The 3 things you need to know about Dispensationalism

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LEARN. bol .education. Learn music with Berklee from anywhere. Welcome to The Rap Report.

I'm your host Andrew Rapaport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member. On this episode of The Rap Report, we are going to be discussing a topic known as dispensationalism.

We're going to discuss what dispensationalism theology is and is not, and I know some of you already are going, wait,

I don't want to hear about that. Well, let me encourage you. Next week, I will have Pat Ebendroth on discussing his new book on covenant theology.

So this was me on another podcast. Well, sorry, he calls it a podcast, but it's actually a

YouTube channel, and therefore, technically, it's not a podcast. But that aside, it was a joy to be on here with Adam.

I met Adam through Twitter. We talked, and he is a covenant theologian, wanted to have me on his show to discuss, well, dispensationalism.

And so he titled this Three Things You Need to Know About Dispensationalism with Andrew Rapaport.

Now, his channel is Curious Christianity, so I encourage you to check that out. You can watch the video of it.

But this, I hope, will be helpful for explaining at least what

I think is much confusion within the theological circles on what dispensationalism is and is not.

We're going to balance it out next week with a look at what covenant theology is with someone who's literally written a book on it.

So check that out next week as well. So I hope you look forward to this episode of The Rap Report.

Dispensationalism, covenant theology, what does it mean at all? Today, I have a very special guest,

Andrew Rapaport, and he is here to help explain and, I don't know, hopefully bring some clarity to what dispensationalism is and why we should believe in it.

So myself, I have not converted yet. So, Andrew, welcome to the channel, and good luck.

Maybe you can convert me to dispensationalism. No, that's not the goal. The reality is that we'll all agree 100 % about 10 ,000 years from now for sure, even 1 ,000 years from now.

So most of these issues that we debate over are not as big of issues as people make.

But I do appreciate you having me on. I thank you for having the discussion with me.

Yeah, no, I'm really excited. And you know what? Honestly, I'm also just excited to hear you say exactly what you just did.

You know, this channel actually is based on curiosity and the willingness to have conversation with people that we disagree and to be able to really explore.

So I really hope that this will be a great exploration for those that haven't heard of it. And I will just say, like,

I haven't spent nearly as much time talking about this subject. So I am interested. I'm interested in hearing what it is you have to say.

So if you could help us, Andrew, what is dispensationalism? For most of us, it's just a big word that theologians argue about, and the rest of the average person does not know why it matters at all.

Yeah, well, let's start with what it is not. Okay. Tell me what it is not. It is not an end -time system.

Most people, when they hear dispensationalism, if I say I'm a dispensationalist, the first thing they say is, well, I'm a millennial, or I'm post -millennial, or I'm not pre -millennial.

Yeah, I heard of somebody who did that recently. Maybe me. Can't imagine who that might be.

But that's the common response people give, which reveals that people don't understand what dispensationalism actually is.

The end -times view is not a requirement for dispensationalism. It's a byproduct of it.

So what is it? It's a hermeneutic. That's really what it comes down to. And for those who may not know that term, hermeneutics is the study of interpretation.

So how do we interpret? Every one of you listening is practicing hermeneutics right now.

You're listening to my words. You're listening to Adam's words. And you are interpreting them.

But most people don't even think about the rules they apply to interpretation. And we recognize those rules most often when someone takes us out of context.

And suddenly we get, hey, hey, hey, hey, no, that's wrong. You didn't put the right context there.

You took me out of context. Most people recognize that one when done to them, not when they do it to others.

So that's something we all do, but we don't think about the rules of it. And so when we think about the two big terminologies would be covenant theology and dispensational theology, they are primarily the differences is in how we interpret the

Scripture. And let me just give, if I could, a quick history lesson. Just because when we say covenant theology, there is a different view of the way words are used today and the way it's used historically.

And so let me give you a quick history lesson so that we understand it. And that way, if I use terms, people understand what

I mean by the terms, or at least how I'm going to use some terms together. Covenant theology is a way of interpreting that was born out of the

Roman Catholic Church. Now stop, I'm not saying that every covenant theologian is

Roman Catholic or that covenant theology is heresy because it's Roman Catholicism. I'm not saying that.

Because I was about to say, man, you're about to really anger everybody going deep on this one. Yeah, but we have to understand because most people historically that say they believe in covenant theology believe in Reformed theology, not covenant theology.

And so what you have is the Catholic Church that started to kind of replace themselves with Israel, kind of take on the view of priesthood and things to give themselves credibility by saying, oh, see, we're like Israel.

You had some of that. You had some of the interpretation. But then you also have where they weave in tradition.

And over time, they start weaving in a whole lot of things to the point that right now the Catholic Church is the authority over the

Bible because it's the Catholic Church that has to interpret the Bible. That, by definition, makes them a higher authority if they're the only ones that can interpret.

But the Reformers came along and said, okay, look, there's a lot of good that we have in this hermeneutic, but there's a lot of bad that comes with it from the

Catholic Church. So what they did was create what we would know as historically

Reformed theology, which many would argue that Baptists couldn't be

Reformed because part of the Reformed theology often has the view of covenants, of viewing the confessional statements, things like that.

That's a separate discussion. So what we call covenant theology today is historically what's referred to as Reformed theology.

So if I use the terms covenant theology or Reformed theology, I'm using them interchangeably because of the fact that we have this historical view.

We have this more modern view. The word Reformed theology or Reformed has morphed as well historically because, as I just told you what it is historically, people today think, oh, well, if you believe in, let's say, the doctrines of grace is probably the better term, but what is referred to as Calvinism.

