Joseph Spurgeon: Navigating Covenant and Dispensational Theology

Covenant theology versus dispensationalism coming your way on the Wrap Report.

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Welcome to another edition of the Wrap Report. I am your host Andrew Rapoport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member. We are here to give you biblical interpretations and applications for the

Christian life. We are gonna do that on this episode. I am joined by a special guest and so we just recorded for his podcast and you're gonna have to go listen to that one as well because, well, we started on his and we carried over a fight?

Hmm, we'll find out. But we carried over a discussion into this podcast, so this is

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, oh wait, no, no, sorry, Joseph Spurgeon. He is pastor of the

Baptist, well, we wish, but maybe not, but he is the pastor of Sovereign King Church and he is the podcaster of the

Patriarchy podcast. And you need to go, at the time that you're listening to this, go and not just find the episode we did on the

Patriarchy podcast, but I will also encourage you to follow so you can hear the rest of the podcast that he does where they build, fight, protect, and lead.

So that is what they do there, and so he's going to do exactly that here as we continue, as we ended that on a discussion of covenant theology and dispensationalism, a

Baptist and Presbyterian. Can we get along? Joseph, you and I met, as you mentioned on your podcast, we met at a conference that Tim Beauchamp put together, the

Jesus in Politics. You spoke, we got together hanging out, really enjoyed the fellowship, and then you and I also wrote articles for Fight, Laugh, Feast magazine.

Now, the best part of me holding this up for the camera is it covers my face. See, that's what everyone loves.

You wrote an article, I wrote an article that was my testimony, which is kind of what we covered on your podcast, but we did cover not only my testimony, we talked about debate, how to raise up children to debate.

You had an article on Judaism and a view we should have toward Jewish people, enemies yet beloved, and so we are going to talk about that, so I encourage you guys, if you don't have the

Fight, Laugh, Feast magazine, maybe you want to go get that so you can read those articles. Wait a minute, Joseph, am

I encouraging people to get a magazine that their episode is called The Dispensationalist, The Dark Right, The Dank Right, and Jesus?

I mean, the whole magazine is against dispensationalism pretty much, and I'm recommending it? What? What are you doing?

Welcome to The Wrap Report. Why don't you introduce yourself to folks and let people know, you know, real briefly,

I say briefly as he's a pastor, briefly, how did you get saved and a little bit about your church and your ministry in case anybody is in the

Jeffersonville, Indiana area and want to come out to visit you. Yeah, well, thank you for having me.

It's good to be here, and thank you for coming on my podcast. We had a good time just before we recorded this.

You know, people get me confused all the time with Charles Spurgeon. I think it's probably my rugged good looks and great theology, probably, but...

Wasn't Charles a Baptist, though? I'm just saying. Yeah, he was.

Was is the key word. No, he still is. He's in heaven and he knows the truth.

R .C. Sproul's Baptist today. I always say that I just went back a generation and recovered what his parents were, so his parents were not

Baptists. You know, I don't know if you know the story, so you'll appreciate this, that when he got saved and then he became a

Baptist, he was telling his mom, and his mom was like, well, I was always praying for you to get saved, but this

Baptist thing, and he said, well, God doubly answered your prayers. And so, you know,

I did grow up, as all Spurgeons probably do, a Baptist now. So I grew up Baptist.

I grew up dispensational, actually. So Jack Van Impey.

Used to watch the Jack Van Impey things. You may not want to own him. My condolences. Roxella, if you remember her, and the guy that did the voiceovers.

So yeah, I grew up dispensational and grew up in a godly home. My parents are

Christians. My dad's a pastor. My uncle is a worship leader, and so I think it kind of runs in the family, and that was actually kind of the, maybe the sticking point a little bit, was like everybody always asks, are you related to Charles Spurgeon?

And then it's like, well, everybody always thinks you ought to be a pastor. Like, are you gonna be a pastor because your dad's a pastor?

And it just happened to be that, like, when I did grow up, we went to Awana, and I did very well at memorizing scripture, and I think it was pretty clear, actually, very early on, that my calling in life was to be a pastor.

My parents have this little, I got a tape recorder from when I was like a child, and I hit play, and I was preaching sermons.

They've got sermons for me from when I was like five or six, preaching. And so, but I felt a lot of pressure about that when

I got into high school, and I was also starting, you know, in my rebellious phase.

I had this girl I thought I was gonna get married to, and so instead of like going off to a

Christian college, maybe, and starting the path, I will join the army and have some money for some college, and I can go to a college close by.

I could be near this girl and whatever, and she cheated on me while I was gone. That basic training.

And so, I came back, and I can remember, now I appreciate the comment.

At the time, I didn't. Lady at the church was like, well, maybe that was God's plan for you.

Like, maybe God was trying to keep you from something or whatever. And, well, I just got angry at God, and I think some of those, you know, it was my own stinking fault.

I should have known better. I was trying to be a savior to this girl who grew up in a broken home and all that stuff, and she wasn't even quite a believer.

And that, the lady at the church, praise God, she was right. Actually, more than right.

I do think God was sparing me, because I know, like, if we had gotten married, we'd probably be in a divorce, everything else.

But, so I ran from God for a while. Ran from the call to ministry. When I say run,

I wasn't like, you know, I was still going to church. Like, I was still helping with stuff as I could.

But, in my heart, I would make atheist arguments, and I would be involved with filthiness, and pornography, and other just wickedness.

And, believe it or not, and you're gonna love this, a couple things that God used to bring me back, and to call me into repentance again, and really into ministry, was at the college where I was going.

