Becoming Better Theologians (part 26)

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Becoming Better Theologians (part 27)

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Well, how many of you know that today is Pulpit Freedom Day? My wife knows.
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You know how she knows? Because I told her. Who knows what Pulpit Freedom Day is?
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Obviously, nobody knows. It wasn't on your calendar and you didn't know it at all.
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Free to say whatever you want, yes, but there are some pastors across America today that are taking the opportunity to take political stands, you know, and they're going to invite the
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IRS to censor them, I guess, and to take away their tax -free status.
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You know, it's like they're throwing down the gauntlet. They want to see how it goes in court. I just thought it was kind of unusual. What a unique concept to just throw down the gauntlet and challenge governments.
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I don't know if that's a good idea or not. Last couple weeks, we've been talking about covenantalism and dispensationalism, and today
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I'm going to take a step back. We're still going to keep talking about it, but I want to fill things in a little bit and could just kind of...
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You know, somebody said, I think I mentioned it a couple weeks ago, somebody said, well, where are we? Where's BBC?
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And I just looked at him and kind of said, yes. Are we covenantal?
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No, not really. Are we dispensational? Well, mostly, sort of. Who knows what
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MacArthur calls himself when it comes to his position on this? Has anybody ever heard this?
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John MacArthur says that he is a leaky dispensationalist. I don't know what that means exactly, except that, you know, there are positions that, and I'm going to point some of these things out, there are positions that for a pure dispensationalist, there are some positions that are a little bit hard to defend biblically, and I think there are some positions for covenantalists that are difficult to defend as well.
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So I'm going to define these terms, first of all. First of all, covenantalism. What covenantalism does is it defines the relationship between God and His people through a series of covenants.
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We've talked about the Abrahamic covenant. What are some other covenants in the Bible? Mosaic covenant, which was between Moses, well, between God and Israel.
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Now, here's just two broad categories of covenants. How about we try these?
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Conditional and unconditional. A conditional covenant would be what? If you do something,
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I'll do something, and that would be like the Mosaic covenant, where God says to Israel, if you obey me, then what will
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I do? Bless you. Now, the Abrahamic covenant, on the other hand, we've talked about this in Genesis 15, when the smoking fire and burning oven, or burning fire and smoking oven, whichever it is, when it goes down the middle of those two, and I always like to walk down this aisle because it just kind of looks like there should be,
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I'm not saying that you guys are dead animal parts, but here's a clear pathway, and here comes the smoking oven and the burning fire and the burning fire and the burning oven and the smoking, whichever that is.
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It symbolizes the presence of God, and it goes between these two pieces, and what's Abraham doing?
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He's sleeping. So is that a covenant that is conditional or unconditional? It's unconditional because Abraham isn't saying, you know, it's not
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God saying, I vote this way, how do you vote, Abraham? Abraham's unconscious. He has no saying in it.
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But covenantalism defines the relationship between God and his people in a series of covenants. Now, a covenant, as defined by O.
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Palmer Robertson, who, by the way, is a covenantalist, he says, it is a bond in blood, sovereignly administered.
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A bond in blood, sovereignly administered. And again, the picture would be of a covenant.
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It's not like, you know, we would say, well, I'll covenant with you. I don't really think we mean that.
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You know, we sort of say that we'll promise one another something. I'll covenant with you that I'll pray for you.
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Well, okay, and so if you fail to, do I get to cut you in half? The perfect idea of a covenant is exactly that, that you are putting basically your life on the line.
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It is a bond in blood, sovereignly administered. It's a bond between God and his people.
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Blood signifies death to whomever breaks the covenant bond. God determines the boundaries of the covenant.
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Again, this is all according to a covenantalist here. God determines the boundaries of the covenant, which
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I think is right, i .e., is it conditional or unconditional? You know, what's another unconditional covenant?
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Here's one that maybe you don't think of as a covenant, the rainbow. Is that a covenant?
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It's a covenant between God and...it's called the Noahic covenants.
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And God promises Noah, and does he put any conditions on Noah? No. So that's another unconditional covenant.
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Now, he goes on to say that there are no other religions with these same parameters.
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In other words, where God makes a covenant with his people. No other religion like that so far in archaeological findings.
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They've never dug up anything like this. But covenantalism allows one to define history in terms of covenants.
