This was a lighthearted note I wrote on facebook, where I have many nominally Dispensational friends.

---------------------------

Sometimes believers articulate views of themselves, the church, and the world that are not only incorrect, but that are actually self-contradictory. What follows is an imaginary conversation between two people. Two friends, Rick the Reformed Baptist (or Presbyterian or Anglican, if you like) and Bob the Bible church guy (a generic non-confessional dispensationalist) are talking about life, when Rick thinks of something.


R: Say, Bob, do you think the world is getting better or worse, or maybe just about the same?

B: Oh, that’s easy, Rick. It’s getting worse and worse all the time. I mean, the President is a democrat, homosexuals are all over the place, the economy is in the tubes, and now TV is digital.

R: But what about the big picture, Bob. I mean, not focusing just on this year or this decade, but what do you think about the whole scope of history?

B: Same thing. The politics are all moving toward one world government, and the church is getting more and more apostate. We’re just hanging on until the Rapture.

R: How about you explain to me how you view church history? Start at the beginning.

B: Ok. After the apostles died, the church tanked. Judaizers and Gnostics and all kinds of superstition crept in, and they started believing in things like baptismal regeneration and infant baptism and bishops. Then when Constantine took over, it got even worse. He organized the state church and inserted all kinds of paganism. In that whole early church period, there is hardly any Christianity.

R: What about Augustine, Bob? I’ve always appreciated him.

B: Oh, he was one of the worst. He was an allegorizer and his theology formed the basis of the Catholic church. For the next thousand years there was hardly any Christianity, except for a few Baptists that kept getting burned or drowned.

R: What about the Reformation, Bob? What about guys like Luther and Calvin?

B: Well, Luther got the gospel right. Not sure about Calvin, because he believed in predestination and burned people. But anyway, they still didn’t get rid of all the problems in Catholicism. That’s why they persecuted Baptists and had oppressive church governments. Really, until America there was no freedom of religion for Bible-believers, and even then it was a while before the church recovered an authentic method of reading the Scriptures without using allegory.

R: You mean Dispensationalism?

B: You can call it that, but it’s just reading the Bible plainly and taking God at his word.

R: So, you mean to say that 1,000 years ago there was just about no Christianity, 500 years ago there was a still-mostly-Catholic kind of Christianity, 200 years ago there was freedom for “Bible-believing” Christians, and only since Dallas Seminary has the church interpreted the Bible correctly?

B: More or less, yeah.

R: Then how can the world be getting worse and worse?

__________________
Charlie Johnson
Downtown Presbyterian Church (PCA)
Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, student

__________________
Brian E
Attending Falls OPC
Menomonee Falls, WI

Good outline as to what I think is common in the non-confessional churches. I came from one and this is pretty much on the mark. I notice some common attributes that I think are worth mentioning:

1. The church started in Genesis 1:1 not in Matthew 1:1.

2. There is no mention of the Old Testment and therefore the covenants established by God.

3. No mention of the supremecy of Christ specifically when referencing the "wasted years". I guess the Lord wasn't managing the church at that time.

4. No mention about taking up your cross and following me.

5. Finally, it seems to be all about Bob and when he can be raptured instead of the reformation of the church.

Good reason why another reformation is necessary. Thanks for the post.

__________________
PuritanGeek
Member of LakeOPC
Wickliffe, Oh
Blog: What Justin's Thinking

That just comes off to me as a very affective article Charlie. Thank you.

__________________
Michael P Doyle
Waukesha WI
Member of http://www.cornerstone-pca.com/
Attending http://www.lampseminary.org/

If Dallas is the source of all orthodoxy, then I agree, things are getting worse and worse!

__________________
Rogerant
Justified Sinner
Under Application to URCNA
Saskatchewan

When Bob says that things are getting worse and worse, it sounds like he is saying that there is more sin in the world now than there used to be.

__________________
Curt Hayashida
member, Community Bible Church (Non-denominational)
Vallejo, CA

Quite right. The point of the article was to highlight one inconsistency. When Dispensationalists talk about the future, it's always about how the world is going to continue degenerating until the very end. However, when you ask them to talk about the past, it's a story of increasingly pure Christianity culminating in Baptistic Dispensationalism. Yet, many popular Dispensationalists will at the same time affirm that they are living in the "Laodicean" church age.

Does not compute.

While I do not have any certain "Endtimes" view - I do believe in an imminent, unexpected, return of Christ though - I do question Dispie theology in general - esp. the Rapture-doom-and-gloomers. Oh, they'll say, "Christ is returning very soon, but we won't set a date unlike those cults."

As for those so-called "prophecy preachers" who write books and set dates, I believe they should practice what they preach and sell everything they have and establish a doomsday ministry. But have they? Or are they still living as though they don't believe what they profess?

But I'd say that society today, even DESPITE the resurgence of the homosexual movement etc. it is much better than society during the Biblical times. You are not going to hear of bestiality, temple prostitution common today. I heard during the NT period in Corinth, some men get married at least 20 times in their lifetime!

Why? I believe that it is because the legacy Christianity bought to the world - as Christ said - we are the salt and light of the world. The Church abolished slavery, live sacrifices, cannibalism and other horrible practices. Out from the Reformation - we have the university, and we have classical liberalism - the founding stones of any constitutional republic.

With most churches as a whole now in apostasy, I fear for the future of the world as the Church as a whole continues to decay. I am very angry that the spirit of Tetzel has revived in evangelicalism.

We need God to give us a 21st century Reformation!

__________________
Tian Long (you can call me LTL)
Reformed Baptist
Singapore
"God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble." - Psalm 46:1 (NKJV)

For His honor, glory and name!