A Brief History of Dispensationalism (Periscope Video)

uh so thanks for tuning in whether you're tuning in Live or you're tuning in later appreciate you uh watching um you're welcome to comment during the broadcast and if you're catching this in a recorded version of course you can leave a comment below the video I'm going to go ahead and get started my name is Chris Ross I'm a scholar of Christian history um I blog at 21centuries.com and if you want to be on my email list get different resources about Christian history you can do that by going to 21centuries.com forward slash free and you'll get my free Christian history cheat sheet and get put on my my email list and become a subscriber so again this is a brief history of dispensationalism which is an approach to Bible interpretation this is not meant to be a defense of dispensationalism nor is it meant to be a critique of dispensationalism as best I can I'm going to try to give an objective history of dispensationalism I may give a few editorial remarks at the end um I come out of this tradition and I have thoughts about it so I make sure some of those personal thoughts at the end um but I'll make sure that you the audience know that that's what I'm doing I'm not pretending that's just history so I think it's always a good idea to start with definitions especially with a big word like dispensationalism about which a lot of people have confusion probably most Christians who've been in the church for a while they've heard this word but they have very little understanding of what it means so let's define it first what makes a dispensationalist a dispensationalist and uh then we'll talk about the history of it and some of the different stages in its development up to the present time all right so what is a dispensationalist well first of all we need to ask what is the meaning of the root word of that of that word which is dispensation what is a dispensation I'm going to give a very sort of simple definition of it a dispensation is an era of time in which God is relating to human beings in a particular way all right so it's an error of time in which God relates to humans sorry about my handwriting in a particular or distinctive way we would say I'm going to let you in on a secret it's not really a secret you don't have to be a dispensationalist to believe that God has related to human beings in different ways in different times in other words just because you believe in dispensations that doesn't mean you're a dispensationalist in the technical sense so let me give an example of some dispensations as we look into the Old Testament we see God relating to Israel this nation that he chose out of all the nations and particularly through the mediator Moses uh he gave 600 plus laws and he said I want you Israelites to relate to me through these laws I want you to obey these laws to stay in my favor when you sin I want you to sacrifice animals um at this particular site and that's how you'll stay in my good graces and we'll have a good relationship that was the Mosaic Covenant if we go to the New Testament it's obvious things have changed right and we today we don't relate to God exactly that way we don't we're not required to sacrifice animals to keep a good relationship with God we believe that there's been a final sacrifice in the person of Jesus Christ that all our sins have been paid for um so we don't do all the things that Old Testament Israel did we would say we live in a different dispensation now than Israel did then so right there I've acknowledged at least two different dispensations if you acknowledge that fact if you affirm that fact then in the real sense you're affirming that there are different dispensations in the history of humankind and our relationship to God Okay so um that's a dispensation um so the the label dispensation list is not completely accurate because um it doesn't qualify a dispensationalist completely you can believe in the existence of dispensations uh without being one so what is it that makes a dispensationalist a dispensationalist um I want to get into that now so to do that let's start by going to the end all right the end of time and the end of the scriptures so if we look in the last book of the Bible in Revelation and one of the final chapters Revelation 20 we read about a period of time it's described as a 1 000 year period and whether you interpret that as a literal one thousand years or not um that's how it's it's spoken of I'll read a few verses of Revelation 20 and you'll see in a second what I'm getting at here um so Revelation 20 it says and I saw an angel coming down from heaven having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand and he laid hold of the Dragon The Serpent of old who is the devil and Satan and bound him for a thousand years now that phrase a thousand years is used six different times in Revelation 20. uh and he threw him into the abyss and shut it and sealed it over him so that he should not deceive the Nations any longer until the thousand years were completed after these things he must be released for a short time verse four and I saw Thrones and they sat upon them and judgment was given to them and I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of the testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God and those who had not worshiped the Beast or his image and had not received the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand and they came to life and reigned with Christ for you guessed it a thousand years so again and again in Revelation 20 we hear about this Thousand-Year period now the reason that's important is that the way you think about and conceive of that Thousand-Year period says something about you it places you it classifies you in one of three groups and they all have the word Millennium in them because that's referring to a millennium a Thousand-Year period so Christians can be broken down into these three groups based on how they view the Millennium and in particular how they view Christ's Second Coming in relation to that millennium the first group those who who interpret that 1 000 years figuratively and they interpret that as the present time following Christ's death and Resurrection they interpret this the church age as the millennium and Christ's death and Resurrection as the act by which God threw the devil figuratively into the abyss and bound him if you believe that we're presently in not a 1 000 year literal millennium but the Millennium the the period that he's talking about that Satan has been bound that the gospel is free to uh to bear fruit on the Earth and um by Satan being bound I mean he's not he's powerless against the spread of the Gospel not absolutely bound but he's bound figuratively in that way if that's your belief then you are categorized as an a millennialist okay and you believe that Christ will return after the present age which is by this interpretation the millennium now technically all Millennium refers to the fact that it's not a a literal Millennium but some amillennialists prefer that the title realized millennialists because it's not that they don't believe in the Millennium it's they don't believe in a literal Millennium and they believe we're now in the Millennium the Thousand Years so if that's your view um that's that makes you an all millennialist all right and I'm getting to the definition of a dispensationalist trust me we're getting there all right if you believe that uh Christ will return at a future time after the Millennium and you believe the Millennium hasn't begun yet but you believe that the Millennium will be initiated at a future time when the gospel has in a sense gained victory over all other religions and ideologies in the world in other words if you if you believe the gospel is going to improve the state of mankind and bring in a kind of golden age a 1 000 year golden age of