It has been three months since the highly effective prewrath documentary Seven Pretrib Problems and the Prewrath Rapture has been released.
I was hopeful that there would be some meaningful interaction with it from pretribbers. But regrettably there has been only crickets.
Recently, I learned that pretribulationist Michael Nissim was going to do a review series on the documentary. But my hopes began to be dashed when I watched the first two installments of his series (here and here).
At the outset, he
i. gives the wrong title of the prewrath documentary.
ii. fails to give the names of those who produced the documentary or contributed to it.
iii. omits a link in the show notes to the documentary that he purports to respond to! Pretribs are notoriously for this; as if they don’t trust their readers to think for themselves. Prewrathers cite and link sources—as I just did above!—but pretribulationists seem to neglect this basic feature of interaction and courtesy for readers. [UPDATE: Nissim added the link to the documentary after I posted this article].
iv. omits any interaction with the documentary! Since he explicitly states that he is responding to the documentary, one would think that he would . . . interact with it.
v. and finally—and worse—he miserably misrepresents the prewrath position. The first two videos are riddled with blunders and strawmen. I question whether he actually watched the documentary, since he does not show basic familiarity with the position.
So why am I making this critique now and not when he is finished with the series? Because I value meaningful interaction. Perhaps Nissim will reevaluate the way he is going about this.
Many pretribulationists may look to his series as an “answer” to the documentary and if it is poorly done, it will not bode well for pretribulationism.
I still hold out hope that he can produce a helpful critique of the prewrath documentary, in which I and others would be able to learn and benefit from it.
So I encourage him to rethink his misrepresentations and competently engage in a review that meaningfully interacts with actual statements and specific prewrath arguments from the documentary (using clips from the documentary are fair use).
So I am not going to write-off his critique at this point. I will give him a chance to demonstrate that the documentary has failed to make a prewrath case. But he will have to substantively change the way he is going about this. We shall see.
