He Predicted Early Second Coming : Past Robertson Remarks Deter Secular Believers

Shortly before he began to contemplate running for President, Pat Robertson said God had called him to usher in the second coming of Jesus Christ, an event he expected soon and said would be accompanied by Christians’ “taking dominion” over all of society and reaping the wealth of non-believers.

Addressing a religious seminar in Dallas in December of 1984, Robertson said God had told him “I have called you to usher in the coming of my Son.” He received the prophecy in 1968 through Harald Bredesen, a close associate who laid his hand on Robertson’s head and spoke as if God were speaking.

Both Bredesen and Robertson have characterized the prophecy as applying to Robertson’s ministry, the Christian Broadcasting Network, which Robertson headed until he resigned last year to run for President. “We would all be appalled and Pat would be appalled (at the idea that he was personally chosen). We’ve talked about it many times,” said Bredesen, a CBN board member.

But whether Robertson believes the prophecy applies to him or his ministry, his speech in Dallas goes to the heart of his problem in attempting to win support in Republican primaries and caucuses beyond his dedicated evangelical base. Despite his disclaimers that his strongly held views would not interfere with his “dispassionate” execution of presidential duties, Robertson’s past utterances and writings make it difficult for him to find secular believers.

Speaking of the tall buildings in Dallas, Robertson said at the 1984 seminar: “Imagine the time the people of God have inherited that property, because the Bible says that the wicked lay up and heap up treasures for the righteous.

“Now, you say that is the description of the millennium when Jesus comes back,” Robertson said. “Well, some of it is.” Such mind-boggling events would occur in one to 10 years, including the election of a “spirit-filled President” and “judges speaking in tongues from the bench,” he predicted.

Charismatic or Pentecostal Christians believe they are “filled with the Holy Spirit,” often signaled by the ecstatic ability to speak in a language unknown to them. A tape of the 1984 Dallas talk also records Robertson briefly speaking in tongues during his closing prayer.

Robertson said a sign that the prophecy was coming true was the opening of a CBN transmitter in the Middle East, where Robertson expected Jesus to return. God has “never failed one thing that he has promised me,” he said at the seminar. “We’ve got to prepare ourselves and know that God is going to put us in positions of leadership and trust and responsibility.”

Robertson Sees ‘Bigotry’

Robertson contends that examinations of his beliefs in the context of the presidential campaign are “bigotry,” and challenges critics to evaluate him on his record as a businessman, educator and founder of the multimillion-dollar Christian Broadcasting Network. (An accompanying story examines his secular record).

In a recent interview with David Frost, Robertson said he would resign as President if a conflict arose between his “deeply held religious views and an oath under the Constitution to support the Constitution.”

But he also said then that the Constitution “clearly embodies a Calvinistic view of man.” John Calvin and his followers followed a stern moral code, emphasizing the Bible as the unerring authority in the rigorous pursuit of an active Christian life.

Sees Parallel With Kennedy

Robertson has compared his plight to that of John F. Kennedy, who in 1960 as a Roman Catholic encountered prejudice and anxiety that his religious beliefs would supersede his oath of office. Kennedy, for the most part, put those fears to rest during his presidential campaign in a speech to a ministerial association in Houston. But Robertson, who has spent 30 years as an evangelical minister and broadcaster, is encountering a much stiffer burden of proof.

Unlike Robertson, the Founding Fathers “raised serious questions about biblical revelation and . . . failed to affirm the divinity of Jesus,” said historian Edwin S. Gaustad of UC Riverside, author of the recently published book “Faith of Our Fathers.”

“Abraham Lincoln was profoundly religious but never willing to say he spoke for God or that God spoke to him,” Gaustad said. “There is always an innate suspicion of people who hear voices that we don’t hear.”

The prophecy about God’s choosing Robertson or his ministry is a case in point. Not only does it make him unique among presidential candidates, it also makes him unique among the nation’s well-known conservative preachers.

The prophecy was uttered in May, 1968, by Bredesen at the dedication of new CBN facilities. Ostensibly speaking with the voice of God, he said: “The days of your beginning seem small in your eyes in light of where I have taken you . . . but these days shall seem small in light of where I am going to take you, for I have chosen you to usher in the coming of my Son.”

Asked Thursday to comment on the prophecy, Robertson said that Bredesen “may have been referring to Middle East television,” predicting or forecasting Robertson’s role in “spreading the gospel throughout the Middle East” on the CBN transmitter based in Lebanon.

But in an April, 1982, letter to CBN contributors, Robertson quoted the prophecy and added, “God has assigned to CBN, in these last days, a ministry of John the Baptist--to prepare the way for Jesus’ second coming.”

