Dispensationalism

Allow me to pass along the response to a previous question like this:

“Dispensationalism is a false interpretive approach to Scripture developed by John Nelson Darby. Darby divided history into various periods characterized by a new test of natural man by God, each ending in man’s failure. He proposed that God had two distinctive plans for history, one for the nation of Israel (God’s earthly people), the other for the church (God’s heavenly people). When Israel rejected Jesus, God created the church out of the Gentiles or non-Jews. Darby proposed that God would ‘rapture’ the church before the ‘great tribulation’ and eventually set up a political, millennial kingdom in Israel where Christ would rule physically and visibly.

“Dispensationalism was popularized in America through a preaching tour conducted by Darby and a series of prophetic conferences known as the Niagara Conferences. It received its most widely accepted form through the work of Cyrus I. Scofield, popularized in the Scofield Reference Bible. Scofield proposed seven different dispensations (innocence, conscience, human government, promise, law, grace, and kingdom). This approach to Scripture and the study of the last times is the most common view taught in fundamentalist and evangelical schools and churches.”

WELS rejects dispensationalism and its errors associated with the end times. We state in This We Believe: “We reject the teaching that Christ will reign on earth for a thousand years in a physical, earthly kingdom. This teaching (millennialism) has no valid scriptural basis and falsely leads Christians to set their hopes upon an earthly kingdom of Christ (John 18:36). We reject as unscriptural any claim that Christians will be physically removed, or ‘raptured,’ from the earth prior to judgment day. We likewise reject as unscriptural any claim that all the Jews will be converted in the final days.”