Covenant Theology vs. Dispensationalism Discussed

That's all that we need. Not only sufficient, but the only thing that could be done for baptism. Okay, so we don't need baptism then, because it's the only thing.

Is it the only thing or is it not? Do you need to be baptized or not? Because if you need to be baptized, it's not sufficient.

It is true that you are an extremely skilled debater, and you're good.

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Now let me just, I see we have a new member on YouTube. So thank you,

Isaac. He became a new member on YouTube and you can support us there. It's one of the many ways you can support us.

He said, great subject tonight, looking forward to gaining a better understanding. Me too. We're going to discuss why that's so important in a moment.

But let me just say, if you, I was saying, if you want to support us, you can go to striving for attorney .org

and slash support. You could support us there if you so desire. Now I'm going to bring in Joseph and I think if I remember correctly, let me take this off so people can see the spelling of your last name.

There we go. Joseph Weissman. Joseph Weissman. For some who may not pick up on that, that last name, it sounds a little bit, oh,

Jewish. Right? Yeah, it is. My grandma is from Vienna and her name was

Weissman. And so that name carried over when she came over to the

UK. My dad carried it on. And so I'm a Weissman. My children are

Weissmans. Yeah. So I embrace it. Well, I'm Jewish on both sides. My dad is an evangelist to Jewish people in London.

And he met my mom when he was going door to door and he met an old lady. And she said, well, she wasn't interested in Jesus, but she said, well, come back.

You know, you meet my granddaughter. She's one in a million. She'll do anything for you. She arranged a date.

And the next time my dad came back, my mom was there. And sometime later, they got married and next year is their 40th wedding anniversary.

That's neat. And we may need translation for you tonight.

What language do they speak over there in the UK? British, mate.

Yeah, I have a friend of mine. Someone actually asked his son that when his son was here in the

States, what do they speak there in the UK? He goes, English. It's where you got it from. And then you butchered it.

No, I've been, I live in Oklahoma now, which is a perfect place for a

Brit. I've been here nearly, well, over four and a half years. My wife's American.

We met on social media. So I'm all for social media and, you know, the substance was the same as a style and we got married and we were happy with each other.

So we now have two kids, Jacob and Abigail, who, Jacob's three,

Abigail's one. And you might hear them in the background, but hopefully, you know, you won't.

But yeah, if you do, that's fine. Yeah, that's fine. And so let's talk about why we decided to do this.

You and I spoke for the very first time today, but you reached out to Chris Arnzen from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And why don't you explain what you were looking to do and then we can explain how you and I got connected.

Sure. I recently did a debate on pedo -communian.

I'm a Presbyterian, so I'm a pedo -baptist, not a pedo -communist. OK, for some folks, just explain the differences, explain what they are, because not everyone may know the words.

So yeah, so pedo -baptism is you baptize the infants, not every infant, but of children born to Christians and pedo -communian would simply be you give them the

Lord's Supper. So I would say yes to baptism, no to the Lord's Supper for young children.

And my opponent would say yes to both. And the debate went really well and it just encouraged me because there was a conversation

I really wanted to have as well. As much as I want to discuss that, I really wanted to get into covenant theology and dispensationalism because I come from not only a

Jewish and messianic background, but also a dispensationalist background. And that's where I was at for a number of years.

And the last thing I wanted to, I really was against covenant theology and it was a slow journey to become, to get into covenant theology.

But I remember the frustrations I had as a dispensationalist interacting with covenant theology and likewise as a covenant theologian interacting with dispensationalism.

And I thought that's a conversation I haven't really heard on the subject of hermeneutics.

And I really wanted to hear it on hermeneutics. I thought it would be valuable. And so I asked Chris, hey, is there anyone you can think of?

And he was the number one, the go -to guy that he thought, I know someone. So I was really intrigued and he put us in touch and we chatted today.

So I'm glad to be here. And that's the background to it. Yeah, so we're planning, at least hopefully, to do a live debate on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And really what we was, was you and I started talking and you didn't have a lot of time. And I just said, hey, you want to just come on the show and we can have this discussion to kind of see what, because I'm new to you.

I don't know anything about you. I saw the one debate you did. And, you know, it wasn't a lot.

I didn't know your views as far as dispensationalism and covenant theology. So I figured, why don't we just do this live?

And this is what I would have done on the phone anyway with you, right? Is to understand, so we each understand our positions, because when

I do a debate, at least, and I think I shared a little bit of this with you, we didn't have a lot of time. When I debate,

I'm not debating to win. I debate, in my mind, the purpose of a debate is to educate the audience.

It's not to try to so much convince the opponent, although if you do, hey, that's great, right?

You want to be so convincing that even your opponent will heed. I mean, I loved the time that I had a debate with an imam and at the end of the debate, he took a

Bible from me and said he would, he would read, you know, I gave him just the New Testament. He realized that was about the size of the

Quran and was like, I can read this. And he, people in the audience were aghast that he would do that, which made me say, yeah,

OK, they know that, you know, I kind of won on some points. And he's, he's, he started,

I think, thinking about it because he even at one point in that debate, when it was audience

Q &A, they asked a question, he actually tried to stop me from answering. And he said to the audience, wait, wait, don't, he understands

Islam. And I was like, no, no, I want to answer that. He's like, no, it's OK, it's OK.

And I was the reason he didn't want me to answer, because I understand a little bit of Islam and understand Takiyah and knew that they were lying to protect the faith.

And he knew I was going to call them out for it, as I did. They didn't know it, but he did.

And so, so, yeah, so when we do debates and this is the thing a lot of people don't understand with debates, the debate.

A good debate, at least, is where you have your your premise that each side is trying to you have a position that one is for, one's against.

You're going to be making arguments for and defending that. And then someone's going to counter it and you go back and forth.

The goal of it is going to be in the a lot of it's in the cross -examination where you can dig deeper and start asking questions one on one.

And a lot of what we do tonight will probably be a little bit of that, really, just so we can understand each other's positions.

I mean, you have a very interesting take. And so let me look up. This is what Chris sent me, if I could pull this up, as the the topic of debate.

So I'm just trying to find where he where Chris sent it to me.

You probably know the topic, so I should just let you go for it instead of looking. Sure, I think

I said to him that the topic would be which hermeneutic is more literal, the dispensationalist one or the covenantal one.

And I thought it's an interesting question because usually covenant theology will allow dispensationalism to say it's more literal.

But dispensationalism allows for metaphor and figures of speech.

So it's not that dispensationalism takes everything literally. Like, right.

Oh, you can correct me if. Oh, yeah. Plus, covenant theology, there is a way in which we take scripture literally.

If you look back into the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church at the time had four sentences of scripture.

And I struggle to remember these. The first is a literal meaning, which is whatever the Holy Spirit intends.

The second, I believe, was the allegorical meaning. Then there was a universal moral lesson.

I think that was a tropological meaning. And then also anagogical sense, which is the meaning that you can take away and apply to the church.

And I've probably messed that up a little bit. But basically, they believed in the quadriga, the four senses. And the

Reformation came along and said, no, there's only one sense, the literal sense. And they define it as whatever the

Holy Spirit literally intended. And that would also be my hermeneutic. So now there are places in scripture where I think the

Holy Spirit literally intended a metaphor where a dispensationalist might take it as, no, this is a one for one correspondence with more or less what's going to happen.

And that's where I think the interesting thing is going to lie. Now, you know, we may end up changing slightly the question to one, you know, if we're both more really familiar with.

But that's basically the angle I wanted to get at. So I'm really keen to hear your thoughts, Andrew, just hearing that like initially.

Yeah. And yeah, the way that Chris has sent it to me was that covenant, because it was covenant theology is more literal than dispensationalism.

Because you have to have a pro. We have to have one side that's pro. You can't have both being a pro. By the way,

Karen Bible Share Fellowship says, will you have two

Jews have three opinions? Well, yeah, probably. You know, you're very astute there.

You realize that we're good at debate. I'm debating. So, folks, this will be two debates with two

Jewish believers, as many of you here know. I got a debate coming up with Dr. Michael Brown, another

Jewish believer. And the reason he and I are looking forward to it is because, as you guys regular here know,

I've said Jewish people are raised to debate. It's just like a family activity, at least around the dinner table you'd often have.

The father would just throw an argument out and choose two children to be pro and con and have to debate it.

Why? It sharpens the skill, sharpens the thinking. And we were trained to do that kind of thinking without the emotion.

Because basically, once you use the emotion, you lost. That was the rule. And so when you get people that are trained that way,

I mean, Dr. Michael Brown and I already had some discussions. We're looking forward to it. We realize it's going to be hard because we want to go off on this tangent, that tangent.

So we're probably going to maybe do some follow -ups afterwards on all the different tangents we'd like to discuss.

But it's something where there's not the let's be mean to one another.

So debate's not a bad thing. So let me get to what you had said. So, yeah,

I think that the way that I refer to it, right, because you're going to want to, in the debate, you want to respond to me, not like dispensationalism or something like that.

And there are different views of dispensationalism. There's known as classic, which would say you take a normal, a literal hermeneutic.

I would be, then there's Ryrie's version of, you know, and then there's progressive.

And I don't know, I'd probably be more in the, that's the only way I'm progressive is on dispensationalism, maybe.

But, you know, I'm not sure with them where I would land with those differences they have. But the way

I would describe it is there's three synaconnum, that which you can't have it without.

