Letter From Hank

Although this letter is longer than most, I’ll ask you to read every word. You see, I never would have believed it. And I’m guessing you wouldn’t have either.

But the sad truth is that “reality” today appears to border on the infinitely malleable.

In fact, within a few short decades — a mere blink in human history — we’ve blazed past a “post- Christian” world to “post-truth” and now to what seems to be “post-reality.”

And the velocity is increasing daily.

Worse still, our “reality inversion” has ominously been accompanied by a values inversion. How else could anyone defend the right to surgically mutilate minors under a banner of “gender-affirming care”?
This is insanity on steroids!

But we now live in an era where psychology has triumphed over biology. Narrative and personal preference over objective reality. Increasingly, it’s about how we feel because, apparently, we can no longer
critically think.

Multitudes have, in short, lost their minds.

I wish I could tell you that Christians and theology were immune to these pathologies. But sadly, not so.

Just consider the millions of earnest believers who have innocently yet naively embraced an endtimes view that says God has two distinct people with two distinct plans and two distinct destinies. Only one of those peoples — the Jews — will suffer tribulation. The other — the church — will be removed from the world in a secret coming seven years prior to the second coming of Christ.

Apparently, a predilection for the morbid and macabre (e.g., rivers of blood that would make the Holocaust seem mild) has fused with escapist fantasies to relieve many Christians of their duty to stand against ever-increasing ignorance and evil. “Just let it get bad enough,” the thinking goes, “and we’ll watch it all from the clouds!”

Such malignant mental muddles dangerously confuse “faith” with “fantasy,” and in these perilous times I’ll cast my lot with those longing for a “severe sobriety” that could extinguish the flames of this magical thinking.

You know I’ve said repeatedly that ideas have consequences. And bad ideas have victims.

For anyone who has largely forgotten 9/11, the current turmoil in the Middle East should be a brutal wake-up call. Because we’re not talking about mere differences of opinions here. Or parsing
academic subtleties flavored with theoretical nuance. We’re talking about savagery. Plain and simple.

You see, when religio-political ideologies result in masses of people being slaughtered, there’s no room for doctrinal nuance.

What is at stake here is the power of religion and ideology to make humans subhuman.

Make no mistake. When a Woke virus seizes the brains of the faculties and administrations of our most prestigious universities and millions of young Americans have been indoctrinated with neo-Marxist ideologies that ridicule the notion of a Supreme Being, you might reasonably expect there to be some tough sledding ahead!

Add to that the “triumph of the therapeutic” and a growing consumerist entertainment culture in many of our churches — combined with a pietistic anti-intellectualism and rapidly vanishing biblical and historical literacy — and you might reasonably wonder about our future as a civilization.

Or the future of the planet, if you listen to some popular preachers today.

Because too many are naively inclined to read into current events in Israel apocalyptic fantasies that are decidedly unbiblical and potentially dangerous.

One popular Christian author, Dr. David Jeremiah, claims that after “the Great Disappearance” of Christians, the Jewish people will experience “the Great Tribulation.” Says Jeremiah, this “Tribulation
will be a period filled with unprecedented horrors, upheavals, persecutions, natural disasters, massive slaughter, and political turmoil.”

The unbiblical notion that even the Holocaust will pale in comparison as 21st Century Jews suffer for the sins of their fathers is beyond bizarre. It’s grotesque.

Adding fuel to these turbo-charged imaginations, current TV ads show Christians instantly vanishing in “the Great Disappearance.”

Serious thinkers have to wonder whether the source of such fantasies isn’t Hollywood sci-fi movies rather than simply misguided hermeneutics.

But totally apart from apocalyptic fantasies, true horrors are taking place in the Middle East even as you read these words.

Meanwhile, some Christian leaders are compounding the confusion and chaos with dangerous misinterpretations of Scripture.

And millions of Christians simply don’t know how to begin to process these horrors.

That’s why I wrote a feature article titled, “A Biblical Response to Christian Zionism,” published in a special print edition of the Christian Research Journal. To bring urgently needed clarity to dangerously muddled thinking.

To help you and other believers dispel the dense fog, this special edition of the Journal contains several “companion” articles as well:

  • “What Is Replacement Theology?”
  • “Is the Pre-tribulational Rapture Theory Biblical?”
  • “Who or What Is the Great Prostitute of Revelation 17?” and
  •  “What about the Millennium?”

Because the issues concerning Christian Zionism are so portentous, let me encourage you to get a bundle of five copies of this special print edition of the Journal. By passing copies along to friends and family, you can help dispel dangerous doctrines that are so rampant today.

God bless you for the difference you make!

…because Life and Truth matter,

President

P.S. While astute observers today are talking about a “polycrisis” — multiple crises that are fueling each other and dangerously gathering momentum — as Christians we need to confront the crisis of failing to think and live Christianly. Your partnership enables us to equip multitudes at home and abroad to do both, and for that I’m endlessly grateful!

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