Few subjects can make an ordinary Bible study feel complicated as quickly as eschatology.
A discussion that begins with the return of Jesus Christ can soon involve the rapture, the tribulation, the millennium, national Israel, the church, the biblical covenants, and several competing systems with long theological names.
A newer Christian should not be intimidated by these debates. A person does not need to understand every detail of Revelation, identify the millennium correctly, or construct a complete timeline of the last days to be saved.
Christians are saved through faith in Jesus Christ, not through passing an examination in eschatology.
The essential truths are clear: Christ died for sinners, rose bodily from the grave, reigns at the Father’s right hand, and will return personally and visibly to judge the world and bring His people into their everlasting inheritance.
Nevertheless, studying the competing systems can be worthwhile.
Eschatology is not isolated from the rest of theology. Our understanding of the last things is connected to how we interpret the whole Bible, understand the covenants, identify the people of God, and relate the Old Testament promises to Jesus Christ.
One doctrine in particular—union with Christ—takes us to the heart of the disagreement between dispensationalism and covenant theology.
This article presents dispensationalism fairly while evaluating it from a Reformed and generally amillennial perspective.
The purpose is not to question the sincerity or salvation of dispensational Christians. Many are faithful believers who love Scripture, defend the gospel, and eagerly await Christ’s return.
The question is whether their theological system best explains how all of Scripture finds its unity and fulfillment in Christ.
What Is Dispensational Premillennialism?
The word dispensation refers to an administration, stewardship, or arrangement under which God governs His relationship with mankind.
Dispensationalists divide biblical history into several distinguishable administrations in which God reveals particular responsibilities to mankind.
Recognizing different periods of redemptive history is not uniquely dispensational.
Covenant theologians also distinguish life before the Fall of Adam, the patriarchal age, the Mosaic covenant, and the New Covenant.
No informed Christian believes that every biblical command was given directly to every person in every age. Christians do not build an ark, offer lambs at the temple, or observe Israel’s ceremonial laws.
What makes dispensationalism distinctive is not simply its recognition of historical periods.
Its foundational principle is the continuing distinction between Israel and the church. Traditional dispensationalists believe that national Israel is the recipient of earthly promises concerning a particular land, nation, throne, temple, and kingdom. The church, by contrast, is a distinct people with a primarily heavenly calling.
Under this system, Jesus offered the promised kingdom to Israel during His earthly ministry. Israel rejected its King, so the national kingdom was postponed.
God then revealed the church, a people composed of believing Jews and Gentiles, during the interval between Israel’s rejection and its future restoration. Traditional dispensationalists consequently describe this “church age” as a “parenthesis” in God’s prophetic program for Israel.
At some future point, Christ will rapture the church from the earth.
Most traditional dispensationalists place this event before a seven-year tribulation.
God will then resume His national program for Israel, bringing many Jewish people to faith and fulfilling the seventieth week of Daniel.
Christ will return visibly at the end of the tribulation and establish a literal thousand-year kingdom upon the earth. During this millennium, He will reign over the nations and fulfill Israel’s national and territorial promises.
Dispensational premillennialism must be distinguished from premillennialism generally.
All premillennialists believe Christ returns before the millennium, but not all separate Israel and the church or believe in a pretribulational rapture.
Those additional teachings belong particularly to dispensational premillennialism.
How Dispensationalism Developed
Christians have disagreed about the millennium since the early centuries of the church.
Some early Christians expected Christ to establish an earthly millennial kingdom, while others understood the thousand years of Revelation 20 symbolically.
Later Protestant writers sometimes anticipated a future conversion or national restoration of the Jewish people.
These earlier beliefs, however, did not constitute the integrated theological system now called dispensationalism.
That system emerged in the nineteenth century, particularly through John Nelson Darby, an Anglo-Irish Bible teacher and influential leader among the Plymouth Brethren.
Darby developed a sharp distinction between Israel and the church.
He regarded the church as a heavenly people whose calling and destiny differed from those of earthly Israel.
