Rapture Fever

18 RAPTURE FEVER
- its view of God, man, law, and time? In short, is the absence
of dispensational intellectual positions related to Rapture fever?
Here is a very practical question: Has Rapture fever played
itself out among those fundamentalist leaders who seem most
likely to command the allegiance of a majority of the next generation
of fundamentalists? If the answer is yes -as I think it is
- then this new leadership will soon inherit the dispensational
movement by creating something entirely new, although the
leaders probably will not call it anything different for several
years. This replacement process is already going on. A new
generation of leaders will replace traditional dispensationalists
who proclaim inevitable defeat in history and then do nothing
in order to achieve it.
Traditional dispensationalists believe that until things get
really terrible, the Rapture will not occur; therefore, they conclude,
“Let us rejoice in the inevitable decline of the once-
Christian West. If we can speed up the process of decline by
doing nothing, let us do nothing with conviction.” But what is
their earthly future, according to their own belief? Disinheritance
in histmy by God. This is completely just on God’s part, for they
proclaim a theology of God’s historical disinheritance of His
Son’s church. They receive exactly what they expect: historical
defeat. Theirs is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Today, are witnessing dispensationalism’s terminal generation:
all those self-conscious, culturally isolated people who, as
a matter of principle, choose not to play a significant role in the
wave of the future - Christianity’s technological, intellectual,
and moral fiture. Hal Lindsey is the prophet of this terminal
generation. This does not bode well for dispensationalism.