A Low Blow to Dispensational Theology

by Virgil Vaduva, Planet Preterist Columnist (http://planetpreterist.com)

For the past several days Americans and the rest of the world have been bombarded by the media with images and sounds of the “Jew-on-Jew” abuse taking place in the Gaza strip. True to his word, Ariel Sharon has started the evacuation of illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied Gaza Strip and the media is giving him hell for it. But surprisingly we haven’t heard a peep out of our Dispensationalist friends who usually are so savvy and up to date with Middle-East events. Oh why, you may ask?

What is happening currently in the Middle East, and more precisely, the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied Gaza territories is sending Dispensational theology back into the dark corner that it came out of. The self-made millionaire Hal Lindsey hasn’t said much regarding this issue and his website has been strangely mum regarding the Gaza events. Instead, him and his associate Jack Kinsella are covering the “Intelligent Design” debate and generic news items that have absolutely nothing to do with prophecy or Dispensationalism. Granted Lindsey has written a short “commentary” on how appalled he is at the change in the attitude of President Bush, he fails to put these events in a “prophetic perspective.” Could this attitude have anything to do with all his failed predictions that never came true?

Another friend of ours, Mr. Jack Van Impe has also been quiet about what is happening in Israel failing to utter a single word regarding the relevance of the events currently taking place in Israel.

But why does all this matter you may ask? Why it matters is very simple. Dispensational “theologians” have been practicing news-driven theology for decades. If a fly landed on a camel’s bottom in Israel, then the experts were to proclaim the fulfillment of such-and-such prophecy. When the 1967 and 1973 wars started and Israel displayed a solid retaliatory response against Egypt, this was according to these experts, solid proof that God stood behind the nation of Israel. This was nothing but evidence given by God himself to humanity that Israel is still the chosen people of God and that Gaza belongs to the Jewish people.

For decades they have applied loose and ridiculous methods of interpretation, if it can even be called that, to the Scripture in order to conveniently place their prophetic views in whatever contemporary scenario they found themselves in. Therefore it should not come as a surprise when the first thing that comes to my mind is a willingness to question these charlatans and give them a taste of their own medicine.

So folks, the question that our dear Dispensationalist celebrities need to answer is this: If the six days war had such a huge prophetic relevance in favor of your Dispensational theology, what kind of prophetic relevance does the withdrawal from Gaza have, because it certainly looks to me like, God-forbid, it does not favor your prophetic vision of universal war and destruction at all. Instead, it looks like this is a low blow to Dispensational theology? What say you?

What is Up With Worship?

It happened again. This past Sunday, during the offering, the Worship Team was singing a typical pop-Christian song. While being distracted by the bald man "greeting" the couple in the pew ahead of us with a voice so high in volume my wife couldn't stand it and had to momentarily leave, I glanced up at the projected lyrics on the screen. Superimposed on the low-tech, rolling wave video were a group of lyrics, presumably sung to the Lord God, that began with the non-word "'Cos." Not the short term for comedian Bill Cosby, but presumably the slang abbreviation for "because."

I can now add this to my list of non-words seen on overheads during worship, which include "gonna," "wanna," and "na na na-na-na-na na."

The future of worship: "Trust 'n' Obey," "'Cos He Lives," "Magnify the Precious Name O' Jesus," "The Ol' Rugged Cross."

Far cry from "How Great Thou Art." Or maybe "How Great Are Ya?"