A Defense Of Premillennialism: Fill & Download for Free

In the modern church there are two kinds of fundamentalists; we can call them Original Recipe and Extra Crispy because one is old time, and one is new and very pop culture.Original Recipe fundamentalism began back in the early twentieth century. According to Roger E. Olson: What Is "Fundamentalism" and Who Is a "Fundamentalist?" - Roger E. OlsonScholars disagree about when and where fundamentalism began. As usual, the truth seems to be that it began in several places, independently, simultaneously.The common features of all these individuals and groups were: conservative Protestant, anti-modernist …, anti-liberal theology, privileging something considered “traditional” that is recognizable as a blend of revivalism and Protestant scholastic orthodoxy, biblicism (belief in biblical inerrancy and as literal interpretation as possible), etc.Some of these people were Baptists, Presbyterians, Wesleyans (Holiness), independents (“Bible Christians” influenced by the Plymouth Brethren movement), and Congregationalists. Pentecostals eventually joined in around the margins, uncomfortably. None were Catholics or Eastern Orthodox. Very few, if any, were Anabaptists.The booklets titled The Fundamentals were published in 1910 and 1911. These were articles written by leading fundamentalist scholars and ministers—defending what they saw as the essentials of Christianity. The Fundamentals - WikipediaWhat brought this disparate and even somewhat motley group together under a single banner was an aggressive, pro-active (some would say “reactionary) organized and vocal defense of conservative Protestantism against liberal theology and higher biblical criticism.My denomination embraced theistic evolution from the start. This kind of modernism was “false Christianity in the same way that, say, Mormonism and Christian Science and Jehovah’s Witness teaching was false Christianity.” Olson goes on to explain:They were, in other words, early twentieth century Puritans. Exactly like the Puritans of the seventeenth century, the early fundamentalists believed the churches needed to be purged of heresy and everything linked with it symbolically. And that’s where the trouble started—what that meant. What did it mean to purge the churches and Christian organizations of everything symbolically linked with heresy? And how…?Fundamentalists began founding their own separate Protestant institutions and denominations, publishing houses and missionary agencies. Many organized “Bible institutes.”Throughout the 1930s American fundamentalism especially flourished, but somewhat underground and almost invisible to the mainstream media and religious organizations (such as the Federal Council of Churches).Original Recipe fundamentalism was a quiet Pietism that would have moved gently along its own path much like the Amish and other separatist groups if not for the Scopes-Monkey trial and the problems of public schools. If fundamentalists could have received vouchers early on for private schools for their children, they might have survived as a group. They did not.THE COMPARISON“Liberal” Christianity embraces evolution and modern science, accepts higher criticism, (although some of that has been called into question now since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls,) and criticism has now moved on to Literary Criticism and the Bible is still undergoing being torn apart word by word by dedicated scholars. Liberalism recognizes the errors in the texts of scripture and isn’t troubled by them.Liberal Christianity’s weakness is that it is more “worldly,” it is less evangelical, less mission oriented, less passionately devoted than its more conservative counterparts; these Christians are quieter, less pushy—but sometimes simply just less. This is in some ways also its strength since it tends to be more tolerant and accepting than fundamentalism. It has no trouble accepting other denominations of Christianity, even Catholics.The Baptists make you get re-baptized to join their church if your previous Baptism wasn’t a Baptist one. The liberals don’t care. You can join on a statement of faith, or ask to be baptized, as you wish.Liberals have a tendency to work more on aspects of social justice, to do more “good works” where the fundies and the evangelicals are all about getting people saved—that is all they focus on—period.But fundamentalism is not what it used to be. It used to be an ethic—to have an ethic: a piety.The Extra Crispy version has come about in our modern day partially from common use and misuse. As a result it has developed a connotation of its own, for better or for worse.There is the popular, journalistic meaning that applies the label to anyone believed to be religiously conservative and considers them all “fundamentalist religious fanatics.” There is also the sociological use.For the past thirty-some years sociologists have been defining “fundamentalism” as “religious anti-modernism.” Allegedly, anyone who is against modernity for religious reasons is a “fundamentalist.” But there are some problems with that.First, it’s simply too broad. Second, many fundamentalists, historically, were consciously or unconsciously influenced by modernity. Third, fundamentalists are often the most willing to make religious use of modern technological innovations. Fourth, many spiritually-minded postmodern people could be called anti-modern in certain ways but could not rightly be called fundamentalists.Third, there