The Nature of Christian Deception
In the last chapter of the Book of Daniel, it says twice that
the words of the prophecy should be “sealed up and concealed
until the end of the age.” Christians have been trying their
best to determine the meaning of the prophetic books of the
Bible but it will only be revealed to the generation with a
“need to know.” Christian writers tried to interpret prophecy in
terms of their historical, political and social context. It is
easy to see how things could get off.
The biggest source of deception, in my opinion, comes from
confusion relating to dispensationalism, a doctrine which
started in the 19th century. It started as a vision that the
church would experience a “secret rapture” prior to the
tribulation. Once theologians believed that the church was gone,
they came up with a theory that the church age (or dispensation)
ended with the rapture and that God’s attention turned back to
Israel. Today, fundamental Christianity is so steeped in this
tradition that they can’t see beyond it. What started as a
little doctrine has grown to be a huge system of doctrine with
one error compounding upon another. This is called systematized
error.
This is a huge subject for another book but suffice it to say at
this point that the question is not so much the timing of the
rapture, but the importance of the church and Israel to be
present as the “Two Witnesses” of Revelation 11 – the two olive
trees and the two lampstands. The failure of Christians to see
the Church in every chapter of the book of Revelations has
blinded them to the essential role both groups have.
If Christians assume the church will not be here during the
Tribulation period, they will miss the signs. In working on an
up coming book, we have read and reread the great theologians of
the past – Ironsides, Pentecost, Barnhouse and many others to
the present such as Ryrie, Walvoord, Steadman, etc. The
blindness of these men caused by one false assumption has led to
the failure of an entire generation to grasp the significance of
the last days to the church and an escapism worthy of the
Laodicean Church.
Two errors make prophecy of little importance to Christians.
First, the dispensational approach believed that since the
church raptures at the beginning of the tribulation, it is not
even present during the final seven year period. The second is
preterism, currently promoted by the Bible Answer Man (Hank
Hannegraff), which says that Revelation was written before 70 AD
and all prophecy has been fulfilled. Both extremes tend to
negate the importance of prophecy.
When Will the End Come?
Although Christians down through the ages thought their
generation might be “the one”, there are two major events that
signal the "beginning of the end”. The end cannot come until
these two things occur. One relates to the restoration of the
nation of Israel and the other relates to the rise of a nation
that dominates the earth like none other in history--a young
nation that comes out of the Western Christian world and
dominates the entire world (the eleventh horn).
The Bible clearly foretells many times in the Old Testament the
scattering of the Jews throughout the world and their gathering
in at the end of days just before the Messiah’s reign. In 1948
the nation of Israel was restored, with Jerusalem being captured
in 1967.....
This is part of the introduction to Dene McGriff's book
Recognizing Apostasy and Deception. Please click on the link
below to see the entire book.
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