There was this campus Christian Center, and there was a RUF, which is a Presbyterian minister, and he began talking about how

Israel in the Middle East is not the Israel in the

Bible. And I grew up dispensational, and even though I'm not really walking with God, those are fighting words, and I'm gonna,

I'm gonna fight. I'm gonna defend what I grew up, and I'm like, what are you talking about? Of course they are, and you know, and, and so we got in a big debate.

I remember he had a great chart that he put up, but he mentioned this guy named John Calvin. And, you know,

I grew up, and we, other than Charles Spurgeon, didn't really know much from church history, though I love history.

So I was like, well, who's this Calvin guy? So I went, and I read John Calvin's Institutes.

I got it, and I started reading through that, and then, like, God just started breaking my resistance down, breaking me down, calling me, and that's how

I became a Calvinist. Like, I became a Calvinist the honest way, actually, by reading John Calvin. And God used that.

He used panic attacks that, like, whenever I would commit sin, this anxiety would come on to me to show me, like, it was my guilt.

And then he used a Keith Green song. So he used a Calvinist, then he used, I think

Keith Green was probably an Armenian, Pentecostal -y kind of guy. He used that as well. This song called,

A Sleep in the Light. I mean, you've never heard of it, but there's this line, which is, Jesus rose from the dead, and you can't even get out of your bed.

And I was a DJ and a musician doing rock band stuff, and I would stay up all night and sleep all day, and that line hit me, because I knew

I was supposed to be preaching God's Word. I was supposed to be, and it's like the church, the world's dying in the dark because the church is sleeping in the light, and how can you be so dead when you've been so well -fed, and Jesus rose from the dead, you can't even get out of your bed.

It's still, I get goosebumps even thinking about it now. That's some great lyrics. It is.

And it nails me. It still nails me. And so God used that, used

John Calvin, used getting going on a trip to the Philippines, and all of that to really wake me up and call me into ministry.

And then at seminary, I started getting involved in abortion ministry, started getting involved in street preaching, and then

God called me to plant the church, Sovereign King Church, where we're at. So I remember when

I first went to seminary, they had this church planting seminar, and I had stopped being rebellious, but not completely.

When I first went to the seminary, I was like, well, I won't ever need to do that, because I'm never going to plant church. And so, you know,

God has a sense of humor. And so maybe I should have took that seminar. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I'm glad I may have not been able to do it.

But God has blessed us. We're about eight, nine years, or almost 10 years, and started with three families, up to over 150 people now.

And we just got lots of children, lots of God blessing us left and right.

And beautiful thing about our church, we're Presbyterian, which means as far as ecclesiology, our government.

In our congregation, we have people that are both Credo Baptists and Paedo Baptists, including our elders.

Some of our elders are Credo, some are Paedo, and I'm the head pastor. I have an associate pastor who's a

Credo Baptist. I'm a Paedo Baptist. So we work out this unity while having these kind of in -house fights a little bit and debate.

Well, I said to you, your church is sort of a little taste of heaven in the sense of all the people think, well, you have to be this, you have to be that.

Your church is what heaven's going to be like, where everyone just gets together, disagreements are put aside, and we focus on Christ.

That's what heaven will be like. It's almost heaven, Sovereign King Church. We're going to change John Diver's song. So you have an article that you wrote in Fight, Laugh, Feast.

We started talking, and I should mention if folks want to find you, the website for the podcast is www .thepatriarchypodcast

.com. And if you want to find the church, the church is www .sovereignkingchurch .com.

So www .sovereignkingchurch .com for the church and the patriarchy, and the word the is there.

So www .thepatriarchypodcast .com. So don't forget the the, www .thepatriarchypodcast .com,

or if you're on your app, just search for Patriarchy Podcast. And so let's talk about the article that you wrote.

I'm just going to tell, and I told you, I wanted to say this on the air and not tell you beforehand, but when

I read your article, the whole magazine issue is really kind of against dispensationalism, and I'm a dispensationalist, and I will say that your article was extremely refreshing, and it was refreshing because of the fact that the way you handled the topic, it wasn't like, hey,

I got an ax to grind. And I was expecting, I was expecting like, because, yeah, I'm kind of expecting that with every article that I've been reading it, like that there's gonna be an ax to grind.

But your, your article was, was really well balanced in not just taking the position that you take, but in helping people in their application to, okay, what do

I do with Jewish people to, how do I, how do I deal with them? And so let's start there, and then

I'm sure we're going to get into debating covenant theology and dispensationalism at some point.

But let's talk about your, the article you had. It was called Enemies Yet Beloved. So who are the enemies?

I might take personal offense to this. Who are the enemies, and how are they beloved? Yeah, that's a good question.

Well, we have lots of enemies as Christians, but in this case, we're talking about Jews, and we're talking about obviously unbelieving

Jews. We're not, not talking about you, but we're talking about the

Jewish people. We're speaking in generalities, and I think it's perfectly fine to do. And I think we can call them enemies as far as, as far as the gospel sake.

In fact, that's what the Apostle Paul, I think, calls them, and that they've become our enemies because of rejection of Christ and rejection of Jesus.

And I mean, we see this in the New Testament. He came to his own, his own didn't receive him.

It's very sad. I mean, they have the oracles, they have the covenant promises, they have the word of God, they have everything they need to know that who

Jesus is, who he says he is, and there he is. And other than like, you know, a handful, at least 12 at the beginning, and then the quite maybe a large minority of them after Pentecost, but generally, they reject

Christ. And Christ, a lot of his parables are really punching them in the face about that, like, this is who

I am, and you're rejecting me, and this is what's going to happen. And, and so they reject

Jesus as the Messiah, which means they're rejecting their God.

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As always, Apologetics Live is part of the Christian podcast community. And I read this quote a long time ago, and I can't remember who it was by.