is the pejorative, Baptist and evangelical meaning of fundamentalist. About twenty years ago, fundamentalists pushed out moderates and liberals in a takeover effort of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s Largest Evangelical denomination. This created some deep resentment such that for them, “fundamentalist” is a mean-spirited conservative evangelical willing to use nasty, underhanded means to win a battle for control of their denomination.But fundamentalist is often a term of derision nowadays; it’s used to convey “uneducated” “ignorant” “blind” “self-deceiving” “deluded” and many other condescending and denigrating ideas.Olson’s 7 characteristics of a fundamentalist:Embraces the “fundamentals of the faith” as they are laid out in the pamphlets and booklets of those titles in 1910. Things such as creationism, the virgin birth, the inspiration of scripture, salvation by grace, the Trinity, and so on; but most significantly, shuns Christian Fellowship with those who don’t share them.Believes in biblical inerrancy.The King James version is the only acceptable Bible.If a person believes premillennial eschatology (and especially “pre-tribulational rapturism”) and young earth creationism are crucial Christian beliefs, “fundamentals of the faith,” she is probably a fundamentalist.If a person believes America is, as a nation, part of God’s salvation history and plan of redemption, he is probably a fundamentalist.If a person believes that the Bible ought to be the basis of an entire educational curriculum, including studies of science, philosophy, psychology, etc., she is probably a fundamentalist.If a person believes that Catholics cannot be Christians and/or Calvinists or non-Calvinists cannot be evangelicals (etc.), he is probably, at least in some respects, a fundamentalist.These are not absolute litmus tests. It’s theoretically possible that a person might hold most of these beliefs and, for some unforeseen reason, not be a fundamentalist. Normally, a fundamentalist embraces all or most of these beliefs. Holding one alone does not make him or her a fundamentalist.

It plays a huge role. Believers of a version of the Christian end times called dispensational premillennialism have played a huge role in shaping American security policy over the past few decades. Dispensational premillianialism is the belief that at some point, Jesus will spirit away devout Christians to heaven without them ever having to die (called the rapture) and the Tribulation, a time of crisis and hardship for the people who remain in the world, will begin. During this time, they believe that a world leader they call the Antichrist will appear and his righthand man, the False Prophet, will inculcate the entire world into a Satanic cult. At the end of this, Jesus will appear before the whole world, smite the armies of the Antichrist, and throw the Antichrist and the False Prophet into hell. Then the Millennium will begin for the returned and converted Christian believers, at the end of which armies from 2 countries called Gog and Magog will appear and attack Jerusalem, where the believers will be residing. God will then destroy those armies, throw Satan into hell, and begin the Final Judgment, where all will be judged and sent to either heaven or hell for all eternity.The US Army Command and General Staff College in 2008 published an analysis by Major Brian L. Stuckert of the US Army on the strategic implications of premillennialist belief, and how it explains seemingly nonsensical US actions:http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a485511.pdfHe says that thanks to the creation of modern Israel and the invention of nuclear weapons, many Americans believe the End Times are coming soon. He cites a Pew Research poll where 44% of Americans say they believe Jesus will return within 50 years (p. 35). Premillennialist thought thus has dominated US security policy.Here's a run-down of how Major Stuckert says this belief is and will impact US foreign and defense policy:"In general, collective anxiety over things like world-ending war, the Anti-Christ, and the need to secure our eternal destiny by our own hand will add to strategic hubris, justify increasingly reckless international action, and continue to over-commit the military in ways the Nation cannot afford” (p. 43)."At the heart of U.S. government foreign policy is the singular fact that pre-millennial dispensationalists see support of Israel as being equivalent to supporting God. This steadfast support is 'baffling for Jews, annoying to Arabs, and unavoidable for American Congressmen’” (p. 44)."While a majority of American Jews and Israelis support some form of ‘land for peace,’ many American Christians oppose any policy that would call for Israel to do anything less than rule over all of Palestine–including the West Bank” (p. 47)."At the height of the Cold War when the European theater was said to be of paramount importance, the United States placed Israel with a population smaller than some American cities and no treaty or alliance obligations ahead of everyone else in the world for aid–including NATO allies. The timing is significant and coincides with the election of the first Baptist president since President Truman, who extended formal recognition to Israel against the almost unanimous advice of senior government and military officials. Perhaps more significantly, the timing of the shift in spending was at the crest renewed interest in dispensational