OP, did you get a "Plan of the Ages" mousepad? 
Posted on 09/06/2002 8:50:44 PM PDT by drstevej
Yup. As far as Calvinistic Dispensationalism goes, it probably doesn't get any better than old-school John Nelson Darby.
However, it's certainly possible to better one's self past and beyond the cul-de-sac of Dispensationalism in its entirety.
Been there, done that... out-grew it.
;-)
Best, OP
OP, did you get a "Plan of the Ages" mousepad?
And to think I had enough of flow-charts when I retired from the National Collegiate Debate circuit.
And hey, now -- what's this business about Revelation being at the End of the Church Age?
It's readily apparent that Revelation 1-19 is primarily a prophecy attendant to the beginning of the Church Age.
19 Chapters worth of Meredith Kline's "Covenantal Lawsuit" against Apostate Israel.
You must Kline your way up the Mountain of Understanding, FRiend. (bad pun)
I actually recently came to the decison that I was Christian first, Calvinist second, and Plymouth Brethren third. A distant third. I'm concerned by what I see in within the assemblies: there seems to be an almost arrogant supposition that we're better than the "denominations," because we follow "NT church principles," a buzzword which essentially translates that we have elders instead of clergy, our women wear head coverings (don't get me started on that. From an obscure passage an entire doctrine -- not just a practice -- was built.), and so forth. Little piddley stuff.
And of course, theres dispensational pre-millenialism. I'm not completely convinced by it. I certainly do not consider the dispensations to be anything other than a convenient man-made framework to note major shifts in God's program. But I lean more towards the covenant understanding of things -- but still make the dispensationalist distinction between the church and Israel.
I'm dismayed by the antipathy towards Calvinism to be found in the assemblies. I came within inches of leaving them altogether this past weekend. One of the outreaches the assemblies have is youth conferences that draw young people from all over the region. This past weekend, there was one about 25 or 30 miles from here. I wnated to hear the speaker, since I had heard good things about him. So I drove over on Friday, met up with friends I hadnt seen in a while, and so on. Now, generally the typical youth conference audience contains non-believers, carnal believers, weak believers, young believers, and a few strong ones. A lot of impressionable young people within those walls.
Well the speaker was discussing his testimony, and how "sin makes us stupid," etc. But he, for whatever reason, thought it a good idea to disparage Calvinism (specifically, limited atonement) in his message. Only took two minutes to do so -- using bad exegesis of I Tim. 4:10 (Christ is the savior of all men, especially of believers). I think he saw the glares from a few of us in the audience -- I was close to the front, debating in my mind whether to get up and walk out -- and quickly changed the subject.
I raged the whole drive back to my dorm. This man, before impressionable young minds, took a complicated doctrine, that of the definate atonement, and oversimplified it and disproved the oversimplified version. That was how I became an Arminian. What business did he have discussing definate atonement in an environment that is largely evangelistic?
Fast forward to Sunday. I am at the house of one of the elders from my assembly here at school. I told him about what happened -- he hit the roof. We saw eye-to-eye about this (he's a 5-pointer too). He agreed about the gravity of this, too. So there are like-minded people within the assemblies. Just not the one that sponsored the youth conference. I'll not go back there again.
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