Understanding Eschatology

Introduction

The purpose of our conversation tonight is to focus on that belief which is called dispensationalism, since this idea has been most impactful on our understanding of the eschatology. Yet, the goal and task ahead is also to better understand the field of eschatology in order to discern the way in which eschatological beliefs have changed with the various events and times the subject has faced. So, we will discuss the various concepts of eschatology and then evaluate in greater detail the topic of dispensationalism to discern just how it has impacted America and the modern church.

All of these schools of eschatology differ in their view, understanding, and interpretation of prophecy.

Historic Premillennialism

The church fathers are said to have believed in what is called historic premillennialism. That is, they believed Jesus would literally return in the future to reign for 1000 years from Jerusalem.

Ideas of Historic Premillennialism:

Return back to a Garden of Eden earth

Idealized concepts of Jewish materialism

Romantic justice from oppression and persecution

Key Groups during these times took on a more spontaneous form of prophecy, which not only interpreted previous prophecies, but engaged in their share of prophecies.

Montaist- Montanism (/ˈmɒntəˌnɪzəm/), known by its adherents as the New Prophecy, was an early Christian movement of the late 2nd century, later referred to by the name of its founder, Montanus. Montanism held views about the basic tenets of Christian theology similar to those of the wider Christian Church, but it was labelled a heresyfor its belief in new prophetic revelations. The prophetic movement called for a reliance on the spontaneity of the Holy Spirit and a more conservative personal ethic. Parallels have been drawn between Montanism and modern-day movements such as Pentecostalism (including Oneness Pentecostals) and the Charismatic movement.

During a time where people were use to hearing about the Book of Revelation as a “doom” book. The world seemed to be moving in an opposite direction. Meanwhile, the Montanists were still spreading the premillennialist view, which came across as weird and outdated.

Montanist was seen as a “progressive” movement of the time.

Many missed “end of the world”/ Christ return dates.

By the mid-400’s, Amillennialism would challenge Premillennialism for the following reasons:

Demographic shift, which included the Gentiles

New Gentile converts thought Premillennialism was too Jewish as it prioritized Jesus’ reign from Jerusalem during a time when Rome was the center of the world. (ref. Holy Roman Empire)

Money and support/ favor from the government

The lack of support for the idea of an imminent return of Christ/ the slow [literal] return of Christ

The key biblical passage of this belief is Revelation 20:1-15.

The issue is that the church fathers expected a literal return. Yet, the contents of Revelation 20 does not allow for such a visible proof of such events that lead up to the literal return. For instance, Revelation 20:1-3 is quite incapable of being literal. More importantly, the idea of the saints who were seen is towards those who lived and suffered during the time of the actual writing.

Amillennialism

Around 390 A.D., a scholar named Tyconius started creating the framework for a new approach to Revelation  — an eschatological position that is now called Amillennialism. But, this new symbolic approach didn’t really gain traction until Tyconius’ student, Saint Augustine fanned the flame. And before long, Amillennialism became the standard eschatological view of the Catholic church – all the way up until the 1700’s.

There were always sects who kept the torch of Premillennialism lit. But in the middle ages, it was definitely rare. The pendulum swing to amillennialism was so thorough that, by the Middle Ages, Premillennialism was often seen as heresy – only to be embraced by fringe groups.

Key Points of Amillennialism:

Most [All] of Protestant Reformers were Amillennialists.

This would have been the natural position for the reformers since there was a anti-semtic undertone during these times.

Ideas of the Amillennialism:

Does not believe in a literal or actual future kingdom of peace and prosperity here on earth that will last one thousand years.

The Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in a non-literal way.

Prophecies are interpreted in a figurative way.

The rise of Postmillennialism would is due in part to the rise of science or Enlightenment.

Postmillennialism

Many people of the church believed that the gospel could impact more than the hearts of sick sinners. They believed it would impact economics, government, science, and society. Also, slavery was being challenged in new ways through the church.

