91. The Death Of Dispensationalism (A Practical Postmillennialism. Section 1. Part 1)

Hello and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is a new series called a practical post -millennialism

This is episode 1 The roadmap for our series

Now before you delve into the juicy contents of any book You should encounter a table of contents that provides a road map for where you're heading

Now if I were to present to you a table of contents or a roadmap for this new series I would divide it into three distinct sections in section 1 which we're going to begin today

I would aim to defeat the defeatism that is alive and well in Christianity today.

I intend to show you how an Expectation of defeat has actually crept into the modern church making us morbidly

Discouraged I also plan to demonstrate how this defeatism has crippled the modern

American church and individual Christians Preventing them from joyfully

Engaging in the mission that Jesus has given us Additionally, I want to expose how it has produced a generation of curmudgeon

II disillusioned Christian isolationist who are Disengaged from culture and ever hopeful on being raptured out of here now in section 1

Which is today where we're gonna strive to conquer this pernicious

Canker -sore called defeatism by examining it in its three manifestations now this week.

We're gonna explore how Dispensationalism which is an eschatological doctrine. We'll get into it in a moment.

Don't worry has contributed to this Disease then in weeks two and three we're gonna conclude this section by observing how historic pre -millennial ism

Which is better and a millennial ism, which is even better have in some ways even though much less also fostered an expectation of pessimism and defeat in the modern church and it needs to be repented of if we're going to move forward and Build Christendom in our generation now in section two after we move past the defeatism category

I want to present a biblical case for optimism and what I mean by optimism is I mean that that we can have an optimistic view of the world as Being instead of in being engulfed in flames ready to collapse in a moment's notice

I want us to see how the Bible actually anticipates Jesus's worldwide universal victory

I Want us to see how Jesus is gonna claim all the nations that his reign is gonna be unopposed that he's gonna bring his kingdom of peace over the entire earth as the water covers the sea before this old world concludes and Then in section three after demonstrating the

Bible's optimism about all of these things Well, I want us to do something that I have personally not seen done before I want us to apply the concept of post -millennialism to every aspect of our lives

I want us to answer questions. Like what does it mean for me that Jesus reigns that he is

Achieving a total and complete victory. How will my Kings victory impact my manhood my parenting?

How how is my being a dad going online with his victory as a part of the winning team?

How is our womanhood our mothering our marriages our church participation our community transformation our evangelism discipleship our?

Vocation our finances all of it. How is it gonna support the unfolding victory of Jesus Christ and After exploring all of this

It's my hope That you will leave this series invigorated No longer expecting the worst but working for the best

Anticipating the growth of Jesus's kingdom in our lifetime and Engaged in that mission with all of your heart soul mind and strength.

My goal is simple when we defeat the disgusting idol of defeatism that has

Captivated Jesus's church for far too long And when we embrace the Bible's call for optimism about our future about our

King about his victory Then the Christian Church will stop feeling so powerless

She will cease being angered by the negativity porn That's all over the news and she will discard the kind of pessimism that keeps her secluded and hiding in her churches disengaged from culture reluctant to be the salt and light of the world instead

She will stand up boldly and confidently bringing all of Christ To all the world that is my goal

Defeating defeatism now within the diverse landscape of Christian theology few theological systems have sparked as much debate and reflection as dispensationalism this theological system with its distinct method of interpreting the end times events in the

Bible and Understanding God's role in human history has not only shaped legions of modern

Christians But it's also spoiled many people within the evangelical fold and by that.

I don't mean a good thing Unfortunately, this is true whether you realize it or not

I mean you don't know you don't need to know what dispensationalism actually is or to be an expert on these things to to have

Drank the Kool -Aid it is everywhere. It is Ubiquitous it is much the same way that you cannot detect micro pollutants in the air when you breathe

So many in the church have been Toxified by this 200 year old view that has seeped its way into everything

In eschatological studies, which just means the discipline that examines the last days and the end times.

That's what eschatology is a studying the end times Dispensationalism has become the aerosol poison that is leaked into the ventilation system of the church infecting everything

From its obscure beginnings to its majority status within the American Church It is hard to avoid it and has caught many uninformed captives in its gloomy melancholy nets the result of its incredible spread has not been a strong and vigorous church ready to To attack the day seize the day

Bring the gospel to the nation's disciple the nation's according to the what Jesus told us in his in Matthew 28

No, it's it's instead produced a sickly defeated and lazy church That's unwilling to build anything unwilling to share the gospel to anyone this dumpster fire of a doctrine

That we're gonna be looking at today. I don't care if you get offended by that, honestly That dumpster fire of a doctrine is what we're gonna be looking at today.

