60 - Dispensationalism, Part 2

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61 - Dispensationalism, Part 3

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Hello, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We are glad to have you with us for part two of what we started last lesson.

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We'll talk about that in a moment, but if you have a syllabus, you can open it up.

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We are right now in our syllabus on book number three.

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We're calling that God Speaks to the World. And we are in lesson number eight, the dreaded

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D word, dispensationalism. Oh, what is that? We're going to talk about that.

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We're going to talk about things, covenant theology, dispensational theology. This is part two in this lesson, which means there was a part one for those of you who can count.

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Yeah. All right. So, part two means you really should watch the first class on part one, just saying.

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But we're going to try to give a quick overview of what we covered before and then continue on.

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It has been a heated, heated topic on Facebook. Wow.

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So, we're going to try to correct some things that others are saying and, well,

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I don't know if this will quell the arguments or just fire it up some more, but we'll see.

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This seems to be an issue when people talk about these that people get very emotional about. And we here at Striving for Eternity want to try to be intellectually honest about each of the positions.

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Look, if you're going to believe covenant theology, dispensational theology, or anything in between, you take their two extremes and anything in between, you're going to have to deal with the fact that there's some differences.

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There are reasons people believe what they believe. There aren't people who just believe things for no good reason.

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Don't be so quick to just jettison someone's ideas because it's not what you believe and reject it out of hand because you think it's dumb.

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They have good reason for believing it. And your job as a student of Scripture and if you're going to be studying theology is to understand another person's position and theological system from their perspective.

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Now I do find it interesting because someone made the argument that I cannot present covenant theology fairly because I'm a dispensationalist and therefore their argument was that there's nothing that I could say that would give a good summary of covenant theology.

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I can't be fair. Now I found that interesting that someone who refused to watch last week's or last lesson part one made that statement but all the people that don't agree with me that did watch it seem to say

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I accurately explained their position. So that's what as a student you want to be doing.

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You want to be able to have people from a position that you don't agree with be able to say you know what

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I agree with his description of my position even if he does not agree with the position.

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You need to be able to get to that point. You need to be able to get to where you can argue someone else's position well enough that when they look at that they say you're right in describing my position even though I disagree with your position or you disagree with my position.

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That's being fair. That's what we want to be. Where did some of the I don't know

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I want to say some of the controversy come up. Well some of it came up with just the topic of dispensationalism that seems to be controversial for some.

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But I posted that I posted this on Facebook and just says covenant theology.

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Tell me more about your Roman Catholic hangover. I think that's kind of funny.

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I thought it a joke. I didn't mind when somebody put a meme up on dispensationalism that against dispensationalism.

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I thought that was funny too. Can we laugh. Can we have a sense of humor.

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Let's you know let's look at things now looking at that meme. I want to deal with one thing that people seem to forget historically.

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Where is it that covenant theology got its starting. Most people want to argue

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Oh covenant theology it's from the early church fathers. So is dispensational theology.

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You see the early church fathers historically we're going to talk about this and we in a few months we talk about the progression of Revelation but theology was progressive as well.

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The early church was not working out theological systems the way they do now.

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And so what you have is you have theological systems that were developed over time and typically theology most often is developed because a key doctrine is being attacked.

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In other words in the early century when writing of the New Testament the doctrine that was being attacked was the humanity of Jesus Christ.

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You see that with the Gnostics and you see that in much of the later books like first second third

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John John's gospel. Why is so much of that focused on the humanity of Jesus Christ.

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We had to address that if he if you do not believe that he came in the flesh in the flesh then you don't have

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Christ. Why would there be so much emphasis on that. Because that was the issue being debated see in the first century they thought

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Jesus was God. They didn't believe that he was a man.

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Well after a few years of centuries more like the issue became the reverse.

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His deity was being questioned. And with his deity being questioned that became they argued for the deity of Christ but then there became question of wait a minute.

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How do you explain if Jesus is God and the father is God and you say the spirit is God. How do you reconcile that.

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And so by four hundreds A .D. by the fifth century they're now dealing with the issue of the

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Trinity. So things got developed over time.

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Now you don't see a whole lot of doctrine being written on say end times because that really wasn't an issue until about a thousand

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A .D. Why a thousand A .D. Oh because well guys like Augustine believed that in a literal thousand years of Revelation 20 he just believed the church was in that time.

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So in a thousand A .D. they actually expected Christ to come back and he didn't.

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And so they ended up changing some of what we now call our millennials and we're going to look at that when we look at book four.

