Kicking the Can

I don’t remember for sure, but think it may have been Hal Lindsey’s best-selling The Late, Great Planet Earth that introduced me to the prophecy of the “fig tree generation.”  Lindsey asserted that the rebirth of national Israel was the “budding of the fig tree” and that within a generation of that event, all the prophecies of Matthew 24 would have to be fulfilled.

Jesus said so!!   You can read it yourself in Matthew 24:32-34 if you don’t believe me.  Lindsey then opined that, because a “generation” was about 40 years, that about 40 years or so from 1948 we should expect Jesus to return and set up the Millennial Kingdom.

According to The New York Times, Lindsey’s book was the best-selling non-fiction book of the 1970s and no doubt, it greatly impacted a LOT of people.  But alas! the 1980s came and went, Jesus did not return, and the “fig tree prophecy” needed to be re-visited.  There have been two approaches to its regular recalibration.  First, a “generation” might not be 40 years.  Jack Van Impe calculated the dates and counted the generations in Matthew chapter 1 and concluded that the 2150 years between Abram’s birth and the birth of Christ, divided by the 42 generations recorded in Matthew gives just shy of 52 years per generation.  That moves the goal posts from 1988 to 2000.

Perfect!  The new millennium, the “third day” … everything is dropping into place. 

But alas again!  Y2K came and went.  And Y2K+1.  Back to the drawing board.

The second way to recalibrate is to say, “Maybe the ‘fig tree generation’ didn’t begin in 1948.  Maybe it began in June 1967 when the Jews recaptured Jerusalem.”  Maybe.  If a “generation” really is 40 years as Lindsey proposed, we only had seven years to wait.

In 2008 it was time to move the goal posts again, and now the preferred schema is to abandon “generation” and substitute “lifespan.”  For this we go to Psalm 90.  Seventy years passed from May 14, 1948  in 2018.  Still no Parousia, no rapture, no Millennial Reign.  But there’s a 10-year “fudge factor” in verse 10 where we can stretch to 80 “by reason of strength.”  So it’s “game on” until 2028.

Sorry.  A “prophecy” that can be made to say anything says nothing.  We’re seeing equivocation here, which is a logical fallacy wherein the definitions of the terms of the argument are changed or are ambiguous, so the logic does not really cohere.  But the real problem with this whole thing is at the beginning.  What did Jesus really say???

Jesus said, “when you see all these things, know that it is near, at the very doors.  Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things are fulfilled.”  Jesus used the “fig tree” as an example.  Luke recounted this discussion in Luke 21:29 – “Look at the fig tree and all the trees.  When they are already budding …” 

It is eisegesis of the highest order to invent “rebirth of Israel” and substitute it into this text.  Jesus said nothing about Israel being re-established as a nation.  The “generation” to which Jesus was speaking was, in context, HIS generation, and within 40 years of the time He uttered these words, they were fulfilled by Titus and the Romans.  Whether or not there will be a second or final fulfillment of this prophecy is a separate question.  But “fig tree generation” as a timing device for the rapture is simply a well-executed hoax on the believing but sadly gullible Christian community.  If Bible prophecy were a lawn, then the “fig tree prophecy” would be crabgrass.

I suspect it is the pro-Zionist crowd that may have invented this idea, along with the idea that the blessings and curses suggested in Genesis 12:3 apply to the modern State of Israel.  The reason is fairly clear:  they wanted legitimacy for the UN-created “State of Israel.”  They did not just want a “homeland for the Jews” – their view was broader than that.  Perhaps this is what Jesus was warning us about in Revelation 2:9 and 3:9 – ” … the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan” and ” … the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not, but lie …”  Jesus was talking to US.  Who might he have been talking about??

This is NOT anti-Semitism.  I don’t believe that most of these Zionists are Semitic people.  And I certainly bear them no ill will.  But this is politics, NOT fulfilled prophecy.  That much of American Christianity has been duped is a testimony to their skill.  And I will let it go at that … for now.