Defeating Defeatism: A Critique of the Dispensational View
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Hello, and welcome back to our new series, 'A Practical Postmillennialism.' This is our second article, and you can find the introduction here.
THE ROADMAP FOR THIS SERIES
Before you delve into the juicy contents of any book, you should encounter a table of contents that provides a roadmap for where you are heading. Now, if I were to present a table of contents, a roadmap for this new series, I would divide it into three distinct sections.
In section one, which we begin today, I aim to defeat the defeatism alive and well in evangelicalism today. I intend to show you how an expectation of defeat has crept into the modern church, making us morbidly discouraged. I plan to demonstrate how this defeatism has crippled the modern American church and individual Christians, preventing them from joyfully engaging in the mission Jesus has given us. Additionally, I want to expose how it has produced a generation of curmudgeonly, disillusioned Christian isolationists who are disengaged from culture and ever hopeful of being raptured away. In section 1, we will strive to conquer this pernicious canker sore of defeatism by examining three of its manifestations. This week, we will explore how dispensationalism has contributed to this. Then, in weeks 2 and 3, we will conclude this section by observing how Historic Premillennialism and Amillennialism have also fostered an expectation of pessimism and defeatism that must be repentant of as well.
Then, in section 2, I will present a Biblical case for optimism. Instead of viewing the world as a building engulfed in flames, I want you to see how the Bible anticipates Christ's worldwide, universal victory. He will claim all nations, reign unopposed, and bring His Kingdom of peace over the earth before this old world concludes.
And then, in section 3, after demonstrating the Bible's optimism about these matters, we will do something I have never seen done. We will apply the concept of postmillennialism to every aspect of our lives. What does that mean for me if Christ is to reclaim everything in rebellion, achieving total and complete victory? How will my King's victory impact my manhood? How will my parenting align with His victorious reign? As part of the winning team, how will our womanhood, mothering, marriages, church participation, community transformation, evangelism, discipleship, and vocations all support this unfolding victory? After exploring all of this, I hope you will leave this series invigorated, no longer expecting the worst but working for the best, anticipating the growth of Jesus' Kingdom in our lifetime, and encouraged that He might accomplish this work through you!
My goal is simple. When we defeat the disgusting defeatism that has captivated Jesus' church and embrace the Bible's call for optimism about our future, the Christian Church will stop feeling powerless. She will cease being angered by negativity porn on the news, and she will discard the kind of pessimism that keeps her secluded in churches, disengaged from culture, and reluctant to be salt and light. Instead, she will stand up boldly and confidently, bringing all of Christ to all the world. That is my goal.
DEFEATING DEFEATISM
Within the diverse landscape of Christian theology, few theological systems have sparked as much debate and reflection as dispensationalism. This theological system, with its distinct method of interpreting end-times passages in the Bible and understanding God's role in human history, has not only shaped legions of modern Christians but has also spoiled many within the evangelical fold.
Unfortunately, this is true, whether you realize it or not. You do not need to know what dispensationalism is or be an expert on these things to have been handed the Kool-Aid. It is everywhere. In much the same way that you cannot detect micropollutants in the air you breathe, so many in the church have been toxified by this 200-year-old view that has seeped its way into everything.
In eschatological studies, which means the disciplines that examine the last days and end times, dispensationalism has become the aerosol poison that leaked into the ventilation system, infecting us all. From its obscure beginnings to its majority status within the American church, it is hard to avoid and has caught many uninformed captives in its gloomy melancholy nets.
The result of its incredible spread has not been a strong and vigorous church ready to disciple the nations. Instead, it has produced a sickly, defeated, and lazy church, unwilling to build anything. This is the dumpster fire doctrine we will be looking at today.
Before we begin, I must admit that this topic deserves an entire book. This is especially true when you consider all of the Biblical texts this viewpoint has mangled, and all of the Christians this deplorable doctrine has infected.
