 Dispensationalism
The Vision
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It is the fool living under the sun who determines to "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." What then are we to make of those under the Son who claim, "Evangelize, evangelize, evangelize, for tomorrow we are raptured"? No one wants to come out against evangelism, especially me. It may very well be that in the providence of God the apparent threat of an impending rapture, and the tribulation which follows may actually have motivated a few folks to spread the Good News. Wouldn't it just be like God to use this to bring His sheep into His fold? There's a true sign of the sovereignty of God-He's strong enough to use goofy dispensational eschatology for His glory. (On the other hand, it may be that one day all our apologetical labors may fail on deaf ears as we will be seen by the world as those whose patron saint is Chicken Little.) That He uses our folly, however, is not an invitation to practice still more folly. We do not want to be foolish all the more that wisdom might abound. Folly has a way of slithering from our hands and biting us on the hind quarters. Wisdom, I believe, requires that we think ahead for thousands of years, that we make plans for this work of making manifest the kingdom of God. Wisdom means working for the long haul. I am a postmillennialist. That means I believe that we-that is, the church of Christ-will experience a thousand-year golden age before Jesus returns to make all things right. Despite that strong conviction, I pray regularly Maranatha, Lord Jesus, imploring the King to come now. I'm pretty sure, however, that that prayer will not be answered, not because of my eschatology but because of the promises of God. He tells the children of Israel in Exodus 20 that if they will refrain from idolatrous worship, He will bless them to a thousand generations. The pious, literalist dispensationalists, of course, do not think that thousand means thousand. It is a symbolic number. And they may be right. But it symbolizes a large number, not a small one. He may return after more than a thousand generations. It could even be a round number, and return after only 951 generations. Either way, if a generation is roughly forty years, that means He'll be back somewhere around 39,000 AD; two down, thirty-seven to go. If, on the other hand, He comes tomorrow, 1000 symbolizes roughly 75. Will the Son of Man find faith on the earth when He returns? He will if I can help it. Here is where the eschatological rubber meets the application road. Because I believe that He will not come tomorrow, I labor to prepare for His distant coming not by making scary movies about what could happen tomorrow, but by raising up godly seed. I am raising my children to participate in victory, not to snatch escape from the jaws of defeat. A Reformed perspective is a transgenerational one, a view of the future that moves forward with each generation not only witnessing the growth of the kingdom but taking part in bringing the growth to pass. Their children are in Sunday school dreaming about airplanes with raptured pilots; our children are in constant training for the spiritual warfare to which they have been called. If God should bless Denise and me with more covenant children, and if He should bless their labors in raising our grandchildren in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and if He should bless those children with quivers full of mighty weapons, and such should continue for thousands of years, for hundreds of generations, what might this world look like? How might our King's glory shine forth before the watching world? Dispensationalists are warning us about polishing the brass on the Titanic, because they don't realize that we're building the Starship Enterprise-or, rather, that we are polishing spaceship Earth to prepare for the return of the King. Most of you have heard the multi-level marketing spiel before, about the wisdom of earning a cut of the fruit of the labor of a thousand people rather than merely earning all of your own fruit. While it might be a pipe dream in friend-nagging home businesses, it is the substance of the business of our homes. I love my children madly, as they are here and now; but I dream of the day when they will be the great-great-grandparents of several thousand godly grandparents. I want my "downline" filled to capacity with fearless soldiers. You can neither have such a dream nor achieve it if your vision of the future is that it will all end in failure tomorrow. I am not suggesting that dispensationalists make bad parents; I'm sure many of them would put me to shame. I am suggesting, however, that their labors do not match their own system, and that there are no doubt many whose labors, or lack thereof, do match their system. Such a vision does not thrive in the soil of pessimism. You will have trouble raising godly seed under the clouds of doom. The biblical vision, however, can inspire us to obedience. When we know the kingdom will grow, when we know that God is faithful in His covenants, when we know that He has promised to be God to us, to our children, and to as many as are afar off, when we know that Christ not only came to conquer the world but that He has already overcome it, then we move forward in the faith. We move forward believing the good news of the Kingdom of Christ. We don't send our little children out to drag their heathen classmates onto the boat, but prepare them for the larger task of raising their own children such that they would be a light to the world that is not triumphing, but perishing. Eschatology then is not a theological parlor game but the very spring in our step, the very hope that is within us, the very vision that we are to pass onto His blessings, that He is in the midst of blessing to a thousand generations.
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