The Troubling Worldview of the 'Rapture Ready' Christian
Be sure to read and comment on my latest column regarding end-times mania and the troubling theological and political implications of the popular pretribulational/dispensational teachings.
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About Me
- Bill Barnwell
- I am a 27 year old pastor in mid-Michigan and hold Master's degrees in both Ministry and Theology. I'm also a freelance writer on religious and cultural issues. Amongst places I have been featured or cited are: The American Conservative, LewRockwell.com, Antiwar.com, Campus Report, EnterStageRight.com, The Washington Times, a high school textbook from Gale Publishing, and several college and university publications amongst other places. The views expressed on this page are solely my own. They do not reflect the views of any particular church, denomination or other entity.
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14 comments:
Bill, your article was enlightening because it showed how some rigidly held beliefs may cause significant problems when combined with power. I've heard that many that hold political office in the federal government have dispensationalist views. How this can color an agenda!
I found it interesting to compare and contrast your discussion of dispensationalism to the Roman Catholic Church's interpretation of the Rapture:
http://www.catholic.com/library/Rapture.asp
also see this discussion
http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac1005.asp
Bill, you astutely observe that the average pre-tribber mentality is in some ways aggressive (statist/militarist) as well as passive (apathetic/anti-intellectual).
The former attitude reminds me of the old communist and Nazi excuses for state mayhem: that it is inevitable, being decreed respectively by History or Nature. Substituting the word "God" doesn't change the philosophy. It conditions Christians to regard moral condemnation of American political tyranny as pointless and "unspiritual." As a matter of practical holiness, it makes them (and their children) easy marks for brainwashing and seduction into the very wickedness they refuse to contest.
About 17 years ago I attended a church where they had a visiting Russian pastor deliver a guest sermon. The USSR had just fallen. He said the great need of Russian Christians was to develop a political philosophy. Nobody commented on this, but it was an astounding (even heretical) suggestion by American evangelical standards. At that same church (different night), a young adult pastor gave a sermon where he declared that he couldn't understand why Soviet Communism was despotic because "it started out with such a good idea."
My inaugural address at the Great White Throne Judgment of the Dead, after I have raptured out billions!
Read My Inaugural Address
My Site=http://www.angelfire.com/crazy/spaceman
Your jaw will drop!
It is amusing to see "Christians" arguing about the finer points of fantastic dogmas.
A better idea would be to look inside themselves and try to figure out why they are so compelled to split the world into categories of "saved" and "damned" in order to feel superior to other people.
ljarvi, I suggest you take your complaint up with Jesus regarding the whole "saved" and "damned" issue. It has nothing to do with "feeling superior" to anybody. Furthermore, it's nobody's place here on earth to judge the souls of individuals. That's God's business though by people's fruits we get a pretty good idea of what they stand for. Rather than just using this as an opportunity to whine about Christians, perhaps you should stick to the topic at hand.
I cannot understand how anyone can base their views of the future on a bronze age text that is rife with contradictions.
Harlon, the majority of scholars would date the gospel of Mark prior to 70AD. If such is the case, then we have a fulfilled prophecy right here in one of the texts in question, Mark 13, relating to the destruction of Jerusalem. Those who date Mark late do so because they have an a priori assumption that predictive prophecy is impossible. So much for looking at all the textual and extra textual evidence and having an open mind.
Bill, most dispensationalists that I know are fairly normal (there are ones I know of that are pretty wacky) in most areas of life. But when the subject of eschatology comes up, some kind of switch gets turned on and they go wacko. It's weird to see the difference in the two personalities.
Bill, the problem is that we really have no way to assess the textual integrity of the Gospels, apart from what we choose to believe, since the surviving most ancient versions of the texts are copies of copies of ... well, no one knows how many "generations" or even if there was a single original of each. I believe a number of scholars think at least two of the gospels have a common source text now lost, based on secular text-reading methods, of course.
So even if the great bulk of Mark predates the destruction of the Temple, the prophecy could be a post-facto interpellation. I'm not saying it is, but also not saying it isn't. Just that if we're going to invoke the historical a.k.a. temporal idea of "evidence," by the generally accepted methods of history, any conclusions in any direction must be provisional. We just don't know, except by "knowing" something else a priori (faith or disbelief in possiblity of predictive prophecy).
Also, ljarvi is wrong to project motives of superiority in belief regarding damnation onto all Christians. Still, there certainly are plenty who act pretty smug about it, to the point of advertising their smugness on bumper stickers.
One doesn't have to attribute bad motives, though, to experience the doctrine of eternal damnation, and some closely related claims about God's attitude to sin & sinners and about singularity of the path to salvation, as insurmountable obstacles to faith in any form of orthodox Christianity.
Thanks for your courage in arguing the case against dispensationalism.
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