REVIEWING THE LATE GREAT
PLANET EARTHAfter 24 years does Hal Lindsey's book
seem any more credible?By Dale Baranowski
(Originally published in 'Biblical Polemics Magazine', September 1992
publication of the Jerusalem Institute of Biblical Polemics.)
This is an article about prophecies, Bible prophecies and an evangelical who interpreted and peddled them. If you are not interested in checking on how successful this famous evangelical was in using Bible prophecies after 24 years have past, then this isn't for you. If you have no curiosity at all about his performance and accuracy in predicting world events, despite having been directed by the holy spirit, you might as well stop now.
Such was the tone Hal Lindsey used in the introduction to his bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth' (1). In the late 1960's and early '70s, this book swept the fundamentalist camp in a blaze that attracted the attention of many non-Christians as well as non-committed Christians. The New York Times called it the "Number one Non-Fiction Bestseller of the Decade" (2). Several friends of mine had read the book and immediately became fire- breathing fundamentalists. While I was in university in the early '70s, my Pentecostal roommate and his Baptist friends were convinced that Jesus' second coming would be "any time now", and that I should have accepted Jesus as all the signs and warnings that were in Bible prophecy were taking shape in current events. Lindsey's book presented those prophecies along with their corresponding situation in world developments. I read the book and was struck with the similarity of the situation with Lindsey's portrayal, but I didn't accept his claims as I caught him on a number of significant errors and so discounted the entire book. My roommate was surprised at my attitude.
It was in 1968 that Lindsey prepared the manuscript for his book and a great deal has transpired in those 24 years. Many of the events he forecasted have not come to pass, despite his claim to have been "illuminated" by the Holy Spirit. I have had a good belly laugh at many of the points prophesied therein and I hope to provoke at least a smile in my readers with this review, a postmortem, of 'The Late Great Planet Earth'.
Let us start with Lindsey's qualifications. He graduated from the School of Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary hi Dallas, Texas, and for 6 years was a traveling representative of Campus Crusade for Christ, a highly respected missionary organization among the multitudes of US evangelical fundamentalists (p. 181). He displayed all the essential beliefs and attitudes of the Born-Againers, especially the notion that God has a direct hand in his life and that "(Jesus) motivates and empowers us to follow God's purpose in our lives" (p. 138). When it comes to reading Bible prophecy he goes "trusting in the spirit of God for illumination" (p. 170). Lindsey claims that he and his fellow true believers have direct access to God, "the more we learn of God's love and unconditional acceptance of us, the more we are able to trust Him to work with us. We will also desire to hear His word which renews our minds to His viewpoint" (p. 175, emphasis mine). So that there be no doubt that his book contains the position of the Almighty regarding the future he wrapped up his introduction with: "Let us give God a chance to present His views" (p. viii). With this sort of bold certainty we can not fail to take his words with utmost seriousness as he claimed to have a hotline to God.
Lindsey's first chapter was an expose about the intense interest that westerners had in astrology, ESP, the occult, etc., during the late '60's. Everyone desperately wanted to know the future, and clairvoyants, ouija boards and mediums were consulted in droves. Lindsey wanted all to know that the Bible was good competition for local fortune tellers: "the Bible makes fantastic claims; but these claims are no more startling than local prophets and seers... the claims of the Bible have a greater basis in historical evidence and fact" (p. 7).
From there he dealt with what it meant to be a prophet, "failure to pass the test of a true prophet was a bit severe, the only grade allowed was 100% accuracy. Anything less would doom the prophet to death by stoning (Deut 13.1-11)" (p. 10). It seems that Lindsey failed to notice that verse 2 of that passage specifies that the death penalty is only in the case of a prophet leading the people into idolatry. Deut 18.22 deals with the case of a simple false prophet and there is no hint of it being a capital crime.
