Dispensationalism And CT Final

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Father God, we thank you for the opportunity to return again to your Word, to continue in our systematic study of the Scriptures, looking at various theological systems and how they try to handle the Word of God and how some obviously have mishandled it.
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We pray that we would rightly divide the Scriptures, that we would seek to rightly understand what they have to say, that we would be willing to be loving to one another if we have differences of opinion on secondary matters, but always, Lord, willing to stand firmly and finally on the Gospel, to stand firmly and finally on those things which are most precious, and that is, Lord, your truth of what Jesus did in his Son, or what you have done through your Son, Jesus Christ.
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And we pray, Lord, today as we look at the subjects of dispensationalism covenant theology for one last time, that we would have a sense of humility about us, that we would not show any arrogance as if we ourselves have arrived to a complete and perfect understanding of these things.
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We thank you again, Lord, for your Word.
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Help us to be faithful to it.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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Good morning.
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We have noted over the last few weeks that the differences between covenant and covenant theology and dispensational theology typically arise when we discuss the question of God's people.
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Does God have two people or does God have a singular people? Covenant theology would say God has a singular people that has been throughout the ages partakers in what is called the covenant of grace.
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And whether that covenant of grace was the manifestation of the old covenant under the law or the manifestation of the new covenant under Christ, it has always been an act of God's grace that he would, by his sovereign choice, choose for himself a particular people.
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We agree, and no one disagrees, whether they be covenant theology or dispensational, no one disagrees that God's primary function in the time leading up to Jesus Christ, that he was functioning primarily within the nation of the Israelite people.
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We began with Adam, through Noah, and then through Noah's descendant named Abram, that we were given the covenant, or Abram was given the covenant, that through his seed all the nations of the world would be blessed.
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And he, of course, had Isaac.
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Isaac had Jacob.
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Jacob had 12 sons, and those 12 sons become the 12 tribes of Israel because Jacob was also known as Israel.
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And so later they would be identified primarily as Jews.
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By the time you get to Jesus' time in the New Testament, you don't really hear them being called Hebrews as much, nor Israelites.
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Typically it's the Jews, and this is why in the writings of the Apostle Paul he'll say there's neither Jew nor Greek.
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He doesn't say there's neither Hebrew nor Greek.
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He identifies them particularly with the title of Jew, and interestingly enough, the word Jew comes out of the word Judah, and it's a specific tribe within Israel, was the tribe of Judah.
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It was one of only two tribes that survived outside of the captivity.
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The ten northern tribes fell to Assyria in 722 BC, and the two southern tribes fell to Babylon in 586 BC.
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They survived their time in exile and came out the other side.
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The ten tribes were dispersed under Assyria, never to be truly brought back into a cohesive unit.
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So this is why typically they're identified as Jews, because it was Judah and Benjamin, and Judah being the larger of the two tribes, Benjamin being small, which considered Jewish people, Judah people.
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This is why the time of Jesus you see that, and there's even now a movement where people say you should never call people Jews.
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You should call them Israelites, or you should call them Hebrews, because to call them Jews is to provide them a wrong moniker, a wrong distinction.
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So we won't get into all that, but you've heard the term Zionist and things like that.
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Oftentimes that's equated with use of the term Jew.
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Sometimes the word Jew is considered a negative connotation, but the Bible uses it.
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Jesus used the term Jew, and Jesus himself certainly was a Jew.
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So anyway, having said all that, the dispensationalist says that God has a plan for Israel, that he is still working out today, and that he has a plan for the church, and that the plan for the church has a distinct role in God's economic historical plan, but it is not the same as his role for Israel.
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So that's the distinction.
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Covenant theology essentially says the church has fulfilled the promises of Israel, the promises God made to Israel fulfilled in the church.
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Dispensationalism says no, the church did not fulfill the promises.
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God still has promises that have to be met out with the people of Israel, and the church has its own promises.
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Does anybody remember what we said, the distinction that dispensationalists usually make is that Christians are God's what? Heavenly people, and Jews are God's earthly people.
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That's the distinction that dispensationalists usually make.
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You have the heavenly people of God, which are the believers in Christ, you have the earthly people, meaning that the Jews are given earthly promises, and the Christians are given otherworldly or heavenly promises.
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So that's the primary distinction.
