Church, Part 2 of What We Believe, Part 37

Hey Scott, what brings you in at the pharmacy?

I'm thinking about getting one of the updated COVID -19 vaccines.

Great. Do you know which type of vaccine you'd like?

There's more than one?

Yep, there are different types of vaccines available. You can learn more about them at wedovaccines .com. If you have questions or want to make an appointment, give me a call.

What was that website again?

Wedovaccines .com.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

This message was brought to you by Novavax. Okay, round two. Name something that's not boring.

Laundry? Ooh, a book club. Computer solitaire, huh?

Ah, sorry, we were looking for Chumba Casino. That's right. ChumbaCasino .com has over a hundred casino-style games. Join today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. ChumbaCasino .com.

No purchases necessary. Full worth. Related by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. See website for details.

You have some groups like Mormons or others that would claim that the church is an eternal entity. That it started before there was even an earth. You have that same kind of thinking in Islam and you can even have that thinking in Jewish thought.

I'm saying no, they had a beginning. The church started at Pentecost. I'm also saying that it has a completion.

Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity Ministries and the Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member.

Check out strivingforeternity .org and christianpodcastcommunity .org to find out more. I am joined again by my guest co-host here, Pastor Stephen Dew. He is a fellow podcaster on the Christian Foundry Podcast, which is him and, well, I think like every man in his church.

He's got like eight guys in one podcast and they talk theology and it is really helpful. He's also with the Doctrine Matters podcast. So, welcome again, Stephen. I'm glad to have you here.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I had a blast last time. Looking forward to our conversation this time.

Folks, what we're doing is we want to make sure that you guys hear some other voices from the Christian Podcast Community. Today, we're going to talk, we're going to continue our look into the church.

And we're going to discuss the foundation of the church. When did it start? That may not seem controversial, but it is. But we're going to talk about things like that. We're going to talk about what the church is.

The church is something that many people take for granted and I hope that you won't. I hope that this episode will encourage you to be part of a good local body. Just saying that right up front. But this is a series that we're doing.

We're doing this series and you can go back and check the full series out. The series is What We Believe. If you want to follow along with us, go to strivingforeturning .org. Go to the About section. Under there, click What We Believe.

When you get there, open up the section on the church. We're going to end up reading. Today, we're going to deal with at least the second paragraph under that section. Maybe even the third. We'll see.

We're not in a rush, but why are we doing this? I keep saying this because I want you to understand. We're doing this, well, one, to teach theology. That's helpful. But a second reason we're doing this is so you see what is in a doctrinal statement.

When you read these doctrinal statements, if you're looking for a good church, you want to find a good doctrinal statement. If they have a one or two page doctrinal statement, that tells you pretty much nothing.

You want to see several pages that gives detail. The detail that we're showing here so that you can see when someone says something, there's a lot they're saying they're against and what they're for. We talked about this last episode.

Doctrine does divide, and that's a good thing because it also unifies those of us who are in agreement with such as a doctrinal statement. We would encourage you to go back and listen to the whole series.

We're 30 some episodes in. I just looked, Stephen, before we went live, I went and checked the numbers because I don't do this often. I'm not a numbers kind of guy, but I did check the numbers and looking in the charts that we have where they give you the stats, this podcast is still in the top 100 of all podcasts in the religion section or category in the US.

There's no shortage of religious podcasts either, I've noticed. That's pretty good to be in the top 100.

It used to be the number one section in iTunes. Well, what was iTunes? I think a lot of that was because every church had their own podcast. That was their sermons, but I think now that they've specified it a little bit more.

I'm saying that we're in the top 100 because we just fell to 99. So I can still say top 100. Now, I don't know if you know this, Stephen, because we have a lot of other Christian podcasters and what you have people do is they say, write a review because it helps to get up in the charts.

And I always tell people, no, it doesn't actually. What actually helps get in the charts is when people follow the podcast. That's one of the things that does. Reviews don't help, but you know what reviews help?

