12/01/08 – Bill Barnwell – The Scott Horton Show

Alright y'all, welcome back to Anti-War Radio, it's Chaos 92.7 in Austin, Texas, live Monday through Friday here on Chaos Radio, streaming worldwide on the internet at chaosradioaustin.org and antiwar.com slash radio, 11 to 1 Texas time.
And our next guest is Bill Barnwell from luerockwell.com, he's a minister up in Michigan and therefore knows a lot about the Bible and religions and religious arguments and so forth like that.
And well, I like this guy and I like asking him questions because he gives interesting answers.
So welcome back to the show, Bill.
Good to be here, Scott.
I'm really happy to have you here and I just thought it was hilarious, that guy Luerockwell's got a great sense of humor and it's always so understated.
He wrote on his front page of luerockwell.com, in defense of Barack Obama.
And I thought, what?
And then real small it says, he's not the Antichrist.
Article by Bill Barnwell.
So that's one thing that we can say for this guy is, or you seem to be claiming that you're positive or at least pretty darn sure that Barack Obama is not actually the Antichrist here to usher in the end of the world.
Is that right?
Well, I suppose that anything is possible, but given the reasons laid out from different people and email campaigns and some of the hysteria from those in certain sectors of the church, I have to say that categorically, no, based on the information being passed along.
There's been an email campaign, Wage Against Obama, from really the time he stepped on the national stage after his big speech at the Democratic Convention back in 2004.
And his admittedly very popular quick rise to power, a lot of people were speculating that maybe this guy is the one who, not the one that Oprah Winfrey was afraid to, but the one, the evil one, supposedly predicted in the Bible to help usher in the end times.
And a lot of the reasons given are really quite silly and have nothing to do with the Bible.
Like, you know, a popular email that was going out a couple of months ago was saying that according to the Book of Revelation, the Antichrist will be a man of Middle Eastern descent and will be a Muslim and lists other characteristics.
I mean, there's a number of obvious problems with that.
Number one is that there was no such thing as Islam when the Book of Revelation was written.
There was no Muslim on the face of the earth for well over 500 years.
Ah, details, details.
Yeah, you and your details, pal.
So what you're trying to do then is measure what they're saying against what could even be possible in the slightest.
Okay, I get it.
Well, with Christians, if they say they're going to take the Bible seriously and they develop the worldview and their theological doctrines from the Bible, then we ought to measure such claims against the Bible.
I wouldn't say that it's the mainstream position anywhere within evangelicalism that Obama is the Antichrist, but there has been kind of this loud minority chorus and conspiracy theorists in different quarters of the Church and out on the Internet that have been advancing this claim.
And if you look at, like, say, the day after he was elected, that night he was elected, here he is giving a speech in front of a large, doring audience.
And immediately the first thing I'm thinking is, I bet right now people are writing on the Internet that this could be the Antichrist.
And just for fun, I went and did a little Google search and saw people writing on blogs and what they were writing on social networking sites like Facebook.
And it was all quite odd.
You know, this idea that the Antichrist is going to be a guy who's going to gain worldwide favor and is going to pull the wool over everyone's eyes is a popular idea, and it's been promoted in the Left Behind series.
But it's kind of missing the mark as far as for 21st century Christians, as far as what the Book of Revelation was talking about.
Again, you look at the reasons that Obama came under suspicion.
One, that he's liked by people overseas.
He's liked by Europeans.
And we know that Europeans are bad liberal people.
Therefore, Obama must come under suspicion.
He wants to end the war in Iraq.
And good Christians must support the war in Iraq and must support the President.
And peace.
Peace is something to be suspicious of.
Because according to some dispensationalists, or basically all of them, if you look at a verse in the Bible, Daniel 9, verse 27, the Antichrist is going to bring a false peace to the Middle East, specifically between Arabs and the modern nation of Israel, they would say.
And the Antichrist is going to be adored by people worldwide.
He's going to be this man of peace.
But then, three and a half years into the seven-year tribulation period, he's going to break this peace treaty.
And is going to unleash havoc on the Jewish people.
Now, is all that in the Book of Daniel?
Well, I would say no.
And it would be a very long, complicated discussion that would probably bore most listeners, including even your evangelical Christian ones, because this is very complicated.
