Profile: Lance Lambert

This may seem like shooting an ant with a bazooka, but that’s the sort of thing I do all the time. A reader asked us to have a look at the predictions of a self-proclaimed “prophet” named Lance Lambert, and it’s fairly tragic. Lambert’s site describes him as “one of the most distinguished Bible scholars and speakers in Israel today” and I suppose that may be right, if Israel has only one Bible scholar in it. Lambert claims to have been through the “school of African and Oriental studies at London University” but it was apparently for missions work; there’s no sign his education has prepared him to be a capable exegete, much less a “distinguished Bible scholar.”

In any event, it is not for exegesis that we address Lambert today; it is for a set of six reputed prophecies he has issued over the past two decades. Naturally the point is to ask if he’s anything that could be called a prophet and whether he passes the Deuteronomic test. Let’s look at those messages one at a time.

April 1986: This one’s the longest of the set and also the most specific – which doesn’t say much. There’s a prediction of “unparalleled upheaval and turmoil” as well as of “signs in sun and moon and stars,” “monetary collapses,” “natural disasters,” “old and new plague diseases,” and so on. All of this is too vague to be of much use; what does one mean by “unparalleled”? Of new types? Larger scope? It’s also not clear whether Lambert thinks any of this has been fulfilled or not.

However, when he does get specific enough, that’s where the problems start. After a few lines of exhortation, we get to this:

Do not fear the power of the Kremlin, nor the power of the Islamic Revolution, for I plan to break both of them through Israel. I will bring down their pride and their arrogance, and shatter them because they have blasphemed My Name.

Hmm, well – that’s one for two down, anyway, but I guess someone hasn’t heard – Israel didn’t break the Kremlin. I suppose Lambert had a standard dispensational twist on Ezekiel 38-9 in mind there, but that scenario was pretty much DOA some time ago. Unless of course, he means the current “Kremlin” under Putin now. Which we’re sure he meant back in 1986, too.

Several more paragraphs of exhortation follow, and there’s nothing in it that could be called a prediction save a pledge that Israel would be converted to Christianity. Still waiting, I guess.

November 1992: Long, but not quite as long as the last one. There’s vague warnings of “political, economic, religious and physical upheavals,” of the coming antichrist (sorry – no points for copying the Bible there, even if you’re a dispensationalist), of whom it is said, “his hour has come.” The most specific portion: “One super power I have cast down, and another I am about to judge.” And that’s only half prediction. But for some reason, no correction to the prior prophecy saying that “superpower” would be taken down by Israel.

Other than that – more exhortation, and more, and more warnings. It’s maybe one sentence of testable prediction mixed with several paragraphs of exhortation. Sure doesn’t give us much to judge with.

November 1998: God’s mad now: There’s yet more vague predictions of natural and economic disaster and then piles more exhortation. You have to ask: What would constitute fulfillment of these vague predictions? Even a mild recession could be grasped as an economic judgment, as vague as these prophecies are.

August 2006: The vague predictions continue; there’s a profession that converts will be culled from the old Marxist and current Islamic nations, with the latter’s power being broke. We can be fair -- that one may not be done yet.

April 2010: God’s mad again, and there’s more vague troubles ahead, the same ones as before, plus now even climate problems – kind of a late start on that one, though, since climate trouble has been in the news for decades. Also a prediction that “old and powerful nations will become as if they are third world countries, super powers will no longer be super powers but countries such as India and China will arise to take their place.” It seems to me that’s been predicted by economic forecasters for a while now. Maybe God read their books.

April 2011: Big message: Israel will convert, lots of them. More than last time this was predicted, I hope. Current unrest in the Arab world is said to be “an enormous gain for militant Islam,” though we are assured Israel will still be the winner. And watch out, once again, the last superpower is about to be judged. And God means it this time.

So what’s it all boil down to? Lambert’s prophecies are 93% exhortation/warning, 2% reuse of dispensational themes, 3% too vague to be of much use, and 2% “fresh” – with about half of that having already failed. If it seems silly to belabor such an insignificant mite as Lambert, consider that Harold Camping has done much the same thing, and all the damage he’s caused. Perhaps the only difference between the two in practical terms is that Lambert didn’t come up with as good of a publicity machine. That that is the major difference between the two is fairly disturbing.