Hitch said:
Sure, why not?
It is firmly established in Apostolic teaching that only through suffering does one enter into glory. This is the example which Christ set and we are to follow "in his steps" (1 Peter 2:21). Paul lays out this pattern of Christ-likeness which is to be the model for the Church:
Have this mind in yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:6-11)
Whereas man lost the glory of God as a result of a deliberate act of
disobedience Christ laid aside his glory in a deliberate act of
obedience, in order that man might be brought back into that glory. But, as Christ had first to suffer, indeed die, in order to enter into his glory, the pattern of his life in the flesh (the Incarnation) must be the Christian's pattern for life if resurrection and eternal life are to be its outcome. As Paul goes on to say later in Philippians:
. . .that I may know him [Christ] and the power of his resurrection and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:10-11)
The "hope" Paul expresses in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 is precisely the same "hope" he expresses in Philippians 3:10-11, for it is firmly grounded in the same certainty of the faith:
For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. (1 Thessalonians 4:14)
What Paul expresses in 1 Thessalonians 4 is not, contrary to a theory held by a significant number of more sober scholars, a primitive understanding of the eschatological hope which he later dropped or modified in favor of a more developed understanding expressed in 1 Corinthians 15. Throughout all his writings, Paul is absolutely consistent in proclaiming the one hope that is the outcome of the faith for every believer.
That hope is firmly anchored in
the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Without the resurrection and all that necessarily precedes it (birth, life, suffering, death), "the hope of his coming" is meaningless. The Christ of Apostolic Christianity is God Incarnate, the Word made flesh, whose humble example of birth, life, suffering and death form the pattern of perfect obedience whereby all who follow, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, will also share in his resurrection and thus experience at last the fullness of the
parousia, the perfect restoration of the perfect relationship with the eternal triune God--Father, Son and Holy Spirit--
in a creation perfectly restored as it was in the beginning, for if God's purpose in sending Christ was truly to reverse the effects of sin, then this purpose involves redeeming much more than just the human race. As Paul makes very clear:
For I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom and the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:18-23)
If Christ, through his death and resurrection, has redeemed all those who call upon his name, so also he has reversed the effects of sin on the whole of God's creation.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether in earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross." (Colossians 1:15-20)
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come." (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Outside of Christ, all is still death and destruction. In Christ, we are participants even now in the new creation which is moving toward restoration and renewal, the end of which is eternal life: life as God intended it "in the beginning."
The dispensationalist expectation of the physical removal of "the Church" prior to a period of "tribulation" on earth preceding the final destruction of the planet diminishes the awesome significance of the death and resurrection of Christ. If God intended to destroy the earth all along, why send Christ in the first place? If human beings themselves are responsible for the fallen state of creation (as per Adam and Eve), why save only some of them and leave the rest of creation to suffer the consequences of their misdeeds? God's justice would not allow such, and his mercy would not permit it.
The Christ of dispensationalism is not God Incarnate. He is an historical figure who left us about 2,000 years ago with a list of rules to follow until he comes back to snatch us away so we won't suffer the consequences of our own disobedience to those rules. His birth, life, suffering, death and resurrection are mere historical benchmarks which may give us some hope for the future, but do not form the pattern for life through which the Church and its individual members become the ongoing incarnation of the presence of Christ in the world.
To these observations, I would add the following from Carl E. Olsen in a recent article in
First Things. Note particularly the
highlighted portion.
John Nelson Darby, the ex-Anglican priest who constructed the premillennial dispensational system in the 1830s, based it on three premises: Jesus Christ failed in his initial mission, the Church has become apostate and is in ruins, and the Old Testament promises to the Israelites have yet to be fulfilled. Inevitably and logically this meant that the Church is not connected to Old Testament Israel, nor is she even as important, at least in earthly terms. The Church is, Darby taught, a heavenly people meant for a Christ who was relegated to a heavenly status once he was rejected by the Jews, Gods earthly people. Fast forward to the future millennial reign, complete with a new Temple and reinstituted animal sacrifices. During this Davidic reign the Church will exercise authority from heavenpossibly in a huge, cubed New Jerusalem hovering over the earth. Meanwhile, the earth will be occupied by those non-Raptured and non-glorified believers, mostly Jewish, who accepted Jesus as Savior during the Tribulation. After all, that horrific time will be for punishing an evil humanity and will be a means of bringing the Jews back to God in an ultimate display of tough love. How odd to think that Christians who believe that the Church is composed of Jew and Greek alike (Romans 10:12) are sometimes suspected of anti-Semitism by those who believe that in the future, earthly millennium the Jews will be rewarded with earth while pre-Rapture Christians will achieve heaven, the grand prize.
The popularity of such a system does not exist despite its pessimism, but feeds off it, as the success of the Left Behind books seems to indicate. Once the doctrines of the utter depravity of man and his inevitable slide into ever-increasing evil are accepted, the desire for escape and the hope of Gods vengeful judgment naturally follow. Instead of being incarnational, history becomes fatalistic; instead of being sacramental, the material realm is cursed, even evil. This dualism is both startling and familiar, neo-Gnostic and Manichaean. While fighting against the New Age movement and its dualistic errors, dispensationalists unwittingly embrace a similar error, pitting the spiritual against the physical and the heavenly against the earthly, as though they were never reconciled in the person of Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul may have fought his fleshhis fallen, wounded naturebut he never tried to escape the physical pains his commitment to Christ brought upon him. Undoubtedly the idea of a pretribulation Rapture would have angered him: For to you it has been granted for Christs sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake (Philippians 1:29). You dont see that on too many bumper stickers.