When will people stop listening to these so-called prophecy experts who have been wrong time and time again?
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=54
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=203
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=519
by Bill Barnwell
With every decade that passes, the prophecy charts of the “Left Behind” crowd have to be revised. While “Left Behind” has only been around since the 1990’s, the prophetic system behind it spans back to the 1830’s. Since then, rapture fever has raged throughout various circles of the church. In many denominations, it was and remains unfathomable to believe in anything other than pretribulationalism and dispensationalism. Fortunately, more and more people are waking up to two facts. First, each decade spawns more inaccurate predictions from so-called “prophecy experts.” Second, there are indeed other interpretive options in the prophetic debate that better stand up to Biblical scrutiny. As a result, dispensationalism and pretribulationalism are losing credibility.
Prior to the 19th century, nobody had heard of the “pretribulational rapture.” All doctrinally sound Christians both historically and today believe in the eventual Second Coming of Christ, but it is only recently in church history that this event has been separated from the “pretribulational rapture.”Pretribbers dispute this point and say that the dispensational movement was simply a return to Biblical truth that had been lost throughout church history. But behind this idea is the presupposition that the Bible itself teaches dispensationalism and pretribulationalism. In fact, the verses used to support and defend these doctrines actually do not teach them at all. The other line of defense is to quote a passage from an obscure bishop from the 300’s who allegedly taught pretribulationalism. However, both the authenticity and the meaning of the passage are in dispute. Finally, why is it some kind of trump card for pretribulationalism if only one guy in 1,830 years of church history allegedly taught this concept?
An even better question is: when will people stop listening to these so-called prophecy experts who have been wrong time and time again? Is there a point where they are stripped of their “expert” credentials and consumers stop buying their books in bulk? A case in point, one still very prominent Christian writer heavily suggested that the “rapture” would occur by 1988. The reasoning for this was a misunderstanding of Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21 where Jesus gives his “Olivet Discourse.” Jesus compares the budding of a fig tree to the completion of events of judgment given earlier in these chapters. He then says “I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”
Dispensationalists associate the “fig tree” with modern Israel, even though the text does not suggest this. Knowing that a generation was usually associated with 40 years, many dispensationalists then argued that the “rapture” must have had to occur 40 years after the establishment of the modern nation of Israel. Hence 1948 + 40 = 1988. When that didn’t happen, the prophecy charts were revised and it was explained that generation really meant 70 years. Or maybe even a hundred. And maybe 1948 wasn’t really the starting point. Maybe it was 1967 when Israel recaptured Jerusalem. So, according to the most liberal use of dispensational prophecy charts, the rapture must happen by 2067. Obviously, however, all the “experts” today will be dead and gone by then. They won’t have to answer for their failed predictions if they do turn out to be false.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/barnwell/barnwell77.html
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=73