He also taught that Christ would remove the church before the tribulation and subsequently resume His suspended dealings with Israel.
Darby’s ideas spread through Brethren assemblies, missionary activity, Bible conferences, and his visits to North America.
C. I. Scofield popularized the system among ordinary Christians through the enormously influential Scofield Reference Bible, first published in 1909. Its explanatory notes appeared on the same pages as the biblical text, giving generations of readers an organized dispensational interpretation of Scripture.
Lewis Sperry Chafer provided dispensationalism with a more comprehensive systematic theology and helped establish Dallas Theological Seminary in 1924.
John Walvoord, J. Dwight Pentecost, and Charles Ryrie subsequently refined and defended the system.
Popular writers and speakers then brought its prophecy timetable into the broader evangelical imagination.
Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth and, later, the Left Behind novels made the rapture, tribulation, and Antichrist familiar ideas even among people who had never heard the word dispensationalism.
The modern origin of the system does not automatically make it false.
The age of a doctrine cannot replace biblical examination.
Nevertheless, history does matter.
Dispensationalists sometimes present their interpretation as the plain understanding of Scripture that Christians have always held.
Historically, the complete system of a pretribulational rapture, parenthetical church age, permanent Israel–church distinction, and restored Jewish millennium is comparatively recent.
The Major Forms of Dispensationalism
Dispensationalism has developed considerably since Darby. There are three mainstream forms—classical, revised, and progressive dispensationalism—along with two more radical systems commonly called Mid-Acts and Acts 28 dispensationalism.
Classical Dispensationalism
Classical dispensationalism is associated with Darby, Scofield, and some of the early writings of Chafer.
It draws the strongest contrast between Israel and the church.
Israel is God’s earthly people, while the church is His heavenly people. Israel possesses national and territorial promises; the church possesses a distinct heavenly calling.
The church was a mystery not disclosed in the Old Testament and did not begin until Pentecost.
Its existence forms a parenthesis between Israel’s rejection of the kingdom and the future restoration of Israel’s national program.
Some classical formulations went so far as to assign Israel and the church distinguishable eternal destinies.
Revised or Traditional Dispensationalism
Revised dispensationalism is associated especially with Ryrie, Walvoord, and Pentecost.
It moderates some of the earthly-heavenly contrasts while preserving the essential distinction between Israel and the church.
Traditional dispensationalists emphasize that salvation has always been by God’s grace through faith.
Classical dispensationalism did not consistently and unambiguously teach that Old Testament saints were actually justified by works. Nevertheless, Scofield and some other early dispensationalists used language that plainly suggested different conditions of salvation under law and grace. Later dispensationalists recognized the problem, corrected the wording, and explicitly affirmed salvation by grace through faith in every age.
Traditional dispensationalism strongly reject the criticism that people were saved by works under Moses but are saved by grace under the gospel. The content of revelation developed, but no fallen sinner was ever justified by personal obedience to the law.
This form of dispensationalism ordinarily teaches an Acts 2 beginning of the church, a pretribulational rapture, a future seven-year tribulation, the conversion and restoration of Israel, and Christ’s literal thousand-year earthly reign.
Ryrie identified three characteristics as especially important: the distinction between Israel and the church, a consistently literal or normal interpretation of Scripture, and the glory of God as the overarching purpose of history.
Progressive Dispensationalism
Progressive dispensationalism developed in the late twentieth century through theologians such as Craig Blaising and Darrell Bock.
The word progressive refers to the progressive development of God’s plan, not to political progressivism.
Progressive dispensationalists recognize more continuity among the biblical covenants and dispensations.
They affirm that Christ is already reigning from David’s throne and that the kingdom is present in an inaugurated form. They also teach that the church presently participates in Abrahamic and New Covenant blessings.
This position remains dispensational because it does not believe the church exhausts the promises made to Israel.
It expects a future earthly millennium in which national and territorial promises will be fulfilled for ethnic Israel.
Progressive dispensationalism therefore moves considerably closer to covenant theology without completely adopting it.
