August 21, 2008
I sent this out the month after I shut down the Institute for Christian Economics and transferred all assets to Dominion Educational Ministries, Rev. Nick Kozel's organization. With the Web, I can publish a book in 60 seconds. There was no need for donors to suppot a publishing ministry any longer.
This went to the ICE's email list.
January, 2002
Rev. Bruce Wilkinson's mini-book, THE PRAYER OF JABEZ, is the best antidote to Tim LaHaye's LEFT BEHIND novels that is likely to sell five million copies. It is subtitled (in the smallest subtitle typeface that I have ever seen) BREAKING THROUGH TO THE BLESSED LIFE. It presently ranks #124 on Amazon's site, meaning that it is a huge best-seller.
JABEZ and LEFT BEHIND: the continuing eschatological schizophrenia of American fundamentalism can be clearly seen in the popularity of these two books.
Rev. Wilkinson's book is not much larger than a supermarket check-out stand "purse book." At $6.95, it is affordable. It is so short that most buyers will actually read it. What they read is a call to recite a short prayer every day for 30 days, a prayer that can best be described as postmillennial. This is the prayer, according to the King James Bible:
And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast [borders], and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested (I Chron. 4:10).Rev. Wilkinson has done more to promote the psychology of postmillennialism than I ever have or am likely to do. He has persuaded millions of Christian readers to pray a postmillennial prayer of kingdom victory for 30 consecutive days. He knows that any daily ritual becomes part of a person's pattern of habits after 30 days.
On page 91 of 92 mini-pages of text, he writes this:
I've seen something amazing happen in people you have suspected all along that God answers courageous prayers. When the merest ray of faith shines in your spirit, the warmth of God's truth infuses you, and you instinctively want to cry out, 'Oh, Lord, please . . . bless me!' And I see in people like you a growing excitement and an anticipation of what will happen next.This is the language of inner-spirit pietism, but it comes at the end of a book that has presented Christian service as the goal of one's "expanded borders." On page 82, we read: "I pleaded for more 'territory' (more ministry and influence for Him) and stepped forward to receive it." He continues on page 83.Because something always does. Your spiritual expectations undergo a radical shift, though it may be only slightly apparent to someone else. You feel renewed confidence in the present-tense power and reality of your prayers because you know you're praying in the will and pleasure of God.
As you repeat the steps, you will set in motion a cycle of blessing that will keep multiplying what God is able to do in and through you. This is the exponential growth that I referred to at the close of the previous chapter.Where have we heard this before? At the end of Deuteronomy 8, where Moses presents the case for God's positive feedback in history between covenantal blessing and covenantal growth.
But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day (Deut. 8:18).
Rev. Wilkinson has presented the psychological Christian case for victory in history: spiritually, but also in terms of kingdom growth. He even uses the scientific term, "exponential." Exponential growth is nature's pattern of positive feedback, in which expansion finally approaches infinity as a limit. Actually, exponential growth always reaches the limit of its environment, but technically, infinity is the limit. He continues:
As the cycle repeats itself, you'll find that you are steadily moving into wider spheres of blessing and influence, spiralling ever outward and upward into a larger life for God (pp. 83- 84).
What this mini-book has done, as no best-selling Christian book in my lifetime ever has, is to move readers into the psychology of postmillennialism. Thanks, Rev. Wilkinson!
The same schizophrenia has been bothering millions of American fundamentalists for two decades. With Ronald Reagan's candidacy in 1980, the language of political victory spread through dispensational circles like a prairie fire in August. At the time, I referred to this phenomenon as the intellectual schizophrenia of the New Christian Right.
I also called it the Eschatological Crisis of the Moral Majority.
I wrote that fundamentalists would have to abandon either their new-found interest in politics or their pessimillennial eschatology. Nobody gets into politics in order to lose. Politics offers the hope of victory. The hope of victory is not a pessimillennial hope.
Over the last two decades, both forms of abandonment have taken place. Seminary-level theologians have modified Scofield's notes into near-oblivion. This has been done very quietly, without public fanfare, out of fear of the donors' wrath.
Jerry Falwell formally buried the Moral Majority in 1989.
The latest casualty is Ralph Reed, the former director of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, who six years ago publicly attacked Christian Reconstruction as "an authoritarian ideology that threatens the most basic civil liberties of a free and democratic society." He is now in the middle of the Enron mess. THE NATION recently described his recent spiritual journey as "A Walk Through the Valley of Greed."
