The End is Near...Or Maybe Not

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Warren

Puritan Board Freshman
I found this book while browsing amazon for amil stuff, and thought it was funny, so I clicked. Has anyone read it or heard of the author? I kinda don't like the title, because it leaves me with the impression this guy doesn't believe we live in the last times. Anyhoo, an old friend came back to town, and he's into the Chuck Missler and dispensationalist view...So if you had a friend who's dispensationalist, what's the one book you'd read, besides St. John's Apocalypse, to equip yourself?
 
For the Amill view and a bit of anti-dispensational polemics, I really liked Sam Storms' "Kingdom Come". It helped me answer a lot of questions I had in the process of shedding my own dispensational baggage. I've also read parts of Hoekema's "The Bible and the Future" and really liked what I read. I think he does a good job of arguing for the physical promises in the OT not coming to fulfillment in the millenial kingdom but in the new heavens and new earth. I read Poythress' "Understanding Dispensationalists" for a Covenant Theology class recently and it was helpful by and large from a hermeneutical angle but I felt it was rather incomplete.
 
See, I tried amazoning for Kingdom Come, but all I found was a Superman comic. Thanks for the author's name.
 
https://perimeter-files.s3.amazonaws...Millennium.pdf

Try this.

That was actually a really helpful little treatise. It is not every day you see a "paper" written in a question/answer format. I particularly liked his discussion of ἔθνη in Rev. 20:3. I have not heard of that interpretation, but it is compelling.
 
Hello Matthew,

Here (below) is a brief chapter from a book I'm getting ready to publish. While Sam Storms is good vis-à-vis Dispensationalism, he's too sympathetic to the partial preterist and postmillennial to suit me, even though he is presently amil. If I had to pick one book for someone new to this topic I'd recommend Dennis Johnson's, Triumph of the Lamb.



The vital importance of the Amil view

The Amillennial (or present millennium) view opens our understanding to the crucial times we are in and times soon to come. All other end time views exclude the churches of other times: the premil all those churches before the end time, and the postmil those churches after 70 A.D., denying the relevance of the Scripture—and especially the Book of Revelation, the climax and crown of Biblical prophecy—to those people of God outside these narrow limits. The word of God is meant to be clearly understood in and for all ages.

As with Daniel’s prophecies concerning the devastation Antiochus Epiphanes would wreak in the church of God around 150 B.C.—the LORD preparing His remnant for the extreme suffering to come, even the worship of Him being outlawed in the one place in the world where it existed, and the temple so defiled that worship could not take place there—so it shall be again in our day, but globally the faith and churches being outlawed, the Lord having important discernment and encouragement for us who live near the end, and such days.

The Book of Revelation spoke clearly and urgently to the very people of the apostle John’s day (around 90-95 A.D. and the years following) who experienced horrific suffering, yet had the Apocalypse’s comfort, power, and warnings strong in their hearts. Revelation and all other Scripture likewise spoke to the peoples of the following centuries, instilling courage, wisdom, and godly caution. It spoke to the persecuted Waldenses in the mountains of Italy and France (Gaul).

To the Reformation church it gave them power and vision to withstand Rome, the great harlot Babylon and Beast of their day. Has it anything concrete for us in the second decade of the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century? Has it anything besides the yet valid warnings to come out of the Babylonian Vanity Fair of our Western cultures? Anything to make us like “the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (1 Chron 12:32)? How many Christians have clear “understanding of the times” now, in 2016?

Because of the cultural tide turning against us of late many of us in the Way have come to realize that our easy life under the protection of both government and a supportive society may swiftly be coming to an end, and hard times may well be upon us, if not right away, then in the wings waiting to be called.

But that’s not all; our cultures—the U.S., as well as Europe and the “West” generally—are becoming so hostile to the laws of God, violating them with such egregious wickedness and violence, that we should expect severe judgment on them from on high. The pampered West shall not be exempt from the fiery trials of our faith known by our brothers and sisters elsewhere, in other regions of the world.

