Replies

“Not here to argue or debate”

No, but you do love to spam my posts with falsities that Dispensationalism was initiated by John Darby and others in 19th Century England when in fact your own “church fathers” wrote much about Dispensationalism:

Justin Martyr
Dialogue with Trypho

“But if so great a power is shown to have followed and to be still following the dispensation of His suffering, how great shall that be which shall follow His glorious advent! For He shall come on the clouds as the Son of Man, so Daniel foretold, and His angels shall come with Him.”

Justin Martyr (d. 162): “But I and whoever are on all points right-minded Christians know that there will be resurrection of the dead and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned, and enlarged as the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and the others declare” (“Dialogue with Trypho,” in ANF, I, 239).

Eusebius commenting on Papias of Hierapolis
Eusebius, An Ecclesiastical History to the 20th Year of the Reign of Constantine

“In these he says there would be a certain millennium after the resurrection, and that there would be a corporeal reign of Christ on this very Earth; which things he appears to have imagined, as if they were authorized by the apostolic narrations, not understanding correctly those matters which they propounded mystically in their representations.”

Irenaeus
Against Heresies

The rule of faith taught the following three truths: 1) Jesus would come bodily to Earth. 2) The rule of faith affirms the bodily resurrection of believers, and 3) the rule of faith affirms a future judgment

Irenaeus: “But when this Antichrist shall have devastated all things in this world, he will reign for three years and six months, and sit in the temple at Jerusalem; and then the Lord will come from heaven in the clouds, in the glory of the Father, sending this man and those who follow him into the lake of fire, but bringing in for the righteous the times of the kingdom, that is, the rest, the inheritance, in which kingdom the lord declared, that ‘many coming from the east and from the west should sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob . . . . The predicted blessing, therefore, belongs unquestionable to the times of the kingdom, when the righteous shall bear rule upon their rising from the dead.”

Tertullian

Tertullian: “But we do confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon the earth, although before heaven, only in another state of existence; inasmuch as it will be after their resurrection for a thousand years in the divinely-built city of Jerusalem” (Against Marcion,” in ANF, 3, 343).

At least pretend to be honest when you post will you?

In fact your own “church fathers” wrote much about Dispensationalism

You need to learn to read more clearly. I stated clearly that no Christians of any standing before Darby taught the modern "earthly millennium, rapture-at-any-moment" interpretation of Scripture regarding the End Times."

The Church Fathers indeed taught about "dispensations" in salvation history, but NOT as the modern rapturists teach them. Rapturists taking their quotes out of context has become a pretty common practice.

And thank you for proving my point that rapturists cannot charitably and reasonably discuss this topic with out flying int a pique of anger. That's why it is fruitless to try to attempt a decent conversation about this here. I learned that lesson log ago. Have a blessed evening.

Justin Martyr, Eusebius, Irenaeus and Tertullian did NOT write anything about a pre-tribulation rapture.

Justin Martyr in First apology: Chapter XXXIX

The Spirit of prophecy speaks.. in this way: "For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. Isaiah 2:3 And that it did so come to pass, we can convince you. For from Jerusalem there went out into the world, men, twelve in number, and these illiterate, of no ability in speaking: but by the power of God they proclaimed to every race of men that they were sent by Christ to teach to all the word of God; "

Justin Martyr makes it clear that he believed the peace promises of the Old Testament were a present reality in 130 AD

Eusebius was clear that Daniel's visions were fulfilled in the first coming of Christ -- The abomination of desolation, proclaimed by the prophets, stood in the very Temple of God, so celebrated of old, the Temple which was now awaiting its total and final destruction by fire"

in Eusebius Church history III:7
. It is fitting to add to these accounts the true prediction of our Saviour in which he foretold these very events. {in the Olivet discourse}
His words are as follows: Woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! But pray that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day. For there shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
The historian, reckoning the whole number of the slain, says that eleven hundred thousand persons perished by famine and sword, and that the rest of the rioters and robbers, being betrayed by each other after the taking of the city, were slain. But the tallest of the youths and those that were distinguished for beauty were preserved for the triumph. Of the rest of the multitude, those that were over seventeen years of age were sent as prisoners to labor in the works of Egypt, while still more were scattered through the provinces to meet their death in the theaters by the sword and by beasts. Those under seventeen years of age were carried away to be sold as slaves, and of these alone the number reached ninety thousand.
These things took place in this manner in the second year of the reign of Vespasian, in accordance with the prophecies of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who by divine power saw them beforehand as if they were already present, and wept and mourned according to the statement of the holy evangelists, who give the very words which he uttered, when, as if addressing Jerusalem herself,

The church fathers aren't inspired. They're valuable as a witness to the beliefs of the church in their era. Where they have consensus on something, that consensus borders on being authoritative.

Some of them ended their lives as apostates, like Tertullian. He died a Montanist. Montanism was a strange heresy that believed in ongoing continuous revelation through their "prophets".

This quote of yours from Irenaeus:

... sums up exactly what I and the rest of the Catholic and orthodox world believes, though. There's nothing in it about a thousand year reign of Christ visibly on earth, and there's nothing about a rapture that precedes the second coming by many years.

The Church fathers did NOT teach about dispensationalism — Irenaeus, Justin Martyr etc viewed the Church as the expanded Israel.

they did not understand the Church to be an invisible, spiritual entity that would be taken secretly from the earth before the final events of the world. The idea of this kind of Rapture would have been completely foreign to them.

The Church is in history, but at the same time she transcends it. It is only ‘with the eyes of faith’ that one can see her in her visible reality and at the same time in her spiritual reality as bearer of divine life.

The seed of the Kingdom exists in the Church, but is not yet realized here on earth: ” Now the Father’s will is ‘to raise up men to share in his own divine life.’ He does this by gathering men around his Son Jesus Christ. This gathering is the Church, ‘on earth the seed and beginning of that kingdom’”