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The relationship between God and his people within covenants. Now, let's talk about branches of covenant theology.
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There are several, and I've been thinking I need to do some kind of graph or something to hand out just so you can kind of keep track of all this because it gets a little complicated.
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Amillennialism, which literally means no millennium. A thousand years is not necessarily a thousand years in Revelation 20, etc.,
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etc., etc. And this is from Kim Riddlebarger. Anybody ever heard of Kim Riddlebarger?
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He is on the White Horse Inn. He is an amillennialist.
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I have his book, and I've been reading it. I'm not really convinced, but let me just tell you what he says.
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Amillennialism, not a distinct position until the turn of the 20th century.
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In other words, till around 1900. It had been a subgroup of postmillennialism, which
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I'll get to in a minute. The present millennial age is manifest in the present reign of Jesus Christ in heaven.
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In other words, we're in the millennium right now. That's what amillennialists say.
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Jesus Christ is currently ruling and reigning in heaven. The Old Testament promises are fulfilled by Jesus Christ and his church during the present age.
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So what does that mean? That the promises in the Old Testament are fulfilled by Jesus Christ and his church during this age, during the millennial age, as they would define it.
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The Abrahamic Covenant, the Davidic Covenant, these covenants are fulfilled by Jesus and by his church during this age.
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So how would the Davidic Covenant, for example, be fulfilled now? What is the Davidic Covenant? I'm sorry?
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That the descendant of David will rule on a throne, on an everlasting throne. Okay? So how would that be fulfilled according to the amillennial, and I'll say scheme without meaning to demean it.
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I'm just saying this is their belief system. Christ is currently on an everlasting throne, okay?
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We talked last week about how, according to amillennialism, Satan is bound in the sense that he's not able to prevent the spread of the gospel.
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He's not able to deceive believers as he was before. Let's see, the
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Abrahamic Covenant, they would say, like the land promise is fulfilled. There would be different theories.
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One would be that the land promise is already fulfilled, and the other would be that the church is fulfilling that spiritually.
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And again, millennium is not a literal thousand years, thus amillennialism, no millennium, no literal millennium, but the period between the first and second comings.
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Some of the people who subscribe to amillennialism, besides Riddle Barger, I mean, there are many, but if you're a theological buff, you would know about Gerhardus Voss, Herman Ritter Voss.
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There are many, many. Now, let's postmillennialism, which means what?
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I mean, these things are not so hard to understand if you just kind of separate the words a little bit. Ah, meaning that's the alpha privative.
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It negates things. What's another example of an alpha privative? Adding ah to the beginning of a word to negate it.
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What's that? Amoral, meaning without morals. There's immoral, which is necessarily wrong, and amoral, which means the person has no moral code whatsoever.
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So, postmillennial, post meaning after, millennial meaning, you know, thousand years.
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So, we're actually, after we're living in a period, well, actually, we're not in that period, but anyway, not a literal, they don't believe in a literal year of, literal 1 ,000 year reign of Christ.
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And we are in the millennium now, and Christ's reign comes after this. He's not ruling and reigning now, but he will after this extended, not literal, thousand year period of time.
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Here's the part where I really have difficulty with postmillennialism. Christianity will grow in terms of its adherence and their spiritual strength.
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Again, this is all according to Riddlebarger. He's summarizing these different beliefs, and I took his writing and just kind of condensed it.
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Christian influence will spawn increasing peace and economic well -being. We see that all over the world.
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Let's see. Large number of ethnic Jews will become Christians. I think there are some.
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There will be a short period of apostasy. Christ will return, then resurrection and judgment. Riddlebarger notes that this gained favor in post -Civil
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War because of industrialization, and then it lost favor with World War I, the
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Depression, and World War II. So, in other words, the times kind of pushed against it. Some of the people who believed in postmillennialism.
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Now, listen to these names. Charles Hodge, his son,
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A. A. Hodge, B. B. Warfield. There are many who took this view, and this is basically the old kind of Princeton theologians before Princeton went off the edge of a cliff.
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Now, there are some subgroups, and this is why I say it gets a little confusing, but some of this really, really applies right now.
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There are some subgroups to postmillennialism, people who think that the world is going to get better and better and that there are going to be more and more
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Christians and that we're basically going to usher in the kingdom of God. One subgroup is called theonomy or theonomists, and its goal is to establish
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God's law as the basis for earthly society. They believe that the
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Mosaic law, the Ten Commandments, is operative in both standards and penalties. In other words, there are a small group.
