Calvinism: Why I Am Not A Calvinist

 

WHY I AM NOT A CALVINIST
By NORMAN L. GEISLER

(These are notes I made listening to Dr. Geisler. I have augmented them slightly. – Nelson Price)

There were two lines in heaven, one marked PREDESTINED and the other FREE WILL.

A man got in the one marked PREDESTINATION and was why are you here. He said I got here because I chose to be here. They told him he belonged in the other line.

When he got to the head of the FREE WILL line they asked why he was there and he said they told me I was predestined to be there.

The acrostic regarding the five points of Calvinism are called T-U-L-I-P. The modern day doctrine was started in the Netherlands where tulips grow freely. The points are:

TOTAL DEPRAVITY
UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION
LIMITED ATONEMENT
IRRESISTIBLE GRACE
PERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS

I. TOTAL DEPRAVITY
Calvinists believe man is so totally depraved he no longer has the capacity to comprehend God’s grace. As a result man can’t believe and be saved. Therefore, they believe God has to regenerate them, that is save them and give them a new nature, with which they can believe. Regeneration means to give a dead person life. For them regeneration precedes faith.

How is “dead” to be understood? It either means separation or annihilation. Calvinists interpret it to mean annihilation. Correctly understood it means separation. Adam and Eve are examples. Genesis 3:3 God said that in the day they would eat of the tree in the midst of the garden they would “surely die.” They did not die physically, but they were separated from God, dead to the truth. The image of God was still in them. It was effaced, but not erased.

Unsaved people, that is those who have not been regenerated can know the truth.

Romans 1: 19 says they can see and understand the things of God.

I Corinthians 1: 14 notes they can perceive the truth of God and still not believe the truth.

Ephesians 2: 1 is their basis for this belief.

“You He has made alive who were dead in trespasses.” The death spoken of was spiritual not physical.

Ephesians 2: 8 says, “For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is a gift of God.” In this text faith comes before salvation.

Romans 5:1 confirms this. “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with Go through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

II. UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION
Calvinists believe election is unconditional on God’s part. There is no condition for Him giving it. There is no condition for receiving it. It is given by grace.

They believe you don’t have to believe to receive. God gives salvation regardless of what a person believes. After receiving His regeneration then the person believes.

Extreme Calvinists believe God chooses who will believe. In reality God chooses them because He foreknows who will believe.

I Peter 1: 2 “…elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father….”

Romans 8: 29 “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son….”

To foreknow does not mean to make to happen.

Suppose a person is sitting on a mountain side from which he can see running along another mountain a roadway. From his vantage point he can see just around a curve in the road a bridge out. He can see a car speeding down the road. He knows that traveling at that speed the car will go off the bridge. He foreknows it, but he does not make it happen. The fact God foreknows something does not mean He makes it happen.

Texts often referred to are:

Ephesians 1: 3,5 “Blessed be the Lord God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ…. having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ.”

“Predestination” means predetermined destiny. The Greek word translated predestination is “proorizo.” It was a surveyors term which meant to mark out a boundary. For example years ago surveyors marked out a boundary and decided all within that territory would be called Georgia and/or Georgians. Spiritually before the dawn of creation God marked off a boundary and predetermined all within that boundary would be saved. The boundary is defined in Ephesians 1 as being “in Him” (vs. 4, 7,10) and “in Christ” (vs. 10).

“As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the sons of God” (John 1:12).

We believe and they we receive. Salvation does not come out of our will, but it comes through our will. To God be the glory. If a person gives another $1,000 the giver gets the credit. We receive salvation, but it is given us. We, the receiver, the beggar, God is the giver deserving all the glory.

III. LIMITED ATONEMENT
Calvinists believe Christ did not die for all men, He died only for the elect. That is in conflict with many Scriptures.

“God so loved the world….” John 3:16

“Christ died for the ungodly” Romans 5:6 That includes everyone for “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23

“…One died for all…” II Cor. 5:14

Calvinists interpret “all” and the “world” to mean all the elect of the world only.

All, all means is “all,” the whole world, everybody.

“…God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” I Timothy 2: 3,4 It does not say “some.”

