The Rise and Fall of Dispensational Premillennialism in American Christianity

Mike D'Virglio ^ | Oct 9, 2024

[CondoleezzaProtege]

When I embraced postmillennialism in August 2022, I knew next to nothing about where the most popular Evangelical eschatology, dispensational premillennialism, came from or how it developed. The reason this is important is because eschatology matters. What we think about “end times” will color everything we think about current times. It determines how we interpret the past, present, and future, not just the end of that future, but everything in between now and when the end comes. If we think planet earth is destined for an apocalyptic dystopia guess how we’ll think of current events. I’ll explain why, but I didn’t believe eschatology mattered for most of my Christian life. The speculation surrounding eschatology coming from dispensationalism drove me to become an eschatological agnostic. Or as it’s often called, a pan-millennialist, as in, it will all pan out in the end.

I’ve heard it called newspaper eschatology because it takes headlines and develops predictions from current events that supposedly tell us about when the antichrist will appear and the rapture will happen. These predictions have been going since the mid-19th century, and even though they never turn out to be accurate, that doesn’t seem to diminish dispensationalism’s popularity. At least as it is assumed by probably 90% of Evangelicals to be the truth about “end times.” When I became a born-again Christian in 1978, eschatology was a topic of conversation everywhere. The New York Times even declared Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, published in 1970, to be the bestselling “nonfiction” book of the 1970s.

I’ve been learning the fascinating history of how Evangelicalism got to this point in a book I first heard about in this interview of the author, Daniel Hummel by Al Mohler. The book, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle over the End Times Shaped a Nation, has been a revelation for me. Most surprising has been learning that the development of this thinking in the 19th century was a direct response and repudiation of the dominant postmillennialism of the time. I’ll explain why, but I’ve been under the impression it was the horrific disasters of the 20th century that discredited the post-mill position, but that lamentable century was only the final nail in the coffin of its credibility. It was rather the distortion of the concept of progress in the 19th century with the development of knowledge and science. The distortion was a direct result of the secularism growing out of the empiricism and rationalism of the Enlightenment. God was pushed to the periphery of Western culture, and man enthroned as sovereign creator of progress and civilization. As God said of the builders of Babel, they believed “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.”

Speaking of Lyman Stewart, the founder of Biola (Bible Institute of Los Angeles, 1908), Hummel writes:

In his view, amillennialism was a battering ram to break up the postmillennial hold on nineteenth century Protestantism. With the growing popularity of theological modernism, which adjusted Christian teachings to the intellectual climate of the late nineteenth century, Stewart had identified his main rival.

The reaction against postmillennialism, however, goes back to the mid-19th century and, Irishman J.N. Darby. The earliest “new premillennialists,” as they were called to distinguish themselves from the old ones, are what we now call dispensationalists. To the new guys on the block, the world and the church were far too corrupt for the kind of progress 19th century postmillennialism promised. However it was Darby bringing his version of “end times” to America in 1862 right in the middle of the Civil War that dispensationalism’s march to dominance in American Evangelical Christianity began. There’s nothing like more than half a million of your fellow countrymen being slaughtered fighting each other to bring into question the very idea of progress. But it wasn’t only the trauma of war. As Hummel points out:

The days of postmillennial consensus ended in the 1860s. The Civil War’s violence and destruction helped shatter the image of the United States as the vanguard of the coming kingdom, but this was just the initial shock. Higher criticism of the Bible and Darwinian evolution, two academic discourses that permeated seminaries and universities after the war, began to unravel the biblical case for postmillennialism.

But as well see, the American obsession with progress would not die easily.

Progress and the Spirit of Nineteenth Century America

It’s striking to look back on this side of the unimaginable suffering and misery of the twentieth century, wars and numbers of dead, to realize just how much progress obsessed post-Civil War America. George Marsden observes that “in a nation born during the Enlightenment, the reverence for science as the way to understand all aspects of reality was nearly unbounded.” This reverence grew out of the heady Enlightenment assumption that science and reason could solve all mankind’s problems eventually. The stunning advances in technology seemed to justify the hubris.