Given Robertson’s own claims that God frequently talked with him and that his decision to run for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination depended on God’s wishes, some analysts say it cannot be ruled out that Robertson believes God has shown him a new way to prepare for the second coming.

“Who gets to claim that prophecy? You have the dilemma of the minister for whom the prophecy was made and his ministry going in two separate directions,” now that Robertson has resigned from the CBN, said Mark G. Toulouse of Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University, who did research in the CBN archives last summer.

“I think Pat is going to say it’s related to his ministry,” Toulouse said. “Whether he thinks different in his heart, we may never know.”

An Eclectic Theology

Those who know Robertson well say the ex-minister has an eclectic, unsystematic theology. “He’s pragmatic,” said Joseph Kickasola, a faculty member at Robertson’s CBN University. “He certainly doesn’t owe any loyalties to a church or to a particular theological school.”

Likewise, David Edwin Harrell Jr., author of a recent Robertson biography, said he believes the candidate “has a generic kind of belief in the divine destiny of America.”

But Robertson draws most heavily on a modified version of dominion theology, which grows out of what is known in ultraright religious circles as Reconstructionist thought. That controversial theology anticipates the gradual but inexorable control by Christians of society and government, resulting in the consensus that Old Testament laws should serve as guidelines for administering a harsh justice.

Robertson told an evangelical magazine last year that he has not embraced Reconstructionist teachings. “The Lord intends his people to exercise dominion in his name,” Robertson told Christianity Today. As a consequence, he said, “I admire many of these (Reconstructionist) teachings because they are in line with Scripture. But others I cannot accept because they do not correspond with the biblical view of the sinful nature of mankind or the necessity of the second coming of Christ.”

Cataclysmic Wars

An examination of what Robertson has said and written demonstrates that he believes that for Christians to “take dominion” over America, God will have to spur a revival of unprecedented dimensions. And for Jesus to return, cataclysmic wars and terrors would have to ensue as a precursor--again all at God’s bidding, according to Robertson.

In the fall of 1984, Robertson urged delegates to a convention of the Maranatha Campus Ministries to prepare to assume their rightful roles as caretakers of society.

“What do all of us do? We get ready to take dominion!” he said, predicting that the changes were five years away. “It is all going to be ours--I’m talking about all of it. Everything that you would say is a good part of the secular world. Every means of communication, the news, the television, the radio, the cinema, the arts, the government, the finance--it’s going to be ours! God’s going to give it to his people. We should prepare to reign and rule with Jesus Christ.”

In January of 1985, Robertson asserted that only Christians and Jews were qualified to run government.

Dominion Over Universe

“Individual Christians are the only ones really--and Jewish people, those who trust the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob--are the only ones that are qualified to have reign. . . . Who would be better to take dominion over the universe than those whom God has taken dominion over first?” he said on the “700 Club.”

Co-host Ben Kinchlow then asked: “Obviously you’re not saying that there are no other people qualified to be in government or whatever if they aren’t Christians or Jews?”

“Yeah, I’m saying that. I just said it,” Robertson replied.

In an interview with Time magazine last September, Robertson denied making those remarks. By December, however, he conceded to the New York Times that he had. However, he drew a distinction between his actions as a minister and as a presidential candidate.

“As an evangelical minister I have had a very strong point of view, and as an evangelical Christian I still do,” he told the newspaper. “As President of the United States I would have to administer that office, in a very dispassionate sense, in relation to all people.”

Robertson’s Disclaimers

Even with Robertson’s disclaimers, Harrell wrote that Robertson “must assure a majority of his fellow Americans that his views do not limit his foreign policy options and, above all, that they are not dangerous.”

Harrell noted in his biography that Robertson says his beliefs do not imply an end-times death wish. “God doesn’t want to incinerate the world,” Robertson was quoted as saying.

Nevertheless, some critics feel that Robertson as President would give inordinate attention to the fundamentalist-identified main players in the Armageddon drama.

“In Robertson’s view, an imperialistic Israel is biblically mandated,” said Toulouse of Texas Christian. “His reading of biblical prophecy causes him to take a particular view of the Soviet Union. The way he reads the Bible enables him to know who is evil and who is good.”

Israel’s establishment as a nation in 1948 is broadly interpreted by those with fundamentalist beliefs as the start of the “last days.” Some believe that one generation will not pass away from that time before Jesus and the kingdom of God will arrive.

Robertson had predicted several times around 1980 that two years later Russia would invade Israel and the “last days” would commence. When that didn’t happen, Robertson talked less about biblical prophecy, as it is called.

Answering the question “Are these the last days?” in a book published in 1984, Robertson said he “firmly” expects to be still living when Jesus Christ returns.