Hebrews 2: 9 “…that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for “everyone.”

“The Lord is not slack concerning His promises, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” II Peter 3:9

John 1:29 “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

“He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”

I John 2:2 Calvinists interpret this to mean the Christian world.

I John 2: 16 defines the world as something more that the Christian world: “For all that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — is not of the Father, but is of the world.”

I John 4:8 “God is love.” is nature being love, He must love all people. He is pictured a being all loving. Therefore, God does not love just the elect.

Imagine a farmer has a large pond around which there is a fence with such signs as: “No Trespassing,” “Stay out,” “Danger, Keep Out.” One day he drives by on his tractor and saw three boys in the pond in danger of drowning. Three responses are possible. He might say,

“I warned them. They are getting what they deserve.” Is this a loving person?

He could have lassoed one and call out, “You in the blue shirt, I am throwing you a rope I going to save you.” The other two he willingly leaves to drown. Is this a loving person?

He could throw all three a rope. One accept and the other two decide they can do it themselves. Each of the two determine on their own free will if he will grasp it and be saved.

IV. IRRESISTIBLE GRACE
Calvinists believe God is all powerful and can save anybody, even against their will. However, He chooses to use His power to save only those He chooses to save. If the choice is God’s and He is all loving He must love everyone.

In Matthew 23: 37 Jesus is depicted as saying of Jerusalem “I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”

Love will not force them to love Him against their will. Forced love isn’t love. God works persuasively, but not forcefully.

Either a person says, “Thy, will be done O God” or God says, “Thy will be done.” He will not force anyone against their will.

The grace of God can be resisted. Acts 7: 51 describes persons who resist God’s grace as “stiff-necked” saying, “You always resist the Holy Spirit.”

Romans 9 poses several questions. It notes God loved Jacob and hated Esau.

God did not hate Esau in the sense of cursing him or deliberately being hostile to him personally without cause. Esau was a blessed man (Gen. 39: 9 & 36: 1 – 42).

In his letter to the church in Rome (9: 13) Paul quoted a passage from Malachi (1: 2, 3).

In these texts the word “hate” is used hyperbolically, that is in an exaggerated sense, as it is in other Bible passages. It is used in a relative sense such as when Jesus said we are to “hate” our father and mother. In using it in a relative sense, He was saying compared to the love for God our love for our parents is as though it were hate. This does not discourage love for parents, but it encourages stronger love for God.

“Hate” as used in the case of Jacob and Esau is not used in a positive sense, but in a relative sense to simply express a strong preference for the conduct of Jacob. It was a result of moral resentment. God has a strong distaste and disgust for sin. Therefore, He disapproved of the sin of Esau. If God had acted otherwise He would have been acting contrary to His very own holy nature.

Based on Romans 9: 10-13 some have concluded God loved Esau and hated Jacob before their births. Not so. It is logical that God should have responded negatively to Jacob as a result on his sins.

God did not, and does not, arbitrarily, capriciously, temperamentally, or impulsively make any judgment contrary to traits of His character, some of which are: love, grace, knowledge, and mercy.

God’s perspective is different from ours. He knows things we can never know. In His foreknowledge He knew what the mind set of the two would be. He did not make them chose as they did, but He knew what they would choose. God’s “hate” toward Esau did not cause Esau’s conduct, Esau’s conduct caused God’s aversion to him because of his own willful mind and heart set of“hate” God preceded God’s”hate” for Him and was the consequence of Esau’s free willed hate not the cause of his “hate.” Esau hated God and the kind of hate he had is a sin. God has a form of hate that is righteous indignation which causes Him to “hate” sin. Esau having hated God it was inevitable that God must hate him because of the unrepentant sin in his life or be untrue to His holy and just nature.

God, in His foreknowledge, knew before their births Jacob would love Him and Esau “hate” Him. He did not dictate that Jacob would love Him and Esau hate Him, but He knew each would respond as they did. The fact He foreknew does not mean He made them act as they did. The term “hated” is a relative term meaning, “loved less.” It is the term used to in Genesis 29: 30, 31 to describe Jacob as loving Rachel, but he loved Leah less.

