Dispensationalism and Covenant

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Mike and Steve examine some caricatures of dispensationalism and covenant theology. Tune in for a lively discussion!

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the
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Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.
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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her
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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.
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My name is Mike Abendroth, and I am so thankful today, A, to be alive, B, to be forgiven, and C, I guess farther down on that list, but C, Steve Cooley is actually sitting less than one meter from me.
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In violation. I'm in violation. Now, Steve, you for many years were an
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L .A. sheriff, and what was your favorite ticket to give somebody for a violation?
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What was the favorite? They did something really dumb. It was a violation that you loved to ticket. My favorite violation?
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I don't think I really had a violation that I just really loved. I mean, there are specific instances that I enjoyed, but I don't think there was one that I just...
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Well, let me phrase it this way, because maybe it'll be a good lead -in for justice, right? The desire for righteousness and justice.
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What would happen if, give me a scenario, if a person did X, Y, Z if a traffic deal, a violation, and you would automatically give a ticket versus some other things you go, you know what,
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I might let that one go. What was the one that always got the ticket? Well, lying to me would be...
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I mean, that was just automatic, or the whole, do you know who I am card. That was always good for a laugh.
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But I think maybe this is a good story here. I was working the mountain car, meeting up in the
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Angeles National Forest, which is hundreds of square miles. I don't even know how many square miles. And we see some guy chopping down a tree.
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Christmas tree? Christmas tree, yeah. So, we pull over and go, what are you doing? He goes, just cutting down a
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Christmas tree. And we go, you can't really do that. And he's like, you guys don't have any authority up here. Okay.
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You know, and well, we do, but we don't have tree authority, right?
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And, but he was, he was not very polite. So, we, we had the ability to call a ranger down, and it was only like a seven or eight minute drive.
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Ranger comes down, gives him a $500 ticket. Wow. And then the guy says, well,
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I mean, this is like almost 30 years ago. And he goes, he goes to take the tree and the ranger goes, you can't take that tree.
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$500 and no tree. Well, that would have been, you know, some, some people probably pay a hundred dollars a tree, right?
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To cut it down themselves and be at a difficult farm and all that stuff. I think I told you once, Steve, probably 20 years ago,
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Kim and I were here in New England. We had kids. It was winter. I didn't make a whole lot of money and couldn't afford a tree.
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That's a big deal when you can't afford a Christmas tree. So Kim was sad and the days were getting closer to Christmas and, and no tree, no tree.
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I mean, what am I going to do? I'm in, in debt. Just tell her you become convicted that trees are adultery.
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Yeah. Jeremiah, what? 17? Jeremiah something. What's it? Jeremiah 10, maybe is the
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Christmas tree deal. You don't want an idol made of wood in your house. Pagan holidays,
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Roman Catholic church, December 25th. I mean, the list goes on. What's the Hislop kooky book of two
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Babylonians. Anyway, uh, I was driving home and I think
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I was with Kim's brother, Steve Duncan, and I saw a tree on the side of the road and stopped.
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It must've fallen out of a truck or something. It was a Christmas tree cut and I put it up on the roof of the car and kind of put my hand out the window in the winter and held it up there and drove home and then walked over to the sliding glass doors at that Sterling Lake house and stood there and then knocked on the door and all the kids and Kim and I just started crying.
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I called it the Jehovah Jireh tree God will provide. So and he did, he provided that idol carved out of wood.
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So Steve, we're back live and uh, there's all kinds of things that have happened in the last three months. I think you've only been on a couple of times, maybe via phone.
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What's happened? Uh, you know, a guy, a guy from Connecticut emailed me a submariner retired and he said, you know, they'd be underwater for three to six months.
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And he said, what if you were underwater in the middle of all this back in the day before you had any like internet underneath their way to communicate and you go,
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Oh, you'd be safe from the virus. You would. That sounds like a show. Some kind of the last ship or something.
