(November 23, 1929 – November 25, 2024)
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End Times writer Hal Lindsey and me You’ve most likely seen the news that end-times writer Hal Lindsey went on to be with the Lord on November 25th of this year. One thing is for sure about Lindsey: he evokes a lot of emotion from people, both positive and negative. On the negative side, you’ve got everything from non-Christians saying that teaching Lindsey’s eschatological views to teenagers in the 20th century amounted to literal child abuse (sigh), to believers calling him a false prophet, polygamist, and saying his writings amounted to fear-based theology. Seeing the mud-slinging from the latter is disappointing but not surprising. Name any Christian leader and you’ll find someone in the faith who calls them a false teacher, dangerous, and someone who doesn’t brush their teeth regularly enough. (Christian Post 12/9/24) READMORE>>>>> Aug 1, 2021: Baltimore Post-Examiner: Ron Rhodes: Christian Author Offers Views on Bible Prophecy, End Times
BPE: You mentioned how Pat and Shirley Boone’s interest in Bible prophecy piqued your interest as well. Was there any connection there with the excitement generated by Hal Lindsey’s book The Late Great Planet Earth? Rhodes: Yeah, absolutely. That was around the time when that book became really huge. I didn’t know at the time that I would later meet Hal and talk with him about Bible prophecy, when I was working as a co-host of the nationally syndicated radio show, “The Bible Answer Man.” The Late Great Planet Earth popularized Bible prophecy. I don’t know if you remember, but following the publication of that book, there were literally dozens of other prophecy books that got published by riding the coattails of Hal’s book. Nov 13, 2015: Youtube: Hal Lindsey Report (11.13.15)
Mar 6, 2015: Youtube: Hal Lindsey Report (3.6.15) Dec 19, 2014: Youtube: Hal Lindsey Report (12.19.14) Oct 17, 2014: Youtube: Hal Lindsey Report (Part 1) (10.17.14) |
December 14, 1984: Christianity Today published an article (Critics Fear that Reagan Is Swayed by Those Who Believe in a Nuclear Armageddon’): Views on millenialism and the tribulation appeared prominently in the secular press. The view of eschatology being dicussed, however, was confined to a version popularized by Hal Lindsey in his best-selling book, The Late Great Planet Earth (Bantam). Lindsey applies specific Old Testament prophecy and the symbols of the Book of Revelation to contemporary events.....Serious Bible scholars reject Lindsey’s fanciful depiction of how today’s world events mesh with biblical prophecies. In a book entitled There’s a New World Coming (Bantam), Lindsey writes, “According to the prophet Daniel, the Russians will sweep down to join the Arabs in an attack on Israel and will then continue right through Israel to Egypt and take it over.” He deals with the prospect of nuclear war almost flippantly, saying, “Nuclear weapons will surely be used in any warfare in the future. The major powers of the world aren’t stockpiling nuclear weapons for nothing, and even an effective arms control agreement between nations wouldn’t do away with existing weapons.”...s a result, Lindsey is not taken seriously even at his alma mater, Dallas Theological Seminary. “[Lindsey] goes beyond our teaching,” said seminary president John Walvoord, Sr., adding that there is no way to prove that Scripture describes a nuclear exchange. “The end-time war is a conventional war. I disagree with him that the Bible teaches nuclear war." Lindsey is not the first to draw apocalyptic conclusions from global events. CHRISTIANITY TODAY advisory editor Kenneth Kantzer pointed out that when Napoleon ruled France, some Christians “had it all plotted out” that Napoleon would reconstruct the Holy Roman Empire and usher in the Second Coming. Between the two world wars, the same concern arose about Germany. “One generation’s set of specifics looks pretty ridiculous to the next,” Kantzer said. “Lindsey tries to map it all out in great detail. A lot of us think it’s not very safe to do that.”....Elmer Jantz, writing in the Liberty Bible Commentary (Thomas Nelson), says no linguistic analysis yields the result Lindsey proposes. Theologian Carl F. H. Henry says biblical prophecy “certainly applies to some historical period. But the problem is, when someone says we’ve moved into the last several years, then you go counter to Christ’s own warning against setting the day or the hour.”
January 1, 2006: Lindsey resigned from TBN on January 1, 2006, and indicated that he would pursue another television ministry.
February 5, 2006: Starting aas production schedules allow, Lindsey's new program, The Hal Lindsey Report, focused on Bible prophecy and current events, will be carried on the Sky Angel nationwide. February 10, 2013: Pastor W. Pouweise (Spindle Works): wrote: In a world in which people feel insecure and are looking for trustworthy "soothsayers," millions of people listen to such theories. The sales figures of these kinds of books are a clear proof of what people like to hear. Hal Lindsey's book is the "#1 Best-seller of the decade." But we should not let ourselves be deceived by such speculations. Not even if some of these predictions should come true. That would not be a matter of "passing the test," as Hal Lindsey tries to make us believe. We have to see whether it is in accordance with the whole Word of God. It is also possible that "the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul" (Deut. 13:3).
July 29, 2013: Gary DeMar wrote: In 1970 Hal Lindsey, who spoke at the 2005 Understanding the Times prophecy conference, argued that Israel becoming a nation again in 1948 was prophetically significant. He then turned to Matthew 24:34: "This generation will not pass away until all these things took place. He stated that a generation was 40 years in length. He then argued that with the establishment of Israel as a nation in 1948 and the 40 year length of a generation that the so-called rapture of the church would take place before 1988.
November 23, 2014: Fred Clark (Slacktivist) wrote: Hal Lindsey turns 85 years old today, something that Lindsey himself has spent decades telling us should never come to pass. No one who read and believed The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970 would have expected that the world could possibly still be around on Hal Lindsey’s 85th birthday. The “countdown to Armageddon” had started, Lindsey told us — and that countdown wasn’t supposed to last for another 44 years.
Winter 2017: National Endowment for the Humanities: Long before the Left Behind books crowded the New York Times best-seller list, Hal Lindsey and C. C. Carlson’s The Late Great Planet Earth introduced millions of readers worldwide to end-times prophecy. An accessible, engaging introduction to the coming apocalypse, The Late Great Planet Earth was the best-selling nonfiction book of the 1970s: Ten million copies were in circulation by the end of the decade. It sold more than 28 million copies by 1990, an estimated 35 million by 1999, and was translated into more than 50 languages. A 1977 movie version narrated by Orson Welles ran in theaters nationwide and was later broadcast on HBO. Lindsey was “the most widely read interpreter of prophecy in history,” said one critic. Another claimed that only the Bible itself had outsold The Late Great Planet Earth. -National Endowment for the Humanities; Winter 2017 |