Enraptured

Matt Littlefield is posting about the rapture on his Substack account, and I couldn’t let that slip by without a little light commentary.

The post is entitled “Missed Another Rapture?”, and it’s about the false claims and erroneous connections made by some fringe dispensational Bible enthusiasts eager to be assured the Lord’s return will happen in their lifetime.

I don’t generally pay attention to the prediction-makers in Christendom. I truly believe it’s a fool’s errand to presume esoteric knowledge the Lord never intended us to pursue.

The Autumn Feasts Fulfilled?

Anyway, Matt is putting all these questionable predictions on his mental calendar and striking them off as, one by one, they prove wrong. Perhaps it makes it easier for him to dismiss the biblical alternative to Covenant Theology when some of its adherents say dodgy things online. He’s noted an inordinate number of September predictions for Christ’s return to the air. I’ll let him describe the mindset that produces so many of these:

“Dispensationalists believe the Spring Feasts (Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, and Pentecost) were fulfilled precisely by the First Coming of Christ (His death, burial, resurrection, and the sending of the Holy Spirit). They reason that the Autumn Feasts will likewise be fulfilled by the events of the Second Coming.”

Hence, the cluster of hyper-specific September rapture prognostications. The first of the Jewish autumn feasts is Rosh Hashanah, or the Feast of Trumpets.

The Trumpet Sounds

Matt continues:

“The argument is straightforward from their perspective: The Rapture is associated with a trumpet blast. The next feast on God’s prophetic calendar that involves a trumpet blast is the Feast of Trumpets. Therefore, they argue that it is a compelling candidate for the timing of the Rapture.”

I don’t suppose there’s much point in protesting that “not all dispensationalists” believe these things. I certainly don’t, and I’ve never made a rapture prediction or paid any attention to one in my life. Not only do I not know many dispensationalists who believe the rapture will occur in autumn, I do not know any at all. I guess Matt and I associate with very different types of dispensationalists. I won’t say he’s tilting at a straw man, but the other side of the argument he’s rebutting is one with which I’m entirely unfamiliar, and which I don’t find any more convincing than he does.

I’ve been a dispensationalist, though I did not always use the name, for my entire Christian life, and the only comment I’ve ever made in this space about trumpets and the rapture was this one last year:

“There are numerous trumpet calls in the New Testament, and no reason to try to identify the trumpet blast of 1 Thessalonians 4 with any particular one of these.”

For many dispensationalists, and certainly for Yours Truly, the trumpets are a non-issue.

The National Rebirth of Israel

Matt goes on to complain that dispensationalists tie the national rebirth of Israel to their expectation concerning the timing of the Lord’s return. This criticism hits closer to home, but again misses the mark:

“Since Israel is seen as the “fig tree” of Matthew 24:32-34, its rebirth in 1948 is considered the starting gun for the final generation. Calculations based on a generation being 70-80 years (Psalm 90:10) often point to a window of time culminating in the 2020s, with September being the focal point each year.”

Again, he writes:

“It should be noted that tying the return of Jesus Christ to the establishment of modern Israel, is a core tenet of dispensationalism. Therefore, while more moderate teachers of this school caution against predictions, their system really drives them. The system itself, however, is clearly flawed as it has had to be constantly readjusted to accommodate the fact that the end has not come within a generation of the establishment of Israel.”

I concede some dispensationalists of my acquaintance believed ours was the final generation. A few still do. The question is whether that idea is indeed a core tenet of the dispensational system, and I would contend it is not. It is not the system itself that is flawed, but the thinking of a generation of dispensationalists who got overexcited about the apparent rebirth of Israel and added a new and questionable feature to an existing theological framework that stood very well on its own two feet without their eager attempts to buttress it with their new ideas.

Dispensationalism and Darby

Why do I say this? Because Matt’s fellow Covenant Theologians are always telling us that dispensationalism and belief in the rapture originated with J.N. Darby:

“Rapture doctrine did not exist before John Darby invented it in 1830 AD. Before it ‘popped into John Darby’s head’ no one had ever heard of a secret rapture doctrine.”

Matt Ayars sets out that argument for the umpteenth time just six months ago here, and Sarah Fern effectively rebuts it here. Nevertheless, the popular misconception within the Reformed crowd about Darby’s foundational role in dispensational teaching and belief in the rapture continues. You see this argument all the time online, and I dealt with that misconception here way back in 2016.

Even Wikipedia calls Darby “the father of modern dispensationalism and futurism” and a popularizer of pre-tribulation rapture theology. In this they are (somewhat surprisingly) closer to accurate than the CT folks, in that they recognize that Darby did not invent the dispensational system, he simply modernized and popularized an existing set of beliefs that I and most dispensationalists would contend go all the way back to the apostle Paul. Darby took Paul’s statements in Thessalonians and Corinthians literally, which the Covenant Theologians of his day did not, and the Reformers of today still read figuratively.

A Core Tenet?

So then, Matt cannot have it both ways. It’s quite impossible that tying the return of Jesus Christ to the establishment of modern Israel is a “core tenet of dispensationalism” when the so-called “father of dispensationalism” and popularizer of rapture theology lived and wrote in 1830 and died in 1882, long before Israel once again became a nation in 1948. Obviously, for Darby and generations of believers in the rapture and some version of the dispensationalist system, their eschatology did not depend on interpreting Matthew 24:32-35 to make Israel’s rebirth the “starting gun for the final generation”.

Now, Darby certainly believed God would one day re-establish Israel as a nation, and full credit to him for his faith in a political development that must have looked impossible in his day. But Darby’s proto-Zionist faith was based not on some specific interpretation of the words of Jesus in Matthew 24, but rather on the historic promises of God to Israel, which Darby correctly believed can and will never be abrogated.

No Starting Gun

In short, I can find no specific dependence in Darby’s writings on any time-sensitive fulfillment of Matthew 24:32-35. For Darby or his generation, that event was not the “starting gun” Matt Littlefield would like to make it.

Did some dispensationalists in the mid-to-late 1900s teach that specific interpretation of Matthew 24 and, perhaps erroneously, lead others to look for the rapture by the 2020s? No doubt. But to say dispensationalism stands or falls on the Lord returning within a generation of the nation of Israel’s re-establishment is both misinformed and quite unfair to thoughtful and attentive dispensational believers. The system works perfectly well without it.