Forcing God's Hand: Why Millions Pray for a Quick Rapture—And the Destruction of Planet Earth
	Grace Halsell
	Whitley Company, Paperback, 1999, 140 pgs.
	Captures the expanding alliance between Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. with the state of Israel.
	List Price: $14.95
	AET Price: $9.50

Also by Grace Halsell:

• Soul Sister (30th Anniversary Edition)

Forcing God’s Hand: Why Millions Pray for a Quick Rapture—And the Destruction of Planet Earth

By Grace Halsell

Reviewed by Andrew I. Killgore

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, DECEMBER 1999, pages 122-124

In his poem “The Second Coming,” Irish poet William Butler Yeats contemplates a second coming but is vague about the nature of the divinity we can expect to see at the heralded event. As if to throw off the readers who believe they might have figured out what Yeats had in mind, he concludes with a question, “And what rough beast, its hour came round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”

There is no such uncertainty in the minds of “Armageddon theologists” as described by veteran author Grace Halsell in this revealing book. Two of Ms. Halsell’s highly regarded earlier books, Journey to Jerusalem and Prophecy and Politics, have contributed greatly to American public understanding of the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli dispute and Israel’s impact on U.S. domestic politics.

In her disturbing new work Halsell digs deeply into the current, expanding alliance between Christian fundamentalism in the U.S. and the government of the State of Israel. Grace Halsell has made a dozen trips to Israel and twice as a concerned Christian with groups led by TV evangelist Jerry Falwell. In her book she recounts conversations with fellow members of these groups which revealed that they were looking forward to, indeed welcoming, Armageddon, a cataclysmic final battle between the forces of good and evil, described in allegorical terms in the New Testament book of Revelation.

She quotes from Scripture as well as “Armageddonists” who don’t like Jews but fervently support a Jewish state, and from American Jewish Zionists who, even though most know about the true feelings of these Christian extremists’ feelings toward Jews, support the Armageddonists because, “Israel needs all the friends it can get.”

As described by Halsell, the belief system of those expecting their own personal escape through a “Rapture” followed by a violent end of the world is based on individual interpretations of Biblical texts.

John Darby of England promulgated this doctrine. An American preacher, Cyrus Scofield, popularized it in the United States, largely through his Scofield Reference Bible, first published in 1909. In it, he inserts his own interpretations alongside the original Biblical text.

The Darby-Scofield doctrine has more to do with old Hebraic texts than the Sermon on the Mount. It relegates the Church of Jesus Christ to a secondary role.

To understand Halsell’s Forcing God’s Hand, many readers will have to learn a new vocabulary including: Gog, Magog, the Rapture, the Tribulations, the Antichrist, Gomar, the Gog-Magog wars, dispensationalism, and Born Again.

Perhaps the key word is dispensationalism, meaning to Armageddonists that history is divided into epochs, or time periods, having a fixed order of progression. Dispensationalists believe Jews are to return to Canaan of the Bible, where a Jewish state is to be established.

This idea contradicts traditional belief, which has held that salvation comes through personal sacrifice and suffering. The doctrine that promises no pain explains the popularity of TV evangelists Tim La Hoya, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and others who “sell” the idea that by simply saying you are “born again” you can be snatched away to a heavenly grandstand seat where you can watch the next Holocaust below.

The titanic battle of Armageddon is to take place at Megiddo, north of Tel Aviv and inland from the Mediterranean. While visiting the existing site of the ancient town of Megiddo, Ms. Halsell points out to one of her traveling companions on a Falwell-led tour of American Christians to Israel that it is hardly bigger than an American farm, and thus too small for the last great battle. But her fellow traveler, displaying a remarkable mental compartmentation, assures her, against all the evidence of her senses, that Megiddo is quite big enough.

A notable aspect of Halsell’s conversations with Armageddonists is a certitude about their interpretations of even the most obscure parts of the Bible. For example, Chittim is Cyprus, Magog is the nation of Russia, although in Semitic languages such as Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus, the prefix ma (me in Hebrew) means “the place of.” In other words, Magog might be assumed to mean the place where Gog is located rather than another entity that Gog must fight.

When the forces of evil led by the brilliant but utterly evil Antichrist (who must be a male Jew, in Falwell’s opinion) appear to be winning at Armageddon, Jesus descends from the heavens to rally the forces of good, who then prevail. Those who have been “born again” are raptured into the heavens above the fray, and thus escape injury or death in the cataclysm.

“Rapture” is devised from a Biblical reference to a “snatching away.”

Some idea of the utter destruction of Armageddon, provided by lecturer Hal Lindsay, author of The Late, Great Planet Earth, is that only 144,000 Jews will survive. They will then have to go out and preach Christianity like so many Billy Grahams to carry out Old Testament rituals.

To Force God’s Hand in activating their quick Rapture and Armageddon—zealots are demanding an immediate destruction of Jerusalem’s most holy Islamic shrine. Halsell exposes this most preposterous “Christian” directive—that a third temple must be built in Jerusalem, that animal sacrifice be resumed and that Jesus Christ preside on a Jewish throne—to carry out Old Testament rituals.

Halsell talked at length with American-educated Palestinian lawyer/intellectual Jonathan Kuttab, a Christian, who points out, quite correctly, that, in contrast to the 2,000-year history of Christianity, dispensationalism is not even 200 years old.

Halsell writes also that Reverend Falwell never exposes his tour groups to Palestinian Christians, although they constitute about 15 percent of the Palestinian residents of the Holy Land. This, combined with the fact that at the time Halsell made her trips Falwell was flying around the United States in a $3 million airplane put at his disposal by Israel, raises questions about his honesty.

Dispensationalism seems to be a growing force in the U.S. All of the top Southern Baptist leaders appear to be adherents. In fact, Charismatic church groups, favoring dispensationalism have sprung up all over the United States. They believe the world will soon come to an end, which they welcome. And as editor Ted Daniels of the Millennium Prophecy Report newsletter, quoted by Ms. Halsell, notes, “People who expect the world to end soon do strange things.”

The most disturbing thought is that the made-up theology of dispensationalism and the existing, heavily armed state of Israel are in alliance, each strengthening the other. All this makes violence—in support of dangerous ideologies and questionable dogmas—quite acceptable. Who knows which violent outbursts by impressionable groups in our own time and country may arise from the doctrinaire depths of dispensationalism?

Andrew I. Killgore, a retired career foreign service officer and former U.S. ambassador to Qatar, is the publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.