PTRC: Social Action and Dispensationalism
What with how so many within and without the ECM are jettisoning the doctrine of the Blessed Hope and placing eschatology on the shelf as de facto "disposable doctrine" in favor of a social gosp-- er, I mean, "social justice"... ahem... I found this article regarding social involvement within a dispensational framework to be very interesting.
Yes, yes, I know. Tommy Ice is the devil. Blah blah blah.
Read the article. It's spot-on.
This is another great one.
Labels:
Christianity,
doctrine,
Emerging/Emergent,
spirituality,
theology
3 comments:
Many good things here Mike. I could do without Missler, but the IceMan is pretty good.
I think that anytime we "blame" a certain end-times viewpoint for this or that we quickly get ourselves into trouble. I remember when David Hocking came to our church and blamed the hatred of the Jews on the Amil. position. Yikes!!!!
It's easy to make sweeping accusations against those who hold to differing beliefs. I've noticed strengths in both camps. I've also noticed weaknesses. Pre-mil/pretrib folks sometimes go overboard with their theories. They get distracted from the more important things. Amils often times play down end-times talk or don't talk about it at all.
Again, our blessed hope should be Christ...not the pretrib rapture. The fact is most of us won't be alive when this happens anyway. We'll grow old and die.
Let's prepare our folks for that reality--whether we die first or that He comes for us. As an old crusty dispensational guy myself, let's stop writing end-times fiction and creating hype with every new current event, but teach Christ and his glory. He reigns from heaven and will come back to judge the living and the dead.
Yep; being dispensational doesn't guarantee anti-antisemitism any more than being an amil guarantees antisemitism.
To be fair, it is awfully difficult to be a consistent dispie and an anti-semite...
Now, Shane, I love you, but you force me to repeat myself on a very important issue here. You say, "
Again, our blessed hope should be Christ...not the pretrib rapture."
To artificially cut away a longing for Jesus' return from a longing for Jesus Himself is nonsensical - and disingenuous.
Like I'd said earlier; if I am longing for my wife to return from a long trip, and I'm anticipating her at-any-moment arrival through the door of our small yet tiny house, all the more poignant since the Wings boogered their shot at the Cup this year, it's nonsensical in the extreme to artificially distinguish between my longing for her immanent return and my longing for her. The former is an organic and necessary extension of the latter.
Our Blessed Hope is the immanent return of Jesus (which by necessary extension is the pretrib Rapture - since any other timing of His return for the church obliterates the concept of immanency) - which is inextricable from our longing for He Himself. To lop off our excitement at the fact that He could return at any moment from our expectation of He Himself is sophistry.
And while as a dispie I agree we very well could be dead by the time He does come back for His Church, as a matter of non-theological course I honestly don't expect it. I expect to be caught up a split second after the dead in Christ preceed us to meet the Lord in the air.
He could return in a thousand years.
I honestly hope rather fervently that He doesn't wait a thousand seconds.
And my hope cannot be wrenched from the immediate corollary of my great anticipation of He Himself.
We'll have to agree to disagree on this old buddy. I don't think that the issue is as important as you make it out to be.
We are all going to die--that's what the majority of us will face. If, for some odd reason, you and I messed up and He returns after the tribulation, that doesn't take away from my love and longing for my Saviour. It only intensifies it.
I'm looking at this from the vantage point of how doctrine influences our daily lives. Can you honestly say that most, if hardly any, live each day as if the Rapture could happen? Is it really producing this "hyper-spirituality" that some claim? I don't think so. I've actually seen the opposite. People DO get burnt out on end-times hype. I've seen this in Calvary--I've seen it in my Baptist circles. There must be something better.
I believe that "walking in the Spirit" produces this...and, of course, our Blessed Hope...namely, that Christ will someday return for us...or, I could get hit by a truck today....either way, I'm walking close with Him, looking forward to being with Him, and living each day like it could be my last.
I'm trying to daily walk with Him...devotions, Bible reading, prayer, worship, etc, etc.
With this emphasis, I don't think that your end-times view will drastically change anything. It might mean more money for Missler and LaHaye, but it's not going to make me any holier.
Were on the same page, but we see the practical application of the doctrine differently....
I personally believe that hockey watching leads to Jew hating...so there....just joking.
:)
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