Abstract:
An analysis of the Pentecostal Dispensationalist Theology as it relates to the final destiny of the church in which there is a live expectation of the rapture doctrine. In the first decades of the 19th century the Bible was studied with a dispensationalist perspective, that is, the plan of God for humanity, as relates to salvation, was presented in a distinctive way for each epoch of history. Thus arose the definitions of biblical dispensations. Many Evangelical churches adopted the Dispensationalist Theology and the faith in waiting for the Lord Jesus to capture up the saved live ones and resuscitate the saved dead. All the dispensationalist segments are pre-millennial, that is, Jesus will come to carry away the church before the Millennial Kingdom of Christ on earth (Millennium). However, there are divergences regarding the period of the Tribulation. The church will be carried away before, during or after the Tribulation? From this questioning arose, within the dispensationalist theological current, three understandings: the pre-tribulationists which believe in the coming of the Lord Jesus to carry away the church before the Tribulation; the meso-tribulationist, who teach that the church will be carried off in the middle of the Tribulation and finally the post-tribulationists who believe that only after the Tribulation will Jesus carry off the church to the heavens. Of all the three theories of pre-millennium rapture, the doctrine of a pre-tribulation rapture finds greater biblical support and therefore, more acceptance among the Pentecostal Dispensationalist churches. Among the Pentecostal Evangelical denominations whose theology is dispensationalist, there is the Assembly of God, a great divulger and practitioner of the Dispensationalist Theology, which believes in an imminent, literal and pre-tribulation rapture of the church. The pre-tribulationists preach a life of trichotomous holiness: spirit, soul and body should be irreprehensible for the coming of the Lord Jesus!
