A Few Landmarks on Dispensational Premillennial History

 In the interest of full disclosure, I do not and never have embraced dispensational premillennialism, so what follows is neither objective nor comprehensive. The church in which I was raised taught a presumptive but not official dispensational premillennialism. I knew of several quiet dissenters, my parents among them. I do remember when debates about details would surface, sometimes quite vigorously, my father would say, “I guess I’m a pan-millennial. God will make everything pan out regardless of what we think.” In my teen years I got quite a bit more serious about my life as a disciple of Jesus and about the Bible. Though I knew and could recite the sequences of the various dispensational charts, I was never able to make them square with my own investigation of the Bible. Then as a young adult (college and graduate school), I began reading in theology and found that classic Reformed Theology gave me a more satisfying window for understanding biblical eschatology.

I want to be quick and crystal clear to say that though I disagree with my dispensational friends and spiritual kin, I have neither question nor reservation about their faith in Jesus nor the integrity of their discipleship. Yes, I believe theology matters, and these differences of opinion do manifest in sometimes contrasting approaches to practical issues personally and in Church and world.

Dispensational premillennialism was developed (some would say invented) by John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) and popularized by the Scofield Reference Bible (1909, revised 1917). Interestingly, C. H. Spurgeon, a contemporary of Darby, wrote a pointed theological criticism of Darby and the Plymouth Brethren, which seemed to have more to do with ideas about the meaning of Jesus’ life and ministry than eschatology. While dispensationalism is a recent development in the whole unfolding of church history and Christian theology, in some sense it is the heir of the various forms of chiliasm from the Church’s very early days that took the “thousand years” of Revelation 20:2-7 not only literally but as key to understanding the Kingdom of God. The Council of Nicaea in 325 condemned chiliasm as a heresy asserting Christ’s Kingdom had no end. Dispensational theology addresses this by positing a millennial Kingdom and an eternal Kingdom, each fulfilling different purposes in God’s redemptive plan. Even among themselves, dispensational premillennialists do not all agree about which Kingdom references in the Bible are assigned to each of these Kingdoms. Following Nicaea, much of Christian theology has affirmed the essential unity of the Kingdom of God, and classic Reformed Theology has insisted that there is only one Kingdom of God.

When I was a student in the Wheaton College Grad School (Illinois), the school’s statement of faith included a specific premillennial clause, though it did not specify dispensationalism. Faculty and staff were required to sign on but not students. Some years later they asked me to teach one class (Family Development) in the Christian education department of the Grad School. At that time I was expected to sign onto their statement of faith. I wrote a brief exception stating that I did not believe that premillennialism was the only legitimate way to understand biblical eschatology. Perhaps because it wouldn’t be a factor in the course I was teaching, they accepted me and my exception. I do remember as a student, when we came to eschatology in the systematic theology courses I took with Dr. Charles Horn, he said of Revelation 20:2-7, “My premillennialism hangs by the slender thread of a dubious interpretation of a single obscure paragraph that I do not investigate for economic reasons.” Though he did not live to see it, his witness may have contributed to Wheaton College dropping the premillennial clause from its statement of faith in 1993, recognizing that it was not a theological consensus among evangelicals.

Actually, it was only added in 1926 under the (apparently rather contentious) leadership of Oliver Buswell. Wheaton College was founded in 1860 by Jonathan Blanchard who was a staunch abolitionist and used the college campus as a stop on the Underground Railroad for the protection of runaway slaves. I believe the grave of one such slave who died while there is on the campus. Also, the Black community of Wheaton traces its origins to the welcome and protection they received from Wheaton College. Jonathan Blanchard believed his abolitionist work was a direct expression of the Kingdom of God, and incorporated into the school’s motto that continues today: “For Christ and His Kingdom.” Like others in that time and movement, they believed they were building the Kingdom to which Christ could return. There was some hope that with the abolition of slavery, the stage would be set for Christ to return to be recognized as King. Some have called this post-millennialism. With the wars and despotism of the 20^th century, much of that thinking crumbled.

While the evangelical movement is multi-faceted and does not have an official determiner of acceptable theology, Wheaton College has long been a prominent and influential voice, which is part of what makes both the addition of the premillennial clause in 1926 and its removal in 1993 significant. The current statement says:

We believe in the blessed hope that Jesus Christ will soon return to this earth, personally, visibly, and unexpectedly, in power and great glory, to gather His elect, so raise the dead, to judge the nations, and to bring His Kingdom to fulfillment.

Interestingly, the statement of faith of the National Association of Evangelicals is more general, affirming only “His personal return in power and glory.”