It is little understood today that the psychedelic drug explosion of the fifties, sixties, and seventies—the LSD, marijuana, hashish, psilocybin mushrooms, peyote, mescaline, etc—and exported by the Woodstock generation into all the world, constitutes much of the basis for the horrific judgment of end times Babylon spoken of in Revelation 18:23, “for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.” The psychedelic drugs of those days—and the potent marijuana of today—were and are sorcerous potions opening the dimensional gateway to the demonic realm, allowing an influx of satanic influence and activity into the collective human consciousness that, over the past half century, has gruesomely impacted and slowly but surely transformed the zeitgeist—spirit of the age—into one that hates God, His people, and all civic order and decency, so that now we see the full realization of these words: “Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time” (Rev 12:12).

It’s becoming clear that the recent amillennial scholarship in eschatology is establishing itself as the dominant force in the church, notwithstanding the premil IFB and similar congregations and postmil Presbyterian micro-denominations to the contrary—perhaps I should say in the visionary church—and is capturing the hearts, minds, and imaginations of many with its clarity, simplicity, common-sense fidelity to the text, and thrilling vision into the reality of our situation. For it is a joy when we realize that the word of our God is relevant to the point of enabling us to understand the spiritual dynamics—and some events—at play in both “the whole world [that] lieth in wickedness” (1 John 5:19), and in us the church of the living and mighty God in its midst.
___________

Bibliography for Revelation and Amil:

Below is a list of books (a couple of articles and two mp3 sermon series included) on Amillennialism and Revelation commentaries that are amil, plus one book on Daniel.

Riddlebarger’s two books (listed below) are both excellent; the one on antichrist is superb.

Engelsma’s two lengthy articles on Amillennialism are outstanding. The book version of Christ’s Spiritual Kingdom is preferable.

The eschatology books, and the Revelation commentators listed are all amil, all of them in the camp of “eclectic” interpretive methodology, or “modified idealist”, per Greg Beale, who seems to be taking the lead in the field of Revelation studies at this time.

Still, the others are also very good. Of especial note is Bauckham’s The Theology of the Book of Revelation – a smaller work of 169 pages – filled as it is with profound insights and observations.


G.K. Beale, New International Greek Testament Commentary: Revelation; The IVP New Testament Commentary Series: 1-2 Thessalonians; MP3 sermon series on Revelation at Monergism: https://www.monergism.com/blog/exposition-revelation-mp3-series-g-k-beale; Revelation: A Shorter Commentary
Dennis E. Johnson, Triumph of the Lamb: A Commentary on Revelation
Cornelis P. Venema, The Promise of the Future
William Hendriksen, More Than Conquerors: An Interpretation of the Book of Revelation
Richard Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy; and The Theology of the Book of Revelation
Kim Riddlebarger, The Man of Sin: Uncovering the Truth About the Antichrist; and, A Case for Amillennialism: Understanding the End Times
David J. Engelsma, Christ’s Spiritual Kingdom: A Defense of Reformed Amillennialism (A shortened online version: http://www.mountainretreatorg.net/eschatology/amil.html); and his article, The Messianic Kingdom and Civil Government : http://www.prca.org/prtj/apr2004.htm#The Messianic Kingdom and Civil Government
Dean Davis, The High King of Heaven, a great book on the essential hermeneutic issues involved, and excellent analyses, with critiques, of the other millennial schools
Stuart Olyott, Dare to Stand Alone: Daniel Simply Explained
Samuel E. Waldron, The End Times Made Simple
Arturo Azurdia, An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (81 MP3 sermons) : https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/azurdia_revelation.html
 
Also read what the church fathers said on this. After Methodius of Olympus they would be loosely amil (pardon the anachronism) but very futuristic.
 
