Default Dispensationalism Is Holding Back the Church

I love the monthly news magazine World. You can thank David Chilton for contributing to its existence. He used his influence to help launch World with editor Joel Belz and wrote a monthly column for the publication for years. You should subscribe. You can do it here.

Gary North wrote the following in his article “David Chilton Made the Case for Long-Run Christian Optimism.”

“From the very beginning, cranks and crackpots have attempted to use Revelation to advocate some new twist on the Chicken Little Doctrine: ‘The Sky Is Falling!’” It’s not only cranks and crackpots who advocate an eschatological fallback position when things get dicey.”

It’s not only Revelation; it’s also Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, 2 Thessalonians 2, Ezekiel 38-39, and Zechariah 14. I discuss these topics in my book Last Days Madness.

Last Days Madness

In this authoritative book, Gary DeMar clears the haze of “end-times” fever, shedding light on the most difficult and studied prophetic passages in the Bible, including Daniel 7:13-14; 9:24-27; Matt. 16:27-28; 24-25; Thess. 2; 2 Peter 3:3-13, and clearly explaining a host of other controversial topics.

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Back to World. The following paragraphs by Andrée Seu Peterson caught my attention. It’s from her article “The Mysterious Commander: The battle, the glory, and the story are the Lord’s” that appears in the January 2026 issue of World.

American Christianity is tearing itself limb from limb over the question of Israel and foreign policy. One cites God’s words to Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you” (Genesis 12:3). The other camp counters, “What does modern secular Israel have to do with the true Israel of God? Treat it like any other nation.” One camp calls Israel’s Gaza operation genocide and invokes the Jesus of peace. The other calls it the reasonable self-defense of a nation of 8,000 square miles surrounded by 5 million square miles of Arabs who mostly wish her ill.

This is all above my pay grade. But Scripture has at least told us what the end looks like: The Lord will gather all nations together against Israel, where He will deal with those nations, fighting against them Himself from Jerusalem (Zechariah 14; Ezekiel 38). It is during this existential crisis in the nation of Israel that the “partial hardening until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in” (Romans 11:25) will be removed. “They will look on Me whom they pierced” and “mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son” (Zechariah 12:10). No longer hardened in over 2,000 years of unbelief, Israel will be grafted in once more, even as Paul prayed they would (Romans 11:23).

Most Evangelicals read current events through the lens of unfulfilled prophecy. They’ve been doing it for nearly two millennia. No matter what eschatological position is taught, the “not yet” eats up the “already,” like Francis Schaeffer’s “nature eating up grace.”

Schaeffer wrote in Escape from Reason, “The vital principle to notice is that, as nature was made autonomous, nature began to ‘eat up’ grace. Through the Renaissance, from the time of Dante to Michelangelo, nature became gradually more totally autonomous. It was set free from God as the humanistic philosophers began to operate ever more freely.” The same thing has happened to eschatology. In fact, it happened to Schaeffer.

William Edgar, who served as a professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary, recounts the time in the 1960s he spent studying at L’Abri (The Shelter) in Switzerland under Schaeffer’s tutelage.[1]

I can remember coming down the mountain from L’Abri and expecting the stock market to cave in, a priestly elite to take over American government, and enemies to poison the drinking water. I was almost disappointed when these things did not happen.[2]

Edgar speculates, with good reason, that it was Schaeffer’s eschatology that negatively affected the way he saw and interpreted world events. Schaeffer was good at diagnosing the disease, but he found it difficult to prescribe a cure because the patient was never going to get well this side of a grand eschatological event.

An old sports maxim comes to mind, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Not in Evangelical circles. When the going gets tough, it’s time to talk about the Second Coming of Jesus and play all the prophecy cards. First, “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you” (Gen 12:3) refers to Abraham. There wasn’t an Israel then. I deal with Israel and Bible prophecy in my upcoming book with Brian Godawa. The “you” is singular. All nations, Israel, the United States, all Islamic nations, China, Great Britain, Spain, Gaza, etc., are bound by the same moral standards. No exceptions and no carve-outs. Second, Ezekiel 38 and 39, Gog and Magog, are not about modern-day Russia or anything going on in the world today. The same is true of Zechariah 12-14. See my book The Gog and Magog End-Time Alliance, where I discuss Zechariah 12 and Ezekiel 38-39. Bob Cruickshank and I are putting the final touches on our Zechariah 14 commentary.

The Gog and Magog End-Time Alliance

Jet planes … missiles … and atomic weapons. You will search in vain in Ezekiel 38 and 39, and you will not find them. You will, however, find horses, bows and arrows, shields, clubs, and chariots. If the Gog and Magog prophecy was written for a time more than 2500 years in the future from Ezekiel’s day, why didn’t God describe the battle in terms that we could relate to and understand? Why confuse Ezekiel’s first readers and us?

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A statement by Daniel Hummel, author of The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, from the September 2025 issue of World, gets some of it right. Hummel points out, “your eschatology has a major effect on how you understand being ‘salt and light’ in the world. Are Christians fighting a rearguard action while waiting for rescue or advancing on the enemy’s stronghold? Or is it something in between?” The sad thing about both articles is that neither addresses the prophetic elephant in the room—preterism. But even some preterists don’t get it. For them, everything is past. We’re on our own. Everything ended in AD 70. Both views lead to stagnation when action is required.

[1] Colin Duriez, Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 42.

[2] William Edgar, “Francis Schaeffer and the Public Square” in J. Budziszewski, Evangelicals in the Public Square: Four Formative Voices on Political Thought and Action (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 174.

American Vision’s mission is to Restore America to its Biblical Foundation—from Genesis to Revelation. American Vision (AV) has been at the heart of worldview study since 1978, providing resources to exhort Christian families and individuals to live by a Biblically based worldview. Visit www.AmericanVision.org for more information, content and resources