I grew up as a dispensationalist[1], as many of you know; we won’t rehash that. But I wanted to write something, quick, on the role that I see dispensationalism playing in America, in particular, and in the Western world more generally. Dispensationalism is known for a radical notion of futurism; radical because it ties its futurism into various signs that dispensationalists believe portend of the very end. More generally I still maintain that there will indeed be various signs that the world is close to the return of Jesus Christ, but I differ from the dispensationalist in the sense that I don’t see these signs as, as clairvoyant as they seem to think. In other words, I don’t think the ‘end of the end’ can be linearly charted in the way that dispensationalists famously are known for. While I reject the other alternative to dispensational futurism, which ostensibly sees history as almost purely cyclical, I do think that awash in the unfolding of eschatological history, that we can start discerning patterns of intensity vis-à-vis some of the features that Jesus taught would be present just prior to His coming.

What I want to focus on though is the cultural impact dispensationalist futurism has had upon the American world at large. As a society there is a chialistic (millenarian) expectation that the world is winding down; ultimately this typically eventuates in some sort of dystopian version of the world—like what we see depicted in Hunger Games. I would contend that dispensational futurism has helped contribute to this sort of expectation for the world; i.e. that we are on a linear slide into some sort of oblivion. Books like Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth (1970), or Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins’ runaway success Left Behind series (1990s) have helped perpetuate a Christian version of dystopia that the broader culture has picked up on and imported into their own end-time understandings of the world. As George Marsden in his book Fundamentalism and American Culture and Ernest Sandeen in his book The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800—1930 have helpfully identified is that dispensationalism, in particular, and millenarianism, in general, have rootage back into the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, both in America and the United Kingdom. There was time for what we see woven into the fabric of the American psyche, both Christian and non-Christian alike to flourish and come of age (or even seed).

My concern isn’t that Christians are too overly eager for the second coming of Jesus Christ; in my view, you can never be too over eager for that. My concern is that radical futurism ends up reducing to a sensationalism that ends up causing the person to be looking for the signs of the times in their newspapers, and now on social media, more than they are induced to inhabiting Holy Scripture and living soberly and righteously as we see the day approaching. Don’t get me wrong, I do think it is important to be excited about the coming of Christ; I also think that there are certain ‘signs’ that ought to indicate to people that the return of the Lord might well be upon us (the Apostles in the New Testament lived with this expectation even in their period, which is to my point). What I am warning against, though, is when people start to engage in what is called pesher (which is what the eschatological cult, the Essenes, of Dead Sea Scrolls fame, engaged in as their interpretive method for discerning the times of their day). Pesher simply means ‘this-is-that,’ and it is an attempt to correlate some current event with a biblical prophecy. I would suggest that dispensationalists, and other like-chialistic sects are the contemporary versions of the Essenes; insofar as they engage in pesher. I think doing pesher-type exegesis of the biblical text lends itself to the sort of radical futurism I have been referring to throughout this post. It causes the person to take their eye off the ball that the living Christ would have us focused on. Yes, He wants us to be looking for His coming, but this means living holy and sober lives.

One side-effect of living with a radical-futurist position, in the sense I’ve been describing, is that it makes people prone to get caught up in sensationalistic movements of thought in general. One clear and present example of this could be the so-called Q phenomenon, or its counterpart, the Antifa/BLM phenomenon. Both movements of thought are premised on a linear conception of the world-system; both maintain that some level of activism is required in order to cause apocalyptic events to obtain in order for their version of the ‘time-of-the-end’ to come to pass. These groups have their prophets calling them to action, pointing them to their messengers, and asking them to inhabit a projection of a world-picture set out by a sensationalist expectation of apocalyptic doom. Both believe that some level of human violence is required in order to ingress their world-picture; whether that be street-thugs, or the US Military. I would argue that these two groups (I place Antifa/BLM together), and any other groups that might fall into this continuum, are a product of the sort of radical millenarian futurism projected by dispensationalism, or even Marxism, respectively. Radical futurism is typically abstracted from a sober notion of futurism that orthodox Christianity has maintained since the beginning. Orthodox Christianity has maintained, simply, that Christ will come again and establish a New Heavens and Earth. But orthodox Christianity does not collapse this happening into ‘our’ capacity to discern various signs, in a chart-like fashion, as its mode of actualization. In other words, orthodox Christianity simply believes that the world will be in utter chaos, and in intensifying ways, right up until Jesus comes again (e.g. think the birth pangs analogy).[2]

I would simply exhort my Christian brethren and sistren to abandon radical futurism, and take this sort of dystopian apocalypticism away from the broader culture. I am not saying we shouldn’t be aware of what is going on in the world, in current events. I’m also not saying that Christians shouldn’t be discerning about the time of the end of the end; indeed, I think of all people, as people of the light (cf. I Thess 5) we ought to be able to have a real sense of the times we inhabit. But I think until after the fact (just as at the first coming of Christ) being able to see, in an absolute way, that this-is-that (pesher) is not really possible; and it isn’t an advisable mode of being for the Christian person. But full disclosure: I still struggle with this temptation.

[1] Which I repudiated about 12 years ago (at that point I was a Progressive Dispensationalist).

[2] Unless of course if your postmillennial. But I outright reject postmil as a viable interpretive option of the biblical text. I believe the only viable options, from a biblical eschatological perspective are: Historic or Covenantal Premillennialism, or Amillennialism; I am the latter these days.