What Most People Already Believe

If you have ever seen a chart taped to the inside cover of a study Bible — a timeline running left to right, with a seven-year tribulation marked off in the middle, an Antichrist figure rising partway through, a rapture drawn as an upward arrow lifting believers off the earth before the worst of it starts, and a thousand-year kingdom stretching out afterward — you have already met the most common view of the future held by American Christians today. It has a name: dispensationalism. And if nobody has ever shown you an alternative to it, there is a very good chance you assume that chart simply is what the Bible teaches, the way a person who has only ever seen one map of a country assumes that map is the territory itself.

It is worth knowing, before we go any further, that this is one option among several, and that it is not the option most of the church has held for most of its history. This part of the book is going to walk you through where it came from, what it actually teaches, and why — a full generation before this book gets to the point of comparing it against the other views on offer — you deserve to understand its own internal logic well enough that nobody could accuse this book of trading in caricature.