Comparing Dispensationalism and CT

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Thank you for this opportunity to again be together as a class and to discuss the subject of various theological positions and where we would want to be in line with your word.
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We know that on this particular issue of the day this is a subject upon which good men have certainly divided and yet remained faithful to you, so we pray that we would seek to be ever faithful to learning what the scripture has to say, ever open to being corrected on areas that we would be wrong about, and always willing to say ultimately that you are sovereign and you are all-knowing and you are God and we are none of those things.
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So help us to be submissive to you, to your word, and to what it has to tell us today.
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I pray for myself, specifically, that you would keep me from error in my presentation of this material.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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Well today we're going to discuss a comparison between covenant theology and dispensationalism.
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From the outset, I have to say that this particular issue is one on which, and I mentioned this in my prayer, this is a subject on which good men from Christendom and within Christendom have divided and remained believers, faithful to the scriptures.
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These subjects tend to be divisive but not ones that can't be overcome in regard to our love for one another and how we understand our faithfulness to Jesus Christ.
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Probably the two greatest men that I know of, one from each side, Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul would be what we call a dispensationalist.
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So there's two men from whom you have learned a lot because I learned through them and you learned from me and so by the process of me parenting them often or hearing what they have to say and learning it from them and then teaching it to you, both of these men have had great influence on my ministry and yet both of them come from a different perspective on this issue.
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And it could take us, I mean we could spend months and even years discussing the various intricate differences, but we're going to try to limit ourselves at least to what's on these pages because if we go and we spend too much time chasing rabbits, we'll never leave this particular subject.
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And I do want to, from the beginning, give you a at least tip of the hat or tip of the hand as they were so that there is no question I would not consider myself a dispensationalist.
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But at the same time, I do not consider myself either to be a full-on covenantalist either.
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I think that there are issues with covenant theology as well.
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I think that ultimately we, and I know that's sort of unfair because I hate it, I'll be honest with you, when somebody says I'm not a Calvinist, I'm not an Arminian, I'm a Biblicist, and you say well wait a minute, that's not fair.
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On the issue of Calvinism, when it comes to soteriology and the five points of Calvinism, you either believe them or you don't.
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And I would say when it comes to dispensationalism, I'm not a dispensationalist.
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That's not to say I won't be fair because I was educated in a dispensational school.
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I received my doctorate from a school that said if you're not a dispensationalist you're just outright wrong.
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I mean I've sat under it, I've learned it, and I think I can be fair with it, but I'm not a dispensationalist.
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There is an option that sort of seeks to bridge the divide between the two called new covenant theology, and since it's not on the page we're not going to deal with it as much, but I will say that there are some things about new covenant theology which tend to resonate more with me because it addresses some of the, what I would say are some of the errors in classic covenantal theology.
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But let's just to give you an idea what the major difference, well there's several differences.
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Primarily the major difference between dispensationalism and covenant theology, if you had to distill it down to one primary difference, is how the church and Israel are related to one another.
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In classic covenant theology the church is the fulfillment of God's promises to Israel.
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In classic dispensationalism, and both of those I'm using the word classic because there's always variations, but in classic covenant theology the church is the fulfillment of the God's promises to Israel.
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And dispensationalism, the church and Israel are absolutely distinct and they are not to have any bleeding over.
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The church is God's heavenly people, the Israel, the nation of Israel is God's earthly people, God has blessings for the church and blessings for Israel, and they are distinct and separated and never the two shall meet.
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Okay, that's the strong dispensational view, is that you have to maintain a hard separation between Israel and the church.
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And I will say this, dispensationalism has won the day.
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Dispensationalism is what you will get in the vast majority of Southern Baptist churches.
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If you were to go to them today and you were to sit under their teaching on this particular issue, they would almost not mention covenant theology except to say that it's wrong and they would hold up dispensationalism as the only truth.
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In fact, how many of you are familiar with Jerry B.