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Again, you can dig the trench much deeper and much wider than I have, but I think those, you know, and I know within the room we have those who would consider themselves dispensational, those who would consider themselves covenantal, and I hope that I'm being fair in describing both sides, and if I'm not, you know, hit me with a tack hammer later if I haven't been fair, but I try.
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Again though, where the real issue comes out oftentimes in the discussion is how the future is viewed, because we all know what happened in the past.
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We might interpret it differently, but there's really no question about what has happened.
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You know, we know that Jesus came.
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We know that he died, he was buried, and he was resurrected.
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We know that less than 40 years after his resurrection, Israel experienced the destruction of their place of worship.
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The temple fell in AD 70 under Emperor Titus, and as a result of that, there has not since been a sacrifice likened to those that were being done during the time of Jesus Christ.
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There has not been a priesthood that was practicing sacrifices among the Jewish people ever since AD 70.
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Within one generation of Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection and his ascension, we have this monumental historical event where the very gold that was surrounding the stones of the temple was melted out and pulled out, and as Jesus had promised, not one stone was left upon another.
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The only thing left of that temple, if you're not familiar, is the wailing wall, and it's almost a misnomer to call it a wall.
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It's just a bunch of stones, and there's holes all in it, and if you go over there, they're filled with paper.
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Richard, have you ever been there? No.
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But you know what? You've seen it.
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I know you've seen it, where they take their scripture or their prayers, and they write their prayers out, and they tightly roll them into little, you know, tubes, and they shove it into the wall.
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If you go over there now, it's just filled with those prayers, and it's praying for the nation of Israel.
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It's praying for, you know, a revival of sorts for the people of Israel.
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So, in the dispensational view, we usually have, and I would say 99.99%...
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I've never met a dispensationalist who wasn't, but I'm never willing to say 100%.
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But the vast majority of dispensationalists are what you call pre-millennial.
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I just misspelled that.
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Sorry, I always have a hard time with the word millennial.
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You know what? I don't even...
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I feel bad.
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Let me do this again.
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All right, so it's...
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There we go.
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All right, so you have what's called pre-millennial.
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The word millennial is just a funny word.
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Okay, pre-millennial.
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Turn in your Bibles to Revelation chapter 20.
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Revelation chapter 20 says in verse 1, Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit, and a great chain.
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And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for 1,000 years, or for 8,000 years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were ended.
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After that, he must be released for a little while.
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Okay, that's the first three verses that goes on, but the millennial position that is often the debate, hot debate, among some theologians.
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I myself am not as hotly...
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I want to make sure I say this correctly.
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I don't get into heated debates about the millennium, because I don't particularly like this debate.
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It can become...
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people can become very ugly.
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I remember years ago, I bought a book.
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It was a book at a second-hand store.
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It wasn't like I went out searching for this book.
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I just happened to see a book.
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It may still be on my shelf, and it was why Rick Warren was a bad teacher.
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It was like, oh, the dangers of Rick Warren was the name of the book, and I'm no fan of Rick Warren, but I was interested what the author had to say.
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So I buy the book, and I just flip through the first couple pages.
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The whole book was arguing that Rick Warren was a false teacher, not because he had a false view of the gospel, not because he was a seeker-sensitive church, not because he had Miley Cyrus do his Easter pageant, not because of those things, but that Rick Warren was a false teacher because he was an amillennialist, not a premillennialist.
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That's what made him a false teacher, and I thought, well, that's one interesting thing to grab a hold of as being that.
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I mean, I've got, like I said, I got a lot of things.
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I got issues with Rick.
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I got a lot of issues with Rick, but that just seemed to me to write the whole book about him being an amillennialist versus all the other hanging chads that seem to be associated with Mr.
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Warren.
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So premillennialism essentially says this, that there is coming a time on, and this is a very crude drawing, but imagine this line represents time, and this represents Jesus, and thus this would be the church age, that there is coming a time somewhere in the future where Jesus Christ will return, because Jesus Christ has ascended, that Jesus Christ will return to establish an earthly kingdom for a thousand years, and we would call this the dispensation of the kingdom.
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It's a thousand-year literal reign, and that's coming.
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It hasn't come yet.
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That is the view of the dispensationalist.
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Now, where differences occur is what leads up to this, because you notice I left a divide here, because according to dispensationalists, the church age ends with the rapture, and the rapture begins the tribulation.