I found all your posts helpful, thanks guys. My copy of Kingdom Come arrived 2 days ago, and I'm tracking the arguments. I was intrigued to learn Christ fulfills the OT feasts. I never thought of him from that aspect before. Cool stuff.
 
Pardon the double-post.

I found Riddlebarger to be very helpful in extracting me from Premillennialism.
Were you Southern Baptist? Would you still say the SBC are predominantly dispensational? Is it just an undertow doctrine, now?

I don't want to push eschatology, not before I can articulate my view, and get my friend blacklisted, or something.
 
Pardon the double-post.

I found Riddlebarger to be very helpful in extracting me from Premillennialism.
Were you Southern Baptist? Would you still say the SBC are predominantly dispensational? Is it just an undertow doctrine, now?

I don't want to push eschatology, not before I can articulate my view, and get my friend blacklisted, or something.

Dennis is very knowledgeable about evangelicalism, but to my knowledge he has never been Southern Baptist. He was an American Baptist, which is the old liberal mainline Northern Baptist denomination.

What do you mean by "undertow doctrine?"

I don't know what the percentages are and I don't know if Lifeway has polled pastors on this question. They did poll seminary profs some time ago and the largest group was historic premil. But the 6 official seminaries have never been Dispensational anyway. They were basically postmil with maybe some Historic Premil sprinkled in, then more or less liberal and amil (which is why older Southern Baptists tend to associate amil with liberalism) and now conservative and mixed on eschatology. The dispensationalism came from influences outside of the denomination like the Scofield Bible, Moody Press and Dallas Theological Seminary.

I think it is safe to say that most older Southern Baptists (maybe over 50) are more or less dispensationalist, although many (laypeople) probably wouldn't recognize the term. They just know what they believe about the rapture, etc. Among younger ministers, amil and historic premil are quite common, with amil seeming to be more common the younger you get. Among laypeople, many in their 20s and 30s that I know don't tend to have strong views on it. And that goes for many pastors as well. Often it simply is not an emphasis.

Every indication that I've seen points to dispensationalism definitely being on the wane in the SBC, although it surely won't disappear. (If things keep waxing worse and worse in society, I suspect we may see some kind of resurgence, along with a resurgence of things like theonomy. After all, who would have predicted the Calvinistic resurgence would have gotten as big as it did?)

Some of it is the influence of Calvinism, even among those who aren't 5 pointers. Let's face it. With the exception of the few that espouse what I'll term MacArthurism, (chiefly confined to graduates of The Masters Seminary, which is very narrowly focused and relatively small among evangelical seminaries) dispensationalists writing substantial books that get read by large numbers of people just isn't happening today the way it was when Walvoord, Ryrie, Pentecost and others were publishing influential works that were selling hundreds of thousands of copies in the mid-late 20th Century. If somebody wants to read doctrinal stuff today, the Reformed are about the only ones putting it out. Some of it is a backlash against stuff like Left Behind and some of it is simply wanting to have more of an emphasis on missions and evangelism a la David Platt.

Their recent Sunday School literature, "The Gospel Project," seems to be heavily influenced by Goldsworthy, etc. and undercuts dispensationalism implicitly if not explicitly. (I haven't really examined it in detail, but I've seen enough to know that's the thrust of it.) "Jesus on every page" and so on is becoming very popular with younger Southern Baptists. It seems to me that some actually take it to extremes, asserting that not only is Daniel not the "hero" of the story but that he is in no way whatsoever an example to us. (Not seeing Jesus as the "hero" isn't really a dispensational issue, though. It is a moralistic one that has been evident in churches of many persuasions.)

You'll find much more diversity among Southern Baptists on eschatology than you will among independent fundamentalists. With IFBs, dispensationalism is practically an article of faith, and that is likely one reason why some IFB men who admire the likes of Mohler haven't made the switch to the SBC.
 
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I would suggest "Biblical Eschatology" by Johnathan Menn. It interacts with dispensationalism on virtually any point of which you can think, and is AMil.
 