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Anybody ever heard of theonomists? I'm sorry, Greg Bonson, Gary North.
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Interestingly enough, there are a group of these people that when Y2K hit, they were the ones who said get your guns and food and head for the hills because when things go downhill, we're going to take over, you know, kind of thing.
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And then there's a subgroup. Again, this is a sub -subgroup, reconstructionists.
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This is a form of theonomy. By reconstructing the church, the world will eventually become
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Christianized. So again, their idea is to establish the
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Ten Commandments as the rule of law. And then another subgroup of theonomy is dominion theology.
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And that's come up here lately because it's interesting to me because I've been reading the newspapers and some of them have said that, for example,
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Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry are supposedly dominion theologians.
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And what dominion theology says is that the world will eventually come under the dominion of Christ and Christianity will be the dominant principle.
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Again, this idea that somehow we can impose Christianity on the government.
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So that's postmillennialism and its subgroups. Pam. Yeah, Pam asks, you know, anybody who thinks that they're going to usher the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ in before he does, you know, don't they sort of fit into this?
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And doesn't that apply to a lot of these social groups? And in fact, I think it does because a lot of Christian groups that get so involved in social projects, why do they do that?
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Well, I think part of it is because they have a genuine compassion for people, right? But I think the other part is they genuinely want to establish kind of Christianity as more than a faith, but totally as a way of life, as a form of government and everything else.
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Historic premillennialism. Again, this is from Kim Riddle Barger's book on amillennialism. Historic premillennialism.
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That sounds a little bit confusing, so let me just kind of break that down for a second. This is a theory that has been in the church for quite a while, for centuries, and that's the historic part of it.
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Premillennialism, the main difference between historic premillennialists and us, there are two main differences.
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One is they are covenantalists. And the second part, in other words, they would have more of a high view of covenants, we'll get into that more, than we would, but also they would say that God has put
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Israel aside, that he's done with Israel. But anyway, here are the basic tenets of that.
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Jesus' birth is the beginning of a new age and fulfills the Old Testament expectations. Christ's kingdom was begun by his ministry, but is not fully realized.
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So there's an already, it's already here, but it's not fully realized. Already, but not yet, some theologians would say it that way.
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The kingdom is furthered by the work of the Holy Spirit and the church. In other words, the kingdom is growing, it's being developed.
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Apostasy and tribulation mark the period right before the second coming. And then there is a literal 1 ,000 year kingdom.
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Now again, it's very, it's close to what we believe here. Some adherents, some very great theologians,
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James Montgomery Boyce, J. Barton Payne, R. Laird Harris, George Eldon Ladd, Al Mohler.
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In fact, I had a professor tell me at seminary, he said, if you read George Eldon Ladd's book on the kingdom, he goes, he'll almost convince you.
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That's how good Ladd's book is, he said. Now, so those are the three main branches of covenantalism.
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And now here's another subgroup. Preterism can be either amill or postmill.
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Believe that most or all of the prophecies in the Old Testament were fulfilled with the destruction of the temple by the
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Romans in 70 A .D. So even revelation, they would say, most or all of the prophecies in that book took place before 70
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A .D. And among those who would be preterists would be R .C. Sproul.
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He's a partial preterist, which is even a sub -sub. So you can see that all this,
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I mean, you just go, okay, there are a lot of different views here. And here's the interesting thing.
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If we had, if we could bring back, you know, B .B. Warfield, who was postmillennial, or we could bring in Riddlebarger, or we could bring in R .C.
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Sproul, or we could bring in James Montgomery Boyce, and we had them preach the gospel, what would you hear?
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The gospel. We'd go, amen, I have no problem with that. So, again, what we're talking about is a relatively small number of biblical issues, but there are some implications, and I'm going to get into some of that.
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But let's just quickly go through dispensational premillennialism, and I'm going to give you two views of it.
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One from a premillennial dispensationalist, Zuck, Roy Zuck. He says, just his brief snapshot of this,
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Christ will return in the rapture at the end of this age and will reign with his saints on the earth for 1 ,000 years as king.
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In the millennium, a literal 1 ,000 years, the nation of Israel will experience the blessings of God promised to Abraham and David pertaining to Israel's land, nationality, and king.