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But the study started to change somewhat. With that you have the development of theological systems over time and a way of interpreting the

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Bible that became known as covenant theology. Now covenant theology has its foundings ultimately really in the

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Catholic Church. Now what happened in the Reformation the 1500s was that they kind of realized some of this stuff that the

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Roman Catholics used to justify things wasn't so right.

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And you have the development of what was known as reformed theology. Now notice when we talk about reformed theology we're not talking about what people think of as Calvinism or the doctrines of grace

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God's sovereignty and salvation. That's how people use it. But reformed theology is really a reformation of the

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Catholic doctrines that you have in covenant theology. So truthfully most people that call themselves that say that they hold to a covenant theology a lot of it's really reformed theology.

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It's a reformation of the Catholics teachings and that's not a bad thing.

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So there's some people that really got emotional about that meme and I know I'm spending a long time in an introduction because I'm really trying to set up as we look into these discussions how we need to deal with these things.

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It is not a bad thing that historically the Reformation occurred and people said you know what we need to change some of these doctrines.

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Looking at the doctrines they're not right. The way of interpreting scriptures not exactly right.

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The way the Catholic Church does it we need to we need to reform some of this. Now I would be more of a separatist mindset.

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In other words I'm more of the Anabaptist movement which the reformers actually well they had you know the

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Anabaptists killed. But I would find my historical roots more in that separatist movement that was really never part of the

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Catholic Church. Now in that movement there are a lot of bad things the Anabaptists did too.

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All right. Bad theology is always rampant. OK. But the point being is let's be honest with the history.

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There's nothing wrong with saying I don't think maybe some people do because they think that what we're saying in having a

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Roman Catholic hangover is that your covenant theology is wrong because it's based in Roman Catholicism.

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That's not what that is saying. OK. Historically what it's saying is the reformers didn't reform enough.

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As I said theology is progressive. It continues to be more and more precise.

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Dispensationalism I believe is a continuing of what the reformers did when they were formed covenant theology from Roman Catholics and made it reformed theology.

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My point is they didn't reform it enough. And if they go further they come to well

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I would say more of a dispensational position. Those who hold to new covenant theology which is really really similar to where I would be

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I'd probably be mostly considered what's called progressive dispensationalism. Now if you don't know what that means not a big deal.

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What we're going to kind of go over those terms but there's nuances to them that aren't a big deal.

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And as we go through today's lesson I hope that you see that much of the argument that people make between covenant and dispensationalism it's not as big as some make it.

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OK. So for those who say that if you're dispensational you're not saved that I think is a scary place to be.

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And for those who are dispensational and say if you believe in covenant theology you're not really saved. I think that's a bad position to hold to.

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That's a dangerous place to be. OK. There are reasons people hold to these things.

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OK. These things are not as clearly laid out as people argue. And what you see whether it be covenant theology or dispensational theology what you're going to see is that both sides are going to find their rooting in Scripture.

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Both sides are going to see the early church fathers supporting their argument. So when you say well covenant theology that's based in you know the early church fathers not really.

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Some of them you could say yep they use that figurative style of interpretation and saw the connection of Israel and the church.

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But there's some that they didn't see it as clearly and they didn't develop that on either side as well because that wasn't an issue.

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It wasn't something that needed to be addressed. They were dealing with the person and deity of Jesus Christ.

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That had to be addressed. The Godhead with the Trinity that needed to be addressed. The issue of salvation that was addressed.

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Paul had to deal with that between Jew and Gentile. How does one be saved. Read the book of Romans. He had to deal with that issue.

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Galatians as well. So there were issues that when you look at theology it's actually kind of cyclical because what you end up seeing is that they seem to always kind of come back to things.

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You know we dealt with inerrancy of the Bible many years ago but that's becoming an issue in our day and age again and you're seeing that being debated again and more people having to be more precise in the discussion of inerrancy.

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You should know what inerrancy is by the way. If you don't know what that is that's because you jumped in in this class and you didn't look at our previous classes on the

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Bible. But when we look at these things we need to be honest about it.

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And let's not read into someone's argument a bunch of emotion. OK. The fact that reformed theology came out of the

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Catholic Church and reformed it is a good thing that they did that. But it is a historical thing.

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I would just say they didn't reform it enough. I mean if you look at those who hold to New Covenant theology they're realizing that you know there is this distinction between Israel and the church.

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They just would not call themselves dispensationalist and I think that a lot of that is some of its terminology, some of it is positions that people hold to.

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But the thing that I'm really trying to caution us on is let us be fair with one another and what each other believes.

