They didn’t exist prior to the inception of the Fundamentalist movement, and have been completely slated in academic circles. A (British) University wouldn’t even give the time of day to such future-eschatologies – they are considered in the same vein as the more extreme heresies of the first centuries of the Church.

I realise people won’t like me scoffing at something for purely academic reasons, but if you can’t even establish more legitimacy than the Gnostics, you are in trouble.

as an aside i think the gentlest rebuff is to ask people to remember how before the mainstream ecumenical movement when all good protestants didn’t like catholics how much everyone said the anti-christ would be a catholic or the pope or how the catholic church was the great whore, then when world war 1 and 2 happened it was obvious that hitler was the anti-christ, then we went back to the catholic church untill the cold war really took off then we started to think the anti-christ would deffo be either russion or atleast east european (thats even in the left behind book) oh and now that we’re fighting terrorist we’re now told that the anti-christ is gonna be a muslim,

Anyone see a patern emerging here

1 a: a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation b: an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition2: a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary

Take out the trust in magic or chance part, and it pretty much describes much of the end-times “theology” that gets passed off these days as fact.

MB

Cindy, I grew up completely a Left Behind kind of Christian, only because I never truly studied the issue and simply read things like Left Behind. I don’t know what I think now when it comes to eschatology, but I’ve studied all the “-isms” and think they often are our best attempt to understand an Infinite God and His plans.

You bring up a great issue that frequently haunts us all – judgment and condescension. We’re told to love and are agents of love. the enemy will use any thing he can to get us to do anything but love. And he really loves it when we do it in the name of Christianity.

Great conversation, all. Thanks, Grace, for sharing this.

carlo,
Thank you for the link. That was very interesting. I was thinking that someone should write a book that contradicts the theology of the Left Behind books. It does sound like a fascinating book.

ben,
It actually surprises me a little bit that some of these mentalities are so ingrained.

t,
No tea. Double americano, perfect.

tom,
Thanks for your response to Cindy. I haven’t read Surprised by Hope yet, but the things that I have read about it lead me to believe that I would probably agree with many of Wright’s perspectives on this subject.

cindy,
I really don’t spend much time trying to figure this stuff out, and I find myself pretty skeptical of those who claim certainty regarding their eschatological beliefs and interpret current events through that grid.

The apocolyptic details have been repeatedly misinterpreted perhaps because they are being forced into a grid of interpretation for which they were never intended.

My passion is participation in the kingdom of God and His plan for restoration and redemption. My future hope is in His eternal reign.

I very much agree with you that these aren’t issues worth dividing over.

makeesha,
I often find myself in the tension between honest exchange and silent disagreement. As conversations among women are prone to, this one moved along quickly before I had an opportunity to delve into the areas of disagreement. This particular conversation was such a barrage of politics and eschatology combined, that I was momentarily speechless. With these particular friends, I would honestly discuss eschatological beliefs, but I wouldn’t wade very far into a political discussion.

Sometimes I leave conversations wishing I said more, sometimes wishing I had said less.

Evangelicals are a more diverse crowd than you may realize.

The definition you gave of the amillenial perspective combined aspects of both amillenialism and postmillenialism.

I’m not sure that your definition of premillenialism was the prevailing understanding prior to Augustine. Actually, I tend to see from my limited reading that the early and mid-church fathers had a more thorough going ability to deal with the highly symbolic nature of eschatalogical literature than have the vast majority of Christians of the past 180 years or so. Few Believers today, in our part of the world at least, have a solid grounding in Old Testament prophetic language. Therefore, many Evangelicals have been indoctrinated in the mis-shapen eschatology promulgated by a few “worthies” of the past..Scofield and Darby in particular. Hal Lindsey revived and popularized in the early 70’s the Scofield/Darby axis. That is so well accepted without question today that to suggest otherwise seems…well, as you seem to indicated…puzzling.

An outstanding treatment of this subject has been published by NT Wright–Surprised By Hope.

I guess I’d call myself a “pan-millenialist”…my trust is in the resurrected Jesus who is Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Everlasting God…and because of Him in the end it’ll all pan out in just the way it suits Him.

T