{"id":1226,"date":"2013-03-13T19:35:35","date_gmt":"2013-03-13T23:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/?p=1226"},"modified":"2013-03-14T09:51:06","modified_gmt":"2013-03-14T13:51:06","slug":"why-i-never-changed-my-mind-about-the-millennium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/why-i-never-changed-my-mind-about-the-millennium\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Never Changed My Mind About the Millennium"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction\"DTS<\/a><\/p>\n

With this post I am beginning a series of seven posts giving response to the testimony and basic argumentation of amillennialist Sam Storm.\u00a0 Storm, whom I have never met to my knowledge, took advantage of the opportunity that the Gospel Coalition website gave to post testimonies of evangelicals who had changed their minds about some doctrine.\u00a0 His well written summary gave some testimonial information about his experience as a student at Dallas Seminary 1973-77,\u00a0 his wrestling with tenets of dispensational premillennialism (especially the pre-trib rapture), and six essential arguments showing biblical information that he insists cannot be handled within a dispensational framework.\u00a0 I had intended to respond when I first saw the article by Storm a couple of months ago, but I came down with an illness and then my heavy travel schedule for Baptist Bible Seminary in February moved it off my table for a while.\u00a0 It is spring break now, so I am picking it back up.\u00a0 In doing so, I want to treat Storm with respect and hope he will do the same for me.\u00a0 I have no basis by which to judge him as something other than a fine brother in Christ, who simply disagrees with the position that I hold.\u00a0 However, our differences do matter for theology and ministry in the churches.\u00a0 I will use his first name below to highlight friendship in Christ in spite of our differences.<\/p>\n

My approach will be to discuss some introductory things in this specific post and then provide six later posts talking about the six main points Storm has outlined as his reasons for abandoning premillennialism.\u00a0 He has a book supporting amillennialism coming out later this year entitled Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative<\/em>, which will no doubt give more detail and for which I hope to give the reader a review.<\/p>\n

There are some similarities between Sam\u2019s experience and mine.\u00a0 Although I did not grow up in church at all, I was saved and baptized in a Southern Baptist Church, the same denomination in which Sam grew up.\u00a0 However, my experience in my church appears to be somewhat different.\u00a0 That particular congregation which pointed me to the Savior was a dispensational church.\u00a0 Many of its members carried the New Scofield Reference Bible.\u00a0 I consider my home church to have been aggressive evangelistically.\u00a0 Three hundred people were baptized the same year I was baptized.\u00a0 But I also consider that church to have been a strong doctrinal teaching church.\u00a0 There was strong teaching on all sections of the Bible, on dispensational truth, on doctrines relative to salvation, systematic theology in general, and ministry skills.\u00a0 Although I did eventually read The Late Great Planet Earth <\/i>by Hal Lindsey, the dispensational literature that I cut my teeth on was by Ironside, Ryrie, Pentecost, and Walvoord.\u00a0 Although I read popular treatments from time to time, it was the serious literature that I gravitated to and to which my church pointed me.\u00a0 For this I am grateful.\u00a0 I must say that I am not sure I ever remember anyone at my church, especially the pastor, ever saying that an amillennialist was suspected of not believing in biblical inerrancy.\u00a0 In fact, George W. Truett, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas before W. A. Criswell, was highly revered.\u00a0 However, he was a postmillennialist (some say amillennialist).\u00a0 In spite of my pastor\u2019s position on dispensationalism, he still respected someone from a different position.<\/p>\n

Another similarity is that Sam and I both attended Dallas Seminary but not at the same time.\u00a0 He graduated from Oklahoma in 1973 and followed right away at DTS finishing in 1977. \u00a0\u00a0I graduated from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 1975 and started my M.Div. at Liberty Baptist Seminary in 1977.\u00a0 I did not make it to DTS until the Fall of 1982 where I graduated with an STM (Master of Sacred Theology) degree in 1984.\u00a0 I finally earned my Ph.D. from DTS in 1993 (actually finishing in the summer of 1992).\u00a0 Like with our church experiences, Sam\u2019s DTS experience and mine were somewhat different.\u00a0 The DTS that I experienced, just five years after Sam graduated, showed great respect for many amillennial scholars.\u00a0 I think of amillennialist Oswald T. Allis and Anthony Hoekema (the latter mentioned by Sam in his post).\u00a0 There were others.\u00a0 I don\u2019t recall ever hearing a DTS professor in class or out of class hint that the amillennialist \u201cwas less than evangelical\u201d to borrow an expression from Sam\u2019s post.\u00a0 Had DTS changed its spirit in five years?\u00a0 Walvoord and Pentecost were still teaching, when I came to campus.\u00a0 While I did constantly witness teachers with convictions strongly affirming premillennialism, I did not detect this disparaging attitude that Sam says that he experienced.\u00a0 Did I just not see it because I was already firmly entrenched in the camp?\u00a0 I don\u2019t think so.\u00a0 I just know that I came away from Dallas Seminary with great respect for those who disagree with me on the millennium and many other issues.\u00a0 In fact, my teachers knocked some rough edges off of me when I was too negative toward others myself.<\/p>\n

I read a lot of the same literature that Sam did in my studies at DTS and on my own as a pastor in Arlington, Texas.\u00a0 My conclusions did not change like Sam\u2019s.\u00a0 I never changed my mind about the millennium.\u00a0 I\u00a0remain a committed premillennialist.\u00a0 I suspect that the real differences involve hermeneutical and theological commitments.\u00a0 These should surface when I begin in the next post to review Sam\u2019s six arguments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction With this post I am beginning a series of seven posts giving response to the testimony and basic argumentation of amillennialist Sam Storm.\u00a0 Storm, whom I have never met to my knowledge, took advantage of the opportunity that the Gospel Coalition website gave to post testimonies of evangelicals who had changed their minds about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,54],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1230,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions\/1230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}