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So there is a time between the tribulation, or the rapture and the kingdom, which is called the tribulation, and there are those who believe that the rapture happens before the tribulation.
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There are those who believe the rapture happens in the midst of the tribulation.
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There are those who believe the rapture happens right before the end of the tribulation.
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These are typically called pre-wrath view.
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And there are some who don't believe that there is a rapture until the moment that Jesus returns.
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He brings us up, brings us right back down.
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So like a yo-yo.
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I mean, I'm just saying this is the typical...
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Am I still being fair? Am I being fair? I'm asking.
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Huh? Because the different positions are pre-trib, before the tribulation, mid-trib, post-trib, or pre-wrath.
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And pre-wrath, as I understand it, is somewhere between mid-trib and post-trib.
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It's before the wrath of God is poured out, God takes his people away.
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Understand? So this is the millennial position as is understood by dispensationalists.
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Now, where the interesting part for me comes in is what happens in the kingdom.
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Because in the kingdom, Satan is bound until some point toward the end of the millennium where he is allowed to be released, and he then leads an army against the Lord who has been seated and reigning from his throne in Jerusalem for a thousand years.
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I've asked the question, where does that army come from? Typically the response is that the army comes out of the children who are born during the time of the tribulation.
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Because remember the only...
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or during the time of the thousand years...
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because remember the only people going into the millennium are the people who are still alive at the time of this.
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And there's a lot of people who've died as a result of the tribulation.
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So a few people are going in here, then you have all the saints who've returned with Christ who are also going into the millennium, and they're having children.
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There are saints that have come back with Christ who are ruling and reigning during the millennium.
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So there are Christians in this system, there are Christians here teaching the children, but there are some children who have rebelled and that's where the armies of the Lord come from.
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Where the biggest change as far as worship is concerned is that during the millennium there is a re-establishment of the practice of the priestly sacrifice.
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Because there's a re-establishment of the temple and a re-establishment of the priestly sacrifice.
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So you have within the thousand years a...
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essentially a going back to the the priesthood.
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So you have sacrifices that are reinstituted, you have the priesthood which is re-established, and these things which are happening in the millennial kingdom.
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Yes? Nope.
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The argument is that in the same way the Old Covenant pointed towards the sacrifice of Christ, these sacrifices would be pointing back to the sacrifice of Christ, but it all is still representational, nothing is actual.
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Again, want to be fair to all positions, they do say, no these aren't for sin, these are pointing back to the one sacrifice for sin.
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In the same way that the sacrifices that happened before Christ, as the book of Hebrews says, the blood of bulls and goats did not take away sin, they all pointed to the one sacrifice of Christ.
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In much the same way that we have communion, even though we would say communion is not a sacrifice, it points back to the sacrifice, that would be the reasoning for it.
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There are certain passages in Ezekiel that are often used to prove these things, particularly in regard to the re-establishing of God's perfect order, and one of those things being the sacrifices and the priesthood.
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Now, amillennialism is the typical covenant theology view, but I want to say this, anytime you say typical covenant theology view, you're not really being honest, because there is no typical.
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I can honestly say this is the typical dispensational view, except for this part here, which is the tribulation.
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This is where dispensationalists tend to disagree.
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Most, if not every, dispensationalist that I know of is a premillennialist.
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I don't know a dispensationalist who's an amillennialist.
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Richard, ever met a dispensationalist who was an amillennialist? Really? Well, look at there.
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Richard's been around this a lot longer than I have.
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He's a graduate of Dallas Seminary, so there were amillennial dispensationalists.
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Amillennial, but dispensational? I would say the majority of dispensationalists are premillennial.
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Would you agree with that? Okay, yeah, yeah, all right.
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I'm sure there's always somebody weird.
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Oh yeah, and that's what I say.
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The biggest difference is right here.
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They all sort of agree on the fact that there's a kingdom coming, that Jesus is going to rule from Jerusalem, those things.
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Here's the big difference, though, with amillennialism.
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In amillennialism, this line becomes a little simpler.
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As in amillennialism, you have Jesus, who was here, who left, he's coming back, and then the new heaven and new earth.
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That is the, I mean, simply, that's the covenant theology perspective.
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Now, can I make it more difficult? Yeah, because the first question people ask, well, where's the millennium? I just read it.