If you believe in Calvinism, you're Reformed. Well, Reformed theology is much more than just the soteriology, which that big word just means the study of salvation.

It's much more than just how we get saved. Reformed theology is far more robust than that, but in today's day and age, people just mean it to refer to that.

Hey, man, the rest of us got to think in sound bites, okay? We can't all be up in the clouds all the time.

If it doesn't fit on a meme for social media, it just isn't theology, right? That's right. That's the modern way.

That's how you get your theology. Yeah, so I'm going to use Reformed theology, covenant theology interchangeably to refer to those rules of interpretation, the hermeneutic, used by those in more of a covenantal camp rather than a dispensational camp, and we'll explain those differences,

I'm sure, as the show goes on. But if I refer to Calvinism or doctrines of grace, then

I'm being more specific to the doctrine of soteriology. Okay. Yep. So, dispensationalism is kind of contrasting covenant theology, and it's more of a way of thinking about and interpreting the

Bible than it is like just a particular small doctrine. Is that kind of the point?

Yeah, that'd be an excellent explanation of it. And there's three key areas that we would see the difference.

Okay. And so, I mean, historically, some would say dispensationalism is a new system.

You know, it's been over 100 years, so that's not all that new, but in the grand scheme of things.

Now, it is quite interesting because a dispensationalist like myself can find the beliefs even in the early church fathers, but they weren't laid out as clearly, which we shouldn't be surprised at because one of the things with theology is all theology is rooted from heresy.

So let me explain that. You have, you know, you have someone come along and say, well, Jesus wasn't

God. Irenaeus. What's the response? Well, we need to look at Scripture and, oh, we get the, you know, a definition of the

Trinity. Well, that doctrine was developed because someone taught heresy. And so over time, we continue to refine and refine our theology.

So that in itself, we shouldn't be surprised that amillennialists, premillennialists all find their root in Augustine because Augustine believed in a literal thousand years.

So I could argue that. He just thought he was in it. So amillennialists can argue it. And so it offers this view that some of the early church fathers were not as precise as we are.

So it makes it really hard to say this is what the early church believed when looking in our day and age.

So I can look to some of the early church fathers and see them teaching some of the same principles of dispensationalism, but not specifically the way we would today.

Okay. That aside. So that's as my buddy Matt Slick says, when it comes to early church fathers, he always says, well, my early church father can beat up your early church father.

In other words, they're all over the map because they don't have it so precise and defined like we do today. So everybody roots themselves in early church fathers.

So that's to say that just because it seems like a newer system doesn't necessarily make it wrong, especially for reformed folks who should believe that we're reformed and keep reforming.

I would say dispensationalism is the keep reforming part. Many, many reformers would disagree.

Obviously, obviously. So let's look at these three. The one that I already alluded to and probably the biggest one that we end up having disagreement on, that you and I would disagree on, would be this idea of the relationship or the continuity, discontinuity of Israel and the church.

Okay. Is the church Israel, is the Israel Old Testament church, and is the church

New Testament Israel? I'm going to hold off on that one because I think that's going to be our bigger discussion. Could be.

And so that's one major one. But what that comes out of, and when we think about the history of dispensationalism, it really was people that looked at the

Reformation, that it still had remnants of the

Roman Catholic Church, and they said, let's take a step back and interpret the Bible in a normal sense.

They used to call it a literal sense, but the problem with calling it literal is people assume that that means

I have to take every word absolutely literal and ignore things like idioms. If I say

I'm so hungry, I can eat a cow. Most people understand that idiom to mean I'm starving, not that I can literally eat an entire cow.

I think that we're going to have to create a new English word for this because in this conversation, it happens so many times where someone wants to use normal.

I've heard plain reading of the text. I've heard a variety of ways to try and explain what everyone means is just like, hey, you read it and you get a basic idea, understanding, idioms, expressions, things like this.

We're going to have to coin a phrase. Here's the thing. Both covenantal theologians and dispensational theologians agree there that they're going to say it's in a normal way of reading.

They're going to see that idioms should be interpreted as idioms. Where we have the difference is if there's any

Presbyterians out there that understand the regulative principle of worship, this is my way of explaining it.

I have a regulative principle of interpretation. In other words, I don't say the Bible says more than it says, and this is where the difference is.

In other words, this is the example I like to use. Is the offering of Isaac a type of Christ?

And I would say no, because Scripture doesn't say so. Is Jonah a type of Christ? Yes, because Scripture says so.

Okay. But a covenant theologian would say yes, it is, because look at all the similarities.

I can agree with the similarities. There's a ton of similarities in the offering of Isaac, but I won't say it is.

Now, if I get to heaven and God says, Andrew, you didn't go far enough. Okay, I'm perfectly fine with that.

What I don't want to hear is, Andrew, you went too far. You started saying something I didn't say.

I don't want to hear that. And so I will freely admit I think dispensationalism is probably a safer hermeneutic because of that.

Can we say it's perhaps a more conservative hermeneutic? Yeah, we could say that. Sure. Yeah, yeah.

You just seem like you're trying to be cautious, like with your words and be like, I don't want to assume or I don't want to, where God has not spoken,

I will not open my mouth. That's exactly it, right? I mean, I don't want to put words in God's mouth.

And so... It sounds a little unsafe. It's unsafe, very.

But see, what we end up seeing is that in a covenant view, you're going to have a little bit more figurative.

So you're going to see things that are figurative that a dispensationalist would take literally.

Example, a thousand years mentioned in Revelation 20, mentioned six times. Dispensationalist is going to take that literally.

And some, and I'm being careful because not all covenantalists would do this, but some covenantalists would take that figuratively.

Most would. Anyone that's amillennial is going to take that figuratively.