Afterwards, he revealed the prophecies for Jesus as supposedly coming from the Hebrew Bible. Refuting these are a routine matter with information from the Jerusalem Institute of Biblical Polemics, yet there are points where Lindsey's logic is transparently faulty. First, "in [the Jews'] blindness they discounted more than 300 specific predictions in their sacred writings" (p. 21); and, "in the Old Testament there were more than 300 prophecies regarding Christ's first coming (all of which were literally fulfilled), but more than 500 relating to His second coming. Many of these two different themes of prophecy were disclosed in the same sentence." (p. 160); then, "the answer lies in the test of a true prophet which Moses gave - their prophecies must all come true" (p. 16); and finally, "[Jesus] fulfilled many of the ancient predictions" (p. 18). Lindsey fell prey to the old anti-Semitic concept of the blindness of the Jews, yet by his own admission, Jews had every reason to ignore Jesus as a contender for messiah as prophecy was to be specific and fulfilled 100%. But Jesus, says Lindsey, only fulfilled 300 out of 800 possible predictions! That was only 40%! Since the second coming was not predicted in the Hebrew Bible it wasn't blindness at all but simply because God never informed the Chosen People that not all the prophecies needed to be fulfilled at the same time. Any Christian that continues to believe in the blindness of the Jews after being confronted with this argument must logically admit that God erred in not telling Jews about one essential feature of the messiah, that of a second coming. This is a pretty serious error, as Lindsey says God took 800 opportunities to inform the Jewish people about the messiah, yet not once did God mention the second coming to them. Many Christians have responded that Jews should have recognized the divinity of Jesus and then taken seriously his idea of a second coming. Yet in reality it was impossible to differentiate the "divinity" of Jesus from all the other virgin-born, miracle-working, demigod claimants that abounded in the Greco-Roman world.
Lindsey had an interesting solution for all those problematic verses in the Hebrew Bible that Christians claim predict Jesus, but are actually set in the past tense, as in Isaiah 53.1-3: "The prophet writes of this event in the past tense which was a common literary device of Jewish writers ... when they wished to emphasize the certainty of a prophecy they would put it in the past tense, which is called the prophetic past tense in Hebrew" (p. 26). This "prophetic past tense", funny enough, is only known in Christian circles. Far from being a "common literary device of Jewish writers", it is absolutely unheard of among Jerusalem Bible scholars who are native Hebrew speakers. Sa’adia HaGaon, the great medieval grammarian, wrote books on basic Hebrew as well as discovered many fascinating patterns hitherto unknown. Rabbi Sa’adia made no mention of such a tense in his writings. Besides, Hebrew is a precise language and having such a tense would cause great confusion since one would not know if a verse was to be understood as a prophecy for the future or simply a past event. This resulting confusion would not be compatible with the idea that prophecy about the messiah is very specific and must be fulfilled 100%. Most importantly, the Isaiah 53.1-3 passage cited here contains verbs in the simple, ordinary, common past tense of biblical Hebrew. There are no literary devices involved.
Lindsey also displayed that remarkable Christian ability to adjust the meanings of key words in prophecy to suit a desired outcome: "There is a clear prediction that the messiah would die for the transgressions of Isaiah's people... 'he was cut off (killed) out of the land of the living...' (Isaiah 53.8b)" (p. 27) Yet in the following passage he interprets "cutoff" in a spiritual sense: "Ezekiel 37 is part of this context and details the miracle of the physical restoration of the Jews to their own land, then afterwards their spiritual conversion... 'Behold, they say, our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, we are completely cut off, Ez 37.17" (p. 41). Why does "cut off mean physical death in one passage while it is only spiritual in another? Lindsey did not broach the subject.
