From: jkk@aiai.ed.ac.uk (John Kingston)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Hal Lindsay's Writings on Prophesy
Date: 8 Jan 93 05:19:27 GMT
Reply-To: jkk@aiai.ed.ac.uk (John Kingston)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <Jan.6.01.42.07.1993.2685@geneva.rutgers.edu> anderson@cs.rose-hulman.edu writes:
>In the early 1970's, Hal Lindsey wrote many books on the end times,  
>including "The Late Great Planet Earth", "There's a New World Coming", and  
>"The Liberation of Planet Earth".  As a new Christian back then, I found  
>them interesting, and they challenged me to see the Bible as very
>relevant to our times.  I thought that he sometimes went too far in trying  
>to correlate Scripture verses with current events, but that the main points  
>of his books were good.
>
>I believe in "You hall know them by their fruits" when it comes to 
>evaluating Christian authors, especially for my children's consumption.
>I know nothing about Hal Lindsey's life, ministry, etc, nor about
>whether his writings are still generally accepted as they were 20 years
>ago.  Can anyone give me more information?
>

Hal Lindsey's (sp?) ministry appears to have been a beneficial one. I came
across a book recently where the author explains how one of Lindsey's sermons
greatly benefitted her in her Christian life. If I remember rightly, the
sermon was entitled "Any Old Clay Pot Will Do", using the image of a potter
(God) moulding clay (us) to explain that God can use absolutely anyone he 
chooses, no matter how worthless they might think they are, because he always
re-moulds pots before he uses them anyway.

As for the books you mention above, here is a VERY brief summary of 2nd coming
theology. (This used to be a really hot topic of debate in the 60s and 70s). 

There are generally four viewpoints held by Christians about what will happen
at the 2nd coming: 

1) Pre-millenialism - all Christians will be taken up to heaven before the
"thousand years of tribulation" predicted in the book of Revelation. Lindsey's
books take this viewpoint, and proceed to instantiate other prophecies in
Revelation and elsewhere with current world events, to suggest that the 2nd
coming is very close. As far as I understand, pre-millenialism is less widely
believed now than it used to be, and Lindsey's writings are not considered
valid by anyone who has seriously studied the subject. 

2) Post-millenialism - all Christians will be taken up to heaven after
enduring the 1000 years of tribulation

3) Amillenialism - there won't be a literal "thousand years of tribulation"

4) Dispensationalism. There's a FAQ on this complex subject (or at least, a
summary of people's views). To summarise briefly, history is supposed to be
divided into a number of time periods, or "dispensations", in which God works
in slightly different ways - e.g. Adam to Noah was one dispensation, when
God's intervention in human affairs appears to be slight, but Moses to Christ
was another, because God then operated through the Law. We are currently in
the second last dispensation, with the last one - the Kingdom of God -
occurring after the 2nd coming. Personally, I have argued against
dispensationalism, on the grounds that its theology excludes the existence of
supernatural spiritual gifts today (they are assumed to belong to the
"establishment of the church" dispensation), that its placement of the Kingdom
of God in the future does not agree with Jesus' sayings, and that it lacks
Biblical justification - but this is supposed to be a brief summary.  

Why does all this matter? Principally because it affects how people live
today: belief in pre-millenialism, especially if it is believed that the 2nd
coming is close, gives a tremendous impetus to evangelism; belief in
dispensationalism rules out the existence and use of spiritual gifts in
churches; belief in post-millenialism may produce a defensive attitude of "the
world is continually getting worse but the church must hold out against its
pressures". For myself, I can't rule out any option apart from
dispensationalism. For yourself, if you can persuade your daughter to take
Hal Lindsey's specific statements with a pinch of salt, reading his books may
awaken her vision for evangelism in a way that nothing else could. 

John Kingston,                               | 
Knowledge Engineering Methods Group,         | The heart of the problem
AIAI, University of Edinburgh                | is the problem of the heart
E-mail jkk@aiai.ed.ac.uk, phone 031-650 2736 |