Reviews help me or us to know what you're thinking about the show. And so I love reviews. We haven't gotten any in in a while. You can go to whichever app you use to listen or in the show notes is a link to leave us a review at lovethepodcast .com slash rap report rap with two Ps and you can leave us a review.

So those reviews you're telling me do nothing. So not even when they hit the star like I have an iPhone and you can hit the star for however many stars you give it. So that does nothing.

Yeah, it is something that you do that within the app and they don't really have a way of knowing all the different apps don't always communicate. Now podcast 2 .0 which is something new coming up has some different features that may end up being more useful.

But what does help is the number of people that follow. So when you look at like say Apple podcasts they know how many people follow and that's the big one that everyone looks at. But you have Spotify as well and Spotify is a little bit more private in their numbers.

So what you end up with is like I was actually when I was in the Philippines speaking to 1500 people and I mentioned to everyone to go and follow the podcast. Well so many people did that in one hour that we were actually in the Philippines for a little while we were the number one podcast in the.

Philippines.

In all categories.

Because.

1500 people, well actually not all 1500 did but a lot of them must have went in and followed it and immediately we shot up and we dropped back down really quick. But it's the number of people that follow.

So folks I'm saying that to say this. If you could do us a favor share this. If you find things that you like in different episodes share it and encourage others to follow. That does help. That's what helps people to to see it in the charts and to go and find it.

So that is helpful for us when you follow. So if you're streaming it, you found it online and you're just streaming it, if you follow that helps but sharing it with others is a big help.

With that out of.

The way, that said, let's get into a great discussion on the church. Stephen I'm going to ask if you could read the second paragraph there under the church and we've now given sufficient time for everyone to go to strivingforjourney .org.

Go to the website, get this reading along. As long as you're not driving please, don't read and drive. Someone just sent me a picture from California another guy in a Tesla. Sound asleep, head.

Back.

They could be self-driving but they're not yet.

Yeah that's becoming a thing now. I've seen as people just smooth out while those things are driving down the highway.

Smooth out, I've never heard that one before. Smooth out.

Yeah for our listeners we have to remember I'm from Arkansas, originally from Mississippi so.

Deep south. So okay.

This is how we define deep south. Do you say.

Y 'all or do you say all y 'all?

I've said both.

Yeah see deep south is all y 'all. That's the deep south.

Yeah so I've used both y 'all and all y 'all and I can tell you there's another saying that really will tell a lot if you say U-ins. All U-ins.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah I had a friend of mine that said U-ins coming over for dinner tonight. I was like.

Who are the U-ins? Is that the new family in the church?

He said that means you and your family coming over. I was like Oh okay. So yeah we'll be there.

That's a new one for me.

See folks even I can learn things on my own show.

Maybe.

That's deep deep south. Alright. Paragraph two of the church. The formation of the church, the body of Christ began on the day of Pentecost and will be completed at the coming of Christ for his own at the rapture.

Okay so this is.

A short again one paragraph, one sentence. Last time it took us a whole hour to go over one sentence. But right from the beginning I'm making a distinction in this and anyone who studies theology a lot may pick up on this right away because what I'm delineating here in this is two things.

One we're talking about the body of Christ which we spoke about last episode. But what we're doing is saying when did it start? And what I'm doing is really identifying that for striving for eternity we fit under a banner or a view known as dispensationalism.

Now there's two main camps called dispensationalism and covenant theology. So right from the beginning I'm saying that. Now you say well wait a minute Andrew I don't see that anywhere in here. See and this is what a doctrinal statement can do.

To those who study deeply and know and have studied dispensationalism and covenant theology they immediately pick up the difference because I'm saying that the Church founded started at the day of Pentecost.

This is Acts chapter 2 when you see at Pentecost Peter gives a sermon and you end up seeing what is at that point referred to as the Church.

Now.

You see Jesus speaking of the Church. Right? Matthew 18. He refers to the Church. And so we know that the word ekklesia which is the word that we get for Church has changed over time. I'll say this is that if you want more detailed than I'm going to give here is I'd encourage you to get my book What Do We Believe?

