Topic Video: What Is Dispensational Premillennialism?

Join us for part two of our topic video series Views on the Millennium. In today's video we'll be answering the question 'What Is Dispensational Premillennialism?'

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As a premillennial system, dispensational premillennialism holds that Jesus will return and believers will be resurrected before the millennium. Jesus will reign physically on earth during the millennium. And unbelievers will be resurrected and judged after the millennium.

But unlike historic premillennialism, dispensational premillennialism generally teaches that resurrected and still-living believers will be raptured to heaven before the great tribulation begins, and that they’ll remain there until the end of the millennium.

Most dispensational premillennialists believe that those who remain on earth after the rapture will undergo the great tribulation, which will last for seven years. At the end of the tribulation, Jesus will return, and the millennium will begin. Jesus will restore the nation of Israel, and visibly reign over all nations from his throne in Jerusalem. During this time, God will fulfill his Old Testament promises to the nation of Israel.

One reason for this difference from historic premillennialism lies in the dispensational aspect of dispensational premillennialism. Dispensationalism teaches that God works in different ways during different eras or “dispensations.” And one consequence of these dispensations is that God has a different plan for the Jewish people than he has for the church.

According to dispensationalism, God sent Jesus to be the Messiah for the nation of Israel in order to fulfill his promises to Israel in the Old Testament. But when Israel rejected Jesus as their Messiah, God put his plans for them on hold. In their place, God raised up the Gentiles in the church. But God still intends to fulfill his purposes to national Israel. To accomplish this, God will rapture the church before the tribulation and deal primarily with Israel during the millennium.

For example, listen to what God said in Amos 9:11-15:

In that day I will restore David’s fallen tent. I will repair its broken places, restore its ruins, and build it as it used to be, so that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name … I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them … I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them.

Dispensationalists believe that prophecies like these will be fulfilled for the nation of Israel in the millennium. At the end of the millennium, Satan will instigate a rebellion, but God will completely defeat Satan and his armies. Afterwards, God will resurrect the unbelievers, plus any believers that came to faith and died after the rapture. Then the last judgment will take place, and the final state in the new heavens and new earth will begin.

“I’m a progressive dispensationalist because I think it takes in the best of both covenant theology, which maintains that focus upon the one people of God and the covenant promises in the Old Testament, but also, it takes the best of the classic dispensational view that sees a future program and plan for Israel as well. So, I kind of get the best of both worlds.”

– Dr. Danny Akin