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Jenkins and Tim LaHaye and the books that they produced? Tim LaHaye, well Jerry B.
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Jenkins was the, Tim LaHaye was the theologian I think and Jerry B.
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Jenkins was the writer, the fictional writer, and they went, they came together and wrote the Left Behind series.
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And Tim LaHaye also produced a outline of the End Times and if you read it, I remember being on a vacation with my wife at Stone Mountain National Park and we stayed at a hotel at Stone Mountain and she had bought me or I had purchased a Tim LaHaye's book on the subject of the End Times.
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This is very early, this is before we even had the kids, this is probably 2002, 2003, right when I was in seminary.
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And I was reading this book and it was fascinating, you know, had all these pictures and all these graphics, it was like, you know, what you see when you look behind that one big preacher from Texas and you know all those things that he has behind, yeah, the things that he has behind him, the billboards, yeah, it was like that but in book form.
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So it's very, very graphically appealing and very nice, you know, I don't mind it being open if you're warm.
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Well, we'll let it bother them until they tell us to stop.
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So I'll try to keep it down.
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So ultimately, as I said, I'm very familiar with dispensationalism but also that's all a lot of people have ever been exposed to.
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I remember once I started to really broaden my understanding of this subject and study outside of what the...
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I was basically being told to study in school and I started looking at outside of that.
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I was at a Bible study at the First Coast High School where I used to work as a security guard.
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There was a school Bible study and they invited me to come in.
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And so I went to the Bible study and before it started, the lady was there and she was one of the leaders, one of the teachers.
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And as often it does, the subject turned to theology and the subject turned to different theological positions and the subject of eschatology in times came up.
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And she said something about the pre-tribulation rapture.
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And I said, well, not everyone believes.
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Or I said, no, that's one perspective, I think is what I said.
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So well, that's one perspective.
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And she goes, no, that's the only one.
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And I said, what do you mean? She goes, that's what the Bible teaches.
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That's absolutely true.
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There's no other way to interpret it.
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I laughed a little.
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Not to mock, but I was like, that's where we have come on this issue.
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In so many churches, we are not given an opportunity to look at the various positions and come to a conclusion based on what the Bible says.
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We're told, this is it, this is the way.
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Again, I remember being in seminary and being told, if you don't believe in a pre-tribulation rapture, maybe God will just leave you here just to prove you wrong or something.
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It was very ugly, very aggressively harsh.
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I don't believe in a pre-tribulation rapture.
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Just so everybody knows right from the outset, I do not believe that that's biblical.
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I don't think that you can prove it from the text.
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And again, not because I'm not a dispensationalist.
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I quit believing in that when I was still a dispensationalist.
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Because again, I've gone through an evolution on this, but the pre-tribulation rapture was, to me, is untenable.
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Yeah, and there's nothing in the text to support it.
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And you have to.
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You have to make conjecture.
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You have to string a set of verses from various places together to come to that conclusion.
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There is, in my opinion, no solid foundational reason to believe in it outside of someone introduced that concept in the mid-1800s and said, this is a possibility, and people ran with it.
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Why? Because we like the idea that we won't have to suffer.
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We like that idea.
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And it's easy.
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It's just like, yeah, you've got, oh sure, man, yeah, absolutely.
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And like I said, it's almost like the pea and tulip for Calvinism.
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You know, the pea is perseverance of the Saints.
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That's the only part that the Baptists like, is that you can't lose your salvation.
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So everything else from the tulip gets jettisoned.
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They're whiskey Calvinists.
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Yeah.
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One-fifth.
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I love it.
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Okay, but the funny thing is, though, that they kept that part.
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They kept the doctrine that you can't lose your salvation, but they threw everything else out.
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And in doing so, they threw out the baby with the bathwater, as it were, because all the reasons why you can't lose your salvation is the first four.
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That we're so depraved that God has to choose us, and that in choosing us, he sent his Son to die for us specifically, and then he drew us by his perfect and irresistible grace.