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Do you watch the last ship? I don't remember. I, I watched some submarine show. I don't think it was that one though.
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Some of my favorite all time movies, by the way, since we're talking about paganism, I think we're submarine movies, you know, hunt for red
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October, you five, seven, one, you be 40 Jacques Cousteau.
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Any spiritual things that you've been thinking about now, all of a sudden, Steve, you don't have a Sunday school to teach or anything like that.
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What, what have you been studying or working on? I've been hating it, um, um, really well, like, like I was saying before we get on the air here and just about covenant works, covenant redemption, um, just thinking through those things, you know, the, all the implications of Genesis three 15, that kind of stuff.
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Well, it's interesting, Steve, you have, you know, broadly speaking, two camps, dispensational camp and a covenant camp ways to look at scripture or interpret scripture or kind of a system of understanding.
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And what you were saying to me beforehand, I, it resonates with me because if covenant theology is known for seeing scriptures and the
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Lord's relationship to us through covenants, covenant redemption works and grace, uh, and dispensationalists see it from a different perspective.
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I'm surprised that more dispensationalist won't just admit, you know what? I do believe in the covenant of redemption, but I don't really want to call it that.
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Well, or even, yeah, and I agree. And I think it's the same thing with other things. Well, if you don't believe in the covenant works, what exactly did the second
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Adam do? Yeah, right. Right. And what the first Adam do and how are they related?
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And it's interesting. You look at Romans chapter five, essentially what's going on in Romans five,
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Paul is trying to teach the recipients of that letter. The work of someone can be credited or be given to someone else.
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He's trying to say there's a representative kind of work, and then he proves it by going to Adam in Genesis, as you just alluded to.
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Yes. Do you see the one affects the many? With Romans five, negatively, Adam's work of sin affected all of us.
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And then of course, Christ's works of righteousness, work of righteousness affected those who the Father had given him.
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But once I think Romans five, federal headship comes into view, I just don't know how they can't say,
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I believe in the covenant of redemption. How about this, Steve? What about some of our dispensationalist friends who would say,
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I don't want to call it a covenant because it's not in scripture called covenant, so I'll call it a pact or I'll call it some kind of agreement.
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But Steve, those friends of ours, they would, if I say the word Trinity, they'd buy that.
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Yeah. Where does that word come from? It doesn't come from the Bible, right? Right. It's just a means of explaining what the
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Bible says, and I think it's the same way with the covenant of redemption, covenant of works, covenant of grace.
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You know, I mean, it's hard to, and I've been looking, I know one of our favorite teachers has actually used some of those terms.
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And it's hard to teach John 17, Ephesians 1, you know, and not refer to some pre -time agreement between the
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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And whatever you call it, I mean, you can call it a covenant, you can call it an agreement, you can call it a pizza.
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It's got all the - You did call it a pizza. It's got all the ingredients of a covenant, all the requirements for a covenant.
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So I don't know what the problem is. Well, Steve, when it comes to pizza, I've only heard two uses for pizza.
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Number one, the thing that you eat with cheese and pepperoni crust. Number two, my children who have taught ski lessons at ski mountains.
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You tell the kids French fries, that means you put your skis parallel and go down.
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And then if you want to try to slow down or turn, you say pizza, because then you make your skis into a
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V, it looks like a slice of a pizza. And then they say pizza, pizza, pizza. So now
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I have a third thing. It's the covenant of redemption pizza. And I think if you eat one slice, you've got to eat the other two slices.
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I just call it the pizza of redemption. Now I can understand why some dispensationalists don't want to say covenant of grace.
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And is there one administration of covenant of grace through the Abrahamic covenant, and then it's going to lead into baptism and circumcision, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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I get that. But the other ones, won't our dispensationalist friends believe if I said to them, was
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God requiring perfection in the garden from his first created being made in his likeness and image?