So what are the essentials to dispensationalism? I would say a normal hermeneutic.

What I mean by that is there are times that when you have a figure of speech,

I'm so hungry, I can eat a cow. You don't believe that I could literally eat a cow, do you,

Joseph? No? Depends how long it's been since you ate. But yeah, I doubt you will literally eat a cow.

That's because you haven't seen me eat. But, and to answer your question, as of today,

I think I'm on day four of a fast. So yeah, I haven't, I'm really hungry.

So maybe I could. I have had 60 ounces of steak in one sitting.

I'll just say that. But that's not a whole cow. And so you can, you know that that's a figure of speech.

So the literal way of interpreting that is to understand it in the genre of an illustration, of it not to be taken as I can literally eat the cow, but the literal sense of it is an illustration, right?

And so, or in that case, more of an exaggeration. So that's a normal.

And so a normal hermeneutic leads to a distinction between Israel and the church.

Israel as a nation versus the church, two separate groups that God works with.

But I would say that there's continuity and discontinuity.

There's a lot of continuity in those that are believing Israel and believing church.

And there's discontinuity as the nation of Israel and the global body church. So I would see a distinction.

And then the third is a view that the Bible, the goal of the

Bible is God's glory, doxological versus Christological. So doxological meaning that I'm going to see a book say,

I always use it as the example, the Song of Solomon. I see the Song of Solomon not about Jesus and the church, which wouldn't have been around for a thousand years.

But I, you know, unless you're going to say that the Israel is the Old Testament church, so granted.

But I would say that that is a picture of a marriage as a wedding is really what you're seeing.

And a godly marriage glorifies God. So those would be the way that I would do it. I wouldn't say that everything has to be absolutely literal.

In that sense. Right. No, I get that. But would you say, I'm going to start prodding a little bit just to see where the disagreement lies.

And this is just a question. It's not gotcha. I'm just, I want to really understand. So would you say that, obviously, you'd say dispensationalism has the normal reading of scripture.

So therefore, would you say that covenant theology doesn't read scripture normally or more so consistently in every area?

Would that be your critique of it that it's not consistent? No, actually,

I would argue it is consistent within its harmonical system. And this is the thing that after I talked to you on the phone that I was looking forward to with this debate with you, because here's what

I find. Most people, when they talk about dispensationalism, they talk about it as an end times view.

And once someone does that, I'm going to go, okay, you don't know dispensationalism. You want to argue it as a harmonutical view.

And I went, wow, okay. That's when Chris Arnzen came to me with that,

I went, okay, this is interesting. We're discussing covenant theology and dispensationalism from a harmonutical perspective.

Folks that don't know what harmonutics is, harmonutics is the art and science of interpretation.

So it's how we interpret. Every one of you listening are practicing harmonutics right now.

You're hearing what Joseph is saying. You hear what I'm saying. You are interpreting those. The question is, what are the rules you're using and applying to that interpretation?

How are you coming to the interpretation? And is your interpretation of what we're saying what we're actually meaning?

And that's the goal of it, right? So when somebody, I mean, no one likes being taken out of context, right?

And God especially. I think John Calvin, I'll paraphrase because, well, he didn't write it in English.

But in the translation of what he said, in a paraphrase, is that when you take

God's word out of context, you no longer have God's word, you have man's word. And so that's really what harmonutics is.

It's are we getting back to what God meant by what he wrote? And now, so to answer your question,

Joseph, I think that where I would disagree with covenant theology would be more in the view of interpreting

Scripture through those covenants, especially the covenant of grace, which we don't see explicit in Scripture.

Now, I'll just say this because I want to clarify, because I have this argument with my buddy,

Matt Slick, that we've debated covenant theology and dispensationalism many times. The issue is that I would actually maybe argue that dispensationalism is more covenantal than covenant theology.

Why do I say that? Because like Matt used to make the argument, he doesn't anymore because we've debated enough, he used to say, well, covenants are in the

Bible, but dispensations are not. Well, yeah, the word that we get dispensations from is there once, but it's not in the sense of what dispensationalism is, but covenants are in the

Bible. And I would say the way the covenants are, I would argue they're more in line with dispensationalism than covenant theology.

Why? Because every one of the dispensations is based on a covenant.

And so that's what defines the dispensation. When we say a dispensation, it's just an economy or way

God works with his people. And so every time there was a new covenant with God's people, that created a new dispensation.

So dispensationalism is based on every one of the covenants. If people say, well, there's seven dispensations, where do they get it from?

Seven covenants. That's where they get it from. Where covenant theology would have three covenants, right?

The covenant of grace, the covenant of works, and then the new covenant.

Now, I'm going to just clarify for people who may be dispensational and just heard something for the first time. Do not think that a covenant of works is a works -based salvation.

Okay, that's a fallacy that some dispensationalists will make. In fact, let me tell you a story,

Joseph, you'll probably get a kick out of it. I was taking a class in seminary on dispensationalism.

And I'm reading, and I'm going to paraphrase this, but I'm reading a dispensationalist, and I tend to read both sides.

I want to be able to argue both sides of an argument, trained that way, right? And so I'm sitting there and I'm reading this dispensationalist, and the dispensationalist says, well, you know, covenant theology believes in two ways of salvation.

The covenant works in the old, the covenant works, grace in the new, the new covenant.

But we dispensationalists believe that ever since the fall, it has been by grace alone. I went, well, okay, that's what

I believe. I guess that makes me dispensational. However, then I started reading the covenant theologian who said, you know, the problem is with dispensationalists, they have two ways of salvation, works in the

Old Testament, Schofield's reference notes, the first edition, and grace in the new.

But we covenant theologians believe that ever since the fall, it was by grace. And I went, wait, wait,

I opened both books. I'm like, wait, they're both saying the same thing. Basically, publishers are making a lot of money, killing a lot of trees, causing lots of arguments.

And yet here's an area where both sides are making the same exact strongman arguments of the other side using different evidence and then agreeing with one another.

All right. Well, speaking of cutting down trees, I should show you a book I've been working on.

You'd be interested. It's based on what you're saying. So I don't know if you've heard of Francis Roberts.

No. So he was an English writer. And this is going to be like a six or seven volumes.

We realize right there what the problem is, right? You said he's an English writer. Americans don't care about anyone else in the world but Americans, right?

Come on. You're in America. Don't you see our news? We never talk about what goes on in England or anywhere.

I learned more about what was going on in our country in the UK than when

I was here. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's good. We're broadening our horizons.

But he wrote this 1 ,700 page folio book in tiny writings in the periods and times talking about covenant theology.

And he referred to each covenant as an administration of the covenant of grace or a dispensation.

So I don't mind using that language. That's fine. But what he argued was that basically you had a covenant of works before the fall.

By covenant, he meant an agreement between God and man, even if not expressly set down as a contract which people sign, which there are some more formalities, say, with Abraham and especially with Moses.

There are formalities there. But he'd say the essence of it was there with Adam. And then he moves through all the covenants of grace.

And he'd say that every Old Testament covenant was a covenant of grace or an administration of the covenant of grace.

In Ephesians 2 .12, it speaks of the covenants, plural, of promise. So how was each covenant a covenant of promise?

Because each one promised Christ. And therefore, the condition to be saved was the same in each covenant, which is to have faith in Christ who is promised.

And when Christ comes, he performs the mercy promised in the covenants, according to Luke 172.

So for Roberts, this was the new covenant or the covenant of performance in which the promised mercy is performed.

So I've got like volume one. Volume one is about covenant of works. And the covenant of grace made with Adam straight after the full covenant.

But volume two is about the covenant made with Abraham. Volume three.

I'm sorry. This one if anyone's if anyone's listening to the podcast, we're going to say you want to watch this because he's actually trying to hold up these three thick books in one hand.

This is entertainment. You know, who says debates have to be boring?

Here we go. Right. Oh, this is all three I've got done so far. But basically, the third one is going to be most interesting,

I guess, to this discussion, because Roberts takes the view, which is now the mainline Presbyterian view that the covenant made with Moses was a covenant of grace.

Now, the reason, Andrew, when you mentioned that some dispensationalists say, well, covenant theology was law and now grace, whereas others see it as grace throughout.

Well, I would say that's because 1689 or what we call particular Baptist theology would see the

Mosaic covenant as a covenant of works as a republication. This is popular in Presbyterian circles in what is it?

Kleinian circles to view the Mosaic covenant as a covenant of works of Presbyterians.

The mainstream ones would see it as a covenant of grace. And that's where I think the most interesting question lies, because it's is there continuity between even the

Mosaic covenant and the new covenant in Christ? Are they all part of the same covenant of grace? That's kind of that might be the most interesting issue to get into.

And I wasn't holding all the books just to prove my point. It's just yeah, yeah, straight as well. Well, Melissa is asking, what's the name of the books and authors?

Have you read that for folks? Yeah, it's Francis Roberts. We just set up a book company called

Berith Press and Berith is Hebrew for covenant. So it's go to www .berithpress

.com. Was it BER? Let me type. Can I type in the chat?

Yeah, you can type it in the chat. Okay, it's going to connect and connect it to.

Okay, I'm going to allow this one second. Okay, yeah, so it's berithpress .com.

So it failed to post, but B E R I T H, and then

P R E S S dot com. And really, what I wanted to do was to bring out the best work possible on covenant theology, so that everyone would have something to actually interact with.

