Eschatology: Centered around Israel or Christ?

The dispensationalist has a heavy view on end-time theology, the rapture. Now, this may not be true today of all dispensationalists, but of the ones I grew up in and the Tim LaHaye and that you were talking about the Left Behind series.

The end-time theology was a scare tactic to get you to live straight. It was a scared straight tactic.

It's all fear and judgment.

Assurance in Christ Versus Fear-Based End-Time Teaching

Yeah, there was no assurance on Christ and resting in Christ, looking forward to the return of Christ. I was dreading the return of Christ. I did not want him to come back.

It's a frightening reality. We also are going to be explicitly Christocentric. We're going to be Jesus-centered in how we understand the Bible and its main point, that it is God's plan of redemption accomplished through Christ that brings God glory.

Our dispensational friends will disagree with us on that because for them, at the center of God's plan to glorify himself, of course, they're not going to deny that Jesus is a part of this, but at the center of God's plan to bring himself glory is Israel and how God works through Israel.

It's a very Israel-centric hermeneutic where ours is unapologetically Jesus-centric.

What we're saying is the narrative and the purpose behind what was written is to further explain, clarify, and reveal the shadow of Christ as we get closer to the substance of.

Christ.

So we think everything in the Old Testament is a greater shadow, a revealing of what's going on when it comes to the actual substance of Christ. So yeah, all of the Bible is Christocentric.

The lens through which we view Israel is Jesus, and so that, I think, is a difference between our perspective and a dispensational view in understanding that the point of the Bible is to reveal God's plan of redemption through history as it has unfolded, and all of his plan to save his people has centered upon Christ.

Yes, we're concerned with authorial intent at the human level, Moses, Paul, David, whoever it may be, and we are primarily concerned with authorial intent at the divine level because there is one author of Scripture, namely the Holy Spirit, who inspired men to write exactly what God would have written down.

Dispensationalism as a Theological System

The dispensationalist argument against Reformed covenantal types like us is that we are using and relying too much upon a theological framework or a theological system, you know, and implication they are not.

And it's like, well, yeah, those seven dispensations, that's a system and a framework of its own. And the other thing that can sometimes happen is dispensationalists will say, you know, we're just using the Bible, whereas you guys are using, you know, confessions and creeds and things like this alongside the Scripture.

And, you know, humbly, I would say this, it's like, well, you know, what do you think that Schofield study Bible is? You know, I think that in a dispensational view, Israel, in terms of God's people and God's saving his people, Israel is the point and the church is kind of the parenthesis.

Yeah, that's fair.

Whereas from our perspective, we would say it's actually maybe the opposite, that Israel is the parenthesis and that the church, God's people, the people of Jew and Gentile, the elect from all nations, tribes and peoples and all that stuff around the throne of God.

That's the point.

Yeah.

And that Israel was the parenthesis. And so that's a fundamentally different perspective there, too, in terms of how we understand God's purposes in redemption and what he's always been out to accomplish.

Shared Christian Hope in Christ's Return

Dispensationalists, all millennialists, post-millennialists, any of those positions that you want to take, they all agree.

Or historic pre-mill.

Yeah, or historic pre-mill. They all agree that Christ is coming back, he's going to rule and reign, and we will live with him forever in our new bodies, in a new heavens and a new earth, in a physical realm, not a spiritual realm.

That was rejected a long time ago. In a physical realm, all positions hold that. Our brothers, we do not need to be calling each other heretics in our disagreements on these positions. Justin and I have our perspective.

So whatever is in the dispensational world, the return of Christ and those details, if you don't get it wrong, you are a heretic in some ways, not everybody.

If you don't get it right and if you don't have a particular view on it, then you are less than at best, if not anathema, in terms of how you would be viewed. And yeah, I agree with you, John. Whenever I talk about eschatology, even teaching our membership class at our church, I mean, our elders are united in our perspective.

I don't tell people what that is. And I also will say to them, here's what you need to agree on to your point, that Jesus is coming back, that it's going to be personal, it's going to be visible, it's going to be bodily, it's going to be glorious.

And that there will be a judgment according to righteousness and that all those in Christ will be resurrected unto eternal life, you know, and to live with God forever and with each other in a new heavens and a new earth that's just as physical as this.

If we believe those things, we're good to go.