Catastrophizing Modernism

  • Thread starter Thread starter RedeemedAbby
  • Start date Start date
  • Christian Chat is a moderated online Christian community allowing Christians around the world to fellowship with each other in real time chat via webcam, voice, and text, with the Christian Chat app. You can also start or participate in a Bible-based discussion here in the Christian Chat Forums, where members can also share with each other their own videos, pictures, or favorite Christian music.

    If you are a Christian and need encouragement and fellowship, we're here for you! If you are not a Christian but interested in knowing more about Jesus our Lord, you're also welcome! Want to know what the Bible says, and how you can apply it to your life? Join us!

    To make new Christian friends now around the world, click here to join Christian Chat.
R

RedeemedAbby

Guest
The belief that the modern world is uniquely bad and ripe for supernatural destruction is not a Protestant doctrine. It is a secular conservative ideology. It has more to do with Oswald Spengler than the Book of Revelation. Many Reformers believed the vast majority of Christendom was false, only their group preserved the truth, that the world around them was spiritually dead, and most clergy were unconverted. Examples include: Scottish Covenanters, English Separatists and Brownists, Dutch Nadere Reformatie pietists, German/Scandinavian pietism, Early Particular Baptists, Gospel Standard Strict Baptists, Primitives and Old School Baptists, Puritan gathered churches, and New England Half-Way Covenant critics.

Many thought they were the only real Christians left on Earth, yet still did not conclude the Apocalypse was imminent. They simply thought this is what the church looks like: tiny, faithful, surrounded by millions of nominal Christians and heretics. Reformed theology has emphasized that the church militant is always under attack, human institutions tend toward corruption, most religious revivals produce more false converts than true ones, and that decline is the default. In the classic Protestant reading of Revelation the Papacy is the Antichrist, the medieval church was apostate, the visible church is unreliable, and only the invisible church is guaranteed to endure. If you believe this, then the disappearance of Christendom in the West is not a unique disaster. It’s just Tuesday.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cameron143
ChristRoseFromTheDead said:
They were mostly right and that's the way it has always been.
Click to expand...

Right, and the trick now as always is to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative:

Gather 'round me, everybody
Gather 'round me while I preach some
Feel a sermon coming on here
The topic will be sin
And that's what I'm agin'

If you wanna hear my story
Then settle back and just sit tight
While I start reviewing
The attitude of doing right

You gotta ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
E-lim-i-nate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
And don't mess with Mr. In-Between

You got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith, or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene

To illustrate my last remark
Jonah in the whale, Noah in the ark
What did they do, just when everything looked so dark?
Man, they said, we better
https://stubhub.prf.hn/click/camref...destination:https://www.stubhub.com/_C-260598
Ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
E-lim-i-nate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
And don't mess with Mr. In-Between
No, don't mess with Mr. In-Between!
 
Jas 4:4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
 
timf said:
Jas 4:4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
Click to expand...
timf said:
Jas 4:4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
Click to expand...

Cf. Hosea 1:2, "When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him,
“Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife
this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.”
 
The road is narrow, but it isn't a tightrope. It's also important to not latch onto every heretical movement through history just to avoid the Catholic Church.
 
RedeemedAbby said:
The belief that the modern world is uniquely bad and ripe for supernatural destruction is not a Protestant doctrine. It is a secular conservative ideology. It has more to do with Oswald Spengler than the Book of Revelation. Many Reformers believed the vast majority of Christendom was false, only their group preserved the truth, that the world around them was spiritually dead, and most clergy were unconverted. Examples include: Scottish Covenanters, English Separatists and Brownists, Dutch Nadere Reformatie pietists, German/Scandinavian pietism, Early Particular Baptists, Gospel Standard Strict Baptists, Primitives and Old School Baptists, Puritan gathered churches, and New England Half-Way Covenant critics.

Many thought they were the only real Christians left on Earth, yet still did not conclude the Apocalypse was imminent. They simply thought this is what the church looks like: tiny, faithful, surrounded by millions of nominal Christians and heretics. Reformed theology has emphasized that the church militant is always under attack, human institutions tend toward corruption, most religious revivals produce more false converts than true ones, and that decline is the default. In the classic Protestant reading of Revelation the Papacy is the Antichrist, the medieval church was apostate, the visible church is unreliable, and only the invisible church is guaranteed to endure. If you believe this, then the disappearance of Christendom in the West is not a unique disaster. It’s just Tuesday.
Click to expand...
Every Christian generation has had many who believe the return of Christ is imminent. The "last days" began on the day of Pentecost. For me, the true sign that we are approaching the end of the age is the restoration of Israel. I do not buy into the idea that there is a time that we can calculate to know Christ's return. I do know what God's word says:

..........so also Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await Him. Hebrews 9:28. See also 1 Corinthians 1:7, 2 Timothy 4:8, 1 John 3:2.

"Salvation" in this context is the redemption of our bodies and being taken out of this world and into the next. I am looking forward to that day. When I see Jesus, I will be like Him. That is the greatest hope that a believer can have.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back