November 1999 Personal Letter

Dear Friends,

Dr. Gerald Schroeder always speaks to our tour groups in Israel and receives the same sort of excited reactions as when he appeared on our television program. He is the MIT professor, now residing in Jerusalem, who proposed that the six days of creation and the 15 billion years found by cosmologists in studying the universe are the same time periods.

Dr. Schroeder caused more consternation and more congratulations in the audience than any other guest we have ever had. Some people claimed relief from a lifetime of difficulty explaining creation, and others swore that they would never watch our program again and would tell all their friends that we were teaching heresy. Personally, I tend to favor Dr. Schroeder’s elegant explanation of the wonderful coordination between science and Scripture, but I’m not an expert. On this past trip, he offered a new teaching which fascinated our tour group, and I’d like to share that here.

Gerald points out that Psalm 105:8 states, “He hath remembered his covenant forever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations.” The covenant is identified as the Psalm goes on; it concerns the giving of the land to Israel (verse 11). The covenant was, of course, delivered to Moses at Mt. Sinai, along with the rest of the Pentateuch, or first five books of the Bible.

But there are only 26 generations between Adam and Moses in the Bible, Dr. Schroeder points out: ten generations from Adam to Noah, ten generations from Noah to Abraham, and six generations from Abraham to Moses. This phenomenon caused the scientist to inquire as to where the missing 974 generations are. There’s another three dozen or so generations to the present time, but that wouldn’t answer for 974 generations, which would be an enormously long period of time. Gerald reasoned that God must be talking about years that predated Adam, and he does the following calculation: 974 generations times 40 years per generation (like the 40 years in the desert) equals 38,960 years. Then the professor applies Psalm 90:4, which points out that to the Lord a day is like a thousand years. 2 Peter 3:8 says the same thing in the New Testament. Therefore, Gerald multiplies his 38,960 years times 365 days per year to get close to 15 million days, and then, calculating 1,000 years for each of those days, he concluded that there would be 15 million “thousands of years” or 15 billion years involved before the creation of Adam!

Gerald went to great pains to tell me that “This is logic from a millennia ago, and so this is not, repeat not, an attempt to match Bible and science.” Evidently, this calculation was done by Jewish sages 1,000 years ago, and they would have no idea that the age of the universe would be discovered to line up exactly with their reasoning from Scripture.

And on the subject of signs of prophecy fulfilled, I came across a very interesting fact in a computer publication. It stated, “Usually reserved for systems managers, ‘God’s status’ allows universal access to all files or a network.” Talk about signs of the Antichrist! The one who will claim he is God will obviously have that status on the biggest system of them all, world domination.

Another small problem about media anti-Israel bias that occurs before every tour is trying to get a weather report from over there. Though many reports publish “Middle East temperatures,” etc., only Jerusalem is given, or only Tel Aviv, and nothing more from this highly varied land of deserts, mountains, and lakes. In short, Israel is not important enough to make the reports on the Weather Channel, but it certainly leads the news broadcasts almost every night.

The Palestinians continue to violate the “anti-incitement” paragraphs in the Wye River Accord. More lately, they have issued schoolbooks with the usual maps showing all of Israel belonging to them and Jerusalem to be their capital. You’d think they’d be a little more grateful. When you think about it, without Israel there would be no such thing as “Palestinians.” If the Jews hadn’t come back to the Middle East, quiet little Israel with virtually no natural resources and no oil would be occupied by the same roving bands of Bedouin and occasional traders as it was for decades previous. It would still have been a land of swamps and malaria, and no jobs to attract Arabs to come over borders as they did in 1948. It would rather be as Mark Twain saw it, a land that he referred to as the forgotten place of God, a hopeless wilderness. But let there be Jews, and by gosh you have something called Palestinians.

And how about this? Without Israel, there would be no Christian church!

Come to Israel with us and see the land for yourself. There is no greater confirmation than being there where it is all happening. You experience a special thrill in seeing prophecy unfold around you. And as Christians, how wonderful it is to walk where Jesus walked and see the land He saw. Our Winter Deluxe Tour (Dec. 11–21) will visit all the major Biblical sites. Among the sites we will see: the ancient City of David, Jerusalem, Israel’s national memorial to the Holocaust, and the Israel Museum where we will examine the Dead Sea Scrolls. We will gather at the summit of the Mount of Olives, walk through the Garden of Gethsemane, see the Upper Room, Calvary, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea, the site of the Sermon on the Mount, Masada, Jericho, the Garden Tomb, and you can choose to be baptized in the Jordan River.

The Grand Tour (Dec. 11–26) adds an extension to the Deluxe Tour. We will stay at a luxurious resort hotel in Eilat on the Red Sea. We will tour the wondrous Negev Desert, En Gedi, Timna (where there’s a newly constructed model of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness), Beer Sheba, the beautiful Arava Valley, and the magnificent city of Petra, carved out of the rose-red mountains in Jordan. And what better place to spend Christmas Eve than in the shepherd’s fields of Bethlehem?

The crew was with us on the September Tour filming for the “This Is Israel!” series. If you can’t be in Israel in December, learn all about the beautiful Holy Land by watching this program series, which will begin after the first of the year.

And please remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem!

Your messenger,