I think, yeah, I can't remember who exactly it was by, but, which is that when the

Jewish people as a whole rejected the Messiah, they didn't give up on Messiahship.

They gave up the Messiah, but they, because of so many of the prophecies, in fact, when you were on my podcast, you were talking about, you had a discussion with a rabbi, and you were talking about the

Messiah, and the 70 weeks, and how it comes right up to Jesus, and then the rabbi was like, well, you do you, or whatever.

You could probably tell the story better than I can. But when they reject the Messiah, they have to also then like, what do they do with all the prophecies about it?

Well, they kind of have to rewrite them, re -change them around. But the quote is like when they rejected the

Messiah, they didn't give up on the Messiah, but they themselves tried to become the Messiah. And there's a kind of a revolutionary spirit among them.

And you see that after Jesus is ascended, and I think he prophesied this in Matthew 24, and maybe that's where we can debate that a little bit, but like he's the destruction of the temple.

There's a lot of people claiming to be messiahs around that time. But there's like this revolutionary, we're going to have to do it now, mindset.

And of course, that gets stomped down in the destruction of the temple, but that hasn't gone away. And that spirit is still there in a sense of like, you have the

Talmud, and Judaism as a religion starts to come into place after the destruction of the temple.

And a lot of it is, what do we do now? We've lost the temple. We've lost the Old Testament.

We can't practice that. What do we do? And so like there's this new system, new things. And a lot of it's very, it can be revolutionary.

Jews have throughout history kind of sided with revolutionary type movements.

I mean, Marxism and stuff like that. And because of that, that puts them often at opposition with Christians.

You reject Christ, you're also going to reject Christians. And if you were to put yourself in the shoes of a

Jew, they're going to think, well, Christians are against them. As you were sharing, they think of Christianity as the

Nazi religion or whatever. But there's this opposition that has happened. And I think as Christians, we're just honest.

We just speak truthfully about this. We recognize that if they are enemies of Christ, rejecting

Christ, they are in a sense our enemies. And we are truthful about what

Judaism is. It rejects Christ. What it teaches about Jesus, some of the stuff in the

Talmud, now not every Jew even knows that, what it taught. But it teaches things about Jesus that are just blasphemous.

And it's a rejection of God, the triune God. And we can truthfully say that, that Judaism's false.

No one will be saved by it. If they are saved, it's by Jesus. But, and I think we can also point out that there have been

Jews throughout history that have done some things that are wicked. I think people, when they reject

Christ, well, they will turn to things that are not good for society as a whole.

Right? There's common grace that God gives all people, but the best thing for society is

God's commands and God's ways. So you reject God's ways, you're not going to get the best. And we're seeing that.

And I think we can even see where people like George Soros and others with lots of money have funded a lot of wickedness.

That's the enemy's part, but there's still the other half, which is, I don't think that their rejection and God's, I think, in a sense of his punishment and curses on them as we see in the destruction of the temple,

I don't see that as an ultimate rejection of Jews altogether. I think

God will uphold his promises so that all of Israel will be saved. And I don't mean

Israel there by Israel in the Middle East. I mean, all of God's people.

And I think that includes Jews and Gentiles. And I think that there are promises in scripture and that Paul, the apostle

Paul talks about in particular for the Jewish people as a whole, that they've been kind of broken off of the branch.

They've been broken off of Israel, if you will. I believe Jesus is the true Israel. They've been broken off from that.

But one day in God's timing as a whole, they will be grafted back in.

And along the way, Jews are converting you, yourself, and we're brothers.

And I think that teaches us, okay, we're truthful about the enemy side, but we're also then hopeful about the other side.

And we therefore, we, you know, Jesus teaches us to love even our enemies, right?

So we proclaim the gospel and we have great hope that God will convert them.

We speak truth. We pray for, you know, I'm a Westminster guy and the Westminster larger catechism on the

Lord's prayer teaches us to pray for the conversion of the Jews. And so my article was, you know, there's a lot of grifters out there that have made this

Jewish thing the thing for like, for a while. And they're getting a lot of popularity.

And it's because there's grifters on both sides. I think there's grifters that say Israel in the

Middle East, exactly as it's constituted now is, you know, almost equivalent as if Moses was there in charge.

And therefore, any criticism of the Jewish nation or any of their policies is off limits because they've got an

Old Testament about blessing those who bless and cursing those who curse. And so, you know, Ted Cruz comes to mind, that kind of, you can't say anything wrong.

And so I think that's grifting. And I think that's wrong. I think there's people that want to influence our government, and they maybe shouldn't have that influence as foreigners over our government.

But then on the other hand, there's grifters that make you know, like, well, the Jews can become the ultimate bad guy. And like, and they, everything becomes about that.

And everything's this conspiracy. And it's not that there's not conspiracies, I think

Jews do conspire in the book of Acts to try to kill Paul. And I think there's still conspiracies that way.

But on the other hand, we're not taught in Scripture to look at as people groups as our ultimate enemies.

And behind like, ultimately, our battle is with beyond flesh and blood. It's spiritual.

It operates in the flesh and blood. But like, so there's grifters that then use this, they use the fact that people are tired of our political leaders, kowtowing to Israel's policies or foreign things.

And now that they just build up themselves as constantly hyping on the Jews. And there's got to be some there's the truth is, is neither the

I'm going to use the word Zionist, but is the that side or the Jew hatred thing altogether.

The truth is, I'm going to love and pray for Jews, I'm going to preach the gospel as God gives me calling,

I'm going to speak out against where they're wrong, I'm gonna be feel free to criticize the nation of Israel.

And I'm going to encourage our country's politicians that their highest duty is to care for our people, and not any other nation's people, whether it's

Israel or Zimbabwe. So there we go. There's an article. Dr.

