Monday, October 1, 2012

Those Itching Ears


I know I should ignore it, but I won't. I still have some spiritual maturing to do. In the meantime; there have been a series of arrows shot at pretribbers by the prewrath camp of late - which is business as usual. This is one of the latest:

"These pretribulational conferences grieve me because you will not find sober biblical exposition—it is basically hype, sensationalism, sprinkled with Bible proof-texts. The message to the attendees at these conferences is basically: “Look at all the ominous prophetic signs out there, the rise of Antichrist must be soon, but thankfully the Lord’s imminent return will rapture us away before the suffering.

"[Jan] Markell and other speakers will tell their itching-ear audience what they want to hear: don’t fret about the current world’s problems, we will be raptured soon! It’s the same old same old with these pop-teachers." 

I'm sure many "sober" dispies don't like pretribulational conferences either, but not for the same reason. Jan doesn't need me to defend her but my suggestion to these critics is to spend more time addressing flaws within their own eschatology rather than incessantly attacking other systems, and undermining the motives of people they disagree with.

"Itching ears" - that brings back memories (circa 2006-7) of when I first heard pretribbers described that way. I thought it had gone out of fashion. Guess I was wrong.

I was a posttribber when I first joined the pretrib-dominant Omega Letter. I had no issues with the folks accepting me there. Many of these "fearful" pretribbers were/are ex war vets and some are still in the military and I'd love to introduce them to the author of the above article.

After the OL was invaded by a handful of adamant prewrathers miffed at something Jack Kinsella (ex cop, ex marine) wrote, I thought I'd take a closer look at the prewrath rapture. Now I'm pretrib.

I believe Eric Douma and Bob DeWaay came to the same conclusions after studying that particular system.

See HERE and HERE. One will find "sober biblical exposition" there.