December 6 - The War Against Bible Prophecy

I have heard from hundreds of you stating your feelings about the Hal Lindsey/TBN issue. My radio program on it is now posted at my "radio archives" on the Web site. Dial-up users should have no problems hearing it due to new technology. I am also aware of TBN's canned reply to those of you emailing stating that Lindsey will be back in January. I am skeptical but let us wait and see. Kindly don't send me any more of TBN's replies as I am overwhelmed with them when ministries like mine are in pretty frantic year-end countdown.

However, I state again, the real issue here is censorship in the Kingdom. Who is next to be silenced for having truth? God will open another door for Lindsey and many hope it will be a better venue than Trinity Broadcasting Network who always ran a disclaimer before Lindsey's show indicating they were not in agreement with him. His program was the number one rated show on TBN. Their loss may be huge. Continue to pray Romans 8:28.

We've heard about the war against Christmas but I was made aware of an equally-troubling issue last week. The head of a mid-sized Christian publishing house contacted me. He told me that other than Multnomah who publishes Mark Hitchcock, and Tyndale, who publishes "Left Behind" and Hank Hannegraaff, all other publishing houses are saying "no" to Bible prophecy. They claim the topic is out of date, out of favor (an understatement), divisive, and no one cares. Seems strange that 40 million copies of "Left Behind" have sold if no one cares. They are partially right. I got this e-mail from a supporter in Oregon and have gotten hundreds of similar e-mails over the years.

"It is surprising to me that there are so many people I have tried to talk to about prophecy who have brushed me off by saying that they consider it 'doomsday talk.' It is difficult to get anyone to even talk about it. Even my own family doesn't want to hear about it."

How and when did we get to this deplorable point? Why is the issue of "the King is coming" a downer? It started twenty years ago in our seminaries when students determined, thanks to their professors, that we can't know for sure which interpretation is right so it would be better to just stay away from it. The Bible is clear which interpretation is right. Their are nuances that admittedly only let us "see through a glass darkly." But the seminaries are cranking out pastors who aren't sure what theology to teach and preach so they don't even go near it.

Now we have theologies who are "new kids on the block." They aren't really "new" but they are enjoying new popularity as those that promote them are popular (though wrong). Almost all mainline Protestant denominations and Catholicism teach Replacement Theology which says the church is Israel, when, in fact, Israel is the key to eschatology. Amillennialism (we're in the Millennium now) is standard in most denominations, and Preterism (all prophecy but the Second Coming is history and happened in 70 AD) is growing thanks to Gary DeMar and Hank Hannegraaff. It looks like they're partially right: All prophecy IS history, at least in the churches and now Christian publishing houses. The theologies that have exploded in the last twenty years are Kingdom Now/Dominion/Reconstructionist/Latter Rain. They all teach that the church will subdue the world and make it perfect, then the Lord can return, but not until the world is perfect. Find that in the Bible, would you?! As I said last week and on air, Jan Crouch is a "Dominionist" and thus locks horns with Lindsey and as program director, she likely made the tragic TBN decision.

So here we are, likely in the last of the last days, facing such a scenario. The signs are shouting at us. But in the last days the Bible also says in II Peter that people would mockingly ask, "Where is the promise of His coming?" And there is an assault on truth. Eschatology spells out in deadly detail (pun intended) the devil's demise. Thus, he's putting up a fight against it as well.

So hang on to your prophecy books because if the Lord does tarry, you may have to resort to re-reading them with the publishing ban on them now in play.