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Is that fair? All right. So let's not read into someone else's position something that's not there.

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And if someone tells you as I had when I put that meme up on Facebook I had people telling me what my thinking was and my emotion behind that.

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That was. I do. I do. I admit it. I admit it. I do. I get frustrated when people tell me what

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I believe and what I think and what I feel especially when I correct them and they tell me

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I'm wrong and I don't know why I do what I do or what

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I believe or what I think. Look between the two of us I think I'm a better judge of what

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I'm thinking believing and feeling than you. OK. I'm just saying. And that's true for one another.

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Look I'm not going to tell you what you're thinking and feeling and better than what you know.

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If you tell me no Andrew that's not what I meant by something I'm going to go OK I have to take you at that because you know better than me why you might do what you do or what you might believe.

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Now can people be dishonest and say they believe things for pride or for positioning.

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Sure that happens all the time. We see that but there is a point where you have to just say look maybe it's my own pride that I'm not accepting what you say you believe.

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All right. So I just I want to I just want to put that out there because we do need to deal with that.

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All right. So let me again deal with some of the issues between covenant theology dispensationally theology is a high level.

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We're going to get into them a little bit more as we look at some stuff but we're talking about a way of interpreting the

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Bible. Keep that in mind. Covenant theology in its forms new covenant theology dispensationalism and remember from last lesson

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I talked about there's classic dispensationalism what some people call it as Riri's dispensationalism or today's dispensationalism there's progressive dispensationalism.

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You're seeing lots of differences on both camps. Okay. Where you have differing views how they hold to more specific things.

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Okay. I'm not getting into the specifics here. I'm going to keep high level and just say kind of there's two sides of a camp covenant theology dispensational theology

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I'm high level. So for those who try to argue but but but and they're making issues that are kind of inner camp issues the differences between classical today's dispensational or progressive or the differences between covenant theology reform theology you know reconstruction theology new covenant theology.

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I'm not going within the camps. All right. And as I already said I mean new covenant theology progressive progressive dispensationalism

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I think are so close in so many areas. It's kind of interesting because those are the two that have they have differing names but that kind of put is the divide but they're so similar that those are really the two closest but they seem to be

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I mean really where they seem to differ is just in how they interpret old unfulfilled prophecies still future prophecies.

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But here's going to be the issues of where you are in these camps high level high level.

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What do you do with Israel and the church. That's going to be a question you want to ask covenant theology typically typically new covenant theology be a little different in this but it's going to be how much continuity discontinuity you see in these typically covenant theology or reform theology is going to see

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Israel and the churches one one body one organization.

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Some would say one one body two administrations an Old Testament administration New Testament administration. Some divide it that way but you're going to see more talk of Israel and the church being one.

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So in the Old Testament it talks about Israel. That's the church in the New Testament talks of the church.

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That's Israel. Spiritual Israel. And so when you see there is a lot of that really when you study a history of theology which most people do not do really is study a history of theology.

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Don't even know too many seminaries outside of mine that teach classes on history of theology. But what it does is it teaches you not just church history which there's lessons on church history.

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There's lessons on systematic theology. This is kind of emerging and showing how theology developed through time.

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Most most church history books don't really focus on the theology through time. But when you do that and you study through church history and the theology of it what you end up seeing is that really in about 1000

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A .D. is when some of these things really were solidified because like I said they all believed in a literal 1000 years and all of a sudden a thousand years passed.

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What are we going to do? And so the thousand years became figurative. Well that's one thing you can do with it.

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And so what you had was now another core question. So first question how similar or dissimilar is

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Israel in the church? Very similar. If it's continuous you're going to be on the covenant theology side.

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If you're seeing distinction you're going to be on dispensational side more generally.

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OK. Like I said new covenant theology they see a lot of distinction between Israel and the church. So even some that hold to reform theology or would say you know they hold to covenant theology are still going to see some distinction between Israel and church.

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Depending where on that spectrum you are is going to define how much. Second thing you're going to ask is how do you interpret certain passages figuratively or what we would say normally or literally.

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OK. So what do we have mean by that. What we have is this. You have a case where when you look at passages of scripture such as Revelation Chapter 20 are the thousand years mentioned in those first six verses literal or figurative.

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If you're going to take things like that figuratively you're going to lean more toward a covenant position.

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And this is where new covenant theology sometimes ends up leaning as well. They would take certain things more figurative where dispensational passage is going to take it more literal or what

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I use the word normal. What do I mean by normal. I take things literal unless it's not supposed to be literal.