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Did he require him to obey? It's pretty hard to argue against that. I know. Did he say, hey,
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Adam, do whatever you want? No. Right. And therefore, when you look even into the
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New Testament, of course, it's only hypothetical because of Adam's sin credited to our account.
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But when Romans 2 .13 says the doers of the law shall be justified, I just take that as part of Romans 1, 2, and 3 showing me
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I need to have an alien righteousness. I don't take it as part of Romans 6 and 7 sanctification.
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I just need to make sure I have enough works to prove my justification. No. You do the law.
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Why would God condemn anyone for doing the law? Never would. Right. So, if you do the law, you're not going to be—
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Do this and do this and live. Right. Right. So, I'm surprised even with the Hosea 6 -7 language of the covenant that Adam would break, and then they would say, you know,
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Adam is a place or maybe Adam is a pizza, but Romans 6 -7,
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I guess they can't make it say that because if in fact it is a covenant there, then they have to use the word covenant instead of,
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I don't know, some kind of pact. Hosea 6 -7? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You said Romans 6 -7.
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Oh, did I? Excuse me. Yes. All right. Good. We'll see. As you can tell, this whole script, it's funny, Steve, you'd appreciate this.
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Sometimes I'll interview people on the radio show and they'll say, could you send me a list of questions ahead of time so I know where you're going to go.
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No. We just say, welcome to No Compromise Radio and see where we're at. That's the difference between you and me.
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When I interview somebody, I have a whole list of questions. Then as they're talking,
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I make notes about where I want to go next and stuff like that. I have to be perfectly candid.
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I have written down a few questions. Usually it's about five minutes before the show and I'll just look at their bio and do a few things.
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But then I do make some little notes as we go. I want to have a follow -up question. Has this happened to you before?
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You're talking to the person you're interviewing and you think all of a sudden you're just listening to a podcast because they're going on and on and on.
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Then I'm thinking, wait a second, I have to ask them another question. No, because I don't do this as often as you do.
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What's interesting is when I listen to other shows and they go on and on, the show will go on for,
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I don't want to, well, I will say two, three, four hours.
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I'm listening to this and I'm going, okay, this is because no matter what the guys say, they weren't prepared.
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Because my background as a police officer, if I took three hours to interview somebody, my sergeant would be going, what is wrong with you?
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It is not this hard, Cooley, get it done. Well, maybe that's their hobby or something like that.
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I'm not sure. You know my philosophy, Steve, and I think for preaching, and it bleeds into the radio, and that is
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I'd rather have people say, oh, I wish you would keep going versus, well, the guy, please sit down,
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I've heard enough. That's why this 50 plus minute preaching, 55, 60 minutes, we regularly laugh about people that we know who go a buck three and an hour and 10 minutes.
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Okay, maybe there's a Sunday night exception and the hardcore people are there and you need to finish a book.
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I guess there are exceptions, but most people I know, they don't preach very well past 45 minutes.
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No, I mean, have there been, for example, people say, well, what about Shepherd's Conference? Some of those guys go an hour and 10 minutes or whatever.
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And I'm like, there are times where, yeah, it was an hour and 10 minutes and I was watching my watch for the last 50 minutes, right?
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And there have been times where I go, wow, that was an hour and 10 minutes worth of glory right there.
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That was awesome. Plus, it's a conference, right? It's, you go there and you think, okay, for a conference, if they use
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PowerPoint, if they were more pedantic, if they use more Greek words or something, I'm thinking it's, but so for the radio, we try to, we just do the 24 minute little deal.
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2430, baby. Yeah. So Hosea 6, 7, not Romans 6, 7, it says for, let's just get to verse 6, for I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
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But like Adam, they transgressed the covenant. There they dealt faithlessly with me.
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And so people have to say, well, is that a place, Adam, Adam, or is that the
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Adam that's in the garden? Now, let me just read what the ESV study Bible says.
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Covenant appears four other times in Hosea, twice it refers to transgressing the covenant.
