A concern of mine as well. Unfortunately, we won't be here to see the transistion that must take place...mtymousie wrote:
Hi, Steve,
Thank you for your thoughts. Actually, I was amillenial for the first four decades or so of my life. Then one fateful day back in 1998, during one of many started and failed "read-the-Bible-through-in-one-year" sessions, Matt.16:27-28 jumped out and grabbed me by the throat ... and turned my comfortable little world upside down!
So, to get some semblance of comfort back and restore my sanity, I set out to compromise what I was reading with what I had been spoonfed all my life (since I had never run across the term "preterism" before, I had no idea at the time that compromise was the very definition of partial preterism). For the next two years, I desperately tried to explain away the OVERWHELMING scriptural and historical evidence that the first century Christians fully expected to see Christ return. I finally had to let go of every vestige of futurist doctrine ... accompanied by many marks from my fingernails vainly trying to hold on.
I believe that a man's sincere view of eschatology has absolutely no effect on his birth into Christ or his salvation (if perfect understanding is necessary to be saved, then we ALL got a big problem). However, I am VERY concerned, especially the further and further we slip away from the "generation" that saw "Israel" become a secular state in 1948, that the widespread doctrine of futurism could eventually have a devastating effect on the gospel. In the next hundred years, how many millions of TV viewers influenced by the popular *evangelists* like Hagee, Van Impe, etc, will become disillusioned when Jesus does not "come again"? When these "men of God" are in time ultimately proven to be false prophets, how many precious souls will start to think that the Bible itself is just not true?
I am thankful for forums like these where a reader can come and see varied points of view and the reasoning behind each view.
JMO,
Dale
aka
preteristmouse
I have always wondered how dispensationalists can justify the 1948 event with anything to do with Israel since their prophetic clock stopped ticking and won't start again until the church is raptured out. Even in their own theology, 1948 has to be meaningless because they are taking this as a fulfilled prophecy to Israel.
