Tonight, for reasons I won’t bore you with, I used a snowblower for the first time in my life. (We got about three inches of snow today. I’m aware some of you got more than that. No need to tell me about it. I feel your pain, as you will no doubt feel mine when it’s our turn.) The experience was pretty much what I expected. It’s less work than my dad’s way, but it’s still work.
Here’s something from my new publisher’s website that impressed me. I’m doubtless motivated to apple-polish a bit, but I’m pretty sure I honestly think it’s exceptionally good. It’s an article arguing that one major reason for the decline in Christian influence in American has been the widespread acceptance of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture interpretation of Revelation. The author argues that holding to this idea (that the whole world is about to slide into war, famine, devastation and tyranny, but that Christians are going to be evacuated before things get bad) has prevented us from engaging the culture.
Frankly, I’m pleased to be associated with a publisher who gets behind this kind of article.
I’m not entirely sure what I think about the end times. I’m pretty sure I reject the Pre-Trib view, largely because it was never heard of before the 19th Century. (As a pastor friend of mine says, “The only Christians in history who’ve believed that the church won’t have to go through the Tribulation have been rich Americans and Europeans in the last couple centuries.”)
I’m not sure I buy the implied optimism I see in the article, though. I can’t shake the feeling that the shot’s gonna hit the fern pretty soon. The thing that worries me in particular (I think I’ve mentioned this before) is the condition of the church. We’ve had periods before in history when the church has been corrupt. We’ve had periods when it’s been apathetic and weak. But we’ve never seen great swaths of the church embracing plain apostasy before. That looks to me very much like the Whore of Babylon of Revelation 17.
And I’m not sure my view is much more helpful, in terms of the cultural engagement this author calls for, than the Pre-Trib one.
P.S. I was surprised by the criticism of Francis Schaefer. I’ll have to give that some thought. I don’t think it nullifies the bulk of his contribution.
On your point of a reason for the lack of cultural engagement, I think you’re right. I’ve heard it more or less from them directly. I think politics has something to do with it for some people in our day, but I don’t know how long pre-Trib Christians have hoped for a type of political salvation (unacknowledged as such).
Luther was amillennial, you know …
The shot’s gonna hit the fern…that’s great.
No one has ever accused me of being an optimist, so I’m with you on that.
And, the whole rapture thing? I was raised and still am a member of a church with this belief.
But, I cannot find scripture to back it up.
I’ve always had a bit of trouble with how it seemed I was taught (or at least, caught) that when things got worse, Jesus would sweep in and take us away because he did not want us to suffer. But, looking at Christianity around the world, and also the life of Jesus, suffering seemed always to be a part of the deal. Not that one HAD to suffer, but that one DID.
No one could ever explain to me why we, at least we at my church, did not have too suffer.
I knew I wasn’t any better than those other people. And, the promises of God for blessing were the same as his promises to me.
So, why when things get bad in Europe of the US, people start looking to the eastern sky? Why not when things go foul on the rest of the globe?
Judy: Yeah, that bothered me too. Christians are being starved, enslaved and slaughtered in Africa, but I’m supposed to believe that I’ll be airlifted out before it happens here?
It seems that as we’ve gotten richer, people started suffering less. With diminished experience of suffering, they lost the confidence they could withstand suffering – and therefore started to believe in a rapture that will save them.
I wasn’t surprised to see that the author is a prominent figure in the Dominionist/Christian Reconstruction movement. DeMar and others, such as Kenneth Gentry, follow a Postmillennialist view of eschatology, which predicts eventual overwhelming success of Christianity in transforming the world for an extended period of time before Christ’s return. I do think we have something to learn from them – Christians indeed have often been too pessimistic about what the Church can really accomplish in this world. But I would balance their viewpoint with this thought, that I think the Bible says that as the end nears, the good will become better and the bad will become worse. The Dominionists seem to think that the bad will become weaker, which I don’t think is the case. But I agree with them that there’s no reason why the good cannot become stronger.
As for Schaeffer, he’s one of those people, like Constantine, Augustine, and Luther, who get blamed for more things than are really their fault, by people who like to think they know better. Schaeffer wasn’t perfect, and DeMar and others no doubt could rightly criticize individual things he’s said, but I would conservatively estimate that Schaeffer has inspired about 100 times as many people to constructive Christian cultural engagement as all the Dominionists combined. BTW, I wouldn’t be surprised if William Edgar is being quote-mined, because he has spoken and performed at more than one L’Abri conference.
Michael: Thanks for that analysis. I hadn’t made that connection. I believe the Nordskog people are, in fact, inclined in a Dominionist direction. You’ve helped me get my ideological bearings here.
As for Schaeffer, well, if he’s the victim of blame for things he didn’t say, I believe he was also guilty of that sin himself. For instance in his take on Kierkegaard. I’m no Kierkegaard expert, but a lot of people think Schaeffer blamed him unreasonably for the sins of later Existentialists.
I think you’re right about Schaeffer on Kierkegaard.
It’s astounding that many pretrib rapturists seem to know almost nothing about their 19th century fantasy. Evidently they have never gone to Google and typed in “Pretrib Rapture Diehards,” “X-Raying Margaret,” “Thomas Ice (Bloopers),” “America’s Pretrib Rapture Traffickers,” “Pretrib Rapture – Hidden Facts” or “Scholars Weigh My Research” – all composed by the evangelical historian whose bestselling book “The Rapture Plot” (check it out at Armageddon Books online) has by far the most authenticated facts about pretrib rapturism’s bizarre, 178-year-old history.
Theresa