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It was right in Revelation chapter 20.
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Well, you have different perspectives.
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One is called amillennialism.
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Amillennialism says that the Revelation chapter 20 perspective, the position of Revelation chapter 20, is a statement regarding the Church Age.
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So, the millennium is not literal.
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That is the typical covenantal view, is that the millennium is not a thousand years, that the phrase a thousand years is simply used to describe an indistinct period of time that's a long time.
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And this is certain literature, the old, certain ancient literature demonstrates this to be so, that there are times where certain round numbers are used, but not specifically to identify a specific time period, but a long time period.
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But, you know, if I said, you know, not hyperbole, but it's indistinct to non-literal, long period of time.
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And somebody says, well, wait a minute, Satan is bound for this thousand years, and so this can't be, because we see Satan running amok in our world.
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So, this cannot be.
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The way that covenant theologians tend to address that issue, is they will say, okay, Satan is certainly able and does operate in our world, but Satan does not operate in our world unfettered.
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Satan operates in our world.
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What happened when Jesus sent out the 72 to preach? He says, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven, right? He said at the preaching of the gospel, Satan was bound.
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There was a binding that happened as a result of the preaching of the gospel, and so the argument among covenant theologians, and forgive me, always feel free to jump in anybody here, because some of you guys have been studying this stuff longer than I've been alive, and I'm willing to be corrected, but as I understand it, the covenant theologian would say, Satan is bound not completely, but that he is bound by the work of the Holy Spirit in the preaching of the gospel, and he no longer rules and reigns utterly over the earth, but that the Spirit working through the churches is ministering the power of God to the people of God, and that Satan does not have ultimate and full rule, but that there is coming a time, as in Revelation says, there's coming a time when he will be unfettered.
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So even amillennialists often think that there is coming a time of tribulation, that there's coming a difficult time, even though it's often kind of, you know, question mark as to whether or not it's going to be a literal seven years, or how it's going to, what's going to be the initial kickoff for those things, you know, because often with the millennial, the premillennial position is often the kickoff is some type of a treaty with Jerusalem, or something that allows a temple to be rebuilt, or the rapture.
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There's a kickoff moment in premillennialism.
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Yes, sir, yeah.
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Amillennialism, yes, sir.
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And they were teaching me that we are the new Israel, we are the new Jerusalem, the church is.
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Sure, yeah.
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God's all done with it.
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Of course, we didn't last long.
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Well, but that's the covenantal position, is that the church is Israel in spirit.
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In spirit, yeah.
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Yes, sir.
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What about the next part of it where it says, Thothrotha, Thotholus, beheaded for the judgment of the Lord, and had not worshipped, and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.
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Yeah.
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And the rest of them did not come to life, and it says, and then they will become priests of God, of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.
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Yeah, this again leads to the question of, is that referring to this which is happening in the future, or is this referring to something that has happened now? And of course, you would say, well, people aren't coming to life now.
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And so, this is one of those questions.
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Well, is this to be interpreted literally? Is this to be interpreted figuratively? How is it to be interpreted? Can it be interpreted rightly in a figurative way? Doesn't sound like it, but.
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Well, I'm just saying, yeah, like I said, I'm not necessarily presenting one view over the other in this regard, but specifically, when Jesus rose from the dead, there were people who rose from the grave with him.
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True.
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And there were people who walked back into Jerusalem, having been raised from the dead on the day he was crucified, and he was raised on the third day, and they came into the town with him to demonstrate his power.
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And there are some who pointed to that particular instance as being the fulfillment of that.
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And that probably goes back to the view of that the second coming happened around 70 A.D.
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or something like that.
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Well, that's preterism, and we haven't even scratched that.
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Preterism says that the second coming, that all that is to be fulfilled has already happened, happened in 80-70.
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Partial preterism says that certain fulfillments were made in 80-70, but not complete fulfillments.
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And that there was a already and not yet type of fulfillment.
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No, are you familiar with the term already and not yet? That's a very important prophetic thing.
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Because you read Old Testament prophecies, there are times when they had an immediate fulfillment and then a future fulfillment.
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Right.
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Antiochus Epiphanus was the immediate fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy about the abomination of desolation who had set up in the temple.
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He set up in the temple during the time of the Maccabees.
