Why We Left Dispytown

We didn't come to postmillennialism because it was trendy. Most of us came kicking and screaming, clutching our Hal Lindsey paperbacks, one foot still out the door of the prophecy conference ballroom. The road out of dispensationalism is long, occasionally humiliating, and involves admitting that you once sold your grandmother's china because you were confident you wouldn't need it. Here are our stories.

Chester T. Rapture — Senior Eschatology Correspondent

"I want to be upfront: I did not leave dispensationalism quietly. I left it loudly, in stages, over eleven years, while continuing to attend prophecy conferences and telling myself I was just there for the fellowship. I had a Rapture bag. You know what a Rapture bag is — it's the bag by your door with granola bars and a printed copy of your key Bible passages in case the Tribulation starts while you're at work and you need to hit the ground running. I had two. One was color-coded. When I finally read Sproul's The Last Days According to Jesus, I sat on the floor of my kitchen for forty-five minutes. Then I went and repacked the bags as general emergency preparedness supplies — which, I have since learned, is actually more useful. I am now a confident postmillennialist and a man with excellent earthquake supplies. God is faithful. He's just not coming to get you in the next fifteen minutes."

Donna Prebulation — Tribulation Desk Reporter

"I hold a doctorate in eschatological hermeneutics from the Leland B. Crowley Institute for Pre-Tribulational Studies, which is not an accredited institution but did send me a very handsome certificate. For nineteen years I taught the seven-year Tribulation timeline to adult Sunday school classes with the kind of calm, authoritative confidence that comes from having laminated handouts. I had a PowerPoint with fifty-three slides. Slide forty-one was just the word 'IRAN' in large red letters with three question marks. When Gary DeMar came to speak at our regional conference and suggested — quite matter-of-factly — that Matthew 24 was fulfilled in AD 70, two people walked out. I was not one of them, but I sat in my car afterward for thirty minutes reconsidering the laminated handouts. I have since revised them. Slide forty-one is now a photograph of Augustine. I believe it is an improvement."

Norman Dispensation — Prophetic Timeline Specialist

"I have been studying prophecy since 1974 and I want everyone to know that I was right about almost everything. The only thing I was wrong about was the conclusion. I correctly identified the signs. I correctly mapped the geopolitical alignments. I correctly noted the increase of earthquakes, the moral decline of culture, and the suspicious behavior of the European Union, which I maintain was always going to be significant — I was simply wrong about what it signified. When I finally encountered partial preterism it was not a comfort. It was an affront. I told my wife it was heresy. She said, 'Have you read it?' I had not read it. I have now read it. I have also read Kenneth Gentry, David Chilton, and Gary DeMar's complete bibliography, which is not short. I was wrong. The charts still exist. They are now postmillennial charts. They are, if anything, larger. My wife has asked me not to laminate any more of them. This request has been noted and will not be honored."

Priscilla Millstone — Kingdom Advancement Reporter

"My exit from dispensationalism was less dramatic than my colleagues', which I think says something unflattering about how I process things. I simply sat down one Tuesday morning with a legal pad, wrote 'Matthew 28:18-20' at the top, and worked out what the words actually meant. Jesus said he had all authority in heaven and on earth. Present tense. Not 'will have' — has. He then told eleven traumatized men to go disciple all nations. Not some nations. Not the elect remnant of nations. All of them. The mission assumes it will work. I wrote this on the legal pad. I stared at it. I thought about every prophecy conference I had attended where the speaker implied Jesus was basically losing. I thought about seventeen years of 'the world is only going to get worse' sermons delivered by men who then went home to their very comfortable houses. Then I closed the legal pad, made a cup of tea, and did not attend another prophecy conference. I did not make a scene. I simply became, quietly and without ceremony, a postmillennialist. It remains the best Tuesday I have had."

Your Story

If you've made the journey out of dispensationalism and want to share your account, we'd love to hear it. Send us a note through our contact page. We may feature your story in a future edition — anonymized if you prefer, since we understand that "I no longer believe in the pre-trib Rapture" can be a complicated thing to announce at Thanksgiving.

"The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it." — 1 Thessalonians 5:24. The "it" is the sanctification of the whole world. He is faithful. He will do it.

A note on our staff: Chester T. Rapture, Donna Prebulation, Norman Dispensation, and Priscilla Millstone are entirely fictional characters created for satirical purposes. Their accounts, credentials, institutions, and laminated handouts do not exist. ADN News is a satirical publication. All writers, bylines, and personal histories on this site are invented. Any resemblance to actual prophecy conference attendees — past, present, or raptured — is purely coincidental and, honestly, kind of the point.