What would Jesus do? It's a no-brainer; he would leave the Christian Coalition, take a consulting job with Enron and then use his divine power to make George W. Bush president.Read that way, there's nothing sinister in the recent revelation that it was Bush's top political advisor, Karl Rove, who in 1997 hooked up former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed with Enron. After eight years of making Pat Robertson look good, Reed was exhausted and ready for a career change. The private sector is even more lucrative than televangelism, and Enron was just one of many fat consulting contracts that was Reed's for the asking.
For the Bush people, it was also a good deal. George W. was still a few years away from announcing for the presidency. In the meantime, it wouldn't hurt to park the former spokesman for the Christian right with the Bushies' close friends at Enron. Think of the synergy in that relationship. Two years later, when the campaign was officially announced, Reed would be added to the Bush payroll without having to sever his ties to Enron, since there were lots of other folks in the Bush camp doing the same thing. Reed knew that Bush would win because "He (God) knew that George Bush had the ability to lead in this compelling way."
But in the interim, a fellow has bills to pay and that Enron consulting job -- which paid $10,000 to $20,000 a month and lasted until Enron's bankruptcy -- was a nice little favor. . . .
I have long had a motto, "politics fourth," after one's personal covenant with God, the church covenant, and the family covenant. But some people specialize in politics. It is a morally high-risk specialization, for politics is the art of what is possible today. It is a life of either constant compromise or constant defeat. Reed has always been a traditional political deal-doer. Now a deal has backfired on him in full public view. He is presently the most visible link between Enron and the White House. He will be in the news over the next year. This exposure that will do his career no good. "Sic transit pluralism."
"Politics is dirty," fundamentalists used to say. Reed's experience will not dispel that perception.
The eschatological schizophrenia of fundamentalism remains a potent and divisive force. On the one hand, political victory has not come to fundamentalists, who are not noted for their long-run outlook. Politics was "a new thing" in 1980. Today, it is an old thing: a long uphill battle that is not being won at the national level, where conservatives always prefer to waste their money. Christian political activists have had to settle for two ersatz victories: (1) Reagan's rhetoric, which was undergirded by White House appointments made by James Baker, who was Vice President Bush's Chief of Staff at the White House, and who ran everything after 1982; (2) George W. Bush, with his feast of Ramadan dinner at the White House.
The President: Good evening, and welcome to the White House. I'm so honored to welcome such distinguished guests and ambassadors during the holy month of Ramadan.America is made better by millions of Muslim citizens. America has close and important relations with many Islamic nations. So it is fitting for America to honor your friendship and the traditions of a great faith by hosting this Iftaar at the White House.
I want to thank our Secretary of State for being here, as well as members of my administration. I want to thank the ambassadors for taking time in this holy month to come to join us in this feast.
Ramadan is a time of fasting and prayer for the Muslim faithful. So tonight we are reminded of God's greatness and His commandments to live in peace and to help neighbors in need. According to Muslim teachings, God first revealed His word in the holy Qur'an to the prophet, Muhammad, during the month of Ramadan. That word has guided billions of believers across the centuries, and those believers built a culture of learning and literature and science.
All the world continues to benefit from this faith and its achievements. Ramadan and the upcoming holiday season are a good time for people of different faiths to learn more about each other. And the more we learn, the more we find that many commitments are broadly shared. We share a commitment to family, to protect and love our children. We share a belief in God's justice, and man's moral responsibility. And we share the same hope for a future of peace. We have much in common and much to learn from one another. . . .
Ramadan is hardly a holy month for American fundamentalists, who think that U.S. State Department is, and ought to be, an extension of Israel's Embassy.
Meanwhile, the generation of the fig tree is dying off. Two decades ago, when it became obvious that the Israel's national 40-year period, 1948-1988, had not produced the Rapture (which was due in 1981), Pat Robertson redefined the generation of the fig tree as having begun in 1967. "The Six-Day War gave the Jews control over Jerusalem in June of 1967. That event started the cosmic click ticking. The length of a generation in the Bible is 40 years. . . . Forty years from 1967 is 2007." (PAT ROBERTSON'S PERSPECTIVE, May-June, 1990, p. 5.)
Problem: the pre-tribulation Rapture is supposed to take place no later than seven years prior to the end of this generation. It is 2002. Delayed again!
