The End Times

My brain feels a bit dead today, but I actually have a good excuse for it. Finally finished typing out one of my stories on to the computer, took me over an hour and a half to type out the rest. It ended with a battle scene, the longest one that I have ever written. Literally. Part of the time I couldn't even read what I wrote before, which made it two times harder than it should have been. But it's over now. Just have to edit it, and I'll be free of that story forever. Thank God!

Well, that's not really what I came to write. This week I was corresponding to someone through email and we were discussing doctrines in the Bible that aren't really clear. Like the debate of whether a baby goes to heaven or not when they die, or if it's right to give the death penalty to a criminal or not.
And then we got onto the subject of the end times.
Yes, the end times.
I told that person that I don't really think that the Bible is very clear on what exactly is going to happen in the end. It's foolish how American churches all over argue about these issues.
I went to a church once where the pastor spent 2 years, I believe it was, preaching on the end times. If he had gone through it quickly it wouldn't have been such a big deal. Preaching that long on the end times doesn't really do much for Christians, it doesn't fill them up on Sundays, to send them back out in the world. Let us just say, that spending two years in the end times was the start of that church crumbling.
And my old church was seemed to be just as bad in this area of the end times. The men in leadership at my old church were Dispensationalists. At least enough of them were to agree that no man could preach in their church if he didn't have the same views on the end times as they did.
Sure a man could agree on the doctrines of grace with them, but if he wasn't Dispensational, he couldn't preach.
It really made me angry when I found that out. And when I found out that a seminary student I know, who spent many faithful years there serving and helping, couldn't preach a class there because of his end times views.
That makes me utterly sick. It really does.
How can someone put their views of the end times higher above the Gospel?

I told the person I was talking to this week that I can't take a firm stand on the end times. All I know is that Jesus is coming back and until then as Christians we need to be living faithfully in Him. And stop worrying about foolish things like when or how exactly Christ is going to come back.
If we are going to study theology, we better be studying the doctrines that matter.
I am so thankful that at my new church God has not let them put their end times views higher than the Gospel. It sickens me when a godly man cannot stand up and preach because he is not a Dispensationalist.
All that matters concerning the end is that Jesus is coming back. We won't know when or how. But He is coming. That's all that matters.
And if people put their Dispensationalism higher than the Gospel, there is something utterly wrong with their thinking.  The Gospel is to prized above all. And yet so many churches have missed that.


God Bless,
   A.W.