Jan

Armageddon Now

During my walk with Christ I got caught up in the frenzy of trying to understand the apocalyptic events that many popular charismatic evangelists were preaching. I bought their books on the end times and was thouroughly convinced an imminent rapture was about to occur.

Now 30 years later I have abandoned them because all of their half truths never came to pass. It is no different today as many modern television evangelists continue fleece the ignorant by painting imminent end time scenarios , by quoting the newspapers etc and using the scriptures as support for their conclusions.

Mr 13:14 But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains:

This verse above is often interpreted by them as the Anti Christ sitting in a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem.

Yet if we take note of who Christ was speaking to in this discourse, we will discover it was those who were seated around him at the time. It is patentently obvious that it is not the TV evangelsits congregation in the 21st century. It was a message to ensure the followers of Christ in the first century survived the destruction of Judea by the Romans in Ad66-70.

Lu 21:20 And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. 21 Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. 22 For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.

Lukes Gospel compliments Mathews Gospel and illucidates the event Christ was warning the infant church of .

Below is an excerpt from a Pdf File called Armegeddon Now. It is a critique on these who have made merchandise of Christs flock.

Opportunism.
The premillenarians’ credibility is at a low ebb because they succumbed to the temptation to exploit every conceivably possible prophetic fulfillment for the sake of their prime objective: evangelism. The doomsaying cry of “Armageddon Now!” was an effective evangelistic tool of terror to scare people into making decisions for Christ and to stimulate believers to “witness for Christ” to add stars to their heavenly crowns before it was everlastingly too late. Voices of moderation were less likely to find mass appeal.

Times of crisis tend to produce feelings of insecurity in the general populace as a matter of course. The evangelistic message was found to be most effective when couched in terms of confident, dogmatic overstatements, rather than in a carefully reasoned, moderate theology that offered indefinite conclusions.

The success of such evangelistic approaches was to the premillenarians well worth the risk of false identifications in the interpretation of prophecy.

It would be unfair to accuse any one preacher or writer of such insincerity; they were True Believers (sometimes caught up in the snare of their overly zealous rhetoric),but, nevertheless, the result as a whole has been gross opportunism.

It is not likely that the situation will change greatly. Although within the movement there are many moderate voices that will continue to speak out against this irresponsibility, these voices will go unheeded since they do not offer any hope of greater success in the primary goal of evangelism.

As a matter of fact, these voices that in the name of truth and integrity cry aloud against opportunism will find their message muted by their own realization that their principal thrust must continue to be evangelism, not the reform of their brothers’ methods. The premillenarians see evangelism as the means to save the world and will continue to use this means as a justification to misuse the end.

Below is a link to the document the excerpt above was taken from.
dwan Armageddon Now