Dispensationalism History Lesson

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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September 13, 2016

00:02: Now that we know where we're at, and this is what we're talking about, is dispensationalism.
00:07: The origins.
00:08: How did it start? Okay.
00:11: How did we get to where it was? Louis Way was a man who believed, he was a churchman, he believed that the Jewish people had to be in the Jewish and back into the land of Palestine before Jesus would come back and set up an earthly reign from Jerusalem.
00:31: Understand that was the first time that had ever been, that concept had ever been brought up.
00:36: It was by Louis Way in the 18th century.
00:39: Okay? Then after Louis Way, we have a man, Edward Irving.
00:57: Anybody remember last week who he's the father of? Not a person, but he's the father of charismatic movement.
01:20: What did he believe? Anybody remember? Edward Irving believed in signs and wanders, speaking in tongues, automatic writing.
01:33: Okay? And that all those things would have to come before the end of the age.
01:39: He actually was the start of the Catholic Apostolic Church.
01:58: Okay? This man's whole life revolved around prophecy.
02:07: Okay? Every bit of it.
02:09: Had to be with the end of the age, the coming, the signs and wanders, anything prophetic dealing with Revelation, Daniel, Ezekiel, all those guys, this guy was an absolute prophecy nut.
02:24: Okay? That would be an easy way to put it.
02:28: He began to have these little seminars.
02:33: Does anybody remember what happened in one of his seminars we talked about last week? Good.
02:46: Yep.
02:46: What was her name? Margaret McDonald.
03:03: What was the first, what was her vision that she had that nobody had ever heard of from 1800 years? Remember, this happened in 1830.
03:12: Okay? He was in the 1830s.
03:15: She had this vision in 1830, 1831.
03:19: What was her vision? That Jesus would come and secretly take his church away.
03:27: The secret rapture.
03:29: I mean, y'all have heard of that.
03:31: Okay? That's the first time that had ever even concept, had ever even been brought up.
03:37: It was by some little girl, 14 years old, in a prophecy conference.
03:47: Now, she had this little vision.
03:56: She wrote it out.
03:57: They were having these little power court, as the powers courts in Ireland conferences, and a man by the name of, this is where we ended with this cat last week.
04:10: We just started with him.
04:13: John Nelson Darby.
04:21: When was he born? 1882.
04:31: Anybody ever heard of him before? Yay, nay? Don't care? Okay.
04:43: John Nelson Darby is the father of modern dispensationalism.
04:49: Okay? He is the first one to put dispensational theology into a system, an order where you can see it.
04:57: Now, remember the guy Edward Irving? Everything that surrounded his teaching was prophecy.
05:03: Okay? Everything that shaped his way of thinking is what we would call ecclesiology.
05:10: Okay? Ecclesiology is the study of the church.
05:13: Eccle, called out.
05:15: Ology, study.
05:16: Study of the church.
05:17: Okay? So, John Nelson Darby, with the prophetic theology of Edward Irving, and his theology of the church, comes dispensational theology.
05:35: Okay? I'm not going to bore you with all of the historical stuff with him, but a few, a couple of things.
05:45: One, he was ordained in 1825 as an Ireland priest, Church of Ireland.
05:57: Okay? He was an Anglican.
05:59: He went to school in Ireland.
06:01: He was ordained a priest then.
06:03: About 1826, 1826 to 1829, he become very disgruntled with the church.
06:12: Okay? He believed that the church was in ruins, and that the church was beginning to become fully apostate.
06:21: And if you remember, these were the last things we ended with last week.
06:25: He believed in this, breaking bread with like-minded people.
06:39: That was one.
06:42: Okay? But he also had a very, very wrong view of the church, that the church was apostate.
06:57: And what did he tell people to do? Anybody remember from last week? He said, leave the church.
07:05: That's what he said.
07:05: He said, leave the church and do small Bible fellowships in homes.
07:12: That started the Brethren.
07:23: Yeah.
07:23: So, the Brethren movement.
07:26: Anybody ever heard of the Plymouth Brethren? Church history? Good.
07:31: Okay.
07:33: Very important.
07:34: This is how we get to where we are today.
