DAVID JEREMIAH: PRETRIB PIRATE!

by Dave MacPherson

     Internationally known pretrib teacher David Jeremiah is a pastor in the San Diego, California area. Although to my knowledge he doesn't lift barbells in a gym for his health, he's an expert on lifting other things that have decidedly helped his wealth - wealth that has allowed him to live on nearby Coronado Island in a condo reportedly worth a cool two million dollars.

     Jeremiah has a good number of bestselling - and pretrib selling - books under his belt that almost never seem to go out of print. And that includes his 1990 book "Escape the Coming Night" which he co-authored with C. C. Carlson which is still available on Amazon etc.

     Twenty years ago, in 1997, I discovered that the same Jeremiah book had heavily plagiarized many pages in Hal Lindsey's 1973 book "There's A New World Coming"!  (Evidently none of Jeremiah's many readers during the first seven years of his book had had any inkling of his literary piracy.)

     You may be wondering what first led me to my discovery of the wholesale stealing. It may have been the description of the 144,000 as "Jewish Billy Grahams" - an unforgettable phrase I knew Lindsey had used.

      While comparing the two books in question, I found exactly 47 pages in Jeremiah's book that had massive plagiarism of Lindsey's book. Here is just a tiny portion of Jeremiah's role as pirate - for which he has never, to my knowledge, apologized:

              
     [NOTE: Quotes from Hal Lindsey's 1973 book "There's A New World       Coming" (NW) will be followed by the plagiarism of them in David
 Jeremiah's 1990 book "Escape the Coming Night" (E).]

     (1) NW, p. 66: The symbolic church of "Philadelphia" was from "1750-1925" - the "great missionary era" of "Wesley, Whitefield...Spurgeon, and Moody...."    
          E, p. 54: "The symbolic "Church of Philadelphia" was "from 1750 until around 1925" - "the period of great missionary outreach" of   "John Wesley, George Whitfield, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, D. L. Moody...."

     (2) NW, p. 123: The 144,000 will be "Jewish Billy Grahams."
          E, p. 121: The 144,000 will be "Jewish Billy Grahams."

     (3) NW, p. 144: "Over a century ago, before America groaned under the present crime wave, Joseph Seiss, the author of The Apocalypse, predicted on the basis of Revelation 9:21 that capital punishment would have been largely abolished by the time of the Tribulation!"
          E, p. 132: "Over a century ago, before we groaned under the present crime wave, J. A. Seiss, author of The Apocalypse, predicted, on the basis of Revelation 9:21, that capital punishment would be largely abolished by the time of the Tribulation."

     (4) NW, p. 173: "God...one of Your children down on earth, Hal Lindsey, just blew it in his Christian life....Lucifer...I let My Son...take the penalty for Hal's sins....You haven't got a case against Hal."
          E, p. 155: "God, did you notice David Jeremiah down there in California? He really blew it today in his so-called Christian life....[Satan], I paid the penalty for his sins upon the cross, so drop this case...."

     (5) NW, p. 251: "...the heavenly preparation for Jesus' return...revolves around five thunderous, resounding shouts of 'Praise the Lord!'... which is sung in unison by angels, Old Testament saints, Tribulation saints, and Church saints."

          E, p. 200:"Five shouts of 'Praise the Lord' resound throughout heaven as there is a great preparation for Jesus' return. The angels, the Old Testament saints, the church saints, and the Tribulation saints will raise their voices in a choir which will reverberate louder than thunder."

     After my discovery I alerted Thomas Nelson, the publisher of the Jeremiah/Carlson book, and said I would be glad to send photocopies of all the plagiarism for their inspection.

      What happened after I sent them a huge stack of evidence is absolutely stunning! The head of the legal department wrote me and stated that

 "We at Thomas Nelson are very concerned about this matter. Accordingly, we are destroying all our current inventory of this title and will not reprint the book."

      But what he said was a huge lie. They never destroyed a single copy of the offending book and have continued to publish it and send royalties to Jeremiah and Carlson since 1990!

      I wrote a separate article about this unbelievable Thomas Nelson scandal and titled it "Thieves' Marketing." And I am grateful that my good friend Treena Gisborn aired it on her excellent "Wolves in Sheep's Clothing" blog several months ago on May 8th.

      I wonder how soon a certain pirate will have to walk the plank!