Rapture Fever

42 RAPTURE FEVER
our governmental process is desirable; however, it is quite
another matter for the Church to strive to become Caesar.”G
Mr. Lewis does not understand politics: one does not get involved
politically in order to lose; one gets involved in order to
win. He also does not understand society: one does not make
the necessary sacrifices in life that it takes to be successfid if one
is told that his efforts will not leave anything of significance to
the next generation, if in fact there will be a next generation,
which is said to be highly doubtful. Mr. Lewis and his pretribulational
dispensational colleagues have paraphrased homosexual
economist John Maynard Keynes’ quip, “In the long run
we are all dead.” They say, “In the short run, we Christians will
all be raptured, and the Jews in Israel will soon wish they were
dead, which two-thirds of them will be within seven years after
we leave.” As we saw in Chapter 1, this view of the Jews is
taught by the leading dispensational theologian of our era.’
Mr. Lewis’ position on politics and social involvement is one
more example of the long-term operational alliance between
the escape religion and the power religion.* Both sides are
agreed: Christians should not seek office as civil magistrates,
except as judicially neutral ag@.s. Yet at the same time, all but
dispensational, natural law philosopher Norman Geisler (a
former Dallas Theological Seminary professor) and academic
political pluralists (e.g., Roman Catholic priest Richard John
Neuhaus) admit there is no neutrality. This is schizophrenic. g
This schizophrenia has left Christians intellectually helpless in
ion Press, 1986; co-published by Crossway Books, Westchester, Illinois). See also
Philip H. Burch, Elites in American Histou, 3 vols. (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1980-
81); Carroll Quigley Tragedy and H@e: A History of the WWld in Our Time (New York:
Macmillan, 1966), pp. 946-56.
6. Lewis, Prophecy 2000, p. 277.
7. John 1? Walvoord, Israel in Prophecy (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan
Academie, [1962] 1988), p. 108.
8. North, MOW-S and Phuraoh, pp. 2-5.
9. Gary North, “The Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New Christian Right:
Christianity and Cmilization, I (1983).