Kingdom Come

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits…Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven…And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” (Matthew 7:15-23)

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

• failed at every attempt at gainful employment including being discharged while still in basic training during World War II, taxi driving, road work, and hairdressing so resorted to unethical measures as an Independent Baptist preacher starting his own churches,
• motivated only by promoting own importance at the expense of others,
• charismatic and persuasive – my father started a series of churches despite being forced out of each one in turn because of his abusive behavior,
• 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, every translation of the Bible, and even the original Hebrew and Greek texts.
• arrogant – he slapped another preacher across his face during a regional pastors’ meeting.
• sociopathic – harming others without remorse – especially his two wives and most vulnerable family members, children, who he maintained in a state of fear from constant beatings and pit against each other in hopes of attaining his favor. 
• delusional to the extent of being psychiatrically diagnoseable, claiming only he knew what God really meant in scripture 
• absolutely controlling of every minute aspect of church and family life, including our mother’s medical treatment which led to an early death before my legal request to obtain custody could be enacted, and his second wife’s literal daily grind for which she appealed to me for rescue.
• 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 as preacher.
  • Against their agreement before marriage due to history of severe mental illness in both families and her express wishes, and despite barely surviving her first delivery due to eclampsia, she was kept permanently pregnant with only a nine-month interlude through twelve pregnancies until, in her 40’s, after her third at-home miscarriage during which she almost bled to death, the obstetrician threatened him with manslaughter if she became pregnant again.
  • Our ever-growing family provided our father with attention used to elicit pity and donations while refusing to provide for the basic physical needs of his family. He ejected every child from home at the earliest legal age despite an 18 year old’s inability to support oneself, two 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 fear-mongered Communism and the Cold War to exhort people to prepare for Jesus’ certain soon return.

My father found his fit in the Fundamental Independent Baptist Movement with its reliance on Dispensationalism.

Anyone who immediately discounts my perspective because I “dishonor” my father by criticizing him dooms every family member under an unscriptural 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 a false teacher.

Its distinctive views cannot be understood unless we consider John Darby (1800-1892)

John Darby was a cult leader whose signs and symptoms matched my father’s. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” 

• He 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 resulting in breakups, one after another.
• He made his own translation of the Bible.
• He had magnetic, electric personal qualities.
• He was a tyrant who was intolerance of criticism, all who did not agree were characterized as apostate.
• He left a massive set of Collected Writings which are almost uniformly unintelligible.
• 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’s greatest influence has been through his unique interpretation of Scripture.” 

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 racist 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

Dispensationalism teaches that It is very dangerous to confuse the nation Israel with the Church the Body of Christ.

This is completely contrary to scripture.

• 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)

So Dispensationalism relies on New Revelation by a spirit.      

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.

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 from each other” is most assuredly a private interpretation in the context of the passage from which it is taken:

• 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 a practitioner of Judaism, as did all the early believers of Jesus as the risen Lord and Savior.

 “when we were come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly. And the day following Paul…declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry. And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and said unto him,

Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law: And they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs…Do therefore this that we say to thee… and all may know that those things, whereof they were informed concerning thee, are nothing; but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest the law.

As touching the Gentiles which believe, we have written and concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication.” (Acts 21:17-25)

Even more important is that God’s plan had included the church composed of people from the whole world since before time began.

“I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward: How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery…That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel…And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God…To the intent that NOW unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God,” (Ephesians 3:1-11)

Why NOW? 

“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things…being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins,” (Hebrews 1:1-3)

Mission Accomplished by the promised Seed of the Woman is why NOW!

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