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  ARE THE BIBLE’S PROPHECIES SCIENTIFIC?

  An accusation often voiced by unbelievers is that the Bible is illogical; that it has no relevance in an age of computers and high technology. Unscientific is the word some use. The weary arguments about evolution refuting the Bible are brought to mind. Upon close examination, these assaults on the Bible—and also its prophecies—are neither scientific nor intellectually sound. The principles of science—of empirical fact and reason—are friends to the Bible, not foes.

  Christians sometimes are forced on the defensive by agnostics and unbelievers who challenge them to “prove” the Bible. Sorrowfully, Christians often resort to saying that the Bible must be taken on faith and not evidence.

  But this is not completely true. Whereas faith is supremely important (see Chapter 7 of Hebrews), faith and fact are not mutually exclusive.

  For example, we accept Jesus as the Son of God by faith, but his works on earth and the witness of those who were with him demonstrate the proof of both his existence and his divinity. If we are to deny that Jesus will one day return to rule earth, we must also be forced to deny these same sources of factual evidence, as well as the unerring words of the prophets. That Jesus lived—and lives—is fact. It is also an article of Christian faith that we believe in these facts. Furthermore, if we accept the inerrancy of God’s Word—and as Christians we must—we cannot but conclude that Jesus will return, for numerous biblical passages assure us of his Second Coming.

  THE LOGIC AND WISDOM OF THE BIBLE

  The Bible is truly an incredible volume containing sixty-six books by dozens of contributing authors—allied by God. It is also the most accurate and revealing history book ever compiled. And the most amazing fact of all is its prophecy. It is easy to understand why Nebuchadnezzar marveled over Daniel’s prophetic revealing of dreams and why the kings of old were moved to wrath by the proclamations of Jeremiah and other divinely inspired prophets. The reason is clear: the prophecies were meaningful and logical, and the prophets’ insights into military and political affairs were unparalleled.

  The biblical prophets cut to the very heart of an issue. Their level of education was immaterial, for they possessed the wisdom of the Most Holy. Led by God, their in-depth knowledge of man’s behavior arid his affairs was astounding. In effect, the biblical prophets were the consummate political scientists of their day, unrivaled and uncanny experts on the subjects they prophesied on, for it was God’s will that they spoke with authority.

  It is well to keep in mind the supernatural genius and masterful knowledge displayed by Jesus Christ while he was on earth. In the use of fact and evidence our Lord was unbeatable, and his indisputable logic finally caused the scoffers and doubters to hold their tongues.

  PROPHECY’S VALUE TODAY

  The logic of the Bible extends even to the most profound issues of our own day. The social conditions under which we live and the internal and external enemies we face are factually covered in the Bible. And this is why prophecy is so important. God’s promises to man, in particular the promises of the Second Coming of Christ and the promises of eternal life, are fully outlined throughout His Word. While we accept Jesus into our hearts through faith, we know without a shadow of a doubt the certainty of His return and the guarantee of His promises.

  CHRIST’S VICTORY IS OUR VICTORY

  Some believe Armageddon to be the final battle—that is, it will mean the end of the world. This is inaccurate. God will not allow the world to be totally destroyed. Even though Armageddon and the worldwide conflict that surrounds its occurrence will be ghastly and will exact a grim toll of casualties, all of mankind will not be extinguished. Instead, by the grace of God, these days of woe will be summarily ended:

  And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened. (Matt. 24:22)

  As the armies of Armageddon converge and engage one another, Christ will intervene. Revelation 19:11-21 describes how Christ will destroy the assembled armies, then take and cast the Beast and his False Prophet into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.

  These verses in Revelation that prophesy the Second Coming of Christ are central to the Christian faith. A number of revisionist theologians, liberal teachers, and New Age leaders have proposed that Jesus cannot possibly return to earth. To them, our Lord was a mere mortal with a worthy message for his times. Many theologians and pastors also deny the Virgin Birth and the Trinity.

  Don’t be misled. The Bible could not be more clear! Jesus is coming. He will defeat Satan and his angels and reign supreme.

  THE KINGDOM OF JESUS

  Having conquered the Beast and his hordes, Jesus will establish his kingdom on earth (Rev. 20:4-6). This has to be the most blessed and joyful event of all time: the ascension of Christ to the throne of the planet Earth. Satan offered him this kingdom long ago; “Worship me,” said the Evil One, “and all this is yours.” Jesus refused. But now, after Armageddon, the Son of God claims His kingdom on His own terms.

  Jesus will not only come as a conqueror and a king, but as a liberator and a judge. He will open the Book of Life and judge the living and the dead. This is the vision (Rev. 21) which John was given of the new world to come after God’s Day of Judgment and of the reward to be given the believers in God:

  And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be His people... And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.