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The following phrase, there they dealt faithlessly with me along with 8, 1 makes it virtually certain that the covenant in view is the
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Mosaic covenant. In addition, the kinds of sins and cures pronounced in the Sinai covenant dovetail precisely with the warnings of the prophet.
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Isn't it interesting here? It says the hard issue is to whom or to what does Adam refer? Many commentators suggest a geographic locality.
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The difficulty is there no record of covenant breaking in a place called Adam. That would be a difficulty, right?
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Yeah. I mean - But is it even the Mosaic covenant that they're breaking? That's interesting. This just reminds me, now you're going to think
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I'm nuts because, because I am. But my uncle yesterday,
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I think it was on Facebook, posted a response to me and I'm reading it and I'm just like, that's a bank of a bank of a bank of a bank shot, right?
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And so, I found a gif, a gif, depending on where you're from, which was some guy shooting a pool cue shot, you know, and it jumps over one ball and off another thing and jumps off another one and into the hole.
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That sounds like this. And so, and exactly. So Steve, basically we have pizza and we have billiard illustrations to talk about the hermeneutics of snooker.
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Yeah, that's what I do best. Are there any dispensations that the covenant theologian should probably go for?
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I just know, you know, here's what I believe and I mean, I think this is biblical.
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Did God ever save anybody in a different way, right?
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And I think the answer is no. If salvation was always by the grace of God, you know, it was through the vehicle or the instrument of faith and to say anything else is to introduce some foreign concept and really to do, you know, when, if you have seven dispensations in the
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Bible, you're doing what the covenant, what you accuse covenantalists of doing, right? Which is viewing scripture through a preset grid of it, you know, imposing your own personal views upon the word of God.
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That's true. Talking to Pastor Steve Cooley today on No Compromise Radio. You can write us info at nocompromiseradio .com.
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Steve, if I just generally said the seven dispensations of old school dispensationalism that I don't know anybody who believes all seven.
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Yeah, I don't know anybody either, although it's a popular caricature among our covenantal brothers. Right, right.
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So I don't know of anybody that believes all seven. They believe a little bit, you know, fewer. They would phrase it differently.
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But if I took the seven, that old system, I see it's too man -centered because in covenant theology you say, all right, these covenants, you know,
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I'm your God and I will, you are my people and I'm your God, or I'm your God and you will be my people rather.
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The focus seems to be on who God is. He's the one that makes these covenants and he's the one, especially with grace and with redemption, is in charge and they're centered around him while the dispensation, easy for me to say.
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Dispensation. Do you ever read the Twitter account with a Calvinistic Sean Connery?
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Nope. And so they spell it out in ways that talk like him.
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They give B .B. Warfield quotes with the S .H. in there and it sounds so good.
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That's the only Twitter account where I pronounce it out loud and it sounds just like Sean Connery.
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Sean Connery. But the seven dispensations, man has something he's supposed to do and then he fails.
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So it strikes me as a very man -centered way to see. And even the dispensationalists we know, of course, don't believe that seven system anymore.
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No. Let's talk in the time we have left, Steve. What are some of the things that dispensationalists say about covenant theologians that are really, you know, it's not, they're not playing fair.
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It's just an exaggeration. It's a snooker ball shot. And then we'll do the opposite side too.
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It's a caricature. Right. Right. Dispensationalists say about covenantalists, well,
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I think the first, the first thing that comes to my mind is they're anti -gnomian. Okay.
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I hear regularly that they say, and we don't have to explain all these because we don't have enough time and we don't know anyway.
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Just kidding. They spiritualize the text. Oh yeah. Sure. Right.
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Yeah. Because, because they, they take the plain meaning of scripture and then they explain it away.
