Challenging Dispensationalism

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Hi y'all -

I was raised with dispensationalist views, but I have repented of my ways  

I have found that some of the disagreements I have had with my brothers and sisters on this forum arise out of Dispensationalism. I thought I would make a post to take on this issue.

I would like to start with an article that deals with the major false premises of dispensationalism, and then we can debate.

So without further ado --

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Trembling at the Word
by Tim Hegg

Many in the Body of Messiah today have made the Word of God ‘manageable” by shirking their responsibility to its commands with an assortment of reasons. Let us be serious about what God says. Let us tremble at His Word.

The prophet Isaiah uses and interesting metaphor in his prophecy’s last chapter: “But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My Word. “ (Isaiah 66:2)

The opening phrase, “But to this one I will look” brings to mind the Aaronic Benediction given to the priests in order to bless Israel (Numbers 6:22-27). This blessing of the Almighty was couched in terms of God “turning His face” toward His people, or “shining His countenance upon them.” This is summed up in the word “look” in Isaiah’s message: when God “looks” toward a person, He has purposed to bless him.

And what kind of person does God intend to bless? Those who are “humble and contrite of spirit.” This describes more than just a personality type; God’s blessing comes upon the person who “trembles” at – and is faithful to – His Word.

How should we understand the term “tremble”? The only other time in Scripture that we find this same Hebrew word (chared) construed with the preposition “al” (as it is in Isaiah 66:2), is in I Samuel 4: 13 -

When he came, behold, Eli was sitting on his seat by the road eagerly watching, because his heart was “trembling,” for the ark of God. So the man came to tell it in the city, and all the city cried out.

Eli was worried about the Ark of God. He was anxious to see it safely back in the hands of Israel and her priests, because it had been captured by the Philistines. His heart trembled at the bad news.

The word chared in Eli’s story is an example of Isaiah’s use of the same word. When Isaiah writes about one who is “humble and contrite of spirit,” he is describing a person who is fully concerned about God’s Word having its rightful place as the powerful work of the King, which is to be obeyed. Trembling at God’s Word means receiving it as the gracious, powerful instruction of the Almighty that is filled with dignity and authority. The Word of god is not common; it is extra-ordinary. It comes to mankind through the miracle of God’s grace, in which He clothes His eternal truth in the garments of human language. As such, it has an awesome power that makes the believer’s soul tremble. We fear to think what might happen if we were merely to wink at His Word.

From the beginning of mankind’s existence, however, the enemy has sought to dissuade God’s image-bearer from trembling at His Word. The Deceiver planted the seeds of doubt into the mind of Chavah (Eve) with this nagging question, “Indeed, has God said?”(Genesis 3:1) From the start there was a battle for God’s Word. Would it be received as eternal and unchanging? Or would it be marginalized and rationalized in such a way as to make it irrelevant?
This lie of the Enemy has been repeated time and again, though it certainly has worn different masks. From ancient time there were those who simply considered the Scriptures to be the product of men, and therefore without any divine authority. The Sages speak of this when they declared that anyone who denied the divine origin of the Torah had forfeited their place in the world to come¹. Even in our day there are those who relegate the Scriptures to ancient mythology or superstition. We who have accepted the Scriptures as the divinely inspired Word of God will never agree with such liberal perspectives.

Yet the Enemy’s challenge of God’s right to demand our obedience still comes masked in deceitfully subtle garb. Through various theological systems and methods of interpretation, some have fallen prey to the notion that some of the Scriptures are no longer relevant for us. They may believe that the teachings were authoritative in days gone by, but today they have been “fulfilled” in a way that essentially renders much of them inapplicable to believers.

