How do Methodists view the message in Revelations?
ADiscipleOnHisPath said:How do Methodists view the message in Revelations?
[URL=http://www.ingodstime.com/images/Excerpt%20Appendix.htm]Not Left Behind[/URL] said:The hope of impending departure can lead believers to abandon interest in the world and its problems. The expectation of deteriorating conditions prior to the soon-approaching rapture is morally corrosive, encouraging pessimism, fatalism, and the forsaking of political responsibility. Disengagement from the problems of the world is ethically indefensible, but it is all too common amongst todays prophecy elite. Their books tell us that nuclear war is inevitable, that the pursuit of peace is pointless, that the planets environmental woes are unstoppable, and so on.
[URL=http://www.upperroom.org/askjulian/default.asp?act=answer&itemid=55613]Ask Julian[/URL] said:There is no official United Methodist position on the Book of Revelation. So in that sense, all our answers are opinions.
Origen said:The key verse I use as a lens through which I read Revelation is "Blessed are those servants whom the master will find at work when he arrives" (Matt. 24:46).
One of the dangers of folks off in the theological weeds is premillennial dispensationalism (the perspective found in Tim LaHaye's Left Behind novels). Professor of New Testament theology at the UMC Wesley seminary in DC, Craig Hill, explained the danger of premillennial dispensationalism this way:
Dr Hill has written a great book that any Methodist interested a Methodist understanding of Revelation (and in the bad theology behind Left Behind) will enjoy: In God's Time.
I also really enjoyed reading the information in the link provided by overnight above. I particularly liked the way Julian began to answer the question How do Methodists read Revelation: