Kingdom Come

My Baptist preacher father didn’t allow our family to have a television, radio, friends, or any other social influence contrary to his control. I hid my unapproved nonreligious books.

Every morning started with personal Bible reading, our evenings were spent in family devotions – an hour-long sermon from our Baptist preacher father to his congregation of nine children ages 16-infant. That should be revealing right there. We attended our father-pastored church services Sunday morning and evening and Wednesday evenings, Friday night Bible club for which I memorized a chapter of the Bible per week, regularly scheduled week-long evangelism services, weekly church maintenance, choir practice and church meetings. 

As an adult I realized I had been raised by a cult leader who demonstrated every classic narcissistic personality disordered characteristic.

• failed at each and every attempt at gainful employment including discharge while still in training from the military during World War II so resorted to unethical measures as an Independent Baptist preacher starting his own churches
• motivated only by promoting their own importance at the expense of others
• charisma
• defiance of other authority figures religious and political
• demanding total obedience
• claiming supernatural power – in my father’s case, to understand the mind of God perfectly exclusive of all other religious leaders
• arrogant
• sociopathic – harming others without remorse – especially his most vulnerable family members
• delusional to the extent of being psychiatrically diagnoseable, claiming only he knew what God really meant in scripture whatever translation or original language being read
• persuasive – my father started a series of churches despite being forced out of each one in turn because of his abusive behavior
• absolutely controlling of every minute aspect of church and family life
• exploiting the weak for financial gain – Our mother worked a full time job as a teacher to support the family from the time they married for nine years through six pregnancies until he finally began earning an income a preacher. Against their agreement before marriage and her express wishes, she was kept permanently pregnant with only a nine-month interlude for lactating through twelve pregnancies until, in her 40’s, after her last of three bleed-out miscarriages, the obstetrician threatened him with manslaughter if she became pregnant again. Our father used our large family to elicit pity and donations while refusing to provide for the basic physical needs of his family and ejected every child from home as quickly as possible despite an 18 year old’s inability to support oneself, the younger ones in the care of foster church families “to allow him to serve God”. 
• intolerant of criticism
• a visionary who promoted controversial views to gain a following.

My father refused any authority over him, and found his fit in the Fundamental Independent Baptist Movement with its denominational distinctive of Dispensationalism.

I learned of dispensationalism when I was thirteen. While working his way through an exposition of the book of Matthew one chapter per evening, upon reaching chapter 24 my father explained that, contrary to a straightforward reading of the text reporting experiences by “ye” in response to the apostles’ questions – and historic fulfillment of these experiences by the apostles such as their martyrdom – this passage did not in fact apply to the apostles because they – and Jesus – were no longer Jews once Jesus resurrected. They became Christians.

Despite being only thirteen years old I was so well versed in the Bible that this made absolutely no sense. When I argued the point my father’s only response was, “That’s dispensationalism, you wouldn’t understand it.” I knew my father well enough to know that he didn’t understand it or he would have carried on his favorite activity of pontificating to a captive audience.

Anyone who immediately discounts my perspective because I “dishonor” my father by criticizing him dooms every family member under an ungodly parent to perdition. Jesus himself demands hatred / repudiation of parents when necessary to follow him instead. My freedom to know the Christ started when I recognized and rejected false authority.

And so I studied out dispensationalism for myself and discovered that instead of relying on the written word, Dispensationalism relies on direct revelation by a spirit. This is the hallmark of any religious cult movement. 

Dispensationalism is simply one of the new religious movements promoting a new version of premillennialism that sprang up in the late 19th century on the basis of “new revelation.”

Given the embarrassing recent history of premillennialism in the United States its revival was nothing less than amazing. 

Its distinctive views cannot be understood unless we consider John Darby and the Plymouth Brethren. 

John  Nelson Darby (1800-1892) 

Like my father, John Nelson Darby failed at every career he attempted before going into the ministry where he promptly broke with organized churches and formed his own churches, one after another due to constant conflict.

We need to understand John Darby as a cult leader.

