Proof of the Superiority of Dispensationalism: We’ve Got the Best Charts!

there was Adam, the first man

there was a ‘holy family’ . . . (Noah)

and then there was a ‘tribe’ . . . (Father Abraham)

and then there was a ‘nation’ . . . (Moses)

and then there was a ‘kingdom’ . . . (King David)

and then there was an ‘Ekklesia’ (Lord Jesus Christ Son Savior))

Kim Riddlebarger, Amill extraordinaire, offers charts: http://kimriddlebarger.squarespace.com/the-latest-post/2012/1/4/you-cant-talk-about-eschatology-without-a-chart-right.html

Three cheers for crayons and for amillennial dispensationalists.

There wasn’t a picture of a test tube ( T T T = Test Tube Theology ) so that James 2:26 when properly disected by “qualified learneds” doesn’t mean what it says ; we have to go to some other Scripture and to someone else to interpret it so that we may “understand” it .

I especially like a Daniel dispensational chart with extra long toes. Neat.

http://low5point.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/long-toes1.jpg?w=500&h=224

Naw Bill Mac. I think the antipathy is simply because people are nasty no matter what eschatological view they embrace.

Too bad you folks have never read David Lutzweiler’s The Praise of Folly. Draper, Va.:Apologetics Group Media, 2009. Subtitled, The Enigmatic Life and Theology of C.I. Scofield. One of the things pre-trib, premil, eschatology has done is get old Rome off of the hot seat at the Antichrist. Now we spend our time looking for some esoteric individual instead of considering the original, according to the Waldensians, for the character, that is, a movement and not a person, an institution, something bigger than any one glorified (so-called) individual. And with the kind of technological advances we have now, we might well have some, supposedly alien ships come over head, use some antigrav-wave devices, and rapture out a bunch of people to terrible deaths in deep space. Flying saucer technology has been with us over 60-70 years, perhaps even longer, if the thing that exploded over Tungunguska (sp) was a Tesla experiment involving zero point energies gone awry. Too bad some folks never read outside the box, one of the advantages of being trained in Black History, where you are taught to do so deliberately, Imagine what we could discover, if we would go back and explore our church records and other sources for real theological insights which might well provide us with better understanding of our Bibles and our theology and of the ideas and etc. of Great Awakenings. The half has never been told. Consider how we might well start praying for a Third Great Awakening and that it could begin in this generation and win every soul on earth and continue for a 1000 generations and a million, million planets throughout some 20,000-100,000 years just so God can crak a humorous remark to the effect that the number of the redeemed in Heaven will be a number no one (even God?) can number…which surely must be humor designed to make His children laugh happily, gladly, gloriously, under the most difficult and despairing of circumstances. Really blows David’s charts to smithereens to have a honest to God post millenialist responding. Hey, David? Have a good laugh. We baptists do allow our selves some humor,especially over last things, for we all know that which is last, lasts.//and it will be the Lord’s last in any case.

Yes, it does go back past Darby, though according to Dr. John Coleman, the decision to put Darby’s views into play were made by the British East Indies Company Board and that the purpose was to divert money from Christian Missions in the 20th century to the nation of israel..and this decision was made for that purpose in the early part of the 19th century (early 1800s). Sort of like reading about the references to WWI and WWII in social revolutionary G. Mazzini’s letter to Albert Pike, circa 187(?) which I have seen quoted in several sources and which was supposed to have been on display in the British Museum for several years but is now generally denied.(naturally). Nothing is like it seems, and hidden things of deception are at work, always preparing surprises to spring on us in the hope that we shall be swept off of our feet with some new yucks.

Sorry, didn’t mean to spoil your fun by getting too heavy and deep. I even know of some of the predecessors of Darby, but have forgotten them. One was a Jesuit from Chile (in the 1700s and whose work got introduced into Protestantism by the Presbyterian chariismatic in London circa 1825) and another was an Archbishop who wrote a work in the 1600s.

As to finished systems of eschatology, the depth of scripture is so great that no mind can comprehend it except the MIND OF ITS ORIGIN. We can see it in crystal clarity and faith to comprehend it because we have no depth perception to speak of.

I had a friend who got booted out of DTS, because back in the late 60s or early 70s (I’m not sure of the date) he did not dot his Is’ and cross his Ts’ like they desired at that time. Anyway that is what he told me…and others.