Another example is his interpretation of certain chapters in Zechariah where he actually added meanings to verses that are not to be found in the text. He claims there will be "the personal revelation of Jesus Christ as messiah to a remnant of Jews in Jerusalem (12.10) ... the repentance and faith that occurs at this personal revelation (12.11-14), the opening of the fountain of forgiveness to repentant Israel (13.1) (and) the triumphant return of the Messiah (14.1-21)" (p. 44). It is quite clear to anyone who reads those verses in Zechariah that Lindsey inserted the underlined ideas as these are definitely not to be found in the text. How does he justify such misrepresentation? The answer to these is found on page 40 where it provides his method of interpretation:
"When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of immediate context, studied in light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths indicate clearly otherwise." (3)
Here we have Lindsey's mandate to interpret verses to mean what is expedient to the Christian cause. Quite clearly the literal meanings of the above passages have been ignored, "immediate context" might be debatable but was definitely ignored where "cut off' was concerned, so all that was left was to apply "axiomatic and fundamental truths". We can only affirm this because Lindsey, like all good Christians, believes in the virgin birth (p. 118) the basis of which is Isaiah 7.14. Here we have an excellent example where their prophecy has been lifted from context. Nothing else in chapter 7 is claimed to have any connection with Jesus, yet it is Christian doctrine that insists verse 14 predicts that a "virgin" will produce Jesus, nothing more. Note that first and foremost, doctrine is Lindsey's guide to understanding the Bible. I can't help wondering if he really thought the Bible is the word of God as he kept changing the meaning of the text when he found it to be problematic. This point is essential if one wants to understand his mental functioning and how he applied it to his bible-based, spirit-illuminated forecasts of the future.
Lindsey was indeed correct that current events in the 1960's and '70's were a frightful affair, with the nuclear arms race in a stand-off between the USSR and the USA, China had developed the bomb, and the Soviets were expanding their influence into the third world. For this reason it wasn't hard for him and many other evangelicals to see World War III, a nuclear holocaust and Armageddon on the horizon. To make sense of all this they searched their Bibles and fell upon Daniel, Chapter 7, Ezekiel 38-45, Zechariah 12-14, the gospels and the Revelation of John. Ezekiel presents prophecies of a war between Gog and Magog and lots of Evangelicals took them to indicate that a war will be fought between Israel and the Soviet Red Army. Ezekiel lists the countries that would join in that war and Lindsey connected them to what was presumed to be their modern names. They are Persia (Iran?), Cush (Ethiopia and the black African states?), Put (Libya and North Africa?), Gomer and his hoards (Slavic iron curtain countries?) and Togarmath and Company (Southern Russia and Cossacks?) (pp. 56-59). Needless to say, many of these countries were directly influenced by the Soviet Union and at that tune, the world was condemning Israel on a daily basis in the UN.
Lindsey was completely convinced he was right, for in 1968, General Moshe Dayan, brilliant tactical commander of the Israel Defense Forces who routed the Arab armies in the 1967 Six Day War, said, "The next war will not be with the Arabs but with the Russians." (p. 48).
Lindsey also noticed that Egypt was leader of the Arab world and Nasser, then-president of Egypt, made no secret of his desire to continue the struggle to destroy the State of Israel as the Arab states had tried in the wars of 1948, 1956 and 1967. Lindsey posited in 1968 that "too many pieces and events have fallen into place for us to believe they could all be 'coincidence'." (p. 61) and "we have seen how current events are fitting together into the precise pattern of predicted events." (p. 69). Be that as it may, let us consider what he forecasted would take place using his Bible, Bible scholars, the holy spirit and his peculiar method of interpretation.
First, Lindsey prognosticated that 10 European countries would join together as a single entity under the framework of the European Economic Community and become a United States of Europe, which he interpreted from Daniel 7:24 KJV (p. 82). Lindsey quoted Halstein (4), former president of the EEC, who said: "At about 1980, we may fully expect the great fushion of all economic, military and political communities into the United States of Europe." (p. 85) and so Lindsey believed that it would be the EEC or some entity based on the EEC that would participate in the great war against Israel.
China, we are told, will send an invincible army of 200 million soldiers overland to join in that conflict (Revelation 9:18, p. 71). Lindsey was fully aware of the fact that China did not have the resources to send them via mechanized transport. He implied that they would have to walk.