I ended up doing over 8 ,000. Yeah, that's right. There were over 8 ,000 footnotes.

We're only into volume three, and most of those are scriptural references. So it's really interesting because he deals directly with the

Hebrew, and they're the kind of discussions I think are needed. I don't think as covenant theology, we've made the argument as best we could with all the best works,

I think. So that's what I'm trying to do is get the best works out there to contribute to the discussion.

So yeah, that's just. Okay, so those books are available out there at your site? Yeah. Okay, cool.

Cool, may have to get them. So if you could help me, and like I said, folks, this is just,

Joseph and I were talking on the phone. We only had like 10 minutes before he had to go, and then we were like, we're going to talk to each other later.

And I just said, why don't we do this in front of all you guys? So you guys are getting a little bit of how

I prepare for debates with people as I like to have a discussion. We had the debate you guys saw on the channel, the debate with the atheist on is

Christianity true? Well, when we went to dinner the night before, I talked to Bill and kind of did some of the same kind of discussion, try to understand, because I don't want to misrepresent the opponent that I'm debating.

And therefore, I want to make sure we get the discussion going.

And so I had asked Joseph, hey, before the debate, would you be able to share with me your opening remark?

Because an opening is prepared. And so I asked if we could do that, whether it's written out, scripted out or not, but at least share the notes and you had agreed.

I'll share my notes as I have them. But as long as Chris doesn't say it's like the debate is

Monday, I won't have time then. But help me understand.

So why do you say that covenant theology is more literal than dispensational?

And with that, could you tell me what you mean by literal? Sure. I think by literal,

I mean, it sticks to the literal sense of scripture in terms of what the

Holy Spirit literally intended. So when we interpret things literally, well, there's two ways the word literal has been used.

And that's where it gets confusing. One is whatever the Holy Spirit literally intends.

That's what he meant. It's like, let me think of an example. That's why you're thinking of an example is when you're defining literal.

Yeah. Is it any different than how I define normal? No, I think it's the same.

Well, let me tell you how I would interpret like any biblical text, right? And then maybe you could tell me how you would interpret it according to the normal sense you're saying, right?

Could we do that? So I would say there are three things you need. One is you need to look at the original languages or a very good translation.

You need to see exactly what words are used and like the tense and the whole sentence, right?

What language is used. Secondly, you need to compare it with the context. So you need to know what's the context, what's gone before, what's coming afterwards.

You need to know other books of the Bible. Say, for example, you're not going to get a full understanding of Kings if you're not also got

Chronicles or you're not going to understand Deuteronomy without Genesis. So you need a knowledge of them all.

And also you need to know what's gone before in the chapter, what's gone afterwards. So if you open your Bible to a random page and it says, go and do likewise, and you're just going to do the thing, whatever you've read before, even if it says he went out and hang himself and now you turn and say, go and do likewise without looking up the context.

That's not really in context, right? So the first point is the original languages. Second point is context.

And the third point would be the analogy of faith. The analogy of faith is Romans 12, 6, where it says, let us prophesy according to the analogy of faith, the analogos fide.

And that means comparing the scripture with all the other scriptures to make sure there's one harmonious message.

So even if an interpretation might, even if on the plain reading, it might seem to clash with another part of scripture, before taking that interpretation,

I'd go and make sure it doesn't clash with anything and make sure it can be harmonized. And I can give examples of that, but I want to stop there to let you talk and see if there are any differences there.

It helps if I unmute first though, right? I mean, that usually helps if I unmute and then try talking.

So, okay, you said Romans 12, 6? Yeah. Okay, so that says, since we have gifts that differ according to the gift of grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly.

If prophecy according to the proportion of his faith. And so you read it differently.

Which translation did you read that out of? Or was that? Oh, okay.

So the Greek word is analogos fide. Okay. So I don't think any translations translate it as analogy of faith.

I think the theologians take the literal Greek term analogos fide and turn it into analogy of faith. Yes, it's proportion of faith.

And I'd see that as pretty much the same thing. Proportion of faith, not how much faith subjectively you have inside you, but basically what is the objective message of scripture.

And that's how you prophesy. That's how you preach. Or that's how you do hermeneutics through understanding the whole message of scripture.

Yeah, and I was going to say we disagreed until you said the last thing. So the word here is the meaning of in relationship to, you know, a proportion, but in relationship to or a relational, like a right relationship, a comparison.

It can be an analogy ratio or proportion.

So it's, I don't, you know, I could dig into it more to see how it's used in.

I mean, I wouldn't be able to do it live, probably, but. Me neither,

I don't worry. I'm winging it too, so no. I'm just looking in Kittle to see quickly if it gives it as an analogy versus, because you used it as an analogy of, you know.

So there'd be two things that I'd say with it. The specific verse, and I agreed with everything up until you brought this verse up.

So the verse is talking about the gifts, right? That we should use the gifts accordingly. So it is, when we're saying the prophecy, if you're saying that's interpretation,

I don't know that I'd say that's interpretation. It could be if you're starting to say that that's preaching.

But the following one is, the next verse is, if service in his serving and if teaching in his teaching, therefore in prophecy, as he's prophesying, it'd be in, you know, saying that the prophecies in accordance with his faith, that's the same with the service and the teaching.

The exhortation, he who exhorts in his exhortation, he who gives with liberty, he who leads with diligence, he who shows mercy with cheerfulness.

So in each one of these, it's that proportion of faith tied to that.

So I'm just wrestling through a text with you saying, like, I guess

I wouldn't come to the same conclusion of the interpretation there of this. But that aside to what you had said,

I think we'd agree, right? The Greek, you know, for those who are listening, watching,

I don't think either one of us are saying that you have to have a good fluent knowledge of Greek or good handling of the

Greek language to know the word of God. A good, faithful English translation or translation into whatever language is perfectly fine.

But when you start debating things, when you're digging deeper, there are times where a single word in the original language can make a difference.

And there's times even where we see Paul making an argument off of the specific word, meaning whether it's plural or singular.

In Galatians, Paul makes the argument, and he said seed, not seeds.

So in other words, one seed from Abraham, Messiah, Jesus, and not all of Abraham's offspring.

So he was pointing out that one, just a specific, you know, that plural versus singular makes a difference.

That he's saying, hey, this was specifically singular for a reason. We would make the argument when we look at the plural pronouns referring to God.

That's specifically for a reason. We build a doctrine based on the specific use of Hebrew words.

And so there, I think we're in complete agreement. You're nodding your head, so that's good. You know, when it comes to context,

I would agree. We start with the immediate context. So we don't jump around, how's this word, what does this word mean in other passages?

We start with the immediate. And some people have put in some examples that you and I could take a look at. But we start with the immediate.

But where I'm going to also add to that, when I speak of context, I'm not only going to speak of the context, the verses before it, the verses after it.

That's the immediate context. Or it could be within the same verse.

I should start with the same verse, I mean, that's exactly what I just did with this passage in Romans 12.

I looked at the verses after it and saw how proportion is fitting with the next couple of verses.

That's immediate context. Before I go looking at how that word is used elsewhere in the Bible, sometimes the word is going to be used the same way throughout the

Bible, but not always. And so I agree. But then I'm going to add other contexts as well.

As a dispensationalist, I'm going to add a context of the culture.

I'm going to add the context of history, where they are in history. So that's going to add into their culture.

What culture are they? Because the Hebrew culture versus the Roman culture are going to be different.

I mean, look, folks, just think about this. There's people growing up right now who never experienced times before a cell phone.

Right? Gen Z. They don't know what it's like before a cell phone. They grew up always having cell phones in the household.

Completely different mindset than how I grew up, where the only phone you had was in the kitchen. And that was the shared phone with everybody else in the family.

And yeah, when you wanted to have a conversation, everyone got to sit in the kitchen and listen in. So that's the thing that, you know.

So I think there's the historical context, there's a grammatical context, there's the cultural context.

Where I think we're going to disagree, where I'm going to say with that last point, I think in the normal reading,

I agree. We're looking for what the Holy Spirit meant, what God meant by what he wrote. What I'm going to say is we're looking for authorial intent.

We want to know what the author meant by what he wrote down. Now, there's two authors, get that.

If we understand the doctrine of superintending, God used the personalities of the individual writers to, you know, to write their thinking, their words, their choice of words.

And yet God used that to be inspired, to be his word. So I understand that the different authors have different styles, different word choices.

And therefore, we got to look at what did they mean to their audience? So when I do a hermeneutics, the first thing

I'm going to do is look at what I think the author at the time meant to his audience before I bring it into what does it mean to me today.

Let me, if I could, and we could interact, and then we'll get back to that third one. Let's bring this one up.

Someone brought this up. I thought I saw it here. Well, I'll just discuss it and maybe

I didn't see it. Matthew 18, where two or three are gathered, there I am in the midst of them, okay?

So that is used, people read that verse all by itself. And what they do when they do that is they read that and say, well, that refers to a small group, you know, prayer meeting because that's encouraging to the pastor when there's only two or three and their

God is in the midst of them. The problem is I read Matthew 28, 19 and 20, and Jesus says, and lo,

I am with you always. In which I always ask my audience, how many

Christians are necessary for Christ to be present? And some of you are thinking the answer is one.

