Passing-Thought

optimistic eschatologies

Just wanted to give voice to the stubborn remnant of "amil" that still remains in my heart:

I recently had the opportunity of hearing Richard Pratt at PCPC's Winter Grace. I found much of his eschatological optimism to be edifying and encouraging, and left even more convinced that Christians have every reason to be "triumphalistic" in their eschatology. amen! I do, however, get a bit concerned when the cross and "sufferings of Christ" seem more preterized than paradimatic in our conception of Jesus and the Victory of God. To say that Jesus came into the world "to make the world a beautiful place" is pie in the sky theology if it does not glory through the cross on its way to glory. Of course, I don't think victory ends at the cross (as it seems to in many evangelical dispensational churches), but there remains a true temptation for our optimistic-exaltation eschatologies to gloss the cross on its way to glory (let alone glory in the cross). We seem to walk with full force with Jesus to Jerusalem in his kingdom proclamation and miraculous healing signs of the Spirit, but "may it never be that you should die, Lord!" 70 AD didn't do away with the cross and its covenantal implications; it sealed them. Every Sunday we still rightly observe the Lord's table, and we say we "remember the Lord's death until He comes." Thus we drink from the same cup. We still bear in our bodies the dying of the Lord Jesus. The suffering of the church is still the "sufferings of Christ" and to those who persecute her, Christ still says, "Why do you persecute Me?" As long as victory is permitted to look like the righteous dying and crying out in heaven "How much longer, O Lord?", then I say onward Christian soldier!

[Closer to fully realizing I'm a "postmil" than when I first believed.]