Mid-Acts and Acts 28 Dispensationalism
Mainstream dispensationalists believe that the church began at Pentecost in Acts 2.
Mid-Acts and Acts 28 systems move that beginning to a later point.
Mid-Acts dispensationalists argue that Pentecost still belonged to Israel’s prophetic kingdom program.
They locate the beginning of the present body of Christ around Paul’s conversion or commissioning—variously placed in Acts 9, Acts 13, or another point in his ministry.
They frequently distinguish Paul’s commission sharply from that of Peter and the Twelve.
Acts 28 dispensationalism places the beginning of the present mystery church after Israel’s climactic rejection near the end of Acts.
Its adherents may assign Paul’s earlier epistles to a preceding program while giving his prison epistles special authority for the present church.
Both systems concern the point at which Israel’s prophetic program was suspended and the parenthetical church age began.
Because they divide the New Testament so severely, some adherents conclude that water baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the Great Commission, or portions of Christ’s teaching do not apply directly to today’s church.
Mainstream dispensationalists properly reject these systems as hyperdispensationalism.
The Principal Competing Positions
Dispensational premillennialism is not the only conservative Christian interpretation of redemptive history and the last things.
Its principal rivals are covenant theology, usually expressed through amillennialism or postmillennialism, and historic premillennialism.
Covenant theology. Covenant theology understands the Bible as the unfolding of God’s unified redemptive purpose.
It commonly speaks of the covenant of redemption within the Trinity, the covenant of works made with Adam, and the covenant of grace through which God saves fallen sinners in Christ.
The historical covenants with Noah, Abraham, Israel, David, and the New Covenant progressively reveal and administer God’s redemptive plan.
Covenant theology recognizes meaningful changes between the Old and New Testaments, but it maintains that God has one people throughout redemptive history.
Old Testament believers were saved by the promised Christ; New Testament believers are saved by the accomplished work of that same Christ.
The church does not begin as an unrelated people after Israel’s failure. It is the New Covenant assembly of the Messiah, incorporating Israel’s believing remnant and grafted-in Gentiles.
Amillennialism. Amillennialism teaches that the thousand years of Revelation 20 symbolize the present period between Christ’s first and second advents.
Christ is reigning now from heaven, and deceased believers reign with Him.
Satan is bound in a qualified sense: he remains dangerous, but he cannot prevent the gospel from gathering the nations as he did before Christ’s victory.
At the end of this age, Christ will return once, publicly and gloriously. His coming brings the resurrection of the righteous and wicked, final judgment, the destruction of death, and the everlasting new creation (John 5:28–29; 1 Corinthians 15:22–26).
Amillennialists do not expect a separate thousand-year Jewish dispensation after Christ returns.
Postmillennialism. Postmillennialism shares covenant theology’s understanding of one people of God and the Christ-centered fulfillment of the promises.
It differs from amillennialism by expecting the gospel to produce widespread historical conversion and blessing before Christ returns.
The “millennium” describes an extended period of gospel prosperity, after which Christ comes to raise the dead and judge the world.
Postmillennialism should not be confused with secular utopianism. Its responsible forms attribute the kingdom’s advance to the gospel and the Holy Spirit, not to inevitable human progress or political engineering.
Historic premillennialism. Historic premillennialists believe Christ returns before a future earthly millennium, but they reject the dispensational separation of Israel and the church.
They usually believe the church will experience the final tribulation and will be gathered to Christ at His public return.
Historic premillennialists such as George Eldon Ladd have also emphasized the kingdom’s present inauguration.
This position is important because it demonstrates that Christians may interpret Revelation 20 as a future earthly millennium without accepting a pretribulational rapture or two distinct peoples of God.
The Dispensational Criticism of Covenant Theology
Dispensationalists raise several substantial objections to covenant theology.
Those objections should be heard accurately rather than dismissed as ignorance.
Their best-known claim concerns biblical interpretation.
Dispensationalists argue that Old Testament promises must retain their normal grammatical and historical meanings.
When God promised Abraham’s descendants a particular land, promised David an earthly dynasty, or foretold Israel’s national restoration, He meant what He said.