It's available at Striving for Eternity but get that book and I go through the history of the word Church and how it changed over time to be more and more specific. But in covenant theology some, and notice the preference I'm making, not all, but some would say that the Church started, well some would say it started with Abraham and some will say it started all the way back to Adam and Eve.

So you have some differences there. And so I'm saying that it starts with Pentecost which means that I would see a distinction between Israel and the Church. Now let me just say, there's a lot of people that get very heated when talking covenant theology and dispensationalism on both sides and some that would say that, well they would actually question someone's salvation if you don't hold to their view.

I will say that I think if you're putting this up at the level of salvation, you're wrong. I think that both are, and both are misunderstood as an end times system, and if you think that, you're wrong.

Both of them have their end times view as a byproduct of a hermeneutic, how you interpret the Bible. Both of them are a system of interpretation. That's what they are. They're rules that you're going to follow.

So dispensationalism is going to follow rules that really we have for any other literature. You're going to look at the authorial intent, you're going to look at the context when we speak of context, we're going to say the context at the time it was written, the historical, cultural context, looking at what the author meant.

And because we do that, we see that there's a distinction between the nation of Israel and the church, and we're going to cover this several times throughout the section on the church because it's going to come up a lot, and I'm going to reiterate it a lot because it's an important point for us to understand because there's a lot of misrepresentation going on on both sides.

Okay? And so I want to try to give kind of an overview and keep hitting it in different ways so that we can keep defining this and understanding it. So the thing is that when you have that hermeneutic, it's called a literal, or I would refer to it as a normal, because we don't take everything literally.

If I said to you, Stephen, I'm so hungry, I can eat a cow, do you believe that I can eat an entire cow? No. That's because you haven't seen me eat.

That is true. That is true. Maybe not in one sitting, but maybe over time. You could eat a whole cow.

But you understand what that idiom is, and so when you understand the idiom, now you can say, oh, he just means he's super hungry. And so that's interpretation. When I use those idioms, you understand it.

If you don't understand those idioms, you don't get it. For example, this is, true story, Stephen,.

This is a.

Warning, you know, as a pastor when you do marriage counseling, this is a warning for you, but my pastor was giving marriage counseling to my bride and I. Now, my bride wasn't born in America, and so she doesn't understand idioms because she spoke Chinese, and she really didn't really speak English outside of school other than with me, and work.

So she didn't know, she really stayed to other Chinese and didn't know a lot of English idioms, and so my pastor said to her, made a comment and said, you know, you could be doing that until the cows come home.

And she just stared at him with this inquisitive look, puzzled, and he's like, what's wrong? She goes, I'm trying to figure out what does this have to do with cows?

And he.

Suddenly realized, he's using all these idioms because he used a lot of idioms, and they didn't, she totally didn't get it. He had to explain every idiom. Well, as pastors, that's what we do when we're preaching, right?

We come to passages with idioms and we explain them. Now, covenant theology. Let me give an overview with that. Covenant theology is going to say the Bible is a special book. It is a spiritual book. And because it is a spiritual book, you're not going to employ all of the same rules that you would have with other types of literature.

And therefore, we would have to look at this with a spiritual meaning. So therefore, when you see things that maybe seem like they're literal, you may be looking for something more. So some of the arguments they're going to make is that they're going to have everything in the Bible pointing back to Jesus Christ.

So you come to a book like Song of Solomon, they're going to say that's Christ and the Church, the marriage that we talked about last episode where the Church is referred to as the Bride of Christ. And they're going to look at this and say, well, that's what that is.

Now, as we do that, here's the thing. I would say that Song of Solomon, from my way of interpreting, is about marriage, and that glorifies God, so I see everything in Scripture as about the glory of God.

When you bring it from a covenantal view, they're going to see everything about Christ and they're going to see a lot of similarities between things that happened in the Old Testament with Israelis who were God's people, they were elect, and Christians in the Church that are also God-elect.

Is there similarities? Yes. But there's also distinctions. And so where you fall in this gamut is going to be how much similarity or distinction, or what we refer to as continuity and discontinuity, you see between Israel and the Church.

