Growing up, dispensationalism was probably one of my favorite eschatological systems, but over the years, and the more I study it, the more pronounced it’s flaws seem to be (Ecc 1:18). If I absolutely had to change systems, I’d probably look into Historic Premillennialism, a system held by Dr. Walter Martin (Ph.D., California Coast University), and Dr. D.A. Carson (Ph.D., University of Cambridge).

The LORD says,

“I will put a curse on people
who trust in mere human beings,
who depend on mere flesh and blood for their strength,
and whose hearts have turned away from the LORD.

— Jeremiah 17:5 NET

Let’s not forget that man made theologies like dispensationalism do not deserve your trust, none of them do. TEST ALL THINGS (1Thes. 5:21). Put your trust in Christ alone.

Contents

  1. 1800s Strange Fire Origins
  2. History Says Different
  3. Can Introduce Antinomianism
  4. Did Chafer Diminish The Gospel?
  5. Ryrie Made Things Up
  6. Two Second Comings Contradiction
  7. There Is Only One Tree Not Two
  8. Twisting Revelation 2:9 To Silence Christians
  9. All Signs Point To The Second Coming

🔥 1. Dispensational Theology Was Developed From The Revelation Of A 15 Year Old Girl In The 1800s.

The first 1:20 seconds of this video will floor you if you understand the gravity of what is being said.

so what I elected to do this evening is something very simple how many have your Bibles good what I’d like to do is to tell you first off that the position I am going to set forth tonight is not new as number one secondly the position I will set forth tonight was believed by the Christian Church for 19 centuries the Church Fathers the Reformers every great theologian in the entire history of the church up until the last 140 years believed that we would see the Anti Christ that we would be persecuted by him and that we would be delivered from him by the second coming of Jesus Christ you will find this in Catholic theology you will find that in Orthodox theology you will find it in all of the reformers and you will not find the idea that we are going to escape the Antichrist until approximately a hundred and forty years ago when a 15 year old girl had a revelation and that revelation was picked up by J. N. Darby the founder of the Plymouth Brethren and developed into a form of theology known as dispensational theology. The church for 19 centuries never heard this doctrine, never believed it, and never preached it, if you want absolute proof of it, the simplest thing in the world is to go back and read Martin Luther, John Calvin, Melancthon, Knox, all the Reformation thinkers …

— Dr. Walter Martin (Ph.D., California Coast University).

🏺 2. History Says Different

Originating from Smyrna, Irenaeus had seen and heard the preaching of Polycarp, student of the Apostle John, and thus was the last known living connection with the Apostles. Irenaeus held to Historic Premillennialism.

An even earlier source, Papias, another student of the Apostle John, also held to Historic Premillennialism. Makes you wonder, what it is that these dispensationalist teachers are actually teaching doesn’t it.

👁️‍🗨️ 3. Can Introduce Antinomianism

ℹ️ Disclaimer: Chuck Smith was a dispensationalist but he was definitely not a dispensational antinomian. If you want to stick to dispensationalism, Smith or Rhodes will teach it without antinomianism.

It’s true that justification is by faith alone (Eph 2:8-10; Rom 3:28), thats common to all protestants. It’s true that we are under grace and no longer under the law. The mistake this disp. sect is making is distorting scripture and the doctrine of faith alone.

Dispensational antinomianism holds that keeping the moral law is at no stage necessary for Christians, since we live under a dispensation of grace, not of law. Romans 3:31 and 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 clearly show, however, that law-keeping is a continuing obligation for Christians. ‘I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law,’ says Paul (1 Cor. 9:21).

— Dr. J. I. Packer (PhD, University of Oxford), Concise Theology. 66. Antinomianism: We are not set free to sin. On faith, on repentance.

Packer is a protestant that teaches faith alone, liberty from the law, and against the heresy of legalism. What he’s saying is what Paul is saying in Romans 3:31. It’s time for those lost in dispensational antinomianism to return to scripture. The Apostle Paul, through the inspiration of God, has provided the correction.

1 What shall we say then? Are we to remain in sin so that grace may increase? 2 Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not! — Romans 6:1-2,15 NET

These verses prove the following three things:

  1. We’re not under the law (Gal 2:16,21; 3:10-12; 5:4; Ro 3:20,28)
  2. We’re under grace (Eph 2:8-10)
  3. We still don’t make a “practice” of sin, abuse grace as a license to sin, or remain in sin (1 Jn 3:6-10; 5:18; Jd 4 NET; Ro 6:1-2,15; 3:8,31).

🆖 4. Did Chafer Diminish The Gospel Message Surrounding Repentance?

The True Meaning Of Repentance is a heartfelt sorrow for sin, a renouncing of it, and a sincere commitment to forsake it and walk in obedience to Christ. A new group has emerged in the 80s that has diminished this 2,000 year old truth and attempted to teach that it is only assent or “change of mind.” Beware this teaching! It’s not a Biblical or scholarly conclusion.