Now, I would like, could you give me an example that's not that, because, you know, you began with this idea that, you know, it's not about end times eschatology.

So let's use a different example then. Otherwise I feel like it's... I gave you another with... Yeah. I gave you another with the offering of Isaac.

Okay. Right. Isaac is... So it's taken figuratively to point to Christ and say, this is an example of Christ, a type of Christ.

And I would say it isn't because scripture doesn't say it is. So I see that distinction there that we would have.

When we get to whether Israel is the church, that's going to be a major one that, I mean, that's so major that it's one of the defining things of dispensationalism, what we would call the sine qua non, that's a

French, sorry, Latin for, you know, without there is not so much. You can't have dispensationalism with these three things.

The first being the normal hermeneutic that we're talking about now. The second being the view of the distinction between Israel and the church.

And the third we'll get to is a doxological view of scripture instead of Christological.

Well, let me mention that one quickly because that... Let me give that and then dive into questions with all.

So the doxological view is the fact that we would take the purpose of scripture as being for God's glory, not specifically

Christ. So I'm not looking for Christ in every passage. Okay. I'm looking for God's glory in every passage.

So if I come to the Song of Solomon, I'm not saying this is about Christ and the church.

I'm saying this is about the love and beauty of a marriage. Now, the love within marriage gives

God glory. But if the purpose of the book was about Christ and the church, now we have some things.

A, it wouldn't have had a meaning for a thousand years, or it had a meaning that we didn't see for a thousand years. The other thing is there's some graphic language in that book that I don't know that that's exactly how we want to describe our relationship with our

Lord. Okay? So when we look at that, I mean, if you look at it, and one of my seminary professors did his dissertation on the

Song of Solomon, like I could think of other things to do a dissertation on, but he lays out that it is a wedding, that the whole thing is about an ancient wedding.

So I would see that as giving God glory. I struggle with what we do when we get to, you know, leprosy on houses, you know, that we see in Leviticus.

I think it's 14. How does that point to Christ? And I've heard people, you know, try, you know, okay, granted, this is a really, really bad one.

But if you remember Harold Camping, he used to be on Family Radio. Nope. He was a really bad representation of covenant theology.

Actually, he's a really bad representation of a lot of things. I mean, he'd have people call up his program and ask how to get saved.

And he would just say, well, if you're one of the elect, God will bring you to repentance and we'll go to our next caller.

And it's like, no gospel, you know? He was the epitome of how not to interpret the

Bible. But I called in his program to ask him that because I was curious since, you know, he tries to jump, he does these really crazy gymnastics to fit

Christ into everything. And so he was going through, well, house means church, and Christ is the head of the church.

And like, this was the gymnastics that some would do. And granted, I've said, he's the worst example of covenant theology.

But that would be what some would do when they're trying to look for Christ in every single passage.

And they will get that from a view that says Christ is talking with the disciples after his resurrection on a way of Emmaus.

And the Old Testament points to it. It doesn't mean every single verse. Sure, sure, sure. I think that it just means the

Old Testament. And so we would see a distinction there. When it speaks about Christ, does that give God glory?

Yes. So I have a broader view as a dispensationalist to what the view of Scripture is than a covenantalist would do.

And so in some areas, I'm more specific, in other areas, more broad. So those are the three overviews.

Okay. Notice I didn't mention anything about times, by the way. I know, I know. You should have. No, I'm just kidding. Okay. So you've got doxological versus Christological, right?

And what's the second one and the third one again? Well, it would actually start off with a normal or literal plain reading of the text versus a figurative meaning.

A distinction between Israel and the Church. Okay. Israel and the Church are not the same thing. They're not the same entity.

We could dig into that more. And then a doxological versus Christological view. Those are the three things.

So I'm curious then. Okay. So you would say that the focus of Scripture is to give

God glory, right? Yes. That sounds very covenantal. Now I'm just joking with you a little bit, but that is sort of true in stuff like, right?

Here's an interesting thing. Okay. When people think of dispensationalism, they think of the guys 100 years ago with charts, laying out end time views.

And that's what dispensationalism is known for outside of the camp, for the charts and the premillennialism, laying out all this timeline.

And I've never really looked at the charts. I mean, I've seen them, but don't use them, right?

So it's a thing where when we look at what dispensationalism is, we'll talk about things like the continuity, discontinuity of Israel.

There's a range within covenant theology, just like there is a range within dispensationalism.

You have the hard liners. I mean, the extreme on dispensational side says there's a complete discontinuity.

I would call this hyper -dispensationalism. They don't read the writings of the Gospels. They don't read the

Old Testament, just the writings of Paul. I would say that's extreme. That's pretty extreme. Yep. The other side on the extreme on the covenant camp sees that everything that was promised to Israel is the church.

And so you'll have some that try to keep the laws because they're Israel. And so you get into that.

The reality is there's a lot more, we're a lot closer now. Where you get really close is what used to be,

I guess it used to be called new covenant theology, which is out of the covenant theology camp, where they see distinction between, more distinction with Israel and the church, a more literal interpretation.

There's some things that as that, and that's actually a very newer, when I say that's a new system,

I know the guys that wrote the first book on new covenant theology. So they're alive today and very well.

So it's within the last 50 years that that has been developed.

And that's now got a new name because that kind of went off in a different way, I guess. But that you can compare to progressive dispensationalism.

And so the other view is called progressive covenantalism, the new covenant theology view.

And I think that whoever came up with the terms really was wrong. Like we don't want to be progressive on either side.

But progressive covenantalism and progressive dispensationalism are pretty close.

They're very much, they see a lot of similarities. It's just when it comes to the end times, future prophecy, there's differences there.

So they don't, they interpret that different. So let's talk about continuity, discontinuity. So if I ask you this question, do you think the

Bible is one story? What is the response to that? Yes. Okay, Bible's one story.

What is discontinuity? What part of this has discontinuity?

And this is where I'm going to joke with you because many people think that, well, covenant theology is more biblical because the

Bible talks of covenants and we don't see dispensationalism in there. Well, we do. The word that we get, dispensationalism, is there once in Ephesians.

But when we look at the covenants God makes with his people, this is back to what

I said with the charts that people are doing. You have the charts of all these dispensations and there's some people that focus on, is there five dispensations, seven dispensations?

Okay. A dispensation is nothing more than an economy, a way that God works with his people.

It's instructions that he gives to a group of people for a time. And those are defined by the covenants.

So dispensationalism is heavier on covenants maybe than covenant theology because we would look at each of the covenants, right?

So there was a covenant given to Adam, and he had some rules and responsibilities. There was a covenant that was given to Noah, and that had more things.

But we end up seeing that then there's a covenant given to Moses. Some dispute whether there was a covenant to David.

Then there's a new covenant. So what we end up seeing is that with each of the covenants comes a responsibility between God and his people.

And so dispensationalism sees that each of those covenants is still part of one story, but each of those covenants has a different way that God relates to those specific people or universal.

So you would say though that God actually interacts with different peoples, people groups, whoever it is, whichever covenantal group.

So let's take a covenant between Abraham and,

I don't know, pick the next covenant, David or Moses or Adam or whatever. Let's take

Abraham and Moses, or we could go back to Adam and Moses. Sure. So here would be an example

I would use. Let's take the Sabbath. And this is one that gets disputed within dispensational circles as well as new covenant theology.

Covenant theology too, yeah, yeah. This is pretty disputed in lots of circles. Yeah, they would—well, new covenant theology would say we have the law of Jesus, so they only look at things that were commanded in the

New Testament. And so if we look at this, on the seventh day of creation, there was a command to keep a

Sabbath that I would say is universal for all human beings because it was given to Adam.

Okay. And so therefore there is a Sabbath that every person is responsible to keep.

Okay. Now, did Moses add to that? Yes. For the nation of Israel, he added a whole lot of new laws for the

Sabbath that apply to the nation of Israel. But we're not the nation of Israel, therefore I would say we're under that universal law that was always in play.

So do I hold to a Sabbath? Yes, I believe we should have a day set aside for rest and for the worship of God.

But does it mean that we can't do work and we can't lift sticks? No. I think that was for the nation of Israel.

So this is how it ends up playing out. But why then are you separating Adam from the nation of Israel?

Well, I wouldn't see Adam as part of the nation of Israel. Right, right, right. Especially since there wasn't an

Israel to be a nation at that point. Well, okay. So would you consider yourself a part of the nation of Israel?

Well, you're probably asking the wrong person because I actually am a Levite. Right, right.

But how do you fit this in for yourself, right? Yeah, so I am physically of the nation of Israel, but under the new covenant.

Okay, right. So now here'd be a thing with that, right? The nation of Israel is commanded—a law for Moses was to keep the

Passover forever, okay? Okay. So Israel has to keep that. That's not part of some ceremonial or civil law.

And I disagree with those distinctions, by the way. But that's the way—no, I believe—

No, don't worry. I get it. But— So, well, because it may be new for some folks.

So there's a—within Reformed theology, there's a tripart view of the law. You have civil, ceremonial, and moral.

I've asked for years if someone could produce for me the 613 laws divided in that camp.

I would love to see someone take that on and divide those that way. Because sometimes things preach well, but they don't fit well in the

Scripture. And I've never seen it. It may exist, but if it does, I'd love to see it. But the issue being is

I take it more that there's universal laws. There's laws for the nation of Israel.

There's laws for the church. Now, I think there's more than that. I think there were laws for Moses and Abraham.

And some of those don't—you know, wouldn't apply because those were covenants that were given to either specific—and most often comes up with Moses because I think that was given to a nation.

And so we do have laws that were civil because they were for that nation on how to do things.

And you could argue— But it's not so clear to me, then, how are you distinguishing? And see, if you don't want to segregate it into these three categories, how are you distinguishing that which laws were given to a nation and that which are moral laws?

Yeah. Well, I do it through the covenants. So what I'm distinguishing, and this is why

I'm using the term universal nation of Israel laws and New Testament laws.

And so what I see in those is the fact that there are some laws that even

Gentiles are expected to follow. For example, thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not kill.

God will hold people accountable. And even the New Testament is clear. They're accountable even though they don't have the law, meaning the 613 commandments.

There were more than just 10. And the thing is, take for example, we talk about the

Sabbath. Yeah. So you have a Sabbath law. That Sabbath law is a moral law. Why?

Because you die if you break it. It's not so obvious to me why you're making a distinction about the

Sabbath law and you're making it—why wasn't that just the covenant for Adam? Well, see, I think that Adam, because it was rooted in creation, that covenant for Adam was—there was that had an effect for all of humanity because we're all in Adam.

And so the covenant to Adam was for all mankind, where what you see with that, which was given to Moses, was for that nation.

Now, is not the covenant of Adam a covenant of death, though, after the sin, after the fall? Yeah. Well, but some was.

I mean, some we see that part of the covenant that we see within creation is the Sabbath day, a day of rest.

And it is kind of interesting that certain countries—Russia tried this. Russia tried doing a 10 -day work week and found that people were not as productive, and they went back to a seven -day.

Actually, I have heard of studies like that. Yeah, that people have like—they've tried other things to try and break the seven -day thing, and it hasn't worked out.