But before we begin I Have to admit that this topic deserves an entire book

This is especially true when you consider all of the biblical texts at this viewpoint has mangled over the years all of the failed predictions

All of the laughable silly things that has come out of this doctrine. It deserves an entire book.

Maybe even a series of books But today we're just gonna barely be able to delve into the murky waters

Perhaps maybe only even staining the smallest little pinky toe in those murky waters by examining today

It's history its roots dissecting its core tenets addressing its addiction to hyper literalism.

It's rigid futurism and How it gives birth to rampant defeatism

Today, I want to show you how this has happened and how this viewpoint has successfully

Immobilized the modern church it stymied her mission and it's caused the world to rapidly decay all around us

Now if that's your jam then buckle up and let's get started dispensational definitions

What is dispensationalism? Well dispensationalism is a theological system that divides human history into seven unique eras of history

And in those eras of history God interacts uniquely and unrepeatedly with man according to whichever era that man belongs

So if you live in Noah's era God deals with you in one way Well, if you live in Old Testament Israel God deals with you another way the

New Testament Church It's still a different way. These divisions in history are hard divisions, which are called dispensations, which is where we get the term

Now, let me give you an example of this. Imagine history is a grand play

That was written and directed by God as you know, most plays at least if they're good Advance a single unified story from the beginning to the end the beginning sets up the story the middle builds and crescendos to some sort of climax and then the climax and Resolution happens and then the story ends the characters go through various ups and downs in the narrative there

They're twist and plot turns in every story But overall every element of every play and again, at least the ones that are worth their salt

Advances a single unified story from the beginning to the end, but this is not the case in the dispensational worldview

According to dispensationalism God has divided the world into seven micro dramas or seven

Disjointed and fragmented chapters where God is doing unique things that do not contribute to the overall unified story

At least not in any meaningful way these seven Dispensations are like seven chapters from seven different books taped and pasted together and you expecting to get something out of it when you read it

These seven dispensations are tough time are meant to highlight the disunity and the discontinuity

Within the redemptive historical story and they're not meant to highlight the overall unity that the

Bible actually describes a Brief history of dispensationalism

Now to understand the rise of dispensationalism We don't need to go back to the

New Testament era or the ancient and apostolic Church We we don't even need to go back to the Reformation because unlike most theological systems that exist

Dispensationalism is relatively new It's popping up into existence happened only about 200 years ago in the 19th century

England now that fact alone Should cause us to be skeptical of this view Since none of the

Apostles none of the original disciples none of their disciples nor their disciples disciples or anyone in the ancient

Church Actually believe this way or had even heard of such a ridiculous view that point alone doesn't make it wrong but it does present an astronomical burden of proof that dispensationalism unfortunately cannot muster now regarding its origins a 19th century man named

John Nelson Darby who was a theologian and a member of an Anabaptist sect known as the

Plymouth Brethren was the first person to begin codifying these views again 19th century

England John Nelson Darby The problem though was that Darby? Wasn't just presenting a new idea

But he was actually presenting an entire new paradigm for how to view the Bible and how to view history and how to view

God's Actions in it now one may reasonably wonder why the Holy Spirit waited 1700 years to reveal such a fragmented view that would cause the church to basically be paralyzed in defeatism

But notwithstanding all of that and its novelty Darby had a new vision for how to interpret the scriptures

That ran afoul of the vast majority of interpretations that had ever been given

According to Darby he saw the Bible not as one continuous story from the author

God But as a series of distinct chapters each with its own theme and its own lessons as we said before he called these chapters

Dispensations now this approach was entirely different from the traditional way of understanding the

Bible that had been handed down for the first 18 centuries known as covenant theology and covenant theology

God mediates a relationship with sinful humanity through Successive covenants these covenants are terms by which

God is going to pursue and dwell with sinful man They come right out of the text covenant with Adam Noah Abraham Moses David you get my point

All of these covenants actually also culminate and move forward and point to the new covenant administration.

