More Dispensationalist Confusion

Recently I had the opportunity to speak with yet another pastor by phone – once again of an Evangelical church about forty-five minutes away.

After some struggle I ascertained that they do have an electric guitar and drum kit but musically they can't put it all together so they often just 'pipe in' or stream praise music from online. I've also noticed in recent years as congregations have shrunk that the music being played by stream (or a few years ago by DVD) has moved from being instrumental to including some kind of professional singer. In some of these ailing congregations no one can sing or lead music anymore. Bizarre as it seems, I've even seen special music performances conducted as a sing-a-long with an audio track that includes vocals.

Obviously it would be better to dispense with such unbiblical practices altogether but for the congregations and individuals doing it – how strange.

By this point in the conversation,, I had more or less decided not to visit the church in question but I decided (mostly out of curiosity) to query him about doctrine. I asked if they were Dispensationalist.

"In what sense do you mean that? End times stuff or just how the Bible works?"

I replied that it all goes together but we could for the sake of argument just use the term in reference to end times matters.

He assured me that he believes in the pre-trib rapture, but also assured me that he knows some men hold to a mid-trib position and that's okay. As far as he was concerned the Church wasn't present after Revelation chapter 4 and thus escaped the Great Tribulation.

However he then informed me that he wasn't a Dispensationalist! This is because he rejected the view that Revelation 1-3 teaches Church Ages.

The common understanding in that school is that the Seven Churches of Revelation or of Asia are Church Ages and the case is usually made that we today are living in the final so-called Laodicean Church Age. This is followed by Chapter 4 in which John is brought up to heaven. This school which purports to be literalist interprets this in a symbolic if not allegorical fashion as the Church being raptured.

It is assumed Revelation is chronologically successive and thus chapter 4 would mark the start of the Great Tribulation which extends until the Second Coming in chapter 19, followed by the Jewish millennial Kingdom in chapter 20 and so forth.

I would of course argue this is a misreading of Revelation and is guilty of numerous false assumptions and deductions that are then imposed on the book. Like Daniel and Zechariah, I would argue it represents a series of largely repetitive visions each focusing on a different aspect of events, each vision more or less extending over the course of Church history and ending with a scene of Parousia and/or Throne Judgment.

This pastor exhibited some confusion in believing that Dispensationalism is somehow limited to the contrived Seven Churches/Church Age schema. He most certainly is a Dispensationalist and yet does not realize it – and given that he repeatedly told me he's been in ministry for 40 years, I find this not a little surprising. I suppose it's possible to have not heard the term, but I consider it strange to not understand the system. Once again I'm left wondering what kind of preaching and teaching this would produce. It cannot be very consistent.

Needless to say this kind of muddle plays out not just in general doctrine and eschatology but in ecclesiology and ethics. There were hints of political discussion but I didn't want to listen to it so I shut it down. The exchange was disappointing on many levels. And yet, I'm afraid it's all too common.