2012 Chafer Theological Seminary Bible Conference

The War on Terror began for the United States on September 11, 2001, with coordinated suicide attacks using hijacked domestic airplanes by 19 members of a sophisticated international terrorist network known as al-Qa’eda. The simultaneous attacks occurred in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, incinerating 3,000 people and destroying billions of dollars in property. Prior to this attack, America responded to al-Qa’eda and al-Qa’eda-styled terrorism with traditional domestic criminal law tools rooted in the American Constitution. After 9/11 America determined that it would have to resort to the tools associated with the regulation of international armed conflict or law of war. ...

While modern leftist academics routinely mock the Judeo-Christian apocalypse prophesied in both the Old and New Testaments (Joel 2; Isaiah 24; Matthew 24-25; 2 Thessalonians 1-2; Revelation 6-19) as something only a deranged literalist could entertain in his own fundamentalist mindset, they remain completely unaware that their most important leftist forefather, Karl Marx, was a false prophet of secular fundamentalism and profane eschatology. Many secular scholars presume taking the Old and New Testaments at face value leads to a dangerous, irrational and fundamentalist worldview. Even too many Christians seemingly chime in with leftist academics by eschewing the idea of a literal fulfillment of such apocalyptic predictions, especially when it comes to great events like the Rapture of the Church (1 Cor. 15:51-52; 1 Thess. 4:13-18), the Great Tribulation (Jer 30:1-7; Rev 6-19), and the glorious Millennial Messianic Kingdom after the Second Coming of Christ (Zechariah 14; Matt 24:30-31; Rev 19:11-20:10). Many other Christians also ignore Old Testament Covenants (Abrahamic – Gen 12:1-4;, Palestinian – Deut 30:1-10; Davidic – Psalm 89; New – Jer 31:31-34) which promise to bless the entire world beyond human imagination (Isa 2:1-4; Mic 4:1-4; Rev 20:1-6) before the Eternal State (Isa 66:22; Rev 21-22). While many Christian scholars are embarrassed by such Scriptures, they fail to understand that modernity itself would not even exist without such a Judeo-Christian apocalyptic worldview. “We of today, concerned with the unity of universal history and with its progress toward an ultimate goal or at least toward a better world, are still in the line of prophetic and messianic monotheism – however little we may think of ourselves in those terms. ...