That's in Jesus Christ Now while covenant theology focuses on the continuity of redemptive history, and it's actually demonstrable from the text

Well Darby segmented biblical history Attempting to prove that God had somehow changed his mode of operation with each successive chapter soon

Those ridiculous ideas. I'm sorry if I'm being dismissive, but they are there again

They're not demonstrable from the text soon Those ideas begin to spread in England and in Europe and eventually they crossed over the

Atlantic where they took hold Now as said Darby's ideas found their most their most fertile soil in the hyper

Individualism and pull yourself up by your bootstraps soil of America It was like planting an old seed and new highly fertilized soil

Which basically just full of manure where it grew twice as fast and gained a firm footing on these shores this quick acceptance from the

American Church and even faster growth within the Americas was primarily thanks to the

Schofield reference Bible which was published in 1909 and brought Darby's Dispensational thinking to the masses now the

Schofield reference Bible by marrying Publishing excellence and marketing genius and and appealing to Christians who wanted to study their

Bible all that added with Dispensational thinking in a single study Bible. Well, the average Christian was exposed to Darby for the first time and they drank it in This would change the fabric and character of American Evangelical theology in this country for more than a century and it still continues to this day

Now beyond impacting just the average Christian or the run -of -the -mill Evangelical Church prominent 19th century theologians arose during this era who

Affected by the system of thinking that they found at home in their Schofield Bibles grew up and began founding influential

Institutions like the Moody Bible Institute which became strong supporters of this new theological framework

You think Dallas Theological Seminary as well and all of this happened like the wild spread of Japanese kudzu in rural,

Georgia America went to bed with the first little sprig of Dispensationalism sticking up out of the garden only to wake up for an entire infestation in the generations ahead

Now it's essential. However to note that while Dispensationalism as a whole is wholly modern some of the elements of Dispensationalism have ancient roots for instance historic pre -millennial ism

Which we're going to talk about next week is a very ancient view that Christ is gonna reign physically on the earth for a thousand

Years after the church is raptured out of the world The world's gonna fall into a seven -year tribulation Christ is gonna set up his millennial kingdom all of that We're gonna talk about that next week

And while I wholeheartedly disagree with that system and with that idea it actually does go back to the ancient church now on the other hand

Dispensationalism borrowed some of these ancient pre -millennial beliefs and combined them with Darby's new way of chopping up the

Bible and Created a new breed of theology, which as the cool kids say is kind of sus influence on the modern church

Now as we delve deeper into dispensationalism, it's crucial to recognize how this once modest theological sapling

Morphed into a colossal oak tree casting its pervasive shadow over much of the evangelical landscape

Dispensationalism is more than a legacy of misplaced beliefs that was inherited from past generations

It has actually become an opaque lens that is blinded a significant portion of Jesus's Church confusing her about the world the church

Engaging with culture how the Bible is interpreted and what's gonna happen in the future like a pervasive weed in grandpappy's garden

Dispensationalism has entrenched itself within the backyard of modern Church thinking especially in its approach to eschatology in the modern nation -state of Israel Because dispensationalism teaches redemptive history through successive disjointed chapters

Christians are not taught to see themselves living in the climax of human history during the reign of their

King But instead during an asterisk period where God is Graciously permitting

Gentiles to come to him because his true bride rejected him It's almost as if the

Dispies are saying God took on a temporary girlfriend while waiting for his wife to come back home

This of course is preposterous since the Gentiles were grafted into the people of God by the finished work of Christ The church age is not an asterisk period the church age is not an allowance that God allowed to happen while the

Jews are in rebellion, no When Jesus died and rose from the grave he made us into one people out of both

Jews and Greek Galatians 328 In that event transformed his church into an entirely

Jewish Phenomenon into a into the Israel of God, which is made up of people from all over every tribe tongue and nation

That's Galatians 616 the Israel of God instead of playing around with the church while he's waiting on Israel to return the

Bible describes God as Already having Israel in the church

Israel and the church are the same phenomenon in the Bible made up of Jew and Greek male and female slave and free

Which of course is all accomplished by the glorious working of his son now despite clear biblical teaching on these things

Dispensationalism views the church as nothing more than an add -on era one of the seven

According to proponents of this view one day Israel is going to end her rebellion and God is gonna revive her again in the future and he's gonna give her a new temple to worship him in and this of course is blasphemy since Israel already exists through the manifold people of God on earth