And so there's moves where, even within covenant theology, they would have New Covenant theology, which sees more distinction or discontinuity between Israel and the Church, and there's kind of some moves in dispensationalism, where I would be, which is more of, I guess it's called a progressive dispensationalism, but I don't like the word progressive in our culture at all, so I prefer MacArthur's term of leaky dispensational, maybe.

But there's a lot of similarities in the way we're going to handle Scripture between a New Covenant theologian and what I would be as a dispensationalist.

Now,.

All that is a preface to say this. When I'm saying the formation of the Church began on the day of Pentecost, I'm saying that there was a transition period between the nation of Israel and the Church.

So I'm seeing that distinction. And so I recognize that anyone that's a covenant theologian may, and I'm saying may, disagree with me because there is some differences I've seen within covenant theology where some will say that the Church started with Adam, some that say it started with Abraham, some that will see that it started that what we call the Church started at Pentecost.

But I'd even argue that what we call Church today isn't what they called Church in Pentecost. Because we use a more specific term, as we said last week. We talked about the uniting of the spiritual body, which brings in that there's a universal Church and a local Church.

Universal Church includes both Pastor Stephen and I. We're part of the universal Church because we're both in Christ, but we don't attend the same local Church. But in both of our local Churches, there's probably unbelievers where there's no unbelievers in the universal Church.

I'm going to say, when we discuss dispensationalism and covenant theology, and we're going to cover it a bunch, here's my way of explaining it. If you understand the terms universal, local Church, or what's sometimes called invisible, visible Church, I want to use those same things for the nation of Israel.

And so I refer to the nation of Israel and believing Israel. So you have people that were part of the nation, but the nation's made up of believers and unbelievers where those that are the elect, those that are the regenerated, those are the saved.

So those would be the universal or invisible Israel. I know that's kind of a new way of thinking for folks, so as we discuss things, I just want you to think about that. I'm going to repeat it a bunch because it's going to be a new concept for folks.

But it has helped me to really understand some of the distinctions because I can agree with many covenant theologians when we look at the similarities between universal Israel and universal Church. It's there because it is, in that sense, you have a body of believers.

So I can agree with that. See, now, I have some dispensationalists that are freaking out right now, and this is why I don't fit perfectly in any camp. Steve and I were once asked, what theological camp are you?

Where do you fit in? I said, well, if you want to know, I firmly believe in Rappaportianism. And he stared at me, I said, my last name is Rappaport. If you want to know what I believe, you've got to ask me.

This is the difference. When we get our theology from the Bible, it doesn't always fit. I don't care what theological system you are in, we're not going to agree everything with what some other man has said.

We're going to find, I mean, look, I'm influenced a lot by John MacArthur. But there's areas I disagree with him. There's areas I think that he makes mistakes in his interpretation. Ah, no,.

You can't say that about the evangelical.

Pope. No, you can.

We have to be able to do that.

Yeah, I mean, you're right. It's hard to fit. It's hard to fit in any camp when you read the Bible in its entirety. Because like you said, let's just take names people know. John MacArthur, I'm with you.

I agree and disagree with some of his things. R .C. Sproul, the list can go on. We all have varying degrees of differences which would not really put us in one particular camp or the other. So, I think that's a good point you've made, though, is that if we pigeonhole ourselves into one camp over another, I think we're leaving a lot of stuff on the table, biblically, that we could really believe in.

We have to do something with these things. We have to do something with Israel. And kind of like you, I don't fit in one camp or the other very well. I'm kind of like you, just ask me what I believe and we can talk through it.

But I think that's a great point to make, is that you don't have to fit into one camp over another.

I can say one thing for sure. John MacArthur, R .C. Sproul, disagreed on things. We would disagree with both of them on things. But I can say one thing for sure. You and I and John MacArthur will be 100 agreement with what R .C. Sproul believes today when we get to glory.

That's right.

We're all going to be in agreement then. R .C. just beat us there.

Yeah.

I saw somebody the other day said, R .C.'s a Baptist now.

Yeah, and you know, there's plenty of Presbyterians that are going to say when we get there, we'll be Presbyterians.

