Newspaper Eschatology
Hey guys. I’m Henry Thomas Imler. I’m Brad, Casey, and Henry’s cousin. You can call me Henry Thomas, Henry, HT, Winkler, I was ordained yesterday to the gospel ministry, ie a pastor, at a little Baptist church in Bunceton MO. I have read much of what has been written here and I am excited to finally come accross a blog where everyone has stayed cool, calm, and collected. Head’s have not exploded. I feel Jesus is at this website bringing unity through diversity of theology. I am very excited to be apart of this blog.
I have been very worried as of late, particuarly because of this Lebon-Israeli confilct. It is a terrible one to be sure, but there is way to much one-sidedness from what I have heard from the church–not here but on the radio. This past week, a guy I work with at Sam’s Club asked me if I thought it was Armaggeddon. I was listening to the radio and heard a lady proclaiming it is biblical prophecy come to pass in our life time. The evidence she cited was one morning, she was reading Psalm 83. In Scotland or Ireland, an ancient copy of the Psalms were found. The text it was open to was Psalm 83. There is much what I call Newspaper Eschatology.
I believe this is impart due to a eschatological system known as dispensationalism. It takes the Old Testament prophecies and shapes the New Testament around them, thus making the primary source of Scripture the Old Testament and not the New. It is my heart to help people understand that our eschatology, our views of the end times and of the return of Christ, must be routed in acceptable and appropriate exegeis and hermenuetics, not upon the Newspaper. The Dispensational system does is not Newspaper based. However, Dr. Adrian Rogers, former president of the SBC and a godly preacher who rarely said the word “um” in his sermons, said something to this effect (I paraphrase) in his series on Revelation, “You can take he Bible in one hand, open your newspaper in the other hand, and see prophecy coming to pass.” The former president of my denomination said that. I know that he was meaning not to get our eschatology from the papers but rather to see it happening in our lifetime. But that makes me uncomfortable and disappointed because the focus of interpretation for the common lay-person (I hate the term ‘layity’) not exegeting the texts but finding a newspaper clipping to fit the description, or worse, find a verse to fit the newspaper.
What I would like to do on this blog is to discuss these eschatologies and see if they hold up to the bar of exegesis. My Jesus coming back is what gives me hope in this world. To know that He is coming to take me to be with him is a great source of strength. Therefore, I want to know as much as Scripture will let me know about the Parousia (Second Coming) as possible. If you find yourself matching up with dispensational theology, feel free to comment on what I say so that I am not misrepresenting you. But I want to explore this often misunderstood and mis-studied branch of theology because that’s where my hear it.
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Comments
Side note as for the baptism poll I wanted to scare some of you and vote “Yes, for salvation” but it said I was stuffin the ballot.
Thank’s Puritanbob. I’ve enjoyed reading what you have to say. It is good to feel accepted by some of the senior members of the blog.
Henry Thomas, congrads on the ministry (ordaination). I know you like books try this one for eschatology: Four Views on Eschatology. This book is one of many of the same type (Four views on eternal security etc). I enjoy reading these because the editor finds leading sccholars who hold each view and each of the scholars writes a chapter on what he believes, then the other scholars critique his opinion. Another great book would be by Larry Pechawer called “leaving the rapture behind” (he gives a great defense in how to intreprate the OT prophetic books. He is a huge hebrew scholar so some of his stuff is deep. casey
Those sound like interesting books Casey. Steve Gregg does a similar thing on the book of Revelation, its a parallel commentary with the 4 main schools of thought on eschatology with commentary from guys in each camp. I was thoroughly impressed by Steve Gregg’s book.
Casey, thanks for the recommendations. I have one in the series called “For Views on the Millennium.” It is actually one of my favorite books because you get each view from a person who holds that view. There is little chance for a straw-man agrgument. I almost bought the parallel commentary on Revelation yesterday, but I don’t quite have the fifty
Hey, I like this new guy! That was a pretty good intro into a discussion of eschatology. The psalm 83 thing is pretty interesting, and if I am reading you correctly it is pretty easy to make headlines fit biblical prophecy, this is a major problem. ex:Look at the left behind theology, personally I don’t really have a dogmatic stance on eschataology. I went through my hardcore premillinial Hal Lindsay days and now I am somewhat of a pre/amillinal
hybrid. One thing I know is that Christ will come back and I long to be with Christ and dwell with Him forever.