happen next Thursday. When the Soviet Union collapsed, that was "proof". So was the first Gulf War. So was Y2K. So is every incident of Arab-Israeli violence that comes up in the news.
(Sidenote: the fascination with Soviet-Arab relations stems from a very wacky reading of Ezekiel 38-39)
The latest excuse to dreg these guys up was the attempt to scare religious voters in 2008 by not to subtly suggesting that Barack Obama was the Antichrist. LaHaye and Jenkins wisely backed away from that particular accusation, but they weren't shy about selling their ideas or their many products.
I really like Rachel Maddow because she's pretty much the only pundit who is respectful of all viewpoints while being unapologetic about her own. She's a Rhodes Scholar and an Oxford PhD, so she knows that of which she speaks! Her interview with LaHaye and Jenkins is posted above.
It's easy to simply dismiss these guys as hucksters and mindless ideologues. They clearly are, but their book sales and a number of surveys have shown that a lot of people believe what they're saying, even though they don't bother to open the Bible and see if any of it makes sense (it doesn't).
We would all do well to remember that Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' books are in the fiction section of the bookstore for a reason. If you want to know what's actually going on in the world, pick up a newspaper.
OK, my ranting is done. Everybody have a good Monday.
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4 comments:
It makes me so crazy that these are the guys who get called to get the "Christian" viewpoint and on MSNBC for Pete's sake. The only progressive voice that gets any airtime is Jim Wallis and he can't be everywhere. It's a wonder they didn't try to burn Rachel Maddow at the stake for being a lesbian.
The NEWEST Pretrib Calendar
Hal (serial polygamist) Lindsey and other pretrib-rapture-trafficking and Mayan-Calendar-hugging hucksters deserve the following message: "2012 may be YOUR latest date. It isn't MAYAN!" Actually, if it weren't for the 179-year-old, fringe-British-invented, American-merchandised pretribulation rapture bunco scheme, Hal might still be piloting a tugboat on the Mississippi. roly-poly Thomas Ice (Tim LaHaye's No. 1 strong-arm enforcer) might still be in his tiny folding-chair church which shares its firewall with a Texas saloon, Jack Van Impe might still be a jazz band musician, Tim LaHaye might still be titillating California matrons with his "Christian" sex manual, Grant Jeffrey might still be taking care of figures up in Canada, Chuck Missler might still be in mysterious hush-hush stuff that rocket scientists don't dare talk about, John Hagee might be making - and eating - world-record pizzas, and Jimmy ("Bye You" Rapture) Swaggart might still be flying on a Ferriday flatbed! To read more details about the eschatological British import that leading British scholarship never adopted - the import that's created some American multi-millionaires - Google "Pretrib Rapture Diehards" (note LaHaye's hypocrisy under "1992"), "Hal Lindsey's Many Divorces," "Thomas Ice (Bloopers)" and "Thomas Ice (Hired Gun)," "LaHaye's Temperament," "Wily Jeffrey," "Chuck Missler - Copyist," "Open Letter to Todd Strandberg" and "The Rapture Index (Mad Theology)," "X-Raying Margaret," "Humbug Huebner," "Thieves' Marketing," "Appendix F: Thou Shalt Not Steal," "The Unoriginal John Darby," "Pretrib Hypocrisy," "The Real Manuel Lacunza," "Roots of (Warlike) Christian Zionism," "America's Pretrib Rapture Traffickers," "Pretrib Rapture - Hidden Facts," "Dolcino? Duh!" and "Scholars Weigh My Research." Most of the above is written by journalist/historian Dave MacPherson who has focused on long-hidden pretrib rapture history for 35+ years. No one else has focused on it for 35 months or even 35 weeks. MacPherson has been a frequent radio talk show guest and he states that all of his royalties have always gone to a nonprofit group and not to any individual. His No. 1 book on all this is "The Rapture Plot" (see Armageddon Books online, etc.). The amazing thing is how long it has taken the mainstream media to finally notice and expose this unbelievably groundless yet extremely lucrative theological hoax!
(saw this bit on the web)
I love Rachel too :-)
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