The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle over the End Times Shaped a Nation

by Daniel G. Hummel

Its features are largely the product of a “literal” reading of the Hebrew prophets and book of Revelation, meaning a biblical interpretative strategy, or hermeneutic, that assumes physical and observable fulfillments of prophecy in historical time that are not simply allegorical or spiritual. The “system” of dispensationalism employs this literal hermeneutic and combines it with a “historical grammatical” method that strives to discover original authorial intent by reducing allegorical readings of all biblical passages in favor of a single objective interpretation. This objectivity extends to prophecy, which dispensationalists anticipate as being fulfilled in a single, preordained way by God. In addition to an eschatology, dispensationalism is also a theory of time. Dispensationalists divide history into discrete units, or “dispensations.” Most commonly, dispensational authors teach that there are seven total dispensations. In this system, we live in the sixth, or second to last. The most crucial point, however, is not the number but the pattern. If human history is a story of dispensations, it is a history of human failure and God’s persistent faithfulness.