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Has The Christian Message Been Corrupted ? Theology
of the Land: A History of Dispensational Approaches
Dispensationalism
is one of the most influential theological systems within the
universal church today. Largely unrecognised and subliminal, it has
increasingly shaped the presuppositions of fundamentalist,
evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic thinking concerning Israel
and Palestine over the past one hundred and fifty years. 1.
A dispensationalist keeps Israel and the Church distinct... 2.
This distinction between Israel and the church is born out of a system
of hermeneutics that is usually called literal interpretation... 3.
A third aspect... concerns the underlying purpose of God in the
world... namely, the glory of God... To the normative
dispensationalist, the soteriological, or saving, program of God is
not the only program but one of the means God is using in the total
program of glorifying Himself.[[3]] 2.1
The Seven Dispensations The
Dispensations
These dispensations are seen by proponents as literally
'providing us with a chronological map to guide us'[[5]]
toward the seventh and final dispensation which will be inaugurated by
the imminent return of Jesus Christ and the climax to world history.
It
was, however, Darby who first insisted that: ‘The
Jewish nation is never to enter the Church.’[[9]]
Scofield developed this idea further: Comparing
then, what is said in Scripture concerning Israel and the Church, we
find that in origin, calling, promise, worship, principles of conduct
and future destiny, all is contrast.[[10]]
The
dispensationalist believes that throughout the ages God is pursuing
two distinct purposes: one related to the earth with earthly people
and earthly objectives involved which is Judaism; while the other is
related to heaven with heavenly people and heavenly objectives
involved, which is Christianity.[[11]] 2.3
A Literalist Hermeneutic Dispensationalism
is based on the hermeneutical principle that Scripture is always to be
interpreted literally. Darby’s
approach might be summarised in one sentence in which he admitted,
‘I prefer quoting many passages than enlarging upon them.’[[13]]
Scofield,
who popularised and synthesised Darby's theology explains further, Not
one instance exists of a 'spiritual' or figurative fulfilment of
prophecy... Jerusalem is always Jerusalem, Israel is always Israel,
Zion is always Zion... Prophecies may never be spiritualised, but are
always literal.[[14]] Ryrie
similarly asserts: To
be sure, literal/historical/grammatical interpretation is not the sole
possession or practice of dispensationalists, but the consistent use
of it in all areas of biblical interpretation is.[[15]] The
logical deduction of a literalist dispensational hermeneutic is,
according to Dwight
Pentecost, another former member of the Dallas faculty, that: Scripture
is unintelligible until one can distinguish clearly between God’s
program for his earthly people Israel and that for the Church.[[16]] So
Donald Grey Barnhouse, another leading dispensationalist insists: It
was a tragic hour when the reformation churches wrote the Ten
Commandments into their creeds and catechisms and sought to bring
Gentile believers into bondage to Jewish law, which was never intended
either for the Gentile nations or for the church.[[17]] With
breathtaking candour Chafer insists: [Dispensationalism]
has changed the Bible from
being a mass of more or less conflicting writings into a classified
and easily assimilated revelation of both the earthly and heavenly
purposes of God, which reach on into eternity to come.[[18]]
Ernest Sandeen critically observes that dispensationalism has
‘a frozen biblical text in which every word is supported by the same
weight of divine authority.’[[19]]
Based on this interpretative principle, dispensationalists hold
that the promises made to Abraham and through him to the Jews,
although postponed during this present Church age, are nevertheless
eternal and unconditional and therefore await future realisation since
they have never yet been literally fulfilled. So, for example, it is
an article of normative dispensational belief that the boundaries of
the land promised to Abraham and his descendants from the Nile to the
Euphrates will be literally instituted and that Jesus Christ will
return to a literal and theocratic Jewish kingdom centred on a rebuilt
temple in Jerusalem. In
such a scheme the Church on earth is relegated to the status of a
parenthesis,[[20]]
a ‘Plan B...’,[[21]]
and ‘...a sort of footnote or sidetrack in contrast to God’s main
mission to save ethnic, national Israel.’[[22]] 2.4
An Apocalyptic Eschatology Crucial
to the dispensationalist reading of biblical prophecy is the
conviction that the period of tribulation is imminent along with the
secret rapture of the Church and the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple
in place of, or along side, the Dome of the Rock. This will signal the
return of the Lord to restore the Kingdom to Israel centred on
Jerusalem. This pivotal event is also seen as the trigger for the
start of the war of Armageddon in which most of the world's population
together with large numbers of Jews will suffer and die.[[23]]
Darby
is rightly regarded as the first to espouse dispensationalism as a
discrete theological system. However, William Kelly and Edward Irving
played no small part in the restoration of premillennial speculations
out of which Darby's dispensationalism arose.[[27]]
Darby was not the first to use the term ‘dispensation’ to describe
periods of Biblical history, nor was his own scheme universally
accepted even within Brethren circles. It was Darby though who first
insisted these dispensations were irreversible and progressive,
speculating that the Church would soon be replaced on earth by a
revived national Israel. During
his lifetime, Darby wrote more hymns than the Wesleys, travelled
further than the Apostle Paul, and was a Greek and Hebrew scholar. His
writings filled forty volumes... If Brightman was the father of
Christian Zionism, then Darby was its greatest apostle and
missionary... [[30]]
Until
brought to the fore through the writings and preaching and teaching of
a distinguished ex-clergyman, Mr J. N. Darby, in the early part of the
last century, it is scarcely to be found in a single book or sermon
through a period of sixteen hundred years.[[31]] The clearest
expression of Darby’s thinking is to be found in ‘The
Apostasy of the Successive Dispensations.’