If those promises are fulfilled only spiritually in a largely Gentile church, then their original recipients never receive what God appeared to promise them.
From this perspective, covenant theology “spiritualizes” prophecies that should be interpreted plainly.
Dispensationalists fear that allowing the New Testament to transform Israel’s promises into blessings for the church makes God’s words unstable.
If Israel can later mean the church and land can become heaven or the new creation, what controls interpretation?
Dispensationalists generally believe that a promise’s final fulfillment must preserve the national, territorial, and institutional referents expressed in the Old Testament. Covenant theologians believe those historical referents were real but may function as types whose final and enlarged fulfillment is revealed in Christ and the completed New Testament.
Dispensationalists also criticize the theological covenants of redemption, works, and grace.
Those concepts may be constructed from biblical teaching, but the precise terms are not ordinarily used in Scripture as names for the Bible’s overarching structure.
Dispensationalists contend that covenant theologians impose a later theological framework upon the biblical text.
Another objection concerns God’s purpose in history.
Ryrie argued that covenant theology makes redemption the Bible’s unifying purpose, whereas dispensationalism recognizes the glory of God as the greater goal.
God glorifies Himself not only by saving individuals but also through His government of nations, judgment of evil, faithfulness to Israel, rule over creation, and accomplishment of every divine purpose.
Dispensationalists therefore describe covenant theology as “replacement theology.” In their estimation, it teaches that Israel’s disobedience caused God to transfer its promises and status to the church.
Romans 11, however, appears to anticipate a future work of God among ethnic Jews. Dispensationalists regard this as evidence that Israel retains a distinct place in God’s plan.
These concerns are not frivolous. God cannot lie, and His promises cannot fail. Covenant theologians must demonstrate that their interpretation fulfills the Old Testament rather than emptying it of meaning.
The Covenantal Response: Fulfillment, Not Replacement
Covenant theologians also affirm grammatical and historical interpretation.
The disagreement is not between people who read the Bible literally and people who disregard its words.
The real question is whether earlier revelation should be interpreted only within its original horizon or within the completed canon given by God.
The New Testament does not merely repeat the Old Testament. It reveals the greater realities toward which Old Testament persons, events, offices, institutions, and promises pointed.
Adam, Israel, Moses, David, the Exodus, the Temple, the Aaronic priesthood, the sacrifices, and the land all possess historical meaning, but they also participate in a larger pattern fulfilled in Christ.
Jesus identifies His own body as the true temple (John 2:19–21). Hebrews presents His priesthood and sacrifice as the final realities anticipated by the Levitical system.
Paul expands Abraham’s promised inheritance from Canaan to “the world” (Romans 4:13). Peter applies Israel’s covenantal descriptions to the New Covenant people of God (1 Peter 2:9–10).
These are not arbitrary allegories invented by covenant theologians. They are inspired apostolic interpretations.
This is why “fulfillment theology” is normally more accurate than “replacement theology.”
The church does not replace Israel as an unrelated Gentile organization.
Israel’s Messiah fulfills Israel’s calling and promises. The believing remnant of Israel belongs to Him, and believing Gentiles are incorporated into that same covenantal people.
Romans 11 depicts one cultivated olive tree.
Unbelieving Jewish branches are broken off, Gentiles are grafted in, and natural branches may be grafted back into their own tree.
Paul does not describe an Israel tree and a church tree growing beside one another.
Nor does he describe Gentiles uprooting and replacing the original tree.
There is continuity of root, promise, and covenantal people, together with a solemn warning that membership is enjoyed by faith rather than presumed through ethnicity.
God’s glory and redemption should not be treated as competing purposes.
Covenant theology does not place man’s salvation above God.
God glorifies Himself through His entire work of creation, providence, judgment, redemption, and consummation.
Ephesians repeatedly describes election, adoption, redemption, and inheritance as occurring “to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14).
God’s glory is revealed supremely in His Son. Christ is the radiance of God’s glory, and all God’s promises find their “Yes” in Him (Hebrews 1:3; 2 Corinthians 1:20).