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And finally, the church today is not fulfilling these promises made to Israel as a nation.
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In other words, God is not done with Israel, and there's more yet to come. Now, here's what Riddlebarger has to say about dispensationalism.
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He says, it is a theological system that distinguishes between seven generally, seven, though some have more and less, distinct periods or dispensations.
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Dispensationalists argue for a literal interpretation of prophetic passages. So covenantal promises made to David and Abraham are to be fulfilled literally in a future millennial age.
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Israel will gain the land promised by God. Christ will rule from Jerusalem. And there will be a literal fulfillment of these covenants in the dispensational system.
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So who are some dispensationalists? Well, as I said,
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John MacArthur calls himself a linky, a leaky, a linky. A leaky dispensationalist.
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Others would be Walvard, Charles Ryrie, and then, of course, some real nuts.
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Hal Lindsey, and I say he's a real nut because his personal life is a mess, whatever his books may have said.
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Chuck Missler, who's always looking for the end of the world. Dave Hunt. Okay, what are some of the flaws of traditional dispensationalism?
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We're going to examine some of the problems with each of these. What are some of the problems with traditional dispensationalism?
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Well, I think one would be that it has tended to lend itself toward easy -believism, also known as non -lordship salvation.
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What does that mean? Basically, and this came out of Dallas Theological Seminary, which is a seminary well -known for its predispensational or premillennial dispensationalism.
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Basically, it's the idea that you can have Jesus Christ as Savior but not as Lord.
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In other words, there are two different classes of Christians, those who just are saved and then those who are actually walking the walk.
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So you can go to heaven without ever obeying, theoretically. Then, let's see, some other things.
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Focusing on current events and trying to fit them into biblical prophecy. Like I said, I mentioned the
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Left Behind series. I'll never forget, you know, this is my moment here to brag this morning.
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One of the key moments of my life was I got to ask John MacArthur a question during a
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Sunday evening service. And I was so, you know, just dead set on asking that I went up.
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You know, when they said, you know, okay, go ahead and line up and get your questions, I was like knocking, you know, women and children out of the way and got right up to the front.
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And so I was the second person he called on because there were three microphones set up.
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And the guy who went before me, because I had a, you know, heavy theological question. The guy who went before me, now this was, this had to be,
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I don't know, 14 years ago, something like that. This guy says, yeah, Pastor John, could you explain how, now this is 14 years ago.
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He says, could you explain how Benjamin Netanyahu fits into the end times? And if I was
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MacArthur, I would have just said, we've got to stop doing these Q &A sessions on Sunday evening.
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You know, something like that. And he just kind of changed the whole subject and, you know, did, got back to the
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Bible. But I just thought, what in the world, how does, I mean, if you can find the word Netanyahu in the Bible, let me know.
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But anyway, so some people are just like that. They're trying to take today's headlines and fit them into the
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Bible and figure out exactly where we are and how close we are to the end. And I think dispensationalism can lend itself to that.
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The idea, another weakness is that the idea that God has saved by different means in different dispensations.
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That somehow, that God had a different way of saving people. And you know what, what's a good argument against that?
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Can you think of a good biblical argument against that? Because I have one if you don't. What's that?
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Romans 4 is good because it talks about Abraham. I have a, I like that one, but I have yet another one.
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And I'd like to just go to Hebrews 11. Because, you know,
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I would think that if there's some different way, I think Romans 4 is probably better, but I like this one because it fits my story, so I'm going to go with this one.
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If there's some different way of salvation. I think a man that was writing a letter to Jews, trying to convince them that Christ was better, he would want to kind of zero in on this way that God used to save people and compare it to how
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God now saves people. But in Hebrews 11, starting in verse 4, listen to what he says.
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By faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous,
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God committing him by accepting his gifts. And through faith, though he died, he still speaks. By faith,
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Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death. And he was not found because God had taken him.
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Verse 6, and without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
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Verse 7, by faith, Noah. Verse 8, by faith, Abraham. Verse 9, by faith, again speaking of Abraham, he went to live in a land of promise.
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And it goes on and on and on. Verse 13, those all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar.
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They didn't know the name of Christ, but they believed in the hope of Christ. They believed in the revelation that they had up to that point.
