Dispensationalism Bows to the Kingship of Satan

I recently came across this interview with Jerry Falwell, Jr., the son of the late-founder of the Moral Majority, that bogeyman of liberals back in the Reagan era. In it, Falwell is quoted as saying, "It’s such a distortion of the teachings of Jesus to say that what he taught us to do personally — to love our neighbors as ourselves, help the poor — can somehow be imputed on a nation. Jesus never told Caesar how to run Rome." I am appalled by the statement, and I think that the elder Falwell would have been appalled, too.

Fist, let me say that Junior's statement is consistent with his dispensationalist hermeneutic. Senior's political activism was inconsistent with that same hermeneutic. I am not suggesting any hypocrisy on the part of Falwell.

Falwell, Jr.

However, I must question the rationality of the statement. Mr, Falwell, how can you say that Jesus advocated a morality only for individuals, that He did not also intend for us to live collectively? That would be like saying that the Sixth Commandment forbids me to murder, but places no obligation on society to strive to prevent or punish murder!

In addition, has Falwell not read the Old Testament? I often wonder that when addressing dispensationalists. If he has, then he is deliberately ignoring the statements in the Law and the history books that God judges a society for its injustices. He doesn't merely judge individuals. When the Assyrians destroyed the Northern Kingdom, or when the Babylonians destroyed the Southern Kingdom, are we to imagine that there were no godly residents in either country who suffered together with their societies? That would not be a rational expectation.

I refer to this tendency among dispensationalists as "surrenderism," a presupposition that the Bible, Christianity, and the Church are doomed to fail, so we are to make no more than token efforts to apply God's word to all of life. That attitude is the opposite of the first instruction that God gave to humanity: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Genesis 1:28). Instead of subduing and exercising dominion, the dispensationalist will have us remain behind our church doors, doing nothing more than talk about selected portions of Scripture, while the world goes to Hell.