Frankly, what Darby, Scofield, Ryrie, Lindsey, or anyone else alledgedly teaches(I say alledgedly because there are MANY who hate dispensationalism, and yes, dispensationalists, so much that the real truth of the teaching is immaterial as opposed to the straw men they would set up) is I R R E L E V A N T ! ! ! What the Bible teaches is what is relevant. When they can’t beat us with Scripture they trot out a distortion of Darby, Scofield, or Lindsey. Frankly, I could care less what any man has taught and what the church has taught for the last 1700 or so years. For much of that time the “church” taught a foreign way of salvation (one based upon works and other types of payment in order to merit Heaven). Most of the church was illiterate and didn’t have Bibles in their own language. MANY priests were as well. Futher, the Bible clearly states that certain things will be unsealed at the time of the end, so why expect the church for the past 2000 years to understand all of the mysteries of God laid out in Scripture?
What I care about is what SCRIPTURE teaches. I have taken the time to do exhaustive study of the subject from various perspectives and find the Pre-tribulational, dispensational, perspective to be the most Scripturally faithful. I refuse to get dragged into the irrelevant argument about what Hal Lindsey, Grant Jeffrey, or any other human being has said. I readily admit there have been abuses. Shame on the abusers. THIS DOES NOT NEGATE THE SCRIPTURAL SUPPORT for the Pre-Trib view. THIS DOES NOT NEGATE God’s future plans for Israel. They can blather on all they want, but I believe what I believe due to what SCRIPTURE teaches. PERIOD. I have certain ideas of how the things in Scripture may be accomplished, but those are my ideas. I’m happy to share, but I do so with that understanding. Nevertheless, I can not get past what the Old Testament and New Testament have prophecied and find any view that dismisses the old for a formulation of what is said in the New to be lacking solid biblical exegesis.
WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE! Thanks much.
No one around here hates dispensationalists, so get over it. It’s dispensationalism that is hard to digest for many of us. We’ve been there, we’re tasted the product, we’ve searched the Scriptures, we’ve seen the result, and we found better pastures. We’re just trying to save others the pain we endured for a time by comparing Scripture with Scripture.
And, as I’ve said before, the “real truth of the teaching” of dispensationalism is rather elusive since a) there is no universal dispensational creed, and b) some of you folks (like the progressives) keep changing the terms of the agreement.