Free Republic

In this article, we first examined the tap root that contributed to the rejection of a literal thousand-year kingdom on earth, the dominant view for the first two centuries of the church, in favour of a spiritualized kingdom unlimited in duration (amillennialism). The single factor: the adoption of an allegorical hermeneutic, which replaced the literal or face-value hermeneutic of Jesus and the apostles. Four sub-roots fed this hermeneutical shift. First: the anti-Jewish bias of the early church developed as a result of a church dominated by gentile believers. Second: an overreaction to heresy, which included the condemnation not only of...

Three years ago I mentioned to a Catholic friend that I was starting to work on a book critiquing the Left Behind novels. I explained that it would thoroughly examine premillennial dispensationalism, the unique apocalyptic belief system presented, in fictional format, within those books. Premillennial dispensationalism teaches that the “Rapture” and the Second Coming are two events separated by a time of tribulation and that there will be a future millennial reign of Christ on earth. “Why?” she asked, obviously bewildered. “No one really takes that stuff seriously.” That revealing remark merely reinforced my desire to write Will Catholics...

The Church And Israel[1] Stanley Toussaint Senior Professor Emeritus in Bible Exposition Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, TX Importance of the Subject In his classic work, Dispensationalism Today, Ryrie sets forth a threefold sine qua non of dispensationalism—a distinction between Israel and the Church, a literal hermeneutic, and the glory of God as His purpose on earth.[2] Of these three, undoubtedly the most important is the distinction between Israel and the Church. Ryrie calls this “the most basic theological test of whether or not a man is a dispensationalist.”[3] He calls it the “essence of dispensationalism.”[4] He goes so far as...