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Out of context: Reply #2885
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Formulated and popularized by nineteenth-century Protestant evangelicals in England, dispensationalism offered a system for recognizing, through a literal reading of Scripture, the whole of human history—past, present, and future—explained in seven Biblical ages, or dispensations. American evangelicals found great allure in dispensationalism’s hyper-Protestant premise—the divine plan, accessible to all through earnest study—and the system was widely promulgated in this country by evangelists like Dwight L. Moody. The most important fundamentalist text, Cyrus I. Scofield’s 1909 Reference Bible, in which the tenets of dispensation are outlined in the margins, sold in the millions, and remains in wide circulation today. Many fundamentalists still accept the dispensationalist view—the late Jerry Falwell was a dispensationalist, as is the Reverend Pat Robertson—and many more are at least familiar with its themes. That is partly because of the spectacular dénouement of the seventh, and final, dispensation—the rapture (sudden heavenly ascent) of saved Christians, followed by a seven-year tribulation, during which the Antichrist and a false prophet will install a one-world religion and the forces of good and evil will clash mightily. After the defeat of the False Messiah, Jesus Christ will return to earth and reign in glory for a thousand years, before engaging Satan in one last battle, at Armageddon.