Rapture Fever

46 RAPTURE FEVER
futurists prove incapable of refuting these books, they will have
surrendered their intellectual position. Since 1989 they have
remained silent.
Silence in the Face of Criticism Is Suicidal
It is my opinion that they will prove incapable of refuting
Gentry’s evidence. It is my opinion that dispensationalists will
not even try they will instead adopt the traditional academic
strategy that dispensational seminary professors have used for
over half a century to deal with any book that challenges their
system: “Let’s keep quiet and pray that nobody in our camp
finds out about this, especially our brighter students.”
As I mentioned in the Preface, the best example of this keepquiet-and-hope
strategy is the unwillingness of any dispensational
scholar to challenge postmillennialist Oswald T. Allis’
comprehensive critique of dispensationalism, F%@hecy and the
Church (1945) for two decades. 16 Charles C. Ryrie’s brief, popularly
written, and intellectually undistinguished attempt to
refute a carefully selected handful of Allis’ arguments appeared
in 1965: Dz3pensationah.sm Today. 17 The fact that this slim volume
is still the primary defense of traditional (Dallas Seminary)
dispensationalism, despite the fact that it has never been revised,
testifies to the head-in-the-sand strategy of the dispensationalist
academic world to its Bible-believing critics. This
dearth of intellectual defenses is especially noticeable today,
given the fact of Dr. Ryrie’s unexpected and somewhat acrimonious
departure from the Dallas Seminary faculty over a decade
ago. Another example is their silence regarding William Everett
Bell’s 196’7 New York University doctoral dissertation, “A Critical
Evaluation of the Pretribulation Rapture Doctrine in Christian
Eschatology,” which has been reprinted by Bell. Major
books deserve full-scale refutations in books, not brief, negative
16. Phillipsburg, New Jersey Presbyterian& Reformed.
17. Chicago: Moody Press.