But I would just say for readers, if they were to read Daniel chapter 9, basically what dispensationalists do is when they get to chapter 9, verses 24-27, they read 24-26 as if it's referring to historical events from well over 2,000 years ago.
And then between verse 26 and verse 27, they insert this massive gap of over 2,000 years and say that God's prophetic time clock has stopped.
And that the person being referred to in verse 26 and verse 27 is completely different.
That in verse 26, it's referring to a historical figure from our standpoint.
In verse 27, it's talking about the Antichrist.
When it says that there's going to be a peace among many, they interpret the word many to mean the modern nation of Israel.
There's all kinds of assumptions being built into one verse of the Bible, and it's influencing people's worldviews and their politics.
And I think it's just silly, both on a scriptural level and on a practical level.
Well, you know, I saw a thing the other day, and I only watched it for like two minutes before I gave up and changed the channel, but it was all about Nostradamus.
And I've seen this my whole life, since I was a little kid.
I've seen the thing about Nostradamus.
And when I was a little kid, the end of the world was going to be a war between us and the Soviet Union in 1988.
And then when I was in, I guess, junior high or ninth grade or something, well, the Cold War was coming to an end and all that.
So now all of a sudden the end of the world was going to be in 1994, and it was going to be some, you know, maybe Saddam Hussein or some evil Middle Eastern leader or something like that.
And then I'm watching this clip, and they're talking about the same problems.
There will be a fire in the new city or something, and that means he's predicting the September 11th attacks is what that was.
And it wasn't actually the beginning or may have been a step, and it wasn't actually the end of the world, but it was.
9-11 is what he was talking about, obviously.
Now, it's almost the same production of all about Nostradamus, but it always changes.
You know what I mean?
It's like these cults are like, yeah, the end of the world is going to be on August 15th, and then when it doesn't happen, you go, oh, it's going to be in November.
And then, like, finally by December the people finally give up and leave, you know?
Well, it's quite a shame if Bible-believing Christians who have a high view of Scripture are putting themselves in the same league as the Nostradamus enthusiasts, and that's kind of what they have done.
You know what the funny thing is, is the end times euphoria has really increased in the last 60 years or so.
But if you look back in church history, every generation, there has been some group, maybe not the majority of believers, but there has been some groups that have felt like their generation is the last.
And they've always interpreted historical events or contemporary events from their standpoint as being the final things on the calendar.
And all history was pointing to them.
It's really a historical arrogance that all of time is just marching towards me and everything that's happening around me.
You know, this is what the Bible is referring to.
My take, and the take of a number of biblical scholars, is why don't we actually look at the Bible in context?
How would the people that Revelation was written to, how would they have interpreted this book?
It was written to a specific group of people.
It was written to seven churches.
I mean, that's clear enough just from reading the book.
And what modern Christians want to do is pretend that after Chapter 3, it has nothing to do with the original audience.
And it all has to do with them and things that are going on around them.
But actually, a look at Revelation in its historical context, the book makes quite a bit of sense to this original audience, a great bulk of it.
It doesn't mean it doesn't have application for every generation after that.
But the danger for people, whether they're believers or they follow, you know, people like this John Edward guy on TV, you know, the prophets and the psychics and all this business, you know, predicting the future is a very dangerous game.
And invariably, it always makes people look silly, which is why I can't understand why all these so-called prophecy experts are still called experts and why they have such a large following when they've never been right about anything.
And I say that and people get mad at me as if I'm being arrogant or presumptuous, but I'm not the one making a lot of money off the books saying what's going to happen and then changing and revising the story every few years when it doesn't match up with my previous predictions.
So I think we need to have a responsible view of the Bible and the book of Revelation.
And I think there's a ton of application from the book of Revelation for people today, not just far-off things that haven't happened yet, but the way I read and interpret Revelation really makes it come to life, rather than just this biblical crystal ball that I'm gazing into waiting for these end-time events to happen.
Well, I know you're a libertarian like me and therefore an individualist, and so I don't mean to come off too much like a collectivist.
But in a sense, what we're talking about here is the shepherd and his flock.
And in your case, your job in being a shepherd is trying to be very careful about what you're teaching to people.
On the other hand, there are others who, it seems to be like you kind of imply there, for financial reasons, are willing to herd their flocks to the bookshelf at Walmart to buy the Left Behind series.
