Will the Real Anti-Prophets Please Stand Up?
By
On December
18, 1956, Clayton Heermance, a.k.a. Bud Collyer, who was the radio voice of
Superman, landed what would become his most successful game-show hosting job
ever--Goodson-Todman's To Tell The Truth. The show had three contestants
who claimed to be the same person and a panel of four celebrity questioners who
tried to determine which one was telling the truth and which two were lying.
Following the questions, each panelist voted for whom he or she thought was
telling the truth. "Wrong guesses were worth money to all three
contestants, who split the money equally."[1]
Throughout
the show's 12-year prime-time and day-time run on CBS, such celebrities as
Polly Bergen, Kitty Carlisle, Ralph Bellamy, Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Orson
Bean, Phyllis Newman, and Bert Convy would try to pick out the real John/Jane
Doe. The famous closing line for each round was, "Will the real
__________________ please stand up!" The show has been reprised and can be
seen in syndication. The host of the new To Tell the Truth is John
O'Hurley, the actor who played Mr. Peterman on Seinfeld.
Why the
stroll down TV memory lane? I received a book written by Larry Spargimino with
the title, The Anti-Prophets: The Challenge of Preterism. For those of
you who are not familiar with the term, Preterism is a view of Bible prophecy
which claims that most Old and New Testament prophetic passages have already
been fulfilled. "Preterism" is derived from the Latin word
praeteritus which means "past," "former,"
"earlier." Spargimino is a futurist. He believes that many prophetic
passages in the Old Testament and most in the New Testament have not been
fulfilled even though the Bible clearly states that they were to happen
"shortly," within a generation. Because I and other Preterists do not
follow Spargimino's futuristic perspective, he has labeled us as
"anti-prophets."
If
modern-day Preterists are "anti-prophets," then we are in good
historical company. A survey of the most widely read and respected commentaries
over the past four-and-a-half centuries will show that Preterism, not the
strained futurism of dispensational Premillennialism, was the predominate
prophetic system held by Bible believing Christians. This is a fact that is not
in dispute. Dispensational Premillennialism is a nineteenth-century invention
while Preterism has a long history behind it. We'll come back to this topic in
a moment.
A
Muddy-the-Waters Debate
Instead of
dealing with Preterism in a systematic and exegetical manner, Spargimino
confuses his readers (including me) by adding extraneous information that has
nothing to do with Preterism. For example, he writes, "Preterism, covenant
theology, post-millennialism, Kingdom-Now theology, dominion theology, the Christian
Reconstruction movement, and theonomy are all related concepts."[2] No
they aren't. There are numerous postmillennialists who are not Preterists, just
like there are premils and amils who are. And just to rub it in, the Jehovah's
Witnesses are premillennial. Spargimino and dispensationalists are
premillennial. In fact, most cultists are premillennial. Does this make Dispensationalism
a cult?
The
Christian Reconstruction movement is not monolithic on either postmillennialism
or Preterism. So-called Kingdom-Now theology has no theology. It begs, borrows,
and steals from everywhere. I can't recall ever reading a book by any of these
guys (e.g., Earl Paulk) that deals with the Bible in an expositional manner.
Most wouldn't know the difference between pre-trib and pre-millennial,
post-trib and post-millennial.
Spargimino
then rambles on for pages detailing the work of Rousas John Rushdoony[3] and
his assessment of American culture and the need to return to a biblical
foundation. Apparently taking issue with this emphasis, Spargimino asks,
"Was the real problem with
Just for
fun, let's follow Spargimino down the "godly heritage" rabbit trail.
Tim LaHaye, who holds prophetic views almost identical to those of Spargimino
and is the most famous prophecy writer in our day with his multi-volume Left
Behind series, places a great deal of emphasis on "the fact that
America [has] lost sight of its godly heritage." In fact, he's written
several books on the subject.[5] Spargimino claims that people like LaHaye are
not like the "dominionists" because, quoting Bruce Barron's Heaven
on Earth, "only the dominionists insist that they must run"[6]
the government. It was LaHaye who wrote the following in his Faith of Our
Founding Fathers, another book dealing with
If we sit
back and let the secularizers continue to dominate the government, the courts,
the media, and education, [our religious] guarantees will be lost. Fortunately,
a groundswell of concerned citizens is getting involved. They are becoming so
informed that they will wrest control of this nation from the hands of the
secularizers and place it back into the hands of those who founded this nation,
citizens who had a personal and abiding faith in the God of the Bible.[7]
It seems to
me that it's LaHaye and those have an "abiding faith in the God of the
Bible" who wants to run the show, not just "conservatives" who
believe in "family values." LaHaye follows a similar emphasis in his
latest book, Mind Siege, co-authored with David Noebel. The authors
write that "Every Christian should consider the possibility of running for
office. Obviously, God does not want 80 million of us to run for office, but He
could use 200,000. (See Proverbs 29:2). . . . It is time to vote into office
only those leaders who share our moral values and who will return our laws to
the biblical principles on which they were founded."[8] It is also important
to remember that LaHaye was instrumental in starting the Moral Majority
in 1979:
A
group of pastors of huge "super churches" decided that the time had
come to organize to promote morality in American life. With the help of
conservative political organizers Richard Viguerie and Ed McAteer, they put
together a nonpartisan political organization that they called Moral
Majority. Its head was to be Jerry Falwell, with other board members James
Kennedy (Presbyterian from
Not one of
these men is a Preterist! In fact, Falwell, Stanley, and LaHaye [and Dr.