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And I just remember reading Hebrews 11 one time and just being fascinated because as a child, even though I was a
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Mormon, we went to Sunday school and we would learn different things about different people.
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And I just thought about what I knew about Samson. And you're reading Hebrews 11 and he's commended for what?
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I mean, he belongs in this hall of faith.
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And it says eventually, And what more shall I say, for time would fail me to tell of, this is verse 32, of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms and forced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions.
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Samson. If you study
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Judges 13 to 16 and you look at the life of Samson, you are not going to see a faithful man.
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You're going to see a man who sinned at every turn. And as far as I can tell, basically his act of faith was in his last dying breath, finally throwing himself on the grace and mercy of God.
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Did God save by different means? I don't think so. And so I think that's a real weakness.
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What we see consistently is this theme of grace and faith.
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Let's see. What are the other flaws of traditional dispensationalism? I think one of the flaws is that church membership is or has been devalued in a lot of dispensationalist systems because there's not this idea of being in covenants.
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I mean, older churches still have church covenants and I sort of favor those.
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It really kind of puts additional meaning on being a church member. And then
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I think there are some occasionally strained understandings of Scripture. There's a man whom
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I love dearly who said this about the Sermon on the Mount. He said that it is only, only for the
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Jews in the millennium. That it doesn't apply to Christians today. Again, I would encourage people to read through the book of Matthew and go, okay, here's
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Jesus getting up before the multitude and saying, all right, parentheses, asterisk, this doesn't apply right now.
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Nobody should listen to this. I don't think that's right.
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I mean, how do you preach it as if it has value today if you're saying it doesn't? Now here's another one.
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Let's go to Isaiah 7. Again, I apologize for coughing.
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I've just been coughing all week. Starting in verse 10.
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Again, the Lord spoke to Ahaz. Ask a sign of the Lord your God. Let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.
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But Ahaz said, I will not ask and I will not put the Lord to the test. And he said, hear then,
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O house of David, is it too little for you to weary men that you weary my
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God also? Therefore, the Lord will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and she shall call his name
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Emmanuel. It's the Christmas verse, right? We all know that. Applies to Jesus.
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Verse 15. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.
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For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted.
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The Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father's house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah, the king of Assyria.
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Now let me ask you something. Put on your thinking caps, your theologian caps.
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Would this passage here mean much to Ahaz if it only applied to the future coming of the
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Messiah? What kind of sign would that be for Ahaz?
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Do you think he was still alive when Jesus was born? I don't think he was.
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I'm dubious of that proposition. So then what?
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What does that mean? Well, again, there are dispensationalists who say that this only applies to Jesus.
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Verse 14 is only about Jesus. And I think, yes, in the sense that only a virgin, meaning
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Mary, had a child and would conceive, but I think that is a specific fulfillment of it and not the only application.
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I think there had to be another fulfillment of it. Any thoughts or comments on that?
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Otherwise, what kind of sign was it to Ahaz? If God says, you know what, pick one as high as heaven or as low as Sheol and I'll make it happen so that I can show you who
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I am, I don't think it has much application if it doesn't happen during Ahaz's life. Just my opinion.
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But I think that's a weakness of the dispensational system. Now, what are some of its strengths?
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And obviously I think it has a lot of strengths, but I only put one.
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Consistent hermeneutic. Consistent hermeneutic. Again, as I called it last week,
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I think it's the plumber's hermeneutic. You look at the passage in context and that determines its meanings.
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And I think that is very much a strength of it. Okay, now, what are some of the weaknesses of covenantalism?
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Well, first I would say that it holds to covenants, which are not said to be covenants in the
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Bible. In other words, when we talk about the covenant of Abraham, we know exactly what we're talking about.
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There are some others that aren't so clear. Covenantalists believe in something called the covenant of redemption.
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Now, I don't really have a problem with that because I also believe in it. The fact that it's not called a covenant doesn't disturb me anymore than the trinity is taught in the
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Bible and it's never called the trinity. I can still use the term. One Swiss theologian gave a useful definition of the covenant of redemption.
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This is from Kurt Daniel. The covenant of God the Father with God the
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Son is a mutual agreement by which God the Father exacted from the
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Son perfect obedience to the law unto death which he must face on behalf of his chosen seed to be given him and promised him if he gave or if he obeyed perfectly the seed in question as his own inheritance.
