Rapture Fever

Conclusion 215
struction. Sort of. Specifically, he wrote a book review of Bahnsen
and Gentry’s House Divided: The Break-Up of Dispensational
Theology (ICE, 1989). He neglected to mention its subtitle. That
is not all he neglected. He neglected to review the book.
I occasionally exaggerate for effect. Not this time. In a two
and a half page review, Walvoord referred to the book only in
the first two paragraphs (eight lines, total) and in the next-tothe-last
paragraph. He did not state its thesis, only that he “has
read few books with more errors of fact and half-truths about
the doctrines being considered.” (He did not identifi even one
of these errors.) He said it is a “diatribe.” Worst of all, he didn’t
identify my Publisher’s Preface as the source of all this erroneous
vitriol; instead, he blamed Bahnsen and Gentry exclusively
- a slur against me, if there ever was one.
For the next two pages, he simply restated what sounds like
1950’s-era class notes on the history of premillennialism. He
continued the tactic that Dallas professors have used constantly
to deflect all criticism of dispensationalism by saying that the
critics are simply hostile to premillennialism. “The debate
against dispensationalism is a misguided one, because what is
actually involved is the premillennial interpretation of the Bible.”
This is “the central issue.” Central for whom?
Not for Bahnsen and Gentry, who were attacking dispensationalism,
especially its antinomianism. Dr. Bahnsen’s section of
the book deals only with the question of biblical law. Walvoord
never mentioned this. He challenged House Divided by arguing
that the early Church held exclusively to premillennialism, a
theory refuted successfully in a 1977 Dallas Seminary Th.M.
thesis by Alan Boyd, which identified Walvoord as the source of
this error. Walvoord’s tactic is the traditional dispensational
apologetic: keep the reader’s attention focused on historic premillennialism,
so that he will not consider either the origins
(late) or peculiar theological views of dispensationalism, which
no group in Church history held prior to 1830.