Posted on 06/12/2023 3:00:20 AM PDT by Cronos
Evangelicals in the 20th and 21st centuries have continually had to reckon with the culture of dispensationalism. Popular dispensationalism, with its hyper-fixation on the end times, has shaped the religious right since its inception in the late 1970s. As a child attending an evangelical church in the Left Behind era, I often heard preaching about the rapture or the coming of the Antichrist. Christian media have been replete with themes of the end times, from books on prophecy fulfillment to songs about being left behind.
More recently, the “Snapture” in Marvel’s 2018 blockbuster Avengers: Infinity War—a scene in which a character’s snap of the fingers causes half the world’s population to instantly dissolve into dust—brought dispensationalism back into mainstream culture. In most of these cases, the rapture appears in isolation from other critical components of dispensationalism, which include God’s covenants with humanity during various dispensations of history and separatism between the church and the world.
Dispensationalism is a form of premillennialism, the belief that Christ will return to earth before the millennium spoken of in Revelation 20 occurs. In dispensationalism, the millennium is the final dispensation of history, after which time will come to an end; presently history is in the dispensation known as the church age. The Bible has foretold that throughout the church age, society will continually deteriorate until the rapture, after which God’s judgment will descend in the seven-year tribulation and the terrifying reign of the Antichrist. Following the tribulation, Christ will return to earth and defeat the Antichrist before beginning his 1,000-year reign from the throne of David in Jerusalem.
In his 1980 landmark study, Fundamentalism and American Culture, George Marsden declared, “It is doubtful that premillennialism was really the organizing principle” of fundamentalism. At the very moment when popular dispensationalists—Jerry Falwell and Tim LaHaye top the list—were organizing a voting bloc of conservative Christians, scholars influenced by Marsden were moving away from understanding dispensationalism. With Falwell preaching in front of state capitol buildings, conversing regularly with President Reagan, and appearing on CNN, the stakes of Marsden’s dismissal of premillennialism were high.
Thus, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism is long overdue. Daniel Hummel explains in great detail and with great clarity the forces that have shaped dispensationalism, leading up to the rise of the religious right and beyond. He helps readers understand what dispensationalism is while dispelling myths that have stymied research into dispensationalism as a potent force in American public life. These myths include the idea that dispensationalism is not a critical component of Protestant fundamentalism in America; that it is, first and foremost, an eschatological system; that it is the natural outcome of a plain-text reading of the Bible; that it is primarily a southern phenomenon; and that it is a monolithic system that lacks diversity. Hummel presents a solid framework for understanding what dispensationalism really is, how it has influenced American fundamentalism, and how it shapes broader American culture.
In the process, he ably corrects Marsden’s error by showing that the premillennial hermeneutic that became dispensationalism served as a solvent for other cultural forces that also shaped Protestant fundamentalism. There certainly were elements involved in the shaping of fundamentalism that went beyond the millenarianism of the post–Civil War years: the story of millenarianism in America includes an apocalyptic strand among some Puritans, the Millerite movement of the 1840s, and the holiness movement. Other elements that are of distinctly British origin and crossed the Atlantic include Scottish common sense realism, John Nelson Darby’s foundational teachings, and Plymouth Brethren theology. Showing that all of these components became wrapped into the “new premillennialism,” Hummel consistently makes the point that dispensationalism does, and has since the 19th century, matter.
None of these elements was sufficient on its own to give rise to what is today generally called dispensationalism. Taken together in an American context, however, the hermeneutic of dispensationalism became both a scholarly pursuit and a pop culture phenomenon. Hummel examines both scholarly and popular approaches to dispensationalism, carefully showing that Falwell and LaHaye taught a different dispensationalism than the likes of James Hall Brookes (mentor of C. I. Scofield, editor of the Scofield Reference Bible) and Lewis Sperry Chafer (protégé of Scofield and cofounder of Dallas Theological Seminary). This distinction is essential, as few scholarly critiques of dispensationalism have arisen since the organizing of the religious right.
The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism is certainly a historical analysis and critique. But it offers something more to evangelicals and exvangelicals whose churches were inundated with the pop theology of Left Behind: sound answers to questions we may not have realized we had. Hummel gives readers like me the ability to discern the more destructive elements of pop dispensationalism while recognizing the hermeneutic’s place in a long history of American evangelicalism. Evangelicalism predates and will postdate dispensationalism, but dispensationalism’s imprint is present and will remain for the foreseeable future.
Hummel locates dispensationalism’s origin in the writings of the nineteenth-century Protestant John Nelson Darby, who established many of the hallmarks of the movement, such as premillennialism and belief in the rapture. Though it consistently faced criticism, dispensationalism held populist, and briefly scholarly, appeal—visible in everything from turn-of-the-century revivalism to apocalyptic bestsellers of the 1970s to current internet conspiracy theories.
Measured and irenic, Hummel objectively evaluates evangelicalism’s most resilient and contentious popular theology. As the first comprehensive intellectual-cultural history of its kind, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism is a must-read for students and scholars of American religion.
The modern evangelical idea of the “rapture” was invented by some Scottish pastor in the late 18th/early 19th century (I forgot his name at the moment)
Before him no major church whether catholic, protestant or orthodox had anything even close to this idea.
The sad thing is this rapture stuff really picked up in the 60’s and 70’s, and people who really bought into this idea were so obsessed it would happen soon that now you see them in older age suffering from a semi-schizo state because they cannot let go of the idea that they might have been wrong about this idea and they cannot allow themselves to admit they were swindled
Dispy's would have us believe that the church is just a parenthetical period in God's plan, everything depends on that, when in reality God's plan is a continuous covenant by faith in him. The "rapture" concept is defeatist in it's nature in that it doesn't require the believer to persevere because of the belief God won't let believers suffer persecution, when in fact it is during persecution that the church is purified and grows.