In which case, when you say that, I then say, no, because God is omnipresent. And if no

Christians are there, God's still present. Therefore, looking at the nature of God, we realize that that verse in Matthew 18 cannot be saying that we need two

Christians for Christ to be present, right? So what does it mean? It's talking about church discipline.

And you're nodding, Joseph, so we're in agreement, which is good, right? What are we doing? We're looking at the context.

The context is church discipline, right? And so, yeah, so that's something that we're gonna do.

So let's get back to, explain now again your third point there, because that's really gonna be the crucial thing that we, it sounds like we're gonna disagree on.

Why don't you expound that a bit? Sure, why don't I give some examples of how this might play out just to make it,

I think that'd be easier to like pin on, because I think what you just did was an excellent use of the analogy of faith.

You safeguarded what could have been an overly wooden interpretation leading to unintentional error and even heresies by looking at the rest of scriptures to show this cannot be what it means.

So that's essentially what we would, what I would say I do with parts of God's word and how

I get to my interpretation. So basically the analogy of faith is saying this, that we use the clearer passages of scripture to understand the less clear.

And we would categorize things like visions as being part of the less clear or the more obscure.

Whereas like the direct commands or the plain writing of scripture, sometimes say the

Pauline epistles are the more clear ones. Or here's another one to do it.

Jesus tells a parable, then he explains the parable. We don't interpret the explanation of the parable by the parable, we interpret the parable through the explanation.

Even though the explanation comes afterwards because we interpret what is less clear by what is more clear.

So I would apply it, for example, in second Thessalonians, the antichrist is going to sit in the temple of God.

Well, what's the temple of God? Now dispensationalists will probably take this in the direction and we can get into this as a specific.

The temple of God is a temple, the material temple antichrist is going to establish it, he's going to sit in it.

And then within that temple, he's going to then blaspheme, a bit like antichrist did.

That would be a literal understanding. Right. Now, what I would do, and I'd take this,

I'd say that I'm being literal according to the literal sense, but what I would do is say, okay, temple of God, what does that mean?

I'll go to 1 Corinthians 3 .16, say, where it speaks of you are

God's temple, you're the temple of God. And John 2, where Christ is the temple, and say, well, the temple of God is going to be sitting in the middle of the church.

I'm going to look for the antichrist to come within the church and elevate himself. And that would lead me to identify the antichrist as the

Pope. I'm a historicist, so that's one example of how that might work out or play out.

And there are several more like Ezekiel 40 through 48. I would take that to, again, to be a picture of the church.

I wouldn't see it as a return to the animal sacrifices because of the book of Hebrews saying that we can't return.

Now, I know dispensationists will say, well, it's a different system, but I'd say we still can't return to the sacrifices.

I'm saying that not to start an argument with you now, more so to actually give you some examples we could hang this on, just for clarity of discussion.

So don't feel pressured. You can totally kind of come back on me on this. No, no, that's fine.

I don't mind at all. Yeah, I think that's a good example because this is something where for the audience listening, you could see where we're differing, right?

It's a good example because I'm going to look at the temple and I'm going to say that that is the temple, right?

The Old Testament temple. Well, obviously not the Old Testament because it's been destroyed, but a one that will be rebuilt.

So where we would, as a dispensationalist, I would look at that and say, that's what we would call the allegory, right?

Taking something that is meant to be literal, taking something and giving it a spiritual meaning, okay, are our bodies referred to as the temple of God?

Yeah, but does that mean that everywhere we see temple, it's referring to a human body?

No, right? So I would say though, the normal understanding of temple is the physical building.

And then you see a case where Paul's going to refer to the body as a temple, but even in that, he's using that as an illustration.

And that illustration points back to an understanding of what was going on in the temple. Now, you said something, Joseph, that a lot of people miss, waiting flowers.

But when you interpret parables, you interpret the parable for the purpose that it was given.

An illustration is there to illustrate one point. And what a lot of people do is they take parables or illustrations and start giving them other meanings and go, well, this is this and this.

And then you destroy the parable or illustration and you can make it say anything you want it to at that point, right?

And so I would say that what Paul was doing when he was referring to the temple as a body is more saying, okay, though he's using that word there, it reflects back to the original meaning, the point that it's pointing to.

And so what I would do in interpreting it is I would go back to what the illustration points to, back to the physical building.

I wouldn't go and say, okay, the temple is the body of Christ and therefore, you know, or things like that.

Yeah. I guess one place I'd go to would be like, say,

John chapter two, right? Where Christ says, destroy this temple and in three days,

I will raise it up. And they've been out of the temple in Jerusalem and the

Jews didn't realise that he's referring to his own body. So I guess one question, you don't have to answer it now, but one question

I like to ask dispensationalists is, were the Jews wrong not to get that when

Christ spoke about the temple, he was speaking about his body? Because in the normal literal, you know, if we say they normally understand temple, they're right there by the temple.

So were they wrong or were they right? And were they consistent? And if they were consistent, why is

Christ correcting them? That's the kind of question I think would be really interesting to get into more later.

Yeah, and we can dig more into it, sure. But I would just, to answer the question quickly, I would say, what was the reason that Jesus used parables?

He said, so that the unbelievers wouldn't understand, right? So the fact that they got it wrong just says,

Jesus succeeded in his mission, right? He tells us why he uses language.

It's kind of like when Donald Trump says that he says these outrageous things because the media won't report it unless he does that.

And then they go, why does he do that? He told you why he does it and yet you report it anyway. You know, that's kind of the amazing thing.

They keep, like, he's told them why he does it. Well, I think there's a similar thing here. Like Jesus told them,

I use this type of language so that they won't understand. So for him to use that, especially saying it at the temple,

I think he did it purposely so that people would be confused. Now here's the irony, though.

Who didn't get it? It was the disciples. Because after Jesus was, after he was crucified, it was the

Jewish leaders that said, you got to guard the tomb because he said he would rise from the dead. By the way, that's one of the arguments

I make for the scriptures being written by God and not mere men. Because mere men would not write a story to try to create a religion where they are the ultimate idiots of the story.

They're the only ones that never got it. The Gentiles get it.

The Jewish leaders get it. The disciples never got it. That's a wonderful thing to point out because it's the same as, if you look at ancient history, right?

You look at all the ancient myths and, you know, Gilgamesh is a great and mighty king and there are barely any chinks in his armor.

And you look at all these ancient myths and then you get to Israel and you start reading about, okay, well, who are our patriarchs?

And there's Simeon and Levi who go and, you know, break their own covenant dishonestly and murder people. And then all the brothers tried to murder

Joseph and Joseph deceives his brothers, whether he had a right to or not. And then

Moses kills a man whether he was right to or not. There's all the flaws are right there, you know, the rapes and the murders and the deceits,

Abraham, you know, this is my sister or not just your sister, it's your wife. Why would they do that if they were trying to fake it?

If they're trying to make the nation of Israel look great, why would they intentionally write so seemingly disparagingly about their own people?

This so authenticates the word of God. So I'm really happy you said that, Andrew, and I fully agree.

Well, the better, the best, one of my favorite examples, I just put it that way, not the best, but one of my favorite examples is

Jonah. Read the book of Jonah, folks. Because the thing is like, everyone knows chapter one where, okay, he gets swallowed by a fish, you know, some sea creature and then gets spit up.

And he goes and preaches. But chapter four, like, look at how it ends. I mean, here's the prophet and he's writing about his prophecy and he's basically saying like, all he wants is

God's judgment on these people. And God basically condemns Jonah for not having mercy on them.

The end. I mean, there's no like, and I learned my lesson, I repented,

God glorified, no, just that's it, the end. You know, when you look at it, it's like, here's a prophet of God.

And God, the book is basically a whole book reprimanding him. So let's see if we can get to, oh, actually, no, we want to get back to your third point to dig in a little deeper.

So let's get back to it. Yeah. So I was just going to say, no, it's really interesting what you mentioned about the parables and you spoke about Christ, you know, the purpose being to confuse or confuse, did

I, am I summarizing that correctly? Like he had a purpose to confuse or confuse those

Pharisees or even intentionally so that his disciples would be kind of confused by it.

Yeah, I mean, he said that the reason he spoke in parables is so that they would not understand.

Right. Not confuse, I don't want to, because I don't want to say that he was being deceptive.

That's the God of Islam, right? That receives his own followers. He knew what he said.

He knew how people of their own volition would respond to that. And he knew by what he said, it'd bring about what he wanted by saying something that they're purposely going to misunderstand.

Right. And I believe he even quotes Isaiah 6, 9, where he says, and he said, go and tell these people, hear ye indeed, but understand not, and see ye indeed, but perceive not.

Make the heart of this people fat and make their ears heavy and shut their eyes, lest they see with their ears and hear with their ears, see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and convert and be healed.

So he quotes that. So therefore, to me, the purpose of scripture is not necessarily what the original audience would understand, because sometimes, as you said, rightly, the original audience, which includes reprobates who hate the

Lord, they're intentionally confused and given a stumbling block.

So that's, I guess, one critique of the dispensation of the term Newtekai said, is there's a lot of focus, not just on authorial intent, but also on what the original audience would have understood.

And I want to say, yeah, but the original audience, some of them would have understood it. Sure, but that was full of lots of people who would never have understood it because it was the purpose of God for them not to do so.