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And as a result, we will now persevere because we persevere in him and not in ourselves.
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That's the simplified version of what the tulip teaches, and yet we want to get rid of the tulip, or the tili, and just have the pea.
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And the same thing with often with dispensationalism is it's very hard line, because we don't want to consider that we might have to go through a difficult time.
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You know, I do believe that difficult times are coming.
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I don't deny that there are certain aspects of Revelation that are yet to be fulfilled, and we will see those.
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Now, whether it happens in your lifetime, or my lifetime, or her lifetime, or my daughter's lifetime, we don't know.
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I know that ever since the 1800s, everybody's been naming and claiming that their generation was the last, but we don't know.
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Well, that's why I want to be careful, like I said, in presenting this information and say that if you come to a different conclusion on this particular issue in regard to whether or not you want to call yourself a dispensationalist, I'm not going to condemn you as a heretic.
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As I said, if you say, well, I think Dr.
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MacArthur has it right, okay.
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We have people in this church who do, and the great thing is we're able to fellowship together and it did not cause an issue.
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But there are some things that I will take a pretty strong stance on that I think could make issues.
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One of the things I will say is this, as a baptized believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, having been born again by the Holy Spirit, I am a son of Abraham by faith, and Jesus said so.
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Jesus said that the sons of Abraham, the true sons of Abraham, are the ones who have faith in me, not who are born of the flesh, you know.
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So obviously that is an issue for dispensationalists.
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And that was one of the major things, the Book of Galatians specifically, and how we understand the relationship between Jew and Gentile now.
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There is now no Jew or Gentile.
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Yeah, exactly.
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You're either in Christ or you're not, and if you're in Christ, you're in the seed of Abraham, because he is the seed of Abraham.
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There was a book I used to have called The Greatest Book of Dispensational Truths, have you heard of that book? I think I have it over there.
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Dispensational Truth is what the one I have is called, and it's by Charles Ryrie.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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That was required reading at seminary.
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I didn't have enough color pictures.
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Well, hey, I use that for family worship at home, Dr.
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MacArthur's a brilliant man, and I would never take anything away from him.
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But I have, you know, as I said, I have the freedom, the liberty in Christ to take issue with anyone.
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I take issue with Sproul on certain things, I take issue with MacArthur on certain things, and I certainly don't consider myself the preeminent theologian upon which all truth must be judged, but ultimately I have to make decisions, and I do.
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Anyway, let's look at the basic description of these two things, and we'll talk about that.
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So your first, do you need a sheet? Okay, you can come up and teach for me, that's what you, you know, you've been around this stuff for a while though, right? Did you guys talk about this much at Bible College? Was this an issue? Did you, did you, and I'm only, because I'm curious, I'm not trying to, did you, did the school try to enforce an opinion on you, or did y'all? I understand, yeah, but they were, the language had to be kind of curtailed.
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I just, I often, you know, wonder what the, what the atmosphere is in different schools, and how it's, precious peaceful atmosphere, that's awesome.
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I mean, and ours was too.
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As I said, you had a couple guys that said, you know, harsh things, but for the most part, I love the men I went to school with, and they were good, godly men.
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So I don't want to come across as if I'm just downing them.
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They did so much in teaching me to love the Word of God.
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All right, so covenant theology centers on one overall major covenant known as the covenant of grace.
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Some have called it the covenant of redemption, and by many, this is defined as an eternal covenant among the members of the Godhead, including the following elements.
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The Father chose a people to be his own, the Son was designated, and his agreement to pay, was designated with his agreement to pay the penalty of their sin, and the Holy Spirit was designated with his agreement to apply the work of the Son to this chosen people.
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This covenant of grace is being worked out on earth in history through subordinate covenants, beginning with the covenant of works, culminating in the new covenant, which fulfills and completes God's work of grace to man on earth.
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These covenants include the Adamic covenant, the Noahic covenant, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and the new covenant.
