Personal testimony and experience.
Since I began teaching fulfilled eschatology, I have experienced both encouraging and disappointing things.
I have watched people come in, listen, ask questions, and genuinely become excited about what they were learning. I have watched them wrestle with passages they had always been taught belonged to our future and begin seeing those passages in their first-century context.
Their traditional understanding was challenged, and at first there was often some, or even a lot, of cognitive dissonance. But they worked through it. They studied. They asked questions. They examined the Scriptures. Eventually, some became excited about seeing prophecy fulfilled in the first century, and I always have hope and get excited with them.
Then something would happen that I almost always had in the back of my mind.
They would go back to a former pastor, a family member, a friend, or someone they respected and begin telling them what they were happily learning. Almost immediately, the warnings would begin.
That is heresy.
You are being deceived.
That is false doctrine.
Someone is misleading you.
You need to leave that church.
Then here we go. They would be covered again with all the traditional, futuristic, and dispensational arguments they had heard most of their lives. Because they were still new to what they were learning and hadn’t yet become firmly grounded in it themselves, doubt would begin creeping in.
They would start questioning what they had learned.
What if they are right? What if I really am being deceived?
I have watched this happen more than once, and I will admit that it is disappointing. It does not happen in every case, but I have seen it enough times to recognize the pattern.
In some ways, I think I understand a little of what Paul must have felt when he watched people he had taught become persuaded by other voices to return to what they had previously left behind. Paul wrote to the Galatians:
But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Galatians 4:9
Paul knew what it was like to teach people, watch them receive what he taught, and then see other teachers come behind him and unsettle them. The Judaizers were persuading believers to return to things from which the gospel had delivered them.
Paul was so troubled by what was happening that he asked:
O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth? Galatians 3:1
And later he asked:
Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth? Galatians 5:7
Paul was not talking about black magic or voodoo. His language described the powerful influence that had come over them. Someone had gotten into their ears and turned their attention away from what they had received. They had been running well, and then another influence came along and hindered them.
Now, I am not saying that everyone who disagrees with fulfilled eschatology is a Judaizer, nor am I saying that our situation is identical to Paul’s. But I certainly understand the disappointment of watching someone become pumped up about what they are learning, only to have another voice creep in and create enough fear and uncertainty that they retreat back to the teaching that is familiar to them.
But I have learned something through this fascinating journey.
We cannot spend our time looking backward at everyone who walks away.
People will come, and people will go. Some will hear this understanding and immediately reject it. Some will become excited and continue studying. Some will embrace it for a while and then return to their former understanding. And some who walk away may come back later. A seed has already been planted.
They may hear something months or even years later that causes them to revisit what they once learned, open those passages again, and begin asking the same questions all over. We should never assume that because someone walked away, the seed that was planted disappeared with them.
Personally, when I was younger, I heard the book of Revelation was already fulfilled. I scoffed and rolled my eyes and left. I didn’t come back to this thought until 15 years later and completely dove right in. Studied day and night. I became thoroughly convinced.
So I have all hope. Some may reject this but come back later. That’s why we should present our understanding with love. They might not remember much about the doctrine you introduced but may have remembered one thing, and that was the way you demonstrated your view with grace.
I cannot control any of that. My responsibility is to faithfully plant, teach, and keep moving forward. God can do far more with a planted seed than I can do by chasing someone who has decided to walk away.
People will come, and people will go. Some will hear this understanding and immediately reject it. Some will become excited and continue studying. Some will embrace it for a while and then return to their former understanding. I cannot control any of that. We cannot manage that.
I do not believe people are going to be lost because they have a different eschatological view. That’s crazy! But I absolutely believe our eschatology affects the way we understand the Kingdom of God, the world around us, and our expectations for the present and the future. If we continually believe that the Kingdom is waiting on some future prophetic event before it can reach its intended reality, we can miss the beauty of the Kingdom that Christ has already established.
I cannot control what someone else chooses to believe. What I can control is whether I keep moving forward.
Paul said:
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13–14
That is where my heart is today.
Let us be encouraged in the midst of opposition and disappointment. I am not going to spend all my time worrying about the ones who left. I am going to help the ones who are still here.
I am going to keep my eyes on Jesus, keep studying, keep teaching, keep writing, and keep moving forward.
Because while I am looking backward at someone who walked away, there may be someone standing right in front of me who is hungry to learn.
And people ARE coming around. Yes! People are walking away from traditions they once assumed could never be questioned. They are discovering the importance of hermeneutics, audience relevance, context, history, and allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture. They are beginning to ask questions they were once afraid to ask.
And what excites me most is that fulfilled prophecy does not leave us with nothing. Many people ask this question. But the answer is that it leaves us with a present Kingdom reality.
We are not sitting around waiting for Jesus to become King. He reigns now.
We are not waiting for the Kingdom to arrive. We are living in it.
We are not waiting for the Old Covenant age to end. It already ended.
We are not waiting for God to establish His New Covenant people. We are His people, His children.
That changes the way we look at the present. Our hope is not built around waiting for the world to become dark enough for us to escape it. Our calling is to live faithfully in the Kingdom that cannot be moved, proclaim the gospel, love people, make disciples, teach truth, and demonstrate the life of Christ in the earth.
That gives me something far greater to focus on than who walked away.
Again, people will come, and people will go. We cannot become so focused on the ones who are gone that we neglect the ones who are still here. And we certainly cannot become so discouraged by those walking away that we fail to notice those who are walking toward us.
There is too much Kingdom now and in front of us to spend our lives staring at what is behind us.
So we keep studying.
We keep teaching.
We keep reaching people.
And above all, we keep moving forward.
Pray this encourages someone. ❤️🙏