• He made his own translation of the Bible.
• He was strong-willed
• He had magnetic, electric personal qualities
• He was a tyrant who was intolerance of criticism.
• He often demonstrated as much zeal in destroying a work of his own building as he did in its first construction.
• He left a massive set of Collected Writings which are almost uniformly unintelligible.
• He was intolerant – all who did not agree with his interpretations of the Bible were characterized as  “apostate..”
• He was overbearing causing much friction, rivalry and strife with multiple divisions within his movement. 
• Darby’s followers, known as the Exclusive Brethren, where blindly loyal to him.
• Darby claim that the Holy Spirit revealed the mystery of dispensationalism to him is false. It was already public knowledge, two examples of many being the works of Joachim of Fiore (~about 1130/ 45-1201/02) and Pierre Poirret (1646-1719) a French mystic and philosopher who had an outline of seven dispensations.

And yet, “Darby’s greatest influence has been through his unique interpretation of Scripture.” 

Absolutely. Defining Darby as a cult leader. All cult leaders’ foundational characteristic is assertion of themself as the final authority.

Just like Lucifer!! Hello!!

Which is why a true prophet of God is known by staying true to “no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.” (II P:eter 1:20)

Darby’s Dispensationalism caught on like wildfire in the American South by 1875. Can we not recognize a religious culture’s reaction formation to losing the Civil War – along with the Ku Klux Klan!

• Repression – We didn’t lose the war that counts.
• Denial – We aren’t impoverished and scorned, we are the Chosen Ones!
• Projection – We aren’t the losers – the Jews are!
• Displacement – We can’t beat the slaves but we can heap abuse on the Jews!
• Regression – We can’t face the trials and tribulations of war again, we get rescued by Daddy!
• Sublimation – Satisfying the desire to destroy the hated enemy through Antichrist’s actions

Darby taught that Israel and the church are separate entities.

This is completely contrary to scripture.

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus…Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands;

• ye were without Christ / Israel’s Messiah…
• aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,
• and strangers from the covenants of promise

But now in Christ Jesus ye…are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;” (Ephesians 2)

It is very dangerous to confuse the nation Israel with the Church the Body of Christ. We are to, “Study to shew ourselves approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). If we are to understand the Bible, we must separate the dispensations from each other.

Narrowly interpreting “rightly dividing the word of truth” to mean “separating dispensations form each other” is most assuredly a private interpretation in the context of the passage from which it is taken:

• Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
• Therefore I endure all things for the elect’s [of Israel] sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.
• It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him: If we suffer, we shall also reign with him.
• shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.
• foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.
• instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;
• And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.” (II Timothy 2)

The dispensationalist claim that God inserted the exclusively Gentile Church into his plan after Israel did not accept Jesus Christ and demanded his death is patently false. The New Testament documents over and over that all Israel did not reject Jesus Christ, only the corrupt leaders who allied with the Gentiles. Paul himself, considered the founder of the Gentile Church, never stopped identifying himself as an Israelite, as did all the early believers of Jesus as the risen Lord and Savior. Even more important is that God’s plan had included the church since before time began, in eternity.

According to Darby, the apostles failed when they did not carry out the Lord’s Great Commission to go out into all the world to preach the Gospel.

Really?

“But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.” (Romans 10:18)

“I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.” (Romans 1:8)

Darby definitely has his “unique interpretation” of scripture and mission strategy.

The editor of the Christian Guardian wrote (in 1887) with specific reference to the work of Darby’s Plymouth Brethren evangelists: “Their whole manner of work is stealthy and uncandid. They open their mission . . . and generally conceal their most objectionable teaching at first. They live by proselyting from the protestant churches instead of going out into the unconverted world and gathering souls for Christ. In many places they have brought about dissension and strife, where brotherly relations had formerly prevailed.”

“where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work…But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.  And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.” (James 4:14-19)

What really promoted Darby’s Dispensationalism was a new version of scripture.

Dispensationalism openly flaunts its cult status by relying on spirit-revelation instead of “It is written“.       

All three of these Scriptural Old Testament “gaps” or valleys have one thing in common: These are things that are spiritually discerned through the Holy Spirit in the New testament, which sheds light on what is written in the Old Testament.