Posted on 05/22/2015 4:54:44 PM PDT by OK Sun
I have been taught Dispensationalism from my mother’s womb. I was born in a dispensational environment. It was assumed at my church to be a part of the Gospel. There was never another option presented. It made sense. It helped me put together the Scriptures in a way that cleared up so much confusion. And, to be honest, the emphasis on the coming tribulation, current events that prove the Bible’s prophecy, the fear that the Antichrist may be alive today (who is he?) was all quite exciting. But what might be the biggest attraction for me is the charts! Oh how I love charts. I think in charts. And dispensationalism is a theology of charts!
The first time I came across someone who was not a Dispensationalist was in 1999. I am not kidding. It was the first time! I don’t think I even knew if there was another view. It was when I was a student at Dallas Theological Seminary (the bastion of Dispensationalism) and I was swimming with some guys who were at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Once they discovered I was a dispensationalist, they giggled and snickered. They made fun of the rapture, the sacrificial system during the millennium, and the mark of the beast (which, at that time, was some type of barcode). It was as if they patted me on the head and said “It’s okay . . . nice little dispensationalist.” I was so angry. I was humiliated. I was a second-rate theologian. They were “Covenantalists” (whatever that was). But they were the cool guys who believed in the historic Christian faith and I was the cultural Christian, believing in novel ideas.
(Excerpt) Read more at reclaimingthemind.org ...
You're right, it took a lot of prayer and struggle and STUDY, but I will no longer fear being tossed around by every wind of doctrine that comes along. The questions always are: WHO SAID IT? WHO WERE THEY SAYING IT TO? AND WHAT WERE THEY SAYING? Find the dispensation and the questions answer themselves. :) God Bless, smvoice
Not if they are Protestant, as their historic faith rests on a rebellion in the Sixteenth Century and a reformation of historic Christianity. Yet there are surviving elements of sanctification and truth in said faith communities.
That will be my new tagline, with your permission. It certainly describes me!
Does wrath equal the great tribulation?
Maybe the great tribulation is the last straw that triggers the wrath of God. Just as God waited for the iniquity of the Amorites to be complete(Genesis 15) before he allowed Israel to enter the promised land, perhaps God will wait with patience in the last days for the iniquity of the world to be complete before sending His wrath.
HERETIC!
Simple definition of Dispensationalism: American Christians will be saved from trials because God knows they’re not ready to suffer or die like the true church always has.
**Do you think those two gospels are the same?**
“Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:” Col. 1:12,13
You are either in darkness, or in light.
**If they are, why are they referred to differently? Why not say the gospel of the kingdom if that is what Paul was preaching?**
Consider these phrases that describe the same Holy Ghost baptism experience:
1. Of couse, the tarrying in Jerusalem for the ‘promise of the Father’.
2. The actual pouring out of the Holy Ghost in Acts 2.
3. The conversion of Cornelius and his household.
Peter, and they of the circumcision, realized that the Gentiles had received the same gift for they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God.
10:44 “...the Holy Ghost fell on all them that heard the word.”
10:45 “...on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost.”
10:47 “..have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?”
(’received’ here, and ‘receive’ in John 20:22, but the same Greek word)
11:15 “..the Holy Ghost fell on them, as on US at the BEGINNING.”
11:17 “God gave them the like gift as he did unto us who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ..”.
As we can see from those passages, there were several ways to explain the same experience:
‘filled with the Holy Ghost’ (Acts 2:4)
‘the Holy Ghost fell on all them’
‘poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost’
‘received the Holy Ghost’
‘the Holy Ghost fell on them’
‘the like gift’
Peter refers to that Pentecost experience as the ‘beginning’, and that the Gentiles’ experience was the same.
That will be my new tagline, with your permission. It certainly describes me!
When the colleges got involved in the Bible they played havoc.
I'll start with the question: "Do you think those two gospels are the same?"
See Luke 9:1-6 and see clearly: at that time they did not even know that Christ was to die. Read Luke 18:31-34. Note they did not have the slightest idea that Christ was to die. And yet, they were preaching the gospel of the kingdom and had been, for two years or longer.
Paul specifically states that the gospel of the grace of God is the preaching of the cross (1 Cor. 1:18), that Christ died FOR OUR SINS, was buried and rose again. That is the gospel of the grace of God. That by trusting in that finished work of Christ, we are saved by grace through faith in that finished work.
So, if the gospel of the grace of God is all about the preaching of the cross, and Peter and the 11 preached a gospel that obviously did not preach about the cross (they had no idea He what He was talking about when He predicted His death), how can they be the same gospel? They cannot.
The gospel which they preached was the "gospel of the kingdom" (Matt. 9:35, Luke 9:2), not the "preaching of the cross"(1 Cor. 1:18).
Here is another illustration> Luke 9:6 says that the apostles "departed, and went through the towns, PREACHING THE GOSPEL". It is assumed that they went forth preaching salvation through the cross, the gospel of the grace of God. Yet Luke 18:31-34 makes it clear that they had NO IDEA Christ would even die. Luke 9 makes this seeming contradiction all plain, for in verse 2 we read "And He sent them to preach THE KINGDOM OF GOD", NOT His death for sin.
Can you see the difference?
Exactly. Which is why I am a non-denominational member of the Church the Body of Christ. If God’s word was read JUST AS IT IS WRITTEN, without trying to add to or take from in order to make it fit a certain belief, people would be surprised at the amount of understanding they CAN have. The Holy Spirit is there to guide us, no doubt.
