Dispensationalism has been in the news recently. Pastors who teach the rapture, the looming antichrist, and a false peace treaty with Israel (among other end-times expectations) have been weighing in on the prophetic significance of the Israel-Hamas war that started on October 7, 2023. This is true for telegenic megachurch pastors like Robert Jeffress and Greg Laurie and for hundreds of less prominent preachers too.
In moments of heightened interest in the Middle East, it can seem to outsiders of evangelicalism (and even to many evangelicals) that this popular dispensational perspective on geopolitics is the evangelical perspective writ large. Most evangelicals (including most informed dispensationalists) know this isn’t the case, of course. But how then should we understand both the extent and the limits of this theology’s influence on American evangelicalism?
I recently published The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, so I should have some thoughts on this topic, especially since the “fall” in the title seems, at first pass, to contradict the recent prominence of popular and pulpit dispensationalist chatter. Some key definitions and distinctions will help us make sense of the already fluid evangelical landscape’s complex and potentially confusing theological scene.
Definitions and Distinctions
First, dispensationalism is much more than an end-times scenario, even if this aspect of theology receives the most attention (and, admittedly, is the most popular part of media coverage). It’s a robust theological system based on a commitment to a particular biblical hermeneutic that shapes adherents’ approaches to many issues in church life and society. Its distinctive eschatology finds wide audiences, but there are other core teachings with profound effects on biblical interpretation such as the distinction between the church and Israel and the future orientation of the kingdom of God.
Second, there are at least two major dispensational traditions worth discussing in today’s context. They’re related but distinct. There’s a scholarly dispensationalism that’s discussed and taught in some seminaries, Christian colleges, and churches but that has a relatively small evangelical constituency and footprint, especially compared to previous generations.
There’s also a popular dispensationalism that inspires books, television, movies, music, and other media. It’s taught in some churches—including large ones—and it’s present in some circles of evangelical politics. What we might call “pop-dispensationalism” is the version most Americans know best—the version presented in the Left Behind novels and movies, and parodied in Hollywood comedies like This is the End.
There are important connections between scholarly and pop-dispensationalism, of course, but there are lots of differences—in style, approach, credibility, and substance. Without acknowledging these distinctions, we fail to accurately understand the doctrine’s influence on American evangelicalism.
Modeled on Charles Ryrie’s era-defining Dispensationalism Today (1965), which took stock largely of the scholarly dispensationalism of the 1960s, this brief tour through dispensationalism today (2024) will skim the surface of the dialectic between the scholarly and the popular dimensions that was much less prominent in 1965.
1. Pop-dispensational media remains popular among evangelicals.
Pop-dispensationalism continues to inform the theological and spiritual lives of millions of Christians—in multiple settings and through multiplying forms of media. Taking book publishing as one example, a chart of bestsellers in the subgenre of “Christian eschatology” (such as Amazon’s) reveals that dispensationalist-inspired analyses of modern politics top the charts. Books by David Jeremiah, Amir Tsarfati, and Jonathan Cahn are routinely at the top. And books in this vein are being issued by large publishers like Thomas Nelson, Baker, and Tyndale.
In other mediums, pop-dispensationalists remain highly visible: television preaching (Jeffress and the recently deceased Charles Stanley) and radio (John MacArthur, Chuck Swindoll) to name a couple. Left Behind witnessed another film entry in 2023, this time directed by Kevin Sorbo.
It’s worth reflecting not just on the quantity and reach of this output but on its quality. Here, the situation is less impressive. Many of the bestsellers are an endless churn of analyses and predictions. This has potentially deformative spiritual effects on its consumers.
Like its predecessors in the 1970s (books like Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth and films like A Thief in the Night), such media presents eschatology in a way that’s disconnected from the movement’s undergirding theological commitments. More thoughtful dispensationalists have lamented this for decades, but it hasn’t stemmed the tide.