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He set up a statue to Zeus.
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The Maccabees came in, destroyed, cut the head off the statue.
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Okay.
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He was the fulfillment of the promise of Daniel of the abomination of desolation.
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But Jesus came along hundreds of years later and said there is coming an abomination of desolation which was spoken of by the prophet Daniel.
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So there was the immediate fulfillment which was Antiochus Epiphanus, but there is another more powerful fulfillment that's coming.
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And so we have the already and the not yet.
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Yes, sir.
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Can I just bring up another quote from the Dallas Seminary? No, no, no, go ahead.
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Oh, by the way, the Dallas Seminary, when it started out in 1923, I believe it was, okay, it was immediately, it was you know, we talked about it.
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But anyway, that it was the Dallas Presbyterian Seminary.
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Ha! I did not know that.
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So it started out as coming to theology.
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It didn't last very long, and of course there was a Presbyterian church that said, no, you're gone.
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So they had to change the name.
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They had to make it Dallas Theological.
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But many times it helped.
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But anyway, over here now there's four major views of Revelation.
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Okay, when you, obviously that's the biggest book on eschatology.
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But there are four major views of it, which are Idealist, Historicist, Futurist, and Preterist.
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So, you know, and all have distinct differences and all that, as well as the many differences in the tribulation.
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Yes, sir? When I talk to a lot of people about this in the past, I always take a lot of them back to, especially when they're talking about the thousand year millennial kingdom that we talked about there in the pre-trib, and so forth.
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And I go back to 2 Peter because, you know, in 2 Peter he makes a couple of statements that you could say, well, he's making a synopsis of things, but in there, you know, he's talking about how the world existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water and so forth.
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I'm jumping down here quickly, but by the same word, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire.
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This is 3 5, 3 7.
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And they exist and stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and the destruction of the ungodly.
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And then he says, but do not overlook this fact, beloved, that with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
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The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowest, but to be patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
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And so, you know, and the idea there that I always like to point out to people is, look, the thousand years, like you said, don't hold fast to that.
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I mean, there's a number, you know, and the book of Revelation is full of numbers that you can't pin down and say, okay, this is, everything's going to be exactly what it says.
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And Peter's point, I thought, was interesting is because it's funny that he missed this whole millennium thing, and he went right to the end of the age, but he's telling them now, correctly, you see what I'm saying? It's just like, okay, you may die, and then you're going up there, so there's not going to be another chance, there's not going to be anything else, this is it, guys.
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And, you know, and I think it's worth delving into sometimes when people make these statements about a second chance, that sometimes this topic evolves into that second chance, well, if I don't get, if I miss it in the rapture, maybe my mom will get saved in the tribulation or something, you know, they get off at a such crazy pace.
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I've heard people say that if you've heard the gospel in this life, and you're alive during the tribulation, if you're alive after the rapture, that you will not, you will be hardened against the gospel in the tribulation, that only people who haven't heard the gospel will be allowed to be saved during the tribulation.
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It's really a, it's a very unique argument that's certainly not the position of most, but.
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How will anybody tell them the gospel if their hearts have been hardened? They won't share it.
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So how will they hear it? People that haven't heard it.
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Yeah, it's, there's a lot of questions.
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I do want to sort of mention, because you mentioned the historicists, idealists, and all that, but I have limited this also, because there is also the post-millennial position.
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The post-millennial position believes that we usher in the return of Christ through the evangelization of the world.
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And as a result, the blessing of the millennium is something that we are doing through the gospel proclamation to all nations.
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So where I often make a distinction, I say premillennialists tend to be pessimistic about the future.
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It's just going to get worse.
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Post-millennialists tend to be optimistic about the future.
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It's going to get better! Amillennialists tend to be more even and say, well, it's going to be bad and good, and it's going to be bad and good up until the end.
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So it's sort of the pessimistic, optimistic, realistic, you know, perspective.
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Yes, sir? Yeah! That's very true.
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You watch an atom bomb take out an entire generation of people and it makes you kind of less optimistic about the future.
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I mean, seriously.
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How many of you were alive when that happened? When the bomb hit? Hiroshima? Were you alive then? Forty-five? But you don't remember it, I'm sure.
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I mean, you guys are too young to...
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I think about that.
