Spotlight 1: Did Darby’s Theory Fail?
Darby’s most famous teaching concerns Daniel’s first “69 Weeks” being totally separated in time from the 70th week. Darby’s view is: 1) Weeks 1–69 ended with Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. 2) At this key point prophecy concerning Israel ends. 3) A new dispensation called the Church Age begins. 4) The end of the Church Age is unknown to Daniel and to us. 5) Only after the Church is raptured does God resume His dealings with Israel in the seventieth week.
However, history did not happen the way he predicted. Israel was reborn in 1948 and his interpretation ignored Christ’s ministry. His gap theory between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks was a defining feature of classic dispensationalism which has failed. Like the great idol to Dagon it fell flat on its face. God has continued to Bless the nation of Israel and the Jewish people. Darby was wrong.
Darby noted that Israel was sanctified by God with earthly promises, an earthly kingdom, literal land, and the Davidic kingdom. What he did not see was its rebirth, the regathering of the people, and Israel’s permanent ownership of the land and Jerusalem. Nor did he see that God would bless Israel outside the last 7-years. This was in Ezekiel’s prophecy of the dried bones 35:11- 14: “I will bring you back to the land of Israel….to your own land.” He failed to realize that Israel and Jerusalem “will be a heavy stone for the whole world.” We can see how Israel is a burden for the whole world. The wars we see now are a burden. And these trials along with the nation Israel will probably last longer than even America.
The Church has a heavenly inheritance, composed of the Body of Christ on earth, and in heaven the Bride of Christ. However, Darby described this “Body” as two distinct peoples with different destinies, though both are saved by grace through faith. His Dispensationalism leaves out the promises of God and His steadfast love for His Chosen people. The fact is God blesses many Jews in Israel with the 3.5-year Ministry of Jesus Christ and the Great Commission. Darby witnessed the persistent persecution and defamation of the Jewish people in his time and may have seen that as God’s judgment. Most futurists agree that Darby’s dispensational theololgy as it stands failed to account for God’s blessings for Israel that occurred: 1) The rebirth of Israel, 2) Israel’s prosperity 3) The power of the Holy Spirit in bringing thousands of Jews into the kingdom in the last two centuries, 4) And the Church working alongside the nation of Israel. But there is another much bigger problem.
Spotlight #2
Darby convinced Moody and others to also accept the 7-year Wrath of God as an outlier event that has requires a rapture appearance in Revelation Chapter 4 and a Temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem along with an Abomination of Desolation. This has become the standard taught in most non-Catholic/Preterist pulpits throughout America. It is so ingrained that few have thought to investigate its foundational weaknesses.
There are 3 KEY problems: 1) Is how it originated– someone or some committee decided that when God told us to count the days in the Wrath of God –they decided to apply that same count to every day in Gabriels epic 70-Weeks Prophecy. God HOWEVER told us 7 TIMES (4 times in the book of Revelation and 3 TIMES in the book of Daniel) to only count 1260 days or 42 months, or “a Time, Times, Half-a-time” in that 360 day/year count. This is very important—and it makes sense—since this short period is a time a chaos under God’s control for judgment—HIstory or a calendar measured time is NOT necessary since it will be quickly followed by the Millennium.
Spotlight #3
By ignoring God’s command and counting all 490 years as 360-day years they converted God’s direct prophetic directive given to Daniel as 483 years into a 476 period. What they did was not only count the 3.5 years but also all the other 479.5 years in the shorter day count. This upended the timeline to where they agreed to switch Ezra (the descendant of the Aaronic Priesthood – scribe- and anointed leader who trusted in God and not on an armed guard “in a time of trouble”- to rebuild homes for priests, singers, servants among those thousands who traveled with him 13 years earlier than Nehemiah) to Nehemiah who was decreed to rebuild the city walls. It also forced them to discount the earlier Appearance of Jesus at this Baptism where He had the Holy Spirit come upon him, John the Baptizer declare him the Lamb of God, and God from Heaven declare him the Son of God for whom I Am well pleased. By discounting this earlier Appearance they had to discount the 3.5 years of Jesus ministry which fulfilled the first half the 70th year of the Daniel 70-weeks prophecy. Hence they had to extended God’s 3.5 year prophecy to a 7-year prophecy, change Christ’s Appearance from His Baptism to his Triumphal Entrance and then flip the meaning of Daniel of 9:27 to where the “covenant” is not the New Covenant given to us as He conquered death, sin and Satan on the Cross–when He was made “desolate” on the “wing of abomination.”
Spotlight #4
ALL of this is a quick summary of what happened in history– to throw off the Prophetic Calendar—-and therefore the study and teaching of Revelation—-no where in Chapter 4 do you see the billions of raptured saints but you do see it in Chapter 7 which fits the 3.5 year Wrath of God that God directed. Nowhere is Revelation do you see a literal Temple—-you would think it would be mentioned as being a place that the 2 Witnesses would be preaching—and where they would have died and resurrected. But there is NO TEMPLE because Daniel 9:27 was adjusted with different Hebrew interpretation to compensate a change from Jesus Christ—-to the Anti-Christ (which should have sent up all kinds of alarms—since Gabriel was sent to announce the Coming of Messiah not the future coming 2,500 years later of an obscure ruler who would receive the title of Anti-Christ. God has warned us that if we add or subract from His last prophetic declaration and panoramic visual presentation of what is to come —we will receive the curses “in this book.”
The book of Revelation is a clear visual explanation of events—–and JOHN sees a number too big to count of saints from every tribe, nation, language and people in Chapter 7 of Revelation—–the book goes into detail to explain why this cannot be those killed prior to the Trumpet judgments as the Darby/futurist system claims. I will say that I do believe in the general futurist viewpoint as it holds to a pre-trib rapture…this is true but the timing and length of that Wrath has to follow what the Word says –as stated 7 times in Daniel and Revelation and not as construed by Darby and those who followed his theory.