In this work it is noticeable, however,
that Darby's views are vague and embryonic compared with later
attempts by Scofield and Ryrie to systematise seven discrete
dispensations. Ryrie’s interpretation of Darby’s dispensations is
significantly at variance with Darby’s own writings but more
consistent with, and probably reliant upon, Scofield. It is an
understatement when Ryrie claims Darby’s scheme is, ‘not always
easily discerned from his writings’.[[32]]
Ryrie appears to have read back into Darby’s writings, a
scheme that suited his own purposes. From Darby’s own works it is
possible to reconstruct his dispensational chronology and compare it
with Ryrie’s interpretation, together with Scofield’s 1909
version, itself modified in a subsequent revision made by Schuyler
English in the New Scofield
Reference Bible in 1967.
Darby defended his dispensational interpretation on two grounds. First, he claimed others had not studied the Scriptures correctly. The
covenant is a word common in the language of a large class of
Christian professors... but in its development and detail, as to its
unfolded principles, much obscurity appears to me to have arisen from
a want of simple attention to Scripture.[[36]] Second, Darby
believed the Lord had revealed it to him personally. For
my part, if I were bound to receive all that has been said by the
Millenarians, I would reject the whole system, but their views and
statements weigh with me not one feather.
But this does not hinder me from enquiring by the teaching of
the same spirit... what God has with infinite graciousness revealed to
me concerning His dealing with the Church.[[37]] Even Roy Coad, in
his otherwise sympathetic history of the Brethren Movement, admits
that 'For the traditional view
of Revelation, another was substituted.'[[38]]
James Barr is less charitable arguing that
dispensationalism was '...individually
invented by J. N. Darby... [and] ...concocted
in complete contradiction to all main Christian traditions...'[[39]] Darby's was convinced that the visible Church of his day was apostate. This assumption appears to have shaped his emerging belief that the Church era was therefore merely a 'parenthesis' to the Last Days. Darby regarded the Church as simply one more dispensation that had failed and was under God's judgement. Just as Israel had been cut off, so the Church would be. Just as only a small remnant of Israel had been saved, so would only a small remnant of the church. And naturally, of course, the remnant taken from the ruins of the Church were his own followers, the Brethren.