^^I mean is dispensationalism an undercurrent/undertow? Do elders of influence preach it, or do they bypass the subject, but still affirm it.

I guess what I'm really asking is, do I stand a chance in Hades persuading my friend to look at scripture again, if everyone teaching him and over him and beside him are Dispensational. Ultimately, that decision is his... and for me its not an issue I'd divide over, but if the tenor is anti-amil, I don't want him torn between the two... Not until I can argue like Socrates or somedude.

Am I rambling?
 
^^I mean is dispensationalism an undercurrent/undertow? Do elders of influence preach it, or do they bypass the subject, but still affirm it.

I guess what I'm really asking is, do I stand a chance in Hades persuading my friend to look at scripture again, if everyone teaching him and over him and beside him are Dispensational. Ultimately, that decision is his... and for me its not an issue I'd divide over, but if the tenor is anti-amil, I don't want him torn between the two... Not until I can argue like Socrates or somedude.

Am I rambling?
That totally depends on the church, which can vary widely (and tends to vary much more widely these days compared to 25 years ago) as I've noted. You'd have to be familiar with that church as well as who your friend looks to for guidance on doctrinal matters. A lot of laypeople in all kinds of churches get into teachings that the elder(s) know nothing about or would strongly disagree with.

That being said, what if they do preach it? Would you have the same qualms about discussing the Doctrines of Grace, which tends to be much more of a hot button issue in those circles? If so, then why have a doctrinal discussion on any topic that might upset someone's apple cart?

Is this a situation where he's coming to you all fired up over the Missler stuff, or do you simply know that he is into it and you are considering saying something about it? If he is trying to turn you on to it, it is quite appropriate for you to state why you disagree with it, if nothing else.

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I have never been SBC. As Chris explained, my background was ABC until about 4.5 years ago (although the ABC Pacific Southwest District formally exited the ABC in 2005 and formed its own denomination of about 200 congregations. So you might say that I was ABC until 2005 and a member of a smaller Baptist body until 2012.)

The highly respected research group within Lifeway (the SBC folks) did a scientific survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors in America this year. The results were illuminating.

36% of all American Protestant pastors self-identify as "pretribulational."
31% of all American Protestant pastors self-identify as "ammillennial."

The Baptist Press (SBC) report of the study (April 26, 2016) noted:

Most pastors were split by denomination:

-- Baptists (75 percent) and Pentecostals (84 percent) are most likely to choose premillennialism.

-- Lutherans (71 percent) were most likely to choose amillennialism, followed by Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (52 percent) and Methodists (37 percent).

-- Methodists (27 percent) were more likely than other denominations to choose postmillennialism.

Education also played a role. Premillennialism is popular with those with no college (71 percent) or a bachelor's degree (63 percent).

Amillennialism is favored by those with a master's degree (41 percent).

At Fuller in the 70s, pretty much everybody was either historic premil or amill. The American Baptists tended to be historic premil and the PCUSA students were mostly amill.
 
Thanks both for helping think this through.

@ Chris : More like, we've had a "lovers spat" (really quite embarrassing) over our view of the Millennium, about three years ago. We disagree to disagree, sometimes. That's one of the reasons I liked being friends with him, until I learned merciful forbearance, I could tangle on minutia with him. The topic's come up now and then, but not at convenient times for discussion. I didn't want to get into at the time (people seeing the Groomsman and Groom in a heated argument wouldn't understand.) He's never tried to convict me of my old worldview, only challenge my new one.

@Dennis : Thanks for the stats! Very revealing. I was expecting premillennialism to be stronger by a landslide. Some encouragement that he might find other Baptists who are not dispensational.
 
I have never been SBC. As Chris explained, my background was ABC until about 4.5 years ago (although the ABC Pacific Southwest District formally exited the ABC in 2005 and formed its own denomination of about 200 congregations. So you might say that I was ABC until 2005 and a member of a smaller Baptist body until 2012.)

