Do we trust “experts” or the Bible?
The Bible believer must challenge himself to take what he hears from the prophecy celebrities and see if it is consistent with God’s word – the King James Bible. That blessed book is the touchstone of truth – anything inconsistent with its words is wrong.
Since about 99% of the end-times gurus take the position that the King James Bible is not the final authority – you can write it down that about 99% of what you hear from these people is flawed in one way or another. They presumptuously correct the divine AV text with alternative readings derived from uninspired Greek and Hebrew lexicons or from variant manuscripts that the AV translators rejected. By doing this they literally cut themselves off from any further spiritual illumination. No one who rejects God’s words can hope to arrive at the truth – it simply cannot be done.
Nevertheless, over the last 4 centuries Bible-believing men – to the extent they maintained faithfulness to the AV text – have been granted much insight and educated the body of Christ on their discoveries. Since around 1900 men like Clarence Larkin and C.I. Scofield accumulated prior insights, added some of their own materials, and widely disseminated this information. The correctness of their literal and “dispensational” viewpoint was acknowledged and accepted by Bible believers – but opposed by the scholarly churchmen who rejected the King James Bible and who were publishing “modern bibles” based upon newly “accepted” critical texts and recently devised Greek and Hebrew lexicons.
Dispensationalism Made Sense.
The great vindication of the dispensational viewpoint came in 1948 when Israel became a nation. That astounding miracle had been predicted by the dispensationalists, but was considered an impossibility by those who firmly believed that the Church was the new Israel, and that the Jews had, like Esua, forever lost their blessing.
So since 1948 the dispensational model explained by Larkin and Scofield has been received as the whole gospel truth by all and sundry. With little alteration their works and charts have been plagiarized and resold time and again under the name of whoever is posing as the latest “prophecy expert”. Scofield’s and Larkin’s narrative about the rapture, the identity of the antichrist, the length of the tribulation, and the end-times sequence of events is repeated today exactly as proposed by them about 100 years ago.
Caution is in order.
But we must remember that both Clarence Larkin and C.I. Scofield were Bible-correctors. They used the King James Bible, but rejected its text whenever they ran into difficulties. This is a red-flag that what they told us is not all true. They were men who benefited immensely from what they gleaned before them – repeating and repackaged insights the Holy Ghost gave to Bible believers; any insight they gained personally only came when they left the AV text unaltered. Everything they wrote cannot be accepted without full examination. The Bible-believer must judge everything by the Book and reject the popular model wherever it is not perfectly in line with the word of God.
This AV-centric type of approach is not taken by the “prophecy experts” like Jack Van Impe, Tim Lahey, Hal Lindsey, Irvin Baxter, Tim LaHaye, Ed Hindson, Dave Breese, John Hagee, Grant Jeffrey, David Hocking, Chuck Smith, Dave Hunt, Chuck Missler, Pat Robertson – and especially not by the prophecy odd-balls like Harold Camping, William Branham, Gerald Flurry, Marvin Rosenthal, etc.
Many of the “received truths” of dispensationalism are dissatisfying because they are awash in incomplete analysis. This has discredited dispensationalism and given preterists and neo-amillennialists unchallenged ammunition for their errors. Amillennialism is obviously wrong – but why hasn’t dispensationalism opened up all the wealth of information contained in, for example, the minor prophets? Passages throughout the Old Testament remain obscure – relegated to ancient history – as if they had no present significance.
It is sort of like an evolutionary “scientist” assuring us that most of our genetic material is insignificant “junk DNA” left over vestiges that have no meaning. What they really mean is that they are too stupid to understand the DNA because its complexity is way beyond their present understanding – and they will never understand it until they stop looking at it from an evolutionary viewpoint and start looking at it as the product of design. It is the same with our present “prophecy expert” approach to the scriptures – they toss out precious “junk” that is inconsistent in any way from the traditional dispensational viewpoint.
Why aren’t they learning anything new?
They can’t expound any further than what they got from Larkin and Scofield 100 years ago because they approach the Bible from the “scholarly” position of correcting its divine words with garbage whenever and wherever the run into any passage they do not understand. That stymies any further revelation from the Holy Ghost because God will not acknowledge those that do not honour him. In their gap of having no actual light on the holy scriptures, they take to lighting sparks of their own devising to get more understanding.
An example is Chuck Missler who decided that the “original manuscripts” had equal distance letter codes. In his excitement to follow this folly he failed to observe that no original manuscripts exist. He rejected the AV text God gave the body of Christ in the end-times for lost papers that God discarded long ago to the winds of time. Chalk Chuck up as a blind fool. Many others like him are desperate for further understanding – that God isn’t giving them – and they rush to pursue strange “gematria” numerology nonsense and other odd-ball gimmicks. Some have given up looking into the scriptures alone and are studying junk from the “Book of Enoch” or from Nostradamus or even the deceived ramblings of unsaved Roman Catholic “prophets” like St. Malachy. Many charismatic nuts are getting excited by new prophetic utterances that are becoming more and more wacky. It is not a surprise because God has always permitted lying prophets to deceive the people who reject his words.