And this is, you know, listen, I can relate to this, okay?
I'm lazy too.
And I don't want to read the whole Bible, but if I really believed in Jesus and all this stuff, and I wanted to learn about it, and somebody handed me the Left Behind series and novels, that probably would be the most I knew about the religion, you know, even if I was a Christian.
You know what I mean?
And this is what's happened.
People have been shepherded toward the book rack at Walmart to find their theology, and it's all based on fear, and it's all based on, you know, again, like you said, this perverted nonsense where anyone who promotes the idea of peace is automatically under suspicion of being an agent of the devil.
Yeah, a few things here.
That's a good point, the latter one.
A few points.
One, I'd say the majority of the big-name people who are putting out the prophecy books, the Hal Lindsey's, the Tim LaHaye's, the John Hayes, I think they do sincerely believe in what they're doing.
I don't think they're minding making tons of money off it, but I think they sincerely believe what they're doing.
If I were them, though, I would just take a look at what they're teaching versus the facts, and some of the predictions they made versus what's actually happened.
I think that should cause their fans and their followers to be a bit concerned about the people that they're trusting as experts.
Second, dispensationalism, this whole idea of a pre-tribulational rapture, and God has two separate plans for the church and Israel, which are going to converge at the end, and basically everything you're seeing in the left-behind books.
Dispensationalism, as I've said many times, I've read about many times, is something, a theological system that's only less than 160 years old.
Nobody believed, nobody believed in this idea of a pre-tribulational rapture, this idea that we need to build a third temple on top of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and possibly ignite a world or regional war.
I mean, these ideas were not around.
They're relatively new on the historical scene.
Three, I am very concerned about this idea that anybody who's talking about peace, specifically Middle East peace, is going to come under suspicion for being, you know, a representative or the Antichrist.
I think that's a terrible way to look at the world, and it basically says, if you're coming at it from this point of view, that we shouldn't try and pursue peace, especially in the Middle East, because it's God's will that conditions just deteriorate, and the only person who's going to bring peace to this side of the Second Coming is going to be a false peace by the Antichrist.
And one of the things is, when I talk about these things, a number of people get on my case saying, you know, it's not a big deal, don't worry about it, you're looking too much into it, got to work out all things in the end, and so on and so forth.
But the things that people believe about the future have very real ramifications about the way they think, act, vote, etc., in the present.
Our ideas about the future control the way we live in the present and the way we view the future, obviously.
So if we've tied ourselves, if certain Christians have tied themselves to a dismal theology of hopelessness and of just war and carnage, and don't do anything about it or you're going to come under suspicion, to me that's exactly the opposite of what's being taught for Christians to pursue in the communities and society and world that they live in.
You know, I'm reading Tom Wood's book with Murray Polner, it's a collection of essays, We Who Dared Say No to War, starting with Daniel Webster and Against the War in 1812-14, and all the way through, and the whole 19th century, it seems, is full of what we would now consider to be deeply conservative people invoking Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount and saying, you know, why are we starting a war, particularly the War of 1812?
There's an essay there where this guy is saying, you know, we're supposed to be followers of Christ, you know, this humble guy who was the Prince of Peace, who was the least among us and whatever, and yet we're trying to invade and conquer Canada?
What the hell are we doing here?
And it's amazing, the parallels.
I mean, if you just switch out Iraq with Canada, or Afghanistan with Canada in some of these essays, or Mexico in some of the others, I'm obviously not that far into the book yet, it's amazing the parallels, and to see, and it's also amazing, though, to hear arguments appealing to people's Christianity as an argument against war rather than for it, which is something that I find sorely lacking in our society now.
Well, a couple things.
Again, this is kind of an American evangelical phenomenon.
I wrote in the American Conservative a couple years back, that before the start of the war, and even during the war at that time, and I'd have to take a look at stats today, but I'm sure they're not that much different, the sociological group that supported the war, the strongest numbers in America, was evangelical Christians.
And I think there's a few different reasons for that.
One is they had a Christian president whom they trusted, and he said that God had led him into the war in Iraq, and so they're trusting their leader, they're trusting their guy.
Two, it's going on in the Middle East, so war in the Middle East, that has, as we've talked about, certain connotations, so we have to get behind that.
And I think a number really legitimately believed in the cause.
