“I’m not trying to be a controversialist...”
Nor was I, friend. I was merely giving my point of view. Is that controversial? With all due respect, I believe I was more polite than many of the irreverent comments about wives and pets.
“John Nelson Darby was a thorough and exhaustive and careful scholar of the Bible.”
+John Chrysostom was moreso. If you enjoy scriptural commentary, you should avail yourself of his treatises on the Gospels.
“It’s less than helpful to call Christians, who also are careful and systematic in their Bible study, ‘snake handlers’ and ‘cool aid drinkers’.”
I never called anyone anything, and I am a Christian myself. I indicated that following individual men on their individual interpretations of individual passages of scripture has shown time and again to be a recipe for personal and salvational disaster.
But...humor me...as I ask the same question I did to a previous Freeper in an attempt to clarify your exact belief (to see if we are talking a difference of BELIEF here...or just semantics over a word):
Do you BELIEVE the Word of God teaches that there will be an event in the future when living mortal Christians will one day hear the trumpet of God…and that they will be CAUGHT UP into the air alive…their mortal bodies forever changed…putting on immortality…and that they will forever be with the Lord…?
Forget the timing...the label...etc. Do YOU believe that God teaches us...in His Word, that there is an event in the future in which mortal Christians...alive...with a heartbeat...will find themselves living their lives here on earth one second...Hear the sound of a trumpet...at which point they will then be changed into immortality...meeting the Lord in the Air and will forever be with Him?
Yes or No?
Your answer, again, determines whether or not we have a semantic issue over a word...or whether we have a wide gap on how to interprete scripture. Forget the timing. Who cares if it is in a month or 10,000 years. Forget the question on whether or not this is a separate event or the second coming being spoken of in 1 Cor 15/1 Thes 4. Forget all of that. Will there be such an event in which mortal Christians put on immortality without tasting death...and they will meet Christ in the air?
Yes Chrysostom is very influential, and well worth reading. We would all profit from a careful study of the fathers and early Christian writers. The point is not to champion one teacher over another. My mention of Darby was merely meant to provide a perspective beyond some popular misconceptions about what he was, and that are tied to popular misconceptions about Dispensationalism, and PB eschatology and ecclesiology. The suggestion that you called anyone anything stemmed from your comment about strychnine laced drink and snake-handlers. That is what I was responding to. In context it seemed to be applied to Dispensationalists. To mention Darby, or millenialism in the same post seemed to be making an equation. If that wasn't the case I don't know what value that comment had. But you say you weren't casting aspersions, so I believe you.
As far as following any one teacher, I guess that happens far too frequently. But I suppose that could be said of theological systems as well. What I'm trying to get at in any post I make is that a critical evaluation is good, controversialism and partisan championship of various schools of thought - or distinctives isn't so good. That isn't to say that we should not be firm in faith and have solid opinions. But it is obligatory to strive to maintain the unity of the faith. Even if it is one sided at times. Holding my strong opinion in abeyance is a little like crucifying the flesh. I don't equivocate on the truth. But I know I don't have a lock on it either. So that's what I'm trying to get at.