I had the Institute for Christian Economics republish this book in 1991.
On December 25, 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Mikhail Gorbachev announced this on national television. View his speech here. This was the greatest day of the post World War II era.
This was the promotional copy that the ICE used to promote the book months before the suicide of the Soviet Union.
For years premillennial dispensational authors have been predicting that Armageddon is just around the corner -- and for years, their false prophecies have failed to come true. In this update of his 1977 book, Armageddon Now!, Dwight Wilson examines these predictions concerning Armageddon, particularly as they apply to Russia from the time of the Russian revolution unto today. With the dismantling of the Soviet empire, this book is more timely than ever.On May 14, 1948, the state of Israel became a legal reality.
Forty years is an intriguing number of years, biblically speaking. It marks one biblical generation. It was this figure of 40 years that had led some dispensational leaders in the late 1970's to forecast the Rapture in 1981: 40 years minus the seven years of Israel's Great Tribulation, when the Church will be in heaven, according to pre-tribulational dispensationalism. But the Rapture did not take place in 1981, either.
In early 1988, Mr. Edgar C. Whisenant published a back-to-back, two-part book. He used more than one title for one of these books, but one version was called The Rapture Rosh Hash Ana 1988 and 88 Reasons Why. It predicted that the Rapture would take place in September 1988. It sold millions of copies. But the Rapture was delayed. Again. Then he announced that he had forgotten that in between 1 B.C. and 1 A.D., there was a full year, so really the Rapture would come in September 1989. It didn't. We then heard no more from Mr. Whisenant.
In August 1990, Saddam Hussein's forces invaded Kuwait. Immediately, there was a flurry of American fundamentalist interest in another wave of books on the revival of "Babylon." Prophecy book sales soared far higher than Scud missiles. Iraq was expected to invade the nation of Israel. But nothing happened. Iraq lobbed a few Scud missiles into Tel Aviv. Most of them were shot down by U.S. Patriot surface-to-air missiles. Armageddon was delayed. Again.
Had the forecasters paid more attention to Dr. Dwight Wilson's book, they might have avoided their subsequent series of embarrassments. He had warned his premillennial peers against making forecasts about the dating of Armageddon, and by implication, the dating of the Rapture. His book surveys the history of such ill-fated prophecies. From 1917 on, premillennial authors repeatedly identified the Antichrist, the Beast, 666, and numerous other "literal fulfillments" of biblical prophecy. None of these identifications proved accurate. Dr. Wilson warned against the use of such "loose literalism."
Now Dr. Wilson offers a new Introduction that updates his original book. He gives the same warning: Christians should avoid making precise predictions about the contemporary fulfillment of Bible prophecies. We will see if his peers take him seriously.
His peers ignored his warning. They still do.
On May 14, 2018, the State of Israel celebrated its 70th birthday. The Rapture of all Christians out of history's Church Age into heaven did not take place on May 13. The Great Tribulation for Israel did not begin on May 13, shortly after the Rapture. May 13 was the final day that the prophecies concerning the "generation of the fig tree" could take place.
Dispensationalists will ignore this, just as they ignored the suicide of the Soviet Union. But this silence will not solve their enormous exegetical problem.
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