Originally published in "The Lord's Coming Herald & Wesleyan Bible Prophecy Advocate," Summer Edition 2000
A Scheme Imposed Upon The New Testament
The popular evangelical fundamentalist
approach to end-time Bible prophecy studies has, for the past twentieth century,
been dominated by the influence of a theory called "Darbyism."
By Darbyism we mean the dispensational premillennial school
of Bible prophecy/salvation history interpretation that originated in England in
the mid-nineteenth century, but never took root in the American Wesleyan
Holiness Movement until it became equated with fundamentalism in the modernist
theological controversies of the 1920's.
Darbyism is most centrally a "scheme" of Daniel's prophecy of
the Seventy Weeks that is sought to be superimposed upon the New Testament. In
other words, Darbyism is a preconceived "grid" of ideological understanding
that, in its practical outworking, has become a magnet for the attraction and
measurement of the entire theology of the New Testament. Hence dispensational
premillennialism is, in essence, a definition of what constitutes biblical
Christianity.
What, then, is the Darbyite construction of Christianity?
Among other things, it consists of the assertion that Christ
came to offer the Jews the promised Old Testament messianic kingdom, but,
because of their rejection of him as the Messiah, the kingdom was "postponed."
Friends, the postponement of the kingdom theology of popular
dispensational premillennialism derives solely from the attempt to superimpose
Sir Robert Anderson's false theory of Daniel's prophecy of the Seventy Weeks upon the
New Testament. The fact is, however, that the New Testament itself gives no hint
that Jesus ever offered—or even intended to offer--a political kingdom to the
Jews that was postponed to them in the first century, or that in this present
age is now on hold.
The Darbyite construction of Christianity entails a "Church
age" having no "Messiah." It offers modern man a
liberally-tainted "existential" religion devoid of
the Christ and the redemptive, socially-transforming power of His kingdom.
Darbyism's effect on the church has been to produce a harvest
of antinomianism; its prospect for the world--in self-fulfilling prophecy
style--the bleak picture of coming Armageddon.
Related Article Links
Shaken Foundations Of Popular Darbyism
Artificial Distinctions Of Dispensationalism
The Biblical Alterntive To Dispensationalism