Dec 11
The 2006 Pre-Trib Study Group
This past week, Terry and I journeyed down to Dallas, Texas to attend the 15th Annual Pre-Trib Study Group.
In 1997, I made my first visit to the meeting. Terry has been an active member since the third year.
The PTSG is basically a prophecy conference for prophecy speakers. It was organized by Tim LaHaye and Tommy Ice with the purpose of defending the pre-trib rapture against attack. During one of the lectures, Tommy said that, "Dr. LaHaye was impressed with the gatherings of the Albury Park and Powerscourt Conference in Britain during the late 1820s and early 1830s where leaders gathered to talk about issues relating to Bible prophecy."
As far as attendance goes, the meeting was a huge success. I had feared that end-time apathy might cause people to stay away
this year, but the opposite was true. The room was about the same size as the one in the hotel that hosted the 2005 meeting, and on several occasions, it was filled to capacity.
We were missing some key folks. Tim LaHaye wasn't feeling well enough to make the meeting. Ed Hindson had three members of
his family in the hospital from a head-on collision with a drunk driver. He was unable to fulfill his role as banquet speaker.
The banquet speaker was John Hagee. Dr. Hindson had personally asked him if he would take his place. Hagee gave a speech that
strongly supported Israel. He also warned of the dangers of Islamic radicals' desire to take over the world.
When I attend the PTSG, my main focus is hearing what other people have to say about current events. Some of the best conversations are during the off-hours. The potential for war in the Middle East was easily the most talked-about subject. There was a common belief among most prophecy scholars that Israel will soon be at war with its Arab neighbors. One well-known prophecy commentator said that Iran may achieve nuclear capability as early as this coming March, forcing Israel to take preemptive action.
Terry and I met up with David Hitt at the conference. He is a patent attorney who lives in the Dallas area. David told us about a project that he is working on. He is trying to market a wireless thumb drive system that he hopes will allow him to support various prophetic ministries. I told him I would ask the readers of the site to pray for his success.
In recent years, I've adapted a practice of applying critical thinking to all work of God. Whether it is a project on Rapture Ready or of some other ministries, I try to honestly judge its value. With this being the 15th year of the PTSG, I decided to take a hard look at what has been accomplished.
It's very hard to determine what kind of impact the PTSG has had in America. The papers presented at the meetings are aimed at a very academic audience. Most people would not be able to stay awake for an hour-long lecture entitled "Postmodern Hermeneutics and Bible Prophecy" or "Problems with Progressive Dispensationalism."
The success of the "Left Behind" book series has made it all the more difficult to assess the impact of the PTSG. Three years after starting the meetings, LaHaye released a book that has transformed the public's view of the end times. Before "Left Behind" came out, I had never heard the media mention the rapture in an article.
Despite the PTSG, "Left Behind," and sites like Rapture Ready, the enemies of the end-time message have been gaining much ground. Satan's strategy has been death by a thousand cuts. Movements like the prosperity gospel, the church growth movement, and competing views on prophecy have been chewing away at the pre-trib rapture's evangelicals base. We now have whole denominations and educational institutions that have turned their backs on Bible prophecy. During the past 15 years, Dallas Theological Seminary has largely abandoned the traditional dispensationalism view.
The Bible predicted that the last days would come at time when most Christians where not looking for the rapture. I think the PTSG is proof that there will still be a remnant waiting for their Master's return.
Like I do with nearly all my site-related travels, I created a detailed photo log of the conference. You can find all the pictures with soon coming captions below on our Photorama page: Pre-Trib Study Group 2006.
Togarmah/Turkey Coming into Focus
Part 2
Turkey and what is happening there at present becomes critical to the endtime puzzle, considering what is being done to Israel by the Baker/Hamilton Commission. There is a concerted effort to keep the Jewish state out of negotiations over the Israeli territory, which the Commission apparently is recommending be on the trading block in its seeming policy of surrender in Iraq.