Today, we are just barely going to delve into the murky waters, perhaps only staining a pinky toe, by examining its history and roots, dissecting its core tenets, and addressing its addiction to hyper-literalism and rigid futurism, which gives birth to rampant defeatism. Today, I want to show how this has happened and how this viewpoint has successfully immobilized the modern church, stymied its mission, and caused the world to rapidly decay all around us. If that's your jam, buckle up, and let's get started.
DISPENSATIONAL DEFINITIONS
What is Dispensationalism?
Dispensationalism is a theological system that divides human history into seven unique eras, whereby God interacts uniquely and unrepeatably with man according to which era the man belongs. If you live in Noah's era, God deals with you in one way; Old Testament Israel, another way; New Testament Church, still a different way. These divisions in history are called dispensations, which is where we get the term Dispensationalism. Let me give you an example.
Imagine history as a grand play written and directed by God. As you know, most plays (at least if they are good ones) advance a unified story from beginning to end. The characters go through various ups and downs, and there are twists and turns in the story, but overall, every element of the play advances a single unified story from beginning to end. This is not the case in the Dispensational worldview. According to Dispensationalism, God has divided the world into seven micro-dramas, seven disjointed and fragmented chapters, where God is doing unique things that do not contribute to an overall unified story. These seven dispensations of time are meant to highlight the disunity and discontinuity within redemptive history and not the overall unity that the Bible describes.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF DISPENSATIONALISM
To understand the rise of dispensationalism, we do not need to go back to the New Testament era, the ancient and apostolic church, or even just before the Reformation. Unlike most theological systems, dispensationalism is relatively new, popping into existence 200 years ago in 19th-century England. That fact alone should cause us to be skeptical of this view since none of the apostles, their disciples, or anyone in the ancient church believed this way or even heard this view. That point alone does not make it wrong, but it presents an astronomical burden of proof that dispensationalism cannot muster.
Regarding its origin, a 19th-century man named John Nelson Darby, a theologian and a member of an Anabaptist sect known as the Plymouth Brethren was the first to begin codifying these ideas and systematically presenting them. The problem was that Darby wasn't just presenting a new idea but an entirely new paradigm to view the Bible, history, and God's actions in redemption. One may reasonably wonder why the Holy Spirit waited 1700 years to reveal such a fragmented view to His Church finally. But, notwithstanding its novelty, Darby had a new vision for interpreting the Scriptures that ran afoul of the vast majority of interpretations ever given. According to Darby, he saw the Bible not as one continuous story but as a series of distinct chapters, each with its own theme and lessons. As we said before, he called these chapters "dispensations."
This approach was entirely different from the traditional way of understanding the Bible, known as covenant theology. In covenant theology, God mediates a relationship with sinful humanity through successive covenants. These covenants are terms by which God will pursue and dwell with sinful man, culminating in the New Covenant administration of Jesus Christ. While covenant theology focuses on the continuity of redemptive history (how God consistently pursues sinners and saves them in history), Darby segmented biblical history, attempting to prove that God changed His mode of operation with man from one era to the next. Soon, those ideas began to spread in England and Europe and eventually crossed over the Atlantic, where they took hold.
As said, Darby's ideas found the most fertile ground in the soil of American soil. It was like planting an old seed in new, highly fertilized soil, where it grew twice as fast and gained firm footing. This quick acceptance and even faster growth in the Americas was primarily thanks to the Scofield Reference Bible, published in 1909, and brought dispensational thinking to the masses. By marrying publishing excellence, marketing genius, and dispensational thinking all in a single study Bible, the average Christian was exposed to Darby for the first time, and American Christianity drank it in. This would change the fabric and character of theology in this country for more than a century thus far.
Beyond impacting just the average Christian or the run-of-the-mill evangelical church, prominent 19th-century theologians arose during this era, affected by the system of thinking found at home in their Scofield Bibles, leading them to found influential institutions like the Moody Bible Institute, which became strong supporters of this new theological framework. This all happened like the wild spread of Japanese Kudzu in rural Georgia. America went to bed with the first little sprig of dispensationalism sticking up in the garden, only to wake up to an entire infestation in the generations ahead.
