The End-Times, David Jeremiah, and Pre-Misapplicationalism

by Terry Wane Benton

It sounds like a very complicated subject (premillennialism), but it is complicated by a bunch of puzzle pieces put in the wrong places. The pieces selected are strung out in a series of misapplied events in the future. It would be like taking these six events and making them all part of a future plan:

1. A Great Flood will come before,
2. A Great Plague of Frogs, which will start
3. A Thousand Year Reign of Christ in which
4. a man named Joshua will lead us into the promised land, after which
5. there will be the rise of four kingdoms, which will bring about
6. the coming of the Messiah to destroy all of them and the earth.

All I have done in the above six points is string together random Bible topics and misapplied them. I randomly pulled six events from their context, some of which had already happened and some of which were still in the future, and I pretended that this was all part of God’s plans for our future. If you know nothing about the Bible and don’t care to study it, I can convince people that this is the last days and a Great Flood will alert us, signaling the last phase of earth's history. Some would object, saying that the Great Flood already happened, but some would find a verse in Revelation, say, Revelation 12:15, and show that the devil will cause a great flood in the future. It says the serpent will cause it. They could then say, “The book of Revelation tells us about a flood and frogs and a 1000-year reign.” But you don’t know the Book of Revelation, and these people seem to have it together, so they can easily deceive people with the above six misapplied Bible topics.

This is basically what has happened with the modern premillennial scheme. They have taken random topics, some of which happened already in the first century, and assembled an elaborate scheme that they tie together as near-future events. They talk of a great tribulation period, but that already happened before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. They have a “rapture” (caught up) happening, but that is at the end, not before a great tribulation period. They misapply Daniel’s 70th week and use that week as if it is still in the future. They look for signs from Matthew 24:1-34 (which were to be before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70) and have people looking for these signs in modern times, which led to religious hysteria in the times of WWI and then the times of WWII and they never seem to learn their lesson about misapplied prophecy. So, in summary, what we see in “The Left Behind” series and in David Jeremiah’s books are assortments of misapplied prophecies. It is Pre-Misapplicationalism! “Pre” means “before,” “Misapplication” means that prophetic scriptures are misapplied, and “ism” means it is a doctrine based on an assortment of misapplied Bible topics.

Until we get our heads out of social media and get them into actual careful Bible study, we can think highly of people teaching misguided ideas, and we won’t know any better. That is how Satan captures religious people and gets them on course to hell while they think they are on course to heaven. Beware! Be like the Bereans and check it out by the scriptures to see what is and is not so (Acts 17:11). It does matter!