Think Wink.

I have been very worried as of late, particularly because of this Lebanon-Israeli conflict. It is a terrible one to be sure, but there is way to much one-sidedness from what I have heard from the church–not here but on the radio. This past week, a guy I work with at Sam’s Club asked me if I thought it was Armageddon. I was listening to the radio and heard a lady proclaiming it is biblical prophecy come to pass in our life time. The evidence she cited was one morning, she was reading Psalm 83. In Scotland or Ireland, an ancient copy of the Psalms were found. The text it was open to was Psalm 83. There is much what I call Newspaper Eschatology.

I believe this is impart due to a eschatological system known as dispensationalism. It takes the Old Testament prophecies and shapes the New Testament around them, thus making the primary source of Scripture the Old Testament and not the New. It is my heart to help people understand that our eschatology, our views of the end times and of the return of Christ, must be routed in acceptable and appropriate exegesis and hermeneutics, not upon the Newspaper. The Dispensational system does is not Newspaper based. However, Dr. Adrian Rogers, former president of the SBC and a godly preacher who rarely said the word “um” in his sermons, said something to this effect (I paraphrase) in his series on Revelation, “You can take he Bible in one hand, open your newspaper in the other hand, and see prophecy coming to pass.” The former president of my denomination said that. I know that he was meaning not to get our eschatology from the papers but rather to see it happening in our lifetime. But that makes me uncomfortable and disappointed because the focus of interpretation for the common lay-person (I hate the term ‘laity’) not exegeting the texts but finding a newspaper clipping to fit the description, or worse, find a verse to fit the newspaper.

What I would like to do on this blog is to discuss these eschatologies and see if they hold up to the bar of exegesis. My Jesus coming back is what gives me hope in this world. To know that He is coming to take me to be with him is a great source of strength. Therefore, I want to know as much as Scripture will let me know about the Parousia (Second Coming) as possible. If you find yourself matching up with dispensational theology, feel free to comment on what I say so that I am not misrepresenting you. But I want to explore this often misunderstood and mis-studied branch of theology because that’s where my hear it.

Israel, John Hagee, and Eschatology

The Second Coming Debate

Eschatology and Quizfarm.com