As my dad pulled a mobile home out of its berth, the hired man was appointed to watch. He watched as a power line slowly went across the roof, snagged the chimney, and pulled it off. Afterwards he told dad, "Hey, I figured that was going to happen!"
The problem with dispisensationalism is that it breeds a generation of passive spectators, convinced that they can't do a damn thing about that which is ordained to happen. I mean, if God Himself has ordained the failure of the gospel within history, who am I to resist God by proclaiming the power and hope of the gospel?
TOM!
The Jesus who questioned if he would find faith when he returned is the same Jesus who told us we would definitely take his gospel to all the ends of the earth.
Paul told us what to expect in Thessalonians - intense trouble followed by His glorious return.
I have found that it is Calvinism that causes men to sit on their hands and wait out the inevitable - especially when the theology is in the hands of someone who really just want’s to be lazy anyway. Get the point?
“The problem with dispisensationalism is that it breeds a generation of passive spectators, convinced that they can’t do a damn thing about that which is ordained to happen”
Tom, your Dad sounds like we was a person with a lot of skills. But I’d be willing to be he’s not the one who taught you to PAINT WITH SUCH A BROAD BRUSH!
It is my personal experience that dispensationalism injects Christians with a sense of Godly urgency - urgency to reach the lost of this world for the hour is late.
“I mean, if God Himself has ordained the failure of the gospel within history, who am I to resist God by proclaiming the power and hope of the gospel?”
More silliness! You are very silly today. What gives??? Surely you don’t really believe your own strawman arguments!
But, Tom, the return of Jesus to this earth to reign from his throne in Jerusalem is part of the everlasting Gospel. To deny such is to deny an integral part of the Gospel itself. So who is really failing here?
There is theory, and then there is practice. Thank God that the Holy Spirit does not abandon us to our logical conclusions. I am a Calvinist (5 point), and yet the "logical" follow to that is that we need not present the gospel because..., well, you have already heard the rest of that objection many times(and doubtless answered it!). There were great missionary movements launched by the Holy Spirit through men who understood God's sovereign grace, as you doubtless know.
It is also true that Hudson Taylor and a whole gaggle of other godly men passionately expended themselves (in a way to make most of us ashamed) to bring the gospel to the lost. They were clearly dispensationalists.
If God waited for theological purity for reclaiming this rebellious world, the disciples would never have made it out of Jerusalem.
End times fever, "holiness" navel gazing, hypercalvinist indifference to the lost, there are gazillions of ways the evil one will subvert all of us from the goal. Thank God for the Spirit of Christ, or none of us would do anything.
Grace to you,
DoP