Exactly.

In one sense, it's going to be fun to see how wrong we are in certain areas.

Because we're.

Finally going to know where we were wrong, like, absolutely. You know, it was a thing, Matt Slick and I, that'd be the one thing you and I could use our last names. I could say I'm a reportian, but for Matt Slick,.

He's a.

Slick-a-teen? What you do with his last name is not going to sound good. But he and I debate a lot. We've actually been invited to conferences so that we could debate different topics. Because like R .C. Sproul and John MacArthur, they could get along and yet have so much disagreements.

And so we've done debates, and someone once asked him, after a debate, why it is that we do these debates, and they noticed that we kind of, both of us, didn't plan it, but we tend to argue, like in this case, the debate that I'm referring to was covenant theology versus dispensationalism.

So I was answering the strawman arguments that dispensationalists make against covenant theologians, and he was doing the same with covenant theologians. And the person noticed that we're both kind of trying to protect the other's side from bad arguments.

We would answer it. And Matt had a really good answer to that that I appreciated. He said, you know, Andrew and I both know we're wrong, theologically. We don't know where, because if we did, we would change.

But we both know that when we sit at the feet of Christ, he's going to correct both of us. And so we can't be too prideful about our theology. And that was really helpful for me to hear him say and think about, because I realize he really is right.

The people who are dogmatic, I mean, there's some people that may have tuned us out just because I said the word.

Dispensational.

Right? I mean, or.

Maybe the dispensationalists tuned out because I actually said positive things about covenant theology. Well, those people probably should have listened to this. Maybe we should have started with this point, but this is the issue.

We have to realize that we cannot be prideful about our theological system. We have to understand where someone's coming from. When I was in the UK, we were doing some ministry there, and I was with someone who is a covenant theologian.

He's amillennial. He knew I wasn't. He's asking me questions. I'm asking him questions. And there was another person who I didn't know, hadn't met before, but he was there listening to our conversation.

And as we discussed this, I asked him some questions about how he interpreted things. And I ended up saying, well, you know, I disagree with you, but I can see that you're consistent in your interpretation.

The rules you're following,.

You're being consistent. And so I can see where you come to that conclusion. And from your position, it makes sense. This guy looked at me and says, I've never seen two people disagree so much on a topic, and yet you show such grace.

And it really was, I said, well, because he's being consistent. If he's just being ad hoc with, I interpret this this way and this that way, then it's a problem. And so when we look at this, I mean, all of this is a lot of preface, because what I'm trying to say is we shouldn't be fighting over the issue of when the Church formed.

But I am stating that I think it started at Pentecost. Now, does this mean that I think that those who may believe that Old Testament Israel is Old Testament Church, I'm not going to make a fight over it.

I'm going to interpret the Scriptures differently than them because of that view. We're going to come to different conclusions. Infant baptism would be one. You're not going to see someone that's dispensational coming to that conclusion, because you need to understand that infant baptism is within an interpretation system of covenants where the family is part of a covenant relationship with God.

And if you interpret it that way, then you're going to end up saying, well, there's got to be that covenant sign in the Church. Baptism is it, then. So we have those things that we have to recognize. I'm stating where we believe at striving for eternity.

So does this mean we can't work with people that are covenant theologians? No. Actually, we can. It's not going to limit it. But I'm saying that to say that there's one clear thing that though I'm going to say is wrong, and that this statement really makes abundantly clear, and that is groups like, well, you have some groups like Mormons or others that would claim that the Church is an eternal entity, that it started before there was even an earth.

You have that same kind of thinking in Islam, and you can even have that thinking in Jewish thought, they will have that to the Scriptures, is say the Scriptures were somehow like an eternal thing that was given down in time.

I'm saying, no, they had a beginning. The Church started at Pentecost. I'm also saying that it has a completion, and I think I think everyone will come to the agreement that the Church has an end. Covenant theologians would say that the end is with the second coming, and because I'm from a dispensational background, and I'm going to be interpreting the Bible in that way, I'm going to have a different view of end times, because I'm going to interpret those not in a spiritual sense, but more in a literal sense, and therefore I see there's a future for Israel.