Baker and company, a 50/50-percent split between Republican and Democrat members, are telling the president of the United States he must talk with Syria and Iran in order to give peace a chance. Too bad either Lenin or Lennon can’t be there to lecture on or sing the one-world refrain: “We Are the World,” or “Give Peace a Chance,” or some other leftist ditty. According to the commission, Israel is, if not overtly, certainly by implication, the problem. The Jewish state would only throw a proverbial monkey wrench into the magnificent bipartisan attempt at unity of thought in bringing peace to the Mideast region.
A big part of that give-peace-a-chance, Neville Chamberlain-like love fest is to promise Syria that it will get back the Golan Heights, and that the West Bank, which includes the ancient areas of Judea and Samaria, would be given up, in a return to the pre-1967 Six Day war boundaries. Most troubling of all in the mix is that Jerusalem, particularly East Jerusalem, would, if the “peace makers” have their way, be up for grabs. At the same time, Israel is kept out of the talks for the most part. Evidently the one-world order crowd thinks it’s none of Israel’s business what is discussed and negotiated in the matter of giving away their land.
But the God of Heaven, it is almost a guarantee, does consider it His business.
A note to you, Mr. President: While you increasingly give your father’s one-world-builder Secretary of State, Mr. Baker, his way in leading the globalists in this effort to force Israel to give up its God-given and hard-won territory, your presidency and your nation will almost certainly suffer deleterious effects. If this course is not corrected, and soon, your legacy and this nation will slip beneath the waves of irrelevance. You have God’s Word on it (Gen. 12: 3).
So, what does all of this have to do with the Togarmah/Turkey matter, found in the Ezekiel 38:4-6 prophecy, coming into focus?
To answer, we must examine precisely what is going on at present in modern-day Turkey, which many scholars believe occupies a significant amount of territory that once comprised the land called “Togarmah.”
Prophecy watchers have long wondered about how the Turkish piece of the end-of-days puzzle will fit into a configuration that will cause it to become part of the forces of Gog when they storm toward Israel to take great spoil. That puzzle piece seems to now be taking a proper shape in today’s news:
ANKARA, Turkey , Nov. 27 — A short 24 hours before a visit by Pope Benedict XVI to this Muslim country, its prime minister finally agreed to meet him publicly. The venue: the airport, on the Turkish leader’s way out of town.
The elaborate, last-minute choreography pointed to the deep divide that has festered within Turkish society since the foundation of the modern state. Should Turkey face eastward, toward its Muslim neighbors, or westward, toward Europe?
In the past five years, Muslims here have repeatedly felt betrayed by the West… Turkey’s hopes of entering the European Union have dimmed. The pope made a speech citing criticism of Islam.
Turkey — a democratic Muslim country with a rigidly secular state — is at a pivot point. It is trying to navigate between the forces that want to pull it closer to Islam and the institutions that safeguard its secularism. Turkey’s pro-Islamic government is constrained by rules dictating secularism established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s revered founder… (The New York Times, November 28, 2006, Allure of Islam Signals a Shift Within Turkey, By SABRINA TAVERNISE).
The Bush Administration’s acquiescence of late to those both within his party and without, who want to extend the diplomatic olive branch rather than stand up to the likes of Bashar al Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the matter of giving up Israel’s territory, must produce pure adrenilin in the Arab-Islamic warlords’ mentality of aggression. The great American Satan cannot stand against Allah, any more than could the Soviet behemoth of the 1980s, just like Osama bin Laden said, will I think, ultimately be their conclusion.
The effect could well be to embolden those warlords to follow Iran’s determination to eradicate every Jew from off the planet in one massive attack.
The Islamics of Turkey are said to be 60 percent in favor of Muslim-run government, rather than secularist-run government. The fanatic Islamics within that nation certainly must recognize weakness within western powers, made evident by the retreat in Iraq, and in more or less giving in to Iran’s nuclear development. Muslim fanatics will doubtless step up their fomenting violence and opposition against the present government officials, who looked toward Europe rather than toward the Islamic tyrants of the Middle East.
Turkey, occupying at least part of ancient Togarmah, seems to be coming into focus as yet another of the endtime players in the coming Gog-Magog attack against an increasingly isolated Israel.
--Terry