Why did God love Jacob more and Esau less? Because He foreknew Esau’s evil deeds.

The same sun that melts wax hardens clay. He loved them both.

V. PERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS
For the Calvinist the only way a person knows they are saved is to die. If you are one of the elect you will hold out.

“I know whom I have believed and that He is able to keep that which I have committed….” II Tim. 1:2

GOD IS LOVE, GOD LOVES ALL, CHRIST DIED FOR ALL

Mankind’s Free Will

“God’s greatest gift to man in all the bounty He was moved to make throughout creation – the one gift the most close to His goodness and the one He calls most precious – is free will.”
Dante Alighieri in “Paradiso”

Throughout the Bible God is depicted as choosing. Being sovereign He obviously has a free will to choose who and what He pleases.

Starting with Adam and Eve, who chose between eating or not eating of the tree in the midst of the garden, human beings have been making choices. They would not have had this free will were it not given them by our sovereign loving God.

Logic makes it clear man has a God given free will. That logic is based on the fact that biblically and currently human beings make choices, therefore it can be concluded from this that man has the ability to chose.

God is sovereign. Again it deserves to be said, man would not have free will had not God acting in His free will, given it to him.

God in His grace and by His sovereign will elected, that is chose, to give man the right and ability to choose. Man therefore is a free moral agent responsible for his choices. The following Scripture passages show this principle to be logical.

Deuteronomy 30:19
“I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live;

Joshua 24:15
“And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

2 Samuel 24:12
“Go and tell David, ‘Thus says the LORD: I offer you three things; choose one of them for yourself, that I may do it to you.’”

1 Chronicles 21:11
So Gad came to David and said to him, “Thus says the LORD: ‘Choose for yourself,’”

I Kings 18:23
“Therefore let them give us two bulls; and let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it; and I will prepare the other bull, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it.

2 Kings 10:3
“…choose the best qualified of your master’s sons, set him on his father’s throne, and fight for your master’s house.”

Job 9:14
“How then can I answer Him,
And choose my words to reason with Him?”

Job 15:5
“For your iniquity teaches your mouth,
And you choose the tongue of the crafty.”

Job 34:4
“Let us choose justice for ourselves;
Let us know among ourselves what is good”

Job 34:33
“Should He repay it according to your terms,
Just because you disavow it?
You must choose, and not I;
Therefore speak what you know.”

Psalm. 65:4
“Blessed is the man You choose,
And cause to approach You,
That he may dwell in Your courts.
We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your house,
Of Your holy temple.”

Proverbs 1:29
“they hated knowledge
And did not choose the fear of the LORD…”

Proverbs 3:31
“Do not envy the oppressor,
And choose none of his ways;”

Proverbs 12:26
“The righteous should choose his friends carefully,
For the way of the wicked leads them astray.”

Isaiah 7:15
“Curds and honey He shall eat, that He may know to refuse the evil and choose the good….”

Isaiah 7:16
“For before the Child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings.”

Isaiah 56:4
For thus says the LORD:
‘To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths,
And choose what pleases Me,
And hold fast My covenant,’”

Philippians 1:22
“But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot tell.”

Luke 10: 42 “Mary hath chosen the good part….”

To “decide” is to chose as the king of Israel said, “So shall your judgment be; you yourself have decided it.” I Kings20: 40

“Bachar,” translated “chose” and its derivatives are used for: men choosing wives (Ge 6:2); Lot choosing the cities of the Plain (Ge 13:11); often of kings and generals choosing soldiers for their prowess (e.g. Ex 17:9; Jos 8:3; 1Sa 13:2; 2Sa 10:9; 17:1). The most important uses of bachar are these: of Israel choosing a king (1Sa 8:18; 12:13); of moral and religious choice: choosing Yahweh as God (Jos 24:15,22), or other gods (Jud 5:8; 10:14); the way of truth (Ps 119:30); to refuse the evil and choose the good (Isa 7:15,16); compare David’s choice of evils (2Sa 24:12).

Paul testified before Agrippa of the heavenly vision given him: “I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.” Acts 26: 19. He had a choice and chose to obey.