Dixon]share the same dispensational, end-time philosophy.
In addition
to the topics of the "Christian Right" and politics, Spargimino's
takes off on a discussion of Calvinism. This is just another irrelevant
digression and distraction since there are non-Calvinists who are Preterists,
and there are Calvinists who share Spargimino's prophetic views. There are many
Calvinists who are dispensationalists. For example, Thomas Ice, one of several
editors of LaHaye's Prophecy Study Bible is a Calvinist and a
dispensational premillennialist! Ice is also a "presuppositionalist,"
another one of Spargimino's dreaded "Preterist connections." R.C.
Sproul is a Preterist,[10] and he is not a presuppositionalist. In fact, Sproul
participated in a published analysis of presuppositional apologetics: Classic
Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of
Presuppositional Apologetics.[11]
While what
is written about Rushdoony, political conservatism, Calvinism, biblical law,
dominion theology, economics,[12] presuppositional apologetics, and infant
baptism--all discussed in chapter 2 of The Anti-Prophets, are
interesting and deserving of study in some scholarly setting, they have little
to do with Preterism. As a result, The Anti-Prophets meanders all over
the theological landscape. Even I was confused as to what points Spargimino was
attempting to make, and I'm familiar with all the topics he discusses! I kept
asking as I was reading: "What does this have to do with Preterism?"
By the time I got to chapter 3, the theological waters had been so thoroughly
muddied that I wondered if anyone would get his point. And then it hit me.
Spargimino designed The Anti-Prophets to confuse his mostly uninformed
readers, most of whom are not Calvinists, probably have never heard about the
debate over presuppositional apologetics, and are apolitical.
It would
have been helpful if Spargimino had simply dealt with Preterism in a systematic
way and left out all the extraneous stuff. Is this too much to ask? It's not
until Chapter 6 on page 125 that we get to the heart of the debate: "The
Question of the `Time Texts.'"
Preterism
and History
Preterism
has a long history. A study of the most widely read Bible commentaries in the
last 450 years will show that Preterism was the orthodox position of the
church. Some of those who wrote on the subject were Baptist (John Gill: 1766),
Methodist (Adam Clarke: 1810), and Presbyterian (J. Marcellus Kik: 1948). The
Bible was read, especially the Olivet Discourse of Matthew 24, Mark 13, and
Luke 21, in terms of a Preterist perspective. Jesus was describing the
soon-destruction of the temple that took place in A.D. 70.
In addition
to Gill, Clarke, and Kik, there are the Preterist works of Henry Hammond
(1653), John Lightfoot (1658), John Owen (1680), Philip Doddridge (1750),
Thomas Newton (1755), N. Nisbet (1787), Thomas Scott
(1817), Alexander Keith (1844), Alfred Edersheim
(1874), Henry Cowles (1880), Milton Terry (1898), Philip Schaff
(1910), Philip Mauro (1924), Jay Adams (1966), and many other lesser known
commentators and writers. Compare these to the Dispensationalism of Spargimino
that did not peak its head over the theological horizon until around 1830. The Scofield Reference Bible (1909) popularized Dispensationalism
to a mass audience with its ubiquitous notes, not even a hundred years ago! The
theology behind "Darbyism" and "Scofieldism," as Dispensationalism was often called,
was considered heretical when it first made its way through the churches.[13]
Former dispensationalist Arthur W. Pink described Dispensationalism as a
"pernicious error" and the "modern method of mishandling"
of Scripture.[14]
Conclusion
The Bible
says that Jesus would come in judgment within a generation (Matt. 24:34),
before the last apostle died (
Notes
1. Tim
Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and
Cable TV Shows: 1946-Present (New York: Ballantine
Books, 1999), 1032.
2. Larry
Spargimino, The Anti-Prophets: The Challenge of Preterism (
3.
Spargimino, The Anti-Prophets, 31.
4.
Spargimino, The Anti-Prophets, 31.
5. Tim
LaHaye, The Bible's Influence on American History (San Diego: Master
Books, 1976). Ed Rowe writes the following in the Foreword: "What is the
basic American idea? It is Christian faith and conviction
arising from the Word of God and resulting in constructive action in all
departments of life, including politics and government" (iii).
6.
Spargimino, The Anti-Prophets, 31. Quoted in Bruce Barron, Heaven on
Earth? The Social and Political Agendas of Dominion Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
1992), 14.
7. Tim
LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Colorado Springs, CO: Master
Books, 1994), 15.
8. Tim
LaHaye and David Noebel, Mind Siege: The
9. Nancy T. Ammerman, "North American Protestant
Fundamentalism," Fundamentalisms Observed, eds. Martin E. Marty and
R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 43. Also see Ed
Dobson, Ed Hindson, and Jerry Falwell, eds., The
Fundamentalist Phenomenon, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House,
1986), 114-115.
10. R. C.
Sproul, The Last Days According to Jesus: When Did Jesus Say He Would
Return? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998).
11. R.C.
Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley, Classic
Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of
Presuppositional Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
1984).
12. Compare
what Spargimino writes about David Chilton's Productive Christians in An Age
of Guilt Manipulators, a critique of Ron Sider's
Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, with what LaHaye writes in The Bible's
Influence on American History: "The Bible's Influence on Free
Enterprise" (43-45).
13. Edwin H. Rian, The Presbyterian
Conflict (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1940),
235-36.
14. Arthur W. Pink, A Study of Dispensationalism. Chapter 1.