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There was a great sense of optimism in our nation after the Civil War and things were getting better, Industrial Revolution, all these things are happening, and there's a great deal of optimism.
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And then you find out that, you know, Hitler is exterminating Jews, and you find out that the world isn't as progressive as you once thought.
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And now America is attacked at Pearl Harbor.
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Thousands die.
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And then we retaliate with the finger of God, as it were, and take out two entire cities of people.
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And we've been working all day to take out Pearl Harbor.
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Wow.
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So you were alive then at the Hiroshima.
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You were alive, but you were barely alive.
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I mean, you were very much alive, but you very much wouldn't remember it.
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So it is hard to maintain strong optimism in the face of such cruelty.
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But I know post-millennialists.
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I have friends who are theonomic post-millennialists who are very optimistic.
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I've got a video series, actually.
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It's a great video series.
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If you're ever interested in studying the post-millennial position, it's called From Terror to Triumph, and it demonstrates how in history, out of every time where there was terror, God has triumphed, and there's always been an upward movement of the gospel.
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Think of the first two centuries of the church.
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I mean, Christians are being fed to lions.
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And then there's an upward movement of the gospel.
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Think about the time during the Reformation.
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I mean, the church was dead in its unorthodox false teaching, and then comes the reformers, and there's this light, and then the gospel goes out.
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And then you have that time of the great awakening in America, and now the missionaries are going out.
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I mean, there have been times where there's terror, and then triumph.
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Yeah.
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And I think, and I hate to say this, because I hate to be a...
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I think that there's coming much more tribulation for Christians in America than we have seen yet.
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But I think out of that will be first a culling of the false, because the churches are filled with false converts, who are converts out of comfortability.
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They're converts to Christianity for their, you know, because they want their marriages to be better.
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They want their lives to be better.
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They want their best life now.
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They have this false view of what Christianity is, and when the real persecution comes, that will cull the herd quickly, because the people who came to Jesus to make their life better, and when they find out it's hard to be a believer, they're going to split.
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And there will be a sanctifying presence in the church when that happens.
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I'm not looking forward to the time when we're under persecution, but I'm saying there will be a blessing, because out of that, the genuine will show itself to be genuine.
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So, if there is a blessing in tribulation, that's it.
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Yes, sir? What he's referring to is his name, Mount Couch.
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Yeah, yeah, I think I am.
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Didn't he write a book called Calvinism in the Airport? No, that was different.
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But Mount Couch, I've had him for different times, but about two or three years ago, he's done a work that has gotten a lot of attention from everywhere, because he is basically in a second period, but he's dealing with all this issue of eschatology.
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But his main point as he gets through the entire large book, his main point is that the ones who are not you know, pre-male, like the all-male, he says, are very, very many theologians who are very, very good on all the heavy issues of theology, of all scriptures, because they take the scriptures literally.
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But he says, every area of the theology except for eschatology, and when they get the issue of eschatology, anything future, that they take it literal rather than literal.
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Figurative rather than literal.
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Yeah.
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Rather than literal, they take it figuratively.
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But it's gotten a lot of attention in this whole area of eschatology.
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And it's very, you know, even those who are not convinced by it, there's been a lot of attention given to it.
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Well, we're getting close to the end of our time.
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If you have questions on this issue, which I'm sure you do, I encourage your further study.
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I am closing out today, though, the conversation on the dispensational covenant theology.
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We're going to move on in the book when we come back from, well, here's how this is going to work.
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I am taking next week off.
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I'll be gone.
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Jason will be teaching.
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I'm not sure what he's teaching on yet.
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I'm sure we'll talk about that.
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And then I'll be back for one week and then Lee's going to teach for several weeks to give me a time, a little bit of a break, which will be nice.
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I'll try to be in the room participating as much as possible.
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But I want to add, I don't know what I'm going to do on that one little side class, but we'll do something probably different, probably step away from the book for just a day and do something a little bit differently.
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But I hope this is, the last few weeks have been beneficial and helpful to you.
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If you want to go back and listen, look up under the headings on Sermon Audio, it says Dispensationalism and CT, CT for Covenant Theology.
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They limit how many characters I can use for titles, so I have to be creative with my title.
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So if you want to listen to the rest of it, you're welcome.
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Yeah, I can put this long of a title.
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Well, thank you guys again for coming.
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God bless y'all.