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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