Poll: Jesus's Second Coming

[barnhart]

Nomad, I welcome your dispensational/premil input. It probably not good when all voices are on one side.

[mike]

I can't speak for your church...but the one I attend and the majority of Anabaptist churches I've attended do not spend "large amounts of time in our Bible studies and sermons speculating about the fulfillment and meaning of prophecy". They spend very little...and unfortunately when it is discussed then people tend to get defensive.

I personally wouldn't want us spending LARGE amounts of time in it...but some time is okay. I think.

From the little I know, the spending of large amounts of time on speculative prophecy in Anabaptist churches seems to be relegated to certain speakers and perhaps certain congregations. One of the bishops in our conference must have had a bunch of time on his hands during Covid and produced a 10-part series on YouTube. I'll PM you the link; it might align well with your perspective.

[Nomad]

I can't speak for your church...but the one I attend and the majority of Anabaptist churches I've attended do not spend "large amounts of time in our Bible studies and sermons speculating about the fulfillment and meaning of prophecy". They spend very little...and unfortunately when it is discussed then people tend to get defensive.

I personally wouldn't want us spending LARGE amounts of time in it...but some time is okay. I think.

From the little I know, the spending of large amounts of time on speculative prophecy in Anabaptist churches seems to be relegated to certain speakers and perhaps certain congregations. One of the bishops in our conference must have had a bunch of time on his hands during Covid and produced a 10-part series on YouTube. I'll PM you the link; it might align well with your perspective.

Thank you for sharing! I'll take a listen in my free time.

[Ken]

I have no idea what or when anything is going to happen in the future. And I don't think anyone else does either.

But I also don't worry about it either. Since eschatology doesn't affect how I live my life one way or the other.

[Heirbyadoption]

I can't speak for your church...but the one I attend and the majority of Anabaptist churches I've attended do not spend "large amounts of time in our Bible studies and sermons speculating about the fulfillment and meaning of prophecy". They spend very little...and unfortunately when it is discussed then people tend to get defensive.
I personally wouldn't want us spending LARGE amounts of time in it...but some time is okay. I think.

From the little I know, the spending of large amounts of time on speculative prophecy in Anabaptist churches seems to be relegated to certain speakers and perhaps certain congregations. One of the bishops in our conference must have had a bunch of time on his hands during Covid and produced a 10-part series on YouTube. I'll PM you the link; it might align well with your perspective.

Thank you for sharing! I'll take a listen in my free time.

Nomad - As one of the few on here who shares much of your eschatalogical perspective, if you ever get bored, I can recommend two series from a couple of our ministers in the congregations where I grew up in out in CA. They would each ardently feels that eschatology should indeed affect how we live our lives, and is as important a part of our Scriptural study as every other part. By way of disclosure, most of the folks I grew up with out there are unashamedly Pre-Mill/Pre-Tribbers out there, though not always hardcore Dispensationalists and certainly not hyper-Dispensationalists. Anywho, David Rumble does a series through Daniel and Norm Layman each one through Revelation that you would probably enjoy in your spare time. Neither are "date-setters" by any means, but they are unashamed to share where their studies have led them. David has an particularly engaging and easy-to-follow study through Revelation (a continuation of his Daniel series), but it's not on the website for some reason. I'll see if I can find you a link at some point. Anywho, see the links below if you have time and interest - they are just mp3s, not video.

Daniel series (David Rumble): https://ogbbc.org/sermons/?orderby=date ... el-david-r
Revelation series (Norm Layman): https://ogbbc.org/sermons/page/2/?order ... ion-norm-l

[JayP]

Serious question, not mocking. Did dispensationalism exist prior to the19th century? I do not think so.

Did God have some issue successfully spreading His word?

I distrust new.

[JohnH]

Serious question, not mocking. Did dispensationalism exist prior to the19th century? I do not think so.

Did God have some issue successfully spreading His word?

I distrust new.

It didn't exist in a meaningful way until the 20th century; John Darby's denomination in the late 1800s was quite small. There are certain dispensational ideas that have existed for a lot longer, though, but usually ended up in the dustbin of history since people making predictions about when Jesus would come back or some event in Revelation happened had the problem that their predictions didn't come true.

The Scofield Bible would really be at the root of this, which I also blame for the rise of Christian Zionism. The core question that needs to be answered is why the Bible itself isn't good enough. I don't think commentaries like Scofield's (which was basically stolen from Darby; Scofield didn't have the time nor background to actually write a quality commentary himself) are a good idea.

[cmbl]

Serious question, not mocking. Did dispensationalism exist prior to the19th century? I do not think so.

Did God have some issue successfully spreading His word?

I distrust new.

Most non-dispensationalists would say that it did not exist prior to the 19th century. Some dispensationalists are able to agree with them. As for other dispensationalists, landmarkism springs eternal.

On another thread I had a post breaking down some elements that (as far as I can tell) are "old" while others were "new". Overall, the system was new.

As an aside, Dispensationalism aimed to be a systematic theology, not just an eschatological view. I recall Daniel Hummel, author of The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, saying that he thinks Darby would be a bit disappointed at how things turned out.

[Heirbyadoption]

THIS is well worth noting.

Dispensationalism aimed to be a systematic theology, not just an eschatological view.

[Ernie]

As one of the few on here who shares much of your eschatalogical perspective, if you ever get bored, I can recommend two series from a couple of our ministers in the congregations where I grew up in out in CA. They would each ardently feels that eschatology should indeed affect how we live our lives, and is as important a part of our Scriptural study as every other part.

How do they think it should affect our lives, and what do they see missing in the lives of those who embrace what the Bible says on the topic, without inserting and adding their own opinions to what the Bible says?