Are Futurists Idealists?
Today our religious culture has taught us many things about the ministry of Jesus. It has affirmed the stories as told above and clearly shown how the earthly eyes of many of the first-century Jews caused them to miss the message, mission and person we call Messiah. But on other fronts, surprisingly, many followers of Jesus have been equally slow to cast off the interpretive schemes of idealism. For instance, when we read the words of Jesus proclaiming his victorious arrival on the clouds of heaven (Matt. 16:27, 28; Mk. 8:38; 9:1; Lk. 9:26, 27; Matt. 24:29ff.) many still forsake the critical realism of Jesus (the maps pointing to higher truth) and opt to repeat the same mistakes of 2,000 years ago (viewing photographs instead). The crowds of his day missed his first appearing; the crowds today are missing his second. If we take the Bible too literally, we may fail to take it seriously. Nowhere is this type of reasoning more apparent than in some of the dispensational arguments being pu