I think there's a number of people, Christian and non-Christian, that believed in the cause back then, but you've noticed more and more defectors from those who supported the invasion and the long-term strategy in Iraq.
Many of those people have kind of went over to the other side and became much more skeptical.
I think evangelicals, certain evangelicals for various reasons, or holdovers, kept holding on to the cause there.
Certainly you didn't see a strong support of the war from Middle Eastern Christians who are being rapidly displaced and persecuted, not just by one side, but on all sides.
And you had a Christian population in Iraq, which has dwindled.
You had a Palestinian Christian population that has significantly decreased over time.
So to me this is more kind of an American phenomenon, and to me it's one that's always been troubling, one which I've always kind of spoken out about.
And I think that there's more and more people who have become a little more cautious and skeptical of this war euphoria.
Lastly, I think also what you see, I alluded in the beginning here, is that it was a Republican president that led this war.
You'll think back to the 1990s when Clinton was launching his humanitarian crusades into Bosnia and then later into Kosovo.
The majority of the right was opposed, including evangelical Christians.
What I suspect that we're going to see now that we have a liberal in office, if he decides he's going to wage some humanitarian war here or there, I think you'll see a great majority of the right, including Christians, stand up and say no.
So I think a lot of this has more to do with political leanings than it does even with theology, but I think the two kind of coincide in certain areas too.
Right.
You know, it's funny.
Anders in the chat room is pointing out that George Bush talked about peace in the Middle East all the time.
They weren't suspicious of him.
I'm thinking maybe it's just because they knew he never meant any of that.
He was bent on war, and that's what they wanted.
Yeah, you know, there's complicated reasons for all of this.
I think the main thing, though, again, is for Christians who develop a worldview from the Bible, if they say that, and I say that and I believe that, well, let's go to the Bible and see what the Scriptures would actually say.
Even historically, those ancient theologians who came up with the just war doctrine, there's no way possible, contrary to what Michael Novak says, there's no way possible that the war in Iraq and preemptive warfare and all these other excuses trotted out came anywhere close to meeting that definition.
Well, you know, here's the thing too, and I really don't know all that much about the Bible or religion personally, Bill, but it seems pretty obvious on its face that if we're going to compare the Bible to what's going on now, America is the Roman Empire, the people that killed Jesus.
Well, you know, I think it would depend on where you're looking.
I think there are, you know, the majority of people I'm critical of.
It's not that I'm disdainful of them, and more often than not, I have things in common with them.
And I think, again, at the core of it, these are good folks that are seriously misguided in a few areas.
And on foreign policy and on the eschatology doctrine at that time, that would be an area where I have some significant differences with a lot of people.
But I think, you know, America, we are a blessed nation, we're a powerful nation, and we have many resources, and we have to be careful how we use that.
And we still are comparatively a fairly religious nation compared to other Western countries.
And we still, you know, a number of Christians will bemoan the fact that Christianity's influence has dwindled in recent decades, but we still have a fairly strong, solid base of Christians, evangelicals, Catholics, and otherwise that are in America.
And we have to be careful of the policies that we promote and pursue in this wonderful country we live in, and how others see us, not just as Americans, but as a representative of a Western nation, as a historically, maybe not governmentally Christian nation, but a nation that has a lot of believers, religious Christian believers in it.
I think we have to be careful of the images that we project to others, and that, again, if we're going to say that we live by the Bible and we live by Jesus Christ, that that should manifest itself in our actions and behaviors, and including how we approach government and politics and foreign policy.
And, you know, I'd like to say, too, because I do come off pretty harsh, my disdain is for the deception, not for the deceived.
And I also, you know, I'm an individualist, and I think all these people, by default, must be good people who, you know, what bothers me is when I watch some of these guys on TV preaching this whole thing where the Antichrist is going to take over the European Union, and peace in the Middle East is always a deception by Satan, and all these kinds of things.
It really bothers me, the effect that this has in the real world, and like you said, on politics.
I mean, I'm trying to remember the name of the Republican congressman who said, Listen, I just cannot cross the religious right.
I cannot do it.
They will destroy me, dude.
They're the most organized force in politics, at least in terms of the Republican Party, and it's just, you cannot be a member of Congress and a Republican and have, you know, cross the Christian right, especially on foreign policy issues and Israel issues, anything like that.
Well, I think the so-called religious right stands for a number of good things and could be a net positive force.