To accept a thing indicates there was an alternative not accepted. This requires a choice. Accept, acceptable, acceptably, acceptance, acceptation, accepted, accepts, and accepting are listed 64 times in the Bible. Each act required a choice.

To “determine” a thing, a selection has to be made requiring a choice. “Determined” appears 30 times in the Bible.

To judge is to choose. Repetitiously persons in the Bible are said to have judged. Thus, they had to make a choice.

In all of these and more instances persons used their God given gray matter to exercise their will freely.

This and nothing else detracts from God’s sovereign will. He is free and able to do whatever He chooses. These and many other verses depict human beings as making choices. They would not have that ability were it not given them by our sovereign God.

It is the reader’s choice as to whether or not they will chose this concept. The alternative is that things are arbitrarily imposed on persons by God. Conditions in the world make if impossible to believe their happening is the design and desire of our sovereign, righteous, and loving God.

The Easter Equation

MATTHEW 28: 1 – 6

JESUS CHRIST is the only person to have His epitaph announced by angels. Weeping women and mournful men came to the tomb in which His lifeless body had been placed. They came to bury their hope. They were there to say farewell to a dream, embalm the past, and to weep and mourn. These defeated and dis-spirited followers of Christ were representative of all of humankind hope.

They were met by angels at the tomb who said:
“Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus
who was crucified. He is not here; for He is
risen, as He said.”

It is always a joy to visit that empty tomb in Jerusalem. On the door recently placed at this entrance for security purposes is the inscription, “He is risen.” What an epitaph!

The resurrection is God’s “yes” to the world’s “no.”

The world says “no” you can’t live forever. The resurrection says “yes” you can.

The world says “no” you can’t live an abundant life. The resurrection says “yes” you can.

The world says “no” you can’t live optimistically and victoriously with hope. The resurrection says “yes” you can live with enthusiasm for your future.

The resurrection shouts of the reality that God has the capacity to correct life’s inequities. When your life seems lost in vicious violence and is subject to outbursts of hatred and bigotry, then the assurance offered by the resurrection says there is hope.

HE DIED

A sensual and sadistic Roman soldier lifter the shaft of his sharp steel spear toward the side of the suffering Savior, With a thrust he slit the skin, divided the flesh, pierced the pericardium and entered the heart. Christ was dead. The soldier himself said he was. The official Roman document defining the execution proclaimed He was dead.

These executioners knew how to push life right to the brink, hold it there, and push it over the brink of death in the most brutal manner.

Near Colorado Springs, Colorado, there is a road which winds through William’s Canyon to the Cave of the Winds. The pass through which it goes seems to get more and more narrow as your travel it. One passage is knows as “The Narrows.” As you draw near it, every indication is that you can’t make it through. Just before you reach it, there is a sign which states: “Yes you can – a million others have.”

Just when life gave every indication of having only a hopeless end, Christ arose–revealing it has an endless hope. You can make it because ONE has. Because HE lives we can live also.

The resurrection tells us that God is involved in our world. The resurrection factor is one the world can’t explain or explain away. The resurrection is God’s way of saying to you: “You really do matter to me.”

Easter is God’s AMEN
and
man’s HALLELUJAH!

The people who came to that tomb that morning were so preoccupied with what happened, that is, Christ’s death, that they were about to miss out on what was happening.

Just when they thought all was lost, the angel said: “He is risen.” Just when they thought all possibility of victory was behind them, the angel announced. “He has gone before you into Galilee.” Christ still goes before us to lead and guide.

HE IS RISEN

That fact on history’s horizon influences all others. Every argument against the literal bodily resurrection of Christ is philosophical. Every argument for the resurrection is historical.

Skeptics scoff at the historical reliability of the records of the resurrection, yet, accept less reliable records of secular events. What is known of Hannibal crossing the Alps was written 250 years later. New Testament documents were written within a lifetime of the event. Historians accept the history written by Thucydides (460 BC) and Herodotus (488 BC) which were translated from manuscripts written 1,300 years later from only eight copies. There are over 1,200 ancient New Testament documents. The records of the resurrection are reliable prompting the famous Greek scholar, Bishop Westcott to say, “Taking all the evidence together, it is not too much to say that there is no single historic incident better or more variously supported than the resurrection of Christ.”

