Enough About Armageddon and the End Times

The following article, Enough About Armageddon and the End Times, was first published on The American Vision.

FrontPage Magazine is one of my favorite go-to sites. It was started by former Communist David Horowitz. Horowitz is Jewish, as are many of the site’s writers. In addition to his memoir Radical Son, he has written Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America as a warning to once Christian America. He understands that the United States was founded on fundamental biblical principles even if those advocating for them were not believers. Biblical principles have been woven into the warp and woof of American society at every level, from education to politics, but now they are being attacked on every front. Horowitz writes:

Do not mistake this as a parochial issue, affecting only a persecuted religious community. In America, the war against Christians is not merely a war against an embattled religion. It is a war against an imperiled nation—a war against this nation and its founding principles: the equality of individuals and individual freedom. For these principles are indisputably Christian in origin. They are under siege because they are insurmountable obstacles to radicals’ totalitarian ambitions to create a new world order in their image (28).

As a former Communist Horowitz knows how to spot the illusion of “progressive” politics. “When I eventually rejected this illusion, I realized that their atheistic creed was itself a form of religious faith. Their God was history, which they viewed as an inexorable march to a promised land” (29).

It’s been said that Christians believe in God but not history, while atheists believe in history but not God. History is as important to God as the created order He declared to be “very good” (Gen. 1:31; 1 Tim. 4:4). Unfortunately, there are many Christians who have adopted a worldview that assumes the end of history and the destruction of this world as they await heaven on earth with Jesus ruling from a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem. The thing about it is, the Bible does not teach this hoped-for scenario. You can search Revelation 20 from the first verse to the last and not find it.

In the meantime, Christian prophecy writers continue to write books about prophetic inevitabilities that are always on the horizon. One such book is Col. David Giammona, a retired U.S. Army chaplain, and Troy Anderson’s The Military Guide to Armageddon. The book details how to prepare mentally, spiritually, and physically for what they believe is the “end times.”

I was surprised that FrontPage Magazine would publish an interview with the co-authors without questioning the legitimacy of their position. It’s not like there haven’t been other prophecy writers who have made similar claims throughout the centuries.

I’m all for preparing for the future, but I am dead set against tying such preparation to a prophetic system that does not have any biblical support and is destructive to worldview thinking that requires a long-term view of history and civilization building.

Col. David Giammona and Troy Anderson believe, based on their end-time views, that Armageddon is inevitable. They believe in an end-time antichrist, a great worldwide tribulation where billions are slaughtered, an inevitable attack on Israel, and so many other end-time beliefs that have been hyped for decades, even centuries. For example, we were told in Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, published in 1970, that an event called the “rapture” would take place before 1988 and remove Christians from the inevitability of a great tribulation.

These prophetic speculators believe in an end-time scenario they claim is a prophetic inevitability. Why bother to fight against something that has been predicted to happen in our lifetime (It’s always in our lifetime)? I wonder how many Christians have dropped out of fighting against the assault on our nation and culture because they have been taught that it’s all been predicted in the Bible and there is little if anything that can be done to stop it. If you want to prepare Christians for a war—ideological and physical—then you must show them that the eschatology that Giammona and Troy Anderson are promoting is false. It has been repeatedly debunked by numerous Bible-believing scholars over the centuries. If you want to re-engage Christians in the fight, I suggest that Giammona and Anderson drop their unbiblical prophetic system and help their fellow-Christians develop a comprehensive biblical worldview to supplant the inevitable collapse of today’s rancid man-centered worldview. You can’t do that when these men are telling people that, in their words, “the overwhelming consensus is that we are beginning to witness the end-time events that Jesus Christ and the prophets predicted thousands of years ago.”

Why bother if the end is right around the corner, a claim that’s been made for centuries? While Christians have been waiting for a soon inevitable end, the forces of evil have been taking over our nation one institution at a time. Stop the prophetic speculation and get to work in restoring the foundations.

Continue reading Enough About Armageddon and the End Times …

American Vision’s mission is to Restore America to its Biblical Foundation—from Genesis to Revelation. American Vision (AV) has been at the heart of worldview study since 1978, providing resources to exhort Christian families and individuals to live by a Biblically based worldview. Visit www.AmericanVision.org for more information, content and resources