Rapture Fever

When “Babylon” Fell, So Did Dispensationalism 191
Then came the week of August 19. Thud. Down went Dzerzhinsky’s
statue. Down went the dreams of the Communist
Party’s leaders. Boris Pugo shot his wife and killed himself.
Marshal Akhromeyev committed suicide. Soviet Communism
died. It’s over.
So is Hal Lindsey’s reputation as a prophet. So is John Walvoord’s.
Walvoord, at 80, lived to see it. I regard this as evidence
that God has a marvelous sense of humor.
I wonder how it feels. To be a Communist who lives long
enough to have seen this. To be a best-selling paperback book
author whose specialty is false prophecies about Russia’s coming
invasion of Israel. To see the work of your life get flushed
down the commode of history. (“This can’t be happening. It
just can’t!”) It must be painful. I hope so.
The day after Dzerzhinsky’s statue crashed to the ground in
what was then called Dzerzhinsky Square, but what will soon be
called something else, Paul Crouch announced to his Trinity
Broadcasting Network (TBN) viewers: “We need to get Hal
Lindsey on the show to explain the meaning of what has happened.”
Indeed you do, Paul. Let him try to reconcile these
events for your emotionally victimized followers. Let him play
the “identi~ Babylon” game one more time. Let’s see Hal Lindsey
dance the Whisenant two-step.” It greatly resembles “Montezuma’s
two-step.” In both dances, the pressure is intense, There
will be dozens of Whisenant two-steppers in 1992, the year of
the revised editions.
Rapture Postponed
It’s all over. The curtain has come down. The Rapture has
been postponed. Again. A dispensationalist can still argue that
the inevitable invasion of Israel by Russia may take place in a
hundred years or a thousand, but the troops in the pews have
been told for 135 years that this event is imminent. The Rapture
was due at any moment because Russia was going to invade
the State of Israel in any moment phs seven years. “The clock of