So there is no hope at all for anyone, this side of the parousia? If so, then WHY BOTHER "praying for our troops to win?" Where sin abounds, in your view, this is no room for grace, but only an inescapable black hole sucking all down to destruction. Except for maybe a few etherial saved "souls" floating like soap bubbles in detached abstraction over the drain.
So why did the Word need to become flesh if only "spiritual" things are relevant? If your statement is indeed a true reflection of your theology, then you are preaching gnosticism, not Biblical Christianity. For there is no real-world redemption in your theological construct. You have nothing to offer a desperate world beyond personal "gnosis" -- and the hindus can offer that.
Precisely!
I don't think that believing we live in a fallen world populated with totally depraved human beings is gnostic. It is very Pauline.
Jesus himself in the parable of the wheat and tares said the two should live together. Who was he speaking of?
(1) Regenerated totally depraved people (see Rom 7) and (2)unregenerated totally depraved people.
They were to be together until separated by a harvest which would end with the weeds being burned.
So, what is the hope of the us sinful folks in this life?.... Regeneration and being one of the saved-by-grace wheat.
DrE, anyone who believes in a millennial reign of Christ is necessarily a dispensationalist. We might quibble over what does and doesn't constitute a dispensation, but the millennial reign is definitely one. At a minimum, there are two others: the old and new covenants.
""Eph 1:8... in which He did abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, 9 having made known to us the secret of His will, according to His good pleasure, that He purposed in Himself, 10 in regard to the dispensation of the fulness of the times, to bring into one the whole in the Christ, both the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth -- in him; 11 in whom also we did obtain an inheritance, being foreordained according to the purpose of Him who the all things is working according to the counsel of His will, """