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Originally published in "The Lord's Coming Herald & Wesleyan Bible Prophecy Advocate,"Spring Edition 2001

The Biblical Alternative To Dispensationalism

   It would certainly be easier to explain what the Bible teaches about the second coming of Jesus Christ if we all had blank minds, or a clean slate, without any previous knowledge of end-time Bible prophecy.

    Unfortunately, that is not the case within the evangelical church-world of America today. Most evangelicals in America today already have a head stuffed full of dispensational preconception. A simple analogy would be the situation of a builder, who has to remove existing structures before he can erect a new edifice in their space.

    Our commission, like Jeremiah's, involves demolition as well as reconstruction (Jeremiah 1:10). The one is impossible without the other. People have to get beyond the future seven year hang-up, for that is not taught in the Bible, but is based on a profound misunderstanding of Daniel 9:27. Once this insight is secured, progress comes much easier.

    What happens next is what we call "the recasting of motifs." You have to orient the nuts and bolts to a different context altogether than what the dispensationalists are familiar with—expand your mind.

    Many interrelated elements are involved, of course, but the core issue, in terms of "end-time" thinking, is the judgment that is coming on the world in connection with the return of Jesus Christ. This is portrayed as the fiery destruction of "Babylon" in the book of Revelation, a great society that is to be destroyed, suddenly and unexpectedly, by massive fire-power at the in-breaking of the biblical end-time.

    No one is going up in some secret rapture before a future seven year timetable of speculative end-time events, as dispensational premillennialism falsely teaches. Rather, the deceived are destined to be momentarily destroyed, like Sodom and Gomorrah, because, to the extent that we are mired in self-fulfilling prophecy, as "Babylon," we are a camp full of antinomian apostates from true biblical Christianity!

    Ponder all the above in terms of "awakening" and/or in terms of "reformation." Logically speaking, is there not a cause?

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