I think that's a question that perhaps that's my ignorance of dispensationalist literature, but I haven't seen that one addressed in what

I have read. And I used to like read, read a lot of it. And I still try to, although, you know,

I've got to watch the book budget and everything and, you know, but, um, um, but yeah, I'm a married man,

Andrew. And, you know, yeah, I still don't understand. So I did have,

I did have this couple there. They're in my house. They're, they were struggling. The husband wanted to buy lots of good

Christian books. The wife wanted to buy lots of shoes. They both thought the other shouldn't.

And I said, look, there's an easy solution to this. Every time he buys a book, that means he's agreeing that you could buy a pair of shoes.

And every time you buy a pair of shoes, it means he can go buy a book. And they were like, oh, okay.

And they liked that. Advice. It's not great financial advice. Yeah. But, uh, so, so we have, um, well, a couple of things.

So we have the first question from Bible Care and Share Fellowship. Acts 1 .8

is dispensational. Now later he ended up saying six to eight. So let me read six to eight. So when they had come together, they were asking him saying,

Lord, is it at this time that you will, you are restoring the kingdom to Israel.

And he said to him, it is not for you to know the times or epochs, which the father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the

Holy spirit has come upon you. And you shall be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem and in all

Judea and Samaria, and even to the, uh, the remoteness, remotest part of the earth.

So, so he, he's saying that that is, uh, dispensational. How would, how would you, uh, and obviously you're going to have an interpretation to it.

That's, and I should say this by the way, before, before you answer, um, folks, just because an, uh, a system is consistent, doesn't make it right.

And that goes for anything because every system will find a way to be consistent. Every one of them,

Jehovah witnesses, Mormons, uh, look, okay, let me just tell a quick story.

Being both, both, both of us being Jewish. I had a guy contact the ministry. I haven't told a story in a long time.

He wanted to, he wanted to prove that, you know, Judaism was right. And he knew

I was a Jewish believer. He wanted to, you know, meet with me. We, we met, we had, you know, good kosher meal.

And during that five hour discussion, uh, this was his basic argument.

The ra, only the rabbis can answer the conundrum that we, that we see in scripture.

What's the conundrum? David, in their view, David being a man of God had to be sinless.

Now we all see a problem with that because David was the one who wrote, we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Uh, did you remember what he wrote? So, okay. But as a man of God, he'd say, he couldn't have committed adultery and killed

Uriah. So what the rabbis have done is come up with a way to answer this, the, this dilemma that they themselves created.

Kind of sounds like the Democrats, actually. They create a mess and they go, we have the solution. Yes. Okay.

Uh, so you're right. They, they allow tons of illegals in and they have the solution. Let them all become

American citizens so they can vote for us. Right. So, so this, the solution that he had was that what

Uriah did, I'm going to cut to the chase with a short version of it. They argue that Uriah gave his wife a writ of divorce.

And there was two types of divorce that the men would go to war. They'd give him a temporary divorce in case they don't return.

But he gave a permanent divorce. And the way that we know that is because when he's called back, he wouldn't go back to his house because then he'd gone back to his house and slept with his ex -wife.

Then that would have been the problem. And so what he ends up arguing is that he would, he divorced his wife.

That's why he wouldn't go back to his home and have relations with her. Cause that would have been adultery. So I asked the question, then why did

David have him killed? Oh, because he called David Lord. That's blasphemy.

He wasn't referring to his Lord in the way that we call God Lord though.

Right? And so they have a consistency to it. They have a way to explain everything.

Flat Earth has a way of explaining it in a consistent way. They'll find a way to do it. But is it right?

That becomes a question. And so there's a question we'll get to about that in a moment. But yeah, so Acts 1 .8,

how would you then interpret that? Maybe I'll surprise you, Andrew, but I believe that Israel will be restored in terms of the

Jews will return to Christ, will flourish, not only as a nation, as a national church.

So I believe in, and this, I'd be taking this from different parts of scripture, but essentially

I believe in the millennium will have covenant to Christian nations that will have magistrates or rulers ruling by both tables of the law.

So by the Ten Commandments, and this is establishmentarian theology, and they'll be supporting the church.

Okay. And the church will be protected. And among all the nations, I think we'll see

Jerusalem rise to prominence and the Jews restored as a national church. Although right now they're in unbelief and apostasy and great wickedness.

I believe that the Lord has maintained their national distinctives. And I believe that Christ's answer incorporates that.

He says, it's not for you to know the times or the seasons. He doesn't say the kingdom will not be restored.

And I know some people will go there and some people will say, oh, Jesus was, you know, he was saying that their question was wrong.

I don't believe he thought the question was wrong in itself. Like, I don't think he thought it was totally wrong.

I do think he issued a gentle corrective when he talks about both in Jerusalem and Judea and in Samaria.

So already that's the Samaritans who, you know, hey, the Jews and the Samaritans don't get along very well. And unto the uttermost parts of the earth.

So to me, what happens in Israel, we're going to see in all the nations. There'll be something particular about the

Jews for sure. But I think it's all happening within the context of the church. So I'm not going to say that the Jewish nation won't be restored.

I believe it will be. So I don't know if that answers it. I just, what

I'm trying to say is there's an answer within historic reform theology that does agree and allow for that.

And I know that's not the typical or common answer you'll always hear in these discussions. So I'm throwing it out there.

Yeah. And you know, Matt Slick is a Presbyterian that holds to a similar view. So it's not that, it may not be that common, but it's not that off base with other

Presbyterians, shall we say. All right. So let's go through some of the other, I want to get through some of the questions that did come up in the back.

So Seamus says, I feel like there has been someone before Darby who did the math of Daniel 9.

Daniel 9 is an interesting one. This is one, you know, we don't have time to get into it.

But when you look at that, I see amillennialists, premillennialists, both interpret the first 69 seven -year periods literally.

Right? The difference is in that last seven -year period, where a dispensationalist is going to see a gap, and I think the text allows for a gap between the 69 weeks or the seven -year periods and the last one.

So I see that there's a possibility of a gap. The, you're going to have others who start to try to explain that that seven -year period is figurative or the first half of it is literal and that's from the baptism to the cross.

But then the last half is still figurative. That takes you to 70 AD. You know, it's, there's,

I think the only, like, the 70 weeks of Daniel, I think in a dispensational way, stays consistent.

I always struggle with, I did have one amillennialist who told me it's all figurative and that avoids the whole thing.

I have difficulty when you take the first 69 as literal and the last week or half a week as figurative because I don't see anything in the text that allows for a change of that last week.

But I don't know what you might think about that. Yeah. Well, can you explain some more, like the figurative view?

I'm not sure if I've heard that before. So what they'll say is that the first 69 weeks brings it from the decree of Cyrus to the time of Christ.

And then that last week, most will say that it starts with the baptism, leads halfway through is

Jesus's death. And then that last three and a half, that last part, it's either the last seven years or the last three and a half years, goes all the way to 70

AD. And so obviously that math doesn't work, right? No, that math doesn't work. No, that would not be my view.

Sorry, am I interrupting? I don't want to interrupt. No, no. All right. So, right, like how many days was

Jesus in the earth, right? Three nights and three days. Does it mean he was there from midnight to midnight to midnight to midnight to midnight?

No, but we'd say, well, the Jewish way is counting any part of a day as a day. So I'd apply that also for a week.

That 70th week, even though it was cut short, was still the 70th week.

And there's no need to count three years into it. Some people try and claim that the after the halfway point is the beginning of the ministry of the apostles.

I think that seems forced. So I'm happy to count the truncated week as a 70th week still, if that answers it.

OK, now, would you when would you see that that 70th week ending?

When Christ is cut off in the middle. I'd say the covenant I see is a covenant of grace.

The confirming is Christ preaching and the cutting off in the middle of the week, as after three years of preaching, three years of public ministry, he's cut off, but not for himself.

So that would be the crucifixion. OK, all right.

So let me get through some of these. So this is a personal question for you. Oh, no, I thought it was to you.

It's actually to Seamus. But I just realized it was Bible Care and Share Fellowship who asked Seamus, are you a

Messianic Jew? So first off, just for folks who don't know, some people, especially those grown up in my generation, the word

Jew could be taken offensively, just so you know. Use the word Jewish. It's safer.

But so, yeah, so now it puts the context. So but I'll just say

Seamus' response was, I just lit my menorah for Hanukkah. So with the

Seamus, Seamus is an objective form of the meaning of serviceable.

And so now I understand why he had put that. But and I was going to tell the story with that is, so I decide

I haven't done Hanukkah really since my grandmother stopped letting me in her house for that.

But I just thought actually I decided this year I was going to start doing that. I don't think I don't think there's anything wrong with doing it.

I don't think there's, you know, but it is nostalgic for me. And so I decided this year we're going to start doing that.

But the question I thought that was directed to you, so I'll ask it to you anyway, because I already know the answer.

Were you a Messianic Jewish person? And with that, let me ask what you what your understanding of that is.

OK, so I grew up like ethnically Jewish.

Both my parents, each of them came to like went into the church before they met. So they raised me going to church.

Then in my teenage years, we started attending a Messianic congregation. And then when

I was around 18, I went off to college and I got into Messianic Judaism. I became someone who spoke at Messianic services and got really into it.

I ran a blog. I did lots of things that would be considered Messianic. I got very much into political

Zionism and activism, and I stepped away from all that. Around 29,

I realised I was a false convert. I wasn't regenerate. There were too many sins, too much was inconsistent about my life.