Justin Marchegiani Or Somalia. Dr. Gregory Poland Somalia should come first. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dr. Gregory Poland But you know, you you're right in the fact, and for folks that may not be aware of some of what you're talking.

So I had a pastor, I think I preached as church, I don't know, eight or nine years ago. And I haven't been in touch with him, probably since then that I that I know of.

But after the Tucker Carlson debate, interview, whatever you want to call it with Ted Cruz that you referenced.

And I mean, Ted Cruz coming up with a doctrine that he even he couldn't come up with what scripture verse says it cuz yet that it didn't say there isn't a verse that tells us as Americans, if we bless

Israel, we're going to be blessed. Okay. But, you know, I had this pastor who after that, sent an email to the ministry and told me that he was no longer going to be having his congregants to follow anything that striving for eternity does.

In fact, he informed me that I not only am not saved, but cannot be saved because I'm a

Jewish. And so that is an extreme granted, but it is out there.

And this is a church that I would have assumed is solid. And I mean, I spoke at the church, right?

I preached there before. So it was a thing where there are some real hard dividing lines.

And we talked about this on your podcast, these dividing lines that people have.

And I really think that there's some real issues here. This is why

I say your article is refreshing because you and I may disagree where these lines are, right?

I read the article and said, oh, I'm so glad that you agree that all Jewish people will be saved.

No, no, no. You said all of Israel and yet you're going to interpret that different than I would, right?

So I can look at this and say, okay, you're seeing Israel referring to the people of God.

You're seeing the scripture says all of Israel will be saved. But you look at this and you're having your dividing line, and yet you're telling people, be praying for Jewish people to get saved, be evangelizing to Jewish people to get saved.

It's not that we just cut them off. Just because if you're believing that, okay,

God worked through the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, now he's working through the church and you don't believe there is a future for a nation of Israel, right?

Because I think that would be fair to say you don't believe there's a future for the nation of Israel, right? Not in a sense.

I don't think the Bible prophesies particular reconstitution of a nation or that kind of thing.

I think as a people, there's a future in a sense of them being grafted back in.

But I don't think the Bible switches. Like when you said in the Old Testament was with Israel and then the New Testament he's doing with the church.

I wouldn't quite use that language. Yeah. Are you tired of pillows that go flat or every couple of years they smell bad?

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SFE. Because I think the Old Testament people are the church.

Correct. You would see two administrations, one people. Yes. Yeah. And see, that's the thing is that, you know, even with a view where you're saying, we're cutting these lines here, you're very balanced in saying, but you still need to reach out to Jewish people.

You need to be sharing the gospel with them, praying for them to get saved.

And that's the thing that there are these hard lines, as you mentioned, people who are just going one extreme or the other, right?

There are those on the other extreme, right? So, pastor that says, I'm not saved because I am

Jewish. There are others. And I almost wonder if Tucker Carlson, if Ted Cruz would be in this category, but it almost seemed like he was saying all

Jews are saved. You know, I know that Ted Cruz claims to be a

Christian. I listened to his podcast and it causes me to question. So, I'm just saying,

I don't know his heart. He's never shared how he came to Christ. But in that interview,

I was looking at like, it seemed like both extremes. One was saying like, no, the

Jews are the cause of everything wrong in the world. And the other saying, no, Jewish people can't do anything wrong. And yet your article was really in the middle, filled with grace and yet, you know, cutting the line where you made, well, let's deal with it.

You dealt with some really good arguments that were to point out that, look,

Jewish people in the time of Christ, they put him to death.

They conspired, as you said earlier, right? They conspired against him. And so, it's not that...

And not only conspired against him, the scriptures even use the word conspiring when it talks about Acts 23, 12.

When it was day, the Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves under an oath saying that they wouldn't either eat nor drink until they had killed

Paul. So, it was quite clear that they conspired against Christ.

They're obviously going to conspire against his followers. Yeah, I had to just check because I was like, I think that's how the article opens, and it was.

It opens with that verse. And so, so let's deal with this. I mean,

I think that both of us agree that the nation of Israel, people that are, you know, in the constitute

Israel today who are the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, really Jacob, right?

The 12 tribes after him. They are both good and bad, right? There's people who...

So, my thing of, you know, people would ask me, do I support Israel?

Well, for what, right? Do I support their attacking of Hamas after October 7th?

Yes, that's called justice. Just like I support America going after, you know, people that on 9 -11.

I think, I think you could even, I would take a little, I hate to sound like, don't call me, please don't call me balanced or fair anymore.

I don't want to be that. That's too kind. No, but I would take a more nuanced position in that I think initially there was justice in order to, you have a right response to what has happened.

And I'm not somebody that's going to just jump and say that it's a simple answer, but I think you can still be critical of how they responded in large, like there were innocent people that were being butchered without care, being killed.

And who's to blame for that? I mean, I don't think you can put all the blame on Israel, the nation of the

Middle East, Israel, or all the blame on the Palestinians. You know,

I, when I went to Israel, I, I enjoyed meeting the

Israeli, the Jews, and the Palestinian people. Some of the most hospitable people I've ever met were

Palestinians. And, and it's just a mess over there.

And like people want easy answers, and there's not right now. And, and think of, well, here's an example.

When we went to Bethlehem, you got to leave the, you go, you go to the West Bank basically, you're leaving behind the, you're going behind the lines, if you will.

And, and our driver was a Palestinian. To come back into Jerusalem, you got to go through checkpoints. And when we come back in, they pull our driver over, and they just give him like the business, like, they're just going crazy, until they stuck our heads in and saw a bunch of Americans.

