by Jim Fletcher

I made a funny the other day, as they say where I come from.

At least I think I did.

Maybe not.

I was ordering new contact lenses and the young lady sitting across from me, earnestly pecking away at the computer, asked if I wanted to join a “three-year” or “five-year” plan. I would save about $20.

“But what if Jesus comes back before that?” I asked. “Then it wouldn’t really matter.”

She never looked away from the computer screen, but I did see a faint expression. Then a slight grin, but more of the This guy is a nut variety.

Finally, I said, “Well, I’m sort of kidding around with you. Kind of.”

“Well…yes, but it might be true,” she allowed.

That’s where we left it. But I thought a great deal about her generation — college-age students today. They are smack-dab in the middle of the last-days heresy that mockingly asks, Where is your Jesus? He’s been gone a long time.

This mocking, predicted by the apostle Peter, has infected every layer of our society, particularly churches.

I am hearing from my Bible prophecy friends that there is a real downturn in prophecy teaching in the churches. Pastors are shying away from it. Sunday schools shelve it in favor of the latest faddish marriage curriculum. Let me put this out there:

A key attack is coming from celebrity Christian leaders who are embarrassed/miffed about conservative, biblical teaching. This celebrity influence is further evidence of a cultural shift.

Imagine with me the atmosphere at the time of my youth, just post-Hal Lindsey. His book The Late Great Planet Earth swept-in a flood of interest in Bible prophecy. The Six Day War had just concluded and people could see major events unfolding that pointed to fulfilled prophecy. I’m speaking of big things, such as the Israeli settlement of the biblical heartland, particularly between the years of 1977-1987.

This kind of fulfillment alone, the re-settlement of biblical Israel by modern Jews, is a sign from God so huge, one wonders how people miss it.

Many are missing it because clever critics confuse the issue.

(By the way, an aside about Hal Lindsey. In recent years, he has become a convenient target of the enlightened/progressive wing of the Church, who sneer that Lindsey has uttered some failed speculations over the years. My answer to that is, Hal Lindsey is a lot closer to the truth than his critics are.)

I just read a fascinating book by Bob Dewaay, and I urge you to get it. The Emergent Church: Redefining Christianity, is an analysis of just what the Emergents believe. Specifically, Bob outlines their eschatology (I didn’t know they embraced any sort of eschatology; who knew?).

Essentially, left-leaning Christians believe in eschatology insofar as they believe that at some (evolutionary) endpoint, God will reveal truth to everyone. The implication, of course, is that everyone from your local grocer to Hitler will smack his forehead and say, “Aha! I see it now! Now I accept your truth, God!”

That is universalism, the belief that everyone in the end will be saved.

Now, leaders like Rob Bell and Rick Warren are embracing a pluralistic sense of “community.” The only ones who need not apply, though, are Bible-believing Christians. These “fundamentalists” are not only not playing ball with New Agers and U.N. tree huggers, they are not playing ball with “progressive” Christians.

There is a certain breathtaking arrogance to the attitudes of people like Bell and Warren. Bell in particular is teaching young people that the Bible isn’t literally the word of God. Warren hobknobs with globalists, other celebrities, and vainly attempts to please them all.

Again, one of the most-hated biblical truths out there today is that the Creator of the World is going to physically intervene again, this time to save man from destroying himself.

Remember, Jesus asked, when the Son of man returns, will He find faith on the earth? That’s diametrically opposed to the left-leaning Christian crowd, which insists that spiritual faith is on the rise.

The attack line that today is asking, Where is Jesus; you claim He’s coming soon, is deadly and itself an astonishing fulfillment of prophecy. If you read 2 Peter 3, and realize that teachers like Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo, and, the Southern Baptist Warren are breaking bread with plenty of folks who do not believe in Jesus’ Second Coming…you see quite clearly that the Bible is shining a bright spotlight on prophecy.

You see, the fundamental problem between those who believe in the Second Coming, and those who don’t, is that the latter believes man can save himself. Man can help God save man.

Seems insane, doesn’t it? The patient is going to help the doctor cure the patient.

I am reminded of the sincere, earnest, principled Woodrow Wilson, who thought he could help usher in an era of peace through the League of Nations. He should have realized that with mankind plunging into a ghastly world war, coupled with the revenge-minded victors at Versailles…man-engineered peace could not be achieved.

Even Bill Clinton’s mission to North Korea, to secure the release of two journalists, will in the end only give legitimacy to that psychotic nerd, Kim Jong-Il.

Okay, I digressed.

I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that if we taught our young people (like the young lady at the eyewear specialist) that God reveals Himself in really big ways in our world today — I’m reminded of Robert Dick Wilson’s “Big-Godder” philosophy — there would be more hope in the world today.

It was that hope Paul was no doubt thinking of when his neck was on the chopping block. It is that hope that has sustained missionaries throughout the centuries. And it is that hope that will see us through.

jim@prophecymatters.com