Yeah. And I find it interesting that for evolutionists who argue that we evolved in all this, where do you get a seven -day work week from?

Every culture has a seven -day work week. Why? You know, because it's part of the creation order.

And so as being part of creation order, I think there are things that are universal for all. And so I think that there's laws that we would see within the covenants that are given to a wider range, and some that are given to a specific range.

So I would argue that those which are given to the nation of Israel were for the nation of Israel.

So that's why I make that distinction. But by what mechanism would you determine that? Harmonetics. Right? No, but it's looking at the covenants, looking at things.

So there's going to be things—let's take, for example, one that's challenged a lot today, homosexuality.

No, it's challenged today? I don't think it should be challenged. It shouldn't be. I know, I know. But what we have is we have people that are trying to say, oh, well, the new covenant is all about love.

And so what they want to do is redefine the Old Testament. Now, what they're doing is putting such a distinction between Israel and the church that they're saying, well, those laws don't apply to us at all.

That was just for the nation. However, what was that law rooted in? Creation. One man with one woman.

And that is repeated multiple times through Scripture, both in Old and New Testament, that that is the reason why homosexuality is wrong.

So it's rooted back to creation. That makes it universal. So I wouldn't be opposed to looking at Old Testament passages for that or New Testament passages for that, because I see it rooted to the creation order.

Would you say, then, that the covenant that God makes with Adam, the creation covenant there is unique and distinct from the other covenants?

I would. I think I would. I might need to think about this more because I've never been asked that question.

But my initial thought is that I think every covenant is unique. But you're saying the creation covenant has like a unique, almost a unique sense in which it goes throughout, right?

That it impacts all of us and even all of the all of the other covenants. They all have something that originates or...

I think there are things that we see throughout that are not necessarily tied to a covenant. For example, why is lying wrong?

Why is murder wrong? Why is rape wrong? Why is coveting wrong?

Now notice, I threw one in there that's not one of the Ten Commandments, right? But yet it's still universally wrong.

Why? Because God is not a liar. God is not a thief. God is not a rapist. God is not one who covets.

In other words, the moral system that we know, we get that from the nature of God.

That's the standard. And so anything that... And this is why I would end up saying that if people go, well, if Jesus didn't repeat, thou shalt not lie, then it's not for the church.

And this is a question I challenge to those that would be involved in New Covenant theology.

The question is, okay, did God mention... Did Jesus mention rape in the New Testament? Because if not, then

I guess rape is okay? Right, right. If we... I know, we follow the logic. We follow the logic of, yeah.

Well, that what she doesn't say is perfectly permissible. I use logic. I know. I'm bad. Sorry.

But yeah, I mean, that's the thing. If we take it to its logical conclusion, then we end up with the question of, is this teaching that we can rape?

And I would say, no, we can't. Okay? And so I think that what makes it unique, what some are unique is that we have the case that this is a covenant given to a specific either group of people.

I could pull it up. But one of the things I did is I looked at all the covenants and kind of showed that there's this progression in the covenants that you see covenant given to a person,

Adam, eventually to a nation through Moses, through a kingdom, through David, if you take that one.

And then you end up having the... To the New Covenant, to everyone.

So I think that you could see this progression over time. Progression. Like, I mean, like it changes, but what do you mean progression?

Like it's progressing in what sense? Like, it's not really obvious to me. Like, I mean, I'm familiar with like, of course, what you're talking about, but like, in what sense is it?

Do you mean that it's progressing as that it's moving forward? Or do you mean that it's progressing as that it's getting better?

Oh, well, I definitely think it's getting better. But I think it's also reaching a broader audience with each one of them.

For example, I would say the covenant to Moses was for a specific nation, Israel, and now

Gentiles are included in a newer covenant that reaches a wider audience.

Okay, but I mean, I don't think this can hold up consistently throughout from the Old Testament to the New Testament, because isn't

Adam the most broad audience you can have? If you're accounting Adam is to be the first of creation, then it's for the whole world, right?

No, no, it's one person. Okay, but who is that? He's one person. Now, I would argue the covenant for the whole world would be the millennial.

You might disagree with that. Okay, but I mean, are you really saying that the covenant for Adam, oh, it's just Adam, but not to his family?

Yeah. And this is something that I've kind of developed. I mean, it comes out of this progressive view of revelation.

We get more revelation with more instruction. I see the covenant the same way, but that's not a major part of dispensationalism.

But let me, if I could, let me do something that, again, this also is, I think, unique with me, but maybe helpful.

All right, let's go. Now, it doesn't mean that it's right or wrong, but when we look at in Romans, this is the big area where people see continuity between Israel and the church, is

Paul will say, not all Israel is Israel. Sure. And so what is he doing? He's referring to a spiritual

Israel. And so what people will say is, see, that means that the church is Israel. All right, now, again, a history lesson, and if anyone gets a copy of my book,

What Do We Believe?, in there, it's a short systematic theology, easy to read, but I have a section on the church where I give a, basically, a historical view of the word ekklesia, where we get the idea of church, because that word has become more and more specific throughout the years.

It used to, originally, it was just the idea of, ekklesia meant a gathering for the purpose of voting.

That's the, in Ephesus is the first place we see that word, and it was for a vote. So every four years in America, we ekklesia.

No, that's, you know, because that word has become more specific throughout history.

And as we end up seeing that, we see that it became for the purpose of worship, but then with the

Catholic Church, you have the Reformers, you have the Puritans start developing it more, and they started to see there's, you know, when everybody's forced to go to church, you have people in the local assembly that are not believers.

Are they the church? That was the struggle. And so what they did was they developed terminology that they used being the visible and invisible church, or sometimes it's referred to as the universal and local.