We're not waiting for Israel to come back Israel's already his but also To say that there's gonna be a new temple that's gonna be built is actual blasphemy

Because the final sacrifice to end all sacrifices already happened in the death burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ it's

Hebrews 10 12 and Instead of seeing Jesus as the true temple or as the true sacrifice or as the true high priest which are all biblical doctrines dispensational gurus

Nullify the finished work of Jesus claiming that the Jews are gonna one day trade in everything that Jesus accomplished

For a blood -lusting animal sacrificing temple This is like trading in all of the romance and intimacy that exists is experienced with an actual bride for a faded -out

Polaroid picture clearly This teaching is ludicrous now according to Dispensationalist this messianic and douche return to a mosaic temple is going to be ushered in by a grand and resounding

Defeat of Jesus's church in that exciting so in order to get back to the temple the church has to crash and burn in fantastic defeat only adding to the absurdity of this ridiculous position

This view asserts that the church will ultimately fail in her mission to win the world to Christ Immorality is going to continue growing unchecked and cover the entire world with its glory

Apparently and the church is going to be raptured out of here as lovable losers And in Antichrist is going to rise to power in an intergalactic battle in Armageddon where Jesus is going to come in and liquidate all of them now this theological nonsense is spread aggressively through Christendom at the same time that Media Empire stopped telling feel -good stories and that's important because things don't happen in a vacuum

Movements don't spread without a context at the same time that Fox News CNN and other media companies discovered that it was profitable more profitable in fact than telling feel -good stories to pump doom and gloom narratives

Incessantly into our living rooms and public squares because it sells well at the same time that happened

American theologians and pastors have taken up this addiction to carnality Selling and peddling panic pessimism and doom to generations of Christians who've become paralyzed

Just like the consumers of cable news By focusing constantly on how the world is going from bad to worse a culture of Christians have grown up fantasizing more ardently about a rapture where they're gonna leave the world behind in a blaze of glory than Actually doing the hard and faithful work of seeing this world conform to the image of Christ For decades a left -behind style abandonment complex has taken hold in the church

Looking past the world that we're living in and the work that's called to be done here to escape to a

Gnostic like bodiless heaven This is like a teenager refusing to clean his room because he knows his mother will eventually

Burst in and do it for him in the same way The church has abandoned the

Great Commission from Christ to disciple the nation's Hoping or at least betting on the fact that the world is one gonna one day get so bad that Jesus is fed up with It and he comes back to clean up the mess that we made

Instead of looking at this as a commission that he gave us empowered by the Spirit for us to oversee for the good of the world

We've abandoned our calling for escapism Instead of ardently trying to see the

Great Commission accomplished in our lifetime Thinking strategically about how do we evangelize and how do we make disciples?

And how do we take back land that belongs to Jesus instead of strategically thinking about these things?

Dispensationalism has employed an attitude of saving as many people as they can

Before the ship sinks. This is why mega churches have have carnal concert style worship services because the goal is to Save people before Jesus returns to pull them out of the flames

Don't worry about discipling them discipling takes way too long who has time for that and that's why this culture of Christianity this dispensational cult has produced a multiple generational problem of baby undisciplined

Christians who've never been brought up in the faith never been taught good doctrine and who Basically are perpetually immature waiting on an imminent rapture and yet the rapture that they're all waiting for Hasn't come has it come after a hundred years of failed predictions.

It hasn't come after thousands of ridiculous prophecies all

Unfulfilled and it's not gonna come in the way that the Dispies are thinking because that's not what the Bible says we're gonna get into that more later, but It's gonna have to wait for future episodes now

To paralyze the church with such defeatist propaganda Dispensationalists have leveraged the domain of Christian book publishing companies and entertainment companies

Who've churned out a litany of volumes that are steeped in this kind of evangelical panic porn eschatology sensationalizing

Bible prophecy that melds current events from the newspaper and now from the tickers on the screen or from your

Twitter account Into end times failed predictions series like left behind the late great plan earth 88 reasons why

Jesus will return in 88 are examples from last generation of how these commercialized ideas take hold in the book publishing companies making their writers fat and wealthy and Leaving a generation of Christians brought up speculating on whether Kovat 19 and its vaccine is the mark of the beast

This skewed perspective has tainted the modern church's ability to understand

God's faithful work in history his ongoing mission in the present and the ultimate trajectory towards a triumphant and glorious future that is coming in Jesus Christ dispensationalism is a miracle that it grew because every story that that you and I have ever watched every movie that we've

Been touched by has a glorious end. Why would we think that? the writer of the

Bible would take the church and Cause its grand and glorious finality

To be that it crashes and burns and loses That sort of thinking has fostered a climate where the headlines in the newspapers are often more important than the scriptures

Leading to a frantic obsession with current events like wars in Israel Potential epidemic outbreaks who is in charge the who?

