The Millennial Maze - Part 3

Dispensational Premillennialism

Dispensational premillennialism offers the most complex chronology of the end times.  According to dispensationalism, the current church age will end with the rapture of the church, which, along with the appearance of the Antichrist, marks the beginning of the seven-year great tribulation on earth.  The tribulation will end with the battle of Armageddon, in the midst of which Christ will return to destroy His enemies.  The nations will then be gathered for judgment. Those who supported Israel will enter into Christ's millennial kingdom, and the rest will be cast into Hades to await the last judgment.  Christ will sit on the throne of David and rule the world from Jerusalem.  Israel will be given the place of homor among the nations again.  The temple will have been rebuilt and the temple sacrifices will be reinstituted as memorial sacrifices.  At the end of the millennium, Satan will be released and lead unbelievers in rebellion against Christ and the New Jerusalem.  The rebellion will be crushed by fire from heaven, and Satan will be cast into the lake of fire.  The wicked will be brought before the Great White Throne, judged, and cast into the lake of fire, and at this point the eternal state will commence.

The dispensationalist version of premillennialism originated in the nineteenth century within the Brethren Movement.  Its distinctives first appear in the writings of John Nelson Darby (1800-1882).  Dispensational premilennialism caught on rapidly in the United States through the Bible Conference Movement.  It was popularized by C. I. Scofield in the notes to his reference Bible and was systematized by Lewis Sperry Chafer, the founder of Dallas Theological Seminary and the author of an eight-volume dispensational systematic theology text.  In the twentieth century, this view was taught on a more scholarly level by men, such as John Walvoord, Charles Ryrie, and J. Dwight Pentecost, and it was popularized by authors such as Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye.
   (Dr. Keith A. Mathison, Reformation Bible College, Tabletalk, Dec. 2013)