Many understand repentance to mean simply a “change of mind.” The weakness of this position is that, for the New Testament, this meaning finds no support in any authoritative Greek lexicon or in any modern English translation, none of which translate metanoéō and metánoia as “change of mind” for New Testament passages. It is a definition unique to Free Grace supporters, without scholarly support from the academic community or any standard Greek reference works. It also lacks support from any English translation of the Bible.

— Dr. Wayne Grudem (Ph.D., University of Cambridge; D.D., Westminster), “Free Grace” Theology: 5 Ways It Diminishes the Gospel. p. 70. Endorsed by 9 leading Biblical scholars.

Certain names & titles have been redacted to protect my audience from possible dangerous teachings by Chafer and the 80s Free Grace community. You can always refer to the source yourself as I’ve supplied it at the end of each text. It should be stated that I do not think that 80s “Free Grace” Theology is a false gospel, only an incomplete, weakened, or diminished one. I recommend moderate forms of protestantism instead.

6. The Relationship between Dispensationalism and the 80s Free Grace Movement

Historically, the initial source of the Free Grace view of the gospel was apparently not [redacted], its primary advocate in the 1980s and 1990s, but Lewis Sperry Chafer, the first president of Dallas Theological Seminary, especially in his Systematic Theology, where he says, “The New Testament does not impose repentance upon the unsaved as a condition of salvation.” However, Chafer’s main concern was to deny that repentance had to include “sorrow and heart-anguish,” so that “the way of salvation has thus been made impossible for all who do not experience the required anguish.” According to Chafer, because of this mistake, people are led “to measure the validity of their salvation by the intensity of anguish which preceded or accompanied it. It is in this manner that sorrow of heart becomes a more subtle form of meritorious work, and to that extent a contradiction of grace…. To imply, as preachers have done so generally, that God must be mollified… by human agony is a desperate form of unbelief.”35

Although my definition of repentance (p. 865) includes “a heartfelt sorrow for sin,” I would agree with Chafer that we should not tell people to “measure the validity of their salvation by the intensity of the anguish which preceded or accompanied it.” Therefore I have some sympathy with Chafer’s opposition to this pastoral mistake, which he apparently thought was too prevalent in his day. But I think he over-corrected the mistake by insisting that repentance only required a change of mind.

Chafer was a leading proponent of dispensationalism (see pp. 656, 1054) and the president of Dallas Theological Seminary from 1924 to 1952, but not all Dallas Seminary faculty or all who advocate Dispensational theology would hold a Free Grace view A controversy over this point erupted in American evangelicalism in 1988 when John MacArthur, himself a Dispensationalist, published The Gospel according to Jesus. This book, which features enthusiastic forewords by J. I. Packer and James Montgomery Boice, strongly criticized the views of writers like Chafer and [redacted] on evangelism and the nature of saving faith. MacArthur argued (I think convincingly) from many New Testament passages that one cannot truly accept Christ as Savior without also accepting him as Lord or, in other words, that there can be no true saving faith without genuine repentance in the sense of a commitment to forsake sin and walk in obedience to Christ as well. He said that any other view preaches a cheap gospel that offers unconverted people false security, telling them they are saved simply because they agreed that the facts of the gospel were true or prayed a prayer, but they had no true repentance and no real change of life. MacArthur argued that such unbiblical evangelism has never been the teaching of the church through history and that the weakened gospel heard so often as a result of Free Grace teaching has led to a whole generation of professing Christians whose lives are no different from the surrounding culture and who are really not saved at all. [redacted] quickly responded to MacArthur with another book,

[redacted]. As I have argued in this chapter, it seems clear that MacArthur was right to maintain that true saving faith in New Testament terms is more than mere intellectual assent to facts; it must include a heartfelt coming to Christ in personal dependence on him for salvation, combined with a heartfelt repentance from sin. It is misleading to brand this teaching “Lordship salvation” as if it were some new doctrine or as if there were any other kind of salvation—MacArthur is teaching what has been the historic position of Christian orthodoxy on this matter. This position is not salvation by works but simply states the gospel of free grace and salvation by grace through faith in all its biblical fullness. The change of life that will result from genuine conversion does not save us, but it will certainly result if our faith is genuine, for “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17).

— Dr. Wayne Grudem (Ph.D., University of Cambridge; D.D., Westminster), Systematic Theology 2nd ed., Chapter 35: Conversion (Faith and Repentance). pp. 875-6.

💭 5. Charles Ryrie Made Things Up To Make Dispensationalism Work

I feel just as betrayed as Heiser, as I was also raised in dispensational theology, and held to it for half my life.