So the invisible or universal church are believers everywhere in the world throughout all time.

So those who are part of the church, universal, are believers. Now, I would say after the time of Christ, you would say to include those before.

I recognize that. But just understand terminology, and, you know, the Reformers or Puritans could go back and forth on it, but it's that invisible, it's all believers, only believers, even though they don't worship in the same local assembly.

But in that local visible assembly, you have believers and unbelievers. So when we say church, after the

Puritans, it became, what are we speaking of? Are we speaking universal or are we speaking local?

In other words, is it the church that is just believers, or is that local assembly that has unbelievers as well?

That is very helpful for us when we look at what we mean by church.

I take that same thinking and terminology and apply it to Israel, and I think this clarifies a lot of some of the issues.

So there's a universal and local Israel, or a visible -invisible. So in the nation of Israel, you had believers, and all of the believers would make up a spiritual

Israel or universal Israel, invisible Israel, whichever you want to use. And then you had a local assembly or visible assembly of Israel that was made up of believers and unbelievers.

Now, why do I make that distinction? Because I think within the local visible Israel is distinct from the local visible church, where when we look at the universal

Israel and universal church, now we're going to have more continuity. And so when I break it down this way,

I can look at some things that were true for spiritual Israel and say that's true for spiritual church.

But I wouldn't say for the local or visible Israel and church.

So that's where I kind of break down some continuity, discontinuity. It just helps me in my thinking. Sure. So if I rephrased it, perhaps would you accept this?

Don't rephrase it and break my narrative. Look, we now know we live in a culture where truth doesn't matter.

Theology doesn't matter. The narrative matters. Keep my narrative. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Yeah. Well, I'm going to try really hard, but I don't know, man.

It's tough. Well, if you break it, then I got to rethink it, right? Then it's wrong. Well, don't worry. Don't worry. I'm going to improve.

So, but no, if I phrased it just for clarity sake for, because I'm pretty sure

I understand what you're saying. Right. So it's yeah. The idea of like, oh, well, who's the real church. And like, yeah, because I mean,

I think almost all of us, all of us can admit that. Yeah. When you go to church, it's full of both.

Right. You don't just go to church and go like, yeah, I know for sure. Everybody is the perfect state.

Yeah. I always heard. It's called heaven. I always heard one pastor say, it's like, look, if you find the perfect church, you should leave.

Because then you've got, you've got an issue because you're the one that's going to be stuck out.

There is a perfect church. You just have to die to get there. Details, details.

Yeah. Well, so if I phrased it is God's children. Right. So you would say that all who are

God's children and that there's continuity, right? Okay. Not, not everybody is a child of God.

John one 12, you know, not all are children of God, but those who believe in Christ.

I would say that Israel looked forward to the Messiah. So they had a, they didn't have the knowledge we have.

We look back at Christ. They looked forward to him, but there's still the belief is incorrect. What Christ did. Yeah. Okay.

Now I want to shift gears on you for half a second or whatever. I want to know what you think about salvation and how does your hermeneutic interact with salvation from the old

Testament to the new Testament? Does that. I would say it's the same. Okay. So you would say. But, but as what

I just said, they looked forward to, they had a sacrificial system that didn't remove sin, but it looked forward to a sacrificial system or sacrifice that would not.

This is complete side note, but on my apologetics live, I do a show politics live politics, live .com

is how you join and watch it. But we have a guy, a Jewish guy coming in and he's trying to disprove

Christianity. Okay. And he sent me a six page proof that Christianity cannot be from God.

And it's going to be really funny when he comes on because he doesn't realize he destroyed Judaism in the process because his whole argument is

Christ claims to be a sacrifice. And the old Testament says we don't need sacrifices. We need a contrite heart.

We need repentance. That that violates the whole law of like Leviticus is all about the sacrificial system.

And it's a must. You can't have a sacrifice without blood. So it's, it's kind of funny because in his attempt to get, to get rid of Christianity, he gets rid of Judaism and he hasn't put that connection together yet.

Well, that'll be an interesting discussion to be, to be had. Yeah. Have fun with that. Yeah.

It's very much like your show where we, we discuss openly different, different, you know, it's, it's apologetic. So we discuss anything.

And, and it's, it's more, it's more fun, I guess, in this way with the, you know, you invite a guest on,

I have people come into apologetics live and we, it's a podcast too, but they, they, they come in prepared for debate and I don't know

I'm having a debate that night. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's really kind of fun because it's like, I never know what

I'm going to be asked and what I'm going to be challenged with. Yeah. Yeah. Keeps you on your toes. Okay.

So now going yeah, let's, let's go ahead. And I want to get into, just a little bit, cause we only get a little bit of time left.

I know you've got other, other things to do, but so now this is one, now you said

I would disagree with you, but maybe I'm probably would on some points, but I am curious.

So, because everyone does want to know, they want to know about the end times and this and that, and all these sorts of notions.

And so segregating the church from Israel. Now I think it's important that we distinguish here.

Are we talking about the nation of Israel is that's largely when you say Israel, that's what you're referring to.

Is that right? So yeah. And, and, and this is where I don't focus a whole lot on end times, but even though much of the

Bible does the, I don't know. Well when you look at a lot of the old

Testament is dealing with future prophecies. It's just how we interpret those. Well, I think a lot of those were, yeah, were fulfilled in Christ.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and this is, that becomes where some of the differences are. I think that the dispensational view that we would have is because there were certain land promises that were never fulfilled, literally we would see that because we take this in this normal reading, because that led to a distinction between Israel and the church, we see these promises that were given to Israel that were very specific and physical and should be fulfilled by, by Israel.

