This is a quotation from Hal Lindsay's popular book The Late Great Planet Earth (p. 32). In this book we have the author's vision of what will take place during the seven years which separate the Rapture and the "Revelation" or the visible return of Jesus Christ. Why seven years? Lindsay gets this number by adding together the two periods of 3-1/2 years mentioned in Rev. 11 and connecting it to Daniel 9:24, where Gabriel reveals to the prophet: "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city". One week of years being seven years, the period indicated there­fore represents 70 x 7 years or 490 years.

Lindsay then figures out that the time when the Jews were given permission to rebuild their city and temple to the time of the coming of their Messiah was 483 years, or 69 year-weeks. This leaves the last "week" of seven years to be accounted for. According to Lindsay, and Dispensationalists generally, this is the "week" when God will establish His Kingdom at the end of world history. We are now living in the "Church Age", the time of the ingathering of the Gentiles. But at the end of this age God will once again turn to Israel. That will happen during the seven years of the Tribulation. All the events recorded in chapters 6-19 of Revelation will take place during this seven-year period. The Church by that time will have been raptured up to heaven and Israel will play a central role in world politics.

According to Lindsay the fact that Israel has now established itself in the land of Palestine as foretold by the Old Testament prophets, means that the seven-year countdown will soon begin. Just one more thing has to happen yet: the temple must be rebuilt. Once that has been accomplished, things will go very fast. It will begin with the "Roman Dictator" or Anti-Christ making a covenant with the Jews. He will be the leader of a revived Roman empire which will emerge out of the European Common Market and NATO nations, the so-called ten-nation confederacy predicted by Daniel and Revelation. In exchange for their allegiance to the Roman Dictator, the Jews will be granted freedom to worship in their temple. But then Anti-Christ, at the height of his popularity as the world's great Peacemaker, will go to Jerusalem three and a half years later, and entering the temple he will proclaim himself as God, thus breaking the covenant with the Jews. This will be the sign for Jewish "believers' to flee to the mountains and canyons of Petra for divine protection (Matt. 24:16), for the Great Tribulation will now begin. An invasion is launched against Israel by the southern confederation of Arab-African nations headed by Egypt (the king of the south, Dan. 11:40). But as they are approaching Israel's borders, Russia (the king of the north), or Gog, intervenes. Enamoured with the prospect of an easy conquest of mineral rich Israel, Gog cuts off and destroys the southern alliance (Dan. 11:42-43) and sweeps into Palestine, establishing control over the entire Middle East (Ezek. 38). Greatly angered at this breach of world peace, the Roman Dictator now mobilizes his forces and attacks the Russian armies. It is during this assault that Israel turns to their Messiah and a national repentance takes place (Zech. 13:8, 9). The Russians are completely demolished by the Roman forces (Ezek. 39:3-5), God Himself helping the latter by pouring down fire on Russia and various coastlands (Ezek. 39:6).

The Roman Dictator, heading the combined forces of western civilization, now faces his last remaining opponents: 200 million Chinese or the kings of the east (Rev. 16:2). The final battle is joined at Armageddon with the worst fighting centring around Jerusalem (Zech. 12:2-3; 14:1-2). An unsurpassed blood-bath will ensue, the blood running as deep as the horses' bridles over a distance of 490 miles! (Rev. 14:20) The shock waves emerging from this holocaust will reach all nations and bring unprecedented destruction upon the major cities of the world. Just when it will seem as if all life will be annihilated on earth, Christ will return with His saints. Instantly He will wipe out all the enemies of Israel and then, finally, the big event will take place: Christ will establish His millennial reign with Jerusalem as His residence.

All of the above events will take place in seven terror-filled years. Christians, however, have nothing to worry about because they won't be around to experience any of these horrible events. They will be safe in heaven with Jesus. But those left behind after the Rapture face a terrible time under the reign of Anti-Christ. Many of these, however, will be converted to Christ, mainly through the witness of the 144,000 sealed as God's special servants to evangelize the world (Rev. 7:1-4).

This then, is the scenario of the events that will take place shortly, according to Hal Lindsay and many other Dispensationalist writers. They may differ on minor details, but in the main they agree with the outline I sketched above. These are the kind of things one can hear expounded on many radio programs and read in numerous publications dealing with eschatology (the doctrine of the last things).

Books such as The Late Great Planet Earth and There's a New World Coming are enjoying great popularity and for obvious reasons. Hal Lindsay and others like him have a gift for presenting difficult subjects in a very interesting and lucid way and they know there is a tremendous market for books on prophecy in our time. Also, it has to be admitted, Lindsay's interpretation of world events in light of Scripture makes good sense to anyone not too well-versed in the Bible. Within the limited and selective framework in which the book is written, it is really quite consistent But when Lindsay's scheme is examined in the light of the greater context of Scripture and the canons of sound Biblical inter­pretation, it will not be difficult to expose its serious flaws.

This is not the time for me to give a detailed critique of Lindsay's book. I will only point out a few dangers that I see in his approach to Scripture and prophecy.

