- Aug 9, 2015
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Very Good The 'Church of Christ' in the Last Days
By: Pete Garcia
Chances are, if you belong to a Church of Christ (non-instrumental), you probably wouldn't be reading the Omega Letter in the first place. But, I have met enough people along the way who were or know people who are; that I thought this warranted writing.
I was born and raised Southern Baptist, but married into a five generation-strong Church of Christ family. Having attended almost a dozen different Churches of Christ in three different states, I have come to notice similarities and differences amongst all these different churches. But there is one common thread in all of the ones we have attended.
Churches of Christ pride themselves in following the early church model as found in the book of Acts, and not falling underneath any type of hierarchical structure of a higher organization, such as the Southern Baptist do with their SBC Convention or how the Vatican does with the Roman Catholic churches. Each Church of Christ is an independent island of believers rooted together in common faith. But this is also why there have been so many different types of Churches of Christ who have branched out or split apart since the Stone-Campbell movement in the 1800's.
Recently, I attended a Wednesday night bible study at the local Church of Christ and was entreated to a class that could for all intents and purposes be called "the Dangers of Dispensationalism" or "Why Futurism is a Faulty View" as I think that ultimately this was at the heart of his teaching. The preacher teaching the class began to hit some rapid fire points right off the bat to include a clip from the Left Behind movie that came out in 2000.
- Dispensationalism began in the 1800's with John Nelson Darby---thus can't be trusted.
- Israel uprooted the local population in 1948 and thus has become much of the problem in the Middle East
- American politics and churches are overwhelmingly Dispensational which is why we are so 'pro-Israel' which of course is dangerous
- You cannot take the book of Revelation literally or chronologically as it is "Apocalyptic literature", thus in it's "own" special kind of category.
Not knowing what was being taught that night and being a Pre-Millennial Dispensationalist, I of course took exception too much of the discussion. I spoke up politely because much of what was being taught simply wasn't true. This of course didn't sit well with the preacher who probably didn't anticipate being challenged on any of his prescribed views and led to my early self-dismissal from the class. But this experience got me thinking.
Question: If Churches of Christ are supposed to be stand-alone churches (not bound by creeds or indoctrinated by some higher organization), why do they all tend to hold to the same Eschatological view? [See Revelation 19:10]
The How and Why
After this class, I began to research this this more in depth and came across an article released through Pepperdine University (in the January 2000 edition of Leaven magazine) by a Dr. Lynn Mitchell entitled Eschatology: Essential, Yet Essentially Ignored. The author belongs to the Church of Christ, and was writing essentially to ask the same question I am asking here now 14 years later. He makes some interesting points that seem common across the Churches of Christ. He notes two interesting points in the history of the Church of Christ's eschatological understanding. The first he chronicles how it happened:
"Eschatology died as a living concern among our churches because of at least four related developments:
(1) The acceptance of the church-kingdom identity fostered by Tolbert Fanning and like-minded sectarians;
(2) The powerful and brutal assault on millennial modes of thought and millennial thinkers, particularly premillennial, by the Foy E. Wallace Jr. cadre of de-eschatologizers;
(3) The subsequent ruthlessly enforced triumph of Amillennialism and the dogma of church-kingdom identity; and
(4) The filling of the vacuum in eschatological thinking with inane, hybridized life-after-death language uninformed by biblical or systematic theology."
Dr. Mitchell succinctly sums up the end result of such theological witch-hunts within the Churches of Christ in his essay:
"All we have left is ah-millennialism."
"We are neither passionately radical nor invigoratingly hopeful."
As to Foy E. Wallace Jr, history records he made it his personal mission to stomp out Pre-Millennialism single handedly if need be:
In October 1935 Wallace founded the Gospel Guardian as a monthly magazine primarily to combat the views of the premillennialists. The Gospel Guardian ended in June 1936 and merged with the Firm Foundation. In 1937 Wallace was the front-page writer for the Firm Foundation. In 1938 Wallace founded the Bible Banner, initially also dedicated to the defeat of premillennial doctrine.
