***To believe both (the “Gospel transforms lives for the better” and the “world is waxing worse and worse”) you must conclude that either
A) Transformed lives don’t accomplish jack squat when working in groups, meaning groups can’t be transformed
B) God doesn’t plan on transforming lives in the future, or
C) The “transformed life” is but a temporary phenomena.
AMEN!
“So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.” — Acts 19:20
Prevailed at what?***
To all my more thoughtful post leaning Preterists (more thoughtful than the Dispy’s), I think that it is a bit more complicated.
This is NOT our world and our gift. We are but strangers in it. An, even if we are suppose to work for the common good of all mankind because we ALL bear the image of our Maker, what makes us so sure that the spiritual transformation in the lives of believers is suppose to achieve some kind of Edenesque utopia here on this earth before the return of the Lord? This world belongs to the reprobates right now in the sense that this is their last gift from God. The fact that they are selfishly destroying it is simply evidence that they are indeed reprobate. Even Calvin himself noted that this is the ante-room of hell. I do agree with my post-mill brothers that part of our God given destiny is to subdue the world. I don’t think its accomplishment is going to be in a fallen sin filled one.
I also don’t see any logical requirement that a transformed life in a believer equates to this paradise I hear post-mills talking about. What I do see if there is some kind of super majority of believers which forces some kind of utopian rule, it is still a rule with a little leaven in its midst and we are promised by the Lord himself that it will leaven the whole lump. Perhaps someone might explain to me the Scriptural rationale for an entire world conquered when the Lord himself posits the question to his disciples that when he returns will he really find faith on the earth.
I also note that the Acts 19 verse you used, my good sister, still has a world in which the prevailing Word of God was accomplished over ground wet with the blood of the saints. Remember, one of the things upon which the Lord waits for accomplishment before his return is the number of the martuero (forgive my memory if it is wrong) to be completed.
No one believes in an earthly Eden or Utopia.
It is enough to say the hearing of the word will profit to whom it was sent.
And the more preaching of the word, the more grace; the more grace, the more Christians; the more Christians, the more good fruit. All according to the will and purpose of God.
Don't buy into the short view of history.
And
To keep the commandments of the LORD, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good? Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the LORD's thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is. Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked." -- Deuteronomy 10:12-16"And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul,
And Calvin is considered a postmil...
"There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice" -- John Calvin