The Link Between Dispensationalists and Astrologists
June 9th, 2008
By the time you read this the United Astrology Conference will have met in Denver and will have offered their prediction on who will be the presidential winner in November. They were to have made their choice by Tuesday, May 20. I don’t know who they will pick nor do I care.*Â
It appears that an integral component to predicting who will be the next President is the candidates’ exact birth times. Hmmm. They "know" that Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at 7:11 p.m. (Yet other astrologers give other birth times for Obama.) As in the past when it comes to disclosing information in a timely fashion, Hillary Clinton is not sharing the exact time of her birth. And Senator McCain has changed his known birth time by at least two hours, wrecking havoc with predictions on his presidential aspirations. (Supposedly his birth time was embedded like a gold nugget in a Mother’s Day campaign ad where his mother mentioned that her son was born August 29, 1936, at 11 a.m.) I have read that birth data are rated for accuracy and shared among astrologers through a variety of Web sites.
Astrologist Shelley Ackerman and others insist their profession’s work is accurate, if not more so, than many polls. . . . Just about as accurate as dispensationalists like John Darby, C.I. Scofield, William E. Blackstone, Charles Ryrie, Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee–which isn’t saying much! For these individuals have consistently been wrong. Let me take Lindsey as one example. According to the way he read the Bible (at least in the early 1970s), the rapture must take place before 1988, within forty years of the establishment of the nation Israel (May 16, 1948). Furthermore, ten nations would make up the European Common Market. With great certainty Lindsey said that these events were predicted in a variety of Scriptures. And yet he was wrong.
Why are the astrologists and the dispensationalists wrong? The former appeal to the rhythms of heaven and earth, specifically the cycle of nature between the sun and the moon and the planets and the stars, and the latter appeal to newspapers headlines, and when the headlines change new editions of books need to be published.
Both camps remind me of those individuals who read tea leaves for guidance. Ridiculous? Yes! But how many Christians do you know who read their horoscopes or listen to the latest self-styled prophecy experts?
*For the record, they predict an Obama victory — Ed.
Photo by cpt. spock.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Good Post. I have never really made the connection between the two and it is very intriguing.
June 10th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Dr. Bob - can we also throw in all the preaching that was done in the late 30s and early 40s that Hitler was CLEARLY the Antichrist? Or how about in the 90s during Desert Storm that Hussein was CLEARLY the Antichrist? It seems rather cyclical doesn’t it?
June 10th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
I’m with Kevin… only more so!
It frequently bewilders me when I ponder how short-sighted we are in the American (and americanized) church. As a history major I learned the value of historical context and primary sources. Since we as a culture (within the Church and without) are largely ignorant of the “big picture” historically, the wheel gets reinvented in the form of supposedly new interpretations of prophecy and - more dangerously - old heresies repackaged to sell books and attract listeners/viewers/conference attenders.
My bewilderment leads me to consider if I am worshiping in truth and proclaiming the “old, old story.” (And it often makes me wish that I could be a fly on the wall in Nicea in 325 or Jerusalem a few hundred years before that…)
June 16th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
What is frightening to me is that some prophesy experts use things like astrology to back up their warped view of The End. One night Sarah and I were watching a prophesy expert on TV, the name escapes me but it was one of the top five most popular, and he was mingling every sort of predictive nonsense. No extra Biblical source was left out including Nostradamus, current news headlines and astrology. This guys sells books and has regular spots on television, misleading countless Christians down a path of insanity. He uses tools of Satan to propagate a bad theology and sells it in the name of Christ.
Does Revelation 22:18-19 (properly understood and applied) mean anything to these guys when they distort the imagery of Revelation? Oh, wait, they must be too busy misapplying the two verses to scare people from disagreeing with their bad interpretations.