07:36: This is part of church history.
07:37: Okay? He starts the Brethren movement.
07:40: The Brethren movement winds up being a bunch of outcasts and descendants that were going against the church.
07:45: They didn't believe in hanging out with the local assembly.
07:47: Okay? So basically, he was telling people to forsake the local assembly and begin to hang out with one another that thought like him.
07:55: But because John Nelson Darby was a very, his, his personality and his knowledge, he became very distinguished and became very high up in that church, that little church movement, I should say, the Brethren movement.
08:14: Okay.
08:15: Now, he begins to teach his theology of dispensationalism.
08:21: These are the distinctives he began to teach in that theology.
08:24: One.
08:25: Anybody know what a dichotomy is? A dichotomy is an opposition or against one another.
08:33: So, what he began to teach is there was a dichotomy between Israel and the church.
08:42: Okay? He also had a dichotomy between law and grace.
08:55: He also taught that there was a distinction between the rapture and the second coming of Christ.
09:12: And he also taught that there was what we call the peripheral nature of the church.
09:33: And he also taught there would be a Jewish flavored, that's a good word, millennium.
09:49: Okay.
09:51: That was his distinctives of his dispensational teaching.
09:57: How he comes up with these distinctives comes from a hermeneutical, hermeneutical meaning the art and science of interpreting scripture of a literal interpretation of scripture.
10:23: That's what he would say.
10:27: He would say the Israel and the church, Israel and the church are completely separate.
10:34: Okay? Well, that led to the teaching that there were two peoples of God.
10:47: Okay? It means there was Israel, the people of God, and the church, the people of God.
10:55: Well, if there's two peoples of God, then that conclusion means there's two plans for those people, which leads to two covenants.
11:14: Okay? Literal interpretation of law and grace, meaning they're opposed to one another.
11:26: Meaning that under the old covenant, men were saved by the works of the law in application.
11:36: It wasn't blatantly said by John Darby that that was the case, but it was blatantly said by this man, C.I.
11:45: Schofield.
11:47: Okay? And his commentary on John, that strict adherence to the law would lead to their salvation.
11:56: Now, there's a problem with that, isn't there? Because how were Old Testament saints saved? By grace, through faith.
12:04: Okay? He didn't see the law and grace as being complementary to one another, nor did he see the church and Israel as being complementary to one another, as in God's progressive revelation of himself.
12:19: Okay? But then, because of his literal interpretation of scripture, led to what we just said, the parenthetical nature of the church.
12:38: He believes in the Old Testament, the church was completely unheard of.
12:43: Okay? How many of y'all have heard that we are living in the parenthesis age? That's the church age is.
12:53: If you look at any of those charts that we all grew up with, and we've seen, I passed one around last week, there's a parenthesis.
12:59: We are in that age.
13:01: The church was, because there was, the original people was Israel.
13:06: Okay? Understand? You following me? Who rejected Jesus Christ as Messiah? The nation of Israel.
13:15: Then they, they, meaning his theology says that he then turns from Israel, because they reject him as being the Messiah.
13:24: They crucify him, and then he turns to the Gentiles and begins to offer them the kingdom through the time of the church age, right? Through the time of the church age, until the time of the Gentiles is over.
13:50: Then once the church, all the Gentiles were saved, he will secretly rapture these people away.
14:00: Okay? He will resume that covenant with Israel.
14:08: Now I'm seeing some heads go like this.
14:10: Y'all heard that.
14:11: Correct? All right.
14:15: He says the church was not heard of in the Old Testament, and we are living in a parenthesis.
14:21: It was a complete mystery.
14:24: That was his theology.
14:25: Okay? Now, his theology of the church also, there were seven epics, seven epics of the church.
14:44: Anybody know where he got the seven epics, seven times of the church? Anybody know where he got that from? Book of Revelation.
14:52: Okay? The seven letters to the church, right? Seven letters to the churches, and he said the reason we should depart from the church was because this last one was the Laodicean church.
15:12: That's where he said we were at.
15:15: That's the church in Revelation that Jesus does what? Spits them out.
15:24: He says, hey, if you don't want to get spit out, you better call Keister from those places so you're not spit out.
