| | We all live more or less in accordance with our understanding of the Universal Story as well as the sub-plots of our own stories. In other words, our actions are largely governed by our understanding of the purpose and direction of ourselves and of creation as a whole. As Christians, our lives are permanently changed by the story of what God has done in the past as recounted in Scripture and we gain encouragement from our understanding of what He is doing in the present.
However, our lives and the life of the Church in general are perhaps more influenced by our understanding of the future. I am not thinking of the eternal joy in the presence of God that awaits His people, although that is a tremendous comfort to us and our greatest hope. I am thinking of how we understand the future story of humanity prior to Christ's return. Contrary to its neglect in the doctrinal statements of many churches, our understanding of the end times is critical to the church conducting itself rightly and pursuing the right ends. Without rehashing the whole dispensational time line, I think it is sufficient to note that this school of thought, immortalized in the "Left Behind" series does little for our cultural aspirations as the Church. This view would have us anticipate nothing but decline and dissolution for the Church until the coming of Christ, completely ignoring the 2,000 year spread of western Christendom and the expansion of the Church throughout the world. Because of this eschatological innovation, much of the Church has been lulled to sleep in the expectation that there is nothing to do but tend to our individual spiritual condition, save souls as we can, and wait for the unpleasant end to come.
If the dispensational view is correct, so be it. But I believe the church as a whole suffers from an overweighting, combined with a misunderstanding, of Revelation to the neglect of what God says in the rest of Scripture concerning His plan for the Gospel and the world. We cannot neglect all the places in Scripture that God says His kingdom will expand throughout the world and that the entire world will be covered with the knowledge of Yahweh and that the nations will worship Him. Our Lord intends to do much through the Church prior to His returning in gathering the nations to Himself and in transforming culture. He intends to conquer all His enemies before handing the world over to the Father. It is time that the Church (especially in American Evangelicalism) awake from its "Left Behind" mentality and put its shoulder to the work of expanding the Gospel and its benefits to the ends of the earth and to every part of every culture.
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| | Posted 5/6/2007 9:50 AM - 25 Views - 6 eProps - 5 comments
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