It's easy to see that since President Bush was re-elected, the news media has upped its coverage of American Christianity.

The problem is they consistently choose to focus on the phony TV and mega-church evangelical preachers without making even the slightest effort at obtaining any opposing viewpoint (a fundamental rule of journalism).

In October, the New York Times devoted a whole Sunday "Week in Review" cover story to the subject of Bible dispensationalism and how it plays into interpretations of "end times" prophecy.

There were obvious errors anyone with even a peripheral understanding of Bible dispensationalism could have pointed out to them. At the same time, there was nothing in the story from any dispensational preacher!

If you simply type "Bible dispensationalism" into Google, the third listing from the top is a website for the Berean Bible Society, a Wisconsin-based international organization associated with hundreds of dispensational preachers nationwide, including one (Dennis Kiszonas) who even has a weekly radio program right here in Manhattan!

Any of them, I'm sure, would have been delighted to give the straight scoop to the Times, clearing up any confusion on dispensational matters before their story was put into print as "gospel" from the world's "paper of record."

Instead, the Times article, unbelievably, pointed to TV preachers Jerry Falwell, Jack Van Impe and John Hagee as leading dispensationalists! This is like listing Howard Dean as a candidate of the Conservative Right.

Falwell, as I pointed out in a piece just the other week (under the heading "Israel Lite," dated Dec. 18), takes a wholly unscriptural, non-literal view of the Bible, making him as far away from being a dispensationalist as the Dalai Lama is.

Falwell subscribes to formal submission to the "Great Commission," and sides with tongue-speaking, faith-healing Pentecostals and Charismatics, just to name a few red-flag indicators he has absolutely NO interest in or comprehension of dispensationalism.

Even if the Times had just done some elementary journalistic research into their own archives, they might have seen a problem with the fact that Falwell, in 1987, took over Charismatic Jim Bakker's PTL conglomerate and assigned board member positions to Charismatic preachers Richard Dortch, Rex Humbard and James Watts.

Falwell, as most of us easily remember, was the one who angered the public right after 9/11 when he got on Charismatic Pat Robertson's 700 Club and blamed the terrorist hijackings on gays, abortionists and others who've "thrown God out of the public square."

Guess what, Times, this ignorant rhetoric doesn't jive at all with dispensationalism! Under today's "dispensation of grace," God is purposely holding back His wrath and no negative event can be attributed to God executing judgment against wickedness.

Hagee, for another one, has been widely chastised for his statements that it's a "waste of time trying to convert Jews," clearly showing he, too, has NO grasp whatsoever of what dispensationalism teaches.

Dispensationalism, at its most basic, points to the epistles of the Apostle Paul (the only one to lay out the gospel message of salvation in the Bible) as delivering the distinct ministry, given by direct revelation from Jesus Christ, for both Jews and Gentiles alike to follow today.

Paul even uses the word "dispensation" four times in his writings and he's the only one in the entire Bible to use the term.

Dispensationalism's primary message of "grace, not law" precludes today's Jew and Gentile Believers, identified by Paul as "the members of that one body," from following the "law" edicts given by Jesus Christ specifically for Israel alone during His earthly ministry to fellow Jews laid out in the Four Gospels.

The Times article also incorrectly states that 19^th Century British evangelist John Nelson Darby introduced the concept of the Rapture! What?! Uh, excuse me, the Rapture (or the future moment when all Believers, buried and alive, are lifted into the sky and escorted into heaven by Jesus Christ) is something the Apostle Paul unveiled before the Bible was even completed! He wrote about it, in part, in I Cor. 15:51-52.

In another completely ignorant statement, the Times says Christians differ on precisely how the Second Coming will occur "depending on how each interprets a single verse in the 20^th chapter of the Book of Revelation and its allusion to a 1,000-year reign by Christ."

The entire Bible is jam-packed with allusions, picture-types and meticulously detailed prophecy regarding the ins and outs of the Second Coming. Bible students never stop being taught the intricacies of "the great and terrible day of the Lord."

All of this goes to show you, don't count on the media to even understand what the Bible says, much less employ basic journalism skills to give a balanced story. Instead, count on them to keep playing up all the phony churches and preachers, making you believe they represent God, the Bible and all Christians.