I imagine some of those people fear that they did not discern “the signs of the times” properly, which means that God didn’t enlighten them, which means they might not be “saved.”
The whole dispensationalist system is unfortunate. It tends to reduce the Bible to a book of secret codes one must decipher.
The scary thing to me is these people put their entire existence into this idea. When you do that and suddenly it turns out to have been false, you get a very scary situation where that person can suddenly lose all mental stability.
To these people, this rapture idea IS Christianity and it IS God, so if the rapture is not real, then to them it must mean God also is not real, and that can cause these types to then see existence as pointless hence they no longer have any control over any violent impulses.
The rapture belief in itself says nothing about whether believers suffer persecution.
“...the premillennial hermeneutic that became dispensationalism...”
Oh, snap!
Odd. Clarence Larkin died in 1924. He must have ascribed to unpopular dispensationalism.
The problem with some dispensationalists is no different than the problem displayed on FR. If a person becomes hyper-fixated on nonessential doctrine instead of on Jesus Christ they are misguided. It becomes far too easy to develop pride in being an "expert" in whatever that chosen doctrine is and in the crusades that can follow.
>>> The scary thing to me is these people put their entire existence into this idea. When you do that and suddenly it turns out to have been false, you get a very scary situation where that person can suddenly lose all mental stability.
Do you have an example of this happening???
I mean, who is it you know (or heard about) that has “suddenly” discovered this belief to be false?... and then went on some insane rampage??? What triggered their dis-belief???
What event took place or COULD have taken place that caused them to realize that the rapture was false???
Do you know? (What would disprove pre-trib rapture?)
Look around you... who is it that is shooting up schools and churches? “Dispys”?... or people who cant figure out what gender they are?
What is amazing to me is that the scoffers here seem to know so little about what actually takes place during the tribulation, and even less about the signs Jesus said to be looking for when the day would be near... and yet here we are... Biblical prophecy is unfolding right before our very eyes on a daily basis, with just about every sign and proof that the tribulation is about to begin!... and yet it is kool-aid drinking christians who are ignorant and mentally unstable??? Really???
I’m serious about my question... and I’m not talking about date-setters who obviously don’t know the bible either.
What event would biblically disprove the rapture???
2Pe 3:3
“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.”
——>What event would biblically disprove the rapture???
The Mark of the Beast
Bed, Bath, Rapture and Beyond.
True, but there is something much sooner than that. I wonder if the scoffers know.
“To these people, this rapture idea IS Christianity and it IS God, so if the rapture is not real, then to them it must mean God also is not real, “
Correct - and the multiple failures of the rapture prediction are then portrayed as Christianity’s failure
the idea of an early ‘rapture’ tickles the ears of those that are afraid of walking through life when the real downturn comes. They are, however, “thinking” in their own power, as opposed to the Power of the Holy Spirit. As God will never leave us or forsake us, AND, we are the salt and light; it is the ultimate purpose of ours to spread the Gospel to a lost and dying world. Why, once asks, would God remove us JUST when the getting gets bad, and ditch the lost and dying? The answer of course is, that He wouldn’t. When the darkness envelops us, those of us that believe will shine brighter and brighter.
Good points. I say often that the preaching of the early rapture idea is so deceptive (not just to those preaching it but to those being preached to) as once main detrimental consequence would be NOT BEING PREPARED for what’s to come. If you seriously think you’ll be whisked off the earth before things break loose, you will not be on solid footing of faith and the WORD to withstand the onslaught of evil.
Not to label anyone that agrees with early rapture but it truly is a wicked teaching. We are being prepared for such a time as this so to tell people you won’t be here and won’t be needed is just.plain.wrong.
The pre-trib rapture is not biblical. It takes a verse here, another there and stitches a theology that is not there in the Bible.
Take the dispensationalist reading of Daniel’s visions - adding in an additional 2000 years when actually Daniel’s visions ended with the arrival of Jesus and His Triumph. Even the Sadduccess and Pharisees saw the 1st century as the end of Daniel’s prophesies, hence the rising of a number of Messianic figures
>>> The pre-trib rapture is not biblical.
Then What was Paul referring to when he told the Thessalonians “Therefore comfort one another with these words”?
oh.. btw.. that was 1 Thess 4:17-18
I personally DO believe we meet with Christ, at the end of the world and at His coming. There is no period between our meeting with him and the destruction of the elements though. That has been my argument; that so many want to push this idea that believers are whisked out of here and life goes on for X amount of time before Christ returns. That is unbiblical.
See 2 Peter 3 as it’s quite clear that life CANNOT go on as everything is destroyed:
10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be [d]burned up. 11 Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? 13 Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
>>> See 2 Peter 3 as it’s quite clear that life CANNOT go on as everything is destroyed: 10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night
Things may not be as clear to you as you might think.
Clarity here requires that you first understand just what the “day of the Lord” actually is... or more specifically what it is NOT.
1. The day of the Lord is NOT a 24 hour period.
2. The “COMING” of the day of the Lord HAPPENS within the twinkling of an eye. (iow, it BEGINS with an event we know as the rapture)
3. The day of the Lord is actually a millennium in length, with the first week (7 years) being the judgment and destruction of the earth by fire, and is followed by Jesus reigning on the throne of David for 1000 years of peace.
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