LINDSEY'S SUMMATION OF CHRISTIAN TEACHING (WITHOUT HIS ESCHATOLOGY!)
Harold Lee "Hal" Lindsey (born 1929) is a best-selling author, who is currently host of "The Hal Lindsey Report" TV program (for which he himself provides the financing). He formerly hosted the "International Intelligence Briefing" on TBN, but the show was removed as being too "pro-Israel"/"anti-Arab."
Controversially, he has divorced three times and married four times. (His second wife, Jan, was the best-known, as she was featured on the back cover of his early books.) Ironically, this 1974 book says about her, "Little did my dear wife realize when she majored in English and minored in Journalism in college that one day God would team her up with a guy who could preach and teach, but needed someone to put it all down on paper. She's been an integral part of the writing of my last three books... Thank You Lord, for giving this woman to me." Pg. 4)
He wrote in the Introduction, "Somewhere in the midst of all this human chaos and confusion we've forgotten a very fundamental fact. All of creation seems to have a great unity, design, and purpose, and it's inconceivable to me that man should be an exception to this. There must have been an original meaning and purpose for him that got lost somewhere along the way and resulted in a morass of alienation, frustration, and hopelessless. I've written this book to share how I was rescued from my own personal alienation from God, myself, and society and how I found the reason for why I had been put on this earth. My sincere hope is that any kindred souls who need forgiveness, encouragement, and hope will read these pages and find God's solution for their own lives." (Pg. 11)
The first chapter includes Lindsey's own personal testimony. Lindsey then covers, in his popular and often engaging style, concepts such as Spiritual Death; Hypostatic Union; Propitiation; Redemption; Substitionary Death; Reconciliation; Justification; Forgiveness; Regeneration; etc.
He concludes on the note, "One of my main purposes in writing this book has been to show God's great Father's-heart in providing a way to reconcile all of mankind back to Himself. But I have wanted to show Christ not only as our reconciler, but also as the healer of broken hearts and damaged lives. No one could have been more fouled up in his personal life than I was... If you've needed to be liberated from a quagmire of self-life and defeat, I trust you've seen the provision God has made for your liberation at the cross." (Pg. 235-236)
This book is a touching and welcome change from Lindsey's usual prophetic speculations. (But of course, it wasn't a "big seller" like his prophetic books were.)