Geolitic geopolitical shifts and power dynamics all of that deemed as precursors to us getting zapped out of here in essence dispensationalism propelled by theologians pastors publishing houses

Christian media all of that has promulgated a Unfragmented view of the

Bible and is it any wonder since dispensationalism fragments the Bible It's destroyed our view of Jesus's bride the church it has caused a generation to be addicted to panic and pessimism instead of instead of hope and and The gospel and this is not only diverted the church's attention away from the

Great Commission But it's also ingrained a defeatist mindset within the evangelical world contradicting the hopeful and Transformative message of the gospel rendering us ineffective for the mission

Now, where did all of this defeatist mentality come from? Is it just a symptom of a few bad?

Dispensationalist or is it a feature of their entire theological system? Beyond what we've already discussed which is enough for me to say that the view has failed and no one should believe it

Well, but beyond that I want us to explore a couple additional concepts that make dispensationalism pernicious and ludicrous

Again much more could be said but I only want to in this episode give you a summary for now other failed concepts and Dispensationalism number one a commitment to hyper and literalism

Now along with a fragmented approach to the Bible a misunderstanding of Israel in the church and a preoccupation with leaving the world instead of discipling it

Dispensationalism also has a strict commitment to literal interpretation of Scripture Now first blush this kind of sounds epic especially in a world constantly challenging the truth and the authority of Scripture yet It's not a healthy view of literal that distinguishes dispensationalism instead of interpreting the text

Literally, they employ a foolish approach that I like to call literalism For instance literal means understanding something according to its literature

This means that we may know poetry rightly and literally when we employ the rules and strategies that work best for poetry

You don't read poetry like you read a phone book. You don't read a law book like you look at a comic strip

This of course makes perfect sense And it means that different genres of writing require different interpretive tools in order to understand them

Literally now, let me give you an example If I said that I am so hungry that I could eat a cow the literal truth that I'm communicating to you is that I'm starving

I do not intend to communicate that I can literally fit a 2 ,000 pound beast in a 3 ounce stomach

Interpreting my words that way would actually be silly stupid and literalistic, which is precisely what dispensationalism does

Regarding scripture the dispensationalist violates the rules of literature and employs strategies that are needed to extract the most ridiculous meanings for instance and the

Eschatological genre of apocalyptic literature. There's a funny example of this This is sort of a classic example that I use a lot instead of attempting to figure out what?

Locust means in apocalyptic text and what the Old Testament worldview has to say about that what the

Exodus account actually Informs in that how that has to do with plagues and and everything in the

Bible instead of trying to dig into the apocalyptic genre Dispensationalism says that the locust are just John's way of describing

Apache Helicopters because John he didn't know how to describe an Apache helicopter because he saw his vision about our time period

So he described it with things that he knew Well that helicopter kind of looks like a locust and of course

Apache helicopters aren't even in use anymore But dispensationalism or dispensationalist have said that before Now the same is true and dis be say that the mark of the beast which is taken on the wrist or on the forehead

Must be an implanted microchip that's connected to your bank account so you can buy and sell of course

This the the meaning of this had nothing to do with John and his audience

It has to apply to us because the Bible is not written for the first 19 centuries. It was written for us

We're the focus. That's sort of the point You can even give the more ridiculous one that I've seen on Instagram or other memes that the

M and the monster energy drink is Actually the six six six mark of the beast that John is referring to so don't drink monster apparently

This bastardization of the apocalyptic genre produces limitless whimsical interpretations that are frankly

Embarrassing for Christianity and can be dreamt up by any crackpot Interpreter with a weird imagination producing work that bears more resemblance to an ayahuasca trip than accurate biblical exegesis now ironically

Dispensationalists do not interpret other Bible passages with the same sort of rigid fantastical literalism and of course

They don't why would they if they did we would all be removing two by fours from our forehead before we get the sawdust out of someone else's eye or we would expect a