Sure.
Here, I'm just biased, but I happen to disagree with apparently where most, quote, Christian right leaders stand.
Yeah, it is the leadership, the political organization, not the voters.
The voters, again, can be led this way or that, probably.
And so one of the reasons I'm out here advocating things, and I'm no big fish in the pond of Christian right activists right now or anything like that, but to just show that you can be a biblically, morally conservative believer and be conservative yet hold to these positions, say on militarism or whatever, that seem to differ with the leaders of the so-called Christian right.
I think people need to think for themselves on these things.
I think it's good that we have trusted leaders in this and that, but people can be wrong.
I can be wrong.
Pat Robertson can be wrong.
John Hagee can be wrong.
Their views of the Bible are not infallible, and neither are their political convictions, and neither are mine.
So, again, if Scripture is going to be the benchmark, let's measure up against that, and let's be rational.
Let's use our brains and take a look at are we actually using and interpreting Scripture correctly, or are we misinterpreting things?
And just even on a pure practical level, as a member of society, am I supporting policies that make sense, that work, that are just and good?
You know, I think I'd like to attend one of your sermons.
I think that basically anybody who is really seeking the truth and is honest equivocates as much as you.
I mean, that's the mark of your honesty is that, hey, you know, I'm just a man trying to do my best here kind of thing.
And yet that's not what I hear from most preachers.
Everything, or well, and what do I know from most preachers?
But that's not what we hear from the famous preachers.
Everything that they say comes with 100% certainty that they're on God's side about whatever it is that they're saying.
You know, as an Evangelical Christian, there are a number of things I'd say I'm certain on scripturally.
One area where I'd say we have to be cautious is kind of the subject we're discussing today is discussions about the future, what the future holds with Bible prophecy.
You know, I think we have to be very careful of that, particularly because those who have all tried to predict the future have a 100% failure rate.
Even if you look at the Old Testament prophecies about the coming of the Messiah, the religious experts of that time thought they had it all figured out, and Jesus kind of proved them all wrong in terms of their assumptions and how they handled certain texts.
So what I try to do is have a very cautious view of the Book of Revelation and other so-called prophetic texts, that I look at it in its historical context, what did it mean to its original audience, and what can its everlasting application be for all generations?
As far as things on the, quote, end times calendar that have not happened yet and who could be who and what can happen when, I think we have to be very careful of that.
I think it discredits Christianity when we put ourselves in a position to make some type of false prophecy.
I mean, but even as we cross over into political discussion, if we are committed to the idea that in the Bible it calls for the construction of a third temple, there was a temple that was destroyed in 586 BC, and then there was the Jews, Israelites worshipped and performed sacrifices, and one of those was destroyed in 70 AD, and it's a popular thing in dispensationalism that there's going to be a third temple.
And this is the Al-Aqsa Mosque now, right?
Yes, yes.
So we either have to tear that thing down and build it in its spot, then there's others that say, well, it doesn't have to be built right there, but near there.
Clearly, obviously if it's built on top of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, it's just going to unleash all kinds of havoc.
If it's built near there, for this whole purpose that ultra-Orthodox Jews, which are a very small minority that do want to see the temple rebuilt, and start performing animal sacrifices again, and that the Christians would cheer this on, I think is just odd, given that Christ fulfilled all these things, and that was the historical interpretation until the last 160 years, and still I'd say even a minority viewpoint in Evangelicalism today.
But the left-behinders would like us to build a new temple, and I don't think many people sit down and think of the real-life implications if this was to happen.
That this would result in very real violence and chaos, all for the sake of allowing people to go in and re-perform animal sacrifices that Christ has fulfilled.
Because the idea is that until we have this third temple, well, the Antichrist can't come in and proclaim himself God, and defile the temple and all this other business, so that we can't have the end of the world as we know it in the return of Christ.
A lot of real-world things that are built into that that would be very bad news.
And the idea is, well, if it's in the Bible, we can't argue with it.
And my claim is, without getting too complicated in a short interview here, that maybe that's not exactly what the Bible's telling us here in 2008.
Maybe these passages don't mean what people think they mean.
And maybe we can avert this regional or world chaos if we interpret these passages in the correct light.
Well, you know, I'd actually like to try to straighten out a little bit of this in the few minutes we have left.
