Christianity Today: The Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) changed its position on end times theology, voting this summer to drop the word “premillennial” from the denomination’s statement of faith.
An internal document explaining the rationale for the change says premillennialism “is clearly a minority position among evangelical believers.” Premillennialism has been a “denominational distinctive” for the EFCA, according to the document, but shouldn’t be overemphasized.
“The thought was, we must either stop saying we are a denomination that majors on the majors … and minors on the minors, or we must stop requiring premillennialism as the one and only eschatological position,” said Greg Strand, EFCA executive director of theology, in an interview with Ed Stetzer.
The revised statement says, “We believe in the personal, bodily and glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Whether or not Jesus will set up a literal kingdom on earth for a millennium is left to individual discretion. more …
Opinion: The Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) comprises 1,314 congregations with 180,000 members. The Evangelical Free Church of Sweden (headquarters) has 304 congregations and the EFCC of Canada comprises 150 congregations.
Without the literal 2000 year reign of Christ on earth, it is near impossible to fulfill Jacob’s blessing as prophesied in Genesis 27:28-29; assigning the title deed to the promised land to Jacob’s descendants (Genesis 17:8-9). Without Jacob’s promise the salvation of the Jew (Jer. 30:7; Zech. 8:1-23, 12:10) in the millennial reign falls apart.
“We’ve had no slippery slope to an allegorical approach to the Word,” said Bill Taylor executive director of the Evangelical Free Church of Canada. “There’s a stronger dispensationalist history in the US than we have in Canada.”
The allegorical approach, my dear friends, has been the number one cause of confusion and anti-Semitism in the church of Jesus Christ for 1800 years. It was in 200 AD when Origen, the father of allegory, began to turn the early church away from the literal method used by the apostles, to an allegorical method, relegating four-fifths of prophetic Scripture useless. Two hundred years later, Augustine agreed, and replacement theology became embedded in the Catholic church in Rome.
4 methods of reading Scripture:
- Premillennialism: Teaching that Christ will literally and physically be on earth for a thousand year reign (Rev. 20:1-7)
- Amillennialism: Teaching that states that there is no millennium reign (1000 years) of Christ on earth.
- Postmillennialism: Teaches Reconstructionism, a belief that God’s kingdom began at the first coming of Jesus, and will advance throughout history until it fills the whole earth through conversion to the Christian faith and world view.
- Preterism teaches that the events of the book of Revelation were fulfilled in the 1st century. Preterists believe the dating of the book of Revelation is of vital importance and that it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
Amillennialism or Covenant Theology, has effected Protestant churches since the 1700’s replacing or challenging Catholicism’s Replacement theology. Both treat the Jew as out of God’s plan with subtle differences, and have fostered a rapid growth of anti-Semitism that is now running rampant in the US/Canada and the EU.
Some say that Bible prophecy is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. We created BP 101 and the Two Trains studies as a kind of box top. Without a clear picture of the finished puzzle it is almost impossible to fit the pieces together.
See “Two Trains” here, and Bible Prophecy 101 chapter 3 “Doctrines That Divide Christians here