It's essential, however, to note that while dispensationalism as a whole is wholly modern, some of its elements have ancient roots. For instance, Historic Premillennialism, which we will talk about next week, is a very ancient view that Christ will reign physically on earth for a thousand years. This position believes that the rapture will occur, the world will fall into a seven-year tribulation, and then Christ will set up His millennial kingdom on earth. While I wholeheartedly disagree with that idea, it goes back to the ancient church. On the other hand, dispensationalism borrowed some of these ancient premillennial beliefs, combined them with Darby's new way of thinking about the fragmentation of history, and created a new breed of theology, which, as the kids say, is "sus."
INFLUENCE ON THE MODERN CHURCH
As we delve deeper into dispensationalism, it's crucial to recognize how this once modest theological sapling has morphed into a colossal tree, casting its pervasive shadow over much of the evangelical church. Dispensationalism is more than a legacy of misplaced beliefs inherited from past generations; it has become the opaque lens that has blinded a significant portion of Jesus' Church, confusing her about the world, the church, engaging with culture, how the Bible is interpreted, and what will happen in our future.
Like an invasive weed in Grandpappy's garden, dispensationalism has entrenched itself within the backyard of modern evangelical thinking, especially in its approach to eschatology and the modern nation-state of Israel. Because dispensationalism teaches redemptive history through successive disconnected chapters, Christians are not taught to see themselves living in the climax of history, during the reign of their King, but instead during an asterisk period where God is graciously permitting Gentiles to come to Him because His true bride rejected Him. It is almost as if the Dispys are saying God took on a girlfriend while waiting for His wife to come back home.
This, of course, is preposterous since the Gentiles were grafted into the people of God by the finished work of Christ (Romans 11:17-24). This event made one people out of both Jews and Greeks (Galatians 3:28), transforming His church into His true bride (Ephesians 5:25-27) and making her the true Israel of God (Galatians 6:16). Instead of God playing around with the Church while He is waiting for Israel to return to Him, the Bible describes God as already having Israel in the church, which is of course through the glorious working of His Son.
Yet, despite clear Biblical teaching, Dispensationalists view the church as nothing more than an add-on era. According to proponents of this view, one day, Israel will end her rebellion, God will revive her again in the future, and He will give her a new temple to worship Him in. This, of course, is blasphemous since the final sacrifice to end all sacrifices already happened (Hebrews 10:12). Instead of seeing Jesus as the true temple (John 2:19-21), the true sacrifice (1 Peter 2:24) and the true high priest (Hebrews 4:14-15), Dispensational gurus nullify the finished work of Christ, claiming that the Jews will one day trade in everything Jesus accomplished for a blood-lusting temple. This is like trading all of the romance and intimacy experienced with an actual bride for a faded-out Polaroid picture of her (2 Corinthians 11:2). Clearly, this teaching is ludicrous.
According to Dispensationalists, this Messianic-induced return to Mosaic Judaism will be ushered in by a grand and resounding defeat of Jesus' church, only adding to the absurdity. This view asserts that the church will ultimately fail in her mission to win the world to Jesus, immorality will grow entirely unchecked and cover the whole earth, the church will be raptured out as losers, an Antichrist will rise to power, and an intergalactic battle called Armageddon will ensue.
This theological nonsense has spread aggressively through Christendom, and at the same time, media empires have stopped telling feel-good stories. In the same way, Fox News, CNN, and other media companies pump doom and gloom narratives incessantly into our homes and public squares because it sells, American theologians and pastors, have taken up this addiction to carnality, selling and peddling panic, pessimism, and doom and gloom to generations of Christians who are just as paralyzed as the consumer of cable news.
By focusing constantly on how the world is going from bad to worse, a culture of Christians has grown up fantasizing more ardently about a rapture, leaving this world behind in a blaze of glory, than doing the hard and faithful work of seeing it conformed to Jesus Christ. For decades, a "Left Behind" style abandonment complex has taken hold in the church, looking past the world and the work to be done here to escape to a Gnostic-like heaven. This is like a teenager refusing to clean his room because he knows his mother will eventually burst in and do it for him. In the same way, the church has abandoned her commission from Christ, hoping that the world will one day get bad enough that He will come and clean up the mess He gave us, empowered by His Spirit, to oversee.