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The covenant of grace is also used to explain the unity of redemption throughout all ages, beginning with the fall when the covenant of works ended.
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Covenant theology does not see each covenant as separate and distinct.
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Instead, each covenant builds on the previous ones, including aspects of previous covenants, and culminating in the new covenant.
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When I was in seminary and they mentioned covenant theology, they did not mention the covenant of grace, which I find now to be rather problematic, because if you don't understand the eternal covenant, because when someone says covenant theology, what they are saying is the singular covenant of grace is the focus.
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Now every subsequent covenant after that is an extension of that.
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So it really is about one covenant, God's covenant of grace.
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But that one covenant is not specifically and explicitly mentioned in Scripture.
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You'll never go to a place in Scripture that says God made a covenant within himself to save people.
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Now, the, you know, Jesus said, you know, I've come to do the will of my Father who sent me, you know, there's covenant language, but certainly we would agree, and I'm sure that, you know, Sproul or anyone else would agree, there's no place in Genesis 1 where it says, you know, God made a covenant in himself, and no place anywhere where that is specifically stated.
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It is assumed, based on what was done, that there was an agreement within the Godhead, and the Godhead agreeing within itself, within himself, that he would do these things, that he was promising or making a covenant within himself.
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So it is an assumed covenant, and I think it's, I don't think it's wrong to assume it.
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I think it's certainly valid to say that God made a choice, and in making a choice within himself, and because there's three persons within the Trinity, they're covenanting with one another, God the Father will elect, God the Son will redeem, God the Holy Spirit will regenerate, you know, those are the sort of the workings out of how salvation works in the inner working of the Trinity.
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And so that's how the covenant theology begins, is with that.
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But then out of that, we do see explicit covenants.
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That's the implicit covenant, the one that's implied.
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Explicit covenants in Scripture began with Adam.
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God said, if you eat of this tree, you shall surely die.
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You say, well that's not a covenant.
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Well, it is.
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It's a promise, and it certainly tells him that there, you know, if you don't do it, you will live.
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If you do this, you will die.
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There's rules attached to the covenant, and you can live forever as long as you don't do this thing.
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And we don't know how long Adam lived before he ate of the tree, you know.
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There's nothing in Scripture that says how long he lived.
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We can assume it wasn't too terribly long, but only because there's nothing else mentioned.
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It goes straight from the command to the fall.
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And because he needed a helpmate, and it doesn't seem like he would have waited long for it.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I think the creation of, you know, sounds like it happened pretty quickly.
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Yeah, I would say that, him bringing Eve into the picture very quickly, absolutely.
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And I guess we could make the argument that it happened in the same day as he was created, only because it says in Genesis 1, you know, on the seventh day, male and female, he created them, you know.
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So we could argue that that entire scene in Genesis 2 is played out in one day in Genesis 1.
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I mean, think of 24 hours a day, for us seems like a short amount of time, because we've experienced so many of them.
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But yet, how long would it take God to go through this process? Not long at all.
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Yeah, so that's the first covenant that we see in Scripture, the Adamic covenant.
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After that, you have the fall, wherein God gives the punishment for having broken the covenant.
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And we call that the covenant of works, in that, if had Adam maintained his responsibility to not eat of the tree, he could have remained in paradise, right? And so in that sense, it was a workspace.
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This is a proper understanding of what it would be to be saved by works.
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He'd be saved by his obedience.
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If we could perfectly obey the...be saved by our...
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Yeah, we can, but because of Adam.
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But yes, in that sense, Adam had this obedience that could have been, but wasn't.
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And I could get into, there's a Latin construction, what is it, where Picari, I forget how it is, but ultimately, he was in a position where he could sin or he could not sin, but after the fall, he wasn't in a position where he could not sin anymore, because now sin was a part of who he was.
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And that's the way we're born.
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We're brought that on us by his sin.
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I forget the construction, but you know what I'm talking about.
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You're trying to say it, I am too.
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I'm trying to remember.
