Identity Problem In Dispensationalism

[northwye]

"I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Matthew 15: 24
The house of Israel was to be expanded to include the Gentiles (Isaiah 11: 10, Isaiah 42: 6,
Isaiah 60: 2-3, Isaiah 66: 12, Hosea 2: 23, and Malachi 1: 11). But nowhere does the Bible
say that Christ has a people of his own other than Israel. The Gentiles were to join
Israel. There is no "church" in scripture which is just a congregation of Israel.

And Israel was transformed as predicted in II Kings 21: 13, "...and I
will wipe Jerusalem
as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down?"
Then Isaiah 29:16 mentions God's turning of things upside down,and
points to Jeremiah 18: 1-6. This is the parable of the potter where
verse 4 says "And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the
potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the
potter to make it." Israel is the clay in the hands of God the potter. God
remade Israel into a different vessel that seemed good to the potter.

By Christ's time most of physical Israel followed the religion of the
Pharisees, or oral Talmudic Judaism. Christ had much to say about and
to the Pharisees who represented the apostate religion of that time.

However, Hebrews Chapter Eleven lists
some of the people of old Israel who lived by faith. Those listed
in this chapter include Abel, Enouch, Noah, Abraham, Sara, Isaac,
Jacob, Moses, Gideon, and even the prostitute Rahab. "These all died in faith,
not having received the promises, but having seen them afar
off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that
they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." Hebrews 11: 13 There
were a few Hebrews at the time Christ was born who were faithful, such
as Simeon and Anna discussed in Luke Chapter 2.

In Matthew 27: 52-53, after Christ died on the Cross and the veil of
the temple was torn, indicating the Old Covenant was taken away
(Hebrews 10: 9), "The graves
were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose...and went
into the holy city and appeared unto many."

But Charles C. Ryrie (born 1925) says of classical dispensationalism
that the: "basic primise of Dispensationalism is two purposes of God
expressed in the formation of two peoples who maintain their distinction
throughout eternity." Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism Today, 1966,
pp.44-45.

J. Dwight Pentecost is another dispensationalist theologian who in his
book Things To Come ( 1965) says "The church and Israel are two
distinct groups with whom God has a divine plan...These considerations
all arise from
a literal method of interpretation." (page 193, J. Dwight Pentecost,
Things To Come, Zondervan, 1965)....

In dispensationalism "Israel" is always one group, all those who claim
physical descent from Abraham.
At the Cross the promise to Abraham that his seed would be in a covenant with
God forever was changed from the physical seed, the literal DNA of
Abraham, to Abraham's
spiritual seed, to those who like Abraham, believed God. As Paul says
in Romans 9: 8 "They which
are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God."

Followers of dispensationalism cling to their fundamental belief that
physical Israel, the children of the flesh, remain God's chosen
people. They cling to that belief in physical Israel as the chosen
people, which is called Jewish supremacy, because they think their
identity in Christ is based upon believing physical Israel is the
chosen people. This belief is in great part based on Romans 11: 17
that they as Gentiles of the "church" are grafted into the good olive
tree which, from dispensationalism, they think, is all physical
Israel. Yet Paul is not inconsistent in his doctrines. To be
consistent with Romans 9: 6-8, Galatians 4: 25-26, Romans 2: 28-29,
Galatians 3: 28-29 and other New Testament texts, that Israel into
which Gentile Christians are grafted into is Jerusalem which is above,
is free and is the mother of us all, and in Romans 9: 8 the children
of the promise to Abraham as his spiritual seed, rather than his
physical seed who are not born again.

On another Christian forum a couple of years ago, I was saying that
Paul in I Corinthians 15: 52 said that Christ
will appear at the last trump, or the last trumpet, which would be the
seventh trumpet at the end of the tribulation. But a follower of
dispensationalism replied and
said, no, Paul did not mean the last trumpet of the Book of
Revelation. What Paul meant, this dispensationalism said, was a
trumpet sounding in some aspect of the Old Covenant ceremonial law,
during some feast day. This dispensationalist also added that as
Christians grafted into Israel, we need to know more of that Old
Covenant stuff.

In attributing the status of God's chosen people to all physical
Israel, most of whom when Christ walked the earth were in Talmudic
Judaism, the religion of the Pharisees, and not believing I Peter 2: 9
that Christians are the chosen people following the Cross,
dispenationalists have, like Esau in Genesis 25, given up their
birthright.

Their birthright is in Israel, but they have the wrong Israel. Christ
came to save Israel, but that Israel which has an identity in Jesus
Christ, as their spiritual birthright, is Israel reborn in Christ
(John 3: 1-6). Only those born again in Christ are part of saved
Israel.