And they're like, Oh, okay, well, go on. Yeah. And the Palestinian, he said effing

Jews, as he was driving away. And I just thought, man, that's, that's probably the whole thing in a nutshell.

Like, the Palestinians feel put upon by all the checks and stuff.

And the Jews, of course, are recognizing that there's going to be terrorists and things. And it's, it's a mess.

It's anyways. Yeah, it's hard to try. Look, for folks that don't realize, you know, when they say from, you know, the river to the sea, they're talking about the elimination of, they're calling for genocide of people.

So it is a thing where, yeah, you're going to get, how do you generation after generation, you know, for decades, instill this hatred for one another and then say,

Oh, you, you know, they're going to, they're going to get along. Right. I mean, and the reason I bring it to 9 -11, a lot of Americans felt we had the right to respond in 9 -11.

And yet what happened? Well, we had Bush who took away a lot of our freedoms, though people didn't recognize it.

They gave up those freedoms. So we had our own government taking advantage of that to their own benefit, to empower the government over the people.

I could disagree with that and still say, but it was just to go after the enemies that caused it.

Sure. Absolutely. And, and so this is where I think this, it's, you said this, it's not so clear cut that it's one answer to, to these problems.

These are complicated issues. When we talk about who Israel is, it's, it's not so easy as saying,

Oh, well, it's, it's just the offspring of, you know, Jacob, the 12 tribes.

Is that true? Yes. But is, as you referenced, is there references to the church as being spiritual

Israel? Yes. Now, what do you do with that? Because that, that's then

Gentiles. Okay. And then there's Jesus who is Israel.

Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned that in the article. Out of, out of Egypt, I have called my son.

So that's Matthew, right? He's talking about Jesus. And yet the quote is not, is, is if you go back to what he's quoted from the

Old Testament, he's quoting, referring to, to Israel, to Israel, the people of God.

Yeah. And yet it's, it's now referred to as Jesus and it's Christmas time.

We're putting this out. So like, I've been, so I'm, I'm preaching through a focus on Joseph, Jesus, earthly father, and just the connections between Joseph and the

New Testament and Joseph and the Old Testament and the stories that are like being interwoven in Jesus's birth and how he's, it's almost like a replaying of Old Testament Israel in Jesus.

Like, you know, Old Testament, Joseph, his father is Jacob. New Testament, Joseph, his father is

Jacob. Old Testament, Joseph gets betrayed. New Testament, Joseph thinks he's betrayed with Mary.

Old Testament, Joseph gets tons of dreams. New Testament, Joseph gets tons of dreams.

Old Testament, Joseph goes to Egypt and becomes a father to Israel in a sense. And I don't mean like a biological father because Israel was his biological father, but he's a civil father over Egypt to protect.

I mean, over Egypt and over Israel to protect Israel in Egypt. Joseph in the

New Testament is not the biological father of the new Israel or Jesus, but he is a father who now protects

Israel in Egypt. And just like all these little things that are there.

And it's, and then of course, there's also allusions to out of Egypt I call my son. Now there's the, the, the leaving

Egypt, like with Moses and, and just Jesus is fulfilling all that the

Old Testament Israel was meant to do was, was called to do. Jesus fulfills it perfectly. Like they were given the law to obey and they fell it.

Jesus has the law and obeys it perfectly. And so anyways, you can get me going.

Okay. So let me ask you a question, a theological question, with what you said, do you, would you say that Joseph, the, you know, the, the human adopted father of Jesus is a, or let me reword it properly, that the

Joseph of the Old Testament is a type of the Joseph that we see in the New Testament? Yes.

Okay. And the type of Jesus, that's crazy. He's also kind of a type of Jesus and a savior, but I think actually more accurately would be like of Joseph in the

New Testament. It's just, yeah. Now, the reason I ask that is because this is a really good example of the differences where you and I would have when it comes to how we interpret it's, you know, this can't,

I did a debate with Matt Slick on covenant theology, dispensationalism, and we came to a similar thing, but in that case, it was the offering of Isaac and the offering of Jesus and the similarities.

And so here where you say, you would say, yes, Joseph of the Old Testament is a type of the

Joseph of the New Testament. And Matt would say, the offering of Isaac was a type of Christ. And I say,

I say there's similarities. I don't say they're a type because the scripture doesn't say they're a type.

So as a good Presbyterian, as you are, you should appreciate this. But my argument for my hermeneutic is that I use the regulatory principle for hermeneutics, not necessarily for worship, right?

The principle that we don't go beyond what scripture allows. And so I would say there's,

I definitely agree with the similarities. I just don't say it's a type unless scripture says that.

So what do you think? Well, I, yeah, I think this would come to another probably thing we disagree on maybe, and it's a very fundamental thing to Presbyterianism.

It's in the Westminster Confession, which is, it's not only those things that are explicitly said in scripture that are binding, but those that are implied or the implicit.

So for example, here's an area where we agree on, right?

The Trinity, the word Trinity is not used in scripture. Some of the things that, and maybe,

I don't know if you would hold this or not, but the Nicene Creed, for example, some of the language there is not biblical language as far as like in the

Bible. And yet, as Christians, we can look at, I think what scripture says, and we do theology and we, we see that not only is the explicit, but the things we call it good and necessary consequence of that is, is also binding upon us so that there, you know, that it wouldn't need necessarily be a

Bible verse that says, this is a type for this to be a type. Now we may argue about that.

Like, there's a big argument among Presbyterians on what we, if you know what's called the covenant of works, or sometimes called the covenant of creation.

In other words, did God make a covenant with Adam? Well, in the Genesis, there's no explicit yes.

There is a, I think in a Hosea or Amos, it talks about the covenant of Adam, but most covenant theologians will say, yes,

God did make a covenant with Adam in the garden. And it's because it got all the hallmarks of what a covenant is.