The Lutzweiler work is worth a reading as David’s father was one of the early supporters and promoters of Scofieldianism, and David was to wind up sorely disappointed in what he found about Scofield. Does make one think that perhaps Jack Chic’s publications were not too far wrong about catholic infiltration and that there are such persons as half coated Jesuits!!!(whatever that means)..and lest anything I am just a bigot, let me say I do believe there are catholics who are saved…and even catholics are concerned about their own church…just do some googling.

Probably the best chart would be the following:

Wow! (letting God fill in what He really means…my aim is to win the whole earth, beginning with this generation and continuing for a 1000 generations and a 100,000 years and a million, million planets.

Personally, I would prefer the two bisley colts with their holsters and belt that was for sale for $90.00 just down the street from the dorm where I attended college in my first year (East Texas Baptist, ’58-’59). Had I bought them then, I could have sold them for $3,000 in ’72, when I went to my thrid church. And for10,000 by 2005 or more. Jesse and John Wesley Hardin preferred them scofields, I guess they were heavier. My Great Grand Pappy preferred a 38 cal. colt cause you get more shots off in quicker time. He would do a fast draw on the back porch and shoot the head off of a Guiena Hen in Milano, Deep in the Heart of Texas. B.H. Carroll’s brother just about died with laughter about B.H. making a lucky shot, taking a bird on the wing, since B.H. was the worst shot in the family. Now if a post-mill. could do that that long ago, imagine David, what my Post-Millenialism will do, even if we thrown in another couple of hundred years for the stupid conspiracy now in operation to follow through to its gutteral end in the light of the Third Great Awakening, Ps.73:19 and Dan.2 re: the stone becoming a great mountain and filling the whole earth.

I do hope you have a sense of humor David.

You know James,

A Guiena ain’t half bad eatin’ if you cook it right. And they make great watch dogs. Nobody can sneak up on a flock of Guienas roostin’ in your Crape Myrtle bushes. You can get the drop on an outlaw with a S&W Schofield or a Bisley Colt either one if you own a flock of Guienas and pay attention to them when they get startled.

I would like to buy you a cup or two of good coffee some day James, and hear your whole story. You are an interesting fellow. You have certainly “seen a thang or two.”

Be happy to meet your CB. Bet you have an interesting story or two also. Now if we could just get David straightened out about the best charts being post-mills covering 1000 generations and a number in Heaven even the Lord wouldn’t care to count, such a post being utterly unlimited and a chart utterly unending vistas of redeemed souls. And why not. I figure the devil has enough in hell, a narrow pit of a lake, compared to the cubed city of 1600 miles as well as the endless green emerald sea stretching infinitely forever in every direction.

[Just for laughs from amills – or tears from dispies – here’s what I saw on the web]

SCHOLARS WEIGH MY RESEARCH (update)

by Dave MacPherson

(For more than 40 years my pretrib critics have falsely claimed that leading scholars condemn my research. Since those critics continue to deliberately distort and censor (even on Wikipedia etc.) my evidence that Edward Irving’s group as well as Margaret Macdonald taught a pretrib rapture before John Darby and his group did, I hereby present reactions to my research from leading scholars who haven’t had a huge axe to grind either for or against pretrib dispensationalism. See web articles like “Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty” and “More Facts About Margaret Macdonald.”