Instead of ardently trying to see that the Great Commission can be accomplished, thinking strategically about evangelism and disciple-making, dispensationalism has employed an attitude of "saving" as many people as possible before the ship sinks. This, as I have said many times before, has led to multiple generations of baby Christians never being discipled because when an imminent rapture is coming, who has time for that? And yet, it hasn't come. And it will not come in the way the Dispys are thinking, but that will have to wait for an additional episode.
To paralyze the church with such defeatist propaganda, Dispensationalists have effectively leveraged the domain of Christian book publishing companies, who have churned out a litany of volumes steeped in this kind of panic-porn eschatology, sensationalizing biblical prophecy and melding current events into end-time predictions. Series like "Left Behind," "The Late Great Planet Earth," and "Eighty-Eight Reasons Why Jesus Will Return in 1988" have not only commercialized these ideas, making their writers fat and wealthy but have also embedded this cartoonish theology into the collective psyche of Christian culture, who are now speculating on whether the COVID vaccine is the mark of the beast.
This skewed perspective has tainted the modern church's understanding of God's faithful work in history, His ongoing mission in the present, and the ultimate trajectory toward a triumphant and glorious future that is coming in Jesus Christ. It has fostered a climate where the headlines in the newspaper are often more important than Scripture, leading to a frantic obsession with current events like wars in Israel, potential epidemic outbreaks, who is in charge of the WHO, or geopolitical shifts in power dynamics, which are all deemed as precursors to us getting zapped out of here.
In essence, dispensationalism, propelled by theologians, pastors, publishing houses, and Christian media, has promulgated a fragmented view of the Bible, it has destroyed our view of Jesus' bride, the church, and it has caused a generation to be addicted to panic and pessimism. This has not only diverted the church's attention away from the Great Commission but has also ingrained a defeatist mindset within the evangelical community, contradicting the hopeful and transformative message of the Gospel and rendering us ineffective.
But where did all of this defeatism come from? Is it a symptom of a few bad Dispensationalists? Or is it a feature of their entire theological system? Beyond what we have already discussed, let us explore some additional concepts that make dispensationalism so pernicious. Again, much more could be said, but I will only write in summary for now.
OTHER FAILED CONCEPTS IN DISPENSATIONALISM
COMMITTMENT TO HYPER LITERALISM
Along with a fragmented approach to the Bible, a misunderstanding of Israel and the Church, and a preoccupation with leaving the world instead of discipling it, dispensationalism also has a strict commitment to the literal interpretation of Scripture. Now, at first blush, this sounds great, especially in a world constantly challenging the truth and authority of Scripture. Yet, it is not a healthy view of 'literal' that distinguishes dispensationalism. Instead of interpreting the text 'literally,' they employ a foolish approach that I call literalism.
For instance, 'literal' means understanding something according to its literature. This means we may know poetry rightly and literally when we employ the rules and strategies that work best in poetry. You do not read poetry like a phone book. You do not read a law book like a comic strip. This, of course, means that different genres of writing require different interpretive tools to understand them literally.
Let me give you an example. If I said that I am so hungry I could eat a cow, the literal truth I am communicating is that I am starving. I do not intend to communicate that I can fit a 2000-pound uncooked beast in a three-ounce stomach. Interpreting my words that way would be silly, stupid, and literalistic, which is precisely what dispensationalism does.
Regarding Scripture, the Dispensationalist violates the rules and strategies needed when approaching the eschatological genre of apocalyptic literature. Take a funny example. Instead of attempting to figure out what 'locusts' means in an apocalyptic text, which borrows heavily from the Exodus, Dispensationalists assume that the 'locust' was John's way of describing Apache helicopters because that must be what John literally meant. The same is true when Dispys say that the mark of the beast, taken on the wrist and the forehead, must be an implanted microchip connected to your bank account so you can buy and sell. Or, perhaps most ridiculous, that the M in Monster Energy drinks is the '666' John refers to. This bastardization of the apocalyptic genre produces limitless whimsical interpretations that are frankly embarrassing and can be dreamt up by every crackpot interpreter with a weird imagination, producing work that bears more resemblance to an Ayahuasca trip than accurate Biblical exegesis.
