History Of The War Over Dispensationalism

[Tychicum]

Interesting stuff LamorakDesGalis.

 

[mcfly1960]

Even in the 1944 AIC report the claim is made that the Confession of Faith runs counter to dispensationalism's teaching of multiple resurrections. However, all premillennialists hold to at least two resurrections according to Rev 20:4-5. So while lip service was seen to be given to "allow" historical premillennialism, the criticisms revealed otherwise.

Weren't there 2 premillennialists on the committee of 7 and their findings "unanimous"?

 

[LamorakDesGalis]

Weren't there 2 premillennialists on the committee of 7 and their findings "unanimous"?

There were actually 3 premillennialists who were involved.

The 1943 AIC had one, Judge Sibley, a layman who in the process realized he was a premillennialist. He refused to sign the 1943 report, fearing that it would implicate all premillennialists. This brought the intervention of L. Nelson Bell, a prominent, influential missionary, premillennialist and father-in-law to Billy Graham. So Bell and JP McCallie, both laymen and premillennialists, were added to the committee. In protest, 2 committee members resigned - Caldwell and Lacy - because they didn't think the 1943 report needed any kind of adjustment. In one of the many unusual moves associated with the committee, Caldwell and Lacy were allowed to appoint their own successors. They appointed two known anti-dispensationalists: James Bear and Gear.

While the presence of the premils resulted in softening up some of the criticisms in the 1943 report, at the same time Bear narrowed his focus almost exclusively on Chafer. Bear retracted his denouncement of McQuilkin and Columbia Bible College and he baited Chafer into making polemical statements. Bear then turned around and presented Chafer's responses to the AIC as evidence. The result of these misrepresentations was that the PCUS premillennialists distanced themselves from the "extreme dispensationalism" presented by the AIC as connected with Chafer.

Now not all dispensationalists in the 1940s went by the label "dispensationalist." The term "dispensationalist" was a term used by critics like Mauro and Allis, and many critics quite commonly used the phrase "modern dispensationalist" to (falsely) link dispensationalists with liberals. Many who held dispensational beliefs, like James Gray of Moody Bible Institute and McQuilkin of Columbia Bible College, did not call themselves dispensationalists because of these tainted tactics. McCallie by the way, was a pretribulation premillennialist, not a historical (posttrib) premil. Only in 1936 did some at Dallas Theological Seminary take the label "dispensationalist" as their own. With the 1944 AIC report stating it was "simply an interpretative statement" and amended to say only dispensationalism was being denounced and not premillennialism, then McCallie, Sibley, and Bell signed it.

History though shows that the initial suspicions of the premils were right. In 1947, McCallie and Bell were charged by some editor as espousing dispensationalism.

Its very ironic - the McCallie and Bell who signed the 1944 AIC report were denounced as holding that same view.