Unlike its predecessors, today’s pop-dispensationalism is also highly bound by evangelical culture and appeal. While the 1970s progenitors claimed, and no doubt succeeded in numerous cases, to be reaching non-Christians with the gospel message (though they problematically used a popular fascination with pop-eschatology as their evangelism tool), current pop-dispensationalism doesn’t play this role to the same extent. Its products are aimed at and marketed to existing evangelicals.
2. Scholarly dispensationalism has declined in recent decades.
The weaknesses of pop-dispensationalism are exacerbated today because its commercial and consumer-driven growth have further propelled it away from the scholarly theological tradition.
Unlike its predecessors, today’s pop-dispensationalism is also highly bound by evangelical culture and appeal.
The two traditions experienced tension even at the height of scholarly dispensational influence in the 1950s and 1960s, but especially since then, they’ve diverged. This is both because the doctrine has come under increasing scrutiny by historical detractors in evangelical theology and biblical studies and because once-secure dispensationalist institutions have discarded the theology.
While dispensationalism was never the sole theological tradition among fundamentalists or evangelicals (think of the amillennial Calvinism of Westminster Theological Seminary or the historic premillennialism of George Eldon Ladd), by the 1950s, it was one of the dominant paradigms. It had a large stable of Bible institutes and colleges, a growing set of seminaries represented best by Dallas, Talbot, and Grace (in three separate geographic and cultural regions of the U.S.), and an impressive list of nationally renowned scholars.
Yet beginning with critics like Oswald T. Allis in the 1940s and Ladd in the 1950s, conservative opponents of the doctrine have leveled—and expanded—sustained theological, biblical, and intellectual critiques. Add in British critics, from John Stott to N. T. Wright, as well as the turn away from dispensationalism in academic Pentecostal and Southern Baptist circles in recent decades, and it occupies a much smaller piece of the theological pie today than at any time in the last century.
At the same time, once-stable strongholds of this theology have turned away from their historical influences. Examples like Biola University are evident throughout the Christian college and university world. Founded by dispensationalists like Reuben A. Torrey and William E. Blackstone in 1908, Biola today exhibits a thin—and in some places, entirely silent—dispensationalist influence.
Another recent casualty is Multnomah University, a one-time Bible institute and stalwart of dispensational training under its longtime president Willard Aldrich that’s now being subsumed under Jessup University as a satellite school. Moreover, some denominations show the same trend. The Evangelical Free Church of America (merged in 1950 as a solidly premillennial and dispensationalist-influenced denomination) dropped “premillennial” from its statement of faith in 2019.
All that said, the “fall” of this doctrine may be best described as relative rather than absolute. Professional dispensationalist scholars—including Michael Vlach, Michael J. Svigel, and Cory Marsh—continue to publish scholarly works in theology, biblical studies, and history. Midsize and small presses like Paternoster Press and SCS Press issue books advocating dispensational perspectives. Scholarly dispensationalists participate in the Evangelical Theological Society and maintain smaller networks of their own.
3. The effect of these two trends on evangelicalism has been mixed.
These two developments—the spread of a thin, undertheologized pop-dispensationalism and the decline of scholarly dispensationalism—are the essence of what I mean by the “fall” of this doctrine in the last half century. Yet a fall is neither a death nor an absence. Dispensationalism remains relevant, though its influence is mixed today.
Dispensationalism remains relevant, though its influence is mixed today.
There remain seminaries and schools that, at least on paper, adhere to this theology. This includes Dallas Theological Seminary and Liberty University, which are two of the largest nondenominational institutions for training pastors in the country. There are smaller seminaries, like Southern California Seminary, The Master’s Seminary, and Shepherd’s Theological Seminary, committed to dispensational distinctives. Undergraduate schools like Moody Bible Institute remain in the fold as well.
In each of these cases, however, the lived reality of the dispensationalism taught and received by students, at least anecdotally, spans a spectrum from clear and affirming to spotty and sometimes “in name only.” Moreover, adherents admit to difficulty gaining the attention of mainstream academic publishers and journals, which has further circumscribed scholarly dispensationalism’s influence both inside and outside higher education.
