Rapture Fever

Xxxiv RAPTURE FEVER
pages in House D“vided. This leaves only Rev. Ice, who publishes
several monthly newsletters from his Austin, Texas, Bible
church. The theologians of Dallas Seminary by their steadfast
silence regarding Christian Reconstruction’s numerous critiques
of dispensationalism, have by default transferred the unofficial
role of dispensationalism’s spokesman to Rev. Ice. What it boils
down to is this: the intellectual define of tk traditional di.s@nsational
system as an integrated whole now rests solely on the shoulders of
Tommy Ice. This does not bode well for traditional dispensationalism.
In 1945, this strategy of silence worked because dispensational
laymen paid no attention to an academic book such as
Allis’ Prophecy and the Church. Dispensationalists still believed
they could live in safety inside their psychological and ecclesiastical
ghettos. The moral decline of American culture after 1965
has made this assumption appear ludicrous. As they have begun
tentatively to defend Christian and conservative views of how
society should operate, dispensational laymen have been drawn
out of their ghettos and into the arena of poli~cal conflict. This
has led to a division within dispensationalism: the activists vs.
the pessimists. As I have said repeatedly a dispensational activist
has become psychologically an operational postmillennialist.
He does not fight in order to lose. This division within dispensationalism
can be seen even in the brief and ill-fated partnership
that produced Dominion Theology: Blessing or Curse? (1988).
Dr. House is a Christian activist who has publicly debated Dave
Hunt on the legitimacy of Christian activism; Rev. Ice is a selfconscious
pietist and a cultural retreatist who joined Hunt to
debate Gary DeMar and me on this same question in 1988.
Since 1965
This post-1 965 division within the dispensational camp -
social activism vs. pietistic passivism - has called into question
the academic theologians’ strategy of silence. When dispensationalists
become socially and politically active, many of them