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In other words the fact that it says that God gathers his children under his feathers like a hen doesn't mean that God has feathers.

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It's figurative language. I'm going to look at the genre to see if it makes a case for normal normally for a figurative speech.

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Poetry is normally going to be figurative. So if I'm in poetry I'm going to take it that way.

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We have a whole class on this on our school of biblical hermeneutics where you can learn how to interpret the

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Bible. We deal with the different genres. There are rules of how you interpret each one so you can go look at those classes if you want to learn more on that.

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But that's going to be the issue there. OK. Then there's going to be a third distinction.

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I'm actually getting ahead. I know I'm getting ahead of myself because these are really we're going to talk about in a few minutes. But third question ask yourself is what is the purpose of the

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Bible. This is really not as strong of an argument that many make.

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OK. But covenant theologians typically typically generality remember.

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So those of you who don't hold to this don't beat me up but typically are going to hold to the purpose of the

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Bible being the doctrine of salvation that every book points to Jesus Christ and the purpose of the

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Bible is what Christ did for man where dispensationalist is going to hold more to a doxological view of the purpose of Scripture meaning that everything points to God's glory.

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Is salvation giving glory to God. Absolutely. Is Jesus Christ and everything in his person and everything in his ministry giving glory to God.

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Absolutely. But I wouldn't argue that every book of the Bible has to point back to Jesus Christ in one way or another.

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And so I would think that what happens when you look at that doesn't make a major change. I think that one's probably the least that has an effect on the way people do things but you'll see this clearest

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I think in the book called The Song of Solomon where if you're seeing that it has to point to Christ you're going to take this and say this is a picture of Christ in the church his bride the church and therefore this is talking about Jesus and the church not

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Solomon and his wife where I would argue that the picture of a marriage reflects on God.

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And it is a mystery that God has set up. I don't deny that Ephesians makes it clear but I don't think that you have to have it point to Christ it could point to well

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Solomon and his wife and the love affair that they had and talking about the love that should be in a godly marriage whether we want to say that their marriage was godly you don't know enough about them.

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I know he had lots of wives and they weren't so godly but it does point back to that. It's going to handle how you deal with those things.

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All right. So all of that is introduction.

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I know you the things I hear. So that was the introduction. Let's get to the definition shall we.

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All right. I'm sorry but there's just so much heated argument in this that I feel like it was necessary.

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All right. So we dealt with last lesson this word is dispensationalism.

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It's it's used to describe something. Does the word appear in the Bible. Yes it does.

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In the context of a theological system. No. Does covenants appear in the

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Bible. Absolutely. Are they part of describing the theological system that we call covenant theology.

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No. See covenant theology and dispensational theology are descriptions that define a theological system.

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OK. This is one of the problems that I'm having with people. It's a fallacy of equivocation when people say that covenants are in the

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Bible. Therefore covenant theology is biblical. Well dispensationalism dispensation is in the

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Bible. Does that mean it's biblical. See neither one of them are being taught as a system of interpretation.

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You do have covenants. You're going to see if we can get to it in this lesson. We may not.

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But if we can get to it in this lesson you're going to see covenants are extremely important within dispensationalism.

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And that's how you end up knowing people that really don't understand dispensationalism because they think that dispensationalism has nothing to do with the covenants.

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No. The covenants are what define a dispensation. OK. So you're going to see that when we get to the different when we do the survey of the dispensations.

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But what you end up seeing is that the argument let me give you a fallacy I hear the same fallacy of equivocation

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I'm hearing lately with the theological system. People talk about theonomy and they use it to say do you believe in God's law.

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Well I believe in God's law. Absolutely. But that's what theonomy is.

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But they don't call it theonomy you know like covenant theology dispensational theology

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I don't call it you know theonomy theology. If they did that that would make the distinction between theonomy and the theological system of theonomy.

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OK. There's covenants and there's covenantal theology. Covenants are a very specific thing of a covenant that God makes with a people but the theological system known as covenant theology is different.

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It's a system of interpreting scripture and a whole system of belief that's more than just the covenants.

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OK. Theonomy as a theological system is much more than just God's law because if you just said well it's

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God's law that's not the system. If you just give the covenants that's not the system. If you say dispensation it's not the system.

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So trying to be fair I just spent what like 20 minutes trying to explain fairness

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OK. Trying to be fair none of these things describe the systems that were developed much later in time.

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OK. So that's to be fair. Now what is the definition.

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So if you have your syllabus I provide here that in the syllabus dispensationalism is the distinguishable economy and this is from Charles Ryrie by the way quote a distinguishable economy in the outworking of God's program.