@9:07 … I’m gonna say this; with a few of them, you really can say things like, they just gotta make stuff up to make it work. I was raised in classic dispensational thought, that was my first Christian context. And classic dispensationalism is Charles Ryrie and CI Scofield, those guys. And Ryrie got to the point where he had to… you have to understand; classic dispensationalism, I’ve been trying to teach you that prophecy is already but not yet. You got both things working. Classic dispensationalism says “there is no already. It’s all not yet.” And so, when Ryrie would get cornered on like Kingdom language and stuff like this, he literally in one of his books, he wanted so badly for the New Covenant to not be fulfilled in the New Testament. That he said “well then we need to expect a New-New Covenant.” Like he just made up a New-New Covenant, like right there in a book. Okay, can I invent something and have a system too? Is that the new ground rule now? Like you just make one up? I’m going to call my covenant, the Mike Covenant. You’ll see stuff like this happen. That when you look back on it, it makes you laugh, but like he was serious, he was serious about this. And he was a major figure in biblical scholarship in that tradition.

— Dr. Michael S. Heiser (PhD, University of Wisconsin). Dr. Heiser was a master of ancient languages, specifically Old Testament Biblical Hebrew, as well as Ancient Egyptian, and created the KJV, NIV, and NKJV Interlinears for Logos Bible Software. He was far greater than a normal theologian, he was a textual critic.

🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️ 6. Dispensationalism Effectively Teaches Two Second Comings

ℹ️ Disclaimer: This is technically a critique on pretribulational rapture, an option of premillennialism that can be made when selecting an eschatological system. It can exist independently from dispensationalism.

The Rapture is a belief that Jesus Christ will return initially for the church. He will come—but not quite to earth. Here’s how: Jesus will come, and then the church will be taken up to meet him. This view of the rapture is prominent in a system of theology called premillennial dispensationalism.

But here’s the problem: you end up with two second comings.

You get Jesus coming the first time for the church to rapture them away.

Then after a period of tribulation he comes again for the second time. This is the second part of the second coming, second coming 2.B where he comes with the church largely in judgment to rescue those who also became believers during a great period of great tribulation.

However, this isn’t what the Bible says about the rapture. The New Testament doesn’t split up the second coming of Jesus along those lines.

Instead, the second coming of Jesus is more singular, more unitary, more comprehensive, more definitive. There is a period of tribulation or trial that comes upon the world. There’s apostasy, and there’s persecution, the sort of thing spoken about in 1 Thessalonians. Then at the end of that, after a period of tribulation, Christ returns.

It’s not that the church is raptured to go meet him, but rather he returns definitively.

As Paul says, he then hands over the kingdom to the Father. This is the moment where Jesus will be by might what he is by right, Lord of all.

— Michael F. Bird (Ph.D., University of Queensland).

🌲 7. The Bible Only Speaks Of One Tree In Which We Are Grafted

Theology Stance
Dispensationalism The Church is separate from true Israel
Replacement Theology The Church has superseded true Israel
Covenant Theology The Church is an expansion of true Israel

16 And since Abraham and the other patriarchs were holy, their descendants will also be holy—just as the entire batch of dough is holy because the portion given as an offering is holy. For if the roots of the tree are holy, the branches will be, too.

17 But some of these branches from Abraham’s tree—some of the people of Israel—have been broken off. And you Gentiles, who were branches from a wild olive tree, have been grafted in. So now you also receive the blessing God has promised Abraham and his children, sharing in the rich nourishment from the root of God’s special olive tree. 18 But you must not brag about being grafted in to replace the branches that were broken off. You are just a branch, not the root.

19 “Well,” you may say, “those branches were broken off to make room for me.” 20 Yes, but remember—those branches were broken off because they didn’t believe in Christ, and you are there because you do believe. So don’t think highly of yourself, but fear what could happen. 21 For if God did not spare the original branches, he won’t spare you either.

22 Notice how God is both kind and severe. He is severe toward those who disobeyed, but kind to you if you continue to trust in his kindness. But if you stop trusting, you also will be cut off. 23 And if the people of Israel turn from their unbelief, they will be grafted in again, for God has the power to graft them back into the tree. 24 You, by nature, were a branch cut from a wild olive tree. So if God was willing to do something contrary to nature by grafting you into his cultivated tree, he will be far more eager to graft the original branches back into the tree where they belong.

— Romans 11:16-24 NLT

Just some food for thought.

And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you. — Galatians 3:29 NLT

✡️ 8. Some Dispensationalists Twist The Scriptures In Revelation To Silence Other Christian Groups

A common attack you might come across when speaking to a Dispensationalist is the one where they take Revelation 2:9 out of context to attack replacement theologians. I myself am not a replacement theologian or strict dispensationalist, but at the same time, I think these behaviors and interpretations by dispensationalists are in bad taste and fruitless.

