I have read most of your books and have enjoyed all of them. I was once a fundamentalist Christian and your books have really opened my eyes to many things. I have been giving my husband your books to read but he is still not totally convinced and leans towards Biblical literalism. His problem is that prophecies in the Bible have come true; i.e. the Jews returning to their homeland in 1948 as prophesied in the Bible thousands of years before. He also sees great power in the north forming now and expects Armageddon to happen shortly. What are your thoughts on Bible prophecy especially in regard to the Jews and their homeland?
Dear Roz,
I think that anyone who uses the Bible to predict the future is totally out of contact with both reality itself, to say nothing of the meaning of the scriptures. These strange interpretations have gone on for centuries. The “Power in the North,” for example, was the way the Babylonians were described by the Jews 2,700 years ago. Predictions of Armageddon have been made from time in memoriam and all of them have been wrong. If we would remove the book of Daniel from the Bible, written as it was, during the reign of terror that the Syrians imposed on the Jews in the second century, BCE; the apocalyptic chapters of Mark (13), Matthew (25) and Luke (21), written in the aftermath of the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 CE, and the book of Revelation, written during the persecution of Christians during the reign of Domitian in the tenth decade of the common era, then all of this nonsense would disappear. It is all nothing less than religious hysteria and that needs to be said loudly and clearly. Your husband is a victim of superstitious ignorance of which there is a great deal in religious circles.
Parenthetically, asking your husband to read books with the purpose of converting him is something less than loving, to say nothing of being almost universally unsuccessful. The kind of religious mentality your husband displays is a response, not to rational study but to the task of seeking security. I suggest you simply love him as he is and allow him to come out of his fears in his own way and in his own time.
My best,
John Shelby Spong
Comments