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But anyhow, after the covenant with Adam and after the fall, God makes another covenant.
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With who? I know you know.
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Noah.
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God gives Noah the plans for the ark.
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He says, build this ark, 120 years, you know, we're gonna flood the earth.
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And why did he do that? Because man was evil, doing only what was evil continually, and doing what was right in his own eyes, which is evil.
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And so God floods the earth.
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Right now there's a new ark that just opened.
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I don't know if you guys noticed it.
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The Ark Attraction in Kentucky has now opened, which is a life-size version of, yeah, yeah, two of our church members up there for the opening of it.
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Yes, sir.
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You said he made another covenant.
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Wouldn't it be fair to say that it was just another aspect of the original? Yeah, in classic covenant theology, the understanding is not that it's another covenant, you're right, is that these are all extensions of the covenant of grace.
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Covenant, by definition, is eternal.
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Yeah, so this is, but we would still call it the Noahic covenant, and the Adamic covenant, but yes, it's all an extension of the covenant of grace.
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It's all part of that one implied covenant between the Father and the Son.
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Yes, thank you, that is right.
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So we have the Noahic covenant, which actually happens when he comes off the ark, right? He comes off the ark, and God makes a covenant with him.
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He, you know, institutes a new standard by which men can judge other men.
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He says if a man kills another man, or sheds blood by his blood, by men shall his blood be shed.
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So there's this new institution of how men will govern other men by a certain standard of righteousness, and no longer is every man going to be able to do it what's right in his own eyes.
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So there's a lot of, there's some changes that come after the Noahic covenant.
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Then comes Genesis 12.
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I'm jumping, jumping, but you understand we're just trying to get through these.
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Then comes Genesis 12 with the great Abrahamic covenant, whereby God promises through this one man Abraham, through his seed, all the nations of the world will be blessed, right? Later on the Apostle Paul would tell us, it doesn't say seeds, and this is how you know Paul was a great exegete, because Paul makes a argument based on a plural versus a singular.
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Later in Galatians, he says, he said he didn't say seeds plural, he said seed with a capital S, and that is Jesus.
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And I've always thought that's interesting, because certainly you can use the word seed in the singular to denote a plural, because I could say I spread seed.
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I don't have to say I spread seeds.
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I could say I spread seed in the garden, and you would understand that's more than one.
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But Paul makes the argument from an exegetical position that this is a specific singular point, that the promise is to Jesus, and all the promises of the covenant is to Christ and those who are in him.
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That's a very strong point Paul makes, and so we see again all the covenants are wrapped up in him.
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Yeah, so we go through the Abrahamic covenant, then we come to the Mosaic covenant, which includes the law, the Davidic covenant, which includes the throne, and then you have, of course, the new covenant, which is the culmination and the fulfillment in Christ.
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Okay, so therein lies the basic outline.
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We have one covenant of grace.
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It is extended through these other, we would say, variations on that to where we understand God's grace and how it goes out all the way to today.
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There is no strong distinction in covenant theology between Israel and the church, because in covenant theology, Israel is the prototype of the church.
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It's the promises that Israel were giving of the blessings of God are simply extended out to all the world.
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And if you look at Romans 11, where Paul talks about the engrafting in, he says the root is still there, but you, like a wild olive branch, have been grafted in to the original tree, and the original tree being Israel.
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So it's, you know, the idea of covenant theology, yes, we are Israel.
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We have been made Israel by faith.
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I'm a wild olive branch.
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As a result of covenant theology, the modern expression of Israel, which is typically seen as the nation of Israel, the Jewish people, would be seen not as God's people, but would be seen as an apostate group.
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This is a major issue for a lot of people, because if you say the Jews or Israel is apostate, that means they've turned their back on God, and a lot of people don't want to go there.
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In fact, they'll appeal to the Abrahamic Covenant for that.
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They'll say, it says right here in the Abrahamic Covenant, I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.
