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The Context to the Manuscript's Writing There is a growing division within The Christian church concerning the meaning of the Bible. This chasm is growing wider and darker between those that believe the Bible is God's Word--supernaturally given and protected, and those who believe that the Bible is man's historically conditioned "best guesses" into what God has been about as He works with His people. If the Bible is God's Word to us, then its truth claims over life and conduct cannot be questioned or changed. If it's man's record of what is supposed to be God's doing, then all truth claims within Scripture are open to question or reinterpretation. There was a time when I did not have confidence in Scripture, or the God revealed within its sacred pages. For a period during and at the end of my studies in philosophy, I had become skeptical of any supernatural claims. I was, for all intents and purposes, a logical positivist at this point in time. I believed that if you could not kick something (at least in principle), then it did not exist. God was a bodiless noun floating within a child's dream Through means to be mentioned later in this opening comment, God delivered me from viewing life as this little room made up of matter and energy. What had previously driven me to conclude against God and the supernatural? I have come to believe that there are two primary reasons why learned men finally give up on the notion of God. Either the general condition of human suffering makes the thought of a completely good and totally powerful God paradoxical and untenable. Or the specific appetites to live out a worldly life and indulge the pleasures of the flesh makes the presence of a morally demanding God uncomfortable—and so we jettison God and His moral demands. I was of the former. It troubled me deeply that nature appeared capricious and that the strong preyed upon the weak. I could not square the "red tooth and claw" phenomena of nature against a good and loving God. So I made a small room, constructed it carefully out of the materials of humanism and naturalism, and moved in. This space provided a certain "disquieting comfort" (if I may juxtapose these last two words that seem so unnatural to one another in order to express the quality of Dasein). God in His mercy would not let me live in such a small world built upon the stuff of our cave existence. He exorcised the Dasein demon by breaking down my resistance to the supernatural. How did He do this? First, he brought a friend into my life who was a quiet, sincere, and consistent Christian. Secondly, God brought me into the works of C. S. Lewis. Finally, and here's where things start getting a bit bizarre—I began to have dreams. Through these means, God changed my whole point of view. There, upon the horizon of a dawning new idea, came an earthquake—both terrible and exhilarating! Ontological shifts do not come without titanic force. My metaphysical landscape changed dramatically and quickly. Over night, I had become a living anachronism. When I spoke, my language no longer meant to the intellectual world what it identified for me. Like a woman pregnant with life and thrilled to be so, I discovered that the Kingdom that I now carried within me was marked for eradication. Most intellectuals did not understand me, or if they did, I was targeted as an uninitiated one still living ignorantly within a child's dream. Intellectuals pushed me to the side, but my real frustration grew out of the response of ordinary people to the major shifts being forced upon the public square by the academic community. Most people do not want to think about difficult things. Everyday people prefer to "put their heads into the ground" and go on enjoying their peace and prosperity. I know both intuitively and rationally that the future will devour our children if we do not resist the changes taking place. What is at stake in our decision concerning the meaning of the Bible? I have long believed that one of the things that makes man unique from the rest of the animal kingdom is that he has no instinctive way of putting together his society. Bees will never meet to see if they should redesign the hive… Wolves will never discuss if they should continue to run in packs. The animal kingdom is tuned into its survival within the ecology of our planet through deep instinctive drives. Mankind, however, has no such drives. Even a modest student of history sees clearly that the on-going warfares between clans and cultures can often be traced to the fact that there is no common design for culture that every person will inherently subscribe to. Clearly, reason is not sufficient for us to use in designing human society—the whole bloody history of our planet is proof that we are unable to decide upon a universal plan for culture. Mankind requires an external form for society. Faith says that God supplies that form. I believe that it is the testimony of Scripture (and a real anathema to the PC world), that God has chosen to communicate truth and culture through the Judeo-Christian religion. He does so propositionally through the Bible. If, to the contrary, the Bible is man's best guess record of what God is doing, we have no blueprint for human society that can be universally trusted. An all powerful and loving God would not place mankind into a situation where His people have neither the instincts nor the plans for constructing a good society. I concluded that God had indeed given humanity propositional and timeless truth within the Bible communicated to our race through the Judeo-Christian tradition. Today, Satan's destruction of Biblical truth is to be found everywhere. However, no tool has been more instrumental in destroying the meaning of Scripture and its relevance for human life than the institutions of higher learning. Within the secular and the sacred institutions of learning, a materialistic view of life has given us the historical critical method and a morality based not within God, but within the logical precipitates to the paradigm of evolution. I saw humanistic naturalism destroying the meaning of God (and His meaning for everyday morality) when I was at Luther Northwestern Seminary. The Omega Prophecy was delivered to the seminary community to challenge the view that held the Bible to be historically conditioned and subject to errors and change. When I first started attending classes at the seminary, I quickly saw that the Jesus I was learning about was not the same One that I had learned at my grandmother's knee. But Grannies can be wrong! So I listened and evaluated. Then I started asking some questions. It was the inability of exegetical professors to answer one very specific question that returned me to my grandma's knee (and the Jesus of the Bible). It was clear that all supernatural elements of the Bible were being reinterpreted so that they fit within a naturalistic paradigm which did not allow for the miraculous and out-of-the-ordinary. This manner of doing Bible study is included within what is called the 'historical critical" method, and was championed by such theologians as Rudolf Bultmann in Germany. In order to understand this method better, I asked one professor after another who taught Old and New Testament, "What is it about the