The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Israel Turns 58

She is over 5000 years old but celebrating 58.

Israel since 1948

When you open the link above you'll be asked to open a language pack installation that appears. Just cancel it and the photos and music should begin.


Wes

According to what I was taught when I was a kid at multiple churches, Jesus Christ is eighteen years late in rapturing the Church! It was all supposed to happen within 40 years of Israel becoming a nation again, according to Hal Lyndsey and all of the pastors I ever heard from childhood until only about 7 years ago.

Were it not for a little bit of education in the years since, I would have continued in the assumption that all Christians believed the same thing about the "last days."

I wonder how many thousands of people who grew up hearing and accepting all that "Late Great Planet Earth" stuff have forsaken Christianity altogether now, since all those predictions proved to be false. It's been eighteen years since the budding of the fig tree. The Russians were supposed to have invaded by now and all that stuff.

I'm really suprised that I never heard any alternative eschatology ever presented to me at evangelistic meetings, Bible studies (including a conservative Presbyterian one), friends' conversations, church, or even college classes (at a Baptist college). It's astonishing - not only how the popular "Christian" science fiction has so quickly become the majority report, but also how the historical eschatology of the Church for most of her 2,000 year history has become virtually unknown to the majority of Protestants.

Still learning,
Robin

Robin:

Growing up in the ELCA I never heard anything about "the Rapture", "the Antichrist", "the rebirth of the Nation of Israel", or premillenial eschatology. It was only when I started attending a "christian" high school where they had daily chapels regarding the we're going to be raptured at any moment that I started believing it. I remember asking one of the assistant pastors at my church about this and he didn't know what I was talking about. Which because of my indoctrination at the "christian" high school made me think that I was in a unchristian church.

This caused me later to leave the ELCA for a non-denominational church that taught Scofieldism as the only method to interpret the scriptures. (I still have the tapes somewhere.) It wasn't until I read "Dispensationalism rightly dividing the people of God" that I was exposed to the truth. From there I discovered the Reformed Theology and the rest is history.

Robin,


I remember during the Carter administration, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin signed a peace accord. You should have heard the dispys carry on about "Israel signing a peace treaty with the antichrist".


The dispensationalists are like chameleons, they change their colorful tunes with every passing newspaper headline.

Denny

Romans 3:22-24

Robin,

Do I recall correctly that your background was in a fundamentalist Pentecostal church before becoming Reformed? If so, I'm not surprised that Lindsey's eschatology was the only one you were exposed to. It probably is the most widely promoted by our largely semi-pelagian society.

I remember reading "The Late Great Planet Earth" by Hal Lindsey back in the seventies. He and other dispensational premillennialists wrote some exciting novels on eschatology back then. Salem Kirban wrote one entitled "666" and David Wilkerson wrote "The Vision." These books created quite a stir among Christians.

One thing these authors had in common is that they believed in the last days we would be able to read from our Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other and see the fulfillment of history. Unfortunately their writings are no more valuable than yesterdays newspaper.

OBTW the link I've posted for the celebration of Israel's 58th anniversary was sent to us via e-mail by a friend of my wife who happens to be Jewish.


Wes

Wes asked:
I didn't grow up in a Christian home. My first church was an "independent" Presbyterian church where I heard these things for the first time. Thereafter I went to two Southern Baptist churches (both of which were charismatic), then an Assembly of God. I was into my late 30's before I ever heard anything other than the popular science fiction from any of the churches I attended and visited. I wonder why eschatology is such a rare topic of conversation among the Reformed folk I've travelled with thus far.

Actually, I have found Biblical eschatology to be the main basis for my departure from charismaticism! Seeing the spiritual gifts as an eschatological event rather than an ongoing "lesser form" of revelation that was to continue until Christ's return was, for me, the final straw that broke the Pentecostal camel's back.

-R

I think you'll enjoy reading this article by Charles Terpstra. He points out that the early Reformers did not develop the doctrines of eschatology, at least not very far. Neither Luther or Calvin produced a commentary of the book of Revelation.

In this article by Terpstra he shows the subsequent development of Reformed eschatology which focuses primarily on the amillennial view. Reformed eschatology stresses the sovereignty of God with a focus on Covenant theology.


Wes

Wes,

The following quote


from the linked site is somewhat misleading. In standard Jewish reckoning of dates, we are now in year 5766, but in that system, year 1 begins at Creation, not the establishment of Israel. If Israel's history is reckoned back to Abraham, its actual age will be somewhat less than 4000 years; if reckoned to the Sinai covenant, it will be only about 3500 years.

For comparison's sake, if you divide the numbers by 100, using the quoted figure would be equivalent to telling a 35- to 39-year-old woman that you thought she was about 58. Not a prudent move.

Paul,

Scholars are split over the actual dates that you propose but I don't think the person who developed the link had the acuracy of 5000 in mind. Their focus is on the 58th birthday of the restored Israel. "Israel since 1948."

If you watched the video to the end you can see they call this the 58th anniversary of their Independence Day.


Wes