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OK. Now this is the thing you have to understand when you look at theological systems.

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This is one of the arguments I have kind of with theonomy because it's a relatively new theological system.

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And so they have not defined themselves yet. And that's what you end up seeing in theology is eventually they come up with a definition.

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This is what we believe. So everyone that holds to these things would fall in this camp.

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Dispensationalism did that. They call it the sine qua non. We're going to get to that in a few moments. Some theological systems they're still in their progression.

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Ryrie helped to do that to kind of take some some well what

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I'd say maybe are some extreme views that Darby and you know you know

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I'm drawing a blank on his name Schofield. Thank you. Schofield had that you know he kind of said

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OK there's a little bit of an extreme let's pull it in. All right. And I think what blazing and block blazing and block have done and aren't

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I'm saying that you know in progressive dispensationalism again they're they're they're refining it refining it refining it.

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And I think theonomy needs to if it's going to survive needs to do that because it's to the the fallacy of equivocation is causing it to be so widestream to say well if you believe in God's law you're a theonomist.

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Those are two different meanings of the same word. And so that causes the confusion.

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You know say well if you're a Christian you're a theonomist. That's that's not fair to say because you're using the well if you're a

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Christian you believe you accept God's law. Yes that's true. That doesn't mean you accept this theological system that uses the same word you know as its label and that's what these things are their labels.

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Covenant theology is a label dispensational theology is a label. Theonomy uses the theological system is a label.

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OK. These are labels. If you don't have a right definition of the labels you're going to be fighting over things uselessly.

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That's what a lot of people are doing. All right. As I saw with that meme that I put on Facebook innocently. Now when

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I talk about an economy I mentioned this a little bit last time but we look at the definition we're looking at an economy we're looking at the fact that the way

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God deals with his people during a certain period of time a dispensationalist would see that that changes more than a covenant theologian would.

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Most covenant theologians I think would hold to two economies Old Testament New Testament say we'd say one people two managements is how it's often explained.

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And that right there shows some discontinuity between Israel and the church that there is a distinction.

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I find very few people that are true really really holding to a complete continuity between Israel and the church where there's no distinction.

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If you're really going to hold to that then you should be offering sacrifices today because that was Israel that was command

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Israel and that shouldn't have gone away. I would think. But those that see the distinction and hold to two administrations they're seeing that distinction.

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OK. That whether you call it an administration or you call it an economy it is a changing of how

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God is working with his people. OK. So in that there are similarities. I'm going to make the case that God has dealt with more than just two.

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OK. So these economies each include the following things.

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All right. So these three things that we're going to look at are true in every economy. All right.

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What I'm calling an economy economy is the word for dispensation. So we're going to look at it as a survey and we're going to see that each one of the each dispensation or way of God dealing with his people during a time this economy is going to include these three things.

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One the giving of new revelation. That's your first blank.

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The giving of new revelation each time that there was a new economy or new dispensation

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God gave new revelation. You're going to see that start typically with a covenant.

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You're going to see a little bit more point number two. Number two there was a change in the

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God man relationship. That's your blank their relationship. How do we know that there was a change in the

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God man relationship in each one of these. There was a covenant from God to man associated with it.

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That's how that's that's where we're getting that change in relationship from the chain.

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There was a change in what Adam and Eve had from what Noah had.

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Noah was you know had some new commands given to Noah that weren't given to Adam and Eve.

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An example Adam and Eve did not as far as we could tell could not eat animals.

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Noah was told he can eat animals. That's a change.

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All right. Things like this are changes. How how important are those changes in the broad scheme of things today.

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Not very much. So when we look at Old Testament a lot of these things I think within covenant theology are just kind of kind of washed over in time because there's not that big of a deal in them.

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And that's why in the passage of time these things get broadened into two major economies.

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Okay. I'm saying that just to you know to say again I'm really trying to stress this.

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I'm trying to stress the importance of being fair with one another. All right. Third for mankind there is a corresponding responsibility.

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That's your third blank there for mankind a corresponding responsibility.

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What's how do we know there's a new responsibility for man. It says so in the covenant.

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Okay. Each one of these covenants that you will see as we're going to go through every one of them is going to talk about God giving instruction to man on how man is to behave.

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And man is going to have some responsibility and each covenant is going to have new responsibility for man.

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Okay. So remember these three things. All right. As we go through them as we look at what we're calling dispensations and as you look at every covenant you're going to see this.

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You're going to see new revelation. A covenant is God speaking to man. Therefore that by definition is new revelation.