It doesn't necessarily have to use the explicit language to say so. So the question is, what is a type?

If you look at what types are biblically and then say, okay, are the things that are types, but the

Bible doesn't explicitly say are types. Do they fit the criteria for being a type?

If they do, they are a type. Unless you can make a good argument for why they, they're not a type.

Like, you know, there are things that are similar, for example, and they may not be types because there may be something else that shows it.

So, yeah. And I think this is where, right, the way you're going to approach the interpretation, the way

I'm going to approach interpretation, we're going to come to differing views. And yet there's a lot of similarity that we have, right?

We both would see that, yes, God has a specific people that He is redeeming throughout history, right?

I would argue both of us agree that there were different laws for the

Old Testament saints versus the New Testament saints, and the reason I would argue that is because you don't keep kosher, right?

So, in some way, there's some discontinuity between the two, though I think you would agree there's more continuity than discontinuity.

Would that be fair? Yes, I would argue that the discontinuity must, you know, should be more explicit, though it can be implied.

Yeah. But I think, you know, even when you say there's different laws,

I don't think there's a different moral law. I think we have the same moral law in the

Old and the New, like, so that governs us. But as far as ceremonial laws, I do think there was a change from the

Old to the New. Like, we have two ceremonies in the New Testament, if you will.

We have Lord's Supper and Baptism, whereas in the Old, there was multiples.

Yeah, and there's an interesting thing because, so, I understand the tripart division, right, that we see in the

Westminster Confession. You have moral laws, ceremonial laws, civil laws. Now, I've never seen, maybe you know of one, where the 614 laws that we have in the

Pentateuch, where they're listed in which category that they're in. I haven't seen that. I keep asking for it.

But I do approach it differently, and it's probably because of my Jewish upbringing. Because in Judaism, we would refer to holiness laws.

Those were the kosher laws. And the idea of those laws were to keep the Jewish people separated from the nations around them.

Now, I would argue that that separation was so that there would be the line to Christ, to the prophecy that we have of Christ.

So is it needed? And now that Christ came, do we need those laws? Well, in one sense,

I would say no, because if there's a sign pointing to something, when the thing comes, you don't need that anymore.

If you're going to say, well, do we need holiness? Well, yes, we need to be separate from the world.

So now, you know, so the way I divide the law, I do have a tripart division, but my tripart division is more, are they universal laws?

For example, the Ten Commandments, I think those are universal. A good one to talk about is the

Sabbath. I believe, if you're going to go, wait, you're Baptist, I believe that on the seventh day of creation,

God gave a law for us keeping the Sabbath. However, I think then there's also laws for Israel, that nation from the

Old Testament, and laws for the church. So in Moses' time, the

Sabbath was expanded from what was given to universally, and so there were more specific laws for Israel, the nation, that I don't think carried over into the

New Testament, and therefore we still have a Sabbath, but it's not the Old Testament Sabbath, it's a

New Testament Sabbath. You may want to rip that apart, but go for it. No, you're actually, what you're, maybe it might be in the details, the devil's always in the details, but you're not really arguing much different than what

I would say about that tripart distinction of civil, ceremonial, and moral. Maybe you're articulating slightly different.

You know, when people always say, was there a list of these things? Well, I would ask, where is there a list of the, you know,

Jesus talks about the Pharisees keeping the, they're tithing the deal and the thing, and what does he say about that?

Yeah, well, they missed the mark. No, no, I mean, he says specifically that like, you're very particular about what, but the weightier issues of the law.

That they're missing. They focus so much on small, small detail, a small little seed, and miss the big picture.

Same as the toothpick in your eye versus the log in your eye. Same thing. Yeah, well, he's talking about there's weightier, so I'd like, what issues are weightier versus the less weighty issues of those laws?

We don't have a list. We've got to examine scriptures. Or for example, God himself, if we go to the

Old Testament with Isaiah, he's like, you know, I don't like your ceremonies.

You know, I hate your, not I just don't like, I hate your ceremonies. I hate your new moons. I hate your Sabbaths. And he calls it yours.

When he, the one that commanded all this, like, what are you talking about? You hate those. Those are your commands. But then he then says, why?

Your hands are covered with blood. So, he makes a distinction between, even there, between the ceremonial and the moral law, or the ceremonial, either that or the weightier and the less weightier.

There's a distinction. And I liked how you worded it, is that those kind of what you called holiness, they provided the hedge, if you will, the line around these are

God's people versus these are not God's people. And that's actually what Reform people have always said about the ceremonial laws, or at least like the dietary laws and some of those things.

Some of those things also pointed to the coming of Jesus. And so, as you talked about Jesus's fulfillment of them, you know, when you're building a house, you put up the scaffolding.

Once the house is built, nobody's like, man, I love how beautiful the scaffolding is.

I want to keep that up around the cathedral. No, you take that down so you can actually see the cathedral. Now that Jesus has come, the

Old Testament sacrifices, which are pointing to him, we don't go back to those. Actually, the book of Hebrew tells us we're not to go back to those because it's like,

I mean, it's blasphemy in one sense, it is, but like, it's also, it's a rejection of Christ.

Christ made the one time sacrifice for all time. Why would we go back to these things that were types and shadows at best?

And who couldn't actually, they're the blood of bulls and goats can't redeem us. Why would we go back to that?

Like those things pointed to Jesus now that Jesus has come, you don't need it. If you go back to that, you're basically saying,

Jesus is not enough, I need all this. And that was a big stumbling point for Jews, I think.

Yeah, and I think, you know, a lot of people don't recognize, excuse me, but, you know, we talk about, for example, the food.