Regarding the Jewish State, Lindsey had more wonders of prophecy to present. "Israel will become fantastically wealthy and influential in the future." (p. 173). He quoted Rimmer (5), who wrote the following in 1940: "Ten years of uninterrupted industry will make Palestine the richest concentration of treasure this world has so far witnessed. Even five years of unbroken application to the cultivation of her natural resources would make Palestine the envy of the world and a land very well worth robbing indeed." Lindsey saw that the only natural resource in Israel is the Dead Sea, as it provides chemicals and fertilizers in particular. Lindsey was inspired to believe that an incredible worldwide famine would force the entire world to desire the fertilizer resource that the Dead Sea could supply. He also felt that large amounts of electric power would be needed to refine those chemicals and so he predicted that geothermal energy hidden in faults around the Dead Sea would run generating turbines (p. 145). Since Israel is the "land bridge of the Middle East", which connects three continents, he posited that the temptation for the whole world to pounce on Israel would be irresistible (p. 145).
Lindsey also foresaw the destruction of one third of the earth's surface and based it on Revelations 9:15-18 and reasoned that this could only be due to a nuclear holocaust (p. 155). In addition, he wrote that the troubles in the Middle East would "become so severe that only Christ or the antichrist can solve it. Of course the world will choose the antichrist" (p.173). Lindsey then predicted that the final battle would be at the Valley of Armageddon (Revelation 16:34, 14, 16) and quoted Napoleon, who supposedly said, while looking out over that valley, "all the armies of the world could maneuver here." (p. 153).
Perhaps the most interesting prediction Lindsey made was to set a time limit on all these happenings: "Then (Jesus) said, Truly I say to you this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.'" What generation? Obviously, in context, the generation that would see the signs - chief among them, the rebirth of Israel. A generation in the Bible is something like 40 years. If this is a correct deduction, then within 40 years or so of 1948, all these things could take place. Many scholars who have studied Bible prophecy all their lives believe this to be so." (p. 43). Well, Lindsey has a verse from a gospel, taken in context, with scholarly opinion behind him and the illumination of the holy spirit to top it all off. How could he go wrong? Before we jump to the conclusion that Lindsey should be 100% accurate in his predicting ability, note his disclaimer: "I will make a number of forecasts about the future which are based on a careful study of the prophetic truth and the writings of many scholars on the subject. I believe that these forecasts are based upon sound deductions; however, please do not get the idea that I am infallibly right in the same way that a Biblical prophet speaking under the direct inspiration of God's Spirit was. I believe that God today gives us illumination to what has been written but that He does not give us infallible revelations as He gave the authors of the Bible." (p. 170). Although Lindsey had a ready disclaimer and did not assert infallibility, he sincerely believed that with his Bible, his odd way of reading it, scholarly support and help from the holy spirit, he could present a tangible picture of the near future. Fine, then! Let us take him at his word and under his own terms and see how he did. We will not expect perfection but certainly, he should have been better than the ordinary clairvoyant.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, US President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin after the signing of the Camp David Accords. Was Jimmy Carter the Antichrist?
So last things first, Israel recently had her 44th birthday, a "generation" has passed and nothing of what Lindsey predicted has come to pass. Israel is not a spectacularly wealthy country and Dead Sea chemicals have been at best a third-rate moneymaker, following after tourism and agricultural exports. One reason for this has been the Arab economic boycott against Israel, a detail that Lindsey did not see coming. Being an Israeli farmer by profession, I recently needed some nitrate fertilizer for a special application. Ah* that was available was a brand of urea (6) - from Holland of all places! I commented to a Dutch friend that I was not aware that the Netherlands exported nitrates. He replied: "They do not. The chemicals are Israeli but labeled in such a way as to get around the Arab boycott when shipped to the third world." Lindsey had quoted Rimmer on how Israel needed only five or ten years to develop her natural resources and industry to become an economic treasure trove. Well, the minerals of the Dead Sea have been exploited for the last 20 years without interruption and industry has had from 1973 to the present to develop itself and profound economic bounties have not materialized. Besides, geothermal energy in Israel has proven to be unusable.
Needless to say, a worldwide famine has not struck our planet and there is no physical possibility of the population reaching 7.5 billion souls by the year 2000, as Lindsey quoted in a 1969 UN report (p. 90). The UN published their statistics in May 1992 and they arrived at 5.5 billion. In fact, the population in the west is actually in decline as people are not marrying, marrying late or having very few children.