Reasons the world seemed to be getting better:

Agricultural advancements

Idea of capitalism

Scholastic movement- university, scholarship, chemistry, astronomy, anatomy

Oxford, Cambridge

Cosmology

Social activism

The uprise of what would become Evangelicalism, through the revivals that impacted the new American colonies.

Key Figures

William Wilberforce- was a British politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade.

Hannah More- was an English religious writer and philanthropist, remembered as a poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects, and as a practical philanthropist.

Daniel Whitby- was a controversial English theologian and biblical commentator. An Arminian priest in the Church of England, Whitby was known as strongly anti-Calvinistic and later gave evidence of Unitarian tendencies.

Jonathan Edwards- was an American revivalist preacher, philosopher and Congregationalist theologian. Edwards is widely regarded as one of America's most important and original philosophical theologians.

A major component of the revival preaching was the defeat of Satan/ Antichrist which was at times characterized as the Pope and other religious leaders. Such defeat would prepare the world for a “golden age.”

American democracy and Manifest Destiny

Charles G. Finney (1792-1875)- was an American Presbyterian minister and leader in the Second Great Awakening in the United States. He has been called the "Father of Modern Revivalism.” In his beliefs and teachings Finney departed from traditional Reformed theology by teaching that people have free will to choose salvation. He believed the millennium would begin by ridding the world of evil.

William Carey “Father of Modern Missions”- was an English Christian missionary, Particular Baptist minister, translator, social reformer and cultural anthropologist who founded the Serampore College and the Serampore University, the first degree-awarding university in India.

Adoniram Judson- was an American Congregationalist and later Particular Baptist[1] missionary, who served in Burma for almost forty years.

From the views of individuals like William Carey and Adoniram Judson, we get dominion theology, which is a return back to the Garden of Eden.

Ideas of Postmillennialism

The world is getting better and better.

The millennial kingdom will be established on earth as the world lived in peace/ gets better.

Christ will return toward the end or just after the reign of peace.

There was one significant event that challenged and completely changed the hearts of many from this view—World War I. From here, dispensationalism would find its value.

But once again, certain Christian groups started to take Post-millennial ideas too far. As historian, George Marsden put it: “After the Civil War, the more liberal evangelicals…began gradually to abandon the dramatically supernatural aspects of the postmillennial view.” Indeed, Post-Millennials started becoming quite liberal and loose in their treatment of scripture. Consequently, theology and Christian dogma embraced:

Humanism

Skeptical

Deconstructionist

Darwinist

Questions: “Was Jesus truly born of a virgin? Did Jesus even resurrect? Heck, did Jesus even really exist?”

And thus, the ethos of Post-millennialism became dominated by a desire to reclaim society through education and social welfare. It became less about doctrinal truths and more about social action. It’s less about a personal encounter with the Holy Spirit and more about social reform – using any institution available. This shift even led some extreme postmillennials to think: “Nazism might even be a move of God.” But that’s when our next big mega-shift happened: World War I.

Dispensational Premillennialism

Before we get to the World War 1 of the 20th century, we must first understand the diligent effort of the dispensational movement. The liberalism of the Enlightenment is what gave rise to the dispensational view.

Key Figures of the Dispensational view:

