Chapter 4 is a huge chapter —almost 66 pages long!!!
There are a few lines within this chapter where
it appears that the author has exhausted himself by creating worthless lines
upon lines of fluff in the first twenty pages and decided to finally address the
topic at hand. Even though the author at
last provides the actual content of the book here, the whole chapter is
full of contradictions, misapplications of Scripture, and faulty conclusions.
The absolute arrogance of Dean almost leaps off the page and into your face
time after time throughout the book, but nowhere else like it does in chapter 4.
By the time the author offers an extensive and interesting account of his
interactions with the “88 Reasons” book that predicted a 1998 Rapture, it seems
that real time and space has given way to The
Twilight Zone. This section is interesting in part because he admits that
as a date-setter, he had independently arrived at the same 1988 date 15 years
earlier! But it is also tragic in that Dean goes on to suppose that the
disappointment of 1988 was itself something that fulfilled prophecy, since it
now enables people to scoff at the idea of the Lord's return! It seems that Dean
still falls for the idea that his personal failures can always be spun out into
universal triumphs.
Also, it is symptomatic of Dean's unthinking
zeal that he proposes such nonsense as:
“The abomination of desolation (Matt.24:15)
may well be nothing more surprising than a television set on the pulpit in the
Jewish temple or a Christian church”!
Also, it is symptomatic of Dean's hayseed
approach that he tells us: “No one who
'buys in' on The New Eschatology (in TGD's view, a form of
Reconstructionism that completely denies any sort of future eschatology) will do so because they were convinced by
the academic evidence”.
Dean cannot see the irony of his own
contradiction. Previously we were told that a
dream was used as an epistemic foundation for his writing; yet we are also
told about the error of not paying attention to the “academic evidence”. Dean is apparently torn between two epistemic
poles.
With false humility, Dean admits that even “After 20 YEARS of agonizingly meticulous
Bible study: and after many long hours of prayer and detailed research just for
THIS one article” he is still not sure he is offering the whole truth, just
a “somewhat better” one. He relates
his frustration at finding out how to interpret Revelation (we could have saved
him some trouble by sending him to a seminary library) but we are also assured:
“The Lord answered me
in A DREAM; and He showed me, that He has PURPOSEFULLY obscured the details
that surround His Return...The Same Lord also COMMANDED me to write a book
about THE GREAT and FINAL APOSTASY of Christendom..”.
Well, folks, that sure puts Dean outside of the
parameters of scholarship, doesn't it? If a personal dream is going to be the
foundation… Why does he even mention the “academic
evidence” as proof of anything?
One way or the other. You cannot have it both ways.
But either way Dean is wrong. There is nothing
obscure or difficult about Revelation —nothing more so than any other ancient Bible
book— that serious contextual study will not resolve. Dean apparently never
explored these limits in those 20 years of reported study. We're left to wonder
as well why “The Lord” while issuing
these commands did not give Dean proper and correct knowledge of basic
hermeneutics. Ever a mystery.
Dean spends many lines explaining to us the
need for a definitive “AUTHORITY” for interpretation, and we are told: “That AUTHORITY is: The Common Dictionary”.
It may surprise Dean to learn that when it comes to reading any text, ancient
or modern, “the common dictionary” is only of the least amount of help. Common
dictionaries do not provide the contextual detail needed to understand any text
outside of the sphere of the culture for whom the dictionary is written.
When Dean quotes Luke 23:29 we have yet more
eisegesis. Dean claims that the Lord’s prophesies here that “FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY”
(doubtful, but we'll let that pass) women “will
count themselves FORTUNATE to have never given birth to ANY children, and
FORTUNATE to have never been RESPONSIBLE for the care of children”. We are
assured: “THOSE days have already come;
they are here NOW. We are living in THE AGE OF ABORTION: when children are
often thought of as an 'inconvenience' or as an UNWANTED 'expense'”.
Well... That the Lord Jesus addressed this
point to “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and
for your children”, apparently does not click, as it ought to if we think that
this prediction was fulfilled 66-73 AD when more than a few of these folks and
their children would be alive —though we do not deny its prophetic fulfillment.
That the “blessed” statement comes of those who say it because of all the
suffering at hand that makes life miserable —not because of “expense” or “inconvenience”—
also seems not to be perceived. Dean goes on to offer a mix of good points,
paranoia (“the devil is using abortion to
target pre-born Christians”) and wild rambling on this subject, but for our
purposes it is enough to say that his use of Luke 23:29 is irresponsible.
Dean goes into some detail on the subject, “When
will the rapture happen?” Since our prewrath
view is that such event happens “Immediately after the tribulation of
those days” (Matthew 24:29-31) and that the gathering of the elect (mentioned
in Matthew 24:31 refers to the rapture), there is no reason for us to engage Dean's
ramblings on this issue. It is worth noting only that Dean neither sees nor
understands that there is a distinction between the Antichrist’s great tribulation
against the Church and Israel and the day of the Lord’s wrath against the
ungodly. The latter event happens after the former event. For more about this
subject, start here.