Archive for the ‘eschatology’ Category

I have been taught dispensationalism for most of my life growing up in Southern Baptist Churches but more recently have been finding biblical texts that seem to contradict what I have been taught. This is an excerpt from a publication that I found on another message board. I have taken a few of the points out of the 95 they stated to establish some of the reasons why I am no longer considering myself as a dispensationalist.

Quote:
Originally Posted by 95 thesis against dispensationalism
58. Despite the dispensationalists’ widespread belief that we have been living in the “last
days” only since the founding of Israel as a nation in 1948, the New Testament clearly and
repeatedly teach that the “last days” began in the first century and cover the whole period of
the Christian Church (Acts 2:16-17; 1 Cor 10:11; Heb 1:1-2; 9:26)

59. Despite the dispensationalists’ claim that the expectation of the imminent Rapture and
other eschatological matters are important tools for godly living, dispensationalism’s founders
were often at odds with each other and divisive regarding other believers, so that, for
instance, of the Plymouth Brethren it could be said that “never has one body of Christians
split so often, in such a short period of time, over such minute points” (John Gerstner) and
that “this was but the first of several ruptures arising from [Darby’s] teachings” (Dictionary
of Evangelical Biography).

60. Contrary to the dispensationalists’ creation of a unique double coming of Christ—the
Rapture being separated from the Second Advent—which are so different that it makes
“any harmony of these two events an impossibility” (Walvoord), the Bible mentions only one
future coming of Christ, the parousia, or epiphany, or revelation (Matt. 24:3; 1 Cor. 15:23; 1
Thess. 3:13; 4:15; 5:23; 2 Thess. 2:1, 8; Jas. 5:7; 2 Pet. 3:4; 1 Jn. 2:28), and states that He
“shall appear a second time” (Heb 9:28a), not that He shall appear “again and again” or for a
third time.

61. Despite the dispensationalists’ teaching that “Jesus will come in the air secretly to
rapture His Church” (Tim LaHaye), their key proof-text for this “secret” coming, 1 Thess
4:16, makes the event as publicly verifiable as can be, declaring that he will come “with a shout,
with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God.”

62. Contrary to dispensationalism’s doctrine of two resurrections, the first one being of
believers at the Rapture and the second one of unbelievers at the end of the millennium 1007
years after the Rapture, the Bible presents the resurrection of believers as occurring on “the
last day” (John 6:39-40, 44, 54; 11:24), not centuries before the last day.

63. Contrary to dispensationalism’s doctrine of two resurrections, the first one being of
believers at the Rapture and the second one of unbelievers at the end of the millennium 1007
years after the Rapture, the Bible speaks of the resurrection of unbelievers as occurring
before that of believers (though as a part of the same complex of events), when the angels
“first gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up” at the end of the age
(Matt 13:30b).