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To: blue-duncan; Dr. Eckleburg; TomSmedley; topcat54; Gamecock
The culture was influenced as long as the ruling majority had influence. Otherwise it reverts to its Godless spirit.

Keep talking like that, and I'll make a postmil out of you :D

The problem faced in the Premil position, IMO, is explaining how the Raptured generation (and the ones immediately preceding it) were successful in changing lives, while simultaneously (and spectacularly) failing to achieve "majority status" in influencing the culture. To do so, either the church must suffer a substantial net loss in overall numbers over several generations (reducing their numbers to an ever-shrinking minority of the overall population), or else the individual Christians suffer a substantial net loss in victory over sin over several generations (indicating their failure to avoid being assimilated into, i.e. not repenting of the increasingly sinful culture about them). Victory today, but defeat tomorrow? For premillennialism to be true, at some point either the church performs a massive flip-flop historically and the gates of Hell dramatically begin prevailing against it (maybe because of the Rapture), or else the church has been fighting a slow battle of defeat-and-retreat culturally since the first century. If there's a third option here, I'm just not seeing it.

I'll throw you a bone here - if Christians are not called to/incapable of redeeming the culture about them, then IMO you are correct in holding a Premil vision of the future, holding out the hope of being raptured/rescued as the means of escaping your current predicament, and in ridiculing us Postmils for believing in (and devoting resources to) doing otherwise. But likewise, if we Reformed Postmils are correct in believing we're called to (and promised to be successful in, long-term) redeem the culture, then IMO we're correct in chastising your side for being retreatist (allowing the culture to slide further away from God), and for promoting failure as a Biblical promise for church growth.

288 posted on 07/27/2006 2:17:59 PM PDT by Alex Murphy (Colossians 4:6)
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To: Alex Murphy
The problem faced in the Premil position, IMO, is explaining how the Raptured generation (and the ones immediately preceding it) were successful in changing lives, while simultaneously (and spectacularly) failing to achieve "majority status" in influencing the culture.

II Th 2:3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

It sounds as if you think the Premils are going to cause the falling away.

293 posted on 07/27/2006 4:11:40 PM PDT by Seven_0 (You cannot fool all of the people, ever!)
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