It is not true that ALL others either have no millennial reign, or think the millennium is present or past. Premillenialism was taught by the eartly church, thousands of years before dispensatiionalism was invented.
I am no way a dispy. I have always believed in a literal millenium. If you care to check, Henry Grattan Guinness and E B Elliott, great expositors of Prophecy taught a literal millenium and also mentioned dispensations.
While we are here you said "If your interested" It should be "If you're interested, or "If you are interested."
Not getting at you in particular but it really bugs me when people get it wrong.
You're = You are
Your. Beloning to you.
Also there.
There = Over there
Their = Belonging to them
They're = They are.
My daughter teaches private English lessons to British and foreign students one of them wrote the folllowing aide memoire:
I almost busted out laughing. That post is so humorous. You are so picky about my usage of "your" rather than "you're" or "you are" but the speck in my eye did not compare to the beam in yours!
Is it "millenium" or millennium?
Is it "premillenialism" or Premillennialism?
Is it "dispensatiionalism" or dispensationalism?
Really! So much for your brag to fame on handling the English!
On a more serious note, there are no other schemes outside of dispensationalism that teaches a literal millennial reign of Christ.
I think you are considering that "Dispensation" is that which was pushed by Darby, and popularized by preaching of the last century or a bit.
Paul used "dispensation" at least four times as an indication of a period of time.
That is all dispensationalism does. It outlines history into periods of time. It can be varied as much as by who is writing.
Even Peter stated that "...at this time God winked at..." Peter was outlining the Scripture historically into dispensations.
Covenant theology uses grouping and I have seen Darby dispensation charts that also showed the standard covenants in agreement.
This is nothing new.
What was "new" was the popular "Darby dispensation" thinking which has (imo) two problems. One the segregation of the church as separate rather than grafted into believing Israel, the second the assumption of a pre-wrath rapture.
Neither of those are for a discussion on this thread.
Not true. As somebody once said, that is being economical with the truth. The early church writers wer pre millenial, but no way dispensationalism.
Historicists were also pre mil. Later ones may not be. Certainly Guinness and Elliott were.
I disagree. Certainly, they were premillennial, but they also recognized the dispensational thinking of the catching away of believers out of this world, the presentation of a final anti-christ, that believing gentiles were no longer excluded from the believing Israel, and so forth.
Just because they did not use a "Darby" scheme did not prevent them from being dispensational.
Pre mil is not a dispy view, they purloined the teaching as did SDA and Bristish Israelites..
Typical of the modern thinking, everything dispensational started with Darby!
Not true.
Darby was first a lawyer, and as such was skilled at evidentiary gathering and presentations. He did a good job, and caused a lot of folks to sit up and take notice.
Some time ago, I started reading through much of his work. It is exhausting!
However, in the investigating (in which I encouraged all members of the BB to participate) not a single doctrinal error in which one could assign heresy has been found in all his writings.
Certainly there are disagreements, yet there is no doubt he was brilliant and scholarly.
However, here is a truth.
I cannot find a single instance in which Darby was original. That is he took from others (as we all do) and produced volumes of works in which have stood the test of other scholars reading and approval.
Darby did not invent "dispensation."
Darby did not invent the thinking of a "rapture."
Darby did not invent the "tribulation."
Darby, as a scholar put a scheme together that brought attention to the matters of the end times that incorporated from thinking and teaching that went before him.