This world is my home. I don’t plan to fly away. I’d rather build God’s kingdom here than slip into some fantasy cloudscape with a little cabin in the corner of Gloryland. Honestly, I don’t even know what that last part means. In all of the descriptions of heaven, I’ve never heard of any homesteaders being involved. But hundreds of people in my life have expressed that very notion as their ultimate goal.
For those hunkered down and awaiting the Rapture, the idea is to fly away from this old world at the last moment–to abandon ship before it goes down. There’s not much thought as to regenerating Creation, no thought to working towards the kingdom goals.
Before the late 1800’s, this “abandon ship” mentality was reserved for heretical groups like the Gnostics and Manicheans and the Zoroastrians. The reason you haven’t heard of these groups is that they were stamped out because what they taught was junk theology having little to do with the story arc of Old and New Testament. It was unknown to our founding fathers who were Christians. In fact, it was an unknown doctrine until the middle of the 19th century. But no other doctrine has done more to shape our nation or undermine our churches than the teachings and writings of John Nelson Darby and Dr. C. I. Scofield.
Here’s the gist. The following is a summation of the flawed argument.
The Rapture theology of Darby and Scofield states that those who are ‘saved’ will be spared the final tribulation before the end of the world. So the best course of action is to get right with God so we don’t get left behind (yes, that series of books presents a modernized Scofeldian dreamscape).
Of course, it isn’t that simple. There are subplots involving the reestablishment of Israel as a nation, a multiplicity of Second Comings, and one world governments under the direct control of Satan–but you get the idea.
Scripturally speaking, preparing for the coming of the Kingdom is the task of the Church. This task is to be accomplished by equipping the saints for living in such a kingdom in the here and now. Our goal is to prepare the way, to transform the world. In fact, our nation was colonized by several groups for the expressed purpose of “hastening the return of the Lord,” as it says in 2 Peter 3:12. This theological understanding of “the general spread of the gospel” was seen as the goal of the Church for more than 1800 years. The purpose was not to stamp people for the Rapture, but to cause them to inhabit the Kingdom of Heaven by causing the Kingdom of Heaven to inhabit them.
Then along comes Darby and Scofield.
What many of us living in the South don’t realize is the extent to which this “abandon ship” mentality has taken over our ecclesiology, or understanding of what it means to be the church. As a rule, this notion is a sub-text in many Methodist congregations. But it nonetheless forms us and shapes us away from the truth as the Church knew it for 18 centuries.
Look at it this way: If we are leaving the world, we have no cause to change it, to clean it up. But if company is coming, we have incentive to prepare for the arrival.
Given this historical perspective and the effect this wrongheaded thinking has had, one can begin to see why the Church has withdrawn from the business of building the kingdom.
With the focus placed squarely on Rapture and getting the church out of Dodge, so to speak, subsequent generations are starting to find this new purpose ringing hollow. If the goal is to get into the church in order to “get out,” and no one seems to be getting out for the past 150 years or so, one can begin to see why the young people are withdrawing from the church in droves.
One place where this is not the case is in congregations where kingdom building is still a priority. These congregations are marked by their establishment of a kingdom of praise and worship and a dedication to personal discipleship practices ranging from personal study of the Bible to prayer and fasting. or through the promulgation of the social gospel of ministry to the widows and orphans, the sick and imprisoned, the impoverished and homeless, and the blind, lame, deaf, and mute.
God’s intention, from the first moment of creation, was wholeness and order. The broken nature of humanity meant that God was required to take a more active hand in maintaining the wholeness of the community of humankind. Through a series of covenants, God has called people to live together in a balanced, peaceful, whole community.
The “abandon ship” mentality is killing the church.
It is time to stop obsessing with the lifeboats. There are sails to rig, courses to chart, and decks to swab.
Join us at Piperton UMC and find out how you can live into the Kingdom that is at hand. It hasn’t been fully realized, and won’t be until Christ comes in final victory. But until then, we have work to do and life more abundant with which to do it.
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