All these changes were part of the industrial revolution after the Civil War transforming the largely agrarian society of America’s founding into a worldwide economic powerhouse. Along with change came problems. Industrialization and growing populations of immigrants flocking to cities along the East coast created deplorable conditions for a significant number of people. Christians thought Christianity provided an answer in what came to be known as the Social Gospel; a significant change in American Christianity was on the horizon. Many nineteenth century reformers, like the abolitionists, were Unitarians having rejected what they considered the illogical concept of the Trinity; their hearts were in the right place, but their theology wasn’t. German biblical criticism and its rejection of the Bible as reliable history and God’s authoritative verbal revelation had a profound effect on Christianity in the growing secular age. The also spreading rejection of orthodox historic Christianity in the mainline denominations, along with the suffering brought on by the industrial revolution, produced the response of the Social Gospel.

This struggle for the soul of Christianity (pun intended) playing out in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came to be called the fundamentalist-modernist controversies. The new premillennialists (the term dispensationalism didn’t get coined until 1927) were part of the broader fundamentalist movement that eventually came to dominate American Evangelicalism. On the fundamentalist side were an amalgamation of Christians loosely held together by a handful of orthodox beliefs about the historical veracity of the Christian faith, and on the modernist side were liberals who embraced the social gospel and a religion of progress. To say these two were incompatible is like saying water and fire are not compatible.

From the late 1870s to Word War 1, the leadership of mainline Protestant denominations slowly but surely gave up any pretense in believing the Bible was a supernatural document. They accepted the Enlightenment assumptions of empiricism and rationalism, including the inevitable conclusion of German biblical critics’ attacks on the Bible’s veracity. These were the liberals, and conservatives who stood against them came to be called fundamentalists from a series of twelve short books, The Fundamentals, written from 1910 to 1915. Even though he was a conservative, William Jennings Bryan echoed what almost all Christians believed prior to World War I:

Christian civilization is the greatest that the world has ever known because it rests on a conception of life that makes life one unending progress toward higher things, with no limit to human advancement or development.

As George Marsden adds, “evangelicals generally regarded almost any sort of progress as evidence of the advance of the kingdom.” The Great War was used to attack the credibility of postmillennialism, but it was World War II that put the nail in the coffin. The Soviet Union and Mao’s communist China didn’t help.

Dispensationalism’s Eventual Triumph

Regardless of Bryan’s conservative Christian convictions, he embraced a concept of postmillennialism that dispensationalists rightly believed came from liberal Christianity and a distortion of the Bible’s understanding of progress as the providential working of God in history through His people. A postmillennialism based on Enlightenment assumptions could never last because progress is a Jewish and Christian concept the pagans stole and bastardized. It’s almost like thinking a man can become a woman and a woman a man, not that anyone would ever think such a thing. The two versions of progress are as mutually exclusive as the sexes. But why did dispensational premillennialism triumph and become the dominant eschatology of 20th century Evangelicalism?

Before the nail was driven into the coffin by the horrors of 20th century war and death, revivalism and the great evangelist, D.L. Moody, paved the way.

According to Hummell:

These two implications of Moody’s ministry—the popularization and fusion of new premillennialism with revivalism—could hardly be separated. They worked together to form a potent and wildly successful message. Moody’s ministry spearheaded an interdenominational evangelical ethos shot through with the influences of premillennialism.

It’s hard to imagine in post-Christian America just how popular and influential Moody was. When he embraced dispensationalism It gained instant credibility, which in due course would influence one of the most consequential Christians of the 20th century, Cyrus Ingerson Scofield. Scofield developed and published his reference Bible in 1909, which arguably became the most influential book molding 20th century fundamentalism which in due course became Evangelicalism. It sold a million copies in less than a decade and became the best-selling book in the history of Oxford University Press. Nothing like Oxford printing a book to give it max credibility.

Scofield systematized the dispensational hermeneutic, and with it as Hummell says, “Scofield transformed the new premillennialism [dispensationalism] into a full-blown religious identity for millions of Christians.” The Scofield Reference Bible was ubiquitous among the baby boomer generation of Christians. When I became a Christian in 1978, I remember it being spoken of in glowing terms, and highly suggested as a reference source. In fact in the early decades of its adoption, “it became a common marker of right belief in Moody movement circles.” This triumph was a long time coming for a new movement. It started with the Pietism growing up in 17th century Germany, made its way into a Brethren movement that eventually influenced Wesley, but importantly for the rise of dispensationalism, Darby, then Moody, then Scofield. His notes established the new premillennialism, revivalism, Higher Life teachers, and what are called Exclusive Brethren concepts as the default for fundamentalist Christians.

