Dispensationalists are Wrong Yet Again
As a child I listened with great excitement to Dispensational teachers, and read many of the books of the leading advocates of The System. Little did I realize at the time how foolish this theological bias was, and how sensationalized it had become. The Bible was interpreted in light of daily newspapers, as if modern day events were part of Biblical prophecy being fulfilled right before our eyes. The world was coming to an end. Armageddon would happen during the 1980s. The church could begin the countdown. There was going to be a revived Roman Empire, manifested in the rise of the European Common Market.
One well known false prophetic teacher of this nonsense, Hal Lindsey, predicted in his book, The Late Great Planet Earth, that the European Common Market would grow to a league of ten nations, at which time it would represent the revived Roman Empire. This ten-nation economic union would then be subdued, and ruled by a diabolical “future fuehrer” or antichrist. The number ten was alleged to be based on a scripture from the seventh chapter of Daniel that describes a beast with ten horns. In the 1970s there were six countries in the Common Market; today it is known as the European Union, and has twenty-eight member countries. The ten kings of Daniel’s vision who arise formed a single kingdom which was destroyed, and so does not match with Hal Lindsey’s interpretation of that chapter. On June 22, 2016 the foolishly imagined modern revived Roman Empire began to break up as England voted to withdraw from the European Union and take control of their nation from Brussels.
Hal Lindsey predicted in the same book that the Soviet Union would be the Empire of the Anti-Christ. What is the truth? The truth is that since 1989 the USSR no longer exists, and now Hal Lindsey has changed his view. His prediction did not come true. Rather than repent, false teachers just write another sensational book, with a new twist. They do this to gain a following, and to make merchandise of God’s people.
Dispensational teachers once said that the acknowledgement of Israel by the United Nations as an independent state in 1948 was according to prophecy. They postulated that within 40 years the Rapture would take place. A countdown started.
By 1989, there was no Rapture, but there was the start of new prophetic insights. The sensationalism never ends, though the hopes and dreams of many are left in the churning waters of the Dispensationalist’s theological muddy wake.
The Dispensationalists have been proven to be consistently wrong time and again. It was, and is, inappropriate for them to interpret the Bible in light of modern events, as if the ancient Hebrew prophets had Russia, China, or America in mind. God knows how to spell. If God had wanted the ancient prophets to speak directly about contemporary events and nations, God would have given them specific names and nations.
Dispensationalism is a dangerous system of theology, because it offers a false hope of escapism from pain and suffering for the church. More than one naïve advocate of Dispensationalism has said that they cannot believe God will allow people to go through His wrath. By that they mean the special seven year great tribulational wrath conjured up by The System.
In contrast, the promise of Scripture is that Christians will not know the eternal wrath of God. At Calvary, Christ delivered His own from the wrath of God to come upon all who do not believe. Christians patiently “ wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10). However, Jesus taught that the wrath of God continues to abide on all who reject Him as Lord and Saviour.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God” (John 3:16-21).
I doubt very seriously if any of the Christians in the Middle East are Dispensationalist, because they are experiencing genocide. They know the church is not escaping great tribulation, but the church will survive any and every expression of great tribulation, because the gates of hell, today, in the form of Islam, shall not prevail.
My prayer is that the foolish doctrine of Dispensationalism, with all of its false hope and promises, will disappear. If it does not, many professing Christians in America are going to fall away from the faith when great tribulation comes to them, and come it will according to Jesus. “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Christians should prepare for persecution, and not embrace a false hope of escaping it through an imaginary Rapture.