15:29: That was his theology.
15:31: Okay? Now, how did John Nelson Darby's dispensationalism that was all over Europe and Ireland get to here? Understand, that's where it started.
15:58: From 1862 to 1877, John Nelson Darby made seven transatlantic trips to the United States.
16:15: Understand, I didn't say flight.
16:18: He got on a boat seven times and came over here, and he taught his theology.
16:29: In Ireland and England, the brethren movement caught on very well.
16:41: Is that what they did away with the pastoral thing where people just as the Holy Spirit moved them began to preach or teach? You're talking about the brethren movement? Yeah.
16:57: The brethren movement didn't really have any church structure like we would have leaders, elders, that type of.
17:04: It was kind of just lay people getting together, having a Bible study.
17:08: So what you had, and I'll say this word carefully in the sense that they weren't teaching a false teaching or a false gospel because they were very ...
17:17: John Nelson Darby was an adamant man about the doctrines of grace, justification by faith alone, all of that, which I'll talk about why he stuck really well in a few minutes here in the States.
17:31: But the brethren movement had no church structure.
17:33: It'd be like all of us getting together once a week and having a Bible study in a home, but they were treating it as a church and not comparing him to Charles Camping.
17:44: I'm not saying ...
17:45: Charles Camping was a heretic.
17:46: I don't know if you all know who he was, but he was the one that said the end of the world was coming in May 21st, 2011 or something ridiculous like that.
17:55: He taught the same thing.
17:56: The church is apostate.
17:58: Church age is over.
17:59: Come out of those and start meeting in with like-minded people in homes.
18:04: That's what he taught.
18:05: Well, John Nelson Darby too, but John Nelson Darby wasn't a heretic.
18:09: He loved the Lord, although I believe his dispensational theology is very deficient in showing the flow of redemption of God from beginning to end, and we can talk about that.
18:24: We won't get that today.
18:26: It might be next week or the following.
18:28: But seven transatlantic trips is how he made.
18:31: Brethren movement caught on in England.
18:33: Those seven trips here, dispensationalism caught on.
18:42: Dispensationalism caught on really well.
18:43: One, because he met with men like ...
18:47: I'm trying to think of somebody y'all might know.
18:52: How about this guy? Any of y'all heard of D.L.
18:58: Moody? All right, because of people like D.L.
19:02: Moody, he allowed him ...
19:04: Although D.L.
19:05: Moody didn't actually teach dispensationalism.
19:10: He let him propagate that and put in schools where he had the Moody Bible Institute and Biola Bible Institute of Los Angeles.
19:19: They began to put permanent people that taught that theology, and that's how it became so prominent in the United States.
19:26: And the reason why it caught on in the late 19th century, early 20th century is because of liberalism.
19:38: Liberalism in the Bible really became not a study book.
19:43: It became something where people made stories, kind of where we're at today.
19:48: People may talk about good stories of the Bible, but didn't teach theology.
19:53: So when he did come over in those times and begin to teach that and set these up with a man named Dr.
20:00: Brooks in Walnut Baptist Church in St.
20:03: Louis with D.L.
20:05: Moody in Chicago, and he began to set up this type teaching because it was an adherence to Bible study.
20:11: Study your Bible.
20:12: Man, he was adamant.
20:13: You must study your Bible.
20:15: You've got to read your Bible.
20:17: And because he promoted that in a time in which liberalism was beginning to take feet, that's why it grabbed a hold of so well, because it was encouraging people to study their Bible, but it was encouraging them to study their Bible in light of his system, okay? Are you following me? Okay, now.
20:49: He had the Bible then agreed with his system.
20:53: You got it.
20:54: Proof texting more so, okay? That's basically what he did.
21:00: Look, we all may not agree.
21:03: Hey, look, I'm not a dispensationalist, okay? Just letting you know.
21:06: You can believe that way, and you can teach that way, and that's fine.
21:10: You show Christian charity to me, I'll show Christian charity to you.
21:12: It's not a dividing matter.
21:13: I just want you to know that.