And I realised that I hadn't been saved. I wasn't walking according to the truth. I knew that I had an intellectual faith, not one that was truly in my heart.

I believed that there was no evidence of the Holy Spirit's work in my life. And I needed to repent of my sins.

I had a notion of faith. So I repented and I stepped back from everything and I started reconsidering a lot.

And to me, since that time, the last seven plus years,

I realised I was putting way too much into my Jewish identity at the expense of Christ.

Some people get quite defensive about that and they'll say, well, there's no way that your

Jewish identity can get in the way of Christ. But I really think there is. Yeah, I got into the feast.

Now, I'd say that I see those ceremonies as typical. OK, I see them as pointing forward to Christ.

There's an interesting thing, Andrew, within Judaism. You're near to, whereabouts are you in New Jersey?

Well, I'm now in Philadelphia area. OK, so in New York, you have the

Lubavitch, right? And in 1994, their Rebbe, Menachem Mendoshness, and he died.

And you know what some of them started doing? He couldn't have died. He's the Messiah. Yeah, right. They start saying he's

Mashiach. But you know what some of the Mashiachs started doing? They started turning the fast days into feast days.

They started eating pork. And the huge Mashiachist movement that started changing the feasts.

Why? Because when the Messiah comes, the pig, some say, becomes kosher. Yom Kippurim becomes

Yom Kippurim. It becomes a day like Purim. Everything becomes joyful. There's a change when

Messiah comes. Judaism recognizes this. So for me, the most consistent thing for me to do to declare to my fellow

Jews that Messiah has come is to cast aside the ceremonies. And because they're declaring that Messiah has not yet come.

So I don't want to. That's what I believe Paul is getting into in Galatians with circumcision. Well, don't turn back to it. You turn back to Christ the prophet nothing because they were pointing forward.

Now Christ is here. Now the middle was gone. Now we don't need those things. Now, obviously, there are people who would say, you know, there might be people who get into this for different reasons.

But that's where I'm at. But I love to hear the same, actually. If I can ask you the same question, Andrew, like, because I don't know much about you before today.

So would you consider yourself like Messianic? Would you see that that just says I'm Jewish? Or do you think the word imports more?

How would you? I actually I don't. People ask me if I'm a

Messianic Jewish. I say, no, I'm a Christian. I identify as a

Christian. And the reason is, is because the Messianic Jewish movement brings people, some people are back under the law.

It's really where the Hebrew Roots movement came out of. Because the Hebrew Roots just goes further than the

Messianic movement where it's where they actually go try to live up by the law as if that can bring righteousness.

And I think that though the festivals could be fine, when people start emphasizing too much on festivals or trying to live within a in a

Jewish way of thinking for spirituality, I think that, as you said, it pulls away from Christ and makes my spirituality tied to the things

I'm doing, the rituals, rather than Christ. And that was the problem that brought

Israel, when they were in captivity, under legalism. And so, yeah,

I don't consider myself a Messianic Jewish person. I consider myself to be a Christian. Yeah, me too.

I'm with you, Andrew. You know, and I'll just say this, I mean, what we end up seeing is that we have to separate the old from the new.

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We appreciate that. I do know that a number of people have been getting some

Christmas gifts, or at least getting stuff from MyPillow, because they've let me know that. We appreciate that.

I will say this also, because we do know this. If you have things on your browser that allows you to use coupon codes, there's one called

Honey that I use. If you use a code, like if I do

MyPillow and use promo code SFE, it's going to say, hey, do you want to share that with others? I say, yes.

Be careful when you use our promo code. I mean, be happy to share it that way, but check it.

We had someone who, because he hit to use the coupons after he put in SFE, it ended up using the

Daily Wire promo code that someone shared. We did not get the credit for it.

Daily Wire did. It's only because the person contacted me and told me that, that I was able to go back and use the email he sent to me, share it with Daily Wire and say, hey, just to let you know, this is what happened.

They were like, we don't know how it happened. I'm like, I think I do. So yeah, if you have one of those things, please share with them so that others use our coupon code too if they don't have one.

But don't replace ours with someone else's. You're getting the same discount. You don't get more of a discount by someone else's promo code, at least from what

I'm told. All right, so someone is saying,

LOL, new robe with pillow and slippers. Yeah, you could go for it. I'm wearing my MyPillow slippers right now, which is weird when it's

MyPillow slippers, just saying. And so one of the comments we had from Derek was, a civil devote on this,

I think he meant discussion or something, you know, devote on this topic. This is nice. That was the reason that I said to Joseph when

I talked to him on the phone, I would agree to do this, the civility that I saw with his previous debate.

Melissa says, it doesn't make sense to have a third temple. Melissa, my question would be, why not?

I mean, it didn't make sense for a second temple. And the Jewish people today are preparing for a third temple.

So yeah. Harry says something I think you and I could discuss here.

He says, question, could be put a different way, which one is most consistent, but which one is truest to the text?

And I think, I would just argue, I think both of us would argue that our system is most consistent and the one being most truest to the text.

And that's the issue. You know, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, that's it.

Yeah, of course, like, I don't know what to add to that. Other than, I think another question that you can throw in there, just maybe for people watching and people like weighing these things up, is also, what is true to God's character?

And I think that's something that dispensationalists will often stress, rightly stress, you know,

God's made promises. Is he going to abandon those promises? And that's something as covenantalists, we need to stress as well.

Does God change? If he's the same yesterday, it's there forever. Sudden lurches in the way he interacts with men.

And that's what I think, interestingly, I think progressive dispensationalism shies away from what classic dispensationalism has always been.

So the way I see it is this, and I'm interested in your thoughts, Andrew. Classic dispensationalism would say, there are seven dispensations or however many dispensations.

There is a dispensation of innocence, and then conscience, and then law, and then judges, and now there's grace.

And that seems to chop and change a lot. And then, and by the way, also, this is how we come to our eschatology.

And in the eschatology, there's going to be the rapture, the tribulation, the three and a half years, the seven years, you know, the 144 ,000 being

Jews and all these things. And it's all a package deal. And then what I think was kind of interesting is we've had in the more recent years, the leaky dispensationalist scheme.

And that's basically been, the way I've understood it, is extracting the eschatology of dispensationalism while not really knowing what to do with the rest of it.

And that's where the progressive dispensationalists have come in and said, well, you know, I appreciate the consistency of the classic dispensationalists, but I also appreciate the watchfulness of the leaky dispensationalists.

And hey, maybe if we borrow a little bit from covenant theology too, we can kind of create this whole, we can be the glue that holds it all together into a consistent scheme.

And that's kind of where I see progressive dispensationalists, the place it's in right now.

And I imagine it's got some distance to go. And I know a lot of classic dispensationalists don't really want to let it do that.

They say, well, you're going to end up with nothing left. But I can understand the progressive dispensationalist logic.

Now, is that, have I summarized it accurately, Andrew, or would you differ or quibble? Yeah, I mean, yeah,

I may not agree. I wouldn't, may not say it the same way.

I'll put it that way. But yeah, I think that we do see some, I mean, there are differences within dispensationalism.

But you know, where do I fall? You know, I don't quite know because I don't,

I'm not trying to follow a system is the thing. I would say I'm a dispensationalist because I follow the hermeneutic that they would hold.

And so that's, you know, so when you bring up, and this is new to you to hear me say this, because we just met, but my audience has heard this countless times, our theology has to be rooted in the nature of God.

And so same with our interpretation of scripture. So when you come to people who are going to say, well, how do you deal with the fact that God says before the foundation of the world, he elected people and they go, oh, well,

God looked down the tunnels of time to see who would be saved and then chose those people.

The reason I have a problem with that line of argumentation is it makes

God not eternal and not omniscient. And now you just violated two different parts of his nature.

And if your theology requires God to have to be bound by time and not just know everything, then you don't have the

God of the Bible, right? We always have to start with the nature of God and end with the nature of God and be consistent with the nature of God.

And if you're not consistent with the nature of God, you got a wrong God. Right, Romans 11, right?

Where it's like from him and to him and through him all things, right at the end of the whole thing about eschatology, it goes back to God.

Yeah, yeah. So Travis asks a question. He says, are you guys

Calvinists? Now, I think later he said that Calvinists make a consistent...

Let me see if I can find what he said again because I didn't tag that one.

But he made a point about this. Hold, please. As I search, we have lots of comments here.

Oh, it gets me to see another comment that I should grab from Mr.

Tracy. But I think I've missed where his follow -up to that, so.

But, yeah, so, but looking at this, you know, the thing with...

Oh, it was someone else who said it, that's why. Someone else had said, Calvinism is a good example of a system that seeks to be consistent, but is it right?

So I didn't, I assumed that Travis said that. It was, and I don't know how to pronounce his name, so I won't.

All systems are consistent. Is Calvinism right? I'm just going to say, what do you mean by Calvinism?

Yeah, and I just add in that it's not a bad thing to be consistent. If we have a

God who is not the author of confusion, but the author of peace, 1 Corinthians 14, verse 33.

And then I believe in Isaiah 1. He says, come, let us reason together. The Lord's given us logic and structure, and for God to hold internal contradictions would make him not

God. So if he's God, and he's perfect, and he's logical, and he's consistent, the idea that he'd set down a fragmented word that cannot be put into a consistent system seems, you know, very, seems to go against his nature.