When did the food become clean? Because a lot of people think that it was, you know, in Acts when

Peter has his vision. And yet, Jesus in Mark declared all food clean.

And so it's in Mark that you have that, not in Acts. This is

Mark 7, we'll just read 18 and 19. And he said to them, you are so lacking in understanding also, do you not understand whatever goes in to the man from the outside cannot defile him?

Because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach and is eliminated.

Thus, he declared all foods clean. So that's before the cross.

And people don't realize that. So these laws with the food actually changed before the cross, according to Mark 7.

And so, you know, it's something where I think I find, and this goes back to what you and I talked about on your podcast,

The Patriarchy Podcast, that people should go listen to. The fact that a lot of people don't listen to others, right?

So what are you and I doing? We're hearing each other out. You know, I do word things different than others,

I think, because of my background, maybe, but I like to find where we can find agreement and then talk from the disagreement from there.

So let me do something with that. So you and I, I think, would agree when we talk about the church, would you agree that there is a visible or local church versus an invisible universal church?

And if you agree with that, could you define the two? Yes, I wouldn't say, I think, okay, yeah, there's the invisible church is made up of all the elect, all of those who are truly saved throughout time from Adam, and I believe

Adam was saved by God's grace till now and beyond.

That's the invisible. It's called invisible, not because like there's ghosts or something, but because we don't know, we can't see it.

God does, and it's not invisible to him. He knows who's truly saved. The visible church is all those who profess faith with Christ and their children,

I would argue, but all those who profess faith in Christ, we can at least agree on that part, I think, and throughout the world and throughout time.

And so everyone who makes a profession of faith from, you know, again, the

Old Testament, but also we can say where we, you and I could actually agree would probably be Peter and the apostles to C .S.

Lewis, like all the people that make a profession of faith and they, throughout time and throughout the world, and then we might use the word

Catholic in that sense, it's like universal. And then that visible church is made up of local congregations.

So local congregation is a visible, is a manifestation of the visible church, like, you know, because it's impossible for the whole visible church to meet at one location, they, we meet locally.

And so I would argue there's invisible, visible, and then local is a manifestation of the visible church.

Does that help? Is that something that we agree there? Yeah. And so now what

I'm going to do, so I take from the agreement, let's go to, and this is just the way that helps me to understand when we take it into Old Testament Israel, I want to use a similar type of language.

What I would refer to as local or national Israel and universal or spiritual

Israel. And so I make that same distinction with Israel so that I can see spiritual

Israel, spiritual church. They're both universal. There are believers everywhere universally.

And then there's this local gathering that's made up of believers and unbelievers, whether it is the local gathering of a church building where people go to a church building and call themselves part of a church and you have believers, unbelievers, same thing with the nation of Israel where you had believers, unbelievers.

Does that make sense to you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a very, this is, this is a very,

I think a understood thing is that the Old Testament church had a mixture.

So not everybody that is a part of the visible church, and I think you would agree, not everybody that's a part of the visible church is necessarily a part of the invisible church.

Like there are sheep and then there are goats, there are wheat and tares, there are Judas was a part of the visible church and yet not part of the invisible church.

So Old Testament Israel as a nation is a part of the visible church, the invisible church is all those who were saved were a part of that.

Yes. So that distinction I think is pretty good. Yeah. And the reason I make that distinction because I think,

I think even for Christians, a lot of people make the mistake of doing as what

I said on your podcast, when being raised Jewish, I thought I was going to heaven because I was Jewish, right? That I was taught that all

Jewish people go to heaven because we're God's chosen people, we're after Abraham. I actually think that Christians struggle with that same thought that, that they think as if, well, just because they're

Jewish in the Old Testament, they're God's chosen people means that they're saved. I don't,

I don't make that distinction in the Old Testament, but I think when we come to Romans and Paul's making this argument between a physical

Israel, not all Israel is Israel, he's making that distinction between local and universal.

He didn't use that language. And I think that's, so when I come to that passage, I can say, okay, he's making that distinction.

He's, I don't think he's saying, okay, that, and is where you would disagree. I don't think he's saying, well, in the

Old Testament, that was the church or in the New Testament, that's Israel, right? I make that distinction as well.

But a lot of people, I think they'd use that verse to say, oh, see, that was Israel in the

Old Testament is the church now because they weren't all God's chosen people, now they are, right?

Because in the, you know, I, so I think that that's... I'm not sure I followed for a second, but yeah,

I think, I think I agree that Paul is using, in fact, this is part of the difficulty when we talk about Jews or the

Jewish question dealing with Israel and all of that, is that the word can have multiple meaning and it's very easy to equivocate, use the word one way here and then, and take that definition and bring it over to this other context where it's actually not meant to be used and now you equivocate, which means you're using in the wrong place.

For example, and in Paul, man, in the book of Romans, Paul does this quite a bit with the word law.

Like he can have a paragraph in which the word law could have like four different definitions. And so you're like trying to figure out, like, is

Paul saying the Old Testament moral law was bad? No. What's he talking about? Sometimes he means the principle of death.

Sometimes he means the principle that leads to like, or the law of sin. And so he can use this stuff.

Same thing in that passage, he can be talking about Israel as God's people, the invisible church.

And then he can talk about how all Israel is not Israel in the sense that not all Jews are actually of God's, of the invisible church, all part of actually saved, but outwardly.

And then he's got a great concern for them. Like, I wish they would all be saved.

In fact, the whole passage from, I think, Romans eight, Romans nine is dealing with this. Well, if Jesus is who he says he is, and if the gospel is who it is, then, and God keep his promises, then how are there

Jewish people rejecting Jesus as God's promises failed? And he's like, well, hang on, we got to get this right.