By the way, the "clock of prophecy" cannot officially start ticking until after the Rapture, because there can be no fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in this, the Great Parenthesis, the Church Age. This has been the "received opinion" of traditional dispensationalism from the days of Scofield, but established definitively by H. A. Ironside in his book, THE GREAT PARENTHESIS (1943). There, he wrote: "The moment the Messiah died on the cross, the prophetic clock stopped. There has not been a tick on that clock for nineteen centuries. It will not begin again until the entire present age has come to an end" (p. 23). The prophetic clock has been stopped ever since the cross, no matter what Peter said.
For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God,I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams (Acts 2:15-17).(According to Scofield, Joel had two sets of "last days" in mind: Peter's and the ones applying to the restoration of Israel after the Rapture of the church. See Scofield's note on page 1151 of the SCOFIELD REFERENCE BIBLE. As to how an Old Testament prophecy could be fulfilled in the era of the church, Scofield did not say. Cornelius Stam and other hyperdispensationalists split the dispensational movement in the 1940's, arguing that Acts 2 proves that the church did not begin until the ministry of Paul.)
Pop-dispensationalists want a ticking prophetic clock, so that they can say that Jesus is coming soon. This gets their donors all excited. But they do not want it ticking when it comes to their previous statements regarding "prophecies fulfilled in our time" that did not come true. They want it ticking when it comes time to connect the latest headline about Middle East to their latest pamphlet on the Beast of Revelation. They do not want it ticking when it comes to the untimely collapse of the Soviet Union, "the bear from the north."
If you want to read a history of dispensational prophecies that went astray in the twentieth century, written by a premillennialist historian, visit http://www.freebooks.com and download Dwight Wilson's ARMAGEDDON NOW!
If you like it, order a copy from Christian Liberty Academy:
Dispensational leaders' public defense of their eschatology has now moved from paperback books and revised, updated editions of out-of-print paperback books to novels. I do not expect to see a dispensationalist seminary faculty member defend the Scofield-Chafer theology ever again. The system is dead.
This leads me to the subject of LEFT BEHIND. Why is the series so popular? Because it is a tombstone for the end of a movement. There is a lot of demand for tombstones at the end of an era. It is strictly entertainment, and the emotionally defeated troops want to be entertained while they are waiting for the Rapture. It is so much easier to read novels than it is to J. Dwight Pentecost's THINGS TO COME or memorize a prophecy chart printed in 1952 (revised from a 1932 chart).
Gary DeMar has answered the theology of LaHaye in his new book, END TIMES FICTION. This will have slightly more than zero impact in the world of fundamentalism. His book is a book on theology. LEFT BEHIND is science fiction, rather like Asimov's "Foundation" novels. It is the most popular science fiction series of all time. By October, 2001, LaHaye's novels had sold 45 million copies, according to the Barna Research Organization. Royalty payments on the series are approaching $100 million.
What has quietly been left behind is traditional Scofieldism in the largest dispensational seminaries. I call this the "secret rapture" of the Scofield Reference Notes. Talbot Theological Seminary abandoned LaHaye's old- fashioned premillennial dispensationalism over two decades ago. Dallas Theological Seminary's younger men abandoned it over a decade ago. When Dallas ceased to publish seminary founder L. S. Chafer's 8-volume SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (1948) in 1988, the year of the 40th anniversary of the State of Israel (the fig tree generation, according to Hal Lindsey), the handwriting was on the wall for traditional Scofieldism. It was going from right to left. Fundamentalists in the pews don't have any awareness that the Good Ship Scofield has been abandoned by its crew, who are now in lifeboats, rowing frantically toward the Good Ship Progressive Dispensationalism, which is moving in circles on the hazy horizon. Only the waiters remain on board the Scofield. The passengers are still in the grand dining hall, feasting on stale leftovers. Never having eaten anything else, they do not notice.
No one notices that the crew is missing.
When a theological movement defends its position with novels instead of books on systematic theology, it is in its terminal phase. The longer that the State of Israel survives, the less that anyone with a taste for theology will be able to deal with "the generation of the fig tree according to Hal Lindsey." Yet fundamentalism has always preferred Lindsey-level paperback theology to Chafer-level hardback theology.
The eschatological schizophrenia continues: the prayer of Jabez vs. the novels of LaHaye. On the one hand, Rev. Wilkinson is raising up a generation of psychological postmillennialists. On the other hand, Rev. LaHaye is wasting the precious, unrecoverable time of a generation of psychological retreatists. Both of them are making my work a lot easier.
I'm on Wilkinson's side. This will no doubt cheer him enormously.
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