Time is up on another self prophecy of the end by an evangelical Christian leader. Jerry Falwell predicted in January of 1999 that the “Second coming of Christ probably will be within 10 years.” Falwell was wrong. He also made another prophecy about the Anti-Christ being Jewish and alive at the time. On that count, too, Falwell is most likely wrong. However, the most disturbing statement by the late Dr. Falwell in 1999, at least to me, is not his misled proclamations of the coming of Christ, or his unwise attempts at identifying the ethnicity of the anti-Christ, but rather the following highlighted quote from a January 20, 1999 press release:"When I delivered my sermon on the second coming of Jesus Christ last week to a pastors conference in Kingsport, Tennessee, I conveyed biblically-based truths that I have believed and preached nationally for more than 40 years. In addition to asserting that I personally believe that Christ could return soon (though no one knows the date of His second coming), I stated that the Antichrist may possibly be alive on the earth today. Most evangelicals, including Billy Graham and millions of others, believe in the imminent, premillennial, pretribulational second coming of Jesus Christ for all of His Church."
"Since Jesus came to the earth the first time 2,000 years ago as a Jewish male, most evangelicals believe the Antichrist will, by necessity, be a Jewish male also, since his mission will be to pretend to be the true Christ. This belief is 2,000 years old and has no anti-Semitic roots. This is simply historic and prophetic orthodox Christian doctrine that many (not all) theologians, Christian and non-Christian, have understood for two millennia."
Like the previous errant prophecies by Dr. Falwell, his prediction that most evangelicals are "premillenial, pretribulational" believers in the second coming of Christ is also wrong. Maybe that's true in Lynchburg, Virginia and in the southern U.S., but most evangelicals throughout the world and throughout history have NOT been premillenial, pretribulational believers in the second coming.
Dr. Falwell batted 0 for 3 in 99!
