I teach a seminary-sponsored Prof-Insight seminar each summer on the interpretation of the book of Revelation. This is meant to help church workers and lay people correctly read and understand this somewhat enigmatic book of the Bible. Each year I encounter seminar participants who hold to the dispensational approach of interpreting Revelation (popularized in the Left Behind series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins from 1994–2004). In these seminars I undertake to lovingly dissuade them from the dispensational persuasion so that they embrace the classical (and Lutheran) hermeneutical approach. In my experience this dispensational view is more typical of lay people who are not raised Lutheran. But it is not uncommon to find that even some who are long-time Lutherans are influenced by dispensational thinking.
Because I lead this seminar on a regular basis, I seek to stay informed on scholarship of the final book of the Bible by reading recent commentaries and essays on it. I have noticed over the past decades decreasing numbers of Evangelical (i.e., Reformed and Baptist) authors who espouse the futurist dispensational hermeneutic. I’m pleased to see that they interpret the characters, numbers, and places in the apocalypse symbolically rather than literally. They disavow a geo-political reading of the book and don’t engage in timelines involving a secret rapture, seven-year tribulation, military invasion of national Israel, and so on.
I have further observed this moving away from dispensationalism while attending scholarly presentations on Revelation at the annual gathering of the Evangelical Theological Society. In my hearing, not a single presenter has advocated a dispensational position. Instead, they demonstrate a hermeneutical approach that is congruent with that which the LCMS has historically used. Interestingly, during one such presentation’s Q&A time, a questioner asked whether the “mark of the beast” was in fact a computer chip embedded in flesh, and he was met by frowning not only from the presenter but also all the members of the table panel (and most of the audience, too).
What I have described heretofore is anecdotal to my experience. But a more thoroughgoing analysis of the decline of dispensational theology has been documented by a historian of contemporary Christianity in the United State. Daniel G. Hummel (University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director of the Lumen Center) recently published a book entitled The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism.[i] The title captures the content of the book. As a historian, Hummel recounts the history of dispensational theology in the last two centuries from its beginnings with John Nelson Darby (who brought his unconventional theological thinking from Ireland to America) through its adoption by populist fundamentalism, to proponents such as D. L. Moody, C. I. Scofield, and R. A. Torrey, to its endorsement by Dallas Theological Seminary and popularizing by Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye. It is a fascinating read of historical scholarship, with some surprises for this reader, including a section on a prominent Lutheran advocate of dispensationalism, Rev. Joseph A. Seiss (who in the mid-1800s pastored the largest Lutheran congregation in America and helped found the General Synod).
To the point of this essay, however, is the record of how dispensationalism in recent decades has fallen into isolation and even disrepute among conservative theological schools that had earlier endorsed it. This is what Hummel calls the decline of scholastic dispensationalism. This movement began in the 1990s and accelerated in the 2000s (ironically while the Left Behind series was in its heyday). For example, leadership in the Southern Baptist convention (both denominational and academic) shifted in the 1990s and 2000s from dispensational to covenantalist theology.
Hummel chronicles case-by-case the scholastic defections from dispensationalism at the turn of the millennium. Even Dallas Theological Seminary underwent a schism between the old-school dispensationalists and a new generation of theologians who hold to “progressive dispensationalism” (which is more integrative of the biblical covenants and of Israel and the church). Hummel writes that by the first decade of the new century, “Many of the leading colleges and universities founded by dispensationalists—Biola University, Gordon College, Multnomah College, Trinity International University—continued to grow and even thrive as schools, but they joined each other in ditching distinctly dispensational curricula. Most faculty at these schools claimed little influence and found little inspiration from scholastic dispensationalism, and most students left having little or no knowledge of the system, either.”[ii] Hummel concludes: “In 2004, dispensationalism was a movement with no vested national leaders, a scholastic tradition with no young scholars, a commercial behemoth with no internal cohesion.”[iii]
So, does this mean that we can toss dirt on the grave of dispensational theology? Perhaps so with its scholastic tradition, but not with its populist influence. This is why I continue to encounter participants at my Prof-Insight seminar who are shocked to discover that I don’t espouse belief in a secret rapture or seven-year tribulation or final battle in the Jezreel valley. All you must do is listen to popular preachers on the radio or influencers on the Internet to see that dispensationalist theology is still accessible to millions. I recently received the catalog for Christian Book Distributors and almost every book on eschatology is from the dispensational perspective. There remains in our American culture a strong appetite for sensational teaching on the “end times” from within the dispensational framework.
Accordingly, Lutheran pastors and teachers must continue to expound the scriptures and catechize our members with sound confessional theology, including the teaching of matters of eschatology. Our historic interpretation of apocalyptic sections of the Bible, including the book of Revelation, is far richer and robust than the artificial framework of dispensationalism. I have experienced the joy of watching laypeople move from the sensationalism of dispensational thinking to the deeper truths of eschatology that are now and forever realized in the victorious work of Jesus Christ. He reigns supreme over his new Israel, the church, and will come again to gather his bride and restore creation. That is an enduring theology that will not rise and fall like populist eschatology!
[i] Daniel G. Hummel, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation (Eerdmans, 2023).
[ii] Hummel, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, 316–317.
[iii] Hummel, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, 322.
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