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When God spoke to David and gave him a new covenant the vinic covenant that's new revelation.

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What do we see in whether it's the covenant with Adam and Eve with Noah with Moses with David with Jesus whichever one you're going to look at you're seeing new revelation you're seeing new a change in the relationship the

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God man relationship and you're seeing new responsibility for man. Okay.

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Every one of the covenants are going to include those three features and that is what defines a dispensation or an economy.

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Okay. So it is not that God that dispensationalists believe in seven or nine or 13 different types of salvation.

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I've actually heard people make that claim like people think that there's Adam was saved different than Noah was saved different than David.

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That's not it. It's that God gave new revelation with that revelation came new relationship changes and responsibility on man's part.

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Okay. Now when we look at that I want to go over the essentials of dispensationalism.

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All right. I'm hoping to get through this. This is key in understanding.

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So let's look at the essentials of dispensationalism. Now I am going to call this what is called in Latin the

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Sina Quan num literally means without which there is none or technically without which nothing.

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Okay. Without which nothing meaning without which there is nothing.

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Okay. So the idea being is this is the core. This is the essentials. If you don't have these three elements you don't have dispensationalism.

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Now I'm pointing this out because this is where I always go with people that argue on dispensationalism.

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All right. I go here because what you see when people argue on covenant theology or dispensationalism and they argue against dispensationalism

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I often will ask what is the Sina Quan num of dispensationalism. And I don't

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I can't tell you how many times I have had people that tell me dispensationalism is wrong and they want to argue on end times.

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They want to argue post millennialism or on millennialism versus pre millennialism.

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Now as I go through these you're going to notice there's no talk of pre millennialism in the

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Sina Quan num. None. The reason I ask people what the Sina Quan num is because that usually shows whether they really understand dispensationalism.

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Now when I get people as I've had many many times that people say well I was a dispensationalism and I left it because I read the

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Bible. Well OK then you know the Sina Quan num right?

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And they go the what? Don't use your fancy words buddy. The reason I use those fancy words is because anybody who's done any study in dispensationalism knows those words because it is the way that dispensationalists often if not always define dispensationalism.

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Since I read these are the words these are the terminology that's used to define the essence of the definition of dispensationalism.

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So if you don't know that idea you probably haven't fairly studied dispensationalism.

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Now I know one gentleman who started a church on his own. He's a pastor and he says he came from dispensationalism so he knows it.

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But what he knows of it is all the charts and study of end times and all of his addressing against dispensationalism is really against premillennialism.

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OK. And this is where I think that you know there's a lot of similarity with my New Covenant theology brethren and where I would be because there is a lot of similarity in these points.

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They would hold to many of these points where they would make the differences how they're going to interpret the end times.

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And you know I think that there's there's going to be areas where we are still brothers in Christ. We're not perfect.

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All of us all of us every single one of us has to be honest to realize our theology is wrong somewhere somewhere.

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We're all wrong. We don't know where. If you and I knew where our theology was wrong we would change it if we're honest.

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Now some people know that their theology is wrong. They don't change it because well they're dishonest. That's their problem.

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I don't think that's you guys. All right. But if we're going to be honest with ourselves we've got to be realizing that there's going to be areas where we sit at the feet of Christ.

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He is going to correct every single one of us. There are areas in my theology that I'm wrong. I try to be diligent in my study so that I'm not wrong.

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But there's areas that I'm still learning and growing and where I am wrong and I just don't know it. And God will correct me when

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I sit at his feet on the other side of heaven or glorification.

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But I don't know where they are yet. So that means we've got to be honest with one another that someone may be able to teach us something theologically.

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So let's not be too quick to attack one another. Be honest with what one another believes.

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So let's deal with the sine qua non. All right. And this will probably be as far as we're going to get. So we will do part three of dispensational.

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I really expected I knew I'd do it in two lessons. I didn't think I would need three. I needed three only because of really trying to emphasize and clarify some historical theology.

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Maybe yeah maybe that's what we should do. Maybe we will do a class on the history of theology.

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That would be a lot of fun. I would actually get me back into church history books and writing a syllabus on that would be a lot of fun.

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So maybe we will do that. All right. So looking in your syllabus if you have a syllabus by the way if I didn't mention you can pick up our syllabus at our store at ghostdrivingforeturning .org

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and pick up the syllabus. Twenty five dollars and you can have all the notes that everyone has and fill in the blanks along with us.

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Be good students. There are three essential truths that distinguish dispensationalism from other approaches to scripture.

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Note what I said there. They do not distinguish from end times.

