 Dispensationalism
The Vision
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Our peculiar vision, like politics, can make for some strange bedfellows. On our left are those who share our desire for influencing the world. These are our friends who see their service on the local school board or their canvassing of the neighborhood on behalf of some Republican candidate as service to the King. These are the folks who have a love for the lost, and express that love by playing their music, and adopting their mood every Lord's Day morning. These are those well-heeled pretenders who think that if we can spend enough money making a movie then we can take over the world. We, on the other hand, not only want to influence the world, we want to take it over. We don't want a place at the table; we want everyone to recognize that the table belongs to Jesus alone. But what separates us from these well dressed corporate boys for Christ is our strategy of separation. We conquer by retreat. We build bridges by building walls. We win the world by living in another world. On the other hand we share with those on our right the notion of antithesis-that we are a set-apart people, that the world around us is hell-bent on hell. We don't want to be tainted with the cooties of the culture around us. The trouble is that our compatriots on this side of the aisle are not fighting the war. They have already given up the table. Some even deny that it belongs to Jesus. There is a gnostic strain in dispensationalism, a spiritualism that is deadly and selfish. The culture around us is awash in sin; it is over-ripe and in need of a bath. And for the sake of the elect, we need to give it a bath. We rightly see the world as our enemy, but we must rightly love them as our enemy. The left wing of the church fails at the beginning of that equation; the right fails at the end. Loving our enemies requires not that we merely warn them that this world is about to explode, but that we labor to stomp out the fuse. We need to work for a world where we can tell them of another world. And that is one more way dispensationalism falls short. It is fuel for the fire that western culture is in radical decline. We do not deny such. We recognize that things are getting ugly in the world precisely because they are already ugly in the church. When we greet another teenage gunman treating his school like a video game with a yawn, when sodomites become a protected class, when a million and a half babies are killed every year, we can safely conclude that the salt has lost its savor. And perhaps it has lost its savor because the left has decided it will do a better job as salt if it pretends it is meat, and because the right has been pleading with the meat to hurry up and turn to salt before the destruction comes. We don't want the world to fall apart because it contains still those who will be called out of the world. We want to wish peace upon the prince of Babylon because we want to be free to make manifest the reign of the Prince of Peace. The ingathering of Pentecost could not have happened forty years later when all Jerusalem was under siege, and at each other's throats. The preacher will have a hard time gathering an audience when Attila the Hun is rampaging through town. And every year a million and a half sinners go to their death having never heard the gospel. That is why we are called to be salt and light, that we might preserve the peace such that the elect might be embraced by the light. I don't know the future. It is possible in the providence of God that western culture will experience revival such as the world has never seen. It is possible that these United States will one again become a free nation, one that gladly kisses the Son. It is possible that the kingdom will enjoy steady growth from today forward. But it sure doesn't look that way. It seems more likely that we as a culture will go the way of all flesh. One thing I am certain of, however, that all that we do to build the kingdom will not return void. I'm certain that if we are faithful stewards, the master will reward us. I'm sure that if God has called us to polish the brass on the Titanic, that when He returns, that brass will likewise be raised from the deep, and put to use. Nothing will be wasted. That which we as salt preserve will last forever. It is a good thing to not only pray for the peace of Babylon but to work for it. It is a good thing not only for us but for those who are lost and perishing. Our love for the world must not be a love of attraction, a love that wants to embrace the world, but a love of compassion, a love that wants to see it redeemed. If we can manage that, we can labor for the world without becoming like it. If we can manage that, then we will be salt and light. We are accused of being retreatists by those on our left, told that we do not care for the lost. We are accused of being worldly by those on our right, told that we have forgotten about heaven. These are accusations we bear with pride. Our accusers on our left are the worldly ones, our accusers on the right the retreatists. We strive to be neither, but to be faithful citizens of the kingdom of heaven, for the glory of the King, and for the citizens of Babylon. For such were all of us.
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