The Terminal Generation
How Cyclical History and Accelerationism are Hurtling Humanity Toward the Apocalypse: Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Two Approaches
Hal Lindsey published The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970. Much like Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn’s initial work, The Harbinger, Lindsey’s first foray into publishing radical Christian ideas would open the door to the printing and distribution of other works by these same authors that maintained a similar focus. In this, their literary trajectories were similar.
The modern Hebrew, Cahn, takes a past-is-prologue approach. The gentile’s methodology was to view the uncertain present leading to a certain future.
In Cahn’s case, his initial and subsequent works consider the prophetic. He looks at how the warnings of ancient prophets to ancient peoples may be brought to bear upon twenty-first century events. In the case of Lindsey, end-times biblical messages were considered in light of the events of his time, which was the late twentieth century.
Lindsey looked at what was yet to come, and the prophetic messages concerning what was coming, and related those future events and messages back to what was currently happening. He considered how contemporary affairs were setting the stage for the end times. Cahn, for his part, looks at what had already been spoken to ancient peoples and relates them forward to the current generation.
Cahn’s approach has been with a view to the prophetic and the revelations of ancient mysteries that might be unveiled through an understanding of the Hebrew and the direction of the Holy Spirit. Lindsey’s approach had been more analytical.
To juxtapose their methods, it appears that Cahn starts with ancient scriptures—primarily those in the Old Testament—to see how they relate to modern events. Lindsey started with the events of his time, to see how they might be interpreted in light of scripture, primarily those in the New Testament.
In Cahn’s eyes, the past reverberates into the present. To him, the echoes of the past touch the here and now. They ripple upon our current-day’s shores, as the tides and waves of old, distant storms mold our lives’—and our society’s—coastlines. These echoes bring yesterday’s departed ideologies and attitudes into today’s milieu and corrupt the here and now, as they had corrupted the then and there.
In Lindsey’s eyes, the future is set. Though, what is beyond today is set in stone because God knows what will be and how we’ll get there; what is not set is our current world. With all of its instabilities, our world will inevitably lead to ever-increasing volatility. This will continue until, at last, all that can be shaken will be shaken (Hebrews 12:27).
The world’s instability, as Lindsey saw it, will accelerate until the entire world—the political world, its ideologies and interrelationships, as well as its religious and cultural aspects—is shaken, just as the stable, eternal word of God has said it would be.
In Lindsey’s view, the shaking will continue until God has no choice but to use his sovereign reset button and start anew. He will rule on the earth for a thousand years, a period known as the millennial reign, and then the heavens and the earth will be made new again (Revelation 21:1).
The Fire Escape
As any Christian would be, or should be, Lindsey looked forward to that reset button being pressed. Like the Apostle Paul, he knew that “the grace of God has appeared” and that we’re “waiting for” another appearing: “the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2: 11, 13).
The waiting for, as Paul spoke to Titus, conveys the meaning of expecting the fulfilment of promises. Jesus promised us his return, and we eagerly expect it. This is what had propelled Hal Lindsey’s writings forward and why he was obsessed with knowing just when that expectation might be fulfilled.
As a result, five years after Lindsey came out with The Late Great Planet Earth—which discusses end-times prophecy, the rapture, and the tribulation—he later published Hope for the Terminal Generation. Meaning, a follow-up publication to the work that began his writing career implies a certain thesis: he believed he would live to see the second coming of Christ. He supposed that his was the last generation on earth before “the glorious appearing” (Titus 2:13, KJV).
The Hypothesis
Among these two works from Hal Lindsey, it appears he may have been wrong about some things and definitely wrong about others. For example, he considered the anticipated second appearing of Christ to be an event that comes in two parts: the first being for the church and the second for the rest of mankind.
Part A, itself, comes in two parts. First, “the dead in Christ will rise,” and then those who are living in Christ “will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:16 – 17). This is the rapture—a term that, like the word trinity, is not found in the bible but, in this case, has come to be identified with the return of Jesus for the church.
Part B is when Jesus returns to reveal himself to the world, in general, in order to judge sinners in heaven and initiate his millennial reign on earth. In between the rapture and the sinners’ judgment will be a severe seven-year period, a “tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation” (Mark 13:19).
In a nutshell, this is Hal Lindsey’s view of the end times. It is what has come to be known as the pre-tribulation rapture hypothesis, or the pre-trib theory.
