John Hagee’s book, Four Blood Moons, finds connections between biblical eschatological prophesy and major events in world history. The problem is that he picks his particular interpretation of prophesy out of a large stock of possible interpretations for no other reason than because it fits his coincidences. The same with the events the prophesy is claimed to predict -- they’re picked from a large stock of possible choices, and the only reason to pick them over the other ones is because they fit his coincidences. That makes them not coincidences at all.
That is a problem. I don’t mind it when people make mistakes, but Hagee has a very crude understanding of alternative views. He makes poor arguments against them and does not accurately represent what they believe and why. He’s disrespectful and aggressive towards his opponents. 90% of his argumentation is geared toward painting them a bad color, and 10% is devoted to arguing with what he thinks they believe.
Particularly, this is the case when he represents Supersessionism… and I don’t know what to call them – non-rapture people.
Supersessionism
Hagee uses the term, “replacement theology” to describe Supersessionism, which is pejorative. The first words which he uses to introduce the reader to it are,
Some Christians teach that God has broken covenant with the Jewish people. This teaching has come to be known as replacement theology; some refer to it as Supersessionism.
Do Supersessionists believe that God broke his promise? No. They do not. So do they therefore need to ask themselves, “If God has broken covenant with his own flesh and blood, what confidence do we, as Gentiles, have that he would not break covenant with us?” No they don’t.
Supersessionists, of which I am not one, believe God’s various promises to Israel were upon condition, fulfilled, or added to. I have never heard of any Supersessionist who believes that God broke his promise. And so arguing that God does not break his promises is arguing with a straw man.
Hagee gives Matthew 21:19 as what he thinks is a Supersessionist proof text. It is not. Hagee calls it a foundation for replacement theology. It is not. In the passage, Jesus curses a fig tree, saying, “let no fruit grow on you ever again”, and it withers. The idea that this is a foundational text for Supersessionism is silly. This too is a straw man.
Hagee presents Romans 11:1 as if his opponents disagreed,
I say then, has God cast away his people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, and the tribe of Benjamin”
Supersessionists do not believe that God cast away his people. That is not the matter in dispute. All the views in question affirm that God keeps his promises. There is also middle ground between favoring and abandoning. If God treats Israel like any other ethnicity or nationality then he is neither abandoning nor favoring them.
Near the end of his foul treatment of Supersessionism, he calls it religious Anti-Semitism, as if believing that God no longer favors the Jewish people, that is anti-Jewish.
Non-rapture people
Unlike the last topic, where I actually tend to favor Hagee’s view but not his treatment, I actually disagree with him. I don’t think that scripture teaches in a rapture the way most evangelicals define it. Regardless, he treats the non-rapture people with the same lack of intellectual empathy that he treats Supersessionists.
He claims that non-rapture people think that the bible is allegorical or a myth. He then continues to explain that God literally created the heavens and the earth, and Jesus literally died on the cross, and therefore the rapture is literal. In fact, we don’t have to decide between the bible is completely literal or completely metaphorical, we can actually pick and choose depending on the context. Hagee claims that the bible is literal from cover to cover, so I guess he’s looking forward to a harlot clothed with the sun drinking the blood of the saints. He also thinks that he is literally the salt of the earth – you know, salt, those little white grainy things. He’s one of those.
He also argues against the claim that if the word “rapture” isn’t in the bible, then it is false. I have heard some people make that sort of argument, it is pretty bad, and Hagee properly argues against it. Lots of words were made up after the bible to describe things that are in the bible.
He points to 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 and 1 Thessalonians 14:16-17 in order to justify the rapture. Those are pretty common passages for rapture people.
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be change - in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
1 Corinthians 15:51-52
That sounds like just the general resurrection to me. Do non-rapture people believe that there will be a general resurrection on the last day? Of course they do. If you want to call that the rapture, then be my guest. My understanding is that traditionally the general resurrection on the last day was referred to as the rapture. It is only recently that evangelicals have made it into the disappearance of the saved for an extended period of time.
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
1 Thessalonians 14:16-17
This sounds like the second coming to me. Being caught up in the clouds is imagery (whether literal or figurative) that depicts a greeting and escort as the Lord comes down. In the context of the previous versus, the passage is saying not to be sad for your lost loved ones, you’ll be reunited with them in the general resurrection when the Lord returns. That doesn’t sound like living Christians leaving planet earth for an extended period of time.
Hagee claims that the rapture occurs pre-tribulation. I have no idea how his eschatological timeline works in light of the passages he sites– so the dead will be raised imperishable, the Lord himself will come down from heaven… and then the anti-Christ will appear and the tribulation will take place?
If Hagee wants to argue that the coming Tetrad is an end times symbol, that’s fine. But the way he treats Christians who do not agree is insolent. These Christians typically hold pretty conventional Christian views, and Hagee paints them as radical bible revisionists and then argues with that depiction.
