Dispensationalism

[7]: 13 Dispensationalism is a theological framework that views history as divided into distinct periods in which God interacts with mankind in specific ways.

"[2] Philip Mauro, a critic of the system's teachings in his 1928 book The Gospel of the Kingdom, is considered to be the first to coin the term "dispensationalism" to describe the theological framework that had made inroads into fundamentalism, calling it "a subtle form of modernism".

[4][5] The number of dispensations may vary from three to eight, but the typical seven-dispensation scheme is as follows:[7]: 51–57 According to John Walvoord, God's purpose in the world is to manifest his glory.

Charles Ryrie suggests that a non-literal hermeneutic is the reason amillennialists apply Old Testament promises made to Israel "spiritually" to the church, and covenant premillennialists see some prophecies as fulfilled and others as not.

[7]: 147–148  This millennial kingdom will be theocratic in nature, and not mainly soteriological in the way George Eldon Ladd and others with a non-dispensational form of premillennialism have viewed it.

In Lindsey's version, the unfolding of events includes the establishment of modern Israel in 1948, Jews regaining control of Jerusalem's sacred sites in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, a rebuilding of the Temple which has yet to occur, an Antichrist who will come to power, Christians to be removed from the earth in a rapture of the Church, and seven years of tribulation (Daniel's seventieth week) culminating in a great battle of Armageddon in which Christ will triumph over evil and establish a literal 1,000 year reign of his kingdom on earth.

[29] Christian mystic and philosopher Pierre Poiret (1646–1719) is said by some to have been the first theologian to develop a dispensationalist system, writing a book titled The Divine Economy.

[38]: 100–102  In 1866, Inglis organized the Believers' Meeting for Bible Study, which introduced dispensationalist ideas to a small but influential circle of American evangelicals.

[37]: 317 After Inglis's death, James H. Brookes (1830–1898), pastor of Walnut Street Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, Missouri, organized the Niagara Bible Conference (1876–1897) to continue dissemination of dispensationalist ideas.

Brookes was well known within millenarian circles, both as a prominent speaker at the Believers' Meeting for Bible Study conferences and for having written articles published in Inglis's Waymarks in the Wilderness.

[38]: 134 Brethren theologian C. H. Mackintosh (1820–1896) had a profound influence on American evangelist Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899),[39][40]: 49  who reached very large audiences with his powerful preaching in the latter half of the 19th century.

[42]: vi  It also marked a shift in dispensational theology under evangelists like Moody, from Darby's Calvinism and doctrinal rigor to a non-Calvinist view of human freedom in personal salvation.

Bullinger taught that the Church did not begin until Acts 28, that the Lord's Supper and water baptism were for Jewish believers, and that Paul's epistles were written to the Jews.

Singling it out as the source of division within the larger fundamentalist movement, he wrote that the dispensationalist view was more recent than Darwinism and it eroded fundamental truths of scripture.

[5] Furthering the rift with covenant theology, Ryrie wrote in Bibliotheca Sacra in 1957 that dispensationalism is "the only valid system of Biblical interpretation".

In 1959, Walvoord stated that no non-dispensationalists (including Catholics and mainline Protestants) offered any defense against modernism, and that they were all under the influence of hermeneutical and theological errors.

In 1970, DTS graduate Hal Lindsey published The Late Great Planet Earth, which launched dispensationalist eschatology into pop culture.

[5] The commercial success of The Late Great Planet Earth triggered a flood of books that featured dispensationalism's rapture theology.

[5] In 1972, Iowa filmmakers Russell Doughten and Donald W. Thompson released A Thief in the Night, a fictional film about the aftermath of the rapture that has been seen by an estimated 300 million people.

[47] Televangelist Jack Van Impe covered current events in light of Bible prophecy with a dispensational premillennialist spin.

[46]: 269  Jerry Falwell and Tim LaHaye founded the Moral Majority in 1979, with its objective to get people saved, baptized, and registered to vote.

Reagan had read Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth, and it has been suggested that this eschatological view drove his Middle East policies.

James G. Watt, a member of the Assemblies of God and Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, told Congress that preservation of the environment was made irrelevant by the imminent return of Christ.

DTS-trained pastors pioneered the movement, including Chuck Swindoll, Erwin Lutzer, David Jeremiah, Robert Jeffress, Tony Evans, and Andy Stanley.

[5] Other megachurches, such as John Hagee's Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, blended teachings of dispensationalism with the prosperity gospel and New Christian Right activism.

Led by pastors such as John Piper, Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, and Albert Mohler, this spawned a megachurch movement of its own, whose leaders became outspoken critics of dispensationalism.

[5] By the 1990s, a younger generation of academics emerged as "progressive dispensationalists", opening a rift within the united front Ryrie had pushed for in Dispensationalism Today (1965).

For example, Presbyterian minister John Wick Bowman has called the Scofield Bible "the most dangerous heresy currently to be found within Christian circles".

[65] The Churches of Christ became divided in the 1930s as Robert Henry Boll (who taught a variant of dispensationalism) and Foy E. Wallace (representing the amillennial position) disputed severely over eschatology.

MacArthur identified Dallas Theological Seminary founder Lewis Sperry Chafer as the source of the free grace error.