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Erroneous Hermeneutics

Such beliefs today are, in part, the result of various methods of interpreting the Bible. One such method is called “dispensationalism.” The core of this hermeneutic is the axiom that God required different standards of obedience in different eras or dispensations. What pleased Him in one era may be different in another era. Actually, this same perspective is found quite early in the Church’s history. For example, Justin Martyr (110-165 CE), in his Dialogue with Trypho ²,  uses this argument. He suggests that since people pleased God without observing the Sabbath before God gave the Torah, it is logical to presume that people could do so in a later era, after Messiah’s advent. This remains a pillar of dispensational theology.

In the dispensational scheme of things one’s first duty when studying the Scriptures is to discern between what was given to God’s people in the current era. In essence, significant parts of the Scriptures are therefore rendered unessential. It is upon this basis that the neglect of the Sabbath, festivals and food laws, for example, can occur without any twinge of conscience. To dispensationalists, these rules were for another era – they don’t apply to us.

While though the motive of those who developed this hermeneutic was to make the Scriptures relevant, just the opposite occurred. Once a person comes to believe that parts of the Scripture are no longer directly applicable to his life, he has subtly undermined the authority of God’s divine Word. When one is comfortable with viewing one part of Scripture as non-applicable, it is inevitable and logical that they might just as easily set aside other Scriptures that seem archaic or irrelevant.
A bi-product of such dispensational theology is the erroneous pillar which marks separation and distinction between Israel and the Church. Fuller writes:

. . . the basic premise of Dispensationalism is two purposes of God expressed in the formation of two peoples who maintain their distinction throughout eternity.³

Chafer gives a fuller explanation of this fundamental pillar of dispensational theology:

The dispensationalist believes that throughout the ages God is pursuing two distinct purposes: one related to the earth with earthly people and earthly objectives involved which is Judaism while the other is related to heaven with heavenly people and heavenly objectives involved, which is Christianity.⁴

We may therefore state that two of the primary pillars of dispensational theology are:
1) that God requires different standards of righteousness for different dispensations
or eras
- and -
2) that Israel and the Church are always distinct, and that God’s purposes and requirements for each are therefore also distinct.

The dispensationalist’s need to maintain the distinction between Israel and the Church means that the walk (way of life) given to Israel is ‘distinct from that required of the Church.’ It is understandable, therefore, why those who accept dispensationalism would naturally consider the Torah to be something that applies to Israel, but not to the Church. And their logical next step asserts that the New Covenant (understood as the ‘New Testament’) forms the “way of life” for the Church today.

Dividing the Scriptures

This method of interpretation, however, runs into trouble when scrutinized under the magnifying glass of biblical exegesis. For starters, the Bible of the Apostles was the Tanakh (OT), and they constantly appeal to their Bible (the OT) as the basis for faith and way of life, not only for Israel, but also for the Gentiles who were grafted in. When Yeshua gave the orders to His disciples to make disciples of all the nations, He instructed them to teach these new disciples “everything that I have commanded you.”⁵ The way of life given to the disciples was the same way of life they were to teach those who would become disciples from among the nations. Their way of life was that which mirrored Yeshua’s life.⁶ It was that complete faithfulness and observance of Torah commands.
Moreover, Paul repeatedly taught there was one family of God, not two, and that the Gentiles coming to faith had joined the “commonwealth of Israel” having been “brought near”⁷ by faith in Yeshua. He reveled in the joy of Gentiles being “fellow heirs,” “fellow citizens”, “fellow members of the household of God” and “fellow partakers of the promise.”⁸ How much more explicit could he have been in emphasizing that Gentiles who believed in Yeshua did not replace Israel, but joined her as the chosen people of God?
However, not only does the old-line dispensational⁹ hermeneutic wilt under the light of thorough exegesis, it also adds to the notion that one must pick and choose from the Scriptures. The dispensationalist must approach Scripture with the question of what is applicable in the current dispensation and what is not; they also must separate the Scriptures according to what applies to Israel and what applies to the Church. This can get messy.
Another debilitating hermeneutic is that of allegorizing or ‘spiritualizing’ the Scriptures. In this method of reading the text, the Scriptures’ obvious meaning is presumed to be less valuable than a ‘deeper spiritual’ meaning. Since those who hold to this hermeneutic most often believe that the Church has become the ‘New’ Israel, those laws and statutes given for ‘physical’ Israel are reinterpreted ‘spiritually’ for the ‘spiritual’ Israel— that is, the Church. Using allegory to arrive at the meaning of the sacred text is very arbitrary. For example who decides what ‘deeper spiritual meaning’ the text actually possesses? Since there are no clear guidelines for exactly how one arrives at this ‘deeper spiritual meaning,’ the allegorical method gives way to a host of individualistic interpretations.
Moreover, at the foundation of this hermeneutic the erroneous notion that what is physical is less important than what is non-physical. When God created the physical world, “He declared that it was good,” not bad. And the very fact that God intends to resurrect our bodies shows clearly that He finds eternal value in the physical aspect of our existence.