“‘I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. — Revelation 2:9 (cf. Rev 3:9).

Dispensationalists incorrectly attempt to use this verse to silence anyone who would say that they are grafted in as Jews (figuratively) which is what the Bible teaches (Romans 11:16-24 NLT; Galatians 3:29 NLT). What some dispensationalists don’t know is that this verse is about false professors, those without genuine saving faith (a faith that results in obedience to God, repentance, and good works, that follow after we’re justified by faith alone.) In other words, it’s talking about those with a dead faith (James 2:14-26), false professors without the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:19-23). While those with a living faith are Jews (figuratively).

And I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not; who asserted themselves to be the true Israel of God, Jews that were so inwardly, regenerate persons, or truly Christians; for the Christians, baptized persons (m), were by the Heathens called Jews; but these were not, they professed Christianity in words, but in works denied it; they were men of bad principles and practices, and both blasphemed the ways and doctrines of Christ themselves, and caused them to be blasphemed by others also; they were false Christians, nominal professors, and shunned persecution for the Gospel; who were not what they would be thought to be: these were the broachers of heresies in this period of time, in which there was a multitude of them, and which chiefly respected the doctrine of the Trinity, and the person of Christ; and they were introducers of Pagan and Jewish rites into the church, and were men of flagitious lives and conversations, and paved the way for the man of sin: …

— Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

As you can see, these verses are about fruit-bearing. Dispensationalists warp the scriptures to attack both covenant theologians, and replacement theologians. I personally advocate for systemless textual criticism.

Other Sources

2:9 afflictions. Cf. v. 10 (“suffer persecution”). Includes economic hardship, verbal abuse, and marginalization, likely because they refused to participate in idolatrous trade guilds. your poverty—yet you are rich! This church is materially poor yet spiritually prosperous—the antithesis of Laodicea (3:17). Cf. 2 Cor 8:2, 9; Jas 2:5. synagogue of Satan. Smyrna’s large, influential Jewish population persecuted Christians, possibly slandering them in Roman court, thereby aligning with Satan against God’s purposes (cf. 3:9; John 8:44–47; Acts 13:10).

— The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, 165 scholars (100+ NIV; 65 Study); Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, California, London, Belfast, Claremont, Denver, Westminister, & Dallas.

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REVELATION—NOTE ON 2:8–11 To Smyrna. Churches in Smyrna and Philadelphia (3:7–13) receive no rebuke from King Jesus, who encourages them as they endure persecution. Roman Smyrna (modern Izmir) was a harbor city renowned for its temple to the Mother Goddess and for its provincial imperial cult temples to Tiberius (1st century A.D.) and Hadrian (2nd century). Strabo in his Geography (14.1.37) reported early-first-century Smyrna to be a beautiful city possessing paved streets, a library, a gymnasium, and a shrine to Homer, who may have been born there. A few inscriptions point to a Jewish presence in the city. Jewish opposition to Christians in Smyrna was alleged in the martyrdom accounts of Polycarp and of Pionius (2nd and 3rd centuries, respectively; cf. 2:9).

— The ESV Study Bible has over 200+ biblical scholars (100+ ESV; 95 Study); 9 countries, 20 denominations, 50 seminaries, colleges, and universities, including Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, London, Japan, California, MIT, Duke, Westminister, Dallas, etc. 20,000 study notes, 80,000 cross-references, 200+ charts, 50+ articles, 240 full-color maps and illustrations. Textual Basis: Masoretic Text BHS ‘83, DSS, LXX, SP, S, Vg; UBS5, NA28.

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2:9 Although there will yet be great tribulation (7:14) unparalleled in world history (see Matt. 24:21), believers must expect to suffer much tribulation even in the present age (see Acts 14:22). Christians hindered by poverty in this life can take consolation in the fact that they possess great spiritual riches in Christ (see Eph. 1:18). Those who say they are Jews and are not are either Jewish proselytes or Jews who refuse to believe the scriptural proof that Jesus is the promised Messiah (see Rom. 2:28, 29). Calling these Jews a synagogue of Satan probably indicates that they were persecuting the believers.

3:9 Those in Philadelphia who ultimately belonged to Satan, though they claimed to be Jews outwardly (see Rom. 2:28, 29), would ultimately be forced to worship before the church and to acknowledge that Christ has loved His own (20:4, 6).

— NKJV Thomas Nelson Study Bible translation has 177 Scholars, and the study includes many others.

🚦 9. All Signs Point To The Second Coming

All verses used to support the rapture can also be applied to a post-trib stance. Remember that even in dispensationalism, all signs and prophecies point to the second coming, none to the rapture.



“The words of the wise are like cattle prods—painful but helpful. Their collected sayings are like a nail-studded stick with which a shepherd drives the sheep.” ― Ecclesiastes 12:11