(RNS) — In 2012, I attempted to trace down Hal Lindsey. I reached out to his ministry, in search of his contact data. I wanted his permission to reprint excerpts from his apocalyptic guide “The Late Nice Planet Earth” in a textbook I used to be placing collectively on the rise of the non secular proper. Nobody appeared to know the right way to get in contact with Lindsey, the person whose title was on the ministry masthead and its singular star. Apparently he didn’t really work on the group’s grounds.
Lindsey, who handed away final week, was dwelling in an undisclosed location unknown to even his staff and was presumably someplace off the grid. I spotted at that time that maybe Lindsey really believed the conspiracies he had lengthy peddled. However I used to be by no means certain.
On this period of other reality, deep-state cabals and world puppet masters, it’s extra necessary than ever that we perceive how and why so many Individuals consider that non secular forces secretly drive worldwide occasions and in the present day’s information. Hal Lindsey helped lead us into this period, which makes him probably the most necessary evangelicals and maybe probably the most necessary Individuals of the twentieth century.
Born in 1929, Lindsey transformed to evangelical Christianity within the Fifties whereas working as a Mississippi River tugboat captain. He went to Dallas Theological Seminary within the early Nineteen Sixties, the place he realized the nuances of premillennial eschatology (a specific department of finish instances theology). Theologians had resurrected and revived premillennialism within the late nineteenth century, and it formed the fundamentalist motion in addition to its postwar manifestation often called “evangelicalism.”
Lindsey and his fellow college students decided that the world was careening quickly towards a sequence of cataclysmic occasions described in biblical prophecy. They believed the Holy Spirit would quickly flip this world over to the Antichrist, a diabolical world chief who would preside over an terrible holocaust wherein these true believers who had not already been raptured to heaven would undergo interminable tribulations.
However simply when all hope appears misplaced for these nonetheless on earth, premillennialists taught that Jesus would return with a military of saints to defeat the Antichrist on the literal Battle of Armageddon. Jesus’ victory will pave the best way for God to determine a millennium of peace and prosperity, a brand new heaven and a brand new earth.
Within the first a part of the twentieth century, premillennialism unfold slowly amongst Protestants. However World Conflict II, the detonation of atomic bombs and a Chilly Conflict nuclear arms race made Individuals like Lindsey all of the extra conscious that the world might finish right away.
After graduating from seminary within the Nineteen Sixties, Lindsey moved to California, the place he joined the ministry Campus Campaign for Christ (now Cru) and commenced working with college students at UCLA. He lived in a communal residence known as the JC Mild & Energy Home (JC for Jesus Christ) and was immersed within the Jesus individuals motion, the born-again model of the counterculture wherein Jesus was celebrated as the primary hippie. He additionally started writing a guide with co-author Carole Carlson on the second coming of Jesus.
“The Late Nice Planet Earth” by Hal Lindsey and Carole Carlson. (Courtesy picture)
In 1970, Lindsey and Carlson printed “The Late Nice Planet Earth.” Filling the textual content with foolish puns for chapter titles and subtitles, together with “Russia is A Gog,” “Scarlet O’Harlot” and “Sheik to Sheik,” they utilized biblical prophecy to present occasions, emphasizing the worldwide affect of the USSR and China, the growing energy of Arab nations and the creation of the European Frequent Market. However greater than anything, Israel occupied the middle of Lindsey’s evaluation. He believed the creation of the state of Israel and Israel’s seize of Jerusalem in the course of the Six-Day Conflict represented clear indicators of the fast-approaching finish of days. He anticipated to subsequent witness the reconstruction of the Jewish temple, most likely on the land presently occupied by the Dome of the Rock.
These beliefs have made American evangelicals like Lindsey a few of Israel’s closest champions in america. Nonetheless, they usually see Jews as little greater than pawns of their grand, apocalyptic, end-times, biblical scheme. The Bible, evangelicals insist, predicts that the reborn Jewish nation will finally lengthen to the identical boundaries as David’s historic kingdom. Because of this, they dismiss requires an impartial Palestinian state or any form of two-state resolution. They’re certain no American policymaker will change God’s promise that Jews will inhabit the land of their fathers.
