The Late Great Planet Earth: Hal Lyndsey
Here's a dangerous area for a writer to get in to -- interpreting Biblical prophecies. My father got into these kinds of books when I was a child (the early '70's -- oddly enough, he was younger then than I am now), Hal Lyndsey, Salem Kirban, Ed Vallowe and a host of others. There were books interpreting Revelation, and Daniel -- charts showing timelines of things to come -- fictional interpretations of the last times (which are once again extremely popular, back then it was the book 666, now it's the Left Behind series). Two of the books tread into dangerous waters though -- Salem Kirban's 20 Reasons Why the World Won't Last 20 Years, and this book.
The danger involved is spelled out in the beginning of this book in fact -- if you make a prediction or prophesy, and it doesn't come true, then you are a false prophet. That's how it's spelled out in the Bible -- prophets weren't allowed percentages less than 100 (compare that with your Psychic Buddies) -- if they were wrong, then anything they said was wrong (back then that should have earned you a stoning). So here's where Hal and Salem start getting into trouble -- they start setting timetables. Granted, it made sense -- many end time prophecies involve the return of Israel to it's homeland (which happened in 1948), and the Jews retaking Jerusalem. Back then there was a very powerful enemy to the north (the USSR) and all Africa was aligned against the new Israel. Communism was spreading around the world, and America had just been whumped by a puny little country in Southeast Asia. All the excesses of the late '60's were still running rampant -- getting worse even, and it looked like things were going to heck in a handbasket. It was really easy to interpret this as being the last generation spoken of in the Bible. But then things started to happen, and not happen. Egypt quit fighting Israel -- The USSR imploded into itself -- The upcoming worldwide famine was reduced to various (and changing) sections of Africa -- The world economy didn't collapse -- There still isn't a single world wide church, not even a start to one -- Europe still isn't united, and except for the upcoming Eurodollar, doesn't really show any signs of becoming united. All of these events contradict what this book said would happen before the '90's. Hmm, not a good sign for Hal -- and Salem didn't fare any better with his book either. It all comes down to the fact that only God knows when this will all happen, and only He really understands the book of Revelation.
Although the book ends up being wrong, it contains a great deal of information that any Bible believing Christian should know about -- providing you can still find it, the book is over 30 years old. Just ignore the current day specifics and concentrate on the Biblical references, who knows, they could start happening any time now.....