This peaked in the 70s with The Late Great Planet earth mentality, and I was born-again embracing every bit of it. For me it couldn’t last, thankfully. Yes, the 90s was the Left Behind decade, but when Kirk Cameron himself becomes post-mill, you know the jig is up.

Dispensationalism’s Pietistic Dualism

Although dispensationalism today has nothing like the credibility and awareness it had in the 20th century, it’s assumptions dominate Evangelical Christianity. It is those assumptions that led to Christianity’s cultural irrelevance in America. One of those is a type of gnostic dualism, a two-story Christianity, in Francis Schaffer’s words, which I learned in 1979 or 80 in his book The God Who Is There. There are various ways to describe this two-story version of the faith, but it breaks life into two competing realities. Picture a house where upstairs is all the important stuff, the things that are truly meaningful and real, and downstairs is for the servants, the mundane everyday stuff. Even though it’s the same house it appears like two completely different houses, say upstairs is 19th century Victorian, and downstairs 1960s hip modernism. In Schaeffer’s words, upstairs “is above the line of despair.” Everyone without access to the stairs, is stuck downstairs trying to find meaning, hope, and purpose. If you do have a pass, you can go upstairs when you want to access the things that really matter in life.

This is where the Gnosticism comes in. This philosophy of Greek influence is a kind of secret knowledge which exists in the upper story, and it has little to do with what we experience downstairs. In fact, the stuff downstairs is only relevant as it points to and gets you the pass to the stairs. Then you can leave behind the servants, the Plebes, the hoi palloi, unless they too are given one of the passes, and they will get the knowledge that’s only had in the upper story. I’ve pushed the metaphor far enough, but you get the idea. Gnosticism, a version of Platonism, was a constant threat in the first few centuries of the church. It was the battle against this threat, among others, that forced the church fathers in response to develop the orthodox Christianity of the Nicene Creed we believe today.

After the Reformation, in due course the assumptions from dualism through Pietism, revivalism, and dispensationalism became the dominant worldview of Evangelical Christianity. Spiritual things were the important part of life, and the mundane and material a necessary evil, to be escaped through religious exercises like Bible reading, prayer, and church going. This was my born-again Christianity until I found Schaeffer and began my journey out of an upstairs/downstairs dualism of Pietistic Christianity. It took postmillennialism to finally eradicate it completely for me, but one doesn’t have to embrace that eschatology to escape from gnostic dualistic Pietistic assumptions. It’s just harder to do because these influences are ubiquitous in American Evangelicalism, like oxygen invisible and everywhere.

It’s fascinating to learn how this understanding of Christianity developed in its 20th century version from what came before. It’s impossible to overstate the influence of the development of fundamentalism in the first 30 or so years of the century, and how it’s become the default form of Christianity of almost all Evangelical Christians today. It informs, whether they know it or not, how they see not only the practice of their faith, but how they perceive the culture, including politics. The problem is that because of this Pietistic dualism, secularism completely took over American culture, and Western culture in general. I argued in a recent post that Pietism and secularism are two sides of the same coin. (I’ll put a link in the show notes. It’s ironic because a solid subset of the fundamentalists believed cultural and political engagement was a priority, but they eventually lost to the inherent dualism in their theology.

In the history of Christianity this kind of dualism was rare, although monastic life was a version of it. Reality for people in the Christian West was both material and spiritual. God and the spiritual realm of angels and demons was every bit as real to people in the Middle Ages as the material world they lived and worked in every day. It wasn’t until Pietism and the Enlightenment developed simultaneously in the 17th and 18th centuries, that secularism began its long march to dominance in the West. Christians, including me, often rail against secularism, and rightly so, but it was the dualistic over spiritualized version of Christianity in Pietism that gave secularism the cultural air to breathe and grow. Even though Christians up to the early years of fundamentalism attempted cultural engagement, they didn’t stand a chance against the juggernaut of secularism.

