The Future, According to...

END TIMES

1. ACCORDING TO DISPENSATIONALISTS and HEBREW-ROOTS FOLK

Bible Prophecy is about Messiah setting-up a visible kingdom, centred in Jerusalem, with all nations making annual pilgrimages to a rebuilt temple to offer blood sacrifices during the feasts, with a reinstated Levitical priesthood officiating.

Jesus came to offer that kingdom to Israel. But halfway through His ministry He realised Israel was going to reject Him, so He changed His message and objective. Lucky for Gentiles, because instead an unforeseen thing called the gospel 'of grace' is now going to Gentiles - otherwise Gentiles couldn't have got saved at all.

God actually blinded and hardened Jews so that could happen. But in future God will have decided He's got enough Gentiles saved, and will stop the gospel-program, and resume the real theme of Bible Prophecy: which is Israel. At that time He will stop blinding and hardening Israelis, and after they see His return, this time they'll all get 'saved', even those who weren't saved before. 

The prophesied Messianic kingdom will finally begin, and the whole world will have to revert back under some quasi-Levitical Law and make annual pilgrimages to a replica-temple in Jerusalem to offer blood sacrifices, or be cursed. 

And after a thousand years of that, Christians will then get ganged-up on by the whole world again. 

2. ACCORDING TO THE APOSTLES, AS CLAIMED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 

(so it seems to me, anyway):

Bible Prophecy indeed required Israel to return to their land from captivity, to rebuild their temple, and resume Levitical law; and proselytes from the nations were indeed to begin making annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the feasts - but this was enacted by Jews when they returned from captivity, while the Old Covenant still stood. Messiah was to come in that historical context - and He did come: Jesus of Nazareth. 

It was also already foreseen in Prophecy, though it wasn't yet widely understood, that Messiah would die for our sins and rise again. By the cross, Jesus made a new covenant, which phased-out the old covenant Levitical law, and inaugurated the kingdom-scheme, the promised new creation. 

The announcement of this good accomplishment was called the 'gospel of the kingdom'. But it was also foreseen that not all Jews would believe this message. And it was foreseen that many Gentiles would believe it. 

The destruction of the temple was foretold, and Jews would again be scattered, and it was to happen in that century (and it did). But that didn't mean God had withdrawn anything from Jews. Jewish people could still be saved, just as Gentiles were getting saved. 

Until the last Day, when the kingdom-scheme which Jesus has already inaugurated by His cross and resurrection, and which believers are experiencing already by the Spirit, will be completed visibly, and death itself will be abolished and the dead in Christ will rise to eternal life, just like He rose - both Gentiles and Jews, gathered together in one, in Christ - and we will all be together with the Lord forever, in a completed renewed creation, God dwelling with us, all as foreseen by Abraham, and foreshadowed in Moses' temporary Law, and foretold by the prophets, and announced by John the Baptist, and our Lord and the Apostles.

3. REMARKS:

Dispensationalism's view of Prophecy implies reverting back under Levitical Law in future. It implies the gospel isn't really the main theme of the Bible.

But the Apostles' doctrine - the New Testament - interpreted Bible Prophecy in a way which puts and keeps the focus entirely on JESUS now - on the gospel - as being precisely the very scheme by which God was always going to faithfully fulfil His promise to Abraham and to Israel, for all humanity, even benefiting the physical creation itself (at the resurrection), which was the hope of Israel after all.

"Rightly dividing the Scripture of truth, " Paul called it.