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And if you say anything about Israel, you're cursing Israel, and as a result, you're going to be cursed by God.
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So I'm always careful how I explain this and help people understand this.
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A modern Jewish man who denies Jesus Christ as Savior is not a spiritual descendant of Abraham.
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It seems so simple to me, but that is where dispensationalism, again, would make a difference.
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They would say, no, he is still the heir of the promises of Abraham.
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Exactly.
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As Romans 9 tells us, that it is not of the flesh, but of God's election.
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Read verse 6, they're not all of Israel.
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They're not all Israel who are of Israel.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And this is why, you know, later on in Romans 11, it says all Israel will be saved.
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I've heard Pat Robertson, who is a Paul's teacher, by the way, sit across the table from a Jewish man.
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Pat Robertson was talking to this guy, and the Jewish man says, well, I don't believe in Jesus.
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Do I need to believe in Jesus to be saved? And he goes, well, you're a Jew.
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The Bible says all Israel will be saved.
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You don't have anything to worry about.
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He will answer for that on Judgment Day.
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He will answer for that before God, that he told a Jewish man, just because you're Jewish, you don't have anything to concern yourself with.
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Exactly.
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Well, the Apostle Paul said it.
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He said, I would, I would, that I myself would be accursed if it meant the salvation of my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh.
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So, if they're already saved by virtue of being Jews, Paul's statement about giving his own self would be superfluous and unnecessary.
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Yeah, I think one of the greatest prophetic moments in the history of the church happened after the Scripture was written in AD 70.
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In AD 70, the temple was destroyed as a fulfillment of Christ's promise that it would be.
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It has not been rebuilt.
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That system is obsolete.
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It has been fulfilled in Christ.
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I've talked to a few Jews about that.
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I said, well, now how can you claim to still be the chosen people when you can't even worship correctly? There's no sacrifices, there's no temple.
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And they've replaced sacrifices with almsgiving and good works.
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And I said, sorry, but that's not what it was, you know, so you can't go there, but they don't like that.
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Well, let's look at, very quickly, a description of dispensationalism.
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Again, I want to be fair, and I know that I've already said tip my hand because I said I'm not dispensationalist, but I can still be fair, I hope, and if somebody is a dispensationalist, tell me if I'm wrong, and I will certainly correct it.
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I'm certainly not unwilling to be corrected.
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But reading this, and I don't know where the good doctor who wrote the book is on this, he tries to balance everything as well.
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Dispensational theology looks on the world and the history of mankind as a household over which God is superintending the outworking of his purpose and will.
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This outworking of his purpose and will can be seen by noting the various periods or stages of different economies whereby God deals with his work in mankind in particular.
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These various stages or economies are called dispensations.
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Their number may include as many as seven, innocence, conscience, human government, promise, law, grace, and kingdom.
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Okay.
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There is a passage in the New Testament which references the dispensation of grace and the use of that word, dispensation.
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The word dispensation sounds funny, it's not one that we would normally use, but it simply means the stewardship of something, the watching over of something, or the dispensing of authority or oversight.
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So that's where the word dispensation comes from.
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And so the idea behind dispensationalism is God has always dealt with mankind in the condition that he's in, and so God has chosen to deal with mankind differently in accordance with the condition that he was in at the time.
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For instance, and that's what I say, being fair, it makes a lot of sense.
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Because the idea is when man was innocent in the garden, God walked with man in the garden.
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Because he was innocent, there was no division between he and God, and so there was nothing to keep the two apart, and thus that would be called the dispensation of innocence.
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Right? Because there's nothing to separate.
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The fall comes and a new dispensation begins.
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Because now we deal with the dispensation of conscience.
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Man now knows right from wrong, and what is he to do? God says live right, and man does what? Only evil continually, right? So when man is given to the conscience, he lives evilly.
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Evilly, is that a, that's not a, yeah, rock on, right? Just stick with it.
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He lives evilly.
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So the flood comes as a punishment for that evil choice.