There is no separate group of the body of Christ in scripture
different from that
Israel which Paul in Romans 9:8 says are the children of the promise,
as opposed to the other
Israel, physical Israel, which he says "They which are the children of
the flesh, these are not the children of God." There is no group
different from that saved body of Christ Paul refers to
in Galatians 4: 26 as "...Jerusalem which is above is free, which is
the mother of us all. This
saved Israel is contrasted with that Israel in Galatians 4: 25 as
"...Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children."

"Church" is used many times in the New Testament. Its a translation
of ekklesia, an assembly, a congregation. The "congregation" can be
an assembly of Christians who are of saved Israel, but "congregation"
is not a different body of Christ from the Israel (which is) of God in
Galatians 6: 16.

[episkopos]

I am a firm opposer of the doctrine of Dispensationalism. While I do see different eternal identities in the future kingdom of God, they are not based on DNA nor are they along racial lines. Quite the opposite; people from every race and tongue have been born in Zion through Christ. Those who rely on their physical birthright are of the flesh.

God loves the gates of Zion (the Israel of God in Christ) MORE than all the dwellings of Jacob! (temporal Israel) (Ps. 87)

[episkopos]

Also Dispensationalism is very selective in it's "literal" interpretation of the bible. The interpretation of..."there is no more difference between Jew and Greek in Christ (Zion)"... is not dealt with in the same way as other verses that support their "scheme." The verses that show the oneness in Christ are simply ignored.

[Realist1981]

What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As he says in Hosea:
“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;
and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,
and,
“In the very place where it was said to them,
‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”^[j]
Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
“Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
only the remnant will be saved.
For the Lord will carry out
his sentence on earth with speed and finality.”^[k]
It is just as Isaiah said previously:
“Unless the Lord Almighty
had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom,
we would have been like Gomorrah.”^[l] What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written:

“See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall,
and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.


__________________________________________________ __________________________________


That was Romans chapter 9. When I read that chapter and the next chapter and chapter 11 I come to the conclusion that Israel is those who are in Christ whether their physical lineage is Jewish or any other race of people. There is no special set aside salvation for someone because of their race. It has never been so even before Calvary.

The "remnant" of Israel is probably the remnant of believing Jews "including himself" up into the time of the Gentiles is up.

[John146]

Great post, northwye. There is one people of God and it is known by several names. One is Israel (which is contrasted with the nation of Israel in Romans 9:6). Another is the church. House of God. Temple of God. Body of Christ. Whatever you want to call it Jew and Gentile believers are all one in Christ and we are all His people. God doesn't have separate plans for Jews and Gentiles or for the nation of Israel and the church.

[Diggindeeper]

Northwye, episkopos, Realist1981 and John 146...add me to the list that opposes the doctrine of Dispensationalism.

I have several points of contention with dispensation.
One, dispensation makes it necessary to have a separate plan of salvation for the Jewish people from the rest of the people on planet earth.
Two, dispensation requires that one must believe at some time in the future the Jews WILL become Christians, by gosh, whether they want to be or not!
Third, the Jewish people are predestined to get saved, but not until the Christians are taken out of the way. And then, the Christians will come back to rule and reign over them. For a thousand years.

This only scratches the surface of my contentions...

[Nobunaga]

Add me in too, if we are making a list.

[northwye]

Most of the Christian forums I have been on have been dominated by followers of dispensationalism. At least, almost all
those who post regularly on these forums, with one exception, were dispensationalists. On the one Christian forum where I was not aware
of there being dispensationalists around, the moderators changed the topic of one of my posts - on Daniel 11 - to the Khazar theory, that the
Russian and German Jews are really Khazars and not descendants of Abraham. I stopped posting there after that.

On one large Christian forum very recently I posted the one above, and the moderators cut it down to the first three paragraphs and later banned me from posting, saying I had posted it off of a blog, giving the exact blog address. Why they went to the trouble of searching Google for the title of the article and my real name I don't know, unless a dispensationalist complained about my post. My impression is that, like me, there are others who began to develop an article on one forum, and then use that same draft to post on another forum, and develop it further, and post it on a blog. And then use that more developed blog article to post on a third forum. Often, in this process, one can add things to the article which meet the questions and objections made as comments on forums so the more developed article is better than the first draft. Why a forum would censor a post that they determined was off a blog I am not sure; they didn't say why. They admitted that the blog article they found had my name on it as author and not that of another.

