Rapture Fever

Dis~ensationali.sm Removes Earthly Hope 87
immediate future, relieved only (if at all) by the Rapture of the
Church into heaven. This is Dave Hunt’s message. He sees no
earthly hope for the Church apart from the imminent return of
Christ.
But such a view of the future has inescapable practical implications,
although more and more self-professed dispensationalists
who have become Christian activists, and who have therefore
also become operational and psychological postmillennialist,
prefer to believe that these implications are not really inescapable.
If the “Church Age” is just about out of time, why
should any sensible Christian ‘attend college? Why go to the
expense of graduate school? Why become a professional? Why
start a Christian university or a new business? Why do anything
for the kingdom of God that involves a capital commitment
greater than door-to-door evangelism? Why even build a new
church?
Here, admittedly, all dispensational pastors become embarrassingly
inconsistent. They want big church buildings. Perhaps
they can justi~ this “worldly orientation” by building it with a
mountain of long-term debt, just as Dallas Seminary financed
its expansion of the 1970’s. They are tempted to view the Rapture
as a personal and institutional means of escape ffom billcollection
agencies. A person who really believes in the imminent
return of Christ asks himself Why avoid personal or corporate
debt if Christians are about to be raptured out of repayment?
Why not adopt the outlook of “eat, drink, and be merry,
for tomorrow we will be rescued by God’s helicopter escape”?
The Helicopter Man
Dave Hunt does not want to become known as “Helicopter
Hunt,” but that really is who he is. His worldview is the fundamentalists’
worldview during the past century, and especially
since the Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925, 15
but its popularity
15. George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shuping of Twenti-