Greetings,
This is my first post here so allow me to briefly introduce myself. I am a university student taking various courses in the social sciences, and I am a long-time Chrono fan. This was post about Tim LeHaye ,the author of the Left Behing series, who has sold about 40 million copies of his work. Considering my academic background, my interests in the history of religious movements, and my desire to look at religion from a historical/critical approach I found his speech troubling on July 2010.
The link is here, his speech begins at about 2 minutes in:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjxVw49ftfA
First focus when LeHaye is speaking at 4:10 in the video, where he claims the Hebrew prophet Daniel predicted four worlds empires, a few hundreds year before it happened. After surverying the relevant scholarship, and dialoguing with the Jewish studies professor at my university; I find this strange because the estimated date of composition for the book of Daniel is during the time of the Maccabean revolt. The book of Daniel, is an example of a literary work common to the time called an apocalyspes where someone wrote an account of visions annoymously, to their time period. So, Daniel was not describing a vision thousands of years down the future, but using a vision to describe empires of the past and the current oppressive rulers, the Syrians under Antiochus Epihpanes. I feel Dr. LeHaye is ripping this passage out of its historical context, to support his work.
Now, notice when LeHaye talks at 4:48 and he claims Jesus has fulfilled all of the messianic prophecies, and this is supported by history. Having studying the historical Jesus and ancient history I found this claim bizarre. History, at its foundation, is the study of what probably happened. In summary, from historical documents outside we can know Jesus existed, had a ministry of some kind and was crucified, but the "prophecies" that Jesus supposedly fulfilled cannot be verified by another historical source, other than the New Testament. History has a lot of uncertainties regarding the ancient world, because we have less documents and evidence for that and earlier time periods.
This is only a short critique of LaHaye's TV appearance, much more can be said, and if anyone is interested in this topic, I will continue to discuss. I'm looking for a place for rational discussions.
-Philo