William Miller (1782-1848)- was an American Baptist preacher who is credited with beginning the mid-19th-century North American religious movement known as Millerism. Following his conversion, Miller's Deist friends soon challenged him to justify his newfound faith. He did so by examining the Bible closely, declaring to one friend "If he would give me time, I would harmonize all these apparent contradictions to my own satisfaction, or I will be a Deist still." Miller commenced with Genesis 1:1, studying each verse and not moving on until he felt the meaning was clear. In this way he became convinced firstly, that postmillennialism was unbiblical; and secondly, that the time of Christ's Second Coming was revealed in Bible prophecy. Basing his calculations principally on Daniel 8:14: "Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed", Miller assumed that the cleansing of the sanctuary represented the Earth's purification by fire at Christ's Second Coming. Then, using the interpretive principle of the "day-year principle", Miller (and others) interpreted a day in prophecy to read not as a 24-hour period, but rather as a calendar year. Further, Miller became convinced that the 2,300 day period started in 457 BC with the decree to rebuild Jerusalem by Artaxerxes I of Persia. Simple calculation then revealed that this period would end in 1843. Miller records, "I was thus brought... to the solemn conclusion, that in about twenty-five years from that time 1818 all the affairs of our present state would be wound up." Although Miller was convinced of his calculations by 1818, he continued to study privately until 1823 to ensure the correctness of his interpretation. In September 1822, Miller formally stated his conclusions in a twenty-point document, including article 15: "I believe that the second coming of Jesus Christ is near, even at the door, even within twenty-one years,--on or before 1843." Miller did not, however, begin his public lecturing until the first Sunday in August 1831 in the town of Dresden.In 1832 Miller submitted a series of sixteen articles to the Vermont Telegraph, a Baptist newspaper. The Telegraph published the first of these on May 15, and Miller writes of the public's response: "I began to be flooded with letters of inquiry respecting my views; and visitors flocked to converse with me on the subject.” In 1834, unable to personally comply with many of the urgent requests for information and the invitations to travel and preach that he received, Miller published a synopsis of his teachings in a 64-page tract with the lengthy title: Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ, about the Year 1844: Exhibited in a Course of Lectures. (Wiki)

Ellen G. White (1827-1915)- was an American author and co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Jonas Wendell (1815-1873)

Charles T. Russell (1852- 1916)- was an American Christian restorationist minister from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and founder of what is now known as the Bible Student movement. Founder of Jehovah’s witness. About 1870, Russell and his father established a group with a number of acquaintances to undertake an analytical study of the Bible and the origins of Christian doctrine, creed, and tradition. The group, strongly influenced by the writings of Millerite Adventist ministers George Storrs and George Stetson, who were also frequent attendees, concluded that many of the primary doctrines of the established churches, including the Trinity, hellfire, and inherent immortality of the soul, were not substantiated by the scriptures.

Joseph Smith (1805-1844)- was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. Many expected Smith to lead them to the Millennial kingdom.

John Nelson Darby (1801-1882)- was an Anglo-Irish Bible teacher, one of the influential figures among the original Plymouth Brethren and the founder of the Exclusive Brethren. He is considered to be the father of modern Dispensationalism and Futurism. Pre-tribulation rapture theology was popularized extensively in the 1830s by John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren,[1] and further popularized in the United States in the early 20th century by the wide circulation of the Scofield Reference Bible.

James H. Brookes (1830-1897)- was an American Presbyterian pastor, Christian leader and author. Dr. Brookes led congregations in Ohio and Missouri during a career spanning 43 years. He became a leader among his peers in the Niagara Bible Conference which led to editing The Truth: or, Testimony for Christ, a periodical. His legacy is also found in the many books, booklets and tracts he produced. James Hall Brookes was considered a "founding father" of dispensationalism in the United States along with men like Dwight L. Moody, Adoniram Judson Gordon, C. I. Scofield, William Eugene Blackstone, and Arno C. Gaebelein.

D.L. Moody- was an American evangelist and publisher connected with Keswickianism, who founded the Moody Church, Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts (now Northfield Mount Hermon School), Moody Bible Institute and Moody Publishers.

C. I. Scofield (1843-1921)- was an American theologian, minister, and writer whose best-selling annotated Bible popularized futurism and dispensationalism among fundamentalist Christians. Scofield's correspondence Bible study course was the basis for his Reference Bible, an annotated, and widely circulated, study Bible first published in 1909 by Oxford University Press.[25] Scofield's notes teach futurism and dispensationalism, a theology advanced in the early nineteenth century by the Anglo-Irish clergyman John Nelson Darby, who like Scofield had also been trained as a lawyer.[26]Dispensationalism emphasizes the distinctions between the New Testament Church and ancient Israel of the Old Testament. Scofield believed that between creation and the final judgment there are seven distinct eras of God's dealing with humanity and that these eras are a framework around which the message of the Bible can be explained. It was largely through the influence of Scofield's notes that dispensational premillennialism became influential among fundamentalist Christians in the United States, and these notes became a significant source for popular religious writers such as Hal Lindsey.

Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871-1952)- was an American theologian and considered one of the fathers of modern dispensationalism. He founded and served as the first president of Dallas Theological Seminary, and was an influential proponent of Christian Dispensationalism in the early 20th century. He was a premillennial, pretribulational dispensationalist. His overall theology could be generally described as based on the inductive study of the entire Bible, having similarities to John Nelson Darby of the Plymouth Brethren, moderate Calvinism (rejected limited atonement), a mild form of Keswick Theology on Sanctification, and Presbyterianism, all of these tempered with a focus on spirituality based on simple Bible study and living.

Hal Linsdsey (1929-) is an American evangelist and Christian writer. He is a Christian Zionist and dispensationalist author and television host. He wrote a series of popular apocalyptic books suggesting that the rapture was likely to occur in the 1980s. Lindsey graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary with a Master of Theology degree, majoring in the New Testament and early Greek literature.

Author of The Late, Great Planet Earth, a popular book printed over 17,000,000 copies. The Late, Great Planet Earth is a treatment of literalist, premillennial, dispensationaleschatology. As such, it compared end-time prophecies in the Bible with then-current events in an attempt to predict future scenarios resulting in the rapture of believers before the tribulation and Second Coming of Christ to establish his thousand-year (i.e. millennial) Kingdom on Earth. Emphasizing various passages in the books of Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation, Lindsey originally suggested the possibility that these climactic events might occur during the 1980s, which he interpreted as one generation from the foundation of modern Israel during 1948, a major event according to some conservative evangelical schools of eschatological thought. Cover art of the Bantam edition suggested that the 1970s were the "era of the Antichrist as foretold by Moses and Jesus," and termed the book "a penetrating look at incredible ancient prophecies involving this generation." Descriptions of alleged "fulfilled" prophecy were offered as proof of the infallibility of God's Word, and evidence that "unfulfilled" prophecies would soon find their denouement in God's plan for the planet.

After WW1, the world experienced the Spanish Flu pandemic, followed by the Great Depression, followed by the rise of fascism, followed by World War two and the atomic bomb. So, Christians everywhere began re-thinking their postmillennial optimism: “Maybe the world isn’t getting better? Maybe science hasn’t caused us to evolve beyond our sin natures?” Many Post-millennialists started switching back to Amillennialists. Yet, after the wild success of the Scofield Bible, even more started thinking: Maybe Pre-millennialism was right all along? And in 1948, Dispensationalism hit its tipping point.

Against all odds, on May 14th, 1948, the nation of Israel was reborn as physical reality – for the first time in over two-thousand years. And all of a sudden, hundreds of prophetic Bible passages suddenly seemed realistic again as a future possibility.[35]

For example, Isaiah 11:11-12 says, “11 In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the Mediterranean. 12 He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth. (Isa. 11:11-12). Never before in Israelite history had the Jewish people been dispersed to the “four corners of the earth” and then returned.

Or as another example, Jesus said: “Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until, the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Luke 21:24). And suddenly, in 1967, the world witnessed the Six Day War. And for the first time since Jesus spoke these words, Jerusalem was, in fact, back in Jewish hands. And not surprisingly, the interest in eschatology has entered a golden age – especially for premillennialism.

Suddenly, for the first time in history, the prophecies about the geo-political alliances of Ezekiel 38 could be plausible. Indeed, scholarship on Ezekiel 36-39 has gone through a mega-shift. Premillennialists (of both Historic and Dispensational varieties) were quick to point out that a literal and futuristic interpretation of Revelation was not only plausible but, prudent.

Key Ideas of Dispensationalism:

The world is God’s household.

God dispenses or administers its affairs according to His will and in various stages of revelation. These stages mark off the different economies in God’s purpose; these economies are dispensations.

1. Innocence

2. Conscience

3. Human Government

4. Promise

5. Law

6. Grace

7. Kingdom