pre-millennialism ignited by Jewish success in the Six Days and Arab-Israeli wars followed by the publication of Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth” (p. 48)."In 1998, the United States Congress recognized that Israel no longer required any economic enhancement or support, but continued to increase funding for the improvement and expansion of Israeli military capabilities. The Congress has also shown interest in funding another on-going program: emigration of Jews worldwide to Israel. In dispensational pre-millennialism, this is called the Ingathering and the return of the Jews to their biblical homeland in Palestine is an essential precursor to Armageddon” (p. 50)."Because of the pre-millennial worldview, the U.S. will continue to adopt an adversarial approach to any country perceived as at odds with Israel. Since these conflicts are seen as deterministic and inevitable, there is little incentive to employ diplomacy or any other instrument of power other than the military in these situations” (p. 51)."While many Americans can readily see how pre-millennialism influences U.S. policy toward Israel and the Middle East, the effect of this philosophy on our dealings throughout the rest of the world may not be as recognizable. Pre-millennialism will drive the U.S. further from the U.N. in the near future since many pre-millennialists have to come to view that body as a platform for the Anti-Christ” (p. 52)."Pre-millennial interpretations of biblical prophecy that predict the emergence of a one-world government led by an anti-Christ causes distrust and even antagonism toward organizations like the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the European Union, NAFTA and OPEC. Reflecting on her time as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Madeleine Albright notes that many of her efforts were frustrated because the U.N. was widely perceived as playing the 'villain’s role’ as the architect of world government by many American Christians. Albright goes on to explain that she constantly found herself 'on the defensive’ and, as a functionary within the U.N., was perceived by many as 'quite literally – the devil’s advocate.’ The Christian right constantly works to undermine the U.N. One particularly noteworthy example was a videotape produced by Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum titled Global Governance: The Quiet War Against American Independence, which prominently featured future Attorney General John Ashcroft denouncing the U.N.” (pp. 52–53)."Since shortly after World War I, pre-millennialism has posed problems for relations between the U.S. and Russia. American pre-millennialists today are certain that the Russia will attack Israel within the next 60 years. Beginning with the Scofield Reference Bible, pre-millennialists have been nearly unanimous in their identification of Russia as the Gog and Magog of the Bible” (p. 53)."Partnership between the U.S. and Russia could lead to significant improvements in dealing with North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and China. Russia could contribute to the long-term stability of the Middle East, but we fear any involvement that would seem to lead to the fulfillment of biblical battles. Suspicion on the part of the U.S. can be hard for other nations to understand. In the case of Russia, it is reasonable to expect that they will respond with suspicion of U.S. actions on the global stage. One example of Russian suspicion is the effort on the part of the Russians to curtail U.S. and NATO military access to Central Asian bases” (pp. 55–56).“Most pre-millennialists agree that China is the central figure in the ‘kings of the east’ that will gather to attack Israel at the Battle of Armageddon, as described in Revelation 16:12–16. ... These ideas concerning China’s role in the near future undoubtedly create an undercurrent of distrust on the part of U.S. policymakers and strategists. This will likely cause continuing tensions in Asia and the Pacific. U.S. leaders run a risk of misinterpreting and overreacting to Chinese policies, initiatives and military programs” (p. 56).These views have been evolving since then, and since this article was published in 2008, premillennialists have become fixated on a new Antichrist figure: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the President of Turkey.[Bad photo of Erdoğan making the rounds on the Internet that makes him look Satanic.]Here's one article that makes Turkey out to be an enemy of Israel, and that's been passed around by American conservatives on the website Free Republic, where premillennialist views predominate:Erdogan Of Turkey Literally Resurrects The Image Of The Ottoman Beast And Vows That All Who Defy Him Will Be BeheadedThey make use of numerology. For example, in reference to the number of regions Turkey has (7) and the crescent moon on its flag kinda sorta resembling 2 horns, they make the argument that Turkey is the country Israel must fear most.Given the information presented above, it appears that nascent apocalyptic beliefs surrounding Erdoğan and Turkey held by American premillennialists will in the near- to medium-term make Turkey out to be one of the "bad guys". Unless the grip premillennialists have over US security policy can be broken, this will have serious implications for NATO and peace and prosperity in the Near East.So this is how premillennialist belief shapes American foreign and defense policy. The ramifications are terrifying.