Thousand pound camel to enter through the eye of a needle before any rich man can get into heaven now

Don't get me wrong a literal approach to Scripture is reasonable and it's necessary So long as we honor the literature to which every text is pulled from the problem occurs when we adopt literalism making every eschatological text fit into our world

Instead of it and from the world to which it was written this method imposes strange and inconsistent rules upon the text leading to wild and Ridiculous conclusions that must be avoided like the bubonic plague number two

Addiction to futurism now along with a commitment to wild and outlandish literalism

Dispensational chaps are more addicted to futurism than lab rats being force -fed cocaine

By futurism. I'm talking about the principle of interpreting the text in a particular time

For instance in eschatological studies, there's there's sort of four views on how to interpret in times passages

Those who think the end times passages have a primary spiritual meaning are called idealist

Those who believe that the majority of the passages are going to be worked out sequentially in epics of history are called

Historists, they don't really exist very much anymore But that's a historical view and those who think that most of the eschatological events

Happened in the past happened in the time period which with which they were written Those are called preterist and then the fourth there's those who believe that the overwhelming majority of the end times events

Will not occur until an uncertain future those people are called futurist

Instead of reading the scripture in the most appropriate manner Which is tempting to uncover what the original author intended to say to the original first century audience

Dispensationalism with its hyper literalism assumes that the reader of scripture is at the center of biblical interpretation

What I mean by that is that the writers of scripture the New Testament Was not written to a specific people about a specific events that were going to happen in their world.

That's preterism Dispensationalists believe that the lion's share of eschatological passages were written to us.

They have no application whatsoever to the period to which they were written They treat scripture

In fact as if its writers were writing to us Looking beyond the people who are standing right in front of them asking questions of them to speak to us this view is not only wrongheaded, but it prioritizes our generation as the generation that scripture was concerned with rendering the past 2 ,000 years of church history a necessary foregone conclusion that needed to pass away in order to get to us because 2 ,000 years of church history could not understand these passages because they weren't written to them

They were written only to us. This is not only arrogant, but it's decidedly foolish

Scripture was written to its original audience by God's grace. It has application to all generations

That is the faithful view Dispensationalism promotes defeatism now as we come to the point when you take

Dispensationalism literally now no pun intended here. You end up with a worldview suffocating with pessimism lunacy and defeatism when you view biblical history as Fragmented more fragmented in fact than a

Tarantino movie. Then you not only see the eras that we are living in as Significant, but you see

Christ reigning on his throne is nothing other than a placeholder for a future Jewish temple

This unbiblical view will cause and has historically caused Christians in the church to lie back

Remain unengaged and to treat the building of their vocations their families their stock

Portfolios as more important than the building of Jesus's kingdom Why because the era we live in is just an asterisk the era that we live in is not significant

We are waiting on Israel to repent and until then as many Gentiles as can come in can come in once you're saved

Go on about your life this fragmented approach to history and prophecy Paints a demoralizing picture of a world that is spiraling into more profound

Evil and a church that is destined for abject failure what a winning narrative this theological system is a worldview where despair overshadows hope and inaction trumps the gospel this segmentation also risks detaching believers from a sense of God's continuous and unified plan of History leading to a compartmentalized faith that fails to recognize the overarching narrative of redemption.

Welcome to the modern American Church It's like viewing a mosaic where every piece is isolated

Dispensationalism loses sight of the complete covenant picture of God's redemptive work and it leaves people

Disoriented and paralyzed when the church adopts that sort of foolish thinking

About Jesus's bride the nation -state of Israel. We begin to see the church age is nothing more than God's plan

B Accommodation because Israel decided to reject him instead of seeing the church as the radiant bride of Christ We begin viewing her as the rebound

Jesus chose to make Judah jealous what a silly and shallow perversion of the true gospel story that narrative is and When the church adopts that kind of stupidity and pessimism that's rampant and dispensationalism

We also begin to see the world not as a field that's ripe for the harvest but as a sinking ship that is destined for destruction this belief in the church's imminent failure and imminent rapture instills a sense of futility and defeatism among Christians it anticipates a decline in the church's influence and a rise in global evil which demoralizes believers and it dampens their zeal for mission because Honestly who wants to work on a losing team who wants to put all their energy and effort into a failed project by focusing on Futurism the tribulation rapture nanobots and all of that.

