For those of you inclined to understand the madness of Dispensationalism from a safe distance, I wanted to share with you an outline of some primary features. This comes from a study offered at Jesus-Is-Lord:
Dispensational theology centers upon the concept of God’s dealings with mankind being divided into (usually) seven distinct economies or “dispensations”, in which man is tested as to his obedience to the will of God as revealed under each dispensation.
Dispensationalists see God as pursuing two distinct purposes throughout history, one related to an earthly goal and an earthly people (the Jews), the other to heavenly goals and a heavenly people (the church).
Dispensationalists believe that in the Old Testament God promised the Jewish people an earthly kingdom ruled by Messiah ben David, and that when Christ came He offered this prophesied kingdom to the Jews. When the Jews of the time rejected Christ and the earthly kingdom, the promise was postponed, and the “mystery form” of the kingdom — the church — was established.
The church, according to dispensational doctrine, was unforeseen in the Old Testament and constitutes a “parenthesis” in God’s plan for Israel. In the future, the distinction between Jew and Gentile will be reestablished and will continue throughout all eternity. The “parenthesis”, or church age, will end at the rapture when Christ comes invisibly to take all believers (excepting OT saints) to heaven to celebrate the “marriage feast of the Lamb” with Christ for a period of seven years.
God’s program for the Jews then resumes with the tribulation, Antichrist, bowls of wrath, 144,000 Jews preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and Armageddon. Then, the Second (third, if you count the preTrib rapture) Coming, the instantaneous conversion of the entire nation of Israel, the resurrection of the Tribulation and Old Testament saints, and the “sheep and goats” judgment. The “goats” will be cast into hell, the “sheep” and the believing Jews will enter the millennium in natural human bodies, marrying, reproducing, and dying. The “mystery church” and the resurrected Tribulation and Old Testament saints will live in the heavenly Jerusalem suspended above the earthly city. This millennium will be a time of great peace and prosperity, with Christ ruling on David’s throne. After 1,000 yrs. Satan will be released from the chain with which he had been bound at the beginning of the millennium and many of the children born to the “sheep” and the Israelites will follow him in revolt against Christ. The King will again destroy His enemies, followed by another resurrection of the righteous, another resurrection of the unrighteous, a final judgment, and at last the New Heavens and the New Earth.
The terminology alone is enough to make your head spin, and there is very little here compared to the mountain of verbal trash I’ve seen while serving in the ministry: Pre-Trib, Post-Trib or Mid-Trib Rapture; Preterism, Historicism, Chilliasm, etc.
Perhaps you now grasp why I pursue discussing how the Old Testaments saints experienced spiritual birth, too. Jesus spoke of it as a reality before the Cross, as if Nicodemas could and should have had a spiritual birth already. Thus, redemption is redemption is redemption, and that the church is the natural extension of something that lies under the Covenant of Moses. I also teach that the revelation of God is a single thing. Further, I emphasize that one revelation is the same one for this world and the world to come. I teach that the Covenant of Moses was closed forever because the New Testament says so quite bluntly. Truly, as the linked page notes, if you pay attention to the Bible and stop reading stuff back into it, you can’t cling to Dispensational teaching.
That doesn’t mean I endorse everything on that page, but you can make up your own mind. I’m not laying restrictions, but pointing out why I write what I do. The term “heresy” is used here only in the relative sense that I consider it harmful to follow that path.
What do you think about Paul’s comments regarding “partial hardening” of Israel and the “fullness of the gentiles”? And for example that “bones coming together” prophecy?
People have raised those objections in other places, and we should always be ready to answer them. This is what I will tell folks, my Brother:
Context is everything. First we have the issue of translation from Greek to English. A great many translations read a bias into their work so I submit that “partial hardening” is misleading. It is literally “a hardening in part” which is frankly ambiguous by itself. I contend it should be more like, “they were hardened, partly because…” It’s the wider context of the chapter and the Book of Romans that helps discern Paul’s point here. I stand by the commentary originally published in my study notes on Romans. To summarize: Paul says that Jews were the first fruits of the mission of revelation. They refused to stay with the message, so it left a lot of room for Gentiles to enter into the same mission. Jews developed a problem with racist arrogance toward Gentiles, but as Paul notes elsewhere in Romans, the Gentiles had their own problem with cosmopolitan cultural arrogance toward Jews. Both of them have to surrender and give up their arrogance, so that v.25 is part of a warning to the Gentiles to remember that Jews had it and lost it, but Gentiles never had it before Jesus opened the door.
As for the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37), I offer a quote from my study notes on that: “Israel had turned themselves into useless, dead bones. Upon the framework of revelation they once held, the Lord would build new bodies from some other source. Then He would breathe His own power into them, an army of His Heavenly Realm that no man could count. It would not happen until His Son came to bring that life through the Jews and Gentiles together in His Kingdom.”
Thanks for the link Ed, it had been a long time since I read a detailed refutation of D’ism. I had forgotten just how intertwined that heresy is with it’s sister; Decision Theology. Additionally, I believe most adherants and many who teach it are simply duped because I witnesssed people who came out of it say things like “we were taught Scofield References were “Bible””, meaning the SR’s carried the same weight as canon. I’ve noticed many heresies arise from applying western thinking to ANE texts.
This stuff is so deeply wired into the assumptions of some churches that when I began writing outside that box, I realized how shocking things might be for the refugees who escaped it. You really have to back up a long, long way to get a clean start.
Amen