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And in return the Son in promising this obedience to God the Father and producing it in the literal act demanded of him in turn the
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Father the right to demand this seed for himself as an inheritance. So I think this is and we could go and examine this in John 17 and other places, but I think this is what happened.
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Perhaps the major objection is that the covenant is not explicitly or elaborately mentioned in scripture. Yeah, I don't really go for that.
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This is what Charles Hodge said. He said when one person assigns a stipulated work to another with the promise of a reward upon the condition of the performance of that work, there is a covenant.
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And I think that's exactly what happened. Finally, one of the most popular defenses of this covenant is the analogy between Christ and Adam in Romans 5.
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In fact, let's look at Romans 5. And people say, well,
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I don't get it. Are we covenantal or are we dispensational? Well, I think we have elements of both.
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I was talking to somebody last week. If you want to talk about how somebody gets saved,
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I think most dispensationalists, most, not MacArthur, but most would say that faith is something that you generate on your own.
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So dispensationalists, I would say, would tend to be Arminian. We are reformed in our soteriology, meaning that we believe that God goes first.
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Why? Because all things are for God's glory. And the Scripture is very plain that we don't go first.
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We don't generate our own faith. Faith is what? It's a gift. Well, you have to receive the gift.
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You certainly have an obligation. We're not automatons, but it's that, you know, here's where the balance is.
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You know, we talk about God's sovereignty, but we also talk about man's responsibility and how do those two reconcile themselves?
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They don't. So here's what happens in the Arminian system is they lift man's responsibility at the expense of God's sovereignty.
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And some hyper -Calvinists go too far on the sovereignty of God and they say, God's so sovereign that man doesn't even have to repent.
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He doesn't even have to hear the Gospel. He doesn't have to preach the Gospel. And so you have errors on both sides.
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But Romans 5. Let's start in verse 6.
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For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
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For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would even dare to die.
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But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
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Since therefore we have been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God.
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For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.
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More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation.
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Setting up verse 12. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, through Adam, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned.
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For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted when there is no law.
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Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one to come.
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Adam was a type of the one to come referring to Jesus.
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There's this concept of federal headship that dispensationalists utterly reject, which
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I think is a weakness of dispensationalism and a strength of covenantalism.
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Adam was our representative. We've heard Pastor Mike talk about this. Just as Jesus, if we are in Christ, He is our representative.
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Adam fell, didn't obey, and Jesus did obey.
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So the covenant of redemption is thus fulfilled by Christ's obedience.
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But more than that, covenantalists have what they call the covenant of works, which man or Adam's obligation...
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What did God tell Adam to do in the Garden of Eden?
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Did He give him anything to do? What's that? Be fruitful and multiply and tend the garden.
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And He told him what not to do. One thing. It's kind of like your kids though.
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You tell them, okay, you can eat whatever you want, just don't eat the last piece of chocolate cake.
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And what's gone? The chocolate cake. The roast beef, potatoes, and vegetables are all untouched.
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The chocolate cake is gone. And so God says, you know what?
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There's one tree in the garden that you can't eat from. And Eve did, and then she gave it to Adam, and they fell.
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So to covenantalists, the covenant of works, man's obligation, Adam's obligation was to obey God's commands.
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And God then promised rewards for obedience and punishment for disobedience, which was going to be death.
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So those are the two covenants that covenantalists hold to that we have the most problem with.
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I don't really have a problem with the covenant of redemption, covenant of works. I'm still working on it. Pardon the pun.
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Covenantalism. Yeah, Charlie. Yeah, Charlie mentions that when they baptize children, and that was something else
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I was going to say. You know, I mentioned that dispensationalism has its weakness. I think they've diluted kind of the meaning of church membership.
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Well, I think covenantalists have done the same thing. Why? Because they baptize their babies, and they welcome them into the church.
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And then what happens? They could be reprobates. They could be unbelievers. So then what do you have to do?
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You know, you've allowed people into the church who aren't church members, and then at some point you have to go, well, you know, son,
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I love you, but boom, you know, you're out of the church. You're living like a reprobate, and we can't have you in the church anymore.
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So, I mean, what does that mean? If unbelievers could be welcomed as a member of the church until you finally go, okay, you know, so,
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I mean, same coin, different sides. You know, covenantalists will point to dispensationalists and say, you guys completely make up the age of accountability.
