Tim LaHaye is Coming to Town
I teach at a dynamic, vibrant, growing University that is located in a stagnant, lethargic, declining town. About all we have when it comes to worldwide fame is the boyhood home of James Dean (not the sausage guy, the actor). Marion Indiana is off the beaten path in the heart of “flyover country.” When someone famous comes to Marion, Indiana it makes headlines in our local newspaper. That’s why the paper today has an article about Tim LaHaye coming to our local Baptist church. They’re expecting about “1000 people” to come out to touch the hem of his fame—nobody here in this rusting town wants to be left behind.
Tim LaHaye[1] approachs “end times” in the typical pre-millennial fashion that has been so popular recently among evangelicals. If you line up 100 evangelicals and ask them about “God’s unfolding plan for the future” ninety-nine will recite something from LaHaye’s interpretation of Scripture. Indeed, the students I teach simply assume the pre-mill view is “the biblical view of the end times” and they treat any other approach as eschatological heresy.
But, as you know, the pre-millennial approach really a recent idea. It only emerged a couple hundred years ago.[2] Thus is not the view of a thousand years of Christian orthodoxy, but a recent novel approach to explaining Scripture. Historically there are at least four approaches, but to the average Christian today, there is one and LaHaye’s sale of more than 62,000,000 books makes a convincing argument. If it is the wrong view, then most all evangelicals hold a wrong view.[3] Yet there are holdouts. In spite of LeHaye’s dominance of the end times thinking there are at least three other views held by Christians still lurking about in caves and hiding under the floorboards of evangelical churches. The four most common views are:
(The
purpose of this article is not to explain these four views—search
the web to discover that)
So, does your denomination require you to believe one? Go look it up. Many denominations in the past had no stance on these matters. They left it up to their people to decide for themselves. But many were forced to take sides in the 1800s and early 1900’s. Did your denomination? Are you required to believe one of these interpretations of the end times and to reject all the others as unbiblical?
My denomination lets us decide for ourselves[4]. We don’t force people to take one particular view over another because we believe “the Bible is not that clear” and “its not a core issue.” So you can hold (and even teach) any of the four views and be in good standing in my denomination (so long as you teach the other views too and provide room for all four). Nobody Wesleyan is required to take one particular view—a pre-millennialist can’t tell a post-mill or a-mill person they are out of bounds. This makes for far more open and interesting discussion in Sunday school classes and makes us appear to be an open-minded church for people from other denominations.
I like this approach, do you? While the vast majority of folk in my denomination are swayed by the Left Behind interpretation of end times there is room for other opinions. You can even survive in my denomination if you think LaHaye’s approach sounds like somebody smoked a bit too much pot while reading Revelation and Daniel (you can survive, but you won’t be popular). My denomination allows room for eschatological dissenters. Does yours?
But this column isn’t really about the end times, is it? Regular readers have learned to look for swerves at the end of my columns. This column is really about this liberal approach to doctrine—an approach that permits people to believe various things about matters where “the Bible is not that clear” and the they “are not core issues.”
So here’s my question: On what other doctrines “is the Bible not absolutely clear” and thus we shouldn’t require people to believe one particular way? How far will you go with this open approach that sounds so inviting? What other doctrines would you make optional? About what are you willing to take multiple choice answers where all the answers are OK? I dare you—make your list and send it to me. (I promise—I won’t post your name).
So, what do your think?
Respond by clicking here.
[1] LaHaye has two co-presenters: Ed Hindson from Liberty University and prophecy conference guru, Gary Frazier
[2] Pre-millennial approaches to explaining the end times began to emerge about 1800 and spread throughout the 19th century until the approach conquered most of fundamentalism and what later became evangelicalism (a kinder-gentler more worldly form of fundamentalism).
[3] The notion of establishing doctrine my majority view is deep in American Protestant thinking—are there other ways? Can the majority be wrong? How long does a view have to last to be right? Are all discarded views wrong?
[4] I belong to The Wesleyan Church denomination. Half my denomination (the Wesleyan Methodists) split off from the Methodists in 1843 over slavery—we were against it while the Methodist Bishops cried “peace-peace” and refused to reject slavery as sin. Of course when the Civil War was over we lost our primary reason for being, but denominations always find new reasons for existence so we continued. The Wesleyan Methodists had no statement on these matters. The other half of my denomination, The Pilgrim Holiness Church was founded around 1900 and thus had a pre-millennial approach. When these two groups merged in 1968 they went with the more liberal Wesleyan Methodist view allowing individuals to decide personally which approach they favored.