Medical doctor Luke writing at a time when the people who were in Jerusalem at the time of the resurrection were still living said to them:

“You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:48).

Luke further said of the resurrection, “there are many infallible proofs.” This translates TEKMERION meaning “demonstrable proofs,” that is, much empirical evidence Acts 1:3.

Writing in that same time span the author of Acts (2:32) noted: “This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses.” Summarily the Apostle Paul wrote of some of these.

“Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, it you hold fast that word which I preached to you — unless you believe in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by the apostles, Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.”
I Corinthians 15: 1 – 8

James, one of those listed as a witness of His resurrection, was sibling of Jesus who did not believe in Him. That is, until the resurrection. On the even of the resurrection he is numbered among those in the upper room. Thereafter he became the head of the emerging church and died because of His belief in and teaching about the resurrection.

In the first century, a time when they should have known, belief in the resurrection was so broad spread and firmly believed that over 5,000,000 were executed because of their faith.

HE AROSE — they believed it enough to die for Him. That fact has added two new equations to the hopeless. Consider these three possible equations of life.

I. L + D + D = D

Life (physical life) plus spiritual death (the rejection of Jesus as Savior), plus physical death, equals spiritual death.

Physical life without the hope of eternal life makes for a hopeless life. German’s Count Otto Bismarck once said, “Without the hope of eternal life, this life is not worth the effort of getting dressed in the morning.”

II. L + L + D = L

Life (physical life), plus life (spiritual life), equals life eternal.

“…we shall be saved by His life” (Romans 5:10). “His life” is a reference to His resurrected life. Because He lives we shall live forever also.

“TIME”, “We have a great fear of dying and yet we are unable to face the reality of death.”

This we must deal with for Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed unto man once to die.”

With Christ as Savior we can face death because He said, “Because I live you shall live also” (John 14:19).

Because of His resurrection there is a third potential equation:

III. L + L + L = L

Life (physical life) plus life (spiritual life), plus life (raptured or resurrected life), equals
life eternal.

The resurrection of Christ validates His claims to come again: I Thess. 1:10, “…wait for His Son from heaven, who He has raised from the dead, even Jesus Christ who delivered us from the wrath to come.”

Because He arose those of us who die before His next coming shall also be resurrected at His coming: “He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies” (Romans 8:11).

That is the ultimate Easter equation.

A summary of the Easter equation.
A. “Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture…”
B. “…He was buried…”
C. “…He arose again the third day according to the Scripture.
D. “…He was seen…”

Don’t you “see” what this means?
Two men came to the empty tomb that morning. One or the other of them represents you.
John, “the beloved.”
Peter, “the betrayer.”
Both went away believers. Regardless of which one typified you it is also possible for you to go away a believer following the Christ who goes before you.

HE IS ALIVE.

The Harbinger

“The first one to plead his case seems right, until his neighbor comes and examines him.” Proverbs 18:17

Until a case is subjected to cross examination its truth can’t be assured. Without examination through the len of other scripture The “Harbinger by Jonathan Cahn stands as its own witness.

The author states his book is fiction and it is. It is difficult to mix fiction and prophecy. It is misleading when fiction becomes accepted as prophecy. Regardless of the intent of the author his work is heralded by many readers as prophetic.

The intent of the author appears to be to call America to repentance and that is admirable. Philosophies and practices in present day America do in many respects resemble conditions in 8th century Israel. Observing their consequence in ancient Israel should be a harbinger to America. However, the glove is stretched beyond reason to make fiction and prophecy fit like a hand-in- glove.

The book is punctuated with theological, exegetical, and hermeneutical flaws.

Hermeneutics is the study of understanding a statement in its original context. There is nothing in Isaiah 9:10 that suggests it is related to any time and place other than the Northen Kingdom of Israel in the 8th century B. C.

Isaiah 9 is a prophetic passage regarding that period. The first seven verses are essential to understand the rest of the chapter in context, yet they are completely overlooked. Therein the destruction of Israel is foretold, but her restoration is assured. The fact the author completely omits modern Israel from the novel implies God’s judgment on her was terminal. Current affairs dispute this.

