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I'm a believer persuaded that the Scriptures teach that Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom, that believers since the time of Jesus inhabit the Kingdom in its provisional or seed form, that when Jesus comes again He will consummate His Kingdom, and that we will then inhabit the Kingdom on earth in its fullness.

Some form of the above sentence has been believed by Christians from the days of the early church, and is believed by many Christians in the United States (and I assume around the world) today.

However.....

There is at least one camp of theology, dispensational premillennialism,  among American evangelicals that also subscribes to the complete trustworthiness of Scripture, but sees the Scripture teaching that the Kingdom is not in any sense here today. As classical dispensationalists understand it, the Kingdom is wholly a future reality.  Since the 1920s this perspective grew rapidly in popularity among conservative Protestants in America, and my unscientific estimate  is that by 1995, probably 85% of American conservative Protestants believed in some form of dispensational theology.

(I also observe, anecdotally, that many young believers, including pastors, seminarians and theologically-motivated laypeople, are not devotees of dispensationalism. I would now estimate roughly that 70% of conservative Protestants are dispensationalists today, a significant change in the past 13 years.)

Caveat: I suspect many ordinary believers of the estimated 85% might not have known the term "dispensationalism," and may not have known the technical terms within this perspective or the arguments for it.  However,  because ordinary believers in the US heard dispensational preaching, read dispensational perpsectives in newsletters, and hear dispensational perspectives on the radio and at conferences and on various media (tapes, television), it was the cultural air they breathed.

All to say, my hunch is that many ordinary folks were dispensationalists by default, "knowing" this perspective implicitly.

My purpose in this post is not to debate dispensationalism and truly, many of the men and women I care for most in this world and admire and that are examples to me in Christ are dispensationalists. Some of the best researchers my company has hired have been outstanding students at Dallas Theological Seminary, which I consider the flagship seminary of dispensationalism. So please hear this loudly and clearly- this post is not about disparaging dispensationalists nor even arguing about whether this theological camp is accurate or whether the camp I'm in is accurate.

Related, any comments left by readers that try to debate this or criticize one camp or the other won't be approved under this post. Such a debate is a good thing and worthy of high quality dialogue, but that's not my interest in this post, so I will only approve comments that keep the focus.Read more

8:18-24 tells us that our current sufferings will seem slight when compared to the glory that will be revealed. This is not to deny suffering. Paul concedes that suffering is numbingly and painfully real. But in comparison with glory, suffering looks different because it is dwarfed by the grandeur of glory awaiting believers. One of my friends gave birth to her first child a few weeks ago and this is exactly how she talks about birth. The pain of birth was intense and there was lots of groaning, but she said it didn’t even compare to the euphoria of having her daughter in her arms. Read more

In his letter to Titus, Paul offers forty-six crisp verses on theology, social ethics, and personal morality. The letter is a stunning tour-de-force on how Christians are to impact their pagan world. It includes thoughts, I think, that are worth lingering over in a political season.

Curiously, the first thing Paul says about God is that he “does not lie” (Titus 1:2). This is the only time the Bible ever feels the need to say precisely this. Why here? Why now? Simple. From antiquity, Cretans had claimed that Zeus had been born as a man on the island of Crete and had eventually died and been buried there as well; only then had he been elevated to deity in acknowledgment of his many benefactions for the human race.

In a word, Cretans were the Mormons of the ancient world. Not coincidentally, I think, Nikos Kazantzakis, whose several writings — not just The Last Temptation of Christ — imagine a merely human Christ ascending to deity through suffering — was from Crete.

Mainland Greeks had mocked Cretans for their theological brazenness. “Cretans are always liars. For a tomb, O Lord, Cretans build for you; but you did not die, for you are forever,” stormed Callimachus, the 3rd century B.C.E. librarian of Alexandria.

Imagine Paul’s delight at landing upon an indigenous voice that had much earlier affirmed the indictment: “Cretans are always liars …” (Titus 1:12, traditionally, from Epimenides, the 7th century B.C.E. chronicler of Cretan mythology). “Alas,” the Cretan prophet had already acknowledged, “we do knowingly misrepresent the god we claim to know.”

Imagine Paul’s triple delight to find the ancient Cretan voice spelling out in his saying the social and personal consequences of theological dissembling: “… vicious beasts, lazy gluttons” (Titus 1:12).  Read more

At a secluded pull-off along the Seward Highway in Alaska, there stands a mute and blaring testament to the human attitude toward authority.  We may assume that it was once a stark black-on-white Parks Department sign, stating in block letters, 'NO TARGET SHOOTING'.  Now, it sports rebellious marks of human witchcraft, and those etched piercingly into its thick metal:  the terse statute is now punctuated by bullet holes.  Yet the character difference between the law-makers and the law-breakers has been heightened rather than diminshed by the vandalism.  As I gaped at the shredded metal, I both chuckled at the irony, and shivered at the implications, of this cairn to criminality.  I would be afraid to use an AK-47 to thumb my nose, but someone obviously was not.Read more

Is it just me, or is 2008 flying by faster than normal? Where has it gone? I feel as if my time is spent before I am even able to start whatever it is I am doing. Maybe I’m just getting older. I do have a 2-1/2 year old son… that may have a lot to do with it. Anyway, in the spirit of how fast this year is going, here are some random thoughts.Read more

Ben Witherington, a well-regarded professor at Asbury Seminary, reviews The Shack in some detail.

Click here for the whole article.

CULTURE AND COURAGE

We are both part of and a product of our culture more than we care to admit.  A year ago I thought Facebook was silly; now I have a Facebook page and think it’s great.  I cannot imagine life before cell phones, online airline reservations, weather.com and text messaging.  But there was life before these things, and there will be life after. As to my thoughts, five years ago they were saturated – because it was all anyone was writing about – on terrorism and the place of the United States in a post-9/11 world.  Today the “new hotness” is climate change and green energy.  It seems like yesterday it was all about the (Red) campaign, “The Passion of the Christ” and the new Narnia movie.  Now, I am not sure of the cause to which I am supposed to rally friends.

On one hand, then, Andrew Fletcher’s statement, “[l]et me write the songs of a nation and I don’t care who writes its laws,” rings true.  Culture is upstream from politics, it is upstream from us, it is the river we swim in without even knowing it.  I am shaped by it.  Our generation is increasingly self-aware of this, we know the upstream culture can be shaped (or manipulated) to bring about certain results downstream, and so we aim to do so.  I want to be at that culture-shaping place.  Yet at the same time, who am I to be there?  I am as much a product of my culture as anyone, I cannot step outside, I am not immune from its effects.Read more

On Monday I spent the day doing some work around the house. One of the projects that I took on was assembling a set of bookshelves we had purchased at a local retail store. This was one of those pieces of furniture that promised ease of assembly and did not even require any tools. I am not much of a carpenter, so easy assembly and no tools sounded perfect. When I opened the box, I took out all of the pieces and the instruction booklet. The first thing that struck me was how thick the instruction booklet was. I figured that it must have several short sections in different languages. I was wrong. The instruction book was 47 pages long, with 74 “easy steps” to follow.Read more

Who doesn’t complain about “busy-ness”? We’re plagued by it. Whether it is due to your vocation, your children, traffic. Whenever I am around a group of mom’s with young children talking about the Christian life, there is the consistent and pervasive frustration of just not having the time or energy to give to their spiritual life. Almost daily, I will be struck by how distracted I am. How come I can’t remember to pray for the woman in our church whom i found out just yesterday who has a tumor on her head? I mean, I’ve already forgotten. How? No real mystery- I get sucked into myself, my worries, my day.Read more