A Christ-centered theology of redemption is therefore not man-centered. It recognizes Christ as the One in whom God gathers all things in heaven and earth (Ephesians 1:9–10).
The Major Problems with Dispensational Premillennialism
The first problem is its tendency to divide what Christ has united.
Ephesians 2 does not describe believing Jews and Gentiles as two parallel peoples cooperating within God’s plan.
Christ has broken down the dividing wall, made both groups “one new man,” reconciled them to God “in one body,” and made them members of one household and one temple (Ephesians 2:11–22).
Dispensationalists answer that spiritual equality does not erase ethnic distinctions or different corporate roles.
That is true as far as it goes. Men and women, different nations, and different members of a congregation remain distinguishable while sharing equal standing in Christ. The question, however, is whether the New Testament’s language of one body and fellow heirs permits two permanent covenant peoples with separate inheritances.
A second problem is the parenthesis theory.
Dispensationalists do not ordinarily mean that God was surprised by Israel’s rejection or invented the church as an emergency measure. They affirm that God eternally knew and planned the church.
Nevertheless, calling the church a parenthesis can make it appear secondary to God’s principal prophetic program.
Paul describes the united Jewish-Gentile church as a manifestation of God’s eternal purpose. Through this one body, God displays His manifold wisdom even to the heavenly powers (Ephesians 3:4–11).
The church is not an interruption while God waits to return to His greater work.
It is central to the mystery God purposed in Christ before the ages.
A third difficulty concerns the New Covenant.
Jeremiah expressly promises a New Covenant “with the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (Jeremiah 31:31).
A strict Israel–church distinction led some traditional dispensationalists to conclude that the church is not formally under that covenant, receives only selected benefits from it, or participates in a separate New Covenant.
Yet Christ instituted the Lord’s Supper as the New Covenant in His blood,
Paul delivered that ordinance to a predominantly Gentile church, and he identified himself, the apostle to the Gentiles, as a minister of the New Covenant (Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25; 2 Corinthians 3:6).
Progressive dispensationalism recognizes the church’s present participation more clearly, but that concession moves it toward covenantal reasoning.
The pretribulational rapture presents another problem.
First Thessalonians 4 certainly teaches that living believers will be caught up to meet Christ.
The disputed question is whether this occurs years before His public return.
In the ancient world, citizens could go outside a city to welcome an arriving dignitary and accompany him into the city.
The passage can therefore describe the church going out to greet its returning King rather than Christ reversing direction and taking the church to heaven for seven years.
Other passages associate Christ’s coming with public glory, resurrection, judgment, and the end of the age (Matthew 24:29–31; John 6:39–40; 2 Thessalonians 1:6–10).
Scripture never clearly states that Christ returns secretly for the church and then returns publicly with the church seven years later.
Finally, some dispensational expectations for the millennium appear to restore the shadows after the substance has arrived.
A rebuilt temple, Levitical priesthood, and renewed animal sacrifices—even if called memorials rather than salvific as some dispensationalists assert —are difficult to reconcile with Hebrews.
Christ offered one sacrifice for sins for all time and permanently fulfilled the old priestly order (Hebrews 9:11–14; 10:11–14).
The old institutions glorified God by pointing forward to Christ. Once the reality has appeared, returning to the shadows after His second coming seems to reverse the direction of redemptive history.
Union with Christ: The Doctrine Beneath the Debate
Union with Christ means that the Holy Spirit joins believers spiritually and covenantally to Jesus Christ.
Christianity is not merely receiving benefits from a distant Savior.
Believers are “in Christ,” and Christ dwells in them.
Every saving blessing comes through this union.
We are chosen in Christ, justified in Christ, adopted in Christ, sanctified in Christ, and destined to be glorified with Christ.
His death is counted as our death to sin; His resurrection guarantees our new life and future resurrection (Romans 6:3–11; Ephesians 2:4–7).
Dispensationalists generally affirm the believer’s personal union with Christ.