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As a result of the flood, God produces a new dispensation.
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The dispensation which comes after this is normally called human government.
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Human government is this, now man will be responsible to govern his fellow man.
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And men will then be subject to authority which is imbibed in one another.
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There will be men who will place above other men, and there will be responsibility to be subservient or submissive to that particular type of authority.
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And there will be various types of authority all around the world, and you will be responsible to that authority.
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And hey, we still live in that today.
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If you ask a dispensationalist, when did the dispensation of world human government end? They'll say it didn't.
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Human government still exists today.
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You can read it in Romans 13, 1 Peter 2, or 1 Peter 3.
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The Bible tells us, be subject to the governing authorities, insomuch as they're not commanding you to disobey what God has commanded you to do, or to obey something God has commanded you not to do.
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So we understand that there is a limitation on human government, but we still have responsibility to human government.
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So that dispensation has not ended.
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But out of that dispensation, God chose to set up His own government through a man named Abraham.
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There would be one dispensation of God's theocracy or His law, but it was a promise.
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So dispensation first, they would say the dispensation of the promise.
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Promise came to Abraham, and the promise was, you and your descendants will be blessed.
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They'll be given land, prosperity, flowing with milk and honey.
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They're going to be given all these things.
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So that's the promise.
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The law would come later through Moses.
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That's another dispensation.
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I'm sorry, I jumped ahead one.
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You have the dispensation of the promise under Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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Jacob had 12 sons.
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Out of that grows a nation called the nation of Israel, and they would be given the dispensation of the law.
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Here is where I think the greatest failure in dispensationalism lies, outside of the issue of Israel and the church.
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I have heard, and not all dispensationalists believe this, so what I'm about to say is I'm putting a pin in it to say that not everybody believes this, but this is a natural outworking of what they believe.
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Dispensationalists, in some sense, will say that the salvation of Israel, the people, was by works.
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In fact, I remember that.
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I remember very specifically one of my professors saying, before Jesus came, people were saved by their works.
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After Jesus came, they were saved by grace, and that is absolutely an affront to what Paul tells us because he says Abraham believed the gospel and was accounted righteous.
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Right? He was saved while he was asleep.
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Not doing anything.
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Well, yeah, yeah.
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The covenant was, or the promise was while he was, yeah, that covenant of work that's signed.
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So I think, again, I didn't mean to jump right ahead to why I disagree, but one of the things about Israel and the relation to dispensationalism is Israel is given these laws to follow.
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If they follow them, they receive God's blessing.
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If they don't, they receive his curse, which we know is true, but does that afford them salvation? In some dispensational views, it does.
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These are the subtleties of this stuff that you really have to be careful about because, like you say, there's parts that sound good, and then you work that little bit in, and then somebody says, well, I've been going along all right, so I'll just believe that.
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Yeah, you have to be careful.
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So out of the dispensation of the grace, out of law comes grace, right? And out of that grace is, of course, Jesus Christ.
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And here's one of the great passages they will argue in John.
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It says, you know, the law came through Moses, but what came through Jesus? Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, right? So they'll say the covenant of grace.
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Grace is not introduced until Christ as a dispensation.
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We now live under grace.
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And you'll hear people say, I'm not under law, I'm under grace.
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Well, what do they say? I'm not saved by law, I'm saved by grace.
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Well, that should be the statement of everyone in history.
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No one's ever been saved by the law.
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But often they'll make the distinction, well, Israel had the law and we have grace.
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No, Israel had grace too.
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Hebrews 11 is that.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Yeah, good point.
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Good point.
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It's just by faith, by faith, by faith.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah, I can make a good argument that, you know, in Genesis chapter 2 or 3 there, we're saying right there, grace.
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I mean, God didn't kill us as soon as we sinned.
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I mean, you know.
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Absolutely.
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There's grace from the beginning.
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I mean, that's it.
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You want to say something, brother? Same thing.
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Okay.