April 4, 2012 Cahn, the author, stated he does not believe Isaiah 9:10 is about, to, or for America. He says the similarity between Isaiah 9:10 only demonstrates the pattern of God’s judgment. Yet, in many instances he does connect the two. On a number of occasions in the book readers are given the impression there is more than a parallel, there is a connection. The book makes this statement: “Hidden in ancient biblical prophecy from Isaiah the mysteries revealed in The Harbinger are so precise that they foretold recent American events down to the exact days… It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood thriller with one exception …. IT’S REAL.”

These claims are contradictory. How could Isaiah 9:10 not be “about, to or for America” and having precisely “foretold recent American events?”

A significant assumption in the book is that God has a covenant with America. God was obviously at work in the founding of America, but a covenant no. He had a covenant with one country of His choice, Israel. There is no biblical evidence God would have another covenant with any country. His present day covenant is with individual believers made possible by the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus.

If Isaiah 9 is the biblical pattern for judgment why isn’t the pattern found at other times in other scripture in God’s judgment of Israel? There is a simple pattern for judgment found throughout the Bible. It is: God warns, God waits, and if there is no repentant response God expressed His wrath. That pattern is a constant and applies to America as it has to other cultures in the past.

The Harbinger is a novel —- an intriguing novel. It has a message that should be a wake-up call for America, but it is not prophetic. Not all books that contain scripture are scriptural. This one isn’t.

Four Blood Moons

Pastor John Hagge in his book entitled Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change has garnered a significant following of his “end time” thesis based on the moon.

A “Blood Moon” occurs when there is a total lunar eclipse. It bears the name “blood” because the rays of the sun passing through the earth’s atmosphere give the moon a reddish color. A lunar eclipse occurs when the earth is directly between the sun and the moon. When there are four such moons separated by six months it is called a Tetrad.

The next four lunar eclipses will occur on two significant Jewish festivals: Passover April 15, 2014 and April 4, 2015 and Feast of the Tabernacles (Skkot) October 8, 2014 and September 28, 2015. Though rare there have been eight that occurred on these feast days since 162 AD. The most recent Blood Moon Tetrad occurred in 2003 – 2004. Seven more are scheduled before 2100.

Some of NASA’s records and the calculations by Hagge do not seem to correspond.

The frequency of Tetrads vary over time. Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli has observed that there was a 300 year period when Tetrads were numerous followed by another 300 year period when there were none.

Hagge’s thesis is made all the more intriguing in that some dramatic historical events have occurred in Israel around the time of blood moons. He stated, “Every time this has happened in the last 500 years, it has coincided with tragedy for the Jewish people followed by triumph.” He continued, “Once again, for Israel the timing of this Tetrad is remarkable.”

Hagge asserts the 1493 Tetrad ushered in the Spanish Inquisition involving the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Wrong, these blood moon occurred a year after the Inquisition.

The second in 1948 saw the return of the Jews to the Bible Land and the establishment of the nation of Israel. This was a fulfillment of Bible prophecy. However, these moons happened a year after statehood. Again Hagge is wrong.

The third in 1967 coincided with the Six-Day Arab-Israeli War.

As a firm believer in Bible prophecy there is one statement in scripture that stands out to me. Related to the Second Coming of Christ and the end of time scripture says no man know “the day nor the hour.” Hagge says he is not setting dates, but that God and NASA set these dates.

I have lived long enough to have know there are reasons to doubt date setters. A couple of examples are the booklet published in 1987 entitled Eighty-eight Reasons Jesus will come in 1988. When He didn’t the author issued a corrected edition entitled, Eighty-nine Reasons Jesus Will Come in 1989.

Will any person who was alive in 1999 ever forget the approach of midnight January 1, 2000 and the Y2K end of the ages?

The Mayans missed with the Mayan Calendar focusing on 2012 as the end of time.

The marvel is millions of people bought into each of these theories.

To be fair with Hagge he does not say these Four Blood Moons will be the end of time, but in speaking of them he reads scripture over and over related to the Second Coming.

Scripture gives sound advice regarding end times: “…be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not expect Him.” Be ready and enjoy life.