In fact, I already wrote an earlier post about the fact that there is a plausible harmony between the demonic extra-scriptural prophecies held by the unsaved Roman Catholics and many of the modern dispensationalist teachings which will make the end of World War 3 seem like the end of the tribulation, and give the antichrist who arises thereafter credibility as the real Christ!
Scriptural Challenges to the Popular Viewpoint.
There are many inconsistent things about the popular dispensational outlook that need to be revised. Among which are the following:
1. “Book of Revelation is chronological.” This idea makes no sense given that it describes identical events over and over again. In particular, the current view would have us believe that the second advent of Jesus Christ occurs five or six times before Revelation 19:11. Obviously it repeats itself.
2. “The Tribulation is 7 years long (or 3.5 years long).” This concept leaves no time for the 2300 days of Daniel 8:14 and fails to address Revelation 2:10 – “ye shall have tribulation ten days” the only verse in the entire Bible where a length is given with the word “tribulation”. The whole tribulation must be 10 years long.
3. “There is one antichrist and his false prophet.” This riddiculous idea not only excuses the pope from being an antichrist, it ignores the fact that the word “antichrist” (singular) appears in the Bible exactly 4 times, and fails to notice that there are 4 horsemen in Revelation 6, 4 soldiers in John 19:23, 4 beasts in Daniel 7, 4 notable ones in Daniel 8:8, 4 wild beasts in Hosea 13:7-8 and Amos 5:19, and a whole prophetic chapter full of 4′s in the 30th chapter of Proverbs. Obviously there are 4 antichrists.
4. “Salvation in the tribulation is the same as it is now, by Christ’s grace alone.” Nothing could be more incorrect – if a man takes the mark of the beast that one misstep will damn him forever. All the “works” passages in the New Testament (found especially in James, Hebrews, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Revelation) have to have their time of doctrinal application – only he who “endureth to the end” – works – gets saved (Matthew 10:22). Obviously faith plus works is required during that time period.
5. “The rapture occurs right before the tribulation.” Many passages undeniably put the rapture at the end of the tribulation (e.g., Matthew 24:31). Those arguing over a pre- versus a post-tribulation rapture obviously failed to realize that there are two raptures – one for the church before the tribulation and another for the “wise virgin” tribulation saints at the end of the tribulation.
6. “The United States is not mentioned in Bible prophecy.” This fondly held notion- particularly by American commentators – flies in the face of what anybody with discernment can sense when reading Revelation 17 and 18. The “experts” all refused to line up those chapters with the Old Testament chapters describing the destruction of the nation of Babylon because in the OT it clearly is not describing merely a religious system. The vast majority of the Jews remaining outside of Israel live in the USA – a fact which alone proves that the USA is Mystery Babylon (Rev. 18:4; Jeremiah 50:8).
7. “Fallen angels will return to mate with women.” This idea is one of the greatly anticipated signs of the end, but a great disappointment because nobody sees it happening anywhere. The fact that race-mixing is being promoted and that black men like Obama are beginning to govern great nations is ignored as having any bearing on the fulfilment of this prophecy. Worry about being labelled a “racist” scares away all the commentators. And do they have any light to shine on Matthew 19:12?
8. “Only two Jewish witnesses will return.” The second coming of Moses and Elijah (sometimes misidentified as Enoch and Elijah) is a part of the dispensationalist’s narrative – and correctly so – but what about all the other Old Testament characters? Revelation says there are 144,000 witnesses (ch. 7, 14) – has this anything to do with the “dry bones” of Ezekiel 37?
9. “The end of the tribulation is when Iran and Russia are defeated.” Then why is that WW3 at the start of the tribulation according to Daniel 8? The commentators are all silent. Nor can they expound upon WW4 by identifying the “land of unwalled villages” in Ezekiel 38:11, mistaking it for Israel.
10. “The first half of Daniel 11 is historical, the last half prophetic.” If that is so, where is the break in the chronology? The commentators simply don’t understand it and can’t expound the prophetic implications of the entire chapter from the first verse to the last. If they could, they would have a blow-by-blow of the entire tribulation.
Bible believers must reject unsound theories.
Concerning these issues, and many more, the celebrity Bible teachers have nothing to offer because they are Bible-correctors. They can’t step out to declare absolute truth because everything has become relative to them – they have lost their footing when they threw out the AV text.
They are stuck scratching their heads in ignorance. To save face they bloat themselves up as “scholars” and “experts” – vainly trying to lend credibility to themselves for adopting the opinions and preferences and traditions of “reliable” men. They can’t say, “thus saith the Lord” from the AV text – but instead say,
“Perhaps God said … many believe that God said …. I tend to hold … the Greek here is difficult … some scholars agree … a scribal error may have occurred which … but that manuscript reading may not be correct … we cannot be certain … the XYZ version renders the verse as … perhaps God said … maybe we will never know … the recognized opinion is … good godly men hold different views …. blah blah blah!“
This sloppy mush of humanistic nonsense – treating the King James Bible as if it were just any other book – is exactly what we intend to avoid while re-evaluating the prevailing dispensational prophetic system. We want to derive our understanding from the Holy Scriptures – AV 1611 – without making any changes to it.
“I have more understanding than all my teachers:
for thy testimonies are my meditation.
I understand more than the ancients,
because I keep thy precepts.”
Psalm 119:99-100.
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Posted on December 6