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A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of vacationing with my family in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We stayed in a cabin a short hike from where Billy Graham lived. Having grown up in Evangelical and Charismatic churches, I was keenly aware of Mr. Graham and his evangelistic crusades. So many of his contemporaries and subsequent generations duplicated his techniques and message, both of which were a throwback to the 19th century pioneer of Evangelicalism in the United States who transformed the landscape of revivalism, D.L. Moody.
Committed to the cause of making heaven a lot more crowded, Moody preached fire and brimstone sermons that used emotional fear and theological guilt to bring people to a climatic “come to Jesus” moment. Always on the lookout for a better way to do it, Moody came across the writings of John Nelson Darby, whose new take on Christian theology promised a more effective way to literally scare the hell out of potential converts. Darby’s new Dispensationalist belief system changed everything. In Moody’s own words, “[Darby’s writings] have been to me the very key to the Scriptures.”
For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, Dispensationalism is a theological belief system that originated in the 19th century and teaches things like:
- The Bible should be interpreted as literally as possible wherever possible,
- There is a clearly structured timeline for End Times events taught by the Bible,
- Christ will partially return in an event called the “Rapture,”
- After this Rapture there will be a seven-year period called the “Great Tribulation” during which a literal figure called the “Anti-Christ” will rule the world, and
- The Church is “Plan B” because Israel rejected God’s grace.
These beliefs are now so ubiquitous in the American consciousness that many believers assume they’re simply “biblical teachings” and not historically obscure interpretations of the Bible. Little of Darby’s Dispensationalist belief system was innovative. Most all of his system has some precedent in the history of the Church. What was new was the way he took rare views in church history, reconfigured them, and linked them together.
Darby grabbed a huge quantity of Scripture passages out of context to make a robust systematic theology that radically retold the story of Scripture and the beliefs of the Christian Church. He rejected the authority of seminary-trained church leadership who honored the traditions passed down in favor of those who simply felt they had a direct line of revelation to God’s message for the world. This novelty took the place of the more disciplined and scholarly approach to theology that had been the norm for most of Christianity’s long history.
Dispensationalism has become the bedrock of much of Christian expression in the United States, and has spread worldwide through mission work and media. Many Christians, now and over the past 150 years, simply cannot conceive of Christian faith without belief in a Rapture or a literal Anti-Christian. As an evangelistic tool, Dispensationalism was hugely successful for Moody and his successors–providing a sense of urgency to drive people to their knees. That immediacy and fear regarding Jesus coming back to whisk true believers away at any moment has propelled a huge effort to evangelize and has held believers’ attention as incentive to morally toe the line.
It would not be unfounded to suggest Dispensationalism gets and keeps converts through a re-engineered systematic belief system that is premised upon fear. What is the harm, one might ask, if it keeps people from perdition? Generation after generation of Dispensationalists have scared people into a religion that (ironically) espouses the ideal that perfect love rejects fear while continuing to use that fear and uncertainty to keep them after their born again experience.
One wonders, ‘Doesn’t this sound reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition?’ Though different in many ways, both the Spanish Inquisition and Dispensationalism set up an unhealthy and emotionally abusive relationship between Christians and their Church where the latter serves as the enforcers for the former. The Church is not a means of grace but a means of intimidation.
Specific to Dispensationalism, living with the constant threat of being Left Behind has created an epidemic of religious trauma that is driving many to abandon their faith altogether even though many openly acknowledge they still feel drawn toward Jesus. Tragically, their Christian faith has been so ensconced in a Dispensationalist framework that they feel no choice but to give up their faith altogether. They are metaphorically throwing out baby Jesus with the bathwater as they reject a God who has become, in their eyes, an threat to their well-being.
Dispensationalism’s retelling of the historic faith is a perverse distortion of the Christian metanarrative that has been passed down. What is more, the religious institutions that depend upon it are perpetuating those distortions. They are false prophets, declaring falsehoods with (often) the best of intentions but their sincerity doesn’t excuse the damage that is done.
These Dispensationalist religious institutions are leading people astray, giving Christianity a bad reputation, and are priming the pump for the ever-increasing blight of conspiracy theories that are invading so much of American religious and secular life. Q-Anon, as one noteworthy example, has manipulated politics in the United States by stoking the fears and expectations of Dispensationalists and their obsession with, and convoluted beliefs about, the End Times.
So, is Dispensationalism a heresy?
Many church leaders who were first exposed to Darby’s teachings in the 1800s and earlier felt that it probably was. Would scholars still consider it to be so today or has it become so entrenched as to become part of a new orthodoxy? Heresy is to orthodox doctrine as cancer is to normal cell growth in a body; it is a rejection and replacement of essential tenets with something else. It is a corrupted imitation of the authentic Gospel story.
Heresy is embraced by people eager for an exciting new way of believing and it is usually promoted by those who have not had significant theological training. Like cancer, it taps valuable energy and resources in its aggressive spread and is toxic to its host. This is why the Judeo-Christian scriptures contain many warnings and accounts about false prophets, false teachings, and the damage that results. Spiritual cancer is to not be taken lightly.
Perhaps some would argue Dispensationalism could better be described as a wart or a skin tag than a tumor. Whatever the case, it is still parasitic and doesn’t technically belong. Unfortunately, it has now been around for so long without seeming harmful that it has eventually been taken for granted as normal. Again, for a great swath of Christians in the United States and across the world Dispensationalism is the unquestioned and assumed teaching of “biblical Christianity” even though Darby’s invention is three years younger than cement.
This begs the question, how ought we as the Church classify things like this that are parasitic to the Body of Christ, being neither heresy nor wise additions but perhaps not quite raising to the level of formal heresy? Should Dispensationalism be classified as a “proto-heresy,” for lack of a better term? In some ways, corrupted teachings like Dispensationalism are even more dangerous because they never quite rise to the point of needing an absolute condemnation, which is what makes them such insidious and cancerous threats to the Christian faith.
It’s time for Christianity to own up to its true condition these days, warts and all. Let’s dispense with Dispensationalism and remove something unsightly from an otherwise beautiful faith.
