In my previous installment I began a critical review of Bill Salus’ book entitled Israelestine. My contention is that Salus, who would consider himself a futurist, has put forth a historicist interpretative approach of Psalm 83, along with other exegetical errors. Salus contends that Psalm 83 teaches an Israeli war with her surrounding neighbors before the rapture takes place that will set the stage for post-rapture events like the Gog & Magog war and the tribulation. I believe that such a view is simply a product of Salus’ fertile imagination and has no basis in the biblical text (1 Tim. 1:4; 2 Tim. 4:3–5).
In this installment of the series, I will look at the prophetic passages that do place God’s judgment of the nations mentioned in in Psalm 83 into an end-times context. On the other hand, Bill Salus in his book Israelstine argues for a new war, never before discovered by anyone else until he came along that will take place “well in Advance of both the Russian-Iranian Magog invasion and the seventieth week of Daniel (i.e., the Tribulation).” Such a view is blatant historicism, which was proved defective at least a hundred and fifty years ago. Let the Bible itself set the context for the destruction of the nations mentioned in Psalm 83 or in any other biblical prophecy...
In this final installment of looking at a supposed Psalm 83 war, that would precede the campaign of Gog and Magog, I have attempted to demonstrate that such a view has more in common with a historicist interpretative approach then with the futurist system that those holding this view claim to hold theoretically. If this is a prophecy, then it most surely would be fulfilled in conjunction with the Campaign of Armageddon, since I demonstrated in the last installment the over whelming evidence from some prophetic books that most of the nations listed in Psalm 83 will be judged at that time...
Another major viewpoint that was developed during a time when historicism dominated premillennialism is the belief that Babylon in Revelation 17 and 18 is a code word that really refers to Rome, usually the Roman Catholic Church. The point is that futurism is the product of consistent literal interpretation of the biblical text. Thus, if one says that one place name, in this case Babylon, is a code word for Rome or the Roman Catholic Church, whether they like it or not, such a view is an allegorical or non-literal hermeneutic...
There are a number of conclusions I would like to highlight as I bring this series to an end that reflect my concern within our movement of Futurism. I do not believe that my concerns are just abstract ideas that flow out of some personal bent that I may have. Instead, I believe that it is out of concern to rightly divide or handle the Word of God that my concerns have developed...