21:14: But I think it becomes very deficient in understanding the relationship between law and grace, between the church and Israel, and at the end of the age, how Jesus reveals himself.
21:27: Look, if you think that you're going to be secretly raptured out of here before it gets rough, you can believe that all you want, but you're sadly mistaken.
21:35: The Bible does not teach that, okay? That system teaches that, and it caught over good here because we have escapism mentality.
21:47: Understand that the secret rapture and all of that stuff, it only is taught here.
21:55: Some places in Latin America, on the other side of the globe, that stuff doesn't count over there.
22:01: Tell about those people that are getting their heads cut off, their children's being taken off into slavery, and their wives being raped and made to marry other men.
22:11: Tell them that they're going to be secretly raptured out of here before the tribulation comes.
22:17: They don't think it could get much worse than what it is right now, as they're watching their people being butchered and burned and all of that, okay? So, John Nelson Darby's theology, the influence, became from one book.
22:53: It was in 1909.
22:57: C.I.
22:58: Schofield did this book right here.
23:05: The Reference Bible.
23:08: And because at the bottom, it had all of his notes down here.
23:13: Look, I don't have a problem with study Bibles, okay? I used to have one, really bad.
23:16: But because all of his notes were down here, we now have everybody can be a theologian by reading the notes on the bottom of his page.
23:25: But think about it was, all of his notes were bent towards dispensational theology, okay? So, everything that people began, because it was a Bible where everybody could say, wow, man, I don't have time to study, but I can read my Bible and look at these notes.
23:43: That book, a Bible, was the biggest reason for the spread of dispensationalism in the United States, okay? I'm not going to get into everything.
23:56: He's a scoundrel.
23:59: I'll let you know.
24:00: He's a scoundrel.
24:04: You got it.
24:06: It was his system.
24:07: You're right.
24:09: Maybe you should come up and teach sometime.
24:12: It was his notes that everybody grabbed a hold of, okay? If you spend more time in the notes of a Bible than you do actually your Bible, I have a problem.
24:26: Because you're letting a man shape your thinking versus letting the word of God.
24:31: Now, there's nothing wrong with commentaries.
24:33: There's nothing wrong with saying, hey, I'd like to know what this man thinks versus this man's thing.
24:39: But don't go, hey, what does that passage say? Instead of doing the hard labor of exegesis and principles of hermeneutics to see what the text means in light of its context, don't just reach up there on the shelf and pull out a commentary and go, oh, because I like this man, I'm going to believe what he believes.
24:58: Don't do that.
25:01: Men can be wrong.
25:03: I can be wrong.
25:04: That's why when we do teach and we do stand up and preach, I want you to take everything that I say, go home, line it up with scripture.
25:14: If I am wrong, I will fall on my knees, repent before God, and I will seek forgiveness from you.
25:22: But know that if I did that, it would not be intentional, okay? It would never be intentional.
25:27: That's why when we do stand up and we teach and preach, people make life-changing choices to change their life by the words that come out of these lips.
25:35: That's why we have to take it with great weight, okay? So he propagated that Bible, the Schofield Reference Bible was the biggest reason for the spread of dispensationalism theology in the United States.
25:55: But then after him came, that might be an E, you know these guys? Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye.
26:29: He's the one that says, and John, when he saw locusts look like, the locusts in Revelation have had teeth like a lion and hair like a woman, oh, John was seeing Huey helicopters.
26:45: That's what he said, because he made all of Revelation future come from dispensational theology.
26:54: Tim LaHaye, we know who he is.
26:57: Tim LaHaye did the Left Behind series, movies, books, and all that.
27:01: Understand.
27:09: So you don't have to novel those books.
27:17: It's not the Bible, okay? They're in the novel section.
27:23: And you know where they ended up? This ought to be a dead giveaway.
27:35: If the world, if the pagan world, the lost and dying world that hates God, hates everything about God, agrees with your theology, you got something wrong, okay? Something wrong.
27:55: So questions, comments, outburst of anger.
28:11: I got two questions last week.
28:13: Actually, I got more than that.
28:15: And neither one of them's here.
28:18: Somebody asked me, do I believe that Israel is God's chosen people? In short, no, I do not.
