When one discovers that the mattress store has a “For Two Weeks Only” sale every other week, the pressure is off.
Now, clearly the whole thing is going to wrap up one way or another at some point. But I guess I was soured on the “Act Now” school of apocalypticism by the Jehovah's Witnesses. Like the Millerites before them, they “proved” that the end, or the beginning of the end, was going to happen on such and such a day.
And then it didn't. So some of them reinterpreted what they had been so very certain of the month before to show that some imperceptible cataclysm had taken place, just as predicted!, but in the heavenly places, where no one could tell if it had happened or not. It wasn't the exact cataclysm they had been so certain of, but they were even more certain now.
When I first encountered the JW’s in 1971 they were certain of something big that was just coming up, I seem to recall that before the decade was out everything was going to finished, but maybe I don't recall the timing exactly.
But is it possible, and if so how, from the outside to determine (a) whether, in seeming disagreement with the Lord — but no doubt some dispensationalist explanation could be given for His disclaimer of knowledge, it is proper to propose timetables; and (b) if it is, whose timetable is right and how do I know?
And in any event, while Protestants and non-Catholics, in general, downplay their differences and “distinctives”, yet they still seem important enough to those who hold them that they split congregations and organizations.
So who is right and how is one to know? When someone with a covenantal view meets a dispensationalist, what should the onlookers be looking for?
So to the unregenerate D00d-in-the-street, what do you say about where he should go to find the right answer?
I would suggest any protestant church that preaches and teaches the Word of God and Faith in Christ Alone.