Kenny Rogers on Armageddon
An oldy but a goody from Gary DeMar:
Israel’s End-Times Gamble
“If you’re gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right. You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, Know when to walk away and know when to run.”
Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” has sold millions of copies since its 1978 release and spawned five made-for-TV movies. But the song’s appeal is in its no-nonsense philosophy. When there is no way to win, it’s time to walk away from the game. The game is over for Israel. Let me explain. In Tim LaHaye’s pre-tribulational rapture novel The Remnant the Jews are in for a hellacious future. Two-thirds of the Jews living in Israel will be slaughtered. LaHaye is not alone in holding this noxious position.
John Hagee, a popular prophecy writer, states in a World Net Daily column:
Jerusalem today is a detonating device with no fail-safe system. It’s a loaded pistol at an international poker dispute with all players demanding control. It’s a driverless coach careening toward a blind curve—the collision of which will birth World War III.
You see, there’s nothing anyone can do about WW III. According to Hagee, it’s a prophetic inevitability. It’s this fatalistic futuristic perspective that has kept the heads of Jews on the chopping block for 2000 years since there’s still one more holocaust that Jews will have to go through.
Even so, evangelicals are spending millions of dollars to help Jews return to Israel. In so doing, says the Rev. James M. Hutchens, president of Israel/USA, “we believe we are fulfilling a divine calling . . . to assist the Jewish people in their physical return and restoration of the land of Israel.” Like Hagee and LaHaye, Hutchens maintains that “There will be no peace until the Messiah comes.”
The views of these men are alarming to some Jewish leaders, as they should be. Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, asks, “To what extent will a theological view that calls for Armageddon in the Middle East lead [evangelicals] to support policies that may move in that direction, rather than toward stability and peaceful coexistence?” The most probable scenario is that prophetic futurists will sit back and do nothing as they see Israel go up in smoke. What can they do? The Bible predicts it. “There will be no peace until the Messiah comes.”
Given this inevitable scenario, what should Jews do? Leave Israel. Under the New Covenant, your land is meaningless. It has no more theological importance than Rhode Island. Under LaHaye, Hagee, and Hutchen’s prophetic model, odds are you’ll be dead if you stay. If not you, then certainly someone in your family will die. But if you leave, the Muslims won’t have a common enemy to unify them. Let them destroy one another. Remember, Iran’s war with Iraq and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait? There is no unity among these Muslim nations with Israel gone.
Then what? Come to America! Maybe we can convince Congress and the President to carve out a parcel of land in one of our National Monuments for you to settle. America is the safest place on earth for you. Once the Muslims kill themselves off, if you still think your barren strip of land is important, then you can go back. So take a lesson from Kenny. If you’re gonna play the game, ya gotta learn to play it right. You got to know when to hold on to the land and when to run. It’s time to run.
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Gary DeMar is president of American Vision and author of End-Times Fiction, published by Thomas Nelson.
