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Thank you for your well thought out response. I think this is the first one I've gotten that didn't try to berate me or be condescending to me.

I think my problem is that I don't put the same emphasis on eschatology as some others seem to.

The historical (pre darbyist) view of a "rapture" is simply that as Christ comes back, the dead in Christ rise to meet him in the air, and the living saints are changed and meet him AS HE RETURNS TO THE EARTH -- either for final judgment or to set up a millenial reign and then final judgment 1000 years later--depending on whether your are amil or premil or postmil.

This pretty much sums up the way I was taught. I've never heard of a "secret rapture". I was taught that everybody would know when it happened because we'd all be gone.

I don't give Hal Lindsey any more or less credibility than I do Hank Hanegraaff or Mike S. Adams. The last place I heard Hal Lindsey was on the Art Bell show...what does that tell you?

Thanks again for you response. I'll be standing on the sidelines I expect reading, studying, and praying for the Holy Spirit to give me true discernment.

In Christ, Wiley

I think my problem is that I don't put the same emphasis on eschatology as some others seem to. First of all, thanks for your kind response. My problems with dispensationalism are NOT primarily with the eschatology. We can fuddle around with that and the interesting historical events surrounding the inception of the movement of the Plymouth Brethren and all that, but the real issue is one that does concern me. I believe very strongly that the GOSPEL is the heartbeat of the bible,and the heartbeat of true Christianity. I think that many churches today substitute "end times fever" for a return to preaching the simple and powerful message that CHRISITIANS NEED WAY MORE THAN NON CHRISTIANS, and praying that God would let it run rapidly and be glorified. For years I viewed the Christian life as kind of like a launching pad and a rocket. The gospel was the launching pad, but what really made stuff go was the rocket fuel, which consisted of the "disciplines" of the Christian life. I have come to believe that this is heresy, and not far removed from the Galatian heresy. The ONLY real motivation and basis for Christian activity is our state of union with the crucified and resurrected Christ. The gospel itself is the wellspring from which all Christian activity and growth spring. Much moving on to Christian "meat" is simply legalism and doctrinal abstractions today. The church needs to fall in love with the gospel. If we do, we will "preach" it to each other and to ourselves, accepting each other in our sins and struggles (Christ has done so), being honest and not lying about our state of unbelief (because we trust each other as fellow forgiven sinners), and confronting each other as fellow broken sinners. This is "evangelism" to the saved. If we do this, we don't have the false and weird evangelistic "activity" which seems so confrontative, fake, and stilted. It is a natural part of our lives.

So how does this have anything to do with end times theology? Simple. Dispensationalism as a system is horribly destructive to this mindset, because it denies that the salvation message of God is ONE message. It chops up the bible into two separate peoples, with two separate responses to God, and denies that CHRIST is the object of faith to large sections of the Old Testament. Ryrie pitches an absolute hissy fit in attempting to refute this charge, when he claims (departing from Scofield, btw) that the OT believers were saved by grace and through faith and that the benefits of Christ were imputed to them as they trusted Jehovah God's promises through the sacrificial system, for example. They also trusted under the dispensation of Abrahamic administration in a DIFFERENT manifestation of grace, and under the kingdom dispensation on yet another. This is destructive, and why even among your VERY BEST dispensational preachers (and there are some excellent pastors and teachers among them), you hear the kind of sermons you do from the OT. They teach moralisms and and examples of the faith of these men (that is GOOD), warnings not to emulate their mistakes (also GOOD), and the constant character of God (who can fault THAT!). However, they can't seem to find CHRIST in the OT. As an example, pick some contemp. preacher and compare his sermons on the OT with those of Spurgeon.

The bible is ONE book, about ONE people, having ONE message of salvation, mediated by ONE savior, united by ONE faith, with ONE common future. That gospel message is critical, and is obscured by an unbiblical insistence on a wooden and artificial literalism re: apocalyptic passages, so that it becomes a series of lessons on the failures of humanity, rather than the mighty works of God.

That, and only that, is why I invest time showing its internal and historical contradictions, and its unbiblical nature.