It would be inaccurate and uncharitable to claim that they simply deny this doctrine. The tension appears when we follow union with Christ into its corporate and redemptive-historical implications.
God made His promises to Abraham and to his “offspring,” whom Paul identifies ultimately as Christ.
Everyone who belongs to Christ is consequently Abraham’s offspring and an heir according to promise (Galatians 3:16, 26–29).
The inheritance reaches believers not because Gentiles have displaced Jews, but because both receive it in Abraham’s true Seed.
This principle places Christ, rather than ethnicity, at the center of covenantal identity.
Outside Christ, neither Jew nor Gentile believers possesses saving covenant blessings.
In Christ, Jews and Gentile believers become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and participants in the same promise through the gospel (Ephesians 3:6).
Christ is also the faithful Israelite who accomplishes what Adam and national Israel failed to accomplish.
Matthew applies Israel’s exodus language to Jesus: “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Matthew 2:15).
Jesus passes through water, enters the wilderness, resists temptation, obeys God, and then gathers twelve apostles around Himself.
He does not abolish Israel’s story; He brings it to its intended goal (telos).
If Christ is Abraham’s Seed, Israel’s faithful representative, David’s greater Son, the true temple, and the mediator of the New Covenant, then everyone united to Him participates in the fulfillment He secured.
The church does not stand outside Israel receiving unrelated blessings. It consists of the believing remnant of Israel and Gentiles incorporated into Israel’s Messiah.
This creates the central difficulty for dispensationalism: Can people joined to one Christ, incorporated into one body, made heirs of one promise, and built into one temple remain two permanently distinct covenant peoples with separate redemptive destinies?
Classical dispensationalism feels this tension most sharply because it distinguishes an earthly people from a heavenly people.
Revised dispensationalism moderates the distinction but preserves separate historical programs.
Progressive dispensationalism handles union with Christ more successfully by recognizing that the church already participates in the covenants and kingdom.
Yet it must still explain why ethnic identity requires a separate covenantal inheritance after Jews and Gentiles have become fellow heirs in one body.
Progressive dispensationalists respond that unity does not require uniformity.
The church may share spiritual blessings with Israel without exhausting Israel’s national promises.
According to this argument, participation is not displacement.
The covenantal response is that differing ethnic backgrounds do not require differing covenantal destinies.
Jewish identity is not erased, any more than the identities of other peoples are erased. Nevertheless, all believers inherit God’s promises through the same union with the same Christ. Their diversity exists within one redeemed people, not between two parallel covenant peoples.
Does God Still Have a Purpose for Ethnic Israel?
Rejecting dispensationalism does not require hostility toward Jewish people or denial of their importance in redemptive history.
The apostles, the earliest Christians, and Jesus according to His human nature were Jewish.
Gentile Christians do not support the root; the root supports them.
Paul therefore warns Gentile believers against arrogance (Romans 11:17–21).
Covenant theologians disagree about the precise meaning of “all Israel shall be saved” in Romans 11:26.
Some understand “Israel” in this context as the complete people of God composed of Jews and Gentiles.
Others expect an extraordinary future conversion of ethnic Jews before Christ returns.
The latter expectation has substantial precedent within Reformed theology.
Either interpretation is compatible with one people of God.
A future conversion of Jewish people would not require the reconstruction of the Mosaic order or the creation of a separate route to God. Jewish people are saved exactly as Gentiles are saved: by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
When Jews believe, they are grafted back into “their own olive tree” (Romans 11:24).
They do not enter a Gentile institution that replaced their ancestors. Nor do they remain outside the church as a separate redeemed nation.
They embrace Israel’s Messiah and join the one New Covenant people He purchased with His blood.
God has not abandoned His promises. He fulfills them more magnificently than a return to provisional shadows could accomplish.
The promised land reaches its consummation in the renewed creation. David’s throne becomes Christ’s universal dominion. The temple becomes God dwelling with His redeemed people. Abraham becomes the father of believers from every nation.
What Christians Can Learn from Dispensationalists
A serious criticism of dispensationalism should acknowledge the genuine strengths commonly found among its adherents.
