2008 Finger lakes Bible conference with Chuck Missler and Dave Hunt

I was at a small Bible prophecy conference for the last few days. The conference speakers were Chuck Missler, Dave Hunt, Bill Gallatin and Amir Tsarfati.

I guess the theme of the conference was upping the bar because we are getting very close to the rapture.

Amir Tsarfati is from Israel and is a very engaging speaker. If you every get a chance to listen to him do so. He gave us the latest in Israel which really was not news to me since I keep up on these things. He feels the present government of Israel will fall around the end of this month. He sees all the pieces of the puzzle almost in place for the Ezekiel 38 scenario. He also thinks there will be an attack on Iran within months and that Damascus will be destroyed shortly.

Bill Gallation’s message was mainly one of exhortation to the church to do the work of God while we still have time. He also made it clear that he thought America would soon be judged.

Dave Hunt talked mostly about the “New Atheists” that are very evil and are now on a crusade against all religion. Dave is recovering from hip surgery and is getting quite elderly. He was kind of scattered at the conference. It could be medication he is on or it just might be that old age is catching up with him. He said he has to do three debates against top scholars within a week. I simply do not see Dave being very effective in these debates if he performed like he did at the conference. I think Dave needs our prayers that God will strengthen this great defender of the faith.

I am a great Church Missler fan but Chuck Missler was a let down for me. He just did the same 10 year old material at the conference. It was about the same stuff you would get from his through the Bible in 24 hours series. He seemed to be there more to sell his material than to give us any new insights on Bible prophecy.

Missler started his own Internet Bible institute where if you buy his material and do a small amount of interaction and pass a multiple guess test you can get credit for completing the course. He presently has three levels of achievement: bronze, silver and gold. He claims that up to half his credits can be transfer to a certain Internet correspondence University and be used toward a bachelor, masters or PHD program. My problem with that is that a degree from Universities like this is probably useless in the real world anyway. So what it comes down to for me is that you end up paying twice as much for Chuck Mislers MP3’s so you can hang a ridiculous huge Medellin around your neck. Chuck was wearing his Gold around his neck for the entire conference.

So far there has been a couple of hundred people who have completed the Bronze course. Chuck was asked but did not indicate that there were any who have made it to Gold yet, although he did say that dozens were given honorary Gold.

I guess there are several motivations for this institute. Chuck feels the church is ignorant on the Bible and what is going on in the world and needs educating. I would agree with him on that point but usually those going to Bible prophecy conferences are not the ones that need to be targeted.

Chuck also feels the Church will soon need to go underground and the best way to do this is to use Internet technology. I have some concerns with that and I brought a couple of my concerns up with Chuck. If fundamental Christian teaching become illegal it will not be a problem for the Government to filter out any Christian material or even track down anyone. For example, they could use the word “Chuck Missler” and automatically dump any article with that name being indexed, hosted or going through an ISP. They could also do it with the words “second coming” or “rapture” or any other word or phrase they want. They are already doing that in China and some other countries.

Some might say you could encrypt the information but then the government could require all encryption software companies to give them the encryption keys. I brought that up to Chuck but Chuck just said that they did not even need encryption keys. If that were the case (and in real time operations it is not) then Chuck just proved my case.

Chuck teaches that there will be a satellite within five years that will provide Internet access for everyone on earth. That probably is not true. One satellite is not going to cover the whole earth. It might be that in five years there will be the beginning of a satellite system that will eventually cover the whole earth but the whole system would be many years down the line. The media companies are not investing hundreds of billions of dollars in fiber cable and WiMax technology because it will be all obsolete in five years.

Even if there were a satellite system, it would change nothing about filtering capabilities. If all communications were coming from the satellites, someone could still filter the information just by having the data downloaded to government censors before uploading it again to the satellite and sending it back to the earth.

Another argument Chuck used was that we would be under-the-radar so to speak. Nobody is under-the-radar of a filter.

So I am finding this underground Church idea to be incredibly naive. Government right now, in the name of nation security, is being told to monitor all Internet traffic. Any underground church that wants to be under the radar better separate itself from any electronic media.

Anyway, for what my opinion is worth, I find this whole institute of Missler’s to be not well thought out. I also do not feel that he should be using a quarter of his time at a Bible conference that I paid for with the entrance fees promoting his institute during his speaking slots. 

Missler brought up one interesting point at the conference that I will have to think more about. He makes a distinction between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven. He claims that the passages about those Christians practicing the sins mentioned where it is said that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of heaven, is not talking about whether they will be saved or not. Missler claims that the inheritance is ruling and reigning with Jesus Christ in the Millennium. Thus, Missler indicates that some in Christ will not rule or even be in the Millennium reign or Kingdom of Heaven but they still will be saved in the Kingdom of God. I have not thought through the concept yet, so I do not take a position on it. But, if it were true, it could explain why people who are obviously believers are told that if they are practicing these sins, they will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven which comes to earth for a thousand years.