Dispensationalism I

⁸ Who has heard such a thing?
Who has seen such things?
Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day?
Or shall a nation be born at once?
For as soon as Zion was in labor,
She gave birth to her children.

They go to the phrase “shall a nation be born at once,” and think that this describes Israel’s sudden birth on 14 May, 1948. Because they presuppose, given their theology, that God still has certain promises that remain unfulfilled to Israel, therefore the times must be read in terms of whether or not those promise are now being fulfilled. These promises are also commonly tied to the second coming of Jesus Christ. So, if one can rightly discern how prophecy is being fulfilled one can also track the moment when Jesus hovers over all the earth to take up His Church to “meet Him in the air” only to then ascend back into heaven with His church in order to await another 7 years (pre-trib rapture view) or 3.5 yeas (mid-trib rapture view) or 1.75 years (mid-wrath trib rapture view), depending on which flavor of Dispie one is.

This whole conceptual arrangement was never advanced by anybody prior to the 1830s or so. This is when a chap named John Nelson Darby arose in history in order to invent, along with the help of a young Scottish woman named Margaret MacDonald. MacDonald was prone to seeing visions and whom more than a few people believe was either tetched or possessed. Hearing of Macdonald’s ecstatic utterances Darby, commissioned by his denomination hustled to Scotland to investigate for himself.

 Historian Timothy Weber observed,

“He (Darby) arrived in the middle of 1830 and according to his own testimony twenty three years later, actually met MacDonald and heard her prophesy . . . Darby returned home . . . convinced that Margaret McDonald’s view of the rapture was true. He subsequently fit it into his [Dispensational] system, but never acknowledged his debt to her.”

“On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend”  – pg. 24

Margaret MacDonald was merely expressing the charismania that was much in vogue in the atmosphere that she lived in yet this young lady laid the foundations for a eschatology that continues to shape most of modern Christianity today. If you embrace the dispensational view of the rapture you are the intellectual descendent of Margaret MacDonald as much as John Nelson Darby or C. I. Scofield and you have to live with the fact that before these nutjobs nobody in Church history believed in or taught the idea of a “secret rapture.”

Now, keep in mind that Darby, while not as far out on the ledge as Margaret MacDonald, was himself a sketchy character. Darby was originally an Anglican before leaving and forming the Plymouth Brethren denomination which eventually split itself into two over some of Darby’s eccentricities. His theology was so suspicious that Charles Haddon Spurgeon (a contemporary of Darby’s) inveighed against it in his “Sword & Trowel” publication.

A huge reason why folks read the Scripture in such a loopy fashion is due to the rise of the Scofield Bible. A Bible that legitimated the MacDonald/Darby doctrine of the secret hidden rapture. Scofield was a lawyer of sorts who was a con-man and who abandoned his wife and children. Prior to that he was a deserter from the Army of Northern Virginia (CSA) and was reported as a shyster in a local newspaper. By the time he was 36 he was what we would consider today “a drifter.” He was up until this time a “ne’er-do well.” It was around this time that Scofield “got religion,” and made connections with some of the movers and shakers in early Dispensationalism. One of his eventual contacts was with the prince of Dispensationalists, D. L. Moody.

Moody used the doctrine of Dispensationalism and the premillennialism that it required to move the nation away from postmillennialism that the Church and nation had largely owned as its eschatology. The reason that Moody did this is that he found premillennial dispensationalism to be an eschatology that could stitch the USA back together again after the Civil War. Moody emphasized that the Church, North and South, could come back together to the end of the grand goal of hastening the return of Jesus via mass evangelism. The promises of postmillennialism, crushed as they were by the savages of war, could be put in the rear view window and sectionalism could be healed by a joint focusing of getting people saved with a Christianity that didn’t care about political issues.

Moody brought Scofield under his wing and eventually, Scofield, who never had a lick of Christian education or training and only a small amount of training in the law, was tabbed to provide a Bible that would contain extensive notes that would reinforce Dispensational theology as “the Christian faith.” Nothing could be further from the truth. First published in 1909 and then goosed in 1917 with further glosses the Scofield study Bible (so called) notes became as “inspired” to folks as the Scriptures themselves. Placing the notes in the Bible was a genius move that suddenly allowed the dispensational movement to catch fire. Once the Scofield study Bible became the cornerstone to the blossoming “Bible College” movement combined with prophesy conference popping up all over the nation the fire was lit and what should have been exorcised as heresy was embraced by the conservative Church as a bulwark against growing liberalism in the heretofore conservative churches. The time was ripe, a vacuum had been created, and Scofield and his amazing book stepped up and filled the gap. Other popular Dispensationalists would arise but Scofield, in any telling of the story of Dispensationalism, is a key figure.