Napoleon's comment that all the world's armies could maneuver in the Valley of Armageddon may well have been true in his day but to cram 200 million oriental soldiers plus all the forces of Europe, Africa and Asia into that little valley of 250 sq. km. (96.5 sq. mi.) (7) leaves standing room for maybe half of them - that is assuming that they leave their military equipment somewhere else!
China, to my knowledge, has never attacked Israel and never have they attempted to waltz 200 million soldiers overland. This whole idea is patently ridiculous! It is doubtful that the Chinese could produce the 600 million combat boots needed to replace those worn out in the trek. Can you imagine the supply lines overland from China? The US had logistical problems supplying the American forces in the Gulf War and they had the advantages of air and sea transport. Perhaps the Chinese would use native bearers to transport all that rice but where would they get the water necessary to cook it in the arid Middle East? Besides, China has recently established full diplomatic relations with Israel.
In this vein, other countries including Russia are establishing relations with Israel. The black African states are lining up, Nigeria and Angola being the most recent arrivals. It seems that hostility towards her is abating.
Does anyone remember a famous treaty called the Camp David Accords? It seems that Nasser died and Sadat took his place as President of Egypt. It was Sadat, US President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prune Minister Menachem Begin that signed that treaty ending a long period of belligerence between Israel and Egypt. Lindsey said that only the antichrist would be chosen to solve the Middle East's problems. Was Jimmy Carter the antichrist? What about the present talks taking place between Israel, the Palestinians and her Arab neighbors? Is President George Bush the antichrist as well?
Regarding the EEC, Lindsey was wrong again. The Maastrict Treaty of European Union was only drawn up in 1992, with 12 participants. At the time of writing of this manuscript, Denmark has dropped out, making 11 members. However, UK Prime Minister John Major expressed the belief that Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia would join the EEC before the year 2000. (8) This would bring the membership to 14, not 10, as Lindsey predicted. Also, the Maastrict Treaty deals only with currency and economic union. Political and military fusion were not on the agenda.
It should be obvious that Lindsey was wrong about the USSR! His holy spirit did not illuminate the fact that it would completely collapse before provoking World War III. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) set up to replace it is floundering and will probably disintegrate. All those ex-members of the USSR, as well as many ethnic groups within them, are demanding their independence, unlike Lindsey's prophecy that the world would demand one dictator - the antichrist - to solve their problems. For years, Fundamentalists have been telling us that the number of wars and social strife has increased on this earth hi the last century. However, Europe has had her most tranquil period in all history. There has not been a single war on the European Continent for 43 years. Her serenity was only broken last year by the war in Yugoslavia, where Bosnian, Serb and Croat factions are yet engaged in a local but otherwise terrible war.
Although Moshe Dayan was an accomplished battlefield tactician, his political savvy was severely lacking. The fact was that the "next war" was not with the Russians but with the Arab states in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Both Dayan and Lindsey were wrong but Dayan did not read a Bible, nor did he claim to be in touch with the holy spirit. As far as future prospects for war between these two sides go, it is highly unlikely, as diplomatic relations have resumed, as well as with a number of CIS countries.
A number of minor but no less significant predictions that Lindsey made are worth passing mention. "There will be unprecedented mergers of [Christian] denominations into 'religious conglomerates'." (p. 171). "I believe that open persecution will soon break out upon 'real Christians' and it will come from the powerful hierarchy of unbelieving leaders within the [more mainstream] denominations." (p. 172). Funny, this never happened. Christianity is as polarized and fragmented as ever and in the previous US elections, Fundamentalists tried to field their own candidate, Rev. Pat Robertson, to enter the presidential race. Do not forget that ex-president Jimmy Carter was a Baptist while in office. If such open persecution was rampant, then those individuals would never have gotten so far. "The military capability of the United States, though it is at present the most powerful in the world, has already been neutralized because no one has the courage to use it decisively. When the economy collapses, so will the military." (p. 173). Yes, examples of such neutralization and indecisiveness could be found when the US invaded Granada, bombed Libya, invaded Panama and kicked the living daylights out of the Iraqis in the Gulf War! "The Common Market will stop the Communist take-over of the world and will for a short while control both Russia and Red China through the personal genius of the antichrist, who will become ruler of the European Confederacy." (P. 173). "Drug addicts will run for high political office and win through support of young adults." (p. 174). "Oriental religions will become predominant in the western world." (p. 174). No comment is necessary for the above, as they have obviously not come to pass.
