Middle East and the Prophecy Books

Check out Bobby's Blog about The end is near! blah...blah....blah...

During my teen years I bought into the whole prophecy, Fundamentalist movement. It started when I started to read Chick Publications (which is poison). Later I went on reading books like The Late Great Planet Earth. At the time it was advertised on television. When I first saw the ad I was so intrigue with this “interpretation” of the Bible.

During my senior year of high school, I started to work for a local Christian bookstore. That gave me more exposure to these types of books. I did have some exposure to some good books as well but sadly many were not stocked on our shelves.

I remember the booklet 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988. My bad theology was never to the point that I could believe that someone could predicted the year or the day of our Lord’s return. EVERYDAY we had people coming into the store wanting to purchase that booklet. The store that I worked didn’t stock it because the owner of the store didn’t agree with the theology of the author. Everyday I placed special orders for customer who wanted to read that booklet. These customers started to remind me of those who would purchase the trash newspapers that you will find at checkout line at you local grocery store!

At that point I was really beginning to question my Eschatology. Especially when the predicted day came and I WAS STILL HERE! My conclusion was that these people are nuts and I didn’t want any association with them! So, I distanced myself from them. I didn’t stop believing in the truth of Christianity I just avoided the subject of Eschatology altogether and concentrated my studies on other area of theology.

Over the years I drifted more and more to the Reformed understanding of scripture. After watching Choosing My Religion by RC Sproul in the bookstore I was on my way to becoming Reformed. After my best friend and I attended the first Ligonier conference we were getting our feet firmly planted on a solid foundation of Reformed Theology. It was like we were finally been fed after years of living in a famine.

A couple years back I decided to start studying of Eschatology again. I was surprised to learn that most folks in the Reformed camp embrace Amillennialism. I guess one reason it was shocking to me was because Dispensationalism teaches that Amillennialism was satanic. I believe that Amillennialism is the best view of Eschatology that best fits the scripture as a whole.

After reading Bobby’s Blog about the 88 Reasons it brought back memories. And I know that the whole cycle is starting over again because of the war with Israel in the middle-east. Anytime that the Middle East tension rises so do the number of titles of end times (blah… blah… blah…! ) books hits the Christian Bookstores shelves again!

Tim
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