The
Church has sought to settle itself here, but it has no place on the
earth... [Though] making a most constructive parenthesis, it forms no
part of the regular order of God's earthly plans, but is merely an
interruption of them to give a fuller character and meaning to them
[the Jews].[[40]] Darby believed that
the covenantal relationship between God and Abraham was binding for
ever and that the promises pertaining to the nation of Israel, as yet
unfulfilled, would find their consummation in the reign of Jesus
Christ on earth during the millennium. Speaking of the imminent return
of the Jews to Palestine, Darby predicted, The
first thing, then, which the Lord will do will be to purify His land
(the land which belongs to the Jews) of the Tyrians, the Philistines,
the Sidonians; of Edom and Moab, and Ammon - of all the wicked, in
short from the Nile to the Euphrates. It will be done by the power of
Christ in favour of His people re-established by His goodness. The
people are put into security in the land, and then will those of them
who remain till that time among the nations be gathered together.[[41]] Darby was as
dismissive of the Jews as he was of Arabs. He not only taught that God
would 'purify' the Arabs from between the Nile and the Euphrates and
give it all to the Jews, but also believed the majority of Jews would
eventually identify with the Antichrist. The
government of the fourth monarchy will be still in existence, but
under the influence and direction of the Antichrist; and the Jews will
unite themselves to him, in a state of rebellion, to make war with the
Lamb... Satan will then be displayed, who will unite the Jews with
this apostate prince against heaven... a remnant of the Jews is
delivered and Antichrist destroyed.[[42]] Clarence Bass
summarises the novel nature of Darby’s emerging theological
position. It
is not that exegetes prior to his time did not see a covenant between
God and Israel, or a future relation of Israel to the millennial
reign, but they always viewed the church as a continuation of God's
single program of redemption begun in Israel. It is
dispensationalism's rigid insistence on a distinct cleavage between
Israel and the church, and its belief in a later unconditional
fulfilment of the Abrahamic covenant, that sets it off from the
historic faith of the church.[[43]] Darby's dispensational views, like those of Edward Irving, would probably have remained the exotic preserve of sectarian Brethren assemblies were it not for the energetic efforts of individuals like William Blackstone and D. L. Moody. Above all, however, they were propagated by Cyrus. I. Scofield who, through his Scofield Reference Bible, introduced them to a wider audience in America and the English-speaking world.
The
publication of the Scofield
Reference Bible in 1909 by the Oxford University Press
was something of a literary coup. For the first time, explicit
dispensational notes were added to the pages of the biblical text.
While such a systematic chronology was largely unknown prior to Darby
and Scofield, the Scofield
Reference Bible became the leading Bible used by American
Evangelicals and Fundamentalists for the next sixty years.[[44]] By 1945 more than 2
million copies had been published in the United States alone. Between
1967 and 1979 a further 1 million copies were sold.[[45]]
In a move to make Scofield’s work more accessible, in 1984 a new
edition based on the New International Version was published followed
by a CD Rom electronic version.
Scofield's notes relied heavily on Darby's writings. Gerstner
notes that the resemblance between Scofield and Darby ‘is deep and
systematic.’[[46]]
It is significant, however, that neither in the introduction nor in
any of the accompanying notes does Scofield acknowledge his
indebtedness to Darby. In the Introduction
to the Scofield Reference Bible,
he claims it is the 'remarkable results of the modern study of the
Prophets, in recovering to the church... a clear and coherent harmony
of the predictive portions...' Scofield
defined his dispensations as periods of time, '...during which man is
tested in respect of obedience to some specific revelation of the will
of God...'[[47]] The
Dispensations are distinguished, exhibiting the majestic, progressive
order of the divine dealings of God with humanity, the 'increasing
purpose' which runs through and links together the ages, from the
beginning of the life of man to the end in eternity. Augustine said:
'Distinguish the ages, and the Scriptures harmonize.'[[48]]
...there
is a beautiful system in this gradualness of unfolding. The past is
seen to fall into periods, marked off by distinct limits, and
distinguishable period from period by something peculiar to each. Thus
it comes to be understood that there is a doctrine of Ages or
Dispensations in the Bible.[[49]] Scofield's rigid
adherence to these dispensations required him to make some novel
assertions to ensure consistency. So, for example, in describing the
transition between his fourth dispensation of promise to his fifth
dispensation of law, Scofield claims, The
descendants of Abraham had but to abide in their own land to inherit
every blessing... The Dispensation of Promise ended when Israel rashly
accepted the law (Ex. 19. 8). Grace
had prepared a deliverer [Moses], provided a sacrifice for the guilty,
and by divine power brought them out of bondage (Ex. 19. 4); but at
Sinai they exchanged grace for law.[[50]] Similarly, in his
introduction to the Gospels, Scofield imposes stark divisions before
and after Calvary which lead him to the following assertions: The
mission of Jesus was, primarily, to the Jews... The Sermon on the
Mount is law, not grace... The doctrines of Grace are to be sought in
the Epistles not in the Gospels.[[51]] Strangely, Scofield
ignored the one division that is self-evident - that between the Old
and New Covenants. Mark 1:1 categorically states, ‘The beginning of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ’ and Matthew 11:13 reads, ‘for all the
Prophets and the Law prophesied until John.' Yet Scofield places the
life and ministry of Jesus within the dispensation of law, along with
John the Baptist and the Old Testament prophets. He argues that the
sixth dispensation of grace only ‘begins with the death and
resurrection of Christ’.[[52]]
For Scofield, the Lord’s Prayer, and in particular the petition,
‘Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors’
(Matt. 6:12) are not applicable to the church, since it is ‘legal
ground’.[[53]]
Scofield taught that salvation by works had been possible during the
dispensation of the law and that the apostasy of the Church will
signal the end of the dispensation of grace: As
a dispensation, grace begins with the death and resurrection of Christ
(Rom. 3. 24-26; 4. 24, 25). The
point of testing is no longer legal obedience as the condition of
salvation, but acceptance or rejection of Christ... The predicted end
of the testing of man under grace is the apostasy of the professing
church...[[54]] Scofield believed
the Gospels were essentially for the Jews and therefore not relevant
for the Church. In a footnote to Ephesians 3, for example, he claims, ‘In
his [Paul’s] writings alone we find the doctrine, position, walk,
and destiny of the Church.’[[55]]
Similarly, in perpetuating the distinction between Israel and
the Church, Scofield claimed, that Israel is the earthly wife of God
and the Church is the heavenly bride of Christ. That
Israel is the wife of Jehovah (see vs. 16-23), now disowned but yet to
be restored, is the clear teaching of the passages.