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They distinguish from different approaches to scripture. That's what we're discussing. That's why this is in the lesson on the

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Bible. It is an approach to how you approach scripture how you're going to interpret scripture not your end times view.

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OK. All right. So let's look at letter A. It recognizes and maintains a distinction between Israel and the church.

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Those are your two blanks there Israel and the church. Now this is going to be the point where New Covenant theology and dispensational theology is going to have a difference.

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If I said it recognizes a distinction between Israel and the church

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New Covenant theology would agree with that. OK. Dispensationalists would agree with that.

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But it's those other two words that I left out that I put in the definition that makes the distinction. It recognizes and maintains.

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That's the difference between New Covenant theology and dispensationalism. OK. The maintaining of that distinction between Israel and the church.

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The reason being is that some of that gets merged with end times views.

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And so some of it is not maintained in future prophecy. All right. And so there's a distinction there.

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But in dispensationalism we would see a distinction between Old Testament Israel the nation of Israel and what

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God would call the church. The word church has changed over time.

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We're going to look at that in book four of our Systematic Theology when we get there. We're going to talk about the definition of church how it's changed over time.

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But if you need we do have an article on the website Striving for Eternity on the definition of the church.

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I wrote that with a Covenant theologian brethren. So he and I wrote that together.

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So you're going to see some Covenant theology in the definition of church there.

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You're going to see some of some of the differences within that in a new book that I'm trying to come out which is going to be a real small overview of theology.

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I got one more chapter to finish in that and you're going to see a lesson on the church where I kind of went a little bit further than John and I went in the paper that's on our website because I'm presenting how

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I think the church definition furthered in its progression with this distinction of the church and Israel.

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OK I think that's a progression in the definition of the church how it's changed over time. Make that case in the book that will come out soon hopefully.

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But the first distinction the first essential point in definition is that dispensationalism recognizes and maintains a distinction between Israel and the church.

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Those are your two blanks letter B or number two. It will be consistently employ a normal or literal interpretation of the scriptures.

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It will consistently employ a normal or literal interpretation of the scriptures.

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OK what do I mean by that. I said this earlier in this class but it basically means that we're going to see that things should be taken literally unless the genre or something in the context says otherwise.

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There are idioms I could say I'm so hungry I can eat a cow. That's an idiom that doesn't mean

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I actually can eat an entire cow. It just means I'm so hungry you know

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I'm really really hungry. And so we would say I'm so hungry I can eat a cow.

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But I'm not saying I can literally eat a cow. So you need to look for things that may be idioms and you would interpret it as an idiom.

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That's a normal interpretation. I don't use the term literal only because people have misdefined that to mean well if you're going to be literal you mean everything is literal.

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I actually heard an argument against dispensationalism they said well you're not consistent because if you're going to take a literal hermeneutic then you have to believe that the sun rose because it says the sun rises and sets and therefore you have to believe the earth is the center of the galaxy and that the sun revolves around it.

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By the way if you're going to make that argument just saying if you want if that's going to be your argument against dispensationalism be careful.

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That was what John Calvin believed. He did. That was his argument. That was actually the argument that many had when

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Copernicus came out and said no the sun is what's the center we revolve around it. People said no because the

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Bible says the sun rises and sets. I'm just saying that's something that people you know they took it too literal.

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OK. There was an argument actually by John Calvin. So let's look at letter

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C or number three. It regards the underlying purpose of God as being for his glory.

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That's your blank there his glory and not simply for the redemption of mankind. And this is doxological rather than soteriological.

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What do I mean by that? Mentioned this earlier but I'm going to reiterate doxological meaning everything's done for God's glory.

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So the underlying purpose of God is for his glory not soteriological soteriology is the study of salvation redemption of man.

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If you have a soteriological focus then everything is going to be the purpose of God in Scripture is going to be simply for the redemption of man and everything's going to point to what

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Jesus did for the redemption of man. That's going to be the third distinction. And that's going to be about as far as we're going to get.

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Next lesson we're going to go through I'm going to give you what do I mean by progressive revelation progressive dispensation the survey of dispensations we're going to look at those things.

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And so we're going to tackle those things. I really hope I really hope my being clear

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I really really really really hope that you take what I said in the beginning to heart.

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I really want you to to be honest with what one another believes what positions one another holds to and try to be fair and not beat one another up.

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So if you're going to say you disagree with dispensational theology it better be because you disagree with the recognizing and maintaining of a distinction between Israel and the church or because you disagree with a consistently employed normal or literal hermeneutic or because you think that the focus of God is on the redemption of man and not his glory.

