Everything I have been taught since I started going to church at 5 has said that if I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior, then I would not endure any of the tribulation as foretold in Revelation. NONE OF IT....understand????
So I read through almost 15 pages of comments from my fellow sisters and brothers in Christ and I am surprised that hardly anyone believes this......am I wrong in believing it then? Have all my pastors (there have been only 4) been wrong?
I know what that's like. I took the Dispensationalism I had been raised with as a given. For me it was synonymous with Christianity, I didn't know the word "Dispensationalist" exist, I didn't know it was a theological and hermeneutical system distinct from other theological and hermeneutical systems, it was just "what Christians believed".
Granted, I found myself abandoning my Dispensationalism by the time I was out of high school, which was when I began finding most of what I had been raised to believe being challenged and questioned.
If so, and considering the events going on in the world (and sky) today, you're all telling me that since I am a very weak believer (I just "re-started" my journey with Christ a year ago), I am going feel God's wrath in the upcoming tribulation?
Christ said, "In this world you will have tribulation, but take courage, I have conquered the world."
Trials, tribulations, trouble are all part of what it means to follow Christ in this world. Consider the Apostles, imprisoned and beaten, hated and despised. They were stoned to death, beheaded, crucified, torn from limb from limb. Consider the trials those Christians faced under Nero, who nailed them on crosses, covered them in tar and oil and lit them on fire to light his imperial gardens. Consider St. Ignatius of Antioch, disciple of St. John who as an old man was led from Antioch to Rome to face his death. St. Polycarp of Smyrna who was lit on fire as a spectacle. St. Justin, St. Perpetua and all the martyrs. Consider the twenty-six martyrs of Nagasaki, who were all crucified--the youngest of them being thirteen years old--because being a Christian was outlawed in Japan by the Tokugawa shogunate.
For Christ's sake we have been crucified, beaten, flogged, imprisoned, tortured, spit on, hated, set on fire, fed to wild beasts, trampled upon, had our limbs torn from our bodies, for two thousand years we have faced trial after trial, sometimes greater or lesser. But there are always Neros, Diocletians, and Tokugawas in this world.
"In this world you will have tribulation, but take courage, I have conquered the world."
Better yet, you're all going to sit there and tell me that my perfect and wonderful 6 year old, who will be 7 in April
thumbsup
could potentially lose his life in this tribulation and is not going to be raptured to heaven before the age of accountability? Do you know what that makes me feel like right now?
Again, there's always tribulation. Mothers have lost their children, and children have lost their mothers throughout history. It's horrible, tragic, ugly. Of course it is. But that's the world we live in.
Instead, trust in God for His mercy both for your salvation and your child's. He is a God of good justice and unlimited grace.
It makes me feel like I have wasted 32 of my 37 years on this earth, believing in an entity....that truly never loved me to begin with or he wouldn't put parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, etc. through the pain of knowing loved ones, no matter how strongly they believe, are going to die........
I think, unfortunately, this is the fruit of Dispensationalism. Christ never promised us that life would be easy. Our comfort here in the West is an abnormality. Most people in the world suffer. They are hungry, they are dying from starvation, disease (including HIV), malnutrition. There are countless orphans in Africa who lost their mothers and fathers from brutal war and AIDS, many of them are HIV positive themselves, born into the world HIV positive.
This is not a fair world.
But we have a God who loves us, who sent His Son to come and share in our sufferings, who has united Himself with our weak and frail human flesh, who suffered under a ruthless tyrant, was crucified, buried, dead and rose from the dead. He has conquered sin and death. He has defeated the devil and overcome this world. In Him we are reconciled to God and invited to share in Christ's life and Christ's work. We have an opportunity to look forward to the Coming World and, in hope for that reality, invest our energies into making this world a little bit more like that world. We have the opportunity in Jesus to go out and love our neighbor, to embrace the hurting, to give food to the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to give clothes to the naked, to give friendship to the immigrant. We have an opportunity to be a light, to be salt of the earth, a city on a hill. We have that opportunity, it's ours in Christ, to partner with Him as He works in the world to change lives and love the loveless and the unwanted.
I'm off now....to spend what little days I have left with my child
Despite what the so-called "prophecy experts" say, there are not signs and wonders. Those who say the End is coming just around the corner have been saying that forever, they've been saying that since before the current generation of "experts" were even a glimmer in their daddy's eye. We've been living in the Last Days for two thousand years, it began on Pentecost and continues until now.
The End could come tomorrow, or it come in ten thousand years. Nobody knows the day or the hour.
Nobody.
-CryptoLutheran