The highly respected research group within Lifeway (the SBC folks) did a scientific survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors in America this year. The results were illuminating.

36% of all American Protestant pastors self-identify as "pretribulational."
31% of all American Protestant pastors self-identify as "ammillennial."

The Baptist Press (SBC) report of the study (April 26, 2016) noted:

Most pastors were split by denomination:

-- Baptists (75 percent) and Pentecostals (84 percent) are most likely to choose premillennialism.

-- Lutherans (71 percent) were most likely to choose amillennialism, followed by Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (52 percent) and Methodists (37 percent).

-- Methodists (27 percent) were more likely than other denominations to choose postmillennialism.

Education also played a role. Premillennialism is popular with those with no college (71 percent) or a bachelor's degree (63 percent).

Amillennialism is favored by those with a master's degree (41 percent).

At Fuller in the 70s, pretty much everybody was either historic premil or amill. The American Baptists tended to be historic premil and the PCUSA students were mostly amill.

I have long harbored some doubts about Lifeway's surveys of "Protestant Pastors." The numbers can be interesting as far as they go. (If nothing else, the numbers with regard to education level in this survey aren't that surprising. That Baptists and pentecostals are more premil than Lutherans and Reformed are is not surprising.) But the height of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy is 90 years in the rearview mirror, after which Protestantism has continued to split apart. If Machen thought that liberalism was basically a different religion in 1923, what are we to think of it now? In a year in which many have concluded that evangelical really has no meaning whatsoever anymore, "Protestant" means even less. Some of them are essentially Unitarians or even atheists. I don't think I have to tell you how unhelpful it is to lump ELCA, LCMS and WELS in together under a "Lutheran" category, for example. Somebody like Ed Stetzer (currently or previously of Lifeway) surely knows better even if the avg. SBC member or even a good many pastors do not. They have tried to come up with a better definition of evangelical that would yield more accurate results than Bebbington's Quadrilateral, etc. which is an admission that "evangelical" is poorly defined. So then why the continued surveys of "Protestant pastors" which is even worse? Is it because a lot of pastors in conservative Lutheran and Reformed communions would disavow the evangelical label? Is it too hard to get a useful survey size when polling smaller denominations without lumping them into a larger group?

I'm not a betting man, but my bet is that a good percentage of the amils they found essentially deny inerrancy, especially those of a certain age. (Maybe 55+). I say that because many would have been educated at places like Fuller, a mainline seminary or at a SBC seminary when liberals were doing the teaching. (Sure, there are thousands of conservative Reformed grads, but wouldn't that be a drop in the bucket in a pool of "Protestant pastors?") As you know from personal experience, some historic premils deny inerrancy also. This is why embattled conservatives (ca. 50s-90s or so) in denominations like the SBC were suspicious of anything other than dispensationalism (and especially suspicious of amil) since dispensationalists were at least were reliably conservative on inerrancy, etc. (Back then, even some evangelical Presbyterian stalwarts like Boice and Schaeffer were premil and pretrib.) This attitude is fading, but I wonder if we won't see at least a mild resurgence of it as more and more evangelicals seem bent on pursuing "social justice" and are flirting with going too far in that direction, in my opinion. But that would necessitate more younger leaders going over to dispensationalism, which doesn't appear to be happening. Yet, who would have predicted the popularity of the "New Calvinism" 25 years ago? But that really got started in the late 50s.

Who knows what the views of these postmil Methodists are? I think it's safe to say that most of them don't hold to Wesley's views or those of the evangelical Methodist postmils of 100-150 years ago. What percentage are social gospel "postmils" who hold to a progressive eschatology and would be horrified if they were to wake up to find themselves in a millennium of the sort envisioned by the evangelical postmils of the past? But I don't know enough about the Methodist evangelicals in organizations like Good News to know if many are postmils of a more orthodox sort. I do know of some fundamentalist Wesleyans like Vic Reasoner who are partial preterists and either amil or postmil. But I don't think there are very many of those.
 
