Strange Theology – Part I

Historical Roots, Hermeneutics, and the Rise of Dispensational Futurism:

Throughout the history of the Christian church, theological controversy has been a recurring and unavoidable reality. From the earliest centuries, ecclesial leaders convened councils and synods to address doctrinal disputes and to define orthodox belief in response to teachings perceived as erroneous or destabilizing. Despite these efforts, theological ideas—both old and new—have continued to resurface in altered forms. Some represent legitimate attempts to refine or clarify doctrine; others, however, reintroduce long-discarded errors under novel guises. Such developments warrant careful attention and critical scrutiny.

This observation should not be misconstrued as a wholesale rejection of theological innovation or doctrinal re-examination. To adopt such a posture would imply that the church has already attained complete and final theological understanding—a claim Scripture itself explicitly denies. As the apostle Paul reminds believers, “For now we see through a glass, darkly… now I know in part” (1 Cor. 13:12). Intellectual humility, therefore, is not optional but essential. Nevertheless, any proposal that challenges established Christian doctrine must demonstrate fidelity to Scripture as a whole and coherence with the core truths consistently affirmed by the historic church. Equally important is attentiveness to the interpretive judgments of earlier generations who wrestled with the same biblical texts and theological questions.

While tracing the full history of doctrinal development can be demanding, the church is not without resources. A substantial historical record survives in the writings of the early church fathers, medieval theologians, Reformers, Christian historians, and official conciliar documents. These materials—often preserved in creeds, catechisms, and confessional statements—should not be dismissed lightly. To do so risks severing contemporary theology from the communal wisdom of the church across time.

In his article “Our Doctrinal Core,” J. Paul Nyquist identifies five foundational doctrines that historically define Christian orthodoxy and function as essential boundary markers for those who claim allegiance to Christ.¹ These doctrines are: (1) the Trinity—one God in three persons, each fully divine; (2) the person of Jesus Christ—fully God and fully human; (3) the Second Coming—Christ’s personal return to judge and reign; (4) salvation—by faith alone in Christ alone; and (5) Scripture—the Bible as the inerrant and sufficient Word of God. While one could debate the inclusion or exclusion of additional doctrines, this list adequately frames the discussion for present purposes.

Historically, most sectarian movements and doctrinal deviations have not arisen from outright rejection of Scripture but from selective interpretation. Certain passages are emphasized, isolated, or reinterpreted in ways that support pre-existing theological commitments. Over time, these interpretations harden into dogma and are transmitted uncritically from one generation to the next. The result is often the emergence of theological systems that, though claiming biblical authority, diverge sharply from the broader witness of Scripture and the historic consensus of the church.

The focus of this chapter is one such theological development related to Nyquist’s third doctrinal core: the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. While Christians universally affirm Christ’s return, significant disagreement exists regarding its nature, timing, and sequence of events. The particular doctrine examined here is commonly known as the pretribulational rapture, more formally situated within the system of dispensational premillennialism.

Readers who currently hold this view may find the critique unsettling. That response is understandable. My own theological journey included sincere belief in Christ’s Second Coming and, for a period, acceptance of the pretribulational rapture. I was initially raised within a historic premillennial framework and had never encountered the concept of a separate rapture event. When I first heard of it as a teenager, it was presented by those within my own tradition as speculative and unbiblical. Interestingly, I later encountered individuals committed to pretribulationism who were entirely unaware that alternative interpretations even existed. They had been taught that their view was not merely a biblical interpretation, but the biblical interpretation.

After abandoning my earlier eschatological framework, I spent several years without firm convictions on the subject. Eventually, the promise of escaping tribulation proved appealing, and I adopted the pretribulational position. With genuine enthusiasm, I immersed myself in its literature—listening to prominent teachers, examining proof texts, and participating in structured Bible studies on Revelation and prophetic themes. Yet I also compared these claims with other historically grounded, biblically defensible views and observed scholarly debates between their proponents.

A persistent question emerged: if the pretribulational rapture were as self-evident as its advocates claimed, why did it remain virtually unknown prior to the nineteenth century, and why does it continue to represent a minority position among biblical scholars worldwide?

The deeper I investigated, the more troubled I became. I found no clear, straightforward biblical teaching that necessitated belief in a secret, pretribulational rapture. Instead, the doctrine appeared to require a prior assumption of its truth, followed by selective exegesis and creative reinterpretation of isolated passages. A reader approaching Scripture holistically—asking what it teaches about the return of Christ—would not naturally arrive at such a conclusion. The doctrine must be imposed upon the text rather than derived from it.

