Timothy Weber has likened the early dispensationalists to spectators in a stadium, watching history unfold on the playing field below. There were very few among them who believed they could or should play any role in the fulfilment of prophecy except to be watchful and personally prepared. Although conscious to be living at the close of history, the vast majority of Evangelical Zionists believed that only God could move the hands of the prophetic clock. They consequently shunned earthly involvement, let alone any attempt to force the end-time, remaining nevertheless watchful and spiritually prepared. It took two key historical occurrences to galvanize Dispensationalists out of their passivity, and render them into active players in the political
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First, the true Church will be raptured, then the Beast will rule over the revived Roman Empire and the Antichrist will be head of the remaining apostate church. Jews, having returned to the land of Israel “in unbelief”, will rebuild the temple, only to have it desecrated by the Beast when he turns on them, demanding to be worshiped. There will be a Great Tribulation, filled with every form of unprecedented human suffering. A remnant of 144,000 Jews will accept Jesus as Messiah and evangelize the troubled world, but two-thirds of them will be martyred, and the apostate church will be destroyed. Finally, the Empire of the Beast will attack Israel in the battle of Armageddon, but Jesus will return in glory to destroy the Beast’s forces, judge the Gentile nations for their treatment of Israel, be accepted as Messiah by all surviving Jews and Gentiles, and gather Jews into the land of Israel, where he will establish the Kingdom, ruling the world from Jerusalem for one thousand …show more content…
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus proclaimed the arrival and described the character of the new aeon when he read from Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth. The new aeon now coexists in tension with the old in the period between Pentecost and parousia. In fact, Yoder says, they may better be called “present” and “coming” aeons, rather than “old” and “new”, because their distinction is not temporal; it is directional. The present aeon points backward to the human condition outside/before Christ; the coming aeon points forward to the full realization of the Kingdom of
First, the true Church will be raptured, then the Beast will rule over the revived Roman Empire and the Antichrist will be head of the remaining apostate church. Jews, having returned to the land of Israel “in unbelief”, will rebuild the temple, only to have it desecrated by the Beast when he turns on them, demanding to be worshiped. There will be a Great Tribulation, filled with every form of unprecedented human suffering. A remnant of 144,000 Jews will accept Jesus as Messiah and evangelize the troubled world, but two-thirds of them will be martyred, and the apostate church will be destroyed. Finally, the Empire of the Beast will attack Israel in the battle of Armageddon, but Jesus will return in glory to destroy the Beast’s forces, judge the Gentile nations for their treatment of Israel, be accepted as Messiah by all surviving Jews and Gentiles, and gather Jews into the land of Israel, where he will establish the Kingdom, ruling the world from Jerusalem for one thousand …show more content…
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus proclaimed the arrival and described the character of the new aeon when he read from Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth. The new aeon now coexists in tension with the old in the period between Pentecost and parousia. In fact, Yoder says, they may better be called “present” and “coming” aeons, rather than “old” and “new”, because their distinction is not temporal; it is directional. The present aeon points backward to the human condition outside/before Christ; the coming aeon points forward to the full realization of the Kingdom of