I haven’t yet put together a 7-10 minute video of the pdf on ‘Eschatology: Here not There’ but I thought I would just put together a very short summary here and why I consider it to be important. The article covers two areas – one a kind of rebuttal of the ‘secret rapture / Dispensationalism’ and then the second part being a positive – the direction of eschatology being focused on ‘here’ and not ‘there’.
Dispensationalism is late on the scene and the consensus of perspective is that it appears around 1830; some have suggested that J.N. Darby was influenced by a vision that Margaret MacDonald had around that time; others (myself included) see some measure of antecedent in the charismatic revelations / teachings from within Edward Irving’s movement. What is clear is that J.N. Darby developed the ‘dispensational’ scheme around that time and in the decades that followed. More latterly with the view that ‘the secret rapture’ was not found any earlier than this time frame there have been those who are committed to the ‘secret rapture’ teaching have sought to show that it was present in earlier church writings, however there is nothing that is clear, and the writings have to be interpreted through that presupposition.
Even if there are earlier references that can be found the real issue is that (for me) it flows not from Scripture but a later abandonment of the Hebraic worldview for Platonic / Hellenistic that saw the material realm as without value, the soul needing to escape the body, and this material world to be destroyed.
Beyond that the hope of the New Testament is that of the appearance / coming of the Lord Jesus (maranatha – Lord come), not of our disappearance. To change the hope changes how we then live – rather than looking for transformation we look only to see ‘souls saved’; rather than focus on life here we look to ‘life after death’ as all that is important; we tend therefore to draw the line of what is sacred and what is secular, rather than see all of life to be the place where God is present.
The Scofield Bible (and subsequent similar study Bibles) with its notes that explained the various dispensations, effectively replaced the text as the notes explained (replaced?) the meaning of the text. (Of course the same should be noted with all writings – even mine!!). Over decades there have been books written that have explained how current events fit with what we read in Scripture (my era – the writings of Hal Lindsey) who bizarrely explain the visions of Revelation with the perspective that John could not know what he was seeing as he was actually seeing realities of the 20th Century with such military equipment as attack helicopters, inter-continental missiles etc!!! Of course as his writings progress he has to revise what he wrote earlier. Add to books that ‘educate’ a set of novels and films and a very powerful understanding is planted in the sub-conscious and conscious minds of those who are exposed to this.
The danger is of an overriding desire to depart which at worst is that of an escape mentality.
That is the first part of the article, in summarising the second part I draw on numerous NT passages that show the movement is from there to here and the transformation of this creation, that any redemption of people does not stop at the human level but includes the whole of creation. Let me simply take one passage (that wrongly could be thought to underline that ‘this world is not my home’) to illustrate.
But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ (Phil. 3:20).
The article expands on what I put below but in summary one of the challenges with Scripture is that it was not written to us so we can misread some texts if we assume the Bible is in parallel to our culture. In that culture and in Philippi specifically those who were born free were not citizens of, for example, Philippi but they were citizens of Rome. The reason for this was that there was a tendency for people to move from where they were based with a desire to get to Rome which caused a problem for Rome as the infrastructure struggle with the growth. So to counteract that issue people were made citizens of Rome with the desire that they would work to make sure where they lived had as much of the culture and values of Rome in their location. So when Paul wrote to Philippi his language would have been instantly understood, not as ‘Philippi is not your home, heaven is your home’ but as you live in Philippi so your desire needs to be to work / pray for as much of heavens’ values and culture shape the future of your city. In the same way that within the culture the citizens worked for Rome’s values to be expressed, the believers were to work for a heavenly culture to be expressed; the citizens had a hope that one day the emperor would come from Rome and in the same way the believers hoped for the ‘Saviour’ (a title the emperor also had) to come from heaven.
I hope the summary helps a little to position what I have written, and this again I consider as foundational before any discussion about such topics as ‘millenium’, ‘tribulation’ or even life after death.