  THE PLAN OF SALVATION

  Jesus Christ promised that all those who believe in Him, repent of their sins, and call on His name will be saved. To these men and women are reserved heavenly rewards and life eternal. Throughout this book, I have sought to show that the fulfillment of prophecy is proof of God’s love for you and for me. God’s desire is not that we suffer or that we perish. Instead, He calls us to salvation and to joy and happiness through His Son, Jesus Christ: “Worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Rev. 19:10).

  If you are not at present a Christian and a believer in God and His promises, I fervently pray you will read and carefully consider the following verse, John 3:16. In this one wonderful sentence is God’s plan of salvation for you.

  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

  APPENDIX II: THE NEW AGE MOVEMENT—A SCIENTIFIC RELIGION FOR THE END TIME?

  History demonstrates that an age of barbarism cannot be ushered in until a society is fully ready. A religious or philosophical system must first take hold and motivate a small, elite group to generate social upheaval and change in an all-out struggle for dominance and power. This was the pattern in 1917 when Lenin and his Bolsheviks seized power in Russia and later in the 1930s when Hitler and his Brown Shirts subverted and seduced the German citizenry through flattery, propaganda, and intimidation. Both the Communists and the Nazis claimed that objective science supported their corrupt new cultural system.

  Today, the United States and the world face yet another great social movement—a system that combines the worst of science, economics, and psychology in a dangerous new formulation. This powerful modern day successor to communism and Nazism, often called “the New Age Movement” by some writers, uses an insidious, compelling tool that previous barbaric systems failed to wield: the color of religious revelation.

  In this appendix we’ll examine this new religion and discover its darker side. As you will see, this religion immerses itself in a false science and offers to a reprobate world the promise that salvation lies in technology.

  A RELIGIOUS SCIENCE FOR THINKING PEOPLE

  In the New Age worldview, science and technology provide magnificent tools
which man can use to enhance his own powers of mind. In reality, science and technology are abused by New Age teachers who falsely claim that their error-filled and improbable doctrines are based on scientific fact. They claim that a belief in the Bible and in Jesus Christ is unscientific and unbecoming for intellectuals and thinking people. For example, in her book Towards a New World Religion, Lola Davis says that a New Age world religion “is needed to meet the spiritual needs of thinking people, to synthesize scientific knowledge with spiritual teachings, and to unify mankind.” Then Davis takes her case one step further by proclaiming that “revelations of God...include both spiritual and scientific knowledge.” 1

  This can be heady stuff for scientists. They are led to believe that their scientific theories are, in fact, divine revelations. But we know from studying the history of scientific development that scientific theories are never established as absolute truth, for they constantly undergo revision. What is “truth” today becomes outmoded and inaccurate tomorrow. At one time or another, scientists have delivered to the world ironclad “truths” to the effect that airplanes will never fly, that computers could never be built to rival the human mind in calculating speed, that polio could never be conquered. Louis Pasteur, Madame Curie, and the Wright brothers were once branded as scientific fakers or worse by scientists who pointed to accepted scientific “truths” that supposedly refuted the early findings of those brilliant scientists and inventors. Even the century-old theory of evolution is today undergoing dramatic revision, for the archaeological, biological, and geological facts demonstrate that Charles Darwin, who first propounded the theory of evolution, could not have been wholly correct in his assumptions.

  The wise scientist knows scientific truths are ever-changing and that science itself is nothing more than a continuous, never-ending search for the truth—not the truth itself, but the search for truth. God, however, does not market theories nor experiment at learning scientific “truths.” God is immutable. He knows all, and to him there is no mystery unrevealed. But today, thousands of scientists are being intellectually seduced into believing that their theories are “divine” revelations, truths derived from their own godlike intellect, produced through achieving an inner state of higher consciousness.

  Scientists not versed in the Scriptures nor aware of the biblical warnings regarding human pride and the apostasy of a pseudo-science cannot help but be thrilled to hear a New Age herald like Lola Davis declare that the new world religion is one in which separate religions disappear as “religion will come to be recognized as a scientific process.” Furthermore, Davis asserts, “science has already enlarged man’s concept of God.”

  The New Age world religion promises to unify science and religion and demolish the wall that separates secular and divine, material and spiritual. It boldly seeks to marry secular science and the material realm to religion. This has also been Satan’s primary goal.

  TAKING SIDES: SCIENCE TURNS TO THE EAST

  For centuries, scientists have held that to remain objective, science must be neutral toward religions. But scientists are now beginning to take sides. Noted physicist Fritjof Capra, in his best-selling book The Tao of Physics, enthusiastically endorses the New Age worldview while rejecting Christianity as antiscience and out of step with the modern world. “The classical ideal of scientific objectivity,” says Capra, “can no longer be maintained.” 2 In its place, Capra and a growing number of other scientists propose that science adopt the Eastern religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism) and mysticism. Capra also maintains that the roots of physics and of all Western science are to be found in the first period of Greek philosophy in the sixth century B.C., when science, philosophy, and religion were not separated.