Because, again, you know, I'm no theology student.
But basically, when you talk about the, I guess, basically wrecking the Alaska Mosque and rebuilding the third temple there, that's, in the Jewish theology, there's like the stages of the first temple, second temple, the third temple, and all this.
And what you're saying is that, by your interpretation of Christianity, when Jesus came, all of those old laws were basically made null and void by believe in me and all that stuff.
And so any Christians who are pushing for this are stuck back in time.
They're falling for some kind of nonsense and, as you say, risking very real human lives.
Yeah, not all Jews believe that there needs to be a third temple, including all religious Jews.
Second, historically, many Christians did not believe in this idea that we had to build a third temple.
They use a couple of key biblical texts, Ezekiel chapters 40-48, Matthew 24, Luke 21, Mark 13, 2 Thessalonians 2, and the book of Revelation mentions a temple.
And there's a couple different ways to approach that.
But let me just take one passage.
In 2 Thessalonians 2, it talks about the man of lawlessness that many would say is the Antichrist, exalting himself in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God.
And most Christians would view this as a future event.
And when you read Pauline literature, he uses the word temple six, eight times or whatever it is.
And every time he uses the word temple, he uses it in a figurative sense.
He uses it in terms of Christ being the temple or the body of believers, Christians being the temple.
So the argument has to be that in this one singular instance, Paul means something completely different.
He means a literal brick-and-stone temple that the man of lawlessness is going to come and exalt himself in and this and that.
But the problem is, again, this is where you hear where knowledge of Greek grammar comes in.
There's two, there's a couple different words that can be used for temple.
One is, perhaps in English it would be hieron, basically H-E-I-R-O-N.
And generally when that's used in the Greek text, that's referring to a literal brick-and-stone temple.
The other word is naos, N-A-O-S, which can mean, it's the same word that Jesus used when he called himself the temple.
When he says, destroy this temple, he's referring to himself.
I'll raise it again in three days.
So there's no slam-dunk case that Paul is using the word temple here in a literal sense.
Same thing in the book of Revelation.
The book of Revelation is filled with all kinds of symbolic imagery.
There's no discussion anywhere in the New Testament about rebuilding the temple, offering sacrifices in the temple, and this other idea that even after Christ comes back to earth that there's going to be yet another temple that Christians are going to sacrifice animals in to memorialize the death of Christ.
I mean, just none of it is there.
And I would see the fulfillment of these things in the Old Testament so far as the sacrifices.
All Christians would agree that we don't perform sacrifices no more because Christ is our sacrifice.
We should not be getting so uptight over a piece of real estate because it's not just about one piece of land that God dwells in today, but His Holy Spirit's been poured out over all the earth.
That it's not just about one ethnic group of people, but the book of Romans 9-11 says that Gentiles have been grafted in, and those who are in Christ are Jew and Gentile who are united in Christ.
It has nothing to do with race or gender or economic status, and so on and so forth.
So there's a lot to be said about this, and I think those that come in from this dispensationalist system, they're seeing the church age as basically just a parenthesis, and that eventually all these Old Testament customs are going to be kind of revived and so on and so forth.
But I think historically not many people agreed with that, and today it's still a minority viewpoint, although it's one that's very popular and it's selling lots of books.
But I think the implications both theologically and politically are way off.
Well, you know, there's this Justin Armando article from years ago called Beware the Red Heifer, and it's about an effort by certain dispensationalists here in Texas to literally, through genetic engineering, try to come up with a pure red heifer, and they had actually bred a cow that had a little bit of white on the tail when it grew up.
And so it was disqualified, but apparently if they had been successful, they were going to try to, I guess, put this thing on a boat to Israel and go and start a world war.
Yeah, again, there's all kinds of implications.
I'd ask, first of all, where does the New Testament teach any of that?
And they go back to the Old Testament.
It's kind of like people got very excited when the nation we know as today, the political nation of Israel, reestablished in 1948, and they would point to Old Testament prophecies saying that Israel is going to come back from exile, and they saw 1948 as a fulfillment of that.
You know, the problem here is that those verses in context, we're talking about the return from Babylonian captivity after a 70-year captivity after 586 BC.
So they're taking passages out of context because they don't know the original historical context.
And you can't just make the Bible say whatever you want.
You have to understand what the original author was intending.