Ironically, Dispensationalists do not interpret other Biblical passages with the same commitment to rigid, fantastical literalism. If they did, we would all need to remove 2x4s from our foreheads before gathering sawdust from our neighbor's eye or expecting a thousand-pound camel to fit through every rich man's needle… At least the ones who get into heaven.
A literal approach to Scripture is reasonable and necessary so long as we honor the literature to which every text is written. The problem occurs when we adopt literalism, making every eschatological text fit into our world instead of the world in which it was written. This method imposes strange and inconsistent rules on the text, leading to wild and ridiculous conclusions, which must be avoided like the plague.
ADDICTION TO FUTURISM
Along with a commitment to wild and outlandish literalism, Dispensational chaps are more addicted to futurism than lab rats being force-fed cocaine. By futurism, I am talking about when each text will be fulfilled. For instance, in eschatological studies, those who think most end-times passages have a spiritual meaning are called idealists. Those who believe the majority of passages will be worked out sequentially in the epochs of Church history are called historicists. Those who think most eschatological events happened in the past, during the time they were written, are called preterists. And those who believe that the overwhelming majority of end-times events will not occur until an uncertain future are called futurists.
Instead of reading the Scriptures most appropriately, attempting to uncover what the original author intended to say to the original first-century audience, dispensationalism assumes that the reader of Scripture is at the center of Biblical interpretation. Instead of the New Testament being written to specific people about specific events that would primarily happen in their lifetimes (Preterism), Dispensationalists believe the lion's share of eschatological passages have no application whatsoever to the period of the New Testament. They treat Scripture, in fact, as if its writers were writing to them, looking beyond the people who were standing right in front of them to speak somehow to us.
This view is not only wrong-headed but prioritizes our generation as the generation Scripture was written to, rendering 2000 years of Church history a necessary season that needed to pass away to get to us. This is not only arrogant but decidedly foolish. Scripture was written to its original audience. By God's grace, it has application to all generations. That is a faithful view.
DISPENSATIONALISM PROMOTES DEFEATISM
Now, we arrive at the point. When you take Dispensational theology literally (no pun intended), you end up with a worldview suffocating with pessimism and defeatism. When you view Biblical history more fragmented than a Tarantino film, you will not see the era we are living in, when Christ is reigning on His throne, as anything other than a placeholder for a future Jewish temple. This unbiblical view will cause, and historically has caused, Christians in the church to lie back, remain unengaged, and treat the building of their vocations, families, and stock portfolios as more important than the building of Jesus' Kingdom.
This fragmented approach to history and prophecy paints a demoralizing picture of a world spiraling into more profound decline and a Church destined for abject failure. This theological system is a worldview where despair overshadows hope, and inaction trumps the Gospel's transformative power. This segmentation also risks detaching believers from a sense of God's continuous and unified plan, leading to a compartmentalized faith that fails to recognize the overarching narrative of redemption. Like viewing a mosaic where each piece is isolated, dispensationalism loses sight of the complete, cohesive picture of God's redemptive work.
When the church adopts Dispensational thinking about Jesus' Bride and the nation-state of Israel, we begin to see the church age as nothing more than God's Plan B, an accommodation because Israel decided to reject Him. Instead of seeing the church as the radiant bride of Christ, we begin viewing her as the rebound Jesus chose because of Judah's adultery. What a silly and shallow perversion that is of the true Gospel story.
When the church adopts the kind of pessimism rampant in dispensationalism, we will begin to see the world - not as a field ripe for harvest but - as a sinking ship destined for destruction. This belief in the church's imminent failure instills a sense of futility and defeatism among Christians. It anticipates a decline in the church's influence and a rise in global evil, demoralizing believers and dampening their zeal for missions…. Because, honestly, who wants to join a losing team? Who wants to work with all of their might for a failed project?