  Capra fails to fully acknowledge that from that same era came beliefs in spiritism, animism, polytheism, homosexual behavior as an acceptable life-style, the concept of the universe as a divine, living entity (pantheism), and such atrocities as human bondage, slavery, and infanticide. Yet Capra states that Greek and Eastern beliefs and practices provide “a conception of the world in which scientific discoveries can be in perfect harmony with spiritual and religious beliefs.”

  The turn of science toward the East and its mystical religions is only one manifestation of a wholly new revolution in science which threatens to discredit and destroy Christianity. Many scientists work fervently to bring about this destruction; others, more naive, are simply ignorant of the implications of their research. Claiming to be objective, they present new scientific theories and concepts without malice, unaware that others twist the truth and incorporate these new findings into their unholy doctrine. Many scientists would be particularly shocked to discover their theories being used to assert the superiority of Eastern religion and mysticism—and even the occult—over the Judeo-Christian concepts of God and religion.

  If the New Age challenge to Christianity was only a matter of arrogant scientific opposition to the Bible, the present danger might not be so real. But the New Age embrace of the occult and Eastern mysticism is alarming. Many New Age congregations and group members are eager and willing to dabble in and seriously practice an incredible hodgepodge of strange and bizarre religious ceremonies and rituals. Almost anything but a personal God, Jesus Christ, and real Christianity is acceptable to the New Age believer.

  PANTHEISM-WORSHIPPING THE DIVINE UNIVERSE

  The New Age religion is similar in many ways to the ancient belief system called pantheism. Pantheists deny the existence of a personal God, maintaining that the universe itself is god. What’s more, they claim that the human mind is an integral part of the web that is the universe, and that the human mind is the universe.

  If for New Agers no personal God exists, and if man is himself God, there can be no place called heaven where God and his Son, Jesus, and all his mighty angels reside. Nor can there be a hell with a devil and his spirits. Heaven and hell are regarded by New Agers as primitive, outmoded concepts.

  Some New Age writers claim that the pantheistic concept of the universe as God is consistent with new scientific thought. The New Physics, they point out, suggests that the only reality that exists is in our heads. When we gaze at the universe, we merely gaze at a projection of our own minds. Furthermore, the New Physics (also called quantum mechanics) contends that our minds connect with, and are inseparable from, the whole universe, being holistic and similar to threads in a spider’s web. Science writer Bob Toben and scientist Fred Alan Wolf, in Space Time and Beyond, seek to explain that “the whole of the universe, all knowledge, is contained within each individual and each thing.” They conclude, “We are influenced by the stars. We are the stars.” 3

  Intellectuals now teach the New Physics in our universities and colleges. I recall a conversation I once had with one of my brightest university students. A natural sciences major, he had been very impressed by a physics professor who had recently delivered a lecture on “astrology and quantum mechanics.”

  “I now believe,” said the earnest young man, “that astrology is quite possibly scientific fact.” He went on to describe what he felt he had learned—that the entire cosmos is interconnected and that everything in the universe somehow affects every other part. “It’s clear that the movement of heavenly bodies sets off vibrations that influence man’s behavior,” he solemnly pronounced.

  “So you are convinced that our destiny is in the stars?” I asked.

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “I’m sure you heard that from the physics professor,” I said, “but it’s not true. Your destiny and mine are in the hands of God. The stars are there for other purposes.”

  “But according to the New Physics,” he exclaimed, somewhat frustrated, “the stars are God.”

  Looking intently into his eyes, I thought a moment, then responded: “God made the stars.”

  DID THE UNIVERSE CREATE ITSELF?

  Many scientists would not agree with me. Quite a few insist that the universe created itself! Colin Wilson, an occult autho
r, comments in a preface to The Intelligent Universe: A Cybernetic Philosophy (by David Foster) that “the universe itself may not be a dead thing;... perhaps it is alive and intelligent and this living universe coded [itself] and continues to code, program, and control everything in the universe.” 4 Inside this remarkable but flawed book, author David Foster theorizes that the world is like a gigantic electronic computer. Man is envisioned as only a computer component that networks with, or links into, the universal computer.

  But, according to Foster, man has the inherent capability to achieve autonomy from his creator and controller: the master computer that is the universe itself. Through the exercise of higher consciousness, Foster explains, man can rise up and become master of the universe (i.e., “God”). Again, we see in operation the belief that man is divine and can realize his divine nature merely by expanding his conscious mind.

  Like many other New Age scientists, Foster is a believer in science as a panacea for modern man. He says that with the theories of Galileo, “Science replaced religion as a more sure touchstone to reality.” Finally today, due to the revelations of the New Physics and continuing scientific and technological discoveries, science and religion must come together. However, only a new religion will do, says Foster. To try to mix the new science with outdated religions such as Christianity will only lead to a “botched-up affair,” he cautions. Therefore, Foster invites “open-minded scientists and open-minded religious men to join me in a common boat... on to an ocean of quite new ideas.”