This relationship is not to be confounded with that of the
Church to Christ (John 3.29, refs.).
In the mystery of the Divine tri-unity both are true.
The N.T. speaks of the Church as a virgin espoused to one
husband (2 Cor. 11.1,2); which could never be said of an adulterous
wife, restored in grace. Israel
is, then, to be the restored and forgiven wife of Jehovah, the Church
the virgin wife of the Lamb (John 3.29; Rev. 19.6-8); Israel Jehovah's
earthly wife (Hos. 2.23); the Church the Lamb's heavenly bride (Rev.
19.7)[[56]] In many ways
Scofield was representative of, but at the same time became a focus
for, the growing prophetic and millennial fundamentalist movement in
North America influenced by the Brethren. The views later popularised
by Scofield, were shaped by
a series of Bible and Prophetic Conferences held across North America
beginning in 1868 which followed the pattern established by Darby and
Irving at Albury and Powerscourt from the 1830's. Both
the method of 'Bible readings' and the topics of the conferences
strongly suggest that the gatherings were a result of J. N. Darby's
travels in the United States and the influence of the Plymouth
Brethren.[[57]] One of the
resolutions adopted by the 1878 Niagara Conference gives clear
evidence of the influence of Darby's dispensationalism. We
believe that the world will not be converted during the present
dispensation, but is fast ripening for judgment, while there will be
fearful apostasy in the professing Christian body; and hence that the
Lord Jesus will come in person to introduce the millennial age, when
Israel shall be restored to their own land, and the earth shall be
full of the knowledge of the Lord; and that this personal and
premillennial advent is the blessed hope set before us in the Gospel
for which we should be constantly looking.[[58]] In 1974, William E. Cox, a former dispensationalist and subsequent critic offered this appraisal Scofield’s abiding legacy. Scofield’s
footnotes and his systematized schemes of hermeneutics have been
memorized by many as religiously as have verses of the Bible. It is
not at all uncommon to hear devout men recite these footnotes prefaced
by the words, ‘The Bible says...’ Many a pastor has lost all
influence with members of his congregation and has been branded a
liberal for no other reason than failure to concur with all the
footnotes of Dr. Scofield. Even many ministers use the teachings of
Scofield as tests of orthodoxy! [[59]] Craig Blaising,
professor of Systematic Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary,
agrees. The
Scofield Reference Bible became the Bible of fundamentalism, and the
theology of the notes approached confessional status in many Bible
schools, institutes and seminaries established in the early decades of
this century.[[60]] In 1890 Scofield
began his Comprehensive Bible
Correspondence Course through which tens of thousands of students
around the world were introduced to his dispensational teaching about
a failing Church and a future Israel. Scofield directed the course
until 1914 when it was taken over by the Moody Bible Institute. In the
1890's, during Scofield's pastorate in Dallas, he was also principal
of the Southwestern School of the Bible. This was the forerunner to
Dallas Theological Seminary, which was founded in 1924 by another of
his students, Lewis Sperry Chafer, who became one of Scofield’s most
influential exponents. Chafer
has, in the history of American Dispensationalism, a double
distinction. First, he established and led Dispensationalism’s most
scholarly institution through the formative years of its existence.
