You probably already know this about me – I like
the weird. I like the strange. And I especially like the weird and the strange
in the field of eschatology – the study of end things and last days. I recently
picked up the book Final Warnings by
Carl Gallups at my local public library. As I picked it up from the shelf, I
wondered how many books have been written with that title. Although not an exhaustive search, by any
means, a quick glance at Amazon reveals – lots.
Gallups insists that he’s not like those other guys who’ve written books about the last days. He’s not setting dates or trying to convince you that the rapture of the church is imminent. No. Gallups is not a dispensationalist pre-tribulation premillennialist. No. He’s different. But once you get past that bit of difference in the minutia, Gallups is very much like the rest of the writers on this field. Put him right up there with Tim LaHaye, John Haggee, and Hal Lindsey finding “literal” modern military equipment in the figurative and symbolic visions of John’s Apocalypse.
What sets Gallup apart from many of the others, however, is his insistence that the 1986 meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine was the Third Trumpet of the Revelation. He believes that this catastrophic disaster was the “great star” that fell from heaven, “burning as it were a lamp,” falling on the “third part of the rivers, and upon the fountain of the waters...” (Revelation 8:10 -11) Gallups is quite convinced that Chernobyl is the Ukrainian word for “wormwood.” In fact, he spends the largest percentage of the book trying to prove this point. It is the linchpin of his eschatology. He builds everything forward and backward from that fixed point.
It’s ridiculous, of course. But don’t let that stop you – it certainly didn’t stop Gallups from writing the book.
I will give Gallups credit though – he includes a quote from Pontypool, one of my favorite Canadian horror movies, as the epigraph to one of the chapters.
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