To one degree or another Christians became so heavenly minded they were no earthly good. Add to Pietistic dualism an eschatology that sees evil and sin as inevitably growing worse until Jesus comes back to save the day, and you have a recipe for zero cultural influence, which is exactly what has happened. Thus we live in Wokestan. Cultural Marxism made its long march through the institutions with little or no push back from Christians and the church, and what pushback there has been, has been ineffectual. To bring Evangelical Christianity down to earth, both Pietism and dispensationalism need to be addressed critically for the inherent dualism they brought to the Christian faith.

A Christianity with cultural influence also requires an optimistic eschatology of victory, whatever you call it. Going into battle believing we’re going to lose is a recipe for getting more of what got us here in the first place. Embracing postmillennialism is what made all the difference for me and many others. It’s worth giving it a look if you have yet to consider it. The battle for the soul of Western culture is only just begun.

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TOPICS: Current Events; History; Religion & Culture; Theology
KEYWORDS: amillennialism; bible; dispensationalism; endtimes; eschatology; postmillennialism; prophecy; rapture

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Yes, the 90s was the Left Behind decade, but when Kirk Cameron himself becomes post-mill, you know the jig is up.

[Inyo-Mono]

Bookmark.

[Jan_Sobieski]

Hogwash. Virtually all of the Ante Nicene fathers believed in a coming millennial reign of Jesus Christ. Not to mention the apostle John who wrote about it in Revelation.

[AAABEST]

Dispensationalism is what happens when believers are led astray by false doctrine, charlatans and well-meaning heretics.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

This article author is welcome to his own faith beliefs, but there too many errors to spend time correcting them.

The OP of this post continues to present leftovers as new meals.

[military cop]

Lost me with the title.

Had to go find a thesaurus.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

believed in a coming millennial reign of Jesus Christ

Classical Premillennialism is not the same as Dispensational. Theologians through the ages have had differing exposition of the Book of Revelation and other prophecies throughout the Scriptures including the Old Testament. But the dispensational, pre-tribulation, rapture-ready framework is fairly...new. And very American-centric despite originating abroad...albeit in the English speaking world.

[Ronald77]

Not to say the Bible does not support it.

[frank ballenger]

dispensational premillennialism

Don't we all get enough of that around the office water cooler every day? Blah, blah blah.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

—> But the dispensational, pre-tribulation, rapture-ready framework is fairly...new.

False.

Imminence, catching away before the great tribulation, and Israel in the end times were all present in the church fathers.

[Dartoid]

Uhhh ok sure thing. eye roll

[Angelino97]

Virtually all of the Ante Nicene fathers believed in a coming millennial reign of Jesus Christ.

The early Church Fathers thought the end was near, possibly within their own lifetimes.

Turned out not to be the case, so they changed their thinking.

[chud]

But the dispensational, pre-tribulation, rapture-ready framework is fairly...new. And very American-centric despite originating abroad...albeit in the English speaking world.

Exactly right.

Dispensationalism and the Rapture are a recent novelty, originating around the 19th century with John Nelson Darby.