Now, decades after the church first digested that view, it appears to be a fire-escape eschatology. Like those who live their lives as though Christianity was but a means to escape hellfire, the pre-trib view says that the church is outahere before the great tribulation comes upon the earth.
The Parousia Model
That said, the notion of a pre-trib rapture seems to fall apart in light of Matthew 24, which tells us that “Immediately after the tribulation … they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds” (v. 29 – 30, emphasis added). As Paul tell us, the church will meet the Lord in the air; the Lord tells us that the tribulation will come first.
In all of his enthusiasm for a pre-tribulation rapture, Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth made a strong case for such an event. Yet, in light of the whole council of God (Acts 20:27), the opposite appears to be taught by Jesus and by scripture.
As King Henry V’s Bishop of Canterbury had told the king and his court, when it came to the question of whether England should go to war with France, the answer is now “as clear as is the summer’s sun” (Act I, Scene 2): Yes, Virginia, the church will go through the tribulation.
Regarding Hal Lindsey’s timing on when these things would come to pass, not only were his eschatological ordering of events a little jumbled, he was also way off in terms of his overall timing. He believed that the tribulation was very soon to come—as in the nineteen-eighties.
Lindsey’s book about that timeframe included the statement “the decade of the 1980s could very well be the last decade of history as we know it” (The 1980's: Countdown to Armageddon; Oakland: Westgate, 1980. Pg. 8). The author did give himself some wiggle room in his assertion. It’s always a good idea, when predicting the future, to couch your predictions with conditional, tentative terms such as could very well be.
Taken
Hal Lindsey’s works, those mentioned here and others in his thirty-six-book bibliography, have all propagated the idea of the imminent return of Jesus and a pre-tribulation rapture, and have influenced the majority of Christendom to put their trust in this eschatological brand.
His works have influenced other authors to produce their own works, including the fictional Left Behind series, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Their books have resulted in over sixty-three million copies sold, between 1995 and 2007, as well as a 2014 feature film starring Nicholas Cage.
Those millions of books sold, and the film which Cage acted in as a favor to his pastor brother, were based on a misinterpretation of a portion of the twenty-fourth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. The books and the movie, like Hal Lindsey before them, looked at those taken as those taken in the rapture. This is how they consider verse 40: “Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left.” Those taken would be those taken to be with the Lord.
Matthew—therefore Jesus, whom he quotes—views taken in a different light. In the verse immediately preceding “two men will be in the field” contains the explanation of who is taken. It’s those taken in judgment.
Speaking of the flood and how it took the world unawares, and how it compares to the return of Jesus, we’re told of those who were “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage” (v. 38): they “knew not until the flood came, and took them all away” (v. 39, KJV, emphasis added).
Following Protocol
The whole idea of a rapture occurring seven years before the return of Jesus and the “end of the age” (Matthew 24:3)—the end of the church age, and the beginning of judgment and the millennial reign of Christ (Revelation 20:1 – 6)—appears to be foreign to scripture.
As mentioned above, the word rapture is not even found in the Bible. A more accurate term would be parousia, the Greek word that Paul uses in verse fifteen of the rapture prooftext (1 Thessalonians 4:13 – 18), which gets translated in English to coming.
There, Paul tells the church that “we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.” This coming is what those in the ancient Near East and first-century Middle East—i.e., Paul’s audience—would have been familiar with, having seen it and practiced it.
That is, when visiting kings and their delegations would approach a city, a certain protocol was implemented. First, a messenger would blow a trumpet, calling for the citizens of the city to greet, cheer, and welcome the king’s arrival.
The citizens would come out and meet the king, and then the city’s most honored citizens would escort him through the city gates, followed by the rest of those who had come out to meet the king. This is essentially what had happened on Palm Sunday, when the citizens of Jerusalem met Jesus outside the city and then escorted him through the gate.
According to the parousia model, Jesus will enter Jerusalem again, but not on a donkey and not for Jerusalem alone—but for the whole world. The trumpet will sound (1 Thessalonians 4:16), at which time the world’s most honored citizens, “the dead in Christ,” will rise, followed by the rest of the world’s citizens—”we who are alive, who are left” (v. 17)— will go out to “meet the Lord in the air” (v. 17) and escort Jesus back to earth, as ancient kings had been escorted into the cities in which they were being welcomed.
When we continue, we will see how Hal Lindsey was headed in the right direction but was not necessarily on the right track. Our next chapter will consider how we might be more charitable to the eschatologist.