Second, he produced the first full and definitive systematic theology
of Dispensationalism. This massive eight-volume work is a full
articulation of the standard Scofieldian variety of dispensational
thought, constantly related to the Biblical texts and data on which it
claims to rest. Its influence appears to have been great on all
dispensationalist teachers since its first publication, though it is
fading today. All
of Chafer’s work and career was openly and obviously in the
Scofieldian tradition. A few years before his death, Chafer, faithful
to his mentor to the last, was to say of his greatest academic
achievement, ‘It goes on record that the Dallas Theological Seminary
uses, recommends, and defends the Scofield Bible.’ The major line of
dispensational orthodoxy is clear and unbroken from Darby to Scofield
to Chafer to Dallas.[[61]] It is perhaps therefore not surprising that the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and Dallas Theological Seminary have since then continued to be the foremost apologists for Scofield's dispensational views, and Christian Zionism in particular.
Hal
Lindsey, himself a former Dallas student, is undoubtedly the most
influential contemporary dispensationalist. Lindsey has been described
by Time as ‘The Jeremiah
for this Generation’, and by the New
York Times as ‘the best selling author of the decade.’[[62]]
The author of over twenty books, his latest publisher describes
him as ‘The Father of the Modern-Day Bible Prophecy Movement,’[[63]]
and, ‘the best known prophecy teacher in the world.’[[64]]
Lindsey's most famous book, The
Late Great Planet Earth has been described by the New
York Times as the '#1 Non-fiction Bestseller of the Decade.'[[65]]
It has gone through more than 108 printings with sales of more than 18
million copies in English, with between 18-20 million further copies
in 54 foreign language editions.[[66]]
Lindsey’s popularity may be attributed to a combination of
factors: his readable and journalistic style of writing; his
imaginative, if dogmatic, insistence that contemporary geo-political
events are the fulfilment of biblical prophecy;
and, above all, his categorical assertions that the end of the
world is imminent. Like Darby and Scofield, Lindsey confidently
asserts that his interpretation of the Bible uniquely shows what will
happen in the future. Today,
almost before I finish explaining a developing trend - it’s already
an accomplished fact.[[67]] On
the back cover of The Final
Battle we read, This
book describes in more detail and explicitness than any other just
what will happen to humanity and to the Earth, not a thousand years
from now, but in our lifetime-indeed in this very generation.[[68]] Similarly,
on the cover of The Apocalypse
Code, Lindsey’s publisher writes, In
this riveting non-fiction book, the father of modern-day Bible
prophecy cracks the "Apocalypse Code" and deciphers
long-hidden messages about man's future and the fate of the earth.[[69]] In
Planet Earth, the Final Chapter,
we are promised, Hal
will be your guide on a chilling tour of the world's future
battlefields as the Great Tribulation, foretold more than two thousand
years ago by Old and New Testament prophets, begins to unfold. You'll
meet the world leaders who will bring man to the very edge of
extinction and examine the causes of the current global situation -
what it all means, what will shortly come to pass, and how it will all
turn out.[[70]]
Like Darby, Lindsey also claims his interpretations were
revealed personally to him by God. I
believe that the Spirit of God gave me a special insight, not only
into how John described what he actually experienced, but also into
how this whole phenomenon encoded the prophecies so that they could be
fully understood only when their fulfilment drew near... I prayerfully
sought for a confirmation for my apocalypse code theory...[[71]]
Lindsey may also be a popular writer because his tends to
revise his predictions in the light of changing world events. Without
carefully comparing each of his books, one would not necessarily
realise that The Final Battle
(1994) is a revision of The
Late Great Planet Earth
(1970); Apocalypse Code
(1997) is a revision of There’s
a New World Coming (1973); and Planet
Earth 2000 A.D. (1994, & 1996) are both revisions of The
1980’s Countdown to Armageddon (1980).
Planet Earth: The Final
Chapter (1998) is the latest, but probably not the final, version
in the ‘Planet Earth’ series.
A good example of Lindsey's prophetic revisionism concerns the
future of the United States. In Planet
Earth 2000 A.D. (1994) Lindsey specifically draws attention to a
prophecy made in The Late Great
Planet Earth (1970) as evidence of his prophetic accuracy. A
comparison, however, shows that he has edited out his prediction of
Communist subversion which did not occur.
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