28:30: The Bible does not teach that.
28:32: There's one people of God, the elect.
28:44: One people of God.
28:48: Do I believe in the Old Testament that the nation of Israel was God's chosen people by which he pulled out from the rest of the world to make a covenant with them, to make them a peculiar people, to make them a different people, and to be a light into the world? Yes, I believe that, because that's what the Old Testament teaches about Israel, okay? Is part of Israel the elect? You better believe it.
29:22: Yes, that's what it says in Romans.
29:26: Not all of Israel is of Israel.
29:29: So now you see there is what Paul was saying is not all of true Israel is really Israel, or not all of Israel is true Israel, because who are, what did it say in Galatians, who are the true Israelites of God? That's it.
29:47: Only those that believe by faith are the children of Abraham is what it says.
29:51: That's right.
29:52: Only those.
29:54: So to have this, then we can talk about it next week about the teaching of dispensationalism as the church and all those differences.
30:02: So what happens is if you say that Israel is one people and the church is another, then that means there's two peoples of God, not one.
30:24: That means this plan's not yet fulfilled, and that is what it teaches.
30:31: That they have to be back in Palestine, and they have to do that in order to to fulfill the Abrahamic promise.
30:39: Did anybody go back and read Joshua chapter 11 last week? Anybody that was here when I told you that it was fulfilled, that Abraham's promise was fulfilled under Joshua's conquest? It's, actually you don't have to read the whole chapter.
30:53: If you want to just go look and see where it says it, it's chapter 11, excuse me, chapter 11 verse 23.
30:59: It says that after Joshua had conquered all the land that God had promised to the forefathers, if that's all the land that God promised to the forefathers, it was given to Joshua and that they were inhabiting all of the land.
31:15: Would that not mean, or wouldn't that mean that Abraham's promise was fulfilled, correct? Yes, it was fulfilled.
31:24: So land promise, done.
31:30: Fulfilled.
31:32: But because of the sharp distinction between the church and Israel, they say it can't be, because God would be a covenant breaker if he didn't continue to give them the land that he promised them.
31:46: But in Romans chapter 4, he says it's not just the land of Palestine that he gave Abraham.
31:55: It says, read that thing, it's, read the whole chapter because it talks about Abraham and the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise.
31:59: He gives them the whole world.
32:01: So you understand just, and I'll shut up so we can.
32:06: No, don't do that.
32:07: Okay.
32:08: Hey, let's say right here, look here.
32:10: All right.
32:11: Here's the rest of the globe.
32:13: All right.
32:15: God promised Abraham that land right there.
32:18: Okay.
32:21: If God only gave him that much, when he was supposed to give him that much, that'd make God a covenant breaker, would it not? But if he promised him this, and then he gave him all of this, he expanded that promise without ever Abraham knowing that.
32:56: Okay.
32:56: Without Abraham knowing that, that's grace.
33:02: That's fulfilling the covenant over, above, and beyond you could ever imagine.
33:06: What does it say? That he is able to do it exceedingly and above and abundantly, all that the mind could even comprehend.
33:12: And that's what he did by giving the children of Abraham, those that believe by faith, the whole world.
33:19: He is going to give them the whole world.
33:21: Look, we're not waiting for a little piece of land in Palestine with a rebuilt temple and all of that stuff.
33:27: Why would we, why don't we look forward to that? When we look forward to the new heavens and the new earth, where God has done away with all lying, stealing, thievery, adultery, murder, strife, and anger.
33:43: All of those things God's done away with.
33:45: And he wipes away all the deer and he cast all of the old heavens and the old earth into the, wherever he does away with it.
33:53: I don't know what he does with it.
33:55: That's what we should be waiting for.
33:57: Okay.
33:58: So next week we will talk about the teachings of the distinction between the rest of the distinction between the church and Israel and the complications that that has and implications that has as believers.
34:15: And then we're going to talk about the, the law grace dichotomy.
34:22: They're not opposed to one another.
34:24: Okay.
34:25: And then maybe the following week or maybe by the end of next, we might get into the millennium views because that is probably the major thing that y'all would understand about that theology.
34:43: Okay.