Book Review: The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism (Daniel Hummel)

In this new book, Daniel Hummel—historian of US religion and research fellow in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison—gives us a full history of the ups and downs of the popular system of theology that has flooded movies, bookstores, schools, and churches; that of dispensationalism. These are beliefs that are widely held whether someone admits (or even knows) they are a dispensationalist or not, largely thanks to books like the Scofield Bible and the Left Behind series, to teachers from Dallas Theological Seminary and pastors like John MacArthur and Chuck Smith.

Dispensationalism was my background to some degree, both in my early years in church and school and in my teen years with high school, Calvary Chapel, and its Bible colleges. So because of that this book was of great interest to me. I have known some of dispensationalism’s history, but not to this full-blown degree. What I won’t do in this review is give a full summary of the book. A good number of other reviewers have already done that (see Kim Riddlebarger—an academic amillennialist, TGC, George Marsden—historian on Christianity and America). Instead I’d like to highlight certain aspects of the book for you.

3-Part Outline

Hummel’s book is divided into three sections:

1. Part I: The New Premillennialists (1830–1900);
2. Part II: The Dispensationalists (1900–1960);
3. Part III: The Pop Dispensationalists (1960–2020).

Beginning with John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren Movement, Hummel moves through the 1800s and 1900s up to the present day situation. Rather than going into deep detail about everything, Hummel gives us the flow of dispensational history up to where we are today, both its rise and fall, its swelling popularity and its quick decline. Sure, there are still many who hold to dispensationalism due to the influence of Calvary Chapel, Assembly of God, MacArthur, and the continuance of DTS. But “pop dispensationalism” is in decline.

Beginning with John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren Movement, Hummel moves through the Civil War era and how Americans gravitated to Darby’s theology, how numbers and structures became a big deal, and how D. L. Moody helped popularize dispensationalism, or rather, “new premillennialism.”

Hummel refers to any form of dispensationalism before 1927 as “new premillennialism” in order not to be anachronistic. Hummel does this because no dispensationalist referred to himself as such before this date (when it was first used pejoratively). “New premillennialism” is used to differentiate this tnewer heological system from the older historical premillennialism, which denies the strong church-Israel distinction and the doctrine of the rapture, among other things.

Pamphlet Predictions

In showing how popular apocalypticism had become, Hummel writes how a “NASA engineer-turned-prophecy expert, Edgar Whisenant wrote a pamphlet titled 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Happen in 1988. More than 300,000 copies were mailed out to pastors and more than 4,000,000 copies were sold around the country just in the first half of the year. Yet he “diverged from any textbook definition of dispensationalism” and listed some familiar reasons and plenty of absurd reasons (283). Even Ronald Reagan seemed to be swayed by this modern apocalypticism (not necessarily from Whisenant, but from the general pop dispy-ism).

This is in line with what Hummel refers to as “pop dispensationalism.” Hummel notes, “In the 1980s and 1990s, pop dispensationalism spread into virtually every sector of American culture; on screens and in bookstores, over airwaves and in pews” (284). It was being broadcasted by TBN, through CCM music, and from megachurches with dispensational pastors, as well as in schools such as Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) and Moody Bible Institute. Yet that which came out of TBN was just entertainment and contained very little real theology.

Academic and “Pop” Dispensationalism

Academic dispensationalism was what came from the professors at DTS. Pop dispensationalism came from books, the radio, CCM, and TBN. If we could liken academic dispensationalism to Superman, then many of those who propagated a more popular form were barely holding onto his cape. That is to say, DTS professors rigorously taught what dispensationalism was from the Bible; popularizers took certain dispy ideas and ran wildly with them. One example is how Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins ran with the idea of the coming rapture and those “left behind” during the seven years of tribulation. They ran a marathon with those books, writing series to both adults and teens and selling roughly 80 million copies.

Televangelists

Others like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson (The 700 Club), and James Robison, “had built their platforms on the back of televangelism” (286). As televangelists reached out to viewers—“fundamentalists, evangelicals, Pentecostals, charismatics, and potential converts,” they taught a “grab bag of near future concepts that could mix easily with Pentecostal teachings and cast a wide net for potential viewers” (287). It is difficult to define dispensational theology here because, according to Hummel, none of the televangelists “took much interest in the inner workings of any particular theology” (286).

CCM

In regards to CCM, DC Talk sang the apocalyptic “Final Days” on their debut album and later covered of “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” by Larry Norman. On her debut record, Crystal Lewis released “People Get Ready… Jesus Is Comin'” (1996), a song I remember well from the radio. Gospel singer Ivan Parker recorded “Midnight Cry,” which was based on the parable of the ten virgins and how the Father could send the Son at any moment, even midnight (in America, at least). At the end of that parable Jesus tells his disciples, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour” (Matt. 25:13). Like the televangelists, CCM artists usually did not favor theological precision.

Churches and MacArthur

In regards to churches, Chuck Swindoll, John MacArthur, and Chuck Smith, all led (or still lead) megachurches with dispy theology. Regarding the “Lordship salvation controversy,” or “free grace” and “easy-believism” theology, Hummel helpful shows how John MacArthur, while still considering himself a “leaky dispensationalist,” moved somewhat further away from dispensationalists such as Scofield, Chafer, Hal Lindsey, Charles Ryrie, and Zane Hodges and their view “easy-believism” salvation.

The “Snapture” in the Avengers

The Chocolate Milk

Hummel’s book is pretty easy to read. I am not a history buff. I enjoy a good story, but I don’t appreciate being given every fact in a swirling hurricane of details. I also don’t like when an author takes up a topic, writes about a guy on a mission, jump to a different guy with his parallel mission, and then jumps back and forth, sprinkling various, names, places, dates, and businesses all throughout.  Two books I have reviewed do this: Hutton’s The Apache Wars and Heise’s The Gates of Hell (and in some ways, Thomas Kidd’s American History is guilty of this too). All of these are good books, but you have to have a good memory to recall who each person is, where he is going, what he is doing, when he did it, ad nauseum.

For the most part, Hummel does not complicate his book in this way. There are certainly details that must be given, but Hummel knows how to follow through with a theme without creating a labyrinth for the reader to tease out. He lays out some of dispensationalism’s complex ideas clearly and accessibly, making his book approachable to both scholars and laypeople. He writes straightforwardly—clearly out of deep concern for his readers’ sanity. To this we should be grateful.

Recommended?

Hummel offers offers a balanced perspective on Dispensationalism, highlighting its strengths and contributions to Christian thought while also critically examining its limitations and challenges. Some reviews I have seen note Hummel’s poor use of some of the primary and secondary sources, for example that Whisenant’s pamphlet above didn’t have quite the influence Hummel implies when America had a population of 250 million. This may be true, but this book doesn’t stand on Whisenant’s pamphlet alone. Dispensational variants abounded in culture, and Whisenant’s pamphlet is one example of many such pamphlets, radio shows, and book that contained predictions of when the rapture would happen. I heard the same sort of ideas by a few teachers in my high school. This stuff was everywhere.

Hummel isn’t out to cast shade on dispensationalism, as he also gives some of its contributions to Christian theology. I for one would be happy to keep academic dispensationalism around while getting rid of the pop stuff. Let those who study the Bible teach the Bible. Even though I differ quite a bit from dispy theology, I’m happy to have it around to help sharpen me and others in our theological views. If you have ever wondered where dispensationalism came from or how it came to be pervasive, pick up Hummel’s book. It’s quite the ride.

Lagniappe

• Author: Daniel G. Hummel
• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: ‎ Eerdmans Publishing (May 4, 2023)

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Disclosure: I received this book free from Eerdmans Publishing. The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html.

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