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It's going to be one of those three. If you disagree with dispensationalism make it on one of those three points because that's what defines dispensationalism.

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But if you agree with all three of those points you may just be a dispensationalist saying you know

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I don't want to burst your bubble but you just might be.

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So with that said if we're going to finish this up on the surveys of dispensations next lesson that'll be the last lesson in this book.

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As I said before we're going to do a reprieve and go into a lesson and to introduce one of our new schools.

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We're trying to introduce some of our newer schools at different times so that we're doing introductory courses at many different of our schools and then we're building classes within that.

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So this is really our school of systematic theology is probably going to change to the class. We really should call this an overview of systematic theology and we're probably going to have classes specifically on deity of Christ and soteriology and these different things and go into more depth over time.

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But what we will be covering next will be an introduction to world major Western religions and cults.

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That'll be our next topic next book. Those syllabuses are available online.

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It's at our store if you go to our store dot striving for eternity dot org you could pick up the syllabus for that that will be twenty five dollars and that is the student if you go under introduction world religions and culture major Western religions however it's worded and by the student copy that's the syllabus.

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If you have any questions about this lesson or any other feel free to email us at academy at striving for eternity dot org.

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We do try to answer all questions. Also want to strongly strongly recommend that you register for Jersey Fire.

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Jersey Fire is coming up in just a few weeks July 9th 10th and 11th. We're going to be ramping up for that soon be looking for emails if you're on our email list and that is something that we're it is really our signature event.

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It's going to be a lot of fun this year. Dan Phillips I talked to him about his topics.

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I am really looking forward to what he's going to be talking about with discipleship. Also if you'd like to have us come out to a church to your church and teach on how to interpret the

52:35

Bible our Bible interpretation made easy class if you really want to get ready for the next lessons you can pick up my new book.

52:44

What do they believe we're going to be covering much of that material or all of that material and more in our next class and then lastly as we always do in the few minutes we have remaining

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I want to give you a brother or sister of encouragement. Why do we do this? We're doing this for a couple reasons one as Christians we're supposed to be encouraging one another.

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Did you know that crazy idea? Wow that's what we're supposed to do.

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Yeah another another reason is because we like to promote one another not not not everyone that we're giving you are big name people.

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Some none of you know some some of you know some a lot of you know we want to encourage all of them but we want to train ourselves to encourage one another.

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We also as a ministry here at Striving Fraternity one of the things you see about us is we don't promote ourselves we try to promote others.

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I mean do we promote ourselves? Yeah we talk about our materials we teach our classes we talk about going to the Striving Fraternity website we talk about going to articles that we're posting because we're those things but we talk about a lot of other ministries that we partner with.

53:57

Do we have we mentioned the cruise we have a cruise which I don't know it's sometime in June the rates change but they extended the rates for like eight hundred dollars or five hundred for some rooms eight hundred for others you can get a week in the

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Caribbean with Matt Slick from CARM myself will be teaching and Mormon research ministry has a number of speakers great apologetics it's not going to just going to be on Mormonism.

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Lots of apologetics we may have some fun debates going on where it's all being worked out but it's going to be a really cool cruise and really inexpensive

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I mean five hundred dollars for a week all the meals I mean you're going to gain 20 pounds on these things been on a cruise you gain a lot of weight if you're not careful because it's all good food and it's all included so I mean it's a week's vacation for five hundred dollars are you kidding me plus getting to Florida but for some of you maybe that's not as big of a deal strongly encourage you and so where do you go you can go to CARM .org

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and register there you can go to MRM I think it's MRM .org okay

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CARM will take you to MRM anyway they have all the information on Mormon research ministries on the cruise and just when you register and you contact

55:18

Mormon research ministries just tell them you heard about it from Striving for Eternity the reason for that is that we have we're trying to keep track of how different people are hearing about it so let them know you heard about it through us and that way it just helps with that so I'm saying that all that to say we are trying to encourage you to not just be like all about Striving for Eternity I know there's ministries that do that we don't want to be that way so our brother of encouragement happens to have a ministry that is brother

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Tim Hurd from Bible Thumping Wingnut we've had him as a brother of encouragement before he's a dear brother someone

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I hold I do hold as a dear friend and so he's got his podcast they have

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Sunday nights they have a hangout with Matt Slick BibleThumpingWingnut .com

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gets you all of that you can also contact Tim from that website actually to him and Len but contact him and send him an encouraging word you can contact him on Facebook you can tag him if you're part if you're in the