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Right. Replacement theology that the church has replaced Israel. Right. Right. So, so you can look back in the old
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Testament and read the word Israel and go church. Right. So that's replacement because a real covenant theologian would say,
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I'm not replacing anything. This is God's intention, et cetera. Anything else that a dispensationalist says about a covenant theologian that's, that just,
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I don't know, maybe do they say you don't love Jewish people or I'm not sure. Yeah. I mean, there, there is the kind of anti -Israel sort of, because they'll lay it on Luther and therefore they think it bleeds into covenantalism.
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Um, what else, something, you know, about their hermeneutics, they've got bad hermeneutics. It's not a literal grammatical, but that's, that's, that's actually true.
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So that's not one of these caricatures. Right. Um, anything else about it that dispensationalism said,
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Oh, you know what they say? Um, while Luther and Calvin were used by God to rescue the doctrines of soteriology, they never had enough time to deal with eschatology.
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So therefore the Rome, uh, Rome's eschatology is the reformers eschatology. Right. I've heard that too.
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Yeah. Um, okay. Let's flip it around. Uh, what are some of the covenant theologians kind of canards that they throw out against dispensationalism?
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Hal Lindsey. Yeah. Yeah. Or Hagee or, you know, they have a love affair with Israel.
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Uh huh. Yeah. They're willing to go fight for the nation of Israel. Why are
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Beastie Boys songs coming into my brain right now? Uh, yeah. So, so, so left behind.
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Yeah. Like, like you can't, uh, every dispensationalist has a room full of charts and graphs explaining the end times.
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Oh, you know, it just popped in my mind. Two ways of salvation. Yeah. Right. Now, while it's true that Lewis Berry Chafer did not know what was going on with Old Testament salvation.
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And there was this two stage kind of thing. I don't think of many dispensationalists that I know, the leaky ones, kind of the
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TMS ones, they're not going to believe in two ways of salvation. No. So that, that one is a false canard. I have not read, um,
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Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth by John Gershner, um, uh, critiquing dispensationalism.
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I haven't read it for many years now, 20, 25 years, but I think he's got a little bit of that kind of, it's just kind of just, it's a dumb argument.
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Well, I just remember reading that and thinking he knows MacArthur and why would he even be saying these things?
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You know? Right. And you know what? I think in that book, to be fair to Gershner, he did say something about John and how
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John doesn't have the two stage salvation or two different ways of salvation or something. Can you think of any good books that compare the two dispensationalism and covenant theology that's kind of, that are fair?
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The one that pops into my mind that I have not reread, uh, but need to is Continuity Discontinuity edited by Feinberg, um, uh, um, in honor of S.
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Lewis Johnson. We, we, we took that class together, you know, which almost caused me to fail the next semester of Hebrew because I was wrapping up, uh, too much work.
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Yes. Yeah. It was way too much work. We took it during Winterim. I remember that because there was a big confrontation with a particular student.
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Oh boy. Yeah. That was sad. What is your question? Now, I think
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I probably ask more questions now if I'm a student, but back in the day, Steve, I just thought,
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I knew I didn't know. And therefore I just sat there and listened. I didn't have to ask all these questions.
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I was the same way. I, you know, and I'm not, this is like, I'm not beating my chest about my humility, but sometimes students would ask questions and I would cringe because I'm like, this isn't a question.
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You know, they would start with, with all due respect, professor, which, you know. To be fair.
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And right away you go, okay, I know it's not going to be respectful and I know you're about to unload.
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And you know, why did those people, I'm thinking of two men in particular, uh, they always sat in the front center.
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Why was that? I don't know. Quinky dink. I know. I wanted to sit a little farther back so I could like read the
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Wittenberg door or something, snoop around at some articles, something edifying. Well, Steve, it's good to see you face to face here in the studio.
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We still hope to go to Israel in 2021. I think my daughter, Gracie is going to be in Ibex in Israel this fall.
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So let's hope the flights make it. That'll be exciting. No, no COVID. It'll all be gone by then. No COVID, no
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Compromise Radio, no Co. No Co. I like it. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.
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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.
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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.