However after Jews reestablish the total kingdom of Israel, evangelicals count on historical past to take a darkish flip. As soon as Israel’s Christian allies have vanished within the Rapture, Jews will undergo horribly by the hands of the Antichrist, which is able to inadvertently provoke a second Jewish holocaust.
Lindsey supplied a tough date for the Rapture based mostly on Jesus’ promise that when sure indicators appeared the “era” that witnessed them wouldn’t “go until all these items be fulfilled” (Matthew 24:33-34). The “rebirth of Israel,” the evangelist knowledgeable readers, marked the achievement of this prophecy. “A era within the Bible,” Lindsey continued, “is one thing like forty years. If it is a right deduction, then inside forty years or so of 1948, all these items might happen.” Lindsey anticipated the Rapture to occur by 1988. “Late Nice” continues to be in print and has not been up to date or revised, though as Lindsey went via a number of marriages and divorces his creator picture and acknowledgments modified accordingly.
As evangelicals digested the guide, certain that it helped them make sense of present occasions, its reputation grew. Sensing a chance, editors at Bantam Books, a business publishing home, purchased the rights for the mass market version of “Late Nice” from Christian writer Zondervan. Bantam positioned it in newsstands, at airports and in grocery shops, resulting in explosive gross sales. It turned the bestselling nonfiction guide of the Seventies, with tens of tens of millions of copies in print in the present day. In 1979, Orson Welles even narrated a well-liked movie model of the guide. It made Lindsey tens of millions of {dollars}, which he often flaunted.
Lindsey by no means recaptured the success of “Late Nice,” however he rode the premillennial wave that he had helped kind to the top of his life. He wrote extra books on the approaching apocalypse, developed a tv present and took to the web to pitch his theology.
Different evangelicals adopted Lindsey down the highway to Armageddon. They saved readers updated with analyses of the unremitting world turmoil and chaos that outlined their eras. San Diego minister Tim LaHaye laid out an argument in 1972 for an imminent second coming in “The Starting of the Finish.” Two years later Dallas Theological Seminary President John F. Walvoord printed “Armageddon, Oil and the Center East Disaster.” In 1972, apocalypticism discovered one other progressive expression within the movie “A Thief within the Evening,” which turned a cult basic. Christian rock pioneer Larry Norman’s observe “I Want We’d All Been Prepared” (for the Rapture) haunts the movie. Even Billy Graham bought in on the motion, writing extra books on the top instances than on every other matter. Extra not too long ago, LaHaye and co-author Jerry Jenkins wove premillennialism into fiction of their bestselling, 16-volume “Left Behind” sequence.
“Late Nice” made apocalyptic evangelicalism palatable to the broader American public, and even Ronald Reagan purportedly studied it. The guide opened many doorways for Lindsey, who claimed to do consulting work on world politics for each the Pentagon and the Israeli authorities. His success additionally gave him a platform for expressing his political opinions. Like most different premillennialists, Lindsey was a staunch conservative and he parroted the language of the brand new non secular proper.
After 9/11 Lindsey wrote a distorted, fear-mongering recap of the historical past of Islam. His anti-Muslim bigotry drove executives on the Trinity Broadcasting Community to quickly cancel his weekly “Worldwide Intelligence Briefing” prophecy present. Through the first Trump administration, he known as the president “God’s man for this time in America,” whereas chastising Democrats.
Hal Lindsey was by no means an establishment builder and he by no means collaborated with different Christian leaders. However he impressed a era of evangelicals to behave on the conviction that the top was close to, and he fostered in them a way of urgency and certainty and a imaginative and prescient of the world outlined in absolute phrases. Whereas different Christians emphasised endurance, humility and willingness to compromise, Lindsey taught that true believers had been engaged in a zero-sum sport of good-versus-evil. They had been a devoted remnant surrounded on all sides by the satan’s minions, whereas the Antichrist lurked someplace out within the shadows.
Lindsey is gone, however the concepts he popularized will proceed to form evangelicalism for generations to come back.
(Matthew Avery Sutton is a Guggenheim Fellow, is the creator of “American Apocalypse: A Historical past of Fashionable Evangelicalism” and is the Berry Household Distinguished Professor within the Liberal Arts at Washington State College. The views expressed on this commentary don’t essentially replicate these of RNS or WSU.)