nature of reality that forces the conclusion that miracles cannot happen?" The answer was always the same—silence with a look of confusion, and then meaningless diversions. Now it is important to remember that I was asking this, at least at first, as a sincere question. As a philosopher I wanted to know about their view of reality (ontology… cosmology… epistemology… etc) so that I might join with them and be the student and pastor that they were training me to be. As it became evident, these professors were ignorant concerning the things involved in those questions, and had trustingly left them to another area of theology called systematics. Yet the bottom–line, for the exegetical and systematic professors who functioned within the historical critical paradigm, was a strong bias against the supernatural. Why didn't I share this bias? It certainly predominated my college experience. Dream's Doorway to Reality Remember that I once felt comfortable living within a materialistic universe. Then came the day when my universe became much bigger. I began to have dreams. Oh—from my youth I knew that my dreams were not ordinary. For years I was pursued by shadowy, cloaked figures until I had a dream in which I confronted them as they chased me down my home street. After that confrontation the dark villains vanished. Then for a time in my childhood my dreams became tame. I entered college. It was then and thereafter that my dreams went a whole new direction! Most significantly, after college I began to dream things before they took place. My dream "snippets" could be as insignificant as a sequence to a movie before I had seen it. They could be as important as showing me an accident before it took place so that I could be prepared for it when it occurred. My life has been saved on at least two occasions because of such dreams. I began to keep a dream journal to insure my sanity. I needed to be able to prove to myself that I had had the dreams, and was not merely imagining that I had dreamed them before they took place. The dream journal recorded other extraordinary elements to dreams that revealed things to me about myself (and even others). To this day, my schooling in dreams has given me the ability to work with dreams. When in counseling, for example, if a person relates a recurring dream, I am usually able to make gigantic discoveries—often astounding the person with whom I have been counseling. At this point, let's be clear about what I am not saying> I am not saying that even one word of this manuscript should be accepted on the basis of my claim to have extraordinary dreams. Let's face it, I could be crazy or a deceiver. The Bible is the only sure word, and those revelations that flow consistent with the Bible can be considered as appropriate "sermons" or admonitions to The Church. What I am saying is that these dreams had a profound effect upon me! I could no longer live comfortably within a closed system that denied the supernatural. God had released my intellect from the prison of a closed, naturalistic universe. I am persuaded that those forces attacking the unchanging truth claims and accuracy of the Bible are instruments of God's wrath in bringing the end to the human epoch. If the greater part of Christendom repents and returns to an abiding trust in the Bible as God's timeless Word, there is still reason to believe that the end of human history will await a later period. Some Christians may not want to postpone the return of Christ, and I certainly can appreciate their sentiment. But for all kinds of reasons, and not the least of which is given in 2 Peter 3:9, God may be working to postpone the end. What About The Rapture? As we conclude with the whole idea of the end of human history, many readers are probably wondering what The Omega Prophecy has to say about "the rapture." The answer to this is quite simply, nothing at all. This does not mean that, for example, there will be no rapture. I Thessalonians speaks of believers being caught up into the clouds to meet Christ when He returns. Since this is a Biblical truth, it cannot be denied. My problem is with the idea that believers at the end will be "raptured" before the tribulation. Biblical positions about the rapture are divided on this issue. Chapter six of The Omega Prophecy could allow for either view. Yet I have been led not to speak concerning the rapture. Why? Because it is a doctrine that divides sincere students of the Bible. Then again, each side on the issue of a post- and pre-tribulation develop their doctrine from more esoteric Bible verses—not the best for doing apologetics. The majority of those who work with the concept of a rapture believe that it will happen before the tribulation. Although I hope that they are correct, I cannot proclaim it within the work God has given me to do. I have been led to reason like this: God has usually allowed His people to suffer through the persecution which comes to believers. The prophets suffered… The apostles with the early Church suffered… Missionaries have suffered and died terrible deaths throughout the centuries… And Christians today are suffering and being murdered for the sake of Christ and His kingdom. I do not see any reason why God would consider end-time Christians differently than all the martyred saints of old. Granted, He can chose to do so, but I am not convinced on the basis of clear Scriptural truth that He has chosen to spare His children suffering at the end of time. Furthermore, let's look at the worst case scenarios. If I have not proclaimed a pre-tribulation rapture and it does occur, then what a wonderful surprise! People have been prepared through The Omega Prophecy to expect suffering and to take up their crosses and follow Jesus, but their spiritual training will not require their sacrificial service—what a gift of God! On the other-hand, if this work proclaimed a pre-tribulation rapture on the basis of God's Word, and it did not happen, think of the consequences! God's people would be unprepared for suffering! Individual Christians clearly covered by the blood of the Lamb might think that they were unworthy and left behind. They might loose all trust for this word and the credibility of their pastors. Yet far worse, at the time when they would need God the most, they might doubt His goodness and love for them. I hope that there is a rapture for God's faithful saints before the day of God's wrath. Yet if it is to happen, this is an insight that God has kept from me. For those who are convinced of the doctrine, it would be fit into this word within the sixth chapter. To our great God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be all the glory for what He has done, for what He is doing, and for what He shall bring to be. Amen. Correspondence Included here is a link which will send e-mail to my address. Please understand that it is my desire to answer, at least briefly, e-mails that come to me. However, if I do not respond to you, please know that it is because the amount of correspondence that has come to me is beyond my ability to manage. I do value the feedback of my family in Christ, and would not want any of you to conclude otherwise. Thank-you. |
Pastor Dave Anderson |
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[All contents copyright © 1980, 1998 David Anderson] |