The largest and most newsworthy movements to organize and expand evangelical ministry in recent decades have notably been absent of dispensationalist leadership. And not just absent; many have been hostile. These movements, it should be clear, vary in their continuity with historic evangelical theological commitments—but they’re the movements of the day and they reveal where organizational energy in the evangelical world is concentrated.
Going back to the 1990s, the Emergent Church, the “Young, Restless, and Reformed,” the “Third Way” proponents, advocates of Christian nationalism, the Red Letter Christians, and so forth have all been critical of dispensational theology—and for different reasons. Compare this to 70 years ago when the global missions movement, the youth and college ministry movement, and (a couple of decades later) the Jesus People movement and Messianic Judaism, among others, were all animated in significant ways by dispensationalists and their theology.
Perhaps one area where dispensationalists still represent leadership among a broader sector of evangelicalism is in defending a cessationist view of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Two adherents, MacArthur and Justin Peters, are popular voices on this front. But this theological position is under increasing pressure in the U.S. and globally from both Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal Christians.
Combined, these trajectories point to a decline, though a complicated one, in dispensationalism’s generative momentum within American evangelicalism.
4. Pop-dispensationalism isn’t as relevant to national politics as it once was.
While the fortunes of pop-dispensationalism in commercial and consumer spheres has been stunning, one key area of past influence is waning: church-based political leadership.
In the 1920s, figures like William Bell Riley and J. Frank Norris waged war on evolution and alcohol. In the 1950s, John R. Rice, Billy James Hargis, and J. Vernon McGee had some of the largest platforms in the country to attack communism. In the 1980s, Jerry Falwell and Tim LaHaye led the charge against secular humanism. To a man, they believed or were highly sympathetic to the doctrine.
While there remain examples of prominent dispensational pastors weighing in on politics (Jeffress and John Hagee, or John MacArthur on COVID policies), the center of gravity in conservative evangelical politics has swung in other directions. In the 1980s, one of the harshest critics of this doctrine was a newly vocal postmillennial “reconstructionism” that today finds voice in a growing postmillennial nationalism. Doug Wilson, one of the representatives of this movement, was himself a dispensationalist earlier in his life. His “deconversion” from this theology isn’t unique, and the growth of his brand of conservative Reformed postmillennialism in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere is a sign of bigger theological trends.
The center of gravity in conservative evangelical politics has swung in other directions.
More relevant even than Reformed postmillennialism has been the Pentecostalization of Christian political activism in America. Paula White and others served as advisors to Donald Trump, and Hagee runs the largest pro-Israel advocacy group in the country, Christians United for Israel.
Hagee combines strands of modified dispensational eschatology (he has published numerous pop-dispensational books) with Pentecostal and prosperity teachings, creating a potent mix of appeals to diverse constituencies and varied motives for Christian support for Israel. Hagee’s influences allow him to be an American bridge with a global Christian Zionist network that’s overwhelmingly Pentecostal, prosperity-oriented (focusing especially on Gen. 12:3), and antidispensational in key parts of its theology. Much of international Christian Zionism today, as hard as it is to imagine from a U.S. perspective, is substantively and rhetorically opposed to the doctrine.
White, for her part, is closer to a Dominionist position, calling for Christians to assume authority in society and culture. In political circles, this vantage—and that of global pentecostal and charismatic “network” Christianity more broadly—aligns more with conservative Reformed postmillennialism than with dispensationalists and today supplies much of the energy organizing evangelicals politically.
Dispensationalism’s Future
These four snapshots paint a complex picture of dispensationalism today, spanning scholarly, cultural, and political spheres. There’s no way to know how exactly this doctrine will develop in the next 50 years, but if it does witness revived influence in evangelical seminaries, or capture the imagination of Gen Z evangelicals, it’ll be a notable reversal of current trends.
At the same time, if pop-dispensationalism loses its commercial appeal, it’ll be newsworthy as well, and it’ll likely signal a sea change in evangelical culture more broadly—the passing of an often dominant presence in evangelical culture since the 1970s.
Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?
In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