So, yeah, I understand the critique of not over -intellectualizing.

And sure, we need to have faith that, you know, it's heartfelt, and we need to have a faith in our hearts, not our heads.

But if we're correct, it has to be consistent, logically. Would you agree,

Andrew? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the consistency, so here might be the difference.

Every system is going to have a consistency because they're going to find a way to make it fit. But is it logical?

Is it logically valid? That may be a different thing, right? So Travis also, he had said, later you guys can contact me, you know, on Truths With Proof YouTube.

Well, Travis, you're welcome to always come in here. I mean, this is open to anybody. Mr. Tracy said one more, more than once the definition for literal.

So I think he's asking for us to give that definition again. So could you give, could you, and I think this would be good because I think this may be where a lot of the debate we would have on Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron may be around.

So, you know, what would be your definition of literal?

So, yeah, I think this is where earlier I was saying, I'm thinking of an example and then we went on. I never,

I think I never said my example, but let's say, let's say

I came to you, Andrew, and said, hey, Andrew, I literally dreamed last night that you tied my shoelaces together, right?

Or I dreamed last night, if you're interacting me literally, what did Joseph literally say? We literally said that he had a dream in which this happened, okay?

If someone asked you the question, hey, what happened yesterday? And you said, I tied

Joseph's shoelaces together. No, that didn't happen. That happened in my dream. So to literally understand me would be to follow everything

I said. So there's two ways to understand the word literal. The way I'm using it is literally according to what the

Holy Spirit said. So when he says, here is a vision in which certain things are represented or signified, like in Revelation 1 -1, certain things are signed and signified, okay?

Then we're right to say, well, okay, this mark of the beast, it signifies something.

It doesn't literally have to be a physical mark, right? That's one way

I'd say we can still take it literally because we're going according to what the Holy Spirit literally meant. There's another way to define literal, which is, oh, you take everything literally, which means, you know, according to the plain, and I don't want to say wooden because that sounds negative, but according to the plain or normal reading, you know, it says it, this is what it is.

That's, so each side is going to claim to be literal, but perhaps in a slightly different way. But I still think it's valid for us covenant theologians to use the term literal sentence, because that is what we're trying to do.

We're trying to understand what the Holy Spirit literally meant, the way he literally said. So yeah, I didn't know there was more.

I see the comment now from Mr. Tracy. I didn't know there was kind of more than one definition until I started reading back into covenant theology and hermeneutics, and it's all right there.

So yeah, I'll stop talking. Yeah, no, and I think that there's, I don't know that it's so different.

But again, it's going to depend. So when I come to a passage, like you're saying, the more literal wooden.

Well, I'm going to take that unless the context says otherwise is how, you know.

And so you brought up the revelation 20 passage, you know, with what he sees in a vision.

But he mentions there a thousand years, specifically six times for emphasis.

And that's the main point of it. And there's language of chronology.

This happens after a thousand years. So it leads to the fact that what he's seeing is an actual vision.

And this is a vision of what will happen. And so it's literally what he sees.

Yes, I would agree with you on that. And but what's the purpose of it?

See, and that's where I guess we're going to we end up differing is I would say the purpose of it, he's laying out some details here.

And the fact that he reiterates a thousand years that many times is why I would believe that there there will be a literal thousand years where, you know,

Satan would be chained up or, you know, restricted. All right.

Go ahead. Oh, no, I was so yeah, no,

I was going to the like, say, Revelation 13 with the mark of the beast. And this might be an interesting one for our future discussion.

But in Ezekiel nine, Ezekiel has a vision and all the righteous are given a mark.

And then the men are told to go through the streets and kill everyone who doesn't have a mark on them.

Now, that foreshadows or typifies what's going to happen later when the

Babylonians come and take away the Jews. But when the

Babylonians came, the righteous were caught up with them. So you don't see like a one for one, even though in the vision, everyone who's righteous receives a mark to show that, you know,

God is going to protect his elect, even if they suffer in a vision. Only the non elect get killed.

But yet when the Babylonians actually come. What's represented in that vision doesn't have a one for one fulfillment of what actually happens.

And I believe there are reasons why, which we can get into and probably, you know, both prepare better off cuff.

But when I come to something like the mark of the beast and the mark being on the head and the forehead, sorry, the head and the hand, it's a bit like in the

Torah, where it talks about you're going to wear the law on your head and on your arms. Well, the

Jews would say that really literally and literally do it. But does it really mean to wear like the suits and to fill in?

Or does it mean, you know, to have it in your in your mind? And then conversely with the mark of the beast. So that's just a glimpse into where I go with some of that.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. I would say the purpose of that passage in Deuteronomy was to love the Lord, your God with all your mind, heart, soul and strength.

The Jewish people follow the other part and make that literal. Because they could do that. The first part's harder.

What I'm going to do is I've got a couple of comments I'll try to get through. I'm just I'm not feeling completely well.

So I'm going to probably end a little bit early tonight, folks. But let's see if we can get through some of these.

So this comment, and again, I just don't know how to pronounce your name. So I'm not going to because I don't want to mispronounce it.

But dispensationalism imposes dispensations upon the text when no explicit statement about those particular dispensations exist in Scripture.

Covenant theology imposes allegories upon passages that aren't necessarily allegories.

Well, I'm going to disagree maybe a bit with both. But when you say dispensations that are not explicit in Scripture, the dispensations are tied to the covenants that you see in Scripture.

So it is explicit in the Scriptures. I mean, a dispensation is that God says, here's some ways

I'm going to work with my people. This is the people that I'm going to work with. And this is what you do.

And this is what you don't do. That's the dispensation. We get the definition of it from each of the seven covenants.

And so to say that it's not in Scripture, and it could be you really don't understand dispensationalism.

That's possible. But yeah, it is. It is. Each of those dispensations are explicit in Scripture because it's, you know, okay,

Noah, this is what you're going to do. And, you know, now there's going to be a death penalty. And, you know, Abraham, here's what you're going to do.

And okay, now Jesus comes and here's a new covenant. Yeah. Now, I would, you know,

I think that covenant theology may allegorize where they shouldn't.

But they're going to be consistent with, I think, the way they interpret from looking at a covenant relationship.

And they interpret through that lens. And so when we look at the two systems, we have to understand how they're interpreting.

When you say they impose, when you're saying it imposes on the text, it's the, how do they come to the conclusion?

Yeah. And you got to look how they're doing their interpretation. Yeah, I'll just add in to that.

It's definitely possible for someone to allegorize. And actually, this is something that Origen, the church father, did a lot.

He'd allegorize anything. And Jerome, who was still a covenant theologian, but Jerome said about Origen, he said

Origen makes his own genius a sacrament of the church. A very kind of ironic statement there or sarcastic or however you'd say it.

But basically, that's wrong to allegorize a passage, to impose an allegorical meaning where none is intended.

So yeah, if we were to do that, then that's wrong. I don't believe that is what we're doing, generally speaking.

Although I do see among other covenant theologians, I can see where that can happen, where it's not warranted.

And as I grow, I'm not trying to say I have all the answers. I'm going to understand scripture and think this is a meaning.

And then I'm going to reconsider sometime later and be aghast at myself and think, no, that was wrong.

And we don't always intend to do that. We often get into these fights with other people about how dare they get it wrong.

But we don't admit so often, hey, I got that wrong. And, you know, and we rarely correct ourselves.

We just carry on to the next fight. And that's how I find it. Yeah. And now

I'm going to say this. I'm glad that you said that Jerome was a covenant theologian.

I get so many people that get upset with me because historically I say this and it just. Covenant theology is

Roman Catholic theology. That's where it came out of. What most people refer to as covenant theology is reformed theology, not covenant theology.

We call it covenant theology and it's like we accept that. I have to accept that as a term because that's what people think.

But what they mean by that is actually reformed theology, not through covenant theology.

So it's kind of morphed, but it kept its name. So, yeah, there's differences between what's classical covenant theology of the

Roman Catholic Church and what's reformed theology that people call covenant theology. So, OK, let's try to get through.

This is not really related to the topic, but it was brought up. We talked about Calvinism and someone said, we are elect in Christ according to God's foreknowledge.

And then he or she said, we are elect in Christ, the elect one, according to God's foreknowledge.

God is still omniscient. And it's a straw man to say that unless you accept

Calvinism's double predestination, you are an open theist. Notice I never brought up double predestination because I don't believe in double predestination.

I believe everybody starts damned for hell. That's not double.

That's your starting point. It's a single predestination. God either saves you or he doesn't and lets you go on your merry way to hell.

But it's not double predestination. So if you're going to talk about straw men, yeah,

Calvinism classically didn't hold to double predestination. It was Calvin's follower that started teaching that.

It's a logical position. But when you say that foreknowledge, what does the word foreknowledge mean?

I always talk about this, but what God is doing is talking to us in a language that we can understand as babies compared to God.

Do you, the person who wrote that, can you understand what it's like to be omniscient, to just know everything and not learn anything?

Do you know what it's like to have everything be an eternal now, like to be outside of time? No, you and I can't think that way.

So when God speaks to us, it's like when we speak to little children. Joseph, you have a one -year -old and a three -year -old.

When your three -year -old wants to stick a fork in the outlet, do you try to explain to him the way electricity works and how the electricity is going to conduct through metal and go through his body and what those volts are going to...

No? You're shaking your head no. Okay. No, we're just going to say no, bad. You're going to speak in a language your three -year -old can understand.