[John146]

Most of the Christian forums I have been on have been dominated by followers of dispensationalism. At least, almost all
those who post regularly on these forums, with one exception, were dispensationalists. On the one Christian forum where I was not aware
of there being dispensationalists around, the moderators changed the topic of one of my posts - on Daniel 11 - to the Khazar theory, that the
Russian and German Jews are really Khazars and not descendants of Abraham. I stopped posting there after that.

On one large Christian forum very recently I posted the one above, and the moderators cut it down to the first three paragraphs and later banned me from posting, saying I had posted it off of a blog, giving the exact blog address. Why they went to the trouble of searching Google for the title of the article and my real name I don't know, unless a dispensationalist complained about my post. My impression is that, like me, there are others who began to develop an article on one forum, and then use that same draft to post on another forum, and develop it further, and post it on a blog. And then use that more developed blog article to post on a third forum. Often, in this process, one can add things to the article which meet the questions and objections made as comments on forums so the more developed article is better than the first draft. Why a forum would censor a post that they determined was off a blog I am not sure; they didn't say why. They admitted that the blog article they found had my name on it as author and not that of another.

That's pretty funny. So, basically, they had a problem with you plagiarizing your own stuff then?

[BroRog]

"I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Matthew 15: 24
The house of Israel was to be expanded to include the Gentiles (Isaiah 11: 10, Isaiah 42: 6,
Isaiah 60: 2-3, Isaiah 66: 12, Hosea 2: 23, and Malachi 1: 11).

I just reviewed these passages again and could not find any indication from them that the house of Israel would be expanded to include the Gentiles.

In Matthew 27: 52-53, after Christ died on the Cross and the veil of
the temple was torn, indicating the Old Covenant was taken away
(Hebrews 10: 9), "The graves
were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose...and went
into the holy city and appeared unto many."

What makes you think that the rending of the Temple indicated the end of the Old Covenant? According to the author of Hebrews, the Old Covenant had not passed away as if the time of writing.

J. Dwight Pentecost is another dispensationalist theologian who in his
book Things To Come ( 1965) says "The church and Israel are two
distinct groups with whom God has a divine plan...These considerations
all arise from
a literal method of interpretation." (page 193, J. Dwight Pentecost,
Things To Come, Zondervan, 1965)....

Though I don't agree with Dwight Pentecost's view of the "blessed hope" I agree with the literal method of interpretation.

In dispensationalism "Israel" is always one group, all those who claim
physical descent from Abraham.
At the Cross the promise to Abraham that his seed would be in a covenant with
God forever was changed from the physical seed, the literal DNA of
Abraham, to Abraham's
spiritual seed, to those who like Abraham, believed God. As Paul says
in Romans 9: 8 "They which
are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God."

The gifts and the calling are irrevocable.

Followers of dispensationalism cling to their fundamental belief that
physical Israel, the children of the flesh, remain God's chosen
people.

Yes, even Paul believes that the children of the flesh are God's chosen people.

They cling to that belief in physical Israel as the chosen
people, which is called Jewish supremacy, because they think their
identity in Christ is based upon believing physical Israel is the
chosen people.

I have never heard about Jewish supremacy.

This belief is in great part based on Romans 11:17
that they as Gentiles of the "church" are grafted into the good olive
tree which, from dispensationalism, they think, is all physical
Israel. Yet Paul is not inconsistent in his doctrines. To be
consistent with Romans 9: 6-8, Galatians 4: 25-26, Romans 2: 28-29,
Galatians 3: 28-29 and other New Testament texts, that Israel into
which Gentile Christians are grafted into is Jerusalem which is above,
is free and is the mother of us all, and in Romans 9: 8 the children
of the promise to Abraham as his spiritual seed, rather than his
physical seed who are not born again.

The olive Tree is not Israel or the church or any particular group of people. The Olive Tree of Romans 11, are the promises God made to Israel concerning the circumcision of the heart as specified in Deuteronomy 30.

In attributing the status of God's chosen people to all physical
Israel, most of whom when Christ walked the earth were in Talmudic
Judaism, the religion of the Pharisees, and not believing I Peter 2: 9
that Christians are the chosen people following the Cross,
dispenationalists have, like Esau in Genesis 25, given up their
birthright.

Christians do not have a birthright.

There is no separate group of the body of Christ in scripture
different from that
Israel which Paul in Romans 9:8 says are the children of the promise,
as opposed to the other
Israel, physical Israel, which he says "They which are the children of
the flesh, these are not the children of God." There is no group
different from that saved body of Christ Paul refers to
in Galatians 4: 26 as "...Jerusalem which is above is free, which is
the mother of us all. This
saved Israel is contrasted with that Israel in Galatians 4: 25 as
"...Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children."