Lindsay believes that the role of prophecy is to give us advance information about future events. But this is not true. As T. Boersma writes in his Is the Bible a Jigsaw Puzzle? (p. 21):

The prophecies were not given us in order that we might predict the future. A prophet is neither a soothsayer nor a fortune-teller but a herald of God's Word. A prophet proclaims the Word of the Lord. That Word sometimes relates to the past, as when the prophet brings to light the true meaning and significance of historical events. The prophetic Word can also relate to the present, in the sense that it warns of sin and announces judgement … And finally, the prophets very often deal with the future

But even then the prophecies were not given for the purpose of calculating future events. But this is how Lindsay interprets all prophecy. To him such books as Daniel and Revelation contain descriptions of future events; they supply us with a kind of eschatological blueprint. He does not see that the primary task of the prophets, both in the Old and New Testaments, was to address the people living at that time and give them a message that was relevant for their situation. Even if it was a message having to do with the future, it was a future that was inextricably bound up with the present situation in which God's people found themselves.

Boersma writes:

The Old Testament prophecies were often promises of re­demption, namely that the Lord would bring about a change in the fortunes of God's people. A closer look at these prophecies reveals that many of them bear on the return of Israel out of captivity. But this observation in no way exhausts such a promise of redemption. A further stage in its fulfilment is to be found in the coming of Jesus Christ, His birth, His death and His resurrection. A third stage can often be seen in the establishment and expansion of the Church throughout the world. Such a prophecy of redemption is definitely fulfilled when Christ returns and the Church, gathered from among all peoples and all generations, shares fully in God's salvation in the New Jerusalem (Ibid., p 22).

Lindsay and other Dispensationalist writers completely ignore this principle and instead apply a strictly literal and futuristic interpretation, whereby Ezekiel is thought of as predicting what Russia will do in the Middle East and Daniel is supposed to have foretold the exploits of Arab-African nations, while John, in Revelation, saw what role the Chinese would play in the battle of Armageddon.

If this interpretation is correct, the original recipients of these prophetic utterances could not have benefitted a great deal from them. If, for instance, Revelation contains primarily predictions of events that will not occur until our generation, God's people to whom John was writing could not have been blessed very much by reading and hearing "the words of this prophecy" (Rev. 1:3). What did they know about the Chinese and nuclear warheads? The same is true of the prophecies of the Old Testament. I doubt if the people in Ezekiel's and Daniel's time were familiar with the European Common Market, NATO and the Russians.

But there is an even more serious deficiency in Lindsay's futuristic approach to prophecy. It does not do justice to what Revelation calls "the spirit of prophecy" (19:10). That "spirit" is the "testimony of Jesus" (1:2, 5; 2:13; 11:3, 7; 12:11, 17; 20:4). Prophecy in Scripture points to Christ and His finished work. "To Him give all the prophets witness," Peter says in Acts 10:43. The Revelation of John is written for the same reason as the Gospel of John: "that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name" (John 20:31). "If prophecy is not used for this purpose, it may attract or produce paranoid people, but it will not produce or strengthen saving faith" (Robert Brinsmead, Verdict, August 1980, p 16).

Books like The Late Great Planet Earth do not focus the sinner's eye to Jesus Christ, the only Saviour. Rather, they appeal to man's hunger for knowledge about the future. That's the reason why millions of copies of Lindsay's books have been sold in the last decade. People are evidently more interested in speculation about the end of time than information about the way of salvation. Andrew Kuyvenhoven rightly called The Late Great Planet Earth a bad book because it changes the whole focus of the Bible. "God, who spoke in the Old Testament to the fathers by prophets and seers and who has in these last days spoken to us in His Son, is not allowed to say anything to us through the Son. The appear­ance of Jesus Christ in the flesh serves no other purpose, in this book, than to prove that the prophets are reliable fore­tellers of the future." (The Banner, March 17, 1972).

The Late Great Planet Earth is a book about prophecy without reference to Christ and His redemptive work. This is its fatal flaw. Biblical prophecy must testify of Christ and those who expound it must never lose sight of the centrality of Christ and His finished work, even while writing on the last things. As Douglas Ezell says in his book Revelations on Revelation:

This is our center – our curb of arbitrariness. (In the book of Revelation) John is not interpreting the future; John is interpreting the significance of the cross and the resurrection for the future. John is not looking at a sneak preview of history down through the corridors of time to the end; he is declaring God's revelation of the meaning of the cross-resurrection for time and history until the end God is on His throne (Rev. 4), Christ has won the victory (Rev. 5), God is at work in the midst of the apparent chaos (seals, trumpets and bowls). The true victors are those called out in Christ from every tongue, nation and people (Rev. 5), even though in this age it appears to be the people of the earth (those living according to the moral standards of this age) who are victorious. Though God's work in history has been hidden except to the eye of faith, the final stanza will reveal that all history has truly been His story (Rev. 19 and 20). The victory won in history will be displayed in history, and God will ultimately be revealed as all in all. (pp. 21-23)