To be fair, I have found part of one prediction that Lindsey seems to have gotten right: "Look for the present sociological problems, such as crime, riots, lack of employment, illiteracy, mental illness, illegitimacy, etc. to increase as the population explosion begins to multiply geometrically in the late 70s." (p. 174). I do not have any statistics before me but I am willing to allow that the above social problems have been on the rise, if only in the US. Unfortunately for Lindsey, lots of people were laying that in the 60s and it did not take reading a Bible or consulting the holy spirit. It is now easy to see that Lindsey based many of his predictions on trends active in the US in the 1960s. All he did was notice the trend in his day and just assume that things would only get worse.
It should be clear by now that Lindsey was a near-perfect failure in the soothsaying trade. In the 1960s, a clairvoyant named Jeane Dixon gave her prophecies to the Chicago popular press. They came out in January as predictions for that year. I always saved them and at the beginning of the next year, checked her accuracy. If my memory serves me, she was never more than 25% right, with 10% wrong and the rest too vague to be useful. If "Bible prophecy can be a sure foundation on which your faith can grow" (p. 7), as Lindsey says, then there is better reason to turn to ESP for your faith.
So, why did Lindsey fail? In reality, it was not Lindsey who failed. It was his church that failed. Lindsey just took it to its illogical conclusion. His book was the product of all those faulty assumptions and methods of many within fundamentalist Christianity. They project their highest hopes and worst nightmares on the Bible text. They try to make the text fit their church's doctrines, rather than let it speak for itself. At other times, they will use the New Testament's faulty assumptions about the future, about prophecy and worst of all, they will use the same rationale and method that the New Testament used to conclude that Jesus is the messiah. They believe that revelation is an ongoing process, with God somehow whispering in their ears, despite any expressed surface doubts. Deep down inside, they believe their perceptions can only be accurate. Once arriving at a conclusion, they seek others to reinforce their view, no matter how useless, obscure or trivial those opinions may be. They are completely convinced that their thinking involves no sacrifice of intellect, yet disdain skepticism and critical thinking as an obstacle to the prime virtue of faith.
With this mindset continuing, we may well see other people making fools of themselves and their religion. Just remember to save their printed material long enough to check their results. You may find this to be a most entertaining exercise!
FOOTNOTES
(1). Lindsey, Hal, The Late Great Planet Earth (Zondervan Pub. House, Grand Rapids, MI, C. 1970,1977), paperback edition.
(2). Quoted by publisher on the back cover.
(3). P. 40, quoted from Cooper, When Gog's Armies Meet the Almighty in the Land of Israel (Biblical Research Society, Los Angeles), 1940.
(4). Quoted from Time Magazine, from the article, "Europe's Dreams of Unity Revive", 4 July 1969.
(5). Quoted from Rimmer, The Coming War and the Rise of Russia (Eerdmans Pub. Co., Grand Rapids, MI), 1962.
(6). Hydro-Agri Company, Sluiskil, Netherlands.
(7). Encyclopedia Judaica, 1972, under the heading, "Jezreel Valley". "Armageddon" is not a valley but was an ancient military outpost. The valley below it is the Jezreel Valley.
(8). John Major made this statement on the BBC World Service, 25 May 1992, on the program "News Hour".
From: Biblical Polemics Magazine
September 1992, Pages 16 - 20
Published by the Jerusalem Institute of Biblical Polemics, Jerusalem, Israel
The late Shmuel Golding, Director
