The Destructive View of Preterism

 

By Tim LaHaye
Executive Director
Pre-Trib Research Center, Arlington, TX

 

Hank Hanegraaff Calls Tim LaHaye a Racist and a Blasphemer

 

By Dr. Thomas Ice

In his new book entitled The Apocalypse Code,[i] Hank Hanegraaff, host of the Bible Answer Man radio broadcast, selects Tim LaHaye as his prime target in his sub-Christian attack on Tim LaHaye and other Bible prophecy advocates. Strangely, Hanegraaff is known for often quoting the famous maxim: “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”[ii] So where is the liberty and charity in practice that he advocates in theory? Charity and liberty towards those he disagrees with is totally absent in Hanegraaff’s new book. It is one thing to disagree with another Christian (Hanegraaff and any other Christian has a right to voice their disagreement with other Christians), but to call his fellow brother in Christ a racist[iii] and a blasphemer[iv] because he advocates a different view of Bible prophecy goes well beyond the pale.

Hanegraaff contends that his book is about “Exegetical Eschatology to underscore that above all else I am deeply committed to a proper method of biblical interpretation rather than to any particular model of eschatology.”[v] If that is his goal then he has fallen far short of the mark! Hanegraaff’s proposed interpretative approaches, if implemented, would send the church back to the Dark Ages hermeneutically. The great majority of the book is a rant against Dispensationalism in general and Tim LaHaye in particular. There is precious little actual exegesis, if any at all, to support his Preterist-Idealist eschatology, however, there are great quantities of some of the most vicious invective against LaHaye and many other Bible prophecy teachers that I have ever read in print.

This book is not only filled with factual error throughout, but teaches that most Bible prophecy has already been fulfilled (a Preterist viewpoint), Nero was the beast of Revelation (i.e., the antichrist), and the tribulation has already happened. Hanegraaff is certainly no lover of Israel since he teaches that God divorced Israel (he needs to read the end of Hosea) and married the church, supports the pro-Palestinian claims against Israel, and even accuses Israel of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Hanegraaff embraces and argues for replacement theology and many other viewpoints that are detrimental to sound Bible study and interpretation. Not surprisingly, I do not recommend this book, unless one is looking for an example of how not to study the Bible for all its worth.

[i] Hank Hanegraaff, The Apocalypse Code: Find Out What the Bible Really Says About The End Times and Why It Matters Today (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007), 300 pages.
[ii] Hank Hanegraaff and Sigmund Brouwer, The Last Disciple (Wheaton: Tyndale, 2004), p. 395.
[iii] Hanegraaff, The Apocalypse Code, pp. xx–xxiii.
[iv] Hanegraaff, The Apocalypse Code, pp. 189, 225.
[v] Hanegraaff, The Apocalypse Code, p. 2.

 

as of 5-2007