December 15, 1999
20th century brought changes in how Baptists anticipate end-times
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___Have you heard this idea in a sermon lately? The state of the world is getting progressively better, and the kingdom of God will be brought in by evangelism, missions and social reform.
___While that may not sound like a theology anyone is preaching at the end of the 20thcentury, it was a prevalent belief at the beginning of the century.
JAMES LEO GARRETT
___The almost complete dissipation of this end-times theology known as postmillennialism is one of the great changes in Baptist theology over the century, according to an informal survey of Baptist theologians.
___B.H. Carroll, founder and first president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, was a noted postmillennialist. So was John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the famous Baptist preacher in London.
___"Among Protestants in this country at the end of the 19th century, there was a strong commitment to postmillennialism," said James Leo Garrett, theology professor at Southwestern Seminary.
___Postmillennialism is a theology that understands the New Testament book of Revelation to teach that Christ will return to Earth after a thousand-year period of peace and prosperity. It contrasts with premillennialism, which teaches that Christ will return before a thousand-year reign on Earth, and amillennialism, which sees the mention of a millennial reign of Christ in Revelation as language symbolic of completeness or eternity.
___While the tenets of postmillennialism may seem far-fetched to Baptists at the dawn of the 21st century, they must be understood in the culture of the late 18th and 19th centuries, modern theologians explain.
___The 20th century was perceived at its onset to be the "Christian century," even givingbirth to a theological magazine by that name, noted Dwight Moody, dean of the chapel at Georgetown College in Kentucky. Moody wrote his doctoral dissertation at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary on the way the Bible has been understood by Baptists through the years.
___"Missions movements were at their height," he explained. "There was a lot of optimism that preceded the 20th century."
___Yet the 20th century quickly "laid a blanket of despair" on American Christians, Moody added. World wars and a stock market crash eroded the fundamental element of postmillennial theology, that things are going to keep getting better, he said.
___These challenging events in turn fed a growth in the 20th century of an end-times theology known as premillennialism, which in a nutshell says things are going to get worse until God intervenes, Moody said.
___A specific form of premillennialism grew exponentially in influence during the 20th century, added Garrett. Known as premillennial dispensationalism, this end-times theology divides the whole of human history into seven dispensations, or epochs of time, and advocates a rapture of the church from the Earth prior to a seven-year period of tribulation.
___The late Baptist theologian Dale Moody wrote in his systematic theology textbook that premillennial dispensationalism "spread rapidly in the United States after the publication of the second edition of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1917."
___Garrett concurred that the Scofield Bible, with its extensive commentaries in the margins, was paramount in spreading the influence of dispensationalism this century. Many people "read the notes as though they were part of the text," he said.
___Another factor in the spread of dispensational theology was the influence of radio and television preaching, said Brad Creed, dean of Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University. "Baptists no longer got all their information and doctrinal training through Training Union, the Baptist Book Store and their pastor."
___Regardless of why, dispensationalism now stands "at the peak of its influence in Southern Baptist life," Garrett said. "Never has there been a time when dispensationalism has had so much influence."
___Anyone who wants to evaluate the changing end-times theologies of Southern Baptists in the 20th century must ponder what role the events of the century played in shaping theology, he suggested. "Does dispensationalism do better in times of crisis?" he asked.
___Not all premillennialists in the 20th century embraced dispensationalism, however. The belief that Jesus will return to Earth after a period of tribulation to establish a thousand-year reign dates back to the first century. In the 20th century, Baptists embraced various other forms of premillennialism that placed less emphasis on a pretribulation rapture.
___Meanwhile, other Baptists adopted an end-times theology known as amillennialism. This theology reads the book of Revelation more symbolically than literally.
___An interesting note is that both Criswell and Herschel Hobbs, compiler of the 1963 Baptist Faith & Message statement, came under the influence of E.Y. Mullins at Southern Seminary early in the 20th century. Mullins was an amillennialist, a position retained by Hobbs but rejected by Criswell in favor of dispensationalism.
___As the century unfolded, thousands of Southern Baptists followed both paths.
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