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Yeah, I'm reading Kingdom Come... and the author is soooo verbose. I think I can summarize chapters 3- 5 in 2 paragraphs.
 
Chris,

You make so many good points.

First, you are correct about the numbers being deceiving. Since it counts pastors NOT congregants, there is a bias that will give the mainliners a bigger role in the survey than they might have as a percentage of worshipping Christians. Mainliners are in decline and do so reliably every year. Evangelical pastors holding to "inerrancy" might pastor hundreds of folks whereas a typical mainline congregation might struggle with 50-100 on a Sunday.

Second, you probably know that Ed Stetzer is no longer at Lifeway Research, but has been announced as the new "interim teaching pastor" at Moody Church in Chicago (beginning next month).

Third, I think you are spot on about the views of the Bible by many with amill views. Most mainline pastors would be amill, but they would also be thoroughly liberal. And, the ones who were "evangelical" would be so in the Fuller Seminary sense of the term. Fuller dropped inerrancy in the early 1970s, even before my matriculation in '75.

My guess is that "Protestant" is a somewhat more meaningful category to measure than evangelical, simply because it is more accurate and fixed in denotation. What is an "evangelical" may differ from person to person. But, if you attend a church claiming to be Christian that is not Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, it is (by process of elimination) . . . Protestant. Trying to parse who is liberal or evangelical within a particular mainline group might be difficult (e.g., many of my fellow ABC friends a decade ago were Christian exclusivists (no heaven without "accepting Jesus"), egalitarians, rejected homosexual unions, and denied inerrancy in favor of "infallibility"). However, to get an idea what pastors outside of Rome thought about a given subject is (to me anyway) somewhat interesting.

When I taught a class recently on eschatology, it was useful to show my folks how prevalent "left behind" theology is in America and how few of us actually follow an amill line. It was also noted that many of those in the 31% of Protestants who were amill would also be rank liberals.

BTW, in a Lifeway Survey of SBC pastors a few years ago, "Southern Baptist pastors were asked to agree or disagree with the statement, 'I believe in the inerrancy of scripture.' Among Southern Baptist pastors, 97 percent strongly agreed with that statement, another 2 percent somewhat agreed, and 0 percent disagreed."
 
Chris,

You make so many good points.

First, you are correct about the numbers being deceiving. Since it counts pastors NOT congregants, there is a bias that will give the mainliners a bigger role in the survey than they might have as a percentage of worshipping Christians. Mainliners are in decline and do so reliably every year. Evangelical pastors holding to "inerrancy" might pastor hundreds of folks whereas a typical mainline congregation might struggle with 50-100 on a Sunday.

Second, you probably know that Ed Stetzer is no longer at Lifeway Research, but has been announced as the new "interim teaching pastor" at Moody Church in Chicago (beginning next month).

Stetzer is now on the Wheaton faculty. I don't think I had specifically seen that he had left Lifeway, (and his CT page still lists him as being there) and I don't really follow those kinds of events closely at this point. But I doubted he could be at Wheaton, Lifeway and Moody at the same time, at least not long term. I'm sure he's at Moody because he was already going to be in Chicagoland for his new teaching post. It'll be interesting to see what direction the Moody Church goes after Lutzer, who I've always liked despite some wacky things (in my opinion) he may say here and there. A few of Lutzer's books were important influences on me early on. He's an interesting case of a contemporary preacher who put some meat on the table despite (apparently) not being an expository preacher.

Maybe I should have just tried to email Stetzer (or contact Lifeway) about the methodology to see if I'd get a response. Surely I'm not the only one who has questioned it. I do remember sending him a quick note (which was complementary) about something years ago and I did get a brief response. Some people in denominational posts like that have to answer correspondence, although I don't know that it would be possible in the digital age. In some cases, if you follow them on Twitter, they have to follow you, etc. Several years ago, one SBC seminary professor told me that he has to return ALL calls, no matter how ridiculous they may be. But surely there must be an exception for harassment, etc.

Third, I think you are spot on about the views of the Bible by many with amill views. Most mainline pastors would be amill, but they would also be thoroughly liberal. And, the ones who were "evangelical" would be so in the Fuller Seminary sense of the term. Fuller dropped inerrancy in the early 1970s, even before my matriculation in '75.

My guess is that "Protestant" is a somewhat more meaningful category to measure than evangelical, simply because it is more accurate and fixed in denotation. What is an "evangelical" may differ from person to person. But, if you attend a church claiming to be Christian that is not Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, it is (by process of elimination) . . . Protestant. Trying to parse who is liberal or evangelical within a particular mainline group might be difficult (e.g., many of my fellow ABC friends a decade ago were Christian exclusivists (no heaven without "accepting Jesus"), egalitarians, rejected homosexual unions, and denied inerrancy in favor of "infallibility"). However, to get an idea what pastors outside of Rome thought about a given subject is (to me anyway) somewhat interesting.

I don't know what kind of response they get with these surveys, so doing it that way probably is easier. Presbyterian is indeed "Protestant" whether it is confessional, broadly evangelical, moderate, SJW, apostate or whatever. Splitting hairs to answer questions to my satisfaction is moreso the kind of thing you'd look for in an academic publication or book (or ordination exam.) I guess Lifeway polling "Protestant" pastors is akin to their overall rebranding 15-20 years ago to appeal to the wider church world. (It was formerly the Baptist Sunday School Board and the Baptist Bookstore.) I don't know if they would have done that kind of thing years ago, or if they even had a research division at all.

When I taught a class recently on eschatology, it was useful to show my folks how prevalent "left behind" theology is in America and how few of us actually follow an amill line. It was also noted that many of those in the 31% of Protestants who were amill would also be rank liberals.

Yes, I would imagine that those in what I'll call "ethnic" Protestant enclaves like Lutheranism, Dutch Reformed, etc. may not quite grasp the pervasiveness of certain Bible Belt teaching and practices. (And vice versa, of course.) I wonder what they'd think of "Hell Houses?" Some Baptists in the Midwest have felt rather alone in a sea of Catholics and Lutherans, some of whom may continue to see them as some kind of cult. Similarly, I once knew a middle aged lapsed Roman Catholic from New Jersey who didn't realize that Baptist pastors could get married. Strange as it may seem to us, most people really don't think about these things whether they go to church or not.

BTW, in a Lifeway Survey of SBC pastors a few years ago, "Southern Baptist pastors were asked to agree or disagree with the statement, 'I believe in the inerrancy of scripture.' Among Southern Baptist pastors, 97 percent strongly agreed with that statement, another 2 percent somewhat agreed, and 0 percent disagreed."

That's very interesting. I'm sure that the vast majority do affirm it, at least formally. But 0 disagreed and 2% somewhat agreed? Maybe it is a church example of the Bradley (or Duke) effect. I think they've done other surveys that have a higher percentage than that hedging on exclusivity, etc. I guess that may be about right once you consider who would bother to answer the survey given the war that was fought over the issue in the SBC for about 15 years or so. (I don't know if those surveys are done by mail, online, phone or whatever.) While the number is still likely shrinking fast, I can tell you that there are definitely churches that are affiliated with the SBC who have pastors who deny inerrancy and a whole host of other things. But they have largely withdrawn from denominational life. Some of them are dually affiliated with the SBC and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and probably only maintain SBC affiliation because getting out might be seen as being more trouble than its worth. I also know of some churches that were basically liberal during the controversy but have called conservative pastors in recent years. Some of the cases are almost enough to make a postmil out of me.
 
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