Proto-Protestantism: The Less than Great Hal Lindsey

06 February 2025

The Less than Great Hal Lindsey

https://religionnews.com/2024/12/05/the-late-great-hal-lindsey/

As I've mentioned numerous times, I grew up with Hal Lindsey. Like so many other American households of the 1970's, our shelves contained his works. I grew up reading The Late Great Planet Earth and Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth. I later read his 1980's: Countdown to Armageddon and was convinced that the Rapture would likely happen by 1988.

He always tried to walk back his bogus prophecies or pretend that he wasn't actually Prophesying but if you read the works you know that he certainly was. And his failures and recklessness played a part in my years of crisis as a teenager. Disappointed in the shifting sands of Dispensational interpretation and the shallow pop-culturesqueue ethos of Evangelicalism - and most of all the destructive cycles of cheap grace, altar call easy-believism, by the time I was sixteen I was quite critical of Christianity and saw it as a waste of time.

So I thank Lindsey for this - and I do so with no irony. In my case I had to fall and be broken before I could experience life. And when I did find my way to the Throne of Grace some years later I would have much to repent of and yet as painful and haunting as it all is - it could have been a lot worse. Looking back I can see God's preserving hand, keeping me from going too far and utterly destroying my life.

And so in my twenties when I picked up the Bible again and began to serious read it - I was ready to abandon all that I had been taught. I wanted to start over and was open to following its teachings wherever they might lead. I quickly came to see that Lindsey's Dispensationalism (which had at one time so captivated me) was not there. It could not stand up to even minimal scrutiny. It was upsetting in some respects and yet liberating.

The works of Schaeffer, Pink, and others came into my hands and they helped me to further distance myself from that Fundamentalist-Evangelical world. Figures like Bahnsen, Sproul, GI Williamson and most of all Calvin led me into the Reformed sphere - even though I would in time move away from their positions as well and eventually my awe and appreciation was lessened.

I gave Lindsey little mind until I encountered his 1989 work, The Road to Holocaust: Unchecked, the Dominion Theology movement among Christians could lead us - and Israel - to disaster... This work claimed that non-Dispensational eschatology would lead the Church to abandon support for Israel, and indeed Theonomic Postmillennialism made a splash in the 1980's and 1990's. Lindsey was prophetic in this sense - he saw it as a real threat to Dispensationalism's dominance of the Evangelical scene. He was right, and even now we see his school of theology is in decline but by no means vanquished. Or to put it more accurately the broader structures of the theology are more or less gone but the sensationalist eschatology retains its grip. But the moment someone starts to really 'dig in' and examine it, doubts begin to emerge. And with the rise and now seeming dominance of New Calvinist Evangelicalism - the leaders of Dispensationalism are alarmed. It's interesting to me that Lindsey at age 95 lived to see it.

The premise of the Road to Holocaust was deeply flawed - a rejection of Dispensationalism does not necessarily lead one to be Anti-Semitic. The charge that such theology led to the Holocaust was absurd. Historical Anti-Semitism was the result sacralist thinking and the false concept of Christendom. It was not due to rejection of Dispensationalism. How could it be? That theology did not even emerge until the mid-19th century.

But he was on to something even if he was never able to get there - his own pro-America Right-wing bias was certainly a barrier. The Roman Catholic Church was historically Anti-Semitic and despite the attempts of many apologists to spin the historical reality - so was Martin Luther, and deeply so. Regardless of whether or not he took issue with them as a race, his sentiments were hostile and hateful and certainly qualify as Anti-Semitic to the extreme. It is no wonder that later generations of Anti-Semites looked to him for inspiration.

Again, it is worth exploring the fact that Anti-Semitism was not always fueled by the concept of race - which didn't even mean the same thing in centuries past but the fact that they were dissenters within and rejectors of Christendom and its monistic sacralist ideology. The race angle became more prominent later in the context of nationalism and empires.

The Medieval Jews lived in the realm of Christendom but weren't part of it - in fact they rejected it. This was a crisis for the otherwise monistic order. They had no place in it and yet in many respects were essential. Their financial role would generate resentment in some quarters and the Roman Church did all it could to fan the fires of popular hatred and superstition This great hostility was furthered by the practical difficulties created by an order in which it was all but impossible to own land or function in the mainstream of society apart from a Catholic identity - it was all interwoven. As such these outsiders turned to other means such as moneylending which provided a back-door to a corrupt and erroneous model of Christian society which could not function if it strictly adhered to the New Testament - a point dissenters like me continue to make to this day. The problem is not the New Testament, but the model of Christendom itself.

Lindsey touched on these topics but rather sloppily if I recall. It's clear his understanding was limited but he wanted to draw a parallel between the Magisterial Reformation's tendency to reject Premillennialism (which historically is not even the same as Lindsey's Dispensational variety) and to share in the culture's Anti-Semitic proclivities. He drew a tidy if grossly oversimplified and inaccurate line connecting Luther's thought with his influence on German culture, to Hitler, the Nazis, and Auschwitz.

I found the book in the library in 1996 and was eager to read it. At that point I hadn't given much thought to Lindsey for some time and since as a new Christian I was being assaulted with books, newsletters, mailings, and cassette tapes from Theonomists (who are hyper-Dominionists with an ugly Judaizing strain) I was curious to know what he had to say. It was poorly done, but since I already saw the problems with Dominionism, Postmillennialism, and Theonomy - it did represent a very early milestone for me in my eventual path away from the Magisterial Reformation tradition and my once fervent advocacy for Reformed Theology.

I never gave a lot of thought to Lindsey in the years after that. I was not surprised in the least to learn that he was rich and led a somewhat morally dubious life. At some point I saw that he was appearing on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) - a sure sign of moral corruption as the network is the haunt of charlatans and false teachers - those who make merchandise of God's people. That certainly describes Lindsey.

The news of his death brought back a flood of memories - mostly connected to my upbringing, the culture vibe or zeitgeist of that time, as well as my father, and his Scofield Bible.

It also generates reflection as the older generation continues to die off. Apart from the likes of James Dobson (b.1936), and second-tier figures like Charles Swindoll (b.1934), there aren't many of those old voices left - figures that influenced the Evangelical movement in the 1970's and 1980's. They influenced me growing up and helped drive me away from the Church. I walked away from them - and found Christ which didn't lead me back to them but rather, to completely turn my back on them for different reasons. They are the architects of the modern apostasy that characterizes American Evangelicalism and all its compromise and worldliness. I was reminded of that once again while listening to Franklin Graham's blasphemous and deceitful prayer/commentary at the Trump inauguration. God help him for he will answer as a false shepherd.