Dispensationalists have consistently defended the bodily and visible return of Jesus Christ. They remind the church that history is moving toward a divinely appointed conclusion and that Christians should live expectantly.
They also insist that God is faithful. Their concern that God must keep His promises to Israel is commendable, even when covenant theologians disagree with their interpretation of how those promises are fulfilled.
Dispensational teachers have encouraged close study of Scripture, careful attention to biblical prophecy, evangelistic urgency, and resistance to antisemitism.
They rightly remind Gentile Christians that Jewish people should not be treated with contempt and that God’s historical dealings with Israel are essential to understanding the Bible.
Historically, some Christians have adopted anti-Semitic attitudes which are inappropriate to believers who have placed their faith in a Jewish Savior.
Covenant theologians need not surrender these strengths.
We can eagerly await Christ’s return, defend God’s faithfulness, anticipate the conversion of Jewish people, study prophecy seriously, and recognize meaningful stages in redemptive history.
The disagreement concerns whether those truths require a permanent division between Israel and the church.
On the negative side, dispensationalists are well-known for sensationalism.
Christians on both sides should also resist sensationalism.
Speculation about dates, newspaper headlines, blood moons, microchips, international alliances, and the identity of the Antichrist has repeatedly embarrassed the church.
Christ commanded watchfulness and faithfulness, not an endless search for secret prophetic codes.
We can learn to avoid sensationalism through the bad example of many dispensationalists in this regard.
You Do Not Need a Prophecy Chart to Belong to Christ
A new Christian may finish this discussion still uncertain about the millennium.
That is perfectly understandable. Faithful Christians who affirm biblical authority have held amillennial, postmillennial, historic premillennial, and dispensational premillennial positions.
These disagreements matter, but they do not stand at the center of the gospel.
A believer should first become grounded in the clearest teachings of Scripture: the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, the deity and humanity of Christ, His substitutionary death, bodily resurrection, justification by faith, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the certainty of Christ’s return.
Begin with what Scripture makes unmistakable.
Jesus Christ will return personally, bodily, visibly, and gloriously. The dead will be raised. Every person will stand before God. Evil will be defeated. God will renew creation and dwell forever with His people.
Christians may disagree about the sequence of certain events while confessing these truths together.
As believers mature, the deeper questions become useful. They teach us to trace promises through Scripture, distinguish types from their fulfillment, understand the covenants, and see the Bible as one unfolding history of redemption.
These studies should produce wonder and humility rather than pride.
The decisive center of that history is not a prophetic chart, an earthly nation, or even the church considered by itself.
The center is Jesus Christ. God has purposed to unite all things in Him. Every covenant advances toward Him, every saving promise rests upon Him, and every believer receives his inheritance through union with Him.
God has not discarded Israel, nor has a Gentile church stolen Israel’s promises.
Israel’s covenants, offices, institutions, and hopes reach their appointed fulfillment in Israel’s Messiah.
Believing Jews and believing Gentiles are joined to Him and therefore to one another. They become fellow citizens, fellow heirs, one body, one temple, one flock, and one redeemed people under one Shepherd.
This Christ-centered unity is the great difficulty for dispensationalism—and the great comfort of fulfillment theology.
All the promises of God are “Yes” in Christ, and everyone who belongs to Christ is an heir according to the promise.
S.D.G.,
Robert Sparkman
rob@basedchristianity.org
P.S. For those who are curious, I am hold an amillennial position associated with covenant theology. I prefer to use the word nuncmillennial rather than amillennial, though. It is more accurate. I believe that a massive conversion of the physical descendants of Israel will occur prior to Christ’s return, and that anti-Semitism is forbidden in Scripture as the sin of partiality. I think it is highly possible that glorified descendants of Israel will receive the land promises in the New Creation, although this is largely irrelevant because all who are united with Christ are counted as descendants of Abraham and the promises have been expanded to the entire globe (Romans 4). I fully realize that my position on these matters may be incorrect and hold them with humility. RLS.
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