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Mark Driscoll’s recent post discussed the growing gap between the founder of the Calvary Chapel movement and his son. Although I was interested in the post, I appreciated his comments on the Kingdom of God and the Rapture the most. These are things that I would love to write about more, but I will a let a man more educated than I speak to these things right now.
Rapture. The rapture, like the age of the earth, is an issue that Christians should discuss and debate, but not divide over. Years ago when I first read Smith Sr.’s book Calvary Chapel Distinctives, I was surprised to see that in addition to the Holy Spirit, Bible, grace, Jesus, and love, which all make sense, the premillenial pretribulational rapture of the church was an essential doctrine. Curiously, the rapture is a doctrine that has existed for less than two hundred years in the church’s history. The word itself started at a peculiar and possibly cultic charismatic prayer meeting where a women prophesied that the church would be raptured. From that simple beginning, the doctrine has now become the leading eschatological position in American evangelicalism. For more on this issue, the book The Incredible Cover Up: Exploring the Origins of Rapture Theories by Dave MacPherson is a fascinating historical read. Since the doctrine was not even heard of by men such as Athanasius, Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, and Wesley, we should not make this doctrine the litmus test of biblical faithfulness, otherwise we are saying there was no faithful eschatology for the first 1,800 years of the church.
and…
Kingdom. The problem with the older generation of strong dispensationally minded evangelicals was that they had an under-realized eschatology. By this, I mean that they saw the kingdom of God as an almost entirely future event. The younger generation of evangelicals are more prone to embrace an over-realized eschatology whereby the kingdom of God is essentially here already, so talking about heaven, hell, and the eternal state is not important. On this point, Smith Jr. echoes a drum regularly beat by McLaren and others affiliated with the Emergent group. The problem is that the kingdom of God is not yet here, but it does break in through the church, the preaching of the gospel, and the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, a balanced eschatology that holds the “already/not yet” tension of Paul is the only hope for a biblical position on this issue.
I am more and more concerned with a lack of understanding about the Kingdom of God in modern Christianity and in my own life. For one, I just love the teaching and, for me, how it brings the word alive again. I love the masculinity of a God who is crushing the kingdom of darkness and ushering in His Kingdom. For a good read on the subject, check out The Gospel of the Kingdom by George Eldon Ladd. You can read the first 5 chapters here for free.
September 16th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
our worship team has been discussing a little bit about greatness in the kingdom of god recently looking at scriptures like matt 18, 19 and php 2. my heart is definitely moved about this kind of lifestyle and what it means to live for another age. but about the rapture, obviously we don’t as believers don’t want to be divided, but as i study more of the end times i am seeing that the views we hold reflect our image of who god is. and what does it say about how we view god if we believe that in the worst time in earth’s history when a witness of Christ needed most, none can be found?
September 21st, 2006 at 3:39 pm
michael - this is an excellent post, and ironic since I just posted something on my site referencing the very same issue. Praise God for your passion for discovering Truth, which is to say, passion for discovering Jesus.
October 6th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
Just stumbled on to your good blog. You mentioned Dave MacPherson. You may have already seen his web articles including “Pretrib Rapture Diehards,” “Thomas Ice (Bloopers),” “Famous Rapture Watchers,” and “The Rapture Index (Mad Theology!).” Saw these on Google. It’s true, as you said, that pretrib wasn’t heard of for 1800 years. That alone should make folks want to examine the beginnings of pretrib in 1830. Lord bless, thanks for your much needed blog! Bruce