It also coincides with the advent of the industrial age and its emphasis on oil. What better way to ensure our interests in Middle Eastern oil fields than to surround that area with a religious aura of significance?
Geopolitics crept in and many people were unaware.
Additionally, what better way to destroy Christian particularism than to say faith in Christ is a requirement for all...but not quite all. Not now.
This assertion undermines the Scriptural mandate to believe the Gospel THIS VERY DAY because none of us knows the time of either our death or Christ's return.
So it's a two-fer for those who work against the Gospel of grace.
But as I said earlier, this is not a salvation issue. It's more a parlor game; it's a guess. Some guesses are better than others; some guesses actually work against the word of God. But they are just guesses. All of them. And we are cautioned in Scripture to "avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain." (Titus 3:9)
Suffice it to know that all believing Jews and all believing Gentiles are "all one in Christ Jesus."
And so we preach Christ risen to all men, confident all those who are His, at a time of His choosing, will hear the truth, love the truth and believe the truth to the saving of their eternal souls.
Here's a good book which addresses all the perspectives, with an emphasis on amillennialism...
And of course, extolling the Scriptural assurance of the Gospel's success in this world, here's another very good book explaining the postmillennial perspective...
And finally, as final support for this pov, I think dispensationalists tend to be aggressively one-sided which is not quite the case with the amils and postmils. Check out postmil Lorraine Boettner's elegant short discussion of the primary schools of thought. He not only presents the postmil position, but he also says positive things about and offers books detailing premillennialism and dispensationalism.
I am Pan Mil...it will all pan out in the end... :)
We have repeatedly documented hereon that dispensationalism did NOT begin in the 1870’s or so but has been around for essentially the whole Church era and certainly for many hundreds of years.
I’m troubled that you’d deny such documentation.
What about the Thessalonians that thought they had missed the Rapture. They predate Augustinian Replacement Theology by about 300 yrs.
What about Chiliasm that predates the idea that a state church will pave the way for Jesus Christ to return.
From what I can tell dispensationalism is consistent with these earlier premillenial views.