When it's hard to fellowship
Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 2:01 pm
I'm finding it very difficult to have fellowship with other Christians because of dispensational theology. It seems that whenever we get together they all want to talk about who the anti-christ might be and how we ought to be "standing with Israel" because they are God's chosen people and the war of Magog is about to break out. I was at a fellowship meeting that I usually enjoy but this past week they started going through the dispensational timeline of events and everyone was so captivated by the very Tim Lahaye flavor dispensationalism. This puts me in a terrible delima: Do I speak up and tell them they're wasting an opportunity to learn something useful or do I keep silent and know in my heart that I'm letting them believe fables?
After praying in my spirit, I decided to speak up when the leader (a man much older than me) had finished and simply recommended Steve's book on Revelation if they wanted an in-depth treatment of the subject. I explained that they were discussing the futurist view but there are other views, and left it at that. The problem was, it caused some confusion in the group and I felt like I'd made things worse by speaking up. It was very much a "black sheep" kind of feeling. The last thing I want is to break fellowship because of theology but this particular theology is so mainstream that it's hard to find a group that's not intoxicated by it. When someone in our group asked the leader about the coming wars with Israel, the leader spoke very boldly about each detail in the "timeline" and it annoyed me to no end.
I was involved in another fellowship group recently, just going through the book of Genesis, and the teacher saw fit to draw a parallel to what's going on right now with Israel and the end times. Good heavens, can I not be raptured from these discussions! They seem to follow me around. I almost want to become a dispensationalist again just so I can have fellowship!
After praying in my spirit, I decided to speak up when the leader (a man much older than me) had finished and simply recommended Steve's book on Revelation if they wanted an in-depth treatment of the subject. I explained that they were discussing the futurist view but there are other views, and left it at that. The problem was, it caused some confusion in the group and I felt like I'd made things worse by speaking up. It was very much a "black sheep" kind of feeling. The last thing I want is to break fellowship because of theology but this particular theology is so mainstream that it's hard to find a group that's not intoxicated by it. When someone in our group asked the leader about the coming wars with Israel, the leader spoke very boldly about each detail in the "timeline" and it annoyed me to no end.
I was involved in another fellowship group recently, just going through the book of Genesis, and the teacher saw fit to draw a parallel to what's going on right now with Israel and the end times. Good heavens, can I not be raptured from these discussions! They seem to follow me around. I almost want to become a dispensationalist again just so I can have fellowship!