All the things you have described are incidental to His imminent return for His church before the Tribulation starts if one believes in the rapture.
Not according to Dispensationalism. It is completely disingenuous to ignore the contradictions created by Dispensationalism.
And as I have already pointed out Jesus' disciples go through the tribulation. They are not raptured away to escape it. This is just one of the many errors within Dispensationalism.
And it is because of these errors, and their going completely unaddressed, that there is a decline in American Christianity!!!
Christians inside the Church look at the inconsistencies, the lack of accountability, and the lack of internal self-correction and walk away. Non-Christians looking at it all from the outside never believe because believing people who constantly make false predictions, don't hold false predictors accountable, and don't correct the problem are not people with whom they'd like to associate.
Most Dispensationalists aren't aware of these concerns and if they are aware they do not think much about them and when asked to do so the response is usually less respectful than you've been. I study this often. Right NOW the Dispensationalist pastor Gary Hamrick is going through the book of Revelation on the radio. These are re-broadcasts of old teachings that can be found
HERE. I just spoke to two people in the administration of that congregation today. ANYONE can listen to these teachings and
if they do so with their Bible
in hand and open, they will find repeated occasions where he makes statements about scripture that the texts he's citing do not actually state.
My complaints aren't personal. Personally, I think Pastor Hamrick a fine man. My complaints aren't sectarian. I don't subscribe to denominationalism or sectarianism. My complaints are objective and objectively verifiable by ANYONE willing to look at what scripture actually
states in comparison to what Dispensationalists make it
say. The listener isn't five minutes into that first teaching and Hamrick has already made a series of false statements not actually found in the Bible.
I live about an hour outside of DC and the local Christian radio station is one of the biggest in America. Its daily lineup is filled with Dispensationalists. All day long preachers preach and teach eschatology. Even when they're talking about some other topic, they invariably find a way to throw in commentary about end times. Why?
Because Dispensationalism focuses on end times!!! That's what they do. Some of them make prima facie absurd claims. Dr. David Jeremiah can routinely be heard to teach Jesus will come back within his lifetime. The man is 81 years old. If he lives to be 100 then
the logically necessary conclusion to his claim is that Jesus is going to return within the next 19 years. If Jesus does return
I am prepared because I'm not waiting on Israel or its temple. If Jesus does not return, then every word Dr. Jeremiah taught was incorrect and every dollar he made is ill-gotten profit of false teaching
and no one within Dispensationalism will do anything about it. Jeremiah is only one example in an all-day lineup seven days a week.*
Christians who don't think this is an influence on those outside the faith are wrong.
You are apparently a product of this problem because you believe,
All the things you have described are incidental to His imminent return for His church before the Tribulation starts if one believes in the rapture.
When the vast majority of Christendom has historically (and still does) believed Christians go through the tribulation. Only DPism believes otherwise. It's a very popular theology but it's you guys who are the statistical and normative outliers. Those who subscribe to Historic Premillennialism, Amillennialism, Postmillennialism, and Idealism ALL believe Christiansgo through the tribulation. The view you just posted was literally invented in the 1800s. Prior to that it was never a mainstream, orthodox, historical position within Christianity, and it is not what scripture teaches.
Anyone who has ever told someone Jesus is coming back imminently because of the latest newscast (at least Hamrick has enough sense to repudiate that practice) and the content of that news did not turn out to be imminently prophetically is part of the reason American Christianity is in decline.
I know this reads confrontational but it's not my intent to provoke anyone. If you'd like some resources to better examine this, then I'll gladly recommend some sources other than myself. I encourage
everyone to investigate.
*I have been to Jeremiah's congregation outside of San Diego, too. Met the man. Fine man, personally. His teachings are often insightful when he's on Christology, Pneumatology, hamartiology, soteriology, etc, but when he's teaching eschatology, he teaches bad theology.