That's one of the Keys (given to Peter) in understanding the scriptures...
And 2 Peter 3:15, 16 bear witness to this very thing. He states specifically that some things that Paul wrote were “hard to be understood”. Verse 15 is especially wonderful in this regard. “Paul..according TO THE WISDOM GIVEN UNTO HIM...” Peter wasn’t just discussing Paul’s difficulty in making himself clesr: he was discussing Paul’s epistles and WHY some people could not understand and wrested with the scriptures.
Where did you get that crazy idea...None of us ever suggested Jesus was going to surrender...He's going to get us out of the way while he goes Postal on you people who are still here after we're gone...
The Holy Spirit is there to guide us, no doubt.
I sure don`t have nothing against people who believe they are going to be raptured out of this mess.
A life long friend and one that was even closer than a brother ( our wifes became great friends also which was great ) believed in the pre tribulation rapture.
He has been gone from us for many years now, we argued all of the time about it.
I once ask him if he believed Paul was saying we would literally go to meet Christ in the air alive, his answer was exactly.
My point is that if it is literal then Paul was also in the rapture so we must have missed it by almost two thousand years.
There is one Second Coming, with no near miss or almost coming after His First Coming.
Anything other than leaving His people here through thick and thin until that Second Coming would be by definition be His surrendering to Satan since it would grant Satan control again after having taken it from him.
Nice try with the trash talk, though, I like the image of Christ "going Postal", it's so, so, hip and kewl. Very much in keeping with The Church of The Evacuation By Golden Huey.
Selling that baloney about the near miss and collection of His homies for a party is a good way to found a fine Ferrari collection, though, I'll grant you that.
Jeus Christ said, “My kingdom is not of this world”. That’s the gospel; the hope of life everlasting. And he would be the key that opens the door, just as he told Nicodemas: “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” John 3:17
But he had to shed his blood to tear down the wall of sin that separated God from mankind. The testament was of no effect while the testator lived. It required the death of the testator, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ told Peter, in Luke 22:32, that “When thou art converted strengthen the brethern”. He told them to tarry in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father.
**Paul specifically states that the gospel of the grace of God is the preaching of the cross (1 Cor. 1:18), that Christ died FOR OUR SINS, was buried and rose again. That is the gospel of the grace of God.**
So, you don’t think that that was same message Peter preached to Cornelius and his household? His message began this way: “Of a truth I perceive that God is not respecter of persons: But in EVERY nation he that feareth him, and WORKETH righteousness, is accepted with him”.(Acts 10:34,35).
Just as he did to the Jews (in Acts 2:14-36), He preached to Cornelius, Christ and him crucified, the resurrection, and remission of sins to those that believe. Acts 10:36-43. Verses 44-48 show their conversion.
In Acts 19, Paul preached Jesus Christ to the Ephesians. Verses 1 and 2 show that these were believers, for Paul asked them if they had “received the Holy Ghost since ye believed”. If you notice, the next two verses (3 and 4) show NO teaching of Christ’s death, buriel, and resurrection. That’s because they already believed it. It was THEN (vs 5) that “they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus”.
Then Paul laid hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost. (vrs 6)
Okay, you can come to my house after the Rapture. I leave food and ammo to spare for those like you who will be looking for aid because they refused The Grace of God in Christ, for whom there is now no condemnation.
Now that's just rich, someone who commits the same sin Satan did judging others.
No Reformed, amillennial or postmillennial Christian that I know of believes that they're replacing the Jews in God's eschatology. It's the modern dispensationalist who thinks that the Jews have been replaced by the Church, not resuming their place until after the Church disappears in the rapture!
According to English and every other dispensationalist, the Church has replaced Israel until the rapture. The unfulfilled promises made to Israel are not fulfilled until after the Church is taken off the earth. Thomas Ice, one of dispensationalism’s rising stars, admits that the Church replaces Israel this side of the rapture: “We dispensationalists believe that the church has superseded Israel during the current church age, but God has a future time in which He will restore national Israel ‘as the institution for the administration of divine blessings to the world.’”
-- From the thread Answering the "Replacement Theology" Critics (Part 1)“...the very category of ‘replacement’ is foreign to Reformed theology because it assumes a dispensational, Israeleo-centric way of thinking. It assumes that the temporary, national people was, in fact, intended to be the permanent arrangement.”
-- From the thread Replacing “Replacement” Theology"The historical premillennialist's view interprets some prophecy in Scripture as having literal fulfillment while others demand a semi-symbolic fulfillment. As a case in point, the seal judgments (Revelation 6) are viewed as having fulfillment in the forces in history (rather than in future powers) by which God works out his redemptive and judicial purposes leading up to the end. Rather than the belief of an imminent return of Christ, it is held that a number of historical events (e.g., the rise of the Beast and the False Prophet) must take place before Christ's Second Coming. This Second Coming will be accompanied by the resurrection and rapture of the saints (1 Thessalonians 4:15-18); this will inaugurate the millennial reign of Christ. The Jewish nation, while being perfectly able to join the church in the belief of a true faith in Christ, has no distinct redemptive plan as they would in the dispensational perspective. The duration of the millennial kingdom (Revelation 20:1-6) is unsure: literal or metaphorical."
-- From the thread Four Views on the Millennium
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