Now I think Michael Brown will agree with you there. Well, well, in a few areas, Michael Brown and I agree.

Well, yeah, because I know, I know he's going to disagree with you on a lot of things, but one of the things is he really does see this yes, land promises and things like that that are yet to be fulfilled from in Israel.

Okay. And so you brought up Michael Brown, let me just say, and I can't speak for him. I can speak for myself. People assume that I'm a dispensationalist because I'm an

Israelite. That's not true. Okay. What actually what got me to be a dispensationalist is the charismatic movement.

So the reason being... You do have an interesting background, that Andrew. When I went to college, okay, so being raised

Jewish, I became a Christian at 16. My parents found out at 18, that's when they went casket shopping to bury an empty casket for me.

But what ended up happening was I got to college and I got involved with word of faith, charismatic group, because that's all that was at the college.

And they taught me the Bible because I didn't know the Bible. I just trusted them.

Four years later, I graduate. I'm sitting at a Bible study, two men. I'm not even involved in the conversation. They're just at the other end of the table at a

Bible study. And one guy turns to the other guy and says, well, we don't believe that all of those gifts continue to today.

And I went, what? Like I was taught this is how to interpret the Bible. I went home that night and I read first Corinthians 12, 13 and 14 in one sitting, not assuming that the gifts continue just saying, what does the text actually teach?

And I realized that everything I was taught, everything that happens in the charismatic movement was condemned by Paul.

Now you may be charismatic. I don't know. I'll just say more than you are. At this point.

So, and actually we'll have to have a, I'll have to have you back on and we'll have to talk about this.

But I'll say it to this is what that did was I walked away saying, I need to learn how to interpret the

Bible. So for four years, I read everything I could get on biblical interpretation, how to interpret.

And what I ended up coming to was the natural reading, the way we do any other language.

I know there's some who will say that, well, the Bible is a different book. So you must read it with a spiritual hermeneutic or a

Christological hermeneutic, lots of different terminology for it. But I think God gave us language and we use the rules for language.

And, and, you know, maybe we could get into a further discussion of those different rules, but there's rules for historical narrative that differ from Hebrew poetry that different from, you know, prophetic literature.

They each have a set of rules. So you need to identify the type of language you need to identify the rules for that language.

And those rules we would have for literature as well, right? So you can have a, a

Shakespeare or a John Bunyan, for example, John Bunyan writes where it is very clear that he has dual meanings for things.

His main character is Christian that represents a Christian and worldly wise man represents a worldly wise man, right?

Ignorance represents ignorance. So each, so there's clearly by the nature of the book, it is clearly meant to be taken figuratively with some areas, right?

And so you're following the rules for that when interpreting that book, I apply the same to the Bible. And that's really what it comes down to.

I know, I know. Unfortunately, it's still difficult because everyone still disagrees.

It's not like, you know, many of us read hermeneutics books and we read a variety of different books and then we still can't agree on things.

Well, look, look, I put it this way. If everybody could interpret the Bible consistently and accurately all the time, they would agree with me.

It was like a joke. So, so I want to kind of end a little bit on, on, on that, on, on the notion because I've, I've really just been thinking a lot about biblical studies and I've been thinking a bunch about today.

I hear a lot about Christian scholarship and PhDs and all these sorts of things. And it's really led me and including church history, like, you know, cause you were talking about like,

Oh, church history and church fathers. And I think it's important to have all those things. But I think that it goes back to me that the

Bible is ultimately the source of authority. And I think there are some situations in which

I'm conflicting or clashing with academics or even church history in one area or another.

And I just want to go, unless you can convince me through sound reason or the scriptures themselves, you know, show me, show me the

Bible verse, right? Like show me the chapter and verse and you can win me over. Right.

So I am curious. What do you, cause to me, honestly, that's what I hear you saying to some degree, right?

Is you're like, Hey, look, I feel like I read the Bible and this is what it says. Well, essentially that is what

I'm doing. I'm following. I mean, so the issue that I kind of see is when, and this is going to be a generalization and not true for many covenant theologians.

But when you have those that are saying, well, you have to read the Bible in light of the covenants or this covenantal statement, this, you know, confessional statement, the issue is when you start putting creeds in and church history in and saying, we have to reinterpret the

Bible through the, in other words, we don't read it in its plain meaning. We have to read it in light of, of this.

Now, are there times we see that? Let me give a good example. In Haggai, it speaks of Israel, clearly

Israel saying out of Egypt, I call my son. And then in Matthew, he seems to be quoting that very verse, but clearly assigning that to Jesus.

So what people will do is say, well, see, there's a dual meaning here. Therefore, we should interpret the Bible with dual meanings.

We should be looking for the spiritual meaning of things. Well, this again, relative principle of interpretation.

If the Bible, if God does that, then I say, if that's, now notice, he never mentions the prophet that said it.

So there were prophets that weren't, that didn't write in scripture. He didn't say as scripture said.

And so is that something that was known at the time by a different prophet? It could be, that's one explanation, but if it's not, if it is a dual meaning,

I would say, well, when God says it's a dual meaning, because God's word cannot be in error, when we see him give it a dual meaning, then we can say that has a dual meaning.

But I don't look for other things to have a dual meaning. I don't look for a figurative way of interpreting other things.

And so I think what you end up seeing is, I think some, and I'm going to say this, and please, my covenant theologian brothers, please hear me with some grace, because I know this is going to,

I know it's going to ruffle feathers. But this was the view of the separatists, those that didn't want nothing to do with the

Catholic church, that started to reevaluate these things. I think that just like the reformers saw that there was some baggage that the

Roman Catholic church brought into the Bible and into Christendom, and they reformed it,

I just say they didn't go far enough. And I think there's still some of that baggage that Luther and others just weren't willing to get rid of, because it's what they knew.