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If it hadn't been for grace, Adam and Eve would have been in it.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Well, the last one of the dispensations, if there's seven, the last one is the dispensation of the kingdom.
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Here is where dispensationalism really has a foothold in most people's lives because the kingdom is not heaven.
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The kingdom in dispensationalism is the thousand-year millennial reign of Christ whereby he will physically rule and reign from Jerusalem for a thousand years over men and women who live on the earth.
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And this is before heaven.
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That's the millennium, which is referenced in Revelation chapter 20.
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So that is the kingdom that is preceded by a seven-year tribulation, that being preceded by a pre-tribulation rapture.
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So the outline is very simple.
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Right now we're waiting on the rapture.
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When Jesus comes, he will rapture the church.
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Two billion people approximately.
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Well, I wouldn't say that.
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That made believers.
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Let's say, you know, however many.
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Huh? 200.
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Yeah, 200 people will disappear and everybody will go, wow, not much change.
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No, yeah, the salt and light of the world will be taken away, which is the church.
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And then there will be three and a half years of bad and there will be three and a half years of very bad.
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And there will be a man of lawlessness who rises up and causes everybody to have to worship him, and those who don't worship him will be subject to the sword, and on and on and on.
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We know how that works.
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Well, then at the end of that seven-year period, Jesus Christ will come and he will establish his kingdom on the earth and he will bound Satan for a thousand years.
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At the end of the thousand years, here's the part that has always gotten me, at the end of the thousand years, a war will erupt in that new millennial kingdom.
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And that war will be between Satan, who is unbound, and I've always said, well, who is Jesus fighting with? Because he's already judged and the people have died, and who's he fighting with? And it says, well, I've heard this, only believers go into the new kingdom, but they're going to have children in the new kingdom, and those children can be the rebels.
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That's the argument.
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And that's the typical argument.
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The rebels in the new kingdom are the children of believers who go into the new kingdom.
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Okay, that's their position.
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All that even though Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world.
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Yeah, again, the argument, the purpose of all this is to wedge Israel back in, because during the millennial kingdom, this is when sacrifices are reestablished, which again, it's a reestablishing of the temple, reestablishing of the kingdom, reestablishing the worship and sacrifice of Israel.
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The Old Testament comes alive again in the millennium, which again, this is the view, I'm not telling you what to believe, I'm saying that's the position, the premillennial dispensational view is that we're looking forward to a time when Jesus is ruling and reigning from Jerusalem, and we who are believers will rule and reign with him on the earth for a thousand years, but that precedes the new heaven and the new earth, which comes after that.
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Do they believe that people that weren't raptured can get saved during that time? That is a sticky point, because there are people who believe that, and I do have to go, we're out of time, but very quickly, there's different positions.
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One, if you weren't raptured, but you had already heard the gospel, you can't be saved, that's what some of them believe.
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Others believe, if you weren't raptured, and you hadn't heard the gospel, you can be saved, that God won't harden you, he'll give you another chance.
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But those are pretty much the two positions.
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I don't know anyone who doesn't believe no one will be saved during the rapture, because there is obviously those who, during the rapture there has to be some believers, or during the tribulation there has to be some believers.
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Where do those believers come from? And the argument often is, well, they come from Israel, because there's 12,000 from each tribe, 144,000 of the 12 tribes of Israel, they're all Israelites who get saved during the tribulation.
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So there's all kinds of varying interpretations.
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But yes, everybody believes someone will get saved during the tribulation, but there is a question as to whether or not a person who's heard the gospel will then be hardened to it as a punishment for not receiving it before the rapture.
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And I have heard pastors say that.
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You better get it now, because you've heard the gospel, and if you're here after the rapture, you won't be able to take it anymore.
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You'll be a persona non grata.
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You will not be welcomed.
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All right, let's pray.
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Thank you, Lord, for your grace.
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I pray that we have been fair on this subject, and in the weeks to come we'll continue to be fair.
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In Christ's name, amen.