Christian Zionism - New Life Tabernacle of Chattanooga

predictions’ 1031 and is happy to quote others who believe he is ‘The Jeremiah
for this generation.’ 1032 Lindsey’s novel and controversial approach, frequently
copied if rarely equalled, assumes therefore that prophecy is history prewritten,
is authenticated by predictive accuracy and requires his own
decoding. Such a pessimistic and determinist view of the future has certain
profound implications for the Jewish people as well as for international
relations in the Middle East. As will be explored in the next chapter, this
futurist eschatology and the dispensational presuppositions which underpin it
have been exploited to serve the interests of religious and political Zionism.
7.2 Signs of the End: Times are Changing
The rise of a literal and futurist premillennial reading of prophecy associated
with the Albury and Powerscourt conferences, led to much speculation as to
how contemporary events, such as wars, famines and earthquakes, proved
that the end of the world was imminent. In his book, The Last Days: A
Discourse on the Evil Character of These our Times Proving them to be the
‘Perilous Times’ of the ‘Last Days’ published in 1828, Irving sought to show
that ‘we are already entered upon the Last Days, and the ordinary life of a
man will carry many of us to the end of them.’ 1033 Compared to the signs
highlighted by contemporary apocalyptic dispensationalists, Irving’s sound
rather tame. 1034 Irving included, ‘Truce-breakers; Fierce; Despisers; Traitors;
and Heady high-minded’ people. Nevertheless, the degeneracy of British
moral life proved to Irving that his were the last days of the ‘Jewish captivity
and Gentile dispensation’. 1035
Seventy years later, Scofield was still expounding the same bleak
forecast when he spoke at the Niagara Prophetic Conference in 1897 on the
‘Return of the Lord’: ‘The signs and portents of the end-time are now so many
and so ominous that men of vision everywhere, and in every walk of life, are
taking note of them; and this quite apart from the interpretation of them which
1031 Ibid., p4.
1032 Ibid., back cover; Final, back cover;
1033 Edward Irving, The Last Days: A Discourse on the Evil Character of These our Times
Proving them to be the ‘Perilous Times’ of the ‘Last Days’ (London, James Nisbet, 1828),
p10.
1034 Lindsey, Planet, op.cit., pp85-138; LaHaye, Are, op.cit., pp32-43.
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