In only the past five years, the pro Israel Christian community has seen a downturn of support among top leadership. The roots of that are much deeper/older, but the manifestation of a move toward other views (read: Palestinian Narrative) is relatively new.

A close parallel to that reality is the frosty attitude toward the teaching of Bible prophecy; specifically the movement known as Dispensationalism. This teaching would be typical of what is found in Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series, for example.

Dr. Russell Moore’s launch of a new podcast this week typifies this move away from prophecy teaching in American churches (I know most of the best-known prophecy teachers, and most will concede that speaking opportunities are not nearly as plentiful as they used to be).

Moore is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and from that high-profile perch he pontificates often. His tweets voicing his displeasure with Republican front-runner Donald Trump are telling (and frankly kind of weird), and mirror past calls for church leaders to refrain from endorsing or opposing candidates. It seems that the new SBC leadership has no problem taking swipes at Republicans, but you will almost never hear them take issue with, for example, Barack Obama.

It’s a new day in American Evangelicalism.

“Signposts” is another venue for Moore to slowly introduce ideas that a generation or two ago would have been foreign to evangelical audiences. Moore’s views on immigration, politics, and even homosexuality are to the left of past leaders, including his predecessor, Dr. Richard Land. Moore once worked for a congressional Democrat, and his calls for a softer approach to the culture wars sets him apart from what traditional Southern Baptists have taught.

On the pilot podcast, Moore spent most of his time taking a swipe at classic Bible prophecy teaching.

Now, have some prophecy teachers taken license with Scripture? Of course. Too many of them have come too close to the edge of outright predicting the Return of Jesus Christ.

But Moore seems intent on being too reactionary in the opposite direction. In the maiden voyage of “Signposts,” he avers that we really can’t know when Jesus will return; it might be a “million years.” He says we just don’t know.

He then dissects Matthew 24, but falls prey to the same affliction his ideological opponents sometimes do: bedrock faith in his own interpretation. He insists that Jesus was not giving the Apostles signs that we can observe and then deduce the season of His Return.

It is the latest in a series of communications in which Moore makes it clear he is not your grandfather’s ERLC chief. That is not necessarily bad, but for our purposes, his dislike of prophecy teaching impacts countless congregations across the country, because of the messaging stranglehold evangelical leaders have on the community as a whole. We have only to look at the vast influence of Rick Warren’s “Purpose-Driven” model to see that. New Thought evangelical leaders like Moore, Warren, Andy Stanley and others has consolidated power; folks in the pews seem unaware of this.

Most problematic with Moore’s interpretation of the Bible with regard to prophecy is his failure to appreciate the specialness of the Jews and Israel in history, including future history. In short, I believe Moore is a “Replacement Theology” guy, which is a person who believes in essence that because of past Jewish sins, God has “transferred” His promises from the Jews to the…Christian Church. Many prophecy teachers rightly claim that this teaching is a scourge in the current American evangelical community.

I couldn’t agree more. If one reads Moore’s blog, one can easily see where he falls on the question of Israel’s role in history. He simply is indifferent at best.

Most importantly, Moore doesn’t seem to be a fellow who readily admits that he might be wrong. And he is wrong about Israel and wrong about Bible prophecy. To say that Jesus might not return for a million years is simply false. In fact, the Lord gave us plenty of affirmation in the Bible (particularly the Hebrew Scriptures) that the “Final Generation” can know the general season.

I would challenge opponents of that concept to read Zechariah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah, and tell me how God doesn’t let us know the general timing of the End of the Age. The chief proof that we are in that season is the intensifying international pressure on Israel, which will culminate in the information provided in the last chapters of Zechariah 10-14. I’d like to discuss this with Russell Moore.

Irresponsible evangelical leaders often masquerade as responsible evangelical leaders.

In the end, their hubris trips them up. As Israel becomes more of a pariah in the international community, and coalition armies form against her, the view that Christ’s Second Coming is a billion light years away becomes the real false teaching.

I think that’s Moore to the point.