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And for those who say there is an age of accountability and specify it, they are making it up. But on the other side, you know, the covenantalists baptize babies.
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Well, at what point do you say, well, okay, he's eight years old, and he's not saved yet.
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Do we need to kick him out of the church? He's 13 years old, and he's not a believer, and we have to kick him out of the church.
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He's 18. He's 30. He's getting his Social Security checks. When do you kick him out?
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So you've got the same problem. You know, in other words, it's the age of accountability, only it's under a different name.
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Yeah, Charlie says he went to a church once where they said even if they're reprobates, if they've been baptized, they're going to go to heaven.
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And I'm like, okay, that sounds really kind of Roman Catholic. I don't know if that was Preterist or, you know,
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Popist, Papist. Harry. Yeah, I don't want to brag, but I was there.
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You know, and I've relayed this story before, but it was one of the most amazing and kind of surreal things because, you know, I mean, this is like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington debating.
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And Abraham Lincoln got up first, John MacArthur, and he went on for an hour and he basically went through every
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New Testament passage that talked about baptizing that could conceivably talk about baptizing babies, and he explained why it didn't.
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And then George Washington, R .C. Sproul, got up and he just said,
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I mean, it's like yesterday. I could see it. He just kind of, he gave his little, you know, phlegmy laugh.
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And he said, now that my good friend, John MacArthur, has explained why the New Testament doesn't teach infant baptism, let me tell you why
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I believe it anyway. And I think, I know that's available on the web, and I don't know if it's on the
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Grace To You side or not, but, you know, it's available via Ligonier, which I find frightening because R .C.
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got taken to the woodshed on that one. Steve. Which is still strange that you could be in the covenant, right, in the covenant but not necessarily part of the church.
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I don't know, but you could see how that, I don't really understand that. I mean,
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I understand it intellectually, but biblically that doesn't make any sense to me at all. You're either in the covenant, which means that you're in the church, or you're not in the covenant, which means you're not in the church, and you shouldn't be in the church.
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Pam, did you have another comment? Yeah, I'm going to wrap this up with what
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Pam said, but basically, you know, a covenantalist, she talked about continuity and discontinuity, which is an impossible book to read, and don't read it.
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By John Feinberg, it's a compilation, but that's not what she was talking about, just the general concept. Is there continuity between the
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Old Testament and the New Testament, or is there a dramatic change? And for dispensationalists, their tendency is to make too radical of a differentiation between the
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Old Testament and the New Testament. And for the covenantalists, they just say there's no difference, that when you see
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Israel in the Old Testament, you can just kind of, I mean, I'm generalizing a little bit, but you can just kind of substitute church in there.
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You know, Israel was the church. The church was Israel, and there's always been one people of God. And so,
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I mean, both, if you get on either extreme, I think you have problems. And, you know, like I said,
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I think that any of these men, or you could find men from any of these particular systems, that we could listen to preach for weeks and weeks and months and months and years before we said, wait a minute, where did you get that?
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And then we'd go, okay, I get it. You know, we have some differences here. But we've had many covenantal theologians here.
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We had Rick Phillips, he's a Presbyterian. We had the guy with the systematic theology,
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Dr. Raymond. You know, I mean, these are godly, smart men, you know, and I would say no different about Phil Johnson or John MacArthur or any of the other men that have been here that are dispensationalists.
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These are not easy issues. And I was telling someone last week, I think, and I've said this before,
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I think that when the Lord returns, I think there are going to be a lot of surprised people just in the way it exactly plays out, you know, the specific things that happen.
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I don't think anybody's going to have it totally nailed. But, you know, so where are we, BBC? Well, I think we're reformed on our soteriology.
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We're kind of reformed, semi -reformed in terms of how we run the church. We're elder -led.
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Most dispensational churches tend to be congregational. And then we are, what's the other one?
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Oh, yeah. Yeah, we tend to be more dispensational in our eschatology. We expect that there is an actual future for Israel, that God is not done with them.
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Anyway, we need to close. Father in Heaven, we just thank you that you know all things, that you will sort these through.
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Father, I just pray that this brief overview would not be too distracting, but would just encourage us as we read our
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Bible to really be studying, to not just be readers, but to just think through all the issues that are involved and to want to know you and want to comprehend every part of your word, that you have given us these things that we might know you, that we might worship you as we ought.