![]() Whereas the Catholic Church is silent about how this might take place, dispensationalists have formed detailed and elaborate scenarios about Israel in the “Last Days.” Catholic teaching emphasizes the future reality of repentance and spiritual renewal on the part of “all Israel” but says nothing about the necessity of Israel returning to the Promised Land. The “full inclusion” of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of “the full number of the Gentiles,” will enable the People of God to achieve “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” in which “God may be all in all” (674). The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by “all Israel,” for “a hardening has come upon part of Israel” in their “unbelief” toward Jesus. And the Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting extensively from Romans 11, states, Many Christians, throughout the centuries, have believed that the Jews would either be restored to the Promised Land or would finally recognize Christ as the true Messiah. But they also face future horrors worse than anything yet encountered in millennia of suffering and persecution. ![]() In the premillennial system the Jews enjoy a privileged niche. What writers have had to say on these subjects has influenced millions of Americans’ perceptions of events in the Middle East––and of their Jewish fellow citizens. The historian Paul Boyer, in When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Harvard University Press, 1998), gave this summary: The relationship between American dispensationalism and the nation of Israel is complicated sometimes odd and filled with political, historical, and theological ramifications. As one dispensationalist author excitedly wrote shortly afterward, “there isn’t the slightest doubt that the emergence of the Nation Israel among the family of nations is the greatest piece of prophetic news that we have had in the twentieth century.” This event, for dispensationalists, was the event of the century. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was established. Jerome translated the Greek word harpazo (“caught up”) into the Latin word rapiemur.īack to Israel. Ironically, the word “Rapture” is taken from the Vulgate, as St. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. This belief is based in part on a poor interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17:įor the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first. What is the Rapture? It is a secret and silent removal of Christians from earth-not to be confused with the Second Coming, which is later, loud, and very public. The prophetic clock is paused until the spiritual remnant, the Church, is removed from earth by the Rapture. Salvation history has been detoured into the Church age (one of the seven “dispensations” of the system) until the Jewish people are ready to return to God. As Darby and his followers taught, Jesus offered a newly restored, earthly Davidic kingdom to the Jewish people but was flatly rejected.Īnd so Jesus had to go to a back-up plan and establish the Church, which is a “parenthetical” insert into history. Walvoord (1910-2002) put it, “it is not too much to say that the Rapture question is determined more by ecclesiology than eschatology.” This means that nearly all prophecies found in Scripture have yet to be fulfilled it also means that most of what Jesus taught was for the Jews only, not for Christians. Or, as noted dispensationalist theologian John F. Evangelical historian Timothy Weber, in Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism 1875-1925 (Oxford University Press, 1979), explained that Darby “claimed that the doctrine virtually jumped out of the pages of Scripture once he accepted and consistently maintained the distinction between Israel and the church.” This radical distinction between Israel and the Church shapes and informs the entire dispensationalist understanding of Scripture. It was John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), an ex-Church of Ireland priest and a leader in the Plymouth Brethren movement, who established the foundational premise of the belief system: God has two people-the Church and the Jews-and whereas the former is “properly heavenly in its calling and relationship with Christ,” the latter still await the “literal” fulfillment of Old Testament promises of an earthly kingdom centered on Jerusalem and a rebuilt Temple. It’s important to understand that premillennial dispensationalism is quite new, fairly convoluted and fragmented, and rejected by a wide range of Protestants.
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