A dangerous lie

Premillennial dispensational eschatology is committed to portraying the world as inherently incurable and in moral decline. Only the following series of eschatologically inevitable events can reverse this decline: the (somehow) secret Rapture, followed by the Great Tribulation against the State of Israel, followed by the return of Christ to set up an international Christian bureaucracy.

More than this: all evidence of moral decline had been harnessed for decades to prove the inevitability of the fastapproaching Rapture of the saints to heaven. The archetype — the literary model — was Hal Lindey's best-selling book, The Late, Great Planet Earth (1970). Gary North

It is told to us over and over in books and movies like "The Late, Great Planet Earth", "A Distant Thunder" and "Left Behind" series. They foster an unbiblical mindset in the Christian community. Christians are no longer building the Kingdom of God, but they are digging fox holes trying to hold out 'until Jesus comes.'

Although there are some hopeful exceptions, generally there are no long-term Christian movements for establishing mercy institutions Christians once were famous for; institutions such as hospitals, universities, cathedrals with their ministries of mercy to immigrants, indigents, recovery centers for prostitutes, Christian schools, with an historically Christian and orthodoxically Biblical view of the world and of the future. We now slap a Band-Aid on something and call it a ministry thinking we really are doing a work for God. There is no longer an unabashed, decidedly Christian nurturing of leaders, spokesmen, researchers, poets, historians, educators, pastors and preachers, and medical practitioners, etc., as there were in previous generations of Christians. Mostly we are content to think in terms of street-witnessing for the next 3 or 4 years since we are afraid that is all the time we have left. Most Rapture-enthusiasts have a hard time trying to finish 4 years of college.

When we finally wake up after 10, 20, 30, 40 years, and Jesus hasn't raptured us out of this evil world of Satan's rule, and we haven't gotten married and/or had children, because "who wants to bring kids into this world when they might miss the rapture and go through the Great Tribulation"; after years of this,...we find that we have wasted many opportunities for blessings, and we have failed to build a godly legacy for the generations to come.

Let us return to the Bible and rebuild our definitions of Family, Church and State according to the principles and precepts outlined therein. No more of the pragmatism/"she'll be right" attidtude that has gotten us into this mess.