[TomEd]

~~~ Canfield and Scofield ~~~

If you see a turtle on a fencepost, you know it didn’t get there itself.

Imagine an engaging sociopath, a skilled con artist and adroit forger, who specialized in earning, and betraying, the confidence of friends and family. Who deserted his wife and two young daughters, but only after swindling her family out of $1,500. (current value — somewhere north of $53,000)

Somehow, like others before and since, this cad / scoundrel discovers that the evangelical pulpit can provide a lucrative string of suckers. Especially if the core of his message is — “It’s not your fault. You can blame God, since He’s already ordained the global triumph of evil. Don’t worry about the world around you, since it’s a lost cause. Just get your soul saved, and you’re set.”

And the story gets better. Christians voluntarily renouncing influence? Pulling comforting bushels over their lamps? And this accomplished fraudster eager to play “Retreat” RIGHT NOW, instead of 15 minutes before “Taps?”(0) A cabal of anti-Christian(1) men of influence, that included a soap tycoon and a future Supreme Court justice, saw the possibilities. And offered a deal. Suddenly, the gravy train included junkets abroad. A mailing address and lodgings in NYC at the elite Lotos Club, whose membership was restricted to non-Christians. Editorial help. The imprimatur of the most prestigious publishing house in the world.

As a technical writer, I have to give the guy credit. His “reference Bible” provided fodder for dozens of courses in the lowbrow “Bible colleges” that sprouted like mushrooms throughout the cultural hinterland.(2)

Joseph Canfield did a great job of “connecting the dots,” and I strongly recommend his book.

(0) Yes, I earned the Bugling merit-badge on my way to the rank of Eagle Scout

(1) Let the reader understand

(2) No matter which Scofield Reference Bible you buy, the pagination is the same. IFB congregations can be given page numbers from the pulpit for looking up the Scripture references.
https://www.amazon.com/Incredible-Scofield-His-Book/dp/1879998440/

[rebel25]

Here is what I know, my faith is absolute. I am very much an audible learner so I can’t quote all the chapters and verses, but know the whole story. First is birthing pains, then the Rapture removes the Holy Spirit from the world via the Church being raptured. 7 years of great tribulation, giving the children of Jacob/Israel another chance to come to Christ and they will. The two witnesses will come, die, and be resurrected, then the actual second coming with Jesus touching down on mount of olives to rule for 1000 literal years with no death. Then Satan and the living humans that are still rebelling will be eternally cast into Hell. New Heaven will descend to earth with dimensions of 1500 miles cubed. Then time has no meaning.
The two witnesses could be anyone random, but I believe they would be Elijah and Enoch as they haven’t died. Moses has lived and died so that rules him out.

[chud]

Thanks for sharing, TomEd. That book looks interesting. I just ordered it.

[Arlis]

Read Acts 1. “In this same manner...” Jesus will return like he left -in the clouds.

Read all Jesus warnings to be ready.

Read the last chapter of the last book of the Bible for its last words.

Nuf said.

No needs to know/figure out all the details. We need to know just 4 things:

1. He’s coming back
2. NO ONE knows when
3. It makes a difference whether we are prepared or not - a huge difference.
4. Those who love Him will both long for his return and be ready when He returns.

“Come Lord Jesus!”

[fidelis]

No needs to know/figure out all the details. We need to know just 4 things:

1. He’s coming back
2. NO ONE knows when
3. It makes a difference whether we are prepared or not - a huge difference.
4. Those who love Him will both long for his return and be ready when He returns.

Amen. We should spend more time time growing closer to Jesus and in holiness than fruitlessly trying to connect the dots to todays news. If you stay ready, you don't have to get ready. “Come Lord Jesus!”

[sopo]

“It’s not your fault. You can blame God, since He’s already ordained the global triumph of evil. Don’t worry about the world around you, since it’s a lost cause. Just get your soul saved, and you’re set.”— clearly written by someone who never set foot in an evangelical, dispensational church, many congregations sending sons and daughters to low brow Bible colleges and then into farflung fields of missionary work. Not caring about the world? Caring with a different eye—set on eternity , which is what Christ was all about. Yeah, believing his kingdom is not of this world, because He said it. Meanwhile , float off off on your clouds of flatus, but how about for a reality check, “Who Really Cares,” Arthur C. Brooks, 2006. Investigated patterns of charitable giving in US, found evangelicals in the forefront, far beyond whomever it is you’re quoting here ,the “technical writer?” who indeed forces a lot of gas through the pipes on the way to his bugling badge. Oh, and that charitable giving discrepancy extends to blood donations.

[Toad of Toad Hall]

Irenaeus, an ante-nicene father, was the spiritual grandson of the apostle John. He was the student of Polycarp, a direct disciple of John himself. It is Irenaeus who very early on articulated the idea of Mary as the new Eve.

He famously wrote that “the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed through faith”. Through this analogy, he established her role as the “cause of salvation” for all humanity and saw her as a model for the Church.

Another student of John, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, who is believed to be the boy mentioned in Matthew 18:3, viewed Mary as the perpetual virgin who gave birth to Jesus, emphasizing her virginal conception and the reality of Christ’s humanity. He wrote that her virginity, birth, and Christ’s death were “three mysteries loudly proclaimed, but wrought in the silence of God”. His writings helped defend the truth of the Incarnation against early heretical views that denied Christ’s full humanity.

The early church fathers are a true treasure where we find so many tenants of our faith proclaimed from the very start. Thank you for bringing them to our attention in this discussion!