God has not failed because some have rejected. And I think it's easy to just mix those all up.

And then people do. And I think that that makes the helps you read, like when he says, I, I would like to be accursed for the sake of my kindred of the flesh.

He's talking about Jews, according to the flesh, there are Jews, according to the flesh, ethnic Jews, if you will.

And then there are Jews, true Jews, those who are truly saved. And you can be an ethnic

Jew and be truly saved, or, and be a true Jew. And then I think you can be a

Gentile and be a true Jew in the sense of being saved, or be a child of Abraham, in that sense, and part of the spiritual

Israel. And, and so when I get through that, and I see, well, these

Jews have been cast, they've been broken off as far as like the, a visible church can cease to be part of the

Catholic Church, if you will. And by Catholic, I don't mean Roman Catholic. But it could be, it could be broken off, it could cease to be a real church.

Like a branch can be broken off a tree. But Jesus, I mean,

Paul makes the point that these are the natural branches. They got broke off. And you were like, you belong to this tree over here wasn't even part of this, and God's graft you in.

Don't you go boasting and bragging. Like, like you're like the natural branch, you're not you got you got, you got torn off that ivy bush that was getting ready to get burned into hell, and put on here.

So shut up and be gracious, be grateful. And don't you don't look at these other branches that have been broken off and gloat because that could happen to you.

Furthermore, I think he's saying that, if they're being broken off as good, how much more is there coming back from the dead, like there's a resurrection.

And I think that points to, I do think there is a future for the Jewish people as a whole.

I just don't, I don't think it has to mean a reconstituting of a political entity, a national entity, that kind of thing.

Yeah. And what I want folks to hear, right, is the fact that we started with dispensationalist covenant theology, and everyone thinks they're on completely opposite sides, and there's no in between, there's nowhere where they meet.

And yet, okay, we have some differences in language, we have differences in how we're approaching it, we're going to have differences in how it works out.

But yet, what I really want to encourage folks is listen to the way Joseph and I are listening to one another, dialoguing.

It'd be fair to say, Joseph, you have some pretty strong views on this stuff, right? Yeah, I'm pretty settled in my convictions,

I think so. Right? Me too. And yet, you know, no name calling, no attacking, none of that.

And I think that's a healthy discussion. Well, should I start going? Maybe that'll help. Well, there's probably a lot you could say that has nothing to do with me being dispensational.

Dude is ugly, right? Yeah. You could talk about my face for radio all you want, right?

So, but, you know, this is a thing where I think that it's helpful for folks to see that we could disagree, you could disagree, as you mentioned, you could disagree with some of the political decisions

Israel, the nation, is making today, and yet still say, okay, but God could be doing something with individuals there that he's going to redeem them, right?

We have to get out of everything's a black and white issue, as if it's so easy to answer, because nothing in scripture is that easy.

Why would we think life is going to be that easy, right? I mean, it's a thing

I've noticed in counseling that people want either liberality or legalism, because they require no thinking.

I can do whatever I want, or I can't do anything. But the truth is in the middle where you actually have to think through issues and struggle with it and wrestle with it and see what scripture says.

Yes, that's the hardest part of being a Christian, and it's the thing that God has been teaching me more and more, is that obviously we want to have, we're not just like throw everything out and have no principles.

We want principles. I want to obey God's commands. I don't want to be somebody that replaces the commands of God with man's commands and those things.

I want to follow what the Bible says, and yet the Bible teaches us that there's a lot of wisdom in applying it, like Proverbs.

I always bring this up. Do not answer a fool according to his folly. Okay, that's my law.

I know I'm not supposed to answer the fool according to his folly. That's the thing. So any fool,

I'm not answering you. You're an idiot. You're a fool. And then the very next verse is what? Answer a fool according to his folly.

What? Lest you be like him, or lest he be wise in his own eyes.

And it's, okay, is there a scribal error? No, the

Bible contradicts itself. That's what it is. No, what it's saying is like, you've got to, both of those are right, and they're both, and they're not at odds.

Then it's not illogical. It's saying there's wisdom in obeying God, and it takes judgment calls, and ultimately, it's impossible, and I think we both agree on this 100%.

It's impossible to do without the Holy Spirit, without the walking, without God's leading. That's right.

So, folks, again, let me just give a plug. If you're, you know, just north of Kentucky, I think it's like Louisville, Kentucky.

Yeah, Louisville. You've got to spit it out of your mouth. Just think of it like this, Louisville. Louisville. There we go.

Go check out sovereignkingchurch .com,

and check that out, even though they're Presbyterian. They'll be Baptist in heaven, it's okay.

And if you wanted to listen to the, he's going to say that I'll be Presbyterian in heaven, so it's okay. One of us might be right.

What if we're both wrong? We could both be wrong, and we'll all be Anglican. No, that can't be.

But also check out the podcast, thepatriarchypodcast .com, if you want to check out the old episodes, but search for it on your podcast app.

Joseph, any last words you have, anything you want to share with folks here? Tell me how wrong I am on everything, that's fine.

No, I've thoroughly enjoyed our time on my podcast and yours, and it's an encouragement to, you know, as I grew up in dispensational,

I went through the cage stage of anti -dispensational, and I'm still not dispensational, and I'm probably not going to be, and there are things

I think that are, there are bad people that have put some bad things with it, right?

Jack Van Empy kind of stuff, and God had to get me away from that to actually use it, but there are dear brothers like yourself, my father, and others that are faithful and trying to be faithful to God's Word, and so I appreciate that, and may

God bring us to unity in the truth, maybe fight and wrestle for the truth, and do so as brothers that love each other.

And so with that, folks, I would just say that's a wrap.