Editorials

Will America be great again?

Is mankind progressing or is judgment coming? Will Christians bring peace to the world before Christ returns or will the world experience wars, famines and judgment from God?

Theologians are in a fierce battle over eschatology (end times). One thing which tends to unite the Catholic Church, Reformed protestant churches, and progressive emergent churches is Amillennialism. (Greek "a" means no, and "mille" means 1,000). Amillennialism in Christian eschatology involves the rejection of the belief Jesus will have a literal thousand year physical reign on the earth. (Revelation 20:2).

Bob Dewaay, in his book, "The Emergent Church", observed the Emergent Church movement is an association of individuals linked by one very important, key idea: that God is bringing history toward a glorious kingdom of God on earth without future judgment. They loathe fundamentalismmore than any other theology because it claims just the opposite: that the world is getting ever more sinful and is sliding toward cataclysmic judgment. Both liberal progressivism and a fundamentalist coming world judgment cannot be true. Either there is a literal future judgment or there is not.

Emergent Pastor Brian Mclaren teaches that the fundamentalist teaching of "the Second Coming of Christ" is characterized by violence, killing, domination, and eternal torture. Mclaren declares fundamentalists have a dubious interpretation of John's Apocalypse, and are ignorant, wrong, and immoral. Richard Niebuhr said liberalism teaches, "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministry of Christ without a Cross".

However, man is not the arbiter of truth. Only God knows the future. Jesus said in Mathew 24:7 & 22, "For nation shall rise against nations, and kingdom against kingdom; ant there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in various places. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved; but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened."

 

For more information on end time prophecy see "When is judgment day?" and "Tea Party Culture War", by Dr. Steve Johnston

© 2016 - 2024 Steve Johnston - All Rights Reserved.
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