And it's hard to do the break completely and say, let's step all the way back. Look, one of the things with hermeneutics, the first principle

I teach people when I teach hermeneutics is, you need to question your presuppositions. You have to be able to say,

I could be wrong about what I think this passage means. And you have to look at what the text actually says.

And I think that that's a very difficult thing for all of us to do. And so I think that we still have some of the history and the creeds and the confessional statements that people have in their mind when they come to Scripture, and they say, well, this must mean this because this is what history says, scholars say.

I take positions that scholars don't necessarily agree with. No, you wouldn't be a contrarian at all, would you,

Andrew? I'd love to say I'm a biblicist, but that is a meaningless term nowadays.

So I want to be a man of the word. You know what? I really feel like it's a noble thing.

And I'll just say it this way, right? We're pursuing the Bible to understand it as best we can.

Yeah. I love it the way a friend of mine, Matt Slick, puts it. And he and I have debated each other more than we've debated anybody else.

We've debated charismatic gifts. We've debated baptism, infant baptism. He's Presbyterian. I'm Baptist.

He's covenantal, covenantal theologian. Which one of you is on the side of gifts? He believes gifts continue.

Really? Okay. Yeah. I mean, I knew what you believed, and I will be honest. I'm shocked to hear that Matt accepts gifts.

I don't know. He just seems. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Well, you'll have to go check out the debates. Go to Striving Fraternities' YouTube channel.

You'll see one of the many debates we've done on it. Wow. But when we were debating covenant theology versus dispensationalism, one of the women in the audience asked the question.

She said, you know, I noticed that, Andrew, you are defending covenant theology against strongman arguments made by dispensationalism.

And Matt, you're defending dispensationalism against strongman arguments made against covenant theologians.

And now Matt gave a better answer. My answer, which came afterwards, was it's just like the argument comes back.

Like me defending covenantalism will weigh more with a dispensationalist being a dispensationalist.

And so I want people to make good arguments and fair arguments. And so does Matt. So that's why. But Matt had a great argument.

Son, I've repeated many times because it really was good. Matt just said, look,

Andrew and I both know we're wrong in our theology. We don't know where because if we did, we would change. But we know when we sit at the feet of Christ, he will correct both of us and we will be happy for that correction.

And I think that's the big thing is that where we get into trouble is when we get prideful about our theology and we think we can't be wrong because every one of us is wrong somewhere.

I'm wrong. I don't know where. Christ will correct me. I can put it this way. In 100 years, you and I will agree 100 % in our theology.

We don't today. We one of us is wrong. Both of us could be wrong. But I know in some areas we're all wrong.

And that should ground us in humility to not be fighting over these things, but to learn from one another.

I mean, look, I was joking with you on my rap report podcast. I'm going to be discussing this book,

Covenant Theology with Patrick Abendrall, right? That's I'm reading a book on covenant theology to engage with him.

Now, my rap report podcast, if you listen to Andrew Rappert's rap report, that podcast,

I'm going to be letting him speak about the book. I'm going to invite him on to Apologetics Live where we'll debate the book.

Because now people say, well, how could you have a podcast and you bring people on that don't agree with you and you let them speak?

Yeah, because my audience would know what I believe. And one of the things I want to do is be fair with an audience.

Even on Apologetics Live, people get frustrated because I had like a black Hebrew Israelite comes in and I gave him an hour and a half, an hour, 40 minutes before I'm like, finally, like,

OK, what are you trying to say? But I give I mean, I tried to let him I gave him a long time to try to build his argument.

But after an hour and a half, we still didn't understand the argument. But I tried to do that. I want to give people the freedom to to voice their opinion, even if I disagree with it.

I'll interject questions to better understand it, because guess what? Patrick Abendroth might be right on covenant theology.

I might be wrong. I don't think I am. He hasn't convinced me yet. I haven't convinced you of dispensationalism maybe yet.

But the idea here is that we're not trying to convince one another. This is the big thing.

If I had anything to say to your audience, to my audience is this. We should be less concerned with trying to convince each other that we're right and see what we could learn from each other when it comes to our theology.

Learn why someone believes what they believe. Are they consistent within their own system? You and I had a discussion before this totally separate.

It led to this. But what was some of the things you laid out your view, which is how we got into discussing this?

And you said, hey, you got to come on my show. You laid out a view. And it was something where, you know,

I'm I'm asking you questions. And I think I even said to you, I saw consistency. I disagreed with it, but I saw consistency in your argument.

And I appreciated that. And that's what I look to do. Where I poke, people think I'm trying to just kind of,

I don't know, be argumentative or something. It's like I poke holes where I see inconsistencies. You could disagree with me, but if you're being consistent with it, then you have a better argument.

What I'm trying to do is get people to have better arguments, not necessarily my arguments. And that's where I appreciated with you,

Adam, was the fact that when we had a discussion over the phone, it was one where there was a view that you had of that you want to be consistent.

You want to see where the truth leads you. We have a different way of approaching it, but you want to be consistent with it.

And that I end up valuing. And that's where, you know, as you'll poke holes with what I believe, I'm trying to poke holes with what you believe.

But what that does is get us to either refine our views or correct our views or totally denounce our views.

Because we want the truth. That's it. That's it, man. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Well, Andrew, thank you so much for coming on. If you want to learn more about Andrew and his ministry, I'll be sure to have his links in the description below.

And thanks so much for coming, Andrew. Thank you very much for having me. John Sewer is a local company with over 40 years' experience solving

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