Yeah, absolutely. He's going to have to get away from it or he's in trouble and he knows that.

If your 18 -year -old is doing the same thing, might you explain electricity and how it works or are you just going to go, no, bad?

You're going to explain electricity, right? What made the difference? They understand more, right?

Because if you say just no, bad to an 18 -year -old, they may go, why? And shove their fork in, right?

So when he speaks of foreknowledge, speaks of being elect before the foundation of the world, speaks of predestination, he's using language to say we had nothing to do with our salvation.

That's the purpose of the language. He's not saying that to be, as Joseph said, wooden literally by binding himself to time.

However, let's be fair, you referred to a straw man. The fact of the straw man that I made is that when people say that God, that when they say the foreknowledge is

God looked down the tunnels of time to see who would be saved in time and then elected them based on a choice that they made.

In other words, he didn't know what choice they would make. Until he looked through the tunnels of time, that's the issue that I'm addressing.

And that's not a straw man argument. That's the argument that people actually make. And what that means is that God didn't know, they agree in election, but they say the election is based on the person's free choice.

And the way God knew who would choose is he looks down the tunnel of time. That is a

God who's not omniscient, not eternal. So, one last thing that we have here, it may be a big one, but Isaacs, who is a new member there on YouTube, says,

I've heard people argue that the New Testament does not call or equivocate, equate

Israel with the Church, and therefore it is not in support of covenant theology.

What's your response to that argument? So, I'll let you go first. Yeah, I'd say cautiously, there are passages where I do think, open up a big can of worms right at the end.

But Galatians 6 .16, I would see that as having some reference to the

Gentiles, as well as obviously to the Jewish remnant. I would be comfortable taking that.

But I'd also go back to Psalm 87, even the Old Testament, where those who were born in Ethiopia, in Palestine, in Tyre, counted as if they're born in Zion.

This man was born therein. So, the word

Israel is not always used univocally. Sometimes we can commit, I think it's a genetic fallacy, where we see one word and it always means the same thing.

I think dispensationalists would agree that sometimes when we read about Israel, it's the person,

Jacob. Sometimes Israel is the nation. And even dispensationalists would also agree there's a use of Israel in which it means only the elect within Israel.

So, that's already three definitions. And then you can add a fourth one. Sometimes it refers to the kingdom of Israel, like the state, the kingdom.

Sometimes it refers to the whole of all the Jewish people, including Judah and Israel.

Sometimes it refers to Israel as only the ten tribes and not Judah. So, you already have like five or six different definitions of Israel.

I personally don't see a problem reading Galatians 6 .16 and some other passages as including the church as a spiritual

Israel. I would want to qualify that a lot more, but I don't want to take like...

Yeah, I agree. There's a lot to it. So, let me try to see if I could give an answer quickly.

And that is, I do see a distinction between Israel and the church. I do see that there's similarity as well.

And so, there's continuity and discontinuity. And I don't think anyone holds...

There are very few people that hold to complete discontinuity and complete continuity. I think everyone holds to some variation.

Those who say, well, Israel is the church, but they don't keep kosher. They don't keep the

Passover, which Israel was supposed to keep forever. Therefore, right there, it's like, oh, well, you do make a distinction between the

New Testament and Israel then, right? And so, I do it this way. When we define the church, we look at the...

You know, during the kind of dark ages, the church added a kind of an element.

You can look at my book, What Do We Believe?, where I define the church. I go through it historically, what the word meant.

And you see that there became an idea that the church... There's the invisible and visible church.

And so, the invisible church is those who are just believers all around the world.

And the visible church is that church that gathers on Sunday that's made up of believers and unbelievers.

And so, you have that same thing in what's referred to as spiritual

Israel. You have spiritual Israel and national Israel. Spiritual Israel would be the universal

Israel. National Israel would be the invisible Israel. Those of the nation that gather and meet, and they're made up of believers and unbelievers.

But the true Israel, right, we call the true Israel, that's spiritual

Israel, that's only the believers. And so, when we do it that way,

I think we have the way of understanding this, we can do it apples to apples. What most people end up doing,

I see, is taking the church universal.

They apply that to, oh, look, there's Israel, but not all Israel is Israel. But instead of saying, seeing that separation they do with the church between visible and invisible, they say, oh, see, not everyone's

Israel. Therefore, the church is also Israel. And I would say, no, it's the same thing we do with visible and invisible.

So, that's how I would do it. Let me just end with one thing, because, oops, not that one, this one.

The same person was challenging on Calvinism says, created for the sole purpose of damnation equals double predestination.

No, it does not. First off, when you're saying created for the sole purpose of damnation, let me just read scripture and ask, what does it mean?

Because Romans 9, it's kind of clear here.

He says, I'm just going to start for context, because we always want to get context. It says,

Romans 9, verse 17, for the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this purpose,

I raised you up to demonstrate my power in you, that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.

So, he has mercy on whom he desires and he hardens whom he desires.

You will say to me then, why does he still find fault? Who can resist the will of God?

On the contrary, who are you, oh man, who answers back to God?

The thing that is molded will not say to the molder, why have you made me like this? Where does he, does not the potter have the right over the clay to make one for honorable, one, sorry,

I just, my wording is, for some reason, I can't read the word there. But one lump vessel for honorable use and another for common use.

What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make known his power, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath, prepared for destruction, and he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon the vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory.

So, if you're going to say that somehow the purpose of damnation, the sole purpose of damnation is double predestination, the text here is saying that God prepared people for damnation for the purpose of showing his glory in the vessels of mercy, but it's

God's knowledge of that because he's in control of everything. If you want to say that God damns people, well, okay, the text seems to say that, literally.

Go ahead. Yeah, I was going to throw in, and I mentioned the book website

I'm doing. So, I'm basically a part of, my wife and I do this together, we restore old big

Puritan tomes on kind of knotty subjects, so covenant theology is one. I'm just throwing in the chat a book title my wife and I are hoping to prepare.

This is by the moderator of the Westminster Assembly called The Riches of God's Love Unto the Vessels of Mercy, Consistent with His Absolute Hatred or Reprobation of the

Vessels of Wrath. That's one we're trying to get together. Give the author and then say that again slowly because the podcast listeners need to go look that up.

Um, we haven't finished this one yet. We, yeah, Lord willing, within the next year or so.

Oh, I see, I see my screen name is, oh, okay. Um, yeah, it's by William Twiss, William Twiss, who is the moderator of the

Westminster Assembly. There is a free version online, it just has old spelling, but it's called

The Riches of God's Love Unto the Vessels of Mercy, Consistent with His Absolute Hatred or Reprobation of the

Vessels of Wrath. And he's answering this very, all these very knotty questions that we find very difficult.

He wrote about the equivalent of eight or nine hundred pages on it. Um, we haven't started it yet.

We still need to finish God's Covenant. But, um, these are huge subjects, which

I think, you know, in their generation, they grew up, they learned Hebrew and Latin and Greek.

You know, we're raised on, you know, Mickey Mouse and we can't even, you know what

I mean? And they get into depth and complexities that we're still catching up with.

So I don't, I don't, I don't hang off their every word. I'm happy to disagree with them. But what

I'm aiming to do for the church is rather than me just saying what I think, I'm trying to restore what, you know, other people have said on the topic as well and contribute.

That's just something your, your readers or listeners or viewers, I should say, may be interested in at some point.

But I don't have anything to really add beyond that. I think he'll do better than me.

I still need to study more on that topic. Well, Joseph, I want to thank you for coming on. It was helpful for me to better understand your position so that when we do debate on Iron Sharpens Iron, I better understand it and don't, hopefully don't misrepresent you.

I think it was a good discussion. I think it was informative. And so, you know, folks be, be following Iron Sharpens Iron with Chris Arnzen to find out when we will be having debate and having this discussion.

So that'll be coming up soon on his program. His program is, he does Monday through Friday from four to six.

You can go to Iron Sharpens Iron. I think it's ironsharpensironradio .com. But just do a search for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

You'll find the website and that will be where you could find it. Kathy says, yes, thank you.

Good show. We appreciate that. So the thing that we, that I say for just programming note is next week we'll have a show.

We didn't have the guy who wanted to challenge. He was arguing that Calvinism was a dangerous doctrine.

Um, I did reach out to him again today and he didn't respond.

So, uh, if he's willing to come on next week, we'll have that discussion. If not, we'll probably have an open

Q and A. And then after that, we're going to take the last two weeks of the year off.

Unless Drew wants to do a, do shows. I'll leave that up to him.

But, uh, I do, Joseph, I appreciate you coming on, uh, folks, if you want to check out, uh, again, his, his, uh, ministry there that he's, he's working on.

I'll put the banner up again so that you can go, but it is, uh,

B E R I T H press .com.

So go check that out and check out the books that he's reproducing. Yeah.

Thank you, Andrew. I just wanted to say thank you for having me on. I really enjoyed the discussion. And, um, and yeah, it's good to see the comments from your listeners.

I, and viewers, I like that. And, um, yeah, I like, I like the gentle challenges.

I like the, the encouragements. I like the vibe you have going on. So, um,

I want to say thank you to the viewers and to yourself and yeah, look forward to discussing with you further with, um, with Chris.

Thank you. Thank you. All right, folks. So that's, that is what we have for tonight. Remember to go and strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.