This assessment aligns closely with Isaiah R. Maynard’s academic study, “On Presupposing the Rapture.”² Maynard argues that biblical support for a pretribulational rapture only appears after the interpreter presupposes the doctrine and applies a hermeneutic tailored to sustain it. He observes that while the New Testament frequently speaks of Christ’s Second Coming, it remains silent regarding a distinct rapture event. Both Jesus and Paul, he notes, consistently link salvation, bodily resurrection, and the consummation of history to a single, visible return of Christ.²

This essay does not attempt a comprehensive comparison of eschatological systems. Such analyses already exist in abundance. Rather, the aim is to examine why the pretribulational rapture doctrine emerged at all, to identify its historical origins, and to evaluate the theological assumptions upon which it rests. When these foundations are carefully examined, they appear increasingly unstable.

For clarity, the term rapture here refers to the sudden removal of believers from the earth in anticipation of a future period of Great Tribulation. Evangelicals typically situate this event either before, during, or after the tribulation. The focus of this critique is the dominant evangelical position—particularly in North America—that the church will be secretly removed prior to (or midway through) the tribulation in order to escape divine wrath.

As I traced this doctrine’s development, each investigative path led back to a tightly interwoven framework: a rigid futurist reading of biblical prophecy, classical dispensationalism, and modern Christian Zionism. Central to this system is not merely interpretation, but definition. Terms such as Israel, church, tribulation, kingdom, and fulfillment are redefined in ways that predetermine the system’s conclusions.

One significant realization was that the pretribulational rapture functions as a secondary doctrine—developed to sustain a more fundamental claim: that God has two distinct peoples, Israel and the church, whom He governs through separate redemptive programs. To maintain this bifurcation, numerous biblical passages must be reinterpreted and displaced from their historical contexts.

This system depends upon a decisive innovation: relocating prophecies long understood as fulfilled—particularly in the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70—into an indefinite future. Large portions of Daniel, most of Revelation, elements of the Olivet Discourse, and selected Pauline texts are extracted from their original settings and projected onto a future global catastrophe. What earlier interpreters recognized as covenantal judgment is recast as an eschatological drama yet to unfold.

The reason for this relocation is straightforward. Without it, the pretribulational rapture cannot be sustained. Scripture must be reshaped to support the system rather than the system arising organically from Scripture.

The historical roots of this futurist shift can be traced to the Jesuit priest Manuel de Lacunza y Díaz (1731–1801), whose work played a pivotal role in introducing futurism into Protestant eschatology. Drawing upon earlier Jesuit Francisco Ribera, Lacunza rejected the longstanding Protestant identification of the Antichrist with the papacy, proposing instead a future Jewish Antichrist.3-6 His work, published pseudonymously as that of a converted Jew, gained influence in nineteenth-century prophetic circles and was studied at influential conferences such as Albury Park and Powerscourt.

Translated into English by Edward Irving in 1827, Lacunza’s The Coming of the Messiah in Majesty and Glory became foundational for emerging futurist interpretations.⁴ Church historian Le Roy Froom notes that belief in a future individual Jewish Antichrist was virtually unknown among Protestants prior to the nineteenth century.⁵ David Pio Gullón’s research further confirms that futurism was neither the position of the early church nor of the Reformers, but a later development designed to counter Protestant historicism.⁶

Within this intellectual climate emerged John Nelson Darby, who systematized dispensational premillennialism and formalized the doctrine of two distinct peoples of God.⁷ Darby’s solution to the coexistence of Israel and the church was the invention of an unmentioned “church age” and a secret rapture to remove the church before God resumed His dealings with Israel.

The result is a theological architecture requiring an invisible coming of Christ, a seven-year tribulation gap, and two separate Second Comings—all absent from the biblical narrative.

Scripture itself challenges this framework. Passages such as Joshua 21:43–45 and 1 Kings 4:20–21 explicitly affirm the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel. The New Testament consistently presents God’s people as one, united in Christ, grafted into a single covenant community.

As R. C. Sproul observed, “Dispensational theology is a nineteenth-century aberration away from historic, orthodox, biblical Christianity.”⁸ Whether one agrees with Sproul or not, the claim demands serious engagement. As Dewey Dovel rightly argues, the assertion must be evaluated on historical and biblical grounds—neither dismissed nor accepted uncritically.⁹

The task of theology, then, is not to preserve comforting systems, but to submit all systems to the searching light of Scripture and the witness of the church across time.

Endnotes:

1.         J. Paul Nyquist, “Our Doctrinal Core,” National Association of Evangelicals, December 21, 2014.
2. Isaiah R. Maynard, “On Presupposing the Rapture,” unpublished academic paper.
3. Martin Ballard, End-Timers: Three Thousand Years of Waiting for Judgment Day (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 113.
4. Manuel de Lacunza, The Coming of the Messiah in Majesty and Glory, trans. Edward Irving (London, 1827).
5. Le Roy Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Review and Herald, 1946), 257.
6. David Pio Gullón, “Two Hundred Years from Lacunza,” Journal of the Adventist Theological Society 9, nos. 1–2 (1998): 71–95.
7. David Malcolm Bennett, “Edward Irving and John Nelson Darby.”
8. R. C. Sproul, Truths We Confess (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2019), 371.
9. Dewey Dovel, “Dismantling Dispensationalism,” November 9, 2020.