By: Pete Garcia
Chances are, if you belong to a Church of Christ (non-instrumental), you probably wouldn't be reading the Omega Letter in the first place. But, I have met enough people along the way who were or know people who are; that I thought this warranted writing.
I was born and raised Southern Baptist, but married into a five generation-strong Church of Christ family. Having attended almost a dozen different Churches of Christ in three different states, I have come to notice similarities and differences amongst all these different churches. But there is one common thread in all of the ones we have attended.
Churches of Christ pride themselves in following the early church model as found in the book of Acts, and not falling underneath any type of hierarchical structure of a higher organization, such as the Southern Baptist do with their SBC Convention or how the Vatican does with the Roman Catholic churches. Each Church of Christ is an independent island of believers rooted together in common faith. But this is also why there have been so many different types of Churches of Christ who have branched out or split apart since the Stone-Campbell movement in the 1800's.
Recently, I attended a Wednesday night bible study at the local Church of Christ and was entreated to a class that could for all intents and purposes be called "the Dangers of Dispensationalism" or "Why Futurism is a Faulty View" as I think that ultimately this was at the heart of his teaching. The preacher teaching the class began to hit some rapid fire points right off the bat to include a clip from the Left Behind movie that came out in 2000.
- Dispensationalism began in the 1800's with John Nelson Darby---thus can't be trusted.
- Israel uprooted the local population in 1948 and thus has become much of the problem in the Middle East
- American politics and churches are overwhelmingly Dispensational which is why we are so 'pro-Israel' which of course is dangerous
- You cannot take the book of Revelation literally or chronologically as it is "Apocalyptic literature", thus in it's "own" special kind of category.
Not knowing what was being taught that night and being a Pre-Millennial Dispensationalist, I of course took exception too much of the discussion. I spoke up politely because much of what was being taught simply wasn't true. This of course didn't sit well with the preacher who probably didn't anticipate being challenged on any of his prescribed views and led to my early self-dismissal from the class. But this experience got me thinking.
Question: If Churches of Christ are supposed to be stand-alone churches (not bound by creeds or indoctrinated by some higher organization), why do they all tend to hold to the same Eschatological view? [See Revelation 19:10]
The How and Why
After this class, I began to research this this more in depth and came across an article released through Pepperdine University (in the January 2000 edition of Leaven magazine) by a Dr. Lynn Mitchell entitled Eschatology: Essential, Yet Essentially Ignored. The author belongs to the Church of Christ, and was writing essentially to ask the same question I am asking here now 14 years later. He makes some interesting points that seem common across the Churches of Christ. He notes two interesting points in the history of the Church of Christ's eschatological understanding. The first he chronicles how it happened:
"Eschatology died as a living concern among our churches because of at least four related developments:
(1) The acceptance of the church-kingdom identity fostered by Tolbert Fanning and like-minded sectarians;
(2) The powerful and brutal assault on millennial modes of thought and millennial thinkers, particularly premillennial, by the Foy E. Wallace Jr. cadre of de-eschatologizers;
(3) The subsequent ruthlessly enforced triumph of Amillennialism and the dogma of church-kingdom identity; and
(4) The filling of the vacuum in eschatological thinking with inane, hybridized life-after-death language uninformed by biblical or systematic theology."
Dr. Mitchell succinctly sums up the end result of such theological witch-hunts within the Churches of Christ in his essay:
"All we have left is ah-millennialism."
"We are neither passionately radical nor invigoratingly hopeful."
As to Foy E. Wallace Jr, history records he made it his personal mission to stomp out Pre-Millennialism single handedly if need be:
In October 1935 Wallace founded the Gospel Guardian as a monthly magazine primarily to combat the views of the premillennialists. The Gospel Guardian ended in June 1936 and merged with the Firm Foundation. In 1937 Wallace was the front-page writer for the Firm Foundation. In 1938 Wallace founded the Bible Banner, initially also dedicated to the defeat of premillennial doctrine.