By focusing on futurism — the tribulation, rapture, and nanobots — our focus is shifted away from the apparent responsibilities Jesus has given us (like discipling the world) and onto the strange, unclear, and esoteric. Instead of warriors for Christ, we become closet weirdos who suspect every world leader as being a candidate for the Antichrist. This sinful preoccupation leads to a neglect of true evangelism, the long hard work of discipleship, being engaged in culture as the apostles were, working to see the world conformed to the image of Christ, and so much more.
By focusing on a rigid hyper-literalism, many turn the hope-filled genre of apocalyptic literature, such as the Book of Revelation, into a cheap knock-off of the Hunger Games and other second-rate dystopian novels. This perspective risks overshadowing the Gospel's transformative power and the hope found in Christ's ultimate victory with a commitment to constant unbreakable defeat. Can you see why the church has become so paralyzed under that system of thinking?
Dispensationalism does not lead us to clarity; it leads to confusion. When we are under the spell of that heathen system, we will not see the church in the same ways that Scripture depicts her. We will miss the critical role the church will have in and among the nations. And, we will attribute a mystical status to Israel, treating that godless and secular state like a good luck charm so that God will always bless us so long as we side with Israel. These views blind us to who the real Israel is; they skew our allegiances on the world stage and cause us to forget what the point of world history is. History is not moving toward a reinvigorated Mosaic temple Judaism. History is coming under the Lordship of Jesus Christ so that His blessings will cover the entire earth. But… There will be more on this to come.
CONCLUSION: DEFEATING DEFEATISM
Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the PRODCAST, where we are reclaiming a Biblical view of optimism, defeating eschatological defeatism, and working towards 'A Practical Postmillennialism,' where we will see how Jesus' ongoing victory applies to every facet of our lives.
Today, we exposed dispensationalism for its hyperpessimism and addiction to isolationism and defeatism. But, as we draw this episode to a close, our mission is far from over.
As we move forward, we must remember that our fight against defeatism isn't just about dismantling a quirky or flawed theology. It's about reigniting Biblical hope and reinvigorating an optimism that pervades every book of the Bible and foretells a world entirely under the dominion and authority of Jesus. We do not need to be raptured out of this world for that to happen. That will happen in this world, one converted sinner, one disciplined saint at a time until Jesus returns to a Christian world.
That optimism, as we will see in the weeks ahead, is robustly Biblical. It is inherent in the Gospel of Christ. We will learn that the Bible doesn't paint a picture of a defeated Church; it portrays a triumphant Bride, confidently advancing the Kingdom of God, by the power of the Spirit, in obedience to her King and bridegroom. Our task is to reclaim this Biblical vision, to see the Church as Christ sees her - vibrant, victorious, and vigorously engaged in transforming the world He has given her. As Eve was meant to make Adam's garden beautiful, the Church, Jesus' bride, transforms this world according to His vision.
In the upcoming episodes, we will delve deeper into this Biblical case for optimism, exploring how the Scriptures affirm a victorious future for Christ's Kingdom. We will dissect how this optimism should reshape our understanding of our roles as men and women in the church, our families, and our communities. We will challenge ourselves to envision how our vocations, parenting, and even our daily interactions can be a part of advancing Christ's victory to the ends of the earth.
Our goal is clear: to awaken the church from the slumber of defeatism. My goal is to inspire you out of discouragement and lethargy and into passionately engaging in the mission Jesus entrusted us. It's time to discard the chains of pessimism and embrace the empowering truth that we are part of a winning team. We are called not to retreat but to advance, not to cower in fear but to conquer in faith.
So, as we conclude this episode, let's commit to coming back next week with hearts ready to learn, spirits eager to be uplifted, and minds open to being transformed. Let us join hands in building Jesus' Kingdom, in being the salt and light in a desperately decaying world. I will see you back here next week as we continue to prod God's sheep and beat back wolves like dispensationalism. Until next time, God richly bless you!
