Former Talk Show Host Donates His Anti-Rapture Books to Research Center at UCLA
by Staff
September 10, 2009
LOS ANGELES, (christiansunite.com) -- Former radio and television personality, Joe Ortiz, added his recently published books to an existing collection of recordings and material documenting his career now housed at the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA.Ortiz several years ago donated approximately 20 boxes filled with tape recordings of his radio shows, articles he generated throughout his 35 year career as a journalist and public relations consultant, including numerous awards, photos and other memorabilia.
Ortiz' books include The End Times Passover [Etymological Challenges to Millenarian Doctrines] and Why Christians Will Suffer Great Tribulation [The Sequel to the End Times Passover] both published by Author House Publishing in Indiana. He also donated a copy of a book he wrote in 1983, Saved? What Do You Mean Saved? published by GBM Books.
Ortiz, a Bible Orthodox Christian, wrote the three books between 1982 and 2000 while working as a teacher at Los Angeles City Schools, a press deputy to Los Angeles Councilman John Ferraro, a news reporter at KPFK-FM and operating his own public relations agency since 1988.
"I seriously undertook a challenge I believe came from God, to debunk the Pre-Tribulation Rapture and the dispensational, premillennial dogma being promulgated by certain segments of the right-wing evangelical community," stated Ortiz.
"I have always enjoyed research work and noticed that much of the popular Left Behind rhetoric prevalent in the church these past four decades is pure mythology and is definitely not biblical."
Dr. Chon Noriega, the Director of the Chicano Studies Research Center, met last week with Joe Ortiz and his wife Martha and officially accepted the books on behalf of the center at UCLA.
"The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center is honored to receive a gift of three books for its library holdings from noted journalist and author Joe Ortiz," said Dr. Chon Noriega, Director of the center.
"The End Times Passover and its sequel, Why Christians Will Suffer Great Tribulation, add valuable insights into many of the most tumultuous debates going on in Christian scholarship today," said Noriega, who added Ortiz also donated the original manuscript he completed in 1986 on an old typewriter.
Noriega added The End Times Passover and Why Christians Will Suffer Great Tribulation are a welcome addition to the Joe Ortiz Papers and radio interviews, documenting an historical communications career spanning between 1968 to the present. Ortiz is the first Mexican American in US history to conduct a talk show on an English-language, commercial radio station, among other accomplishments.
