Rapture Fever

74 ILW’TURE FEVER
such as Gary North et al, as well as Christian socialists such as
Jim Wallis (of SojOumers), Tom Sine et al whose major focus is
upon cleaning up the earth ecologically, politically, economically,
sociologically etc. They imagine that the main function of
the Church is to restore the Edenic state - hardly helpfi.d, since
Eden is where sin began. Many groups are beginning to work
together who disagree on some points but share with the New
Agers a desire to clean up the earth and establish the kingdom.”]s
Hunt’s view is clear: historical optimism regarding the
positive cultural efects of the gospel is innately demonic; optimism
regarding the gospel’s cultural eflects is inherently New Age philosophy.
Anyone who wonders why dispensationalism has been culturally
impotent need search no farther than the writings of Dave
Hunt. He believes with all his heart that~esus X a loser in histog,
for His Church has been predestined by God to lose.
Christian Reconstructionists teach that there will be a future
era in which the gospel heals the souls of men, and these
healed people will then work to subdue the earth to the glory
of God. This optimism about visible manifestations of God’s
kingdom on earth, he says, is what the New Age movement is
all about.
On the contrary what the New Age movement is all about is
the defeat of Christianity in history. The key New Age doctrines
are these: (1) the self-transcendence of man into a higher being
(through “higher consciousness” techniques, or drugs, or power),
and (2) the law of reincarnation (karma). Christian Reconstruction
reaffirms the doctrine of the absolute Creator-creature
distinction, following the lead of Cornelius Van Til. Christian
Reconstruction also preaches the doctrine of final judgment at
the end of history and God’s preliminary sanctions in history.
What Christian Reconstruction denies is what Hunt affirms as
inevitable and what the New Agers hope for above all: the defeat
of Christianity in htitoq.
18. Dave Hunt, CIB Bulletin (Feb. 1987), front page.