There are not two Israels. There has been and always will be one Israel.

[zeke77]

I just reviewed these passages again and could not find any indication from them that the house of Israel would be expanded to include the Gentiles.

Actually, BR the kingdom was taken from the nation of Israel and given to a nation bringing out its fruits. The new 'holy nation' today is Jew and Gentile who acknowledge Jesus as Lord - those who are one in the body of Christ. Those who walk by that rule are the "Israel of God" today. For the record the 'old testament' was superseded by the 'new testament' in His blood. The Mosaic system in its entirety was nailed to the cross - rendered eternally obsolete.

Therefore I say to you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing out its fruits. And he who falls on this Stone shall be broken, but on whomever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. (Mat 21:43-44 MKJV)


And as many as shall walk by this rule, peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. (Gal 6:16 ASV)

[ewq1938]

Romans 9:6 Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:
Romans 9:7 Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called.
Romans 9:8 That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.

[BroRog]

Actually, BR the kingdom was taken from the nation of Israel and given to a nation bringing out its fruits. The new 'holy nation' today is Jew and Gentile who acknowledge Jesus as Lord - those who are one in the body of Christ. Those who walk by that rule are the "Israel of God" today. For the record the 'old testament' was superseded by the 'new testament' in His blood. The Mosaic system in its entirety was nailed to the cross - rendered eternally obsolete.

Therefore I say to you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing out its fruits. And he who falls on this Stone shall be broken, but on whomever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. (Mat 21:43-44 MKJV)


And as many as shall walk by this rule, peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. (Gal 6:16 ASV)

I, of course, do not share your interpretation of that verse. Jesus is NOT talking about taking the kingdom of God away from Israel, he is talking about taking it from the current religious establishment, e.g. the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees and giving it to the apostles.

[northwye]

"I, of course, do not share your interpretation of that verse. Jesus is NOT talking about taking the kingdom of God away from Israel, he is talking about taking it from the current religious establishment, e.g. the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees and giving it to the apostles. "

This is a dispensationalist type of side step of the issue, which is that God is said to have taken the kingdom from physical Israel and is giving it to another people who will take better care of his vinevard and will not kill the prophets he has sent and eventually his his only son.

The side step of an issue, which can be seen as the thesis, is the dialectic. The dialectic tries to come in from another angle and cause the didactic speaker to compromise gradually his thesis or position.

The dialectic was used on Christ by Satan and then by the Pharisees, but he stuck to the didactic way of teaching. "It is written." In Luke 11: 14-27, Christ cast a demon spirit out of a guy. This is the thesis, that Christ as fully God is able to cast out demon spirits and more. Then, here comes the antithesis. The Pharisees in verse 15 said, in an attempt to discredit Christ's work, that Christ casts out devils through the power of Satan, which is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit to say that. Finally, in verse 27 a woman in the crowd said blessed is the womb that bore Christ, which is a kind of compromise, though its a side step of the main issue in itself.

The dialectic came into the universities and into Western culture through Hegel, Marx and Freud. In itself its a procedure, an attitude or belief change procedure. But this procedure, which is deceptive, came out of the position that since there is no God, everything is permitted. Then, in the late forties and fifties the Group Dynamics movement began to use the dialectic. Soon it was used by clinical psychologists and others in encounter groups. After that it spread to almost all areas of society, including to Christian verbal interaction. Rick Warren in his apostate churches, has used the dialectic in small groups to brainwash Christians. They say its used in Christian seminaries, though I have never been inside of one. To study the dialectic you need an almost verbatim record of what is said in conversations, and Luke 11: 14-27 is close to a verbatim record.

Many dispensationalists don't want to acknowledge that the kingdom and the chosen people status were taken from physical Israel and given to that Israel Paul identifies in Romans 9:8 and Galatians 4: 26, and which he calls the Israel of God in Galatians 6: 16. To make Galatians 6: 16 clear we could say its the Israel which is of God, as opposed to that Israel in Romans 9:8 "They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God." That is, they which are the children of the flesh rely upon being physical descendants of Abraham only and not on faith in Christ. Paul in Romans 9: 27 and Romans 11: 5 talks about a remnant of physical Israel who did accept Christ.

[David Taylor]

I just reviewed these passages again and could not find any indication from them that the house of Israel would be expanded to include the Gentiles.

Matthew 22:3 "call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage. But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise: And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found"

Acts 10:45 "And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost."

Romans 3:29 "Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith."

Ephesians 2:11 "Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross"