Jack Van Impe

Jack Van Impe
Born Jack Leo Van Impe
February 9, 1931
Troy, Michigan
Education diploma, Detroit Bible Institute
Occupation Evangelist, Author, Apocalyptic Bible Prophet, Biblical Scholar, TV show host, Television Personality
Known for Founder of Jack Van Impe Ministries International (JVIM)
Host of the Jack Van Impe Presents syndicated TV program
Title Dr. Jack Van Impe
Religion Evangelical Christian, Baptist
Spouse(s) Rexella Mae Shelton, (1954 - present)
Website
http://www.jvim.com

Jack Leo Van Impe (born February 9, 1931)[1][2] is an American televangelist who is known for his half-hour weekly television series Jack Van Impe Presents, an eschatological commentary on the news of the week through his interpretation of the Bible. The program airs throughout the United States, Canada, and several other countries through both religious broadcasters and the purchase of paid programming time on commercial television stations. Van Impe's website, http://jvim.org/, claims that he is known as the "Walking Bible" because of his extensive memorization of Bible verses.[3] His wife Rexella Van Impe (born Rexella Mae Shelton on November 29, 1932, in Missouri[4]) shares his TV ministry as co-host. Rexella was named after her father, Rex Shelton.

Background

Van Impe's parents, Oscar Alphonse Van Impe and Marie Louise, née Piot, immigrated from Belgium to the city of Troy, Michigan in the United States in 1929.

According to Jack, he and his father Oscar played the accordion at night clubs, and Oscar regularly swore and drank alcohol, and believed that religion was hogwash. At meals, Jack would drink alcoholic beverages along with his father which is a European tradition. Then when Jack was twelve years old, Oscar converted to evangelical Christianity, and Oscar and Jack together smashed all of their bottles of alcoholic beverages, and since that event Jack Van Impe has not drunk any alcohol. This was a major turning point in Jack's life.

Van Impe then played accordion duets with his missionary father across Michigan and other states. In 1948, Van Impe graduated from high school and entered Detroit Bible Institute, earning his diploma in 1952 and beginning his career as a preacher and evangelist as well as an extensive recording career. Jack notes that during his years working with the Billy Graham crusades, when he was at a Youth For Christ rally with Chuck Ohman, Van Impe met his future wife, Rexella, who was an organist with the crusades. The couple were married on August 21, 1954, and started their own joint ministry.

Since the 1950s, Van Impe has released dozens of Gospel and spoken word recordings. His first album Presenting the Van Impes features Van Impe on the accordion as well as Rexella's organ playing. Subsequent musical recordings featured the accorgan, a type of electronic accordion.

Education

According to his official magazine, Van Impe has 15 doctorates, the most recent of which was obtained in 2004 from Pacific International University, a non-accredited conservative Christian university.[5]

Jack Van Impe Ministries

Jack Van Impe Presents is a non profit organization, videotaped at the Jack Van Impe Ministries World Outreach Center, in Rochester Hills, Michigan. Impe's wife Rexella cohosts the telecast.

On a typical show, Rexella begins by reading recent news headlines. Van Impe then applies his memorization of Bible verses to interpret the news stories, generally in an attempt to show that it is another manifestation of biblically-predicted signs of the end of the age.

Twice during the broadcast, once in the middle of the broadcast and once at the end, announcer Chuck Ohman, who many years before was a trumpeter for Percy B. Crawford's "Youth on the March" television broadcasts, describes a DVD that is being sold by the ministry, and how to order. Near the end of the broadcast, Jack looks at the camera and makes a personal prayer to Jesus, and he asks the viewers to make the prayer with him. At the end of the broadcast, Rexella says the goodbyes. On the Christmas broadcast and the Easter broadcast, they play a video of Rexella singing a song in her younger years.

Recurring topics include a New World Order consisting of one world government and one world religion, prophecies of future wars and the second coming of Jesus, modern "Chrislam", differences between the biblical Jesus and the Jesus of Islam, the proposed United Nations blasphemy law and radical Islam, the removal of crosses from churches, the importance of doctrine, and criticism of such individuals as Pope Francis, Barack Obama, Rick Warren, Robert Schuller, Joel Osteen, and Oprah Winfrey. Jack also cites numerous Bible verses, with emphasis on various select verses that are his favorites. Jack uses the King James version of the Bible.

Conflict with TBN

In June of 2011, Trinity Broadcasting Network refused to air an episode of Jack Van Impe Presents which criticized Robert Schuller and Rick Warren for promoting "Chrislam". In response, Jack Van Impe ceased airing his show on TBN.

Biblical prophecy beliefs

Van Impe believes the literal meaning of the bible; (King James Version); that state: according to Revelation 13, a single world political leader (The Beast) and a single world religious leader (the false prophet) will emerge, but the rapture will happen before either leader comes to power. He believes the Bible teaches that the world will be organized into ten political subdivisions, based on the ten-district plan set up by the Club of Rome,[6] and that this ten-division world empire will be jointly ruled by the European Union and the Islamic world, which Jack believes are represented by the two iron legs of the prophetic dream statue in the Book of Daniel. Jack believes in the Prophesy of the Popes, and that according to said prophesy, Pope Francis is Peter the Roman, the predicted pope who will preside during armageddon.

Jack van Impe preaches a Pre-Tribulation Rapture of 'The Body of Christ'.

Van Impe also believes a one-world religion will form, named "Chrislam", the joining of the world's two largest religions, Christianity and Islam. Jack believes the Bible states that the world political leader will "come in peaceably" (per Daniel 11:21) and create a seven-year peace deal involving Israel (per Daniel 9:27). Then, three and a half years into the peace, Russia (the interpreted meaning of 'Rosh' from Ezekiel 38:2 and 39:1; Jack also identifies Meshech and Tubal from the same passages as Moscow and Tobolsk respectively), along with its Middle Eastern allies ('Persia, Cush, and Put', from Ezekiel 38:5), will break the peace by invading Israel, according to Ezekiel 38, and the military of Russia and its allies will be decimated by nuclear warfare and pushed back to Siberia. Then China (the interpreted meaning of 'kings from the east' from Revelation 16:12) will invade, and the military of China will likewise be decimated when Jesus returns.

Health problems

In one episode of Jack Van Impe Presents which aired in the week of June 19, 2006, Van Impe disclosed that he had undergone two total knee replacements in early 2006. He gave thanks to God for his recovery and for leading him to the "wonderful surgeon" who did the operation. Subsequent to the problems with his knees, Jack has suffered from cancer, a severe sepsis attack, and blood loss resulting from holes burned through his stomach by his NSAID arthritis medication.

Criticisms

In 2001, Jack and Rexella Van Impe "won" the parodic Ig Nobel Prize in Astrophysics for their assertion that "black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell."[7]

On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Kimmel mocked Van Impe for stating that the word "computer" added up to 666 by adding up the number of each letter in the word multiplied by 6, and for saying that the antichrist will use computers to keep track of people. Kimmel further criticized Jack Van Impe Ministries for giving instructions on how to access and download content from their website, right after talking about how evil computers are.[8]

References

  1. ↑ Jack Van Impe at the Internet Movie Database
  2. ↑ Religious Leaders of America, 2nd ed., Gale Group, 1999
  3. ↑ Jack Van Impe website, "About" section
  4. ↑ Jack Van Impe Presents, 12 May 2012
  5. ↑ Vancil, Ken (2004). "Now it's Dr. and Dr. Van Impe" (PDF). Today (September/October): 25. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
  6. ↑ Announced in “Regionalized and Adaptive Model of the Global World System,” as part of the Strategy for Survival Project. This revealed the Club's goal of dividing the world into ten political/economic regions which would unite the entire world under a single form of government. These regions are: North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Rest of Developed World, Latin America, Middle East, Rest of Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and China. The same plan was published in a Club of Rome book called Mankind at the Turning Point: Club of Rome Report, REGIONALIZED AND ADAPTIVE MODEL OF THE GLOBAL WORLD SYSTEM, Report on the Progress in the STRATEGY FOR SURVIVAL PROJECT of the Club of Rome, Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel, Directors, "C O N F I D E N T I A L," September 17, 1973.
  7. ↑ "The 2001 Ig Nobel Prize Winners". improbable.com. Retrieved January 1, 2013.
  8. ↑ "Computers = 666!?". Jimmy Kimmel Live!. YouTube. Retrieved January 1, 2013.

External links