Are we living in the end times...Part 3

This is the final entry of my series on the End Times and the Second Coming. I thought we'd finish this topic by contrasting and critiquing the beliefs of Dispensationalists in light of Catholic teaching.

Dispensationalists hold the belief that the Old Covenant God made with the Jewish people has not been either abolished or fulfilled yet. God made a second and New Covenant in establishing the Church, but it has gone corrupt and only a small remnant of ‘true Christians’ remained under the umbrella of this Covenant. In essence, this establishes two Peoples of God. We have the Jewish People of God found in the OT and the remnant People of God in the NT, which is composed of, obviously, Dispensationalists. This thinking is contrary to Christian beliefs. Specifically, it is contrary to Catholic doctrine, which definitively states that the New Covenant concludes and fulfills the Old Covenant.

Dispensationalists claim that Jesus is not reigning as King. According to their views, Jesus came to offer an earthly kingdom to the Jews, but when they rejected it, Jesus had to resort to a ‘back-up’ plan of postponing this offer until the Second Coming. The time from Pentecost until the Rapture is a sort of interlude, if you will, between his attempt to establish an earthly kingdom in his first coming and the actual establishment of his earthly kingdom after the Rapture. The Church, in the eyes of dispensationalists, serves no practical purpose since their focus is completely on the Rapture. Hence, Jesus cannot be reigning as King, because the kingdom wasn’t established. Yet, Jesus proclaimed over and over that the “Kingdom of God had come” and that the “Kingdom of God was at hand.” Dispensationalists refuse to accept the Kingdom as being established because it both destroys their separation of Scripture and it forces them to recognize the Church as the kingdom Jesus established. This allows them to reject the Church as the Body of Christ and also to proclaim that the only necessary action is the individual acceptance of a personal Christ.

It is easy to recognize the Catholic (or even mainline Protestant) unity and the Dispensationalist disunity in the two doctrines. The existence of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant as well as two People of God creates an immense disunity of Scriptures. The failure of Christ to establish a Kingdom and the existence of the Church in this age cannot be understood by adhering to their doctrine. Lastly, human history is a very pessimistic and meaningless existence because nothing that is done now, except embracing Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, has any bearing on the future. As long as one does this, he is saved. The teaching of Jesus and his instruction have no application to dispensationalists. Without Christ as the center and apex of human history, all of time seems to make no sense.

This leads to the last, and most important, consequence of the dispensationalist view. Jesus Christ is removed as the central and pivotal figure in human history. According to dispensationalists, human history is in a state of failure. Dispensationalists divide history into eras that all have the same theme. God offers salvation; man is tested and man fails. Their view of the “Church age” is no different. Jesus failed to establish the earthly kingdom at his incarnation and so we live in failure awaiting the return of Jesus to finally establish this earthly kingdom. The mission of Jesus is meaningless and his incarnation is reduced to failure. The salvific nature and power of Jesus is eliminated.

It seems, in the final analysis, that the Dispensationalist view and their understanding of the Rapture is not only unorthodox teaching, but is actually outside the definition of a Christian. Their beliefs challenge some foundational and primary elements of the Christian faith held by Catholics, Orthodox and nearly all mainline Protestants. For me, anyway, books like the Left Behind series concerning the Rapture fall into the same category as the Da Vinci Code: both are complete fiction. The authors both acknowledge that the books are fictional in their characters, but they both hold that the theology taught within the book is sound and true. A friend of mine advised me that rather than refering to these books as complete fiction, I should refer to them as science fiction. Everybody recognizes Sci-fi as complete fantasy and the result of one with a vivid imagination. That seems to properly describe these type of books. Until next time...God bless.

posted by: crossman at 21:22 | link | comments |
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