I see that those land promises to Israel are going to be brought back in, and because of that, because they weren't fulfilled literally, and they were explained literally, I believe they will be literal, and therefore what I'm saying is that the Church is going to be done with, completed at the rapture.

Now, that's an end times thing. I get it. So let me explain a little bit of end times. Even though we're not there yet, we're going to get there, and that'll be a fun episode. I should probably get some, like, I should find an Amillennialist co-host to do that one with me, because it'd be a lot better, a lot more fun discussion.

I'm saying that the Church is going to end what I believe will happen is that Christ will rapture the Church. Those who are believers will be, as the Scripture would say, caught up in the air, and that at that point we're going to see another transition.

It's going to be a transition back to national Israel, but there's going to be many of those people that would have been in the Church. Now, I believe at the rapture everybody who's saved will go up to be with Christ, and therefore, even though I was from a Jewish background, I won't be here.

This is called Left Behind. Oh wait, no, that's a horrible book and series. No, like, don't, don't, don't, please, don't base your theology of end times off of that series of books, okay? It's a fictional book.

And some of their theology, I think, is somewhat fictional as well. But what I'm saying is that when the Church goes up, the entity that we call the Church won't be here. And when God will then transition, just like I think there was a transition between the nation of Israel as God's focus after Christ died, He starts changing that into the Church, and in that period there was a transition period.

Well, I think that's going to happen. When the Church is gone, there's going to be Jewish people start getting saved. And I don't think that it's going to be just Jewish people, so it's not, for the dispensationalists to try to make it like it's all or nothing, it wasn't that way in the Old Testament.

I believe Nebuchadnezzar I'll see in heaven. I think that Daniel makes that clear. But he wasn't Jewish. There's plenty of people who were followers of God that weren't Jewish in the Old Testament. Even in the New Testament, we see the centurion.

He wasn't Jewish, but under the Old Testament system, he would have been saved. And so, I don't think it's as clear-cut as some try to make it. But this one is saying, I do believe there's a beginning and an end for the Church.

That this period of time, what dispensationalists would call a dispensation or an economy, how God works with His people at this time. By the way, I'm just going to put this out there for folks who may be listening in Covenantal.

Just so you know, when dispensationalists speak of dispensations, those dispensations are defined by a covenant. Every one of them has a covenant relationship, and that's essential to the dispensation, because God's giving new instructions for that group of people.

And so, you have Him giving a covenant. That covenant is the covenant relationship for that group of people, that period of time, a dispensation.

It's progressive.

I think there's some Covenant Theologians going, well, yeah, we believe that. There's a lot more agreement than you think. So, this is a short sentence here that is just trying to really lay out the distinction here that we'd have at Striving Fraternity between Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism.

Now, it doesn't mention any of that, but, like I said, for people that study, they're going to pick up on this. I mean, especially when they see that word rapture. A lot of Amillennialists pick up on that right away.

Like, no, no, no, no, there's no rapture.

This second sentence here is going to flow right into, really, the third paragraph that is coming up. But, from listening to what all you're saying, I think there's probably a lot of folks that may be listening that never realized that the Church, in and of itself, has a lot of eschatological tones to it.

Because, even in what you were talking about, beginning of the Church, when that is, I mean, we can debate and discuss that anytime, but also the end, and when that is, and whatever your eschatology is, it's going to really play on what you believe about the Church as far as the beginning and the end.

But I think it's an important statement to make because we have to realize the Church had to begin, and then again, it ends. If the Church doesn't end, and we talked about this last episode, is the Church are those who place their faith in Jesus Christ.

So, if the Church doesn't end, then that would seemingly say that the Church goes on for eternity, and then even that has eschatological tones to it, because if the Church continues on,.

Then.

Is there a number to the elect? Or, I mean, are people just going to get saved all from now to eternity? So I think this is, a lot of people will overlook a simple sentence like this, and not really think about what it really means, and how much more there is to a statement like this, which is very important, because we have to believe something about the end times.