Billy Graham didn’t suffer any real consequences for his antisemitism because, in order to meaningfully call him out, it would have been necessary to call out society as a whole. People didn’t want to do that, so Billy Graham’s antisemitism went into the memory hole.The Billy Graham-Richard Nixon tape was released in 2002, 30 years after Graham and Nixon had the conversation in question and 8 years after Nixon’s death. Graham immediately apologized for saying what he’d said, and claimed he’d only said it to curry favor with Nixon. From a public relations standpoint, this was the correct move: shove a long-disgraced and not-recently dead politician under the bus, and everyone will just move on.The reason for this is that American culture generally considers it impolite to call out racial and religious bigotry. As an example from my own life in New York City, it causes less of a stir in the (mostly liberal) office when someone explicitly refers to African-Americans and Latinx as “demographically undesirable” than when that person is called out for racism. In order to get the call-out, you either have to be massively over the line or dead, and even then, you will still probably have plenty of defenders.In 2002, Graham was still alive, so that option was out the window. So we have to ask: just how far over the line was Graham with what he said? Note, this is a different question from whether or not what he said was defensible. We’re asking ourselves here just how far outside societal norms Graham was operating when he made the comments he did. And the answer is, unfortunately, he was probably operating well within societal norms.Graham’s comments to Nixon were to the effect that Jews controlled the media, that some Jews were okay but many were simply dumping pornographic filth into the cultural landscape, that Jews were largely to blame for antisemitism, and that after all Graham’s support for Israel, Jews not kissing his feet was completely incomprehensible to him. The thing is, pretty much all of this is standard discourse in the United States even today, and was even more so back in 1972.Let’s take a look at these individually.First up, the myth of Jews controlling the media. This has been a conspiracy theory for decades — at least since the forged The Protocols of the Elders of Zion — but it’s never really that far from the mainstream. This is because, on the surface, there are aspects that appear correct. When you look at, for example, a list of the heads of major Hollywood studios, the list is disproportionately Jewish. That’s not evidence of a conspiracy, though — it’s just reflective of the fact that Jews built Hollywood because the white Christian population of the United States used to think the film business was too disreputable to work in.[1] But because of that proportion, people misidentify the reason for it not being a coincidence, and boom, “Jews control the media because conspiracy” is actually a pretty easy sell to most of the population of the United States. Saying it is usually considered impolite at worst.The pornographic filth angle, on the other hand, isn’t considered impolite at all, and is actually pretty openly backed by many. This is, at its root, the same thing as the “cultural Marxism” conspiracy theory that found wide purchase within paleoconservatism, the Tea Party, and Breitbart readers. You can get away with claiming the “cultural Marxists” are trying to wreck American culture without suffering any real consequences, which is weird, because it is literally Nazi propaganda: Cultural Bolshevism.As for blaming the Jews for antisemitism, this is pretty much de rigeur. In general, people have some need to believe that the world is just, which means that, if some group is being mistreated, people will often look for some sin on the part of that group to explain it. The idea of hate being irrational and that systematic hatred is similarly irrational simply does not fit with the idea of the world being just, so people tend to reject it. This is one reason among many why Quora is home to so many questions about why Hitler hated Jews — there must have been a good reason, otherwise how could it have happened?Last, we need to look at the “I support Israel, how dare they criticize me” element. Graham’s support of Israel often made people think he couldn’t be antisemitic in the way that criticism of Israel frequently leads people to believe the critic must be antisemitic. Both sides of that coin are garbage. Evangelical Christian support of Israel usually has little-to-nothing to do with liking Jews or not — the support has more to do with the eschatological implications of the existence of the state of Israel.[2] Per most premillennial dispensationalists — a common strain within American evangelicalism — the end of the world and the last judgement can only take place when Israel exists in some form or another. Since the subculture in question views the end of the world and the final judgement as desirable outcomes, support for Israel’s existence makes sense.But it doesn’t follow that they like Jews. Graham’s contemporary, Tim LaHaye, wrote a series of books about the end of the world[3] wherein, at one point, a rabbi who decides Jesus was the Messiah must escape from Israel into the rest of the world — which is controlled by the literal Antichrist — for his own safety. Putting it more simply, Christians are safer in countries controlled by the Antichrist than they are among Jews. This is flagrant antisemitism, but these books sold 65 million copies, and more than half of them topped the New York Times best-seller list. Antisemitic Zionism is, weirdly, a popular thing in the evangelical community Graham was part of — not that anyone who subscribes to that particular position is willing to admit their antisemitism if they’re even cognizant of it.[4]Ultimately, Graham’s anger of his not-passionate-enough embrace by Jews following his support of Israel slots neatly into a pretty long tradition of “I wasn’t awful to Jews, why aren’t they throwing themselves at my feet?” Martin Luther started out making some vaguely pro-Jewish remarks, but it didn’t take long before he got pissed off that this didn’t lead to mass conversions to his form of Christianity and started preaching institutional antisemitism. Similar stuff happened with Muhammad. Of course, this transactional view of the matter really just goes to show that these people didn’t like Jews in the first place, but it’s a “polite” enough variant that people ignore it.And ultimately, that’s why Billy Graham suffered no real consequences. None of what he said was really beyond the pale for contemporary American discourse, and calling out the greater culture because of a private conversation held thirty years earlier simply wasn’t going to happen.[1] This also explains why many of the top law firms in the country have multiple Jewish name partners — Jews were shunted into the “disreputable” sections of the practice of law, but those sections became some of the more important ones as time progressed.[2] Also, Islamophobia.[3] The Left Behind series[4] They almost certainly are, but there may be a few here and there who aren’t.