Our focus has been shifted away from the apparent responsibilities that Jesus has given us like discipling the world and that and on to a strange unclear and esoteric future

Instead of being warriors for Christ We've become closet weirdos with tinfoil hats who suspect every world leader is a new candidate for the

Antichrist This sinful preoccupation leads us to neglect true evangelism the long hard work of discipleship and being

Engaged in culture as salt and light that Jesus commanded by focusing on a rigid

Hyper literalism many turn the hope filled genre of apocalyptic literature such as the book of Revelation into a cheap knockoff of the

Hunger Games and then Wonder why we produce such second -rate dystopian

Christian media This perspective risks overshadowing the Gospels transformative power and the hope that can be found in Christ and Christ alone

Can you see why the church has actually become so paralyzed under the system of thinking is it starting to make sense

Dispensationalism does not lead us to clarity. It leads us to confusion we are under the spell of that heathen and I believe

Demonic system and we will not see the church in the same way that scripture depicts her until we give up that view

We will miss the critical role that the church is meant to play in the world and among the nations and we will attribute

Mystical status to Israel treating that godless and secular state. Yes. It is a godless state.

It is a secular state It is not a biblical state and we're gonna treat it like a good luck charm

So that God will bless us if we bless them God will care for us if we side with them those kind of blind

Allegiances cause us to be blind in our treaties that we make with foreign nations

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be a partner with Israel I'm just saying that they're not a good luck charm and they're not

God's unique Covenantal people the church is the Israel of God Having this point of view will cause us to miss the point of what world history is

History is not moving toward a reinvigorated Mosaic temple it is actually coming under the lordship of Jesus Christ So that all of his blessings will cover the entire earth as the water covers the sea

There's gonna be more to come on that but for now, let's conclude our time defeating defeatism

I Want to thank you so much for listening to another episode of the broadcast where we're reclaiming a biblical view of optimism defeating eschatological defeatism and working towards a practical

Post -millennialism where we're gonna see how Jesus is ongoing victory applies to every facet of our lives today

We expose dispensationalism for just some of its hyper pessimism and addiction to isolationism and defeatism but as we draw this episode to a close our mission is far from over as We move forward.

We've got to remember that our fight against defeatism isn't about dismantling a quirky or flawed theology, but it's about reigniting biblical hope and Reinvigorating the kind of optimism that pervades every single book of the

Bible and foretells of a world That is entirely under the dominion and authority of Jesus.

We have to reclaim that We don't need to be raptured out of this world for that to happen

This is gonna happen in this world one converted sinner one discipled Saint at a time until Jesus Returns to a

Christian world that optimism is we're gonna see in the weeks of head is robustly Biblical it's

Inherent in the gospel of Christ and we're gonna learn that the Bible doesn't paint a picture of a defeated church and in a future

Israel it portrays a triumphant Israel of God like bride

Confidently advancing the kingdom of God by the power of the Holy Spirit in obedience to her

King and her bridegroom Our task is to reclaim This biblical vision in order to see the church as Christ sees her vibrant victorious and vigorously engaged in transforming the world that he has given her as Eve was meant to make

Adam's Garden beautiful The church the Bride of Christ is meant to transform this world according to his vision and in the upcoming episodes

We're gonna delve deeper into that biblical case for optimism We're gonna explore how the scriptures affirm a victorious future for Christ's kingdom we're gonna dissect how this optimism should reshape our understanding of our roles as men and women in the church as In our families and our communities and we're gonna challenge ourselves to envision how our

Vocations our parenting and even our daily interactions can be part of advancing Christ's victory to the ends of the earth

Our goal is clear. Our goal is to awaken the church from the slumber of Defeatism my goal is to inspire you out of the discouragement and the lethargy and into Passionately engaging in the mission of Jesus that Jesus has entrusted to us

It is time my friends to discard the chains of pessimism and embrace the empowering truth

That we are part of the winning team We are not called to retreat but to advance not to cower in fear, but to conquer and faith we as we conclude this episode

Let's commit to coming back here next week hearts ready to learn spirits eager to be uplifted minds open to being transformed and let us join hands in the building of Jesus's kingdom today to the ends of the earth to the end of time and Being the salt and light that are that desperately need that it's desperately needed in a decaying world now

See you back again next week. We continue to prod God's sheep and beat back wolves like dispensationalism until next time