So some people say, well, how do we know that there's not a future application even beyond that?
Because they'll say, well, look in the Old Testament prophecies about Christ, about the Messiah, seem to have an immediate application in the Old Testament, and then a further fulfillment in the New Testament.
The issue here is that when we're making claims about the future, saying that there's going to be yet another manifestation or application, I don't have any inspired scripture telling me that.
All I have is guys like Hal Lindsey telling me that.
And I'm going to take scripture over Hal Lindsey.
And I'm going to be very cautious.
And just because a political entity of Israel reassembled in 1948, hey, even if you talk to Orthodox Jews living in Israel today, they would tell you this is not biblical Israel.
Yeah, wow.
Well, so the thing is, again, the politics of all this.
Because as you said, there is somewhat a dwindling influence of Christianity in America.
And I think that the level of belief that people put in this, I mean, as you say, it is a minority who believe in this kind of thing.
And it would be hard to argue that George W. Bush ever really believed in this kind of thing.
On the other hand, well, and also as you say, the members of Congress in Israel.
Well, as you say.
There have been important decision makers that have said on record, people like Tom DeLay, that this sort of theology helps influence their foreign policy.
So there are some significant decision makers whose views are shaped by this.
And it is important.
Look, I'm not anti-Israel.
I'm not anti-Jewish people.
But yet I don't let Hal Lindsey's books dictate my foreign policy.
When the nation of Israel is on the right side of things, I will support them.
When the Palestinians are on the right side of things or are being treated unfairly, I will speak out for them.
I'm not an apologist for the Arab nations or governments.
I think largely they're inept personally.
But I don't think that everything Israel does is of God and should be blessed and condoned.
Otherwise, I'm going to be cursed by God, as many people feel.
So the views that we have about the Bible will influence our politics.
Well, and as you say, the vast majority of the people in Israel agree with you.
They live in what is ultimately a nation state, and they understand that.
It's Americans who have this and a very small number of the Israeli population who think that the Bible is to dictate how their policy is supposed to be.
Well, many of them will honor the Bible.
Most of them accept only the Old Testament.
Those that take Scripture seriously.
But they don't have these same conclusions that the dispensationalists do.
And one more thing I brought up before is kind of an unwittingly sinister thing behind all this is this idea that after the rapture and all the good people are taken, all the Christians are gone, that the Antichrist and the forces of evil are going to put to death two-thirds of Jews.
And I don't believe that.
They're taking that idea from a passage in the book of Zechariah where it talks about two-thirds of Jews being struck down.
But I would say that that's referring to something that has already happened when the Romans came and destroyed Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in 70 A.D.
There was this 70-year war that took place between 63-64.
And it actually went up to about 70-73 A.D.
But a large number of Jews were struck down during that time.
And I think people are taking that passage and futurizing it further to the future and saying that after the rapture, after the Christians are gone, then those that are left behind on Earth are going to be these convergent saints and there are going to be these Jews that come to know Jesus, but the rest are going to get struck down by the Antichrist.
Something that's going to make the Holocaust look not so bad.
Yeah, it sounds like a pretty dangerous alliance for the Israeli government to have forged here in America.
I mean, I certainly would not want a bunch of people who ultimately envision me being nuked off the face of the Earth as my greatest friends, but apparently that's the situation that's been worked out here.
Well, there are some that will quietly tolerate.
The evangelicals that support Israel are very firm and passionate in that.
I just don't think they've thought through all the ramifications, like the two-thirds being struck down after the rapture.
Again, if the Bible doesn't actually teach that, I really don't want to promote something like that.
That's obviously not a good thing.
I'm sorry to cut you short here, Bill, but we're all out of time.
We're coming from certain quarters of America.
When you read interviews about this, the Israelis over there are basically saying, yeah, they're a peculiar bunch, but hey, we'll welcome any support we can get, because the reality is that they do face hostility on all sides.
Right.
All right.
Hey, listen, I'm really sorry to cut you short, Bill.
We're all out of time.
Thanks very much for yours today.
Thanks, Scott.
All right, everybody, that's Bill Barnwell.
He's a minister, a pastor, and freelance writer from Michigan.
You can read what he writes at lourockwell.com.
And that's it for Anti-War Radio.
Sorry I'm a little bit over time.
It's The Light Lunch next on KAOS.