No method of viewing or interpreting Scripture is without need of improvement. This includes Dispensationalism and all the systems that criticize it. And no approach to Scripture by those in the stream of historic, Biblical Christianity is without at least some valid points. Dispensationalism was promoted in the 1800's by the group in England known as The Brethren and known in this country as Plymouth Brethren. A man named Darby was an early leader in this. Later, Robert Anderson, head of Scotland Yard in London (at the time of the Jack the Ripper killings) published a small commentary on Daniel ch. 9 (The Coming Prince) that had great influence for many years. Then C.I. Scofield, with the help of a distinguished committee of evangelical scholars, published his Reference Bible. In the 20th century schools like Moody Bible Institute, most Bible colleges, Dallas Seminary, Grace Seminary and numerous others furthered this view of Scripture. In my view the high water mark of Dispensational teaching came with the New Scofield Reference Bible of 1967. The committee that produced this had such distinguished names as Frank Gabelein and Wilbur M. Smith. They vastly improved the notes over that of the original Scofield and they corrected archaic words and gross mistranslations in the King James Version. I still have high regard for this Bible. There is a Scofield III but I have never seen it.
The essential elements of Dispensationalism are: 1) seven dispensations from Creation to the New Heavens and Earth; 2) clear distinction between Israel (as an ethnic people chosen by God) and the Church (made up of Jew and Gentile without distinction); 3) the Church is not the 'new Israel' -- God will yet restore Israel to Himself during the Great Tribulation; 4) the destiny of the Church, the Bride of Christ is to be raptured, taken to the Father's House, before the Great Tribulation; 5) a sharp distinction between the 'Gospel of the Kingdom' in the four Gospels and early part of Acts, and the 'Gospel of the Grace of God' in Paul's letters; 6) the literal fulfillment of all the prophecies of the Messianic Kingdom at the return of Christ at the close of the Tribulation -- sometimes called premillennialism; 7) the final seven year period in the great prophecy of Daniel 9 is still in the future.
Much, but not all, of these seven represents a return to the consensus of the early Church until the 4th century. Regarding no. 4, the Christian leader Victorinus, in the late 3rd century said, "For the wrath of God always strikes the obstinate people with seven plagues, that is perfectly, as it is said in Leviticus; and these shall be in the last time, when the Church shall have gone out of the midst." I generally agree with no. 4 but I arrive at it differently and I detest the terms 'pre', 'mid' or 'post' tribulation. I emphatically use the term imminent rapture as being much closer to the spirit of biblical teaching.
Of the seven points I have listed the one I first came to be uneasy about (when I was still age 17) was no. 5. I had been so influenced by Dispensationalism that I gravitated toward Paul's letters and tended to set aside the teaching of Christ in the Gospels as being 'for the Kingdom'. Then I was memorizing I Timothy and came to 6:3 & 4 (KJV), "If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; he is proud, knowing nothing . . . ." Then later I noticed that Paul, more than once, said he was 'preaching the kingdom of God' (Acts 20:25).
It is much better to say that there is one Gospel -- Jesus Christ Himself. That one Gospel has several aspects: His death and resurrection; His coming again to bring about the doing of God's will on earth as it is done in heaven. This is all part of the Good News -- the Gospel. This is the first and most basic way I corrected dispensational teaching. As we said at the beginning of this post, other systems of viewing Scripture could stand correction as well.
More to come in Part III. If you, the reader, are facing a threat to your health; your marriage; your children; your church; your walk with God . . . may the Spirit of the Living God do for you now something beyond all that we can ask or imagine.
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