WHO MARGINALIZED THE CHURCH: SECULARISM OR EVANGELICALISM? The apostles’ witness added people to the church daily. American evangelists saved tons of souls, marginalized the church, and lost the nation. The church was not trivialized out of malice or pragmatism, but because of misunderstanding and corruption of biblical theology of the Kingdom of God. The 20th century evangelists built their ministries on a corrupted version of Moody’s imagery that the world was not groaning and waiting for the appearance of the sons of God – the church – for its salvation, but it was a sinking ship. The evangelist’s job was to rescue people on a life-boat for their rapture. The chief culprit was Dispensational Pre-millennialism. Here is how historian George Marsden summarizes the problem in “Fundamentalism and American Culture” (Published by Oxford University Press). “These teachers [Dispensationalists such as John Nelson Darby, W. E. Blackstone, James H. Brookes, C. I. Scofield] held that Bible was absolutely reliable and precise in matters of fact, that its meanings were plain, and whenever possible it should be taken literally. They reached a central conclusion which was equally distant from that of their liberal contemporaries. Christ’s kingdom, far from being realized in this age or in the natural development of humanity, lay in the future, was totally supernatural in origin, and discontinuous with the history of this era. This was a point on which the new dispensational premillennialism differed from older forms of premillenialism. For the dispensationalists the prophecies concerning the kingdom referred wholly to the future. This present era, the “church age,” therefore could not be dignified as a time of the advance of God’s kingdom. The key to understanding the whole dispensational system is very ingenious and complex interpretation of a prophecy in Daniel 9 concerning “seventy weeks”. … The seventy weeks (or seventy “sevens”) is interpreted as meaning four hundred ninety years. Four hundred eighty-three of these years (seven weeks and sixty-two weeks) are thought to refer precisely to the period from the rebuilding of Jerusalem recorded in Ezra and Nehemiah to the time of Christ. The startling and ingenious aspect of the interpretation is that it posits that these first sixty-nine weeks were not immediately followed by the seventieth. Rather, it suggests that the entire church age (not entirely indicated in the Old Testament prophecies) intervenes between the sixty-ninth and seventieth week. This leaves a host of prophecies to be fulfilled in this last brief seven-year time, which is the final period before Christ sets up the millennial kingdom. … With [the] victory [in Armageddon] the millennial reign of Christ in Jerusalem will commence. These long-postponed seven years thus allowed a time for the literal fulfillment of prophesies that dealt with the restored nation of the Jews and not with the church. According to the view that came to prevail (although the movement split internally over chronology) the living true saints of the church would at the outset be rescued from the turmoil of the seven years in the “secret rapture,” by which they would be taken out of the world to “meet Christ in the air.” The immediate implications of the idea that the four hundred ninety years should be divided into a four-hundred-eighty-three-year section and much later seven-year period center on the church age that fills the intervening gap. This current age or dispensation is sharply separated from all teachings of Scripture having to do with the Jewish people, whether in the Old Testament or in the age of the kingdom to come. Even Christ’s ministry was set in the era before the church age began. Thus his teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and the Lord’s Prayer proclaim righteousness on legal grounds (being still part of the Jewish “dispensation of law”) rather than on a doctrine of grace (which characterizes the church age or “dispensation of grace”). The church age is thus a historical “parenthesis.” The Old Testament hardly intimated its coming, the age having been rather a “mystery” revealed only with the Jews’ rejection of Christ’s kingdom. Unlike the postponed kingdom, which has a definite material and institutional structure, the interim church age of grace is non-institutional age of the Holy Spirit. The true church is not the institutional church, which is worldly and steadily growing in apostasy. It is rather a faithful remnant of the spiritual who are “separated and holy” from the world. (pp. 53–54) ******** Ironically, the dispensationalists were responding to some of the very same problems in Biblical interpretation that were troubling theological liberals in the nineteenth century. If Biblical statements were taken at face value and subjected to scientific analysis, major anomalies seemed to appear. Among these were that many Old Testament prophecies did not seem to refer precisely to the church, that Jesus and his disciples seemed to expect his return and the establishment of the kingdom very shortly, and that much of the teaching of Jesus seemed to conflict with the theology of Paul. Liberals resolved such problems by greatly broadening the standards for interpreting Biblical language. Dispensationalists did the opposite. They held more strictly than ever to a literal interpretation but introduced a new historical scheme whose key was the interpretation of the church age as a parenthesis. Once the key step was accepted, the rest of the Scripture could be fit into the scheme, and aspects that others viewed as inconsistencies could be explained as simply referring to different dispensations. (p. 54) Five hundred years ago, reformers such as Martin Luther felt that the Church had become too powerful and corrupt. Therefore, it’s authority needed to be brought under the superior authority of God’ Word. Now we have an opposite problem. American culture, family, education, economy, law, government, entertainment are in desperate need of reform. The only force that can reform America is the church. But evangelical theology’s preoccupation with taking souls to heaven has marginalized the church. The vast majority of American Christians are demoralized. They come across like the ten of the twelve spies who scout the Promised Land but believe that the light of the Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit cannot enable the church to reform America. Jesus cannot bind Satanic deception through the Spirit-empowered Church. He may be the ruler of the kings of the earth but he cannot possibly crush Satan under our feet. He has to come himself to fight the devil – we would rather be enslaved in an American kingdom of Satanic deception than go out to fight for the kingdom of Truth. On Tuesday June 10 at 7 pm, at Redeemer Lutheran Church (Fridley, MN) I plan to present my view of the church in a lecture entitled, “Returning Evangelicalism to the Biblical Theology of the Church.” This is a part of 8-part lecture series, “Why Christianity Lost America, and How to Return America to Greatness.” Please pray for finances to film, edit, and distribute this lecture series. Thank you
Posted on: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 00:05:22 +0000