If we contemplate that God has changing standards for His people, we will surely falter in our faith. We must know and believe that our God does not change.

Once again, even though those who use an allegorical method of interpretation may have pure motives, their methodology is flawed and leads to a view of Scripture that is devastating: what the sacred text obviously says is not what it really means.
In the end, when the Scriptures are divided along the lines of ‘what is applicable and what is not,’ they loose their authority. Theologians become the deciding factor in lifestyle and practice rather than the word of God itself. Instead of trembling at the Word God’s people become comfortable with neglecting what God has ‘really’ said.

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Playing Religion
A ‘Form of Godliness’

Today our Scriptures seem to have become a smorgasbord from which we may select what fits our fancy. We have entered the burgeoning world of ’playing religion.’ Paul speaks of this when he gives us one of his longest lists of vices characterizing the faithless, a list that includes “holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power” (2 Timothy3:5).What does it mean to “hold to a form of godliness?” It means that there is outward show (morphosis) of religion. One cannot help but collate Paul’s words here with those of Yeshua in Matthew 7:22,

Many will say to Me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?”

Indeed, those who protest before the Judge of all the Earth are those who have lived a very religious life. Everything they did was in the name of Yeshua. Yet what is the Master’s response?

And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice
lawlessness” (Matthew 7:23)

This is actually a quote from Psalm 6:8(9). David cries out, “Depart from me all you workers of iniquity (aven).” The Gospel account is given to us in Greek, and in this case, the quote from Psalm 6 is from the Lxx (Septuagint). The word ‘iniquity’ from the Psalm is translated by the Lxx with the word ‘lawlessness’ (anomia), from the Greek word nomos, usually translated ‘law’ in our English Bibles. It is this word that is most often used in the Lxx to translate ‘Torah.’ When preceded by the Greek alpha (used much like our English “un” meaning “not”), anomos becomes “no Torah.”

Those who received the condemnation of the Master were those who were busy ‘playing religion,’ but whose lives were characterized by a willful neglect and distain for God’s Torah. If ever there were a text of Scripture that should cause us to tremble, this is certainly one!
Paul says that those who have merely the outward form of godliness have actually denied the power that produces genuine godliness. What is this power? For the Apostle, the power of God is manifested in a life of righteousness that results from the work of the Spirit in the inner man. As an example, note Paul’s heartfelt prayer for the Ephesian believers.¹⁰
Any attempt to conform one’s life to God’s righteous standards without the Spirit’s empowering work will always be doomed to failure. This is because at the core of obedience to God is a willingness to die to oneself—something patently contrary to our natural way of thinking. Loving God with all of one’s heart leaves no room for self-centeredness, and it is the gracious work of the Spirit in the hearts of God’s elect that brings about this death-to-self (Romans 6:1—11). The power to which Paul refers is the living and abiding presence of the Spirit by which the life of the risen Messiah manifests itself through the actions of His people.
This is illustrated in the lives of Yeshua’s disciples as they lived out the truth of the Gospel. In Acts 3, Peter and John were proclaiming the resurrection of Yeshua in the Temple precincts at the minchah (the afternoon Temple service), and a man, lame from his birth, was healed. Of course, the Sadducees were upset because many of the people were receiving the message of the Gospel, so they arrested Peter and John and put them in jail. The next day, at the trial, they were asked: “By what power, or in what name, have you done this?” (Acts 4:7). Peter, empowered by the Spirit, gave the answer:

Rulers and elders of the people, if we are on trial today for a benefit done to a sick man, as to how this man has been made well, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Yeshua Messiah the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead- by this Name this man stands here before you in good health.
(Acts 4:8-10)

But what really amazed the Temple priests was that Peter and John displayed such authority and power even though they were not among the leading Sages of the day,

Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Yeshua. (Acts 4:13)

The same power of life and righteousness that had characterized Yeshua as He lived and taught among the people was now evident in the lives of His disciples.

The Call to Submission

Today many of us find ourselves in a renewed pursuit of the truth. We have come to realize that the power of the Scriptures has been diminished through millennia of theologies and methods of interpretation. We’re simply trying to discover what the Bible- all of it- means and how we are to obey it. This perspective of the Scriptures, I think, is part of what Isaiah is speaking about when He talks of one ‘trembling’ at the Word of God. Actually, this Hebrew word ‘tremble’ can mean “to be afraid, or to shake with fear,” but it can also mean to be “anxious” and even to “pursue after something with a certain heightened expectation.” We come to the Scriptures with the anticipation that it contains the very words of God that we have not yet heard nor understood. We handle it as though it is a precious and delicate masterpiece- because it is!
Furthermore, we tremble to think we are privileged to hold it in our hands. Like the violinist who holds a priceless Stradivarius, we lift the Scriptures to our chin and tremble to think what music it will play. And oh, what music it plays! It reaches to the very bone and marrow, and divides between the thoughts and intents of our heart.¹¹ It brings forth treasures we could have never imagined, and it overwhelms our soul with the eternal.¹² When we read it, study it and meditate upon it, the unchanging wisdom of God inundates us with all the wonder of a divinely composed symphony. We tremble at the magnificence of God Himself, and of His grace, for sharing His thoughts with us. For the Scriptures become to us the living breath of the Almighty, not just ancient words cast in the context of ancient societies and language. It stands fully relevant in our 21st Century, speaking to us in tones that resonate deeply in our spirits. Isaiah’s words therefore ring in our ears. Trembling at God’s Word means recognizing that His Word is not ‘manageable.’ It comes to us in the power of the Spirit as an overwhelming call to submission, as something far bigger than we are. It displays the awesome heart of our King, Who has called all of us into covenant relationship with Himself, and who therefore subdues our minds with the grandeur of His omnipotence and eternal wisdom. With humbled hearts we respond to Him, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” And He responds by handing us His revealed Word as honeycomb, and kindly says. Eat all of it.”



Endnotes
1 mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1
2 See Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, chapters xix and xcii
3 Daniel P. Fuller, “The Hermeneutics of Dispensationalism” (Doctor’s dissertation, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Chicago, 1957), p. 25.
4 L. S. Chafer, Dispensationalism (Dallas:
Seminary Press, 1936), p. 107.
5 Matthew 28:19-20
6 Luke 6:40
7 Ephesians 2:11-13
8 Ephesians 2:19; 3:6
9 I use the term ‘old-line Dispensationalism’ because in recent years some of the scholars among dispensational schools have forged a new presentation of dispensationalism called ‘Progressive Dispensationalism.’ in which they attempt to answer the nagging questions posed to this hermeneutic by the Biblical text itself. Note Craig Blaising and Darrell Bock, Progressive Dispensationalism (Baker Books, 1993).
10 See Ephesians 3:16-19
11 Hebrews 4:12
12 Matthew 13:52
13 Ezekiel 3:3