By their fruits ye shall know them, and I have benefitted greatly from the spiritual fruits of dispensationalism. Throughout my youth, the majority of my spiritual mentors were dispensationalists. When I first began my personal devotional life, it was a Scofield Bible that I read on a daily basis. Dispensational charts [which MacArthur maligns] hung on the walls at the Bible conference where I worked during my high school summers. At youth rallies and Bible clubs, from itinerant teachers and radio evangelists (including the founder of the seminary I now lead!), in handbooks and magazines, I learned the importance of "rightly dividing the Word of Truth."
Later on I was to hear many negative things said, especially by my Reformed colleagues, about dispensationalism's "heresies." But the criticisms never quite rang true. Dispensationalists were supposed to downplay the relevance of the Old Testament for the Christian life; but some of the best preaching I have ever heard on the Psalms was from dispensationalists. Dispensationalist theology drew strict theoretical boundaries between Jesus as Israel's messiah and Jesus as the Lord of the church; but the Jesus I learned about from dispensationalists was a heaven-sent Savior who showed a matchless love for both Gentile and Jew. The dispensationalist perspective undercut Christian social concerns; but long before I had ever heard of Mother Teresa, I saw dispensationalists lovingly embrace the homeless in rescue missions. Whatever the defects of the older dispensationalism as a theological perspective, it embodied a spirituality that produced some of the most Christlike human beings I have ever known.
One hundred years ago, as dispensationalists anticipated the beginning of a new century, they were not optimistic. They expected wars and rumors of wars. They feared the coming of Antichrist. In contrast, mainline Protestantism and liberal theologians expressed a deep faith in historical progress. They saw the kingdom of God expending in its influence. The twentieth century was to be "the Christian century": war and poverty and famine would be virtually eliminated.
Now, I ask, who had a better sense of what was going to happen in the twentieth century? It seems obvious that Protestant liberalism was simply wrong in its predictions, whereas much of the dispensationalist scenario was vindicated. Why have we not given the dispensationalists more credit for their insights? Who was better equipped to prepare their children for the now much-heralded demise of Enlightenment optimism--the dispensationalists or their cultured despisers?
The answers seem to me to point clearly in the direction of vindication for the dispensationalists' view of history....Because of those theological instincts, as well as their very real spiritual gifts, that I raise up two cheers for the older dispensationalists. [Richard Mouw, "What the Old Dispensationalists Taught Me," Christianity Today, March 6, 1995, page 34].