Loraine Boettner (theologian, author): “I think that you have done a magnificent job in showing the real origin of the Pre-trib rapture theory.”
F. F. Bruce (theologian, encyclopedia contributor): “It is strange that Darby should acknowledge his indebtedness to a young lady in Limerick and say nothing about the young lady in Port Glasgow [that is, not acknowledge her pre-Antichrist rapture of part of the church]….If this work of yours can do anything to counter the influence of Hal Lindsey…, you will have rendered a signal service.” Superficial—-and even devious—-scholarship loves to repeat Bruce’s 1975 surmise that pretrib was “in the air in the 1820s and 1830s.” Hired critic Thomas Ice knows that this wasn’t a scientific conclusion (does reliable data rest literally “in the air”?), and Ice moreover has ignored Bruce’s later statements complimenting my evidence!
Gary DeMar (theologian, author): “THE RAPTURE PLOT is the never-before-told, true story of the plot—-how plagiarism and subtle document changes created the ‘mother of all revisionisms.’ A fascinating piece of detective work.”
Robert H. Gundry (theologian, author): “As usual, Dave MacPherson overwhelms his critics with a superior knowledge of the primary sources. His is a rare combination of historical research and investigative reporting. Those who would refute him have failed to outhustle him, especially in the tracking down of information uncatalogued in academic libraries.” Superficial scholarship is aware that the first—-1973—-printing of Gundry’s THE CHURCH AND THE TRIBULATION stated on pp. 185, 187: “The likelihood is that Edward Irving was the first to suggest the pretribulational rapture….the outpouring on Margaret Macdonald did not include revelation of a pretribulational rapture….” But careful scholarship has long known that after Gundry saw my Macdonald findings, he deleted his Irving statement and substituted favorable comments about the Scottish lassie—-changes appearing in his classic work since the 1980’s!
John H. Kromminga (Calvin Sem. president emeritus): “The material appears to be well researched, and this impression is confirmed by the excellent comments you cite from well-established evangelical commentators.”
Francis Nigel Lee (church historian etc., 9 earned doctorates!): “Dave MacPherson, in his various books, has made a major contribution toward vindicating Historic Christian Eschatology. The 1830 innovations of the disturbed Margaret Macdonald documented by MacPherson – in part or in whole – immediately spread to Edward Irving and his followers, then to J. N. Darby and Plymouth Brethrenism, and were later popularized by the dispensationalistic Scofield Reference Bible, by Classic Pentecostalism, and by latter-day pretribulationists like J. F. Walvoord and Hal Lindsey.”
Harold Lindsell (church historian, author): “…must reading for anyone who is interested in the [pretrib] origins….”
C. S. Lovett (pastor, author): “You have to be, in my opinion, the world’s authority on Margaret.”
Peter Marshall (pastor, author): “I am in emphatic agreement with you on your thesis.”
Walter Martin (researcher, author): “[MacPherson has produced] a fascinating historical detective story…with surprising and not easily refutable conclusions.”
J. Gordon Melton (editor): “According to the best scholarship available, the pretribulation, premillennial eschatology originated among members of the Catholic Apostolic Church as a result of a vision and revelation to Margaret MacDonald. See Dave MacPherson, THE UNBELIEVABLE PRE-TRIB ORIGIN.” (ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN RELIGIONS, 1978)
Gary North (author, church historian): “…Dave MacPherson has inflicted a deep wound on the pre-trib camp by showing that a teenage Scottish girl named Margaret Macdonald…came up with this doctrine….” (Dispensationalism in Transition, Nov., 1988)
Harold J. Ockenga (theologian, author): “You have done your research well.”
J. I. Packer (author, church historian): “From my own explorations of the origins of Darbyism I judge that you are presenting facts fairly, and I am glad you are, for I also regard dispensationalism as an unhappy aberration.”
J. Barton Payne (theologian, author): “MacPherson has once and for all overthrown Ernest Sandeen’s assertions that the Irvingites never ‘advocated any doctrine resembling the secret rapture’ and that to connect J. N. Darby and early dispensationalism with Irving’s church is ‘a groundless and pernicious charge’….For serious students of the history of dispensationalism the study of MacPherson’s discoveries has become a must.” (Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Winter, 1974)
The Prairie Overcomer (Canada): “…MacPherson’s case seems to be watertight.” (July, 1974)
Reformed Review: “MacPherson has done excellent historical research.” (Spring, 1985)
Ian S. Rennie (author, church historian): “…it is likely that [Margaret’s revelation] was grist for Darby’s mill.” (DREAMS, VISIONS AND ORACLES, 1977)
R. J. Rushdoony (theologian, author): “Dave MacPherson has been responsible for major change in the eschatology of evangelical churches by his devastating studies of some of the central aspects thereof. In THE RAPTURE PLOT MacPherson tells us of the strange tale of ‘rapture’ writings, revisions, cover-ups, altercations, and confusions. No one has equalled MacPherson in his research on the ‘pre-trib rapture.’ Attempts to discredit his research have failed….”
The Seminary Review: “[MacPherson] shows conclusively that Margaret Macdonald was the originator of the concept.” (June, 1984)
Oswald J. Smith (pastor, author): “You have some excellent thoughts here that will be difficult to answer.”
Merrill C. Tenney (theologian, author): “…the connection between Margaret Macdonald and Irvingites and Brethren is reasonably well established. You have done a valuable piece of research.”
The Witness (oldest & largest Darbyist Brethren magazine in England): “What [MacPherson] succeeds in establishing is that the [pretrib] view outlined was first stated by a certain Margaret Macdonald…early in 1830.” (April, 1974)

(The critics who have tried to cover up the above scholarship are basically the ones who’ve tried to muddy the waters by “discovering” hints of pretrib before 1830. For more on this, see my internet article entitled “Deceiving And Being Deceived.”)