Rapture Fever

118 RAPTURE FEVER
It is the view promoted by Dave Hunt. Dave Hunt is consistent.
So is his debate partne~ Tommy Ice.4
Those inconsistent premillennialists who are political activists
resent it when I say this, but I keep getting letters like this one.
While it is becoming more acceptable for premillennialist to
get involved in politics, the system militates against such commitments.
This premillennial pietist is consistent: Christians
should direct their resources into missions, narrowly defined,
that is, pietistically defined. What Kenneth Gentry calls The
Greatness of the Great Commission is ignored. 5
A Crucial Shift in Dispensational Rhetoric
What is significant is this: in the last fifteen years, the leaders
of Amm”can fundamentalism have ceased to talk like Dave Hunt, a
fact that Mr. Hunt has publicly deplored. They are no longer
consistent regarding premillennialism and social activism. Not
that they believe in biblical law, of course. But they do believe
in conservative social and political action. (See Chapter 11.)
Paralleling this shift toward activism has been the quiet
abandonment of dispensational theology. As of early 1993, the
only easily available book still defending the details of dispensationalism
was a reprint of Charles Ryrie’s 1965 book, Di@msationalism
Today. It ought to be called, Dispensatwnalism Esterday.
Dispensational eschatology is dying because fundamentalist
activism and outrage at humanism are growing. Ghetto eschatology
is no longer popular with Christians who are trying to
move out of the psychological ghetto and into positions of
influence. To put it bluntly, you don’t run for President on a
dispensational ticket. You run in order to win.
4. Gary DeMar, The Debate Ouer Chr&ian Reconstrwtion (Ft. Worth, Texas:
Dominion Press, 1988).
5. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Greatness of the Great Commksimz The Christian
Ente@ise in a Fallen World (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).