humankind by spreading around the world by the faith spreading around the world and you believe Christ will return post the golden age or after that Golden Age then you are what's called a post-millennialist all right that's another way to interpret that 1000 year period and Christ's return so again you believe as a post-millennialist you believe that uh rather than things getting worse and worse things are going to get better through the spread of the Gospel not just that people will come to the faith but human existence itself will continue to improve and then Christ will return at the end of a one thousand year golden age to a triumphant church that will make you a post-millennialist um there's one more View if you believe that the Millennium is a 1 000 year period it's a literal 1 000 year period and it hasn't yet begun and uh Christ is going to return a second time before that Thousand-Year period that makes you a pre-millennialist because you believe Christ is going to return before a a literal Millennium okay so you are by definition pre-millennial so uh this is not Chris Ross this is Christ returns okay Christ returns after the present time which is the Millennium that's all Millennial Christ returns after a golden age to come that's post-millennialism Christ returns before a literal one thousand years that's pre-millennial so we're getting closer to what a dispensation list is because all dispensationalists are pre-millennialists all dispensationalists believe that Christ will return before a literal 1 000 year millennium so this blue circle represents pre-mills all pre-millennialists okay dispensationalists are a subset of pre-millennialists okay so not all pre-mills are dispensational but all dispensationalists are pre-mil does that make sense all right I sometimes wish there were fewer syllables in dispensationalism it's kind of a big clunky word that's so it goes um so we're closer now dispensationalists are a kind of pre-millennialist but what makes them different from other pre-millennialists and there are two aspects that I want to share that gets a that will get us to our definition right what marks a dispensationalist it's not a belief in dispensations it's not premillennialism it's two other things all right one is the way dispensationalists approach the Bible and distillation dispensationalist claim that they use what's called a literal hermeneutic and rough and dirty way to summarize that is um if the scripture seems to be giving a figurative sense then they read it figuratively if it seems to be giving symbols then they read it symbolically if it seems to be speaking about something literal then they read it literally so they take cues from the text itself and dispensationalists will say this is a plain reading of scripture if the again if the scripture indicates itself that it's speaking symbolically as we see a lot of the language in Revelation then they'll take it symbolically but if the scripture seems to be implying that it itself is to be taken literally then they take it literally all right so a literal hermeneutic but I think even more essential to what makes a dispensationalist a dispensationalist it is a belief that God has distinctive different plans for Israel and the Church of the New Testament all right so I symbolize that with a division between this is my Star of David that's Israel and the cross that's the church all right that's my symbols this is to me this is the essence the heart of dispensationalism if you start with this premise and to a lesser degree to with this literal hermeneutic if you believe that God has distinctive promises for Israel such as the promise to Abraham that he's going to give him land in literal land there's going to be a piece of real estate on the Earth in which Abraham's descendants are going to live that they're going to inherit and um you think that's different from the promises he gives to New Testament Believers you know Jesus says I go to prepare a home a home for you there are many rooms in my father's Mansion I'm going to prepare a place for you if you see those as different that makes you a dispensationalist and the way this plays out with prophecy is that dispensationalists believe God has not finished fulfilling his plans and his promises to Old Testament Israel to the Israelites to the Jewish people and he has concrete promises for instance Promises of giving them a land a piece of land that he has yet to fulfill that he is going to fulfill when you guessed it in the millennium he's going to uh restore them in the land of Israel during the millennium so if you just start with the premise that God has one plan for Israel and God has another plan and in a sense he's doing a very new thing when he builds his church in the New Testament if you believe that your views will be more and more dispensational um by classification all right so I'll talk more about this as we go through the history very briefly of dispensationalism all right so where did this idea come from this idea that God has distinct plans for Israel and the church well let's talk about that green okay when did this idea occur um well as far as the idea that there are different dispensations in which God works that idea is actually very old really going back to some of the church fathers some of the earliest thinkers and writers of the church uh so there have actually been several uh several people throughout history who have talked about the fact that God has worked differently in different eras of history but again that doesn't make anyone a dispensationalist according to the technical definition um just because you say that or imply that there are different dispensations all right so uh what does as far as what I'm claiming makes you a dispensationalist in the technical sense when did that begin um as far as we can tell as far as my research I can tell the first person who talks not only about dispensations but about the fact that God has distinctive plans for Israel and the church and that the church is a new thing it's not just a continuation of Israel uh there was a and actually a Jesuit scholar from Chile named Manuel lacunza his dates are 1731 he died in 1801. and through his study of scripture he came to that conclusion that God has distinctive plans for Israel and he's going to fulfill those very literal promises to them at some future time and he has another plan for the church and this is never to deny that there are Jews coming into the church now but as far as Israel as a whole as a ethnic Unity uh dispensationalists have said God has a distinctive plan for them in the future as well so Manuel lacunza a Chilean Jesuit scholar comes up with this idea in the late 1700s and part of his thinking was that the real Church what we would call The Invisible Church of True Believers is to be distinguished from the visible Church even the Catholic visible church and his ideas got him into some trouble with the authorities in the Catholic church because he said that eventually the the our church would fall away and die off and what would be left is the True Believers within the church so that made him unpopular with some Catholic Scholars but those ideas seem to be originating with or some might say discovered by lacunza all right he influenced some English Scholars who were interested in Prophecy in the early 1800s a guy named Edward Irving I think and um it was through Irving that the first big proponent of classic dispensationalism that we know of comes into contact with these ideas and his name is John Nelson Darby you may have heard of him John Nelson Darby was an Irishman he became he was a lawyer and then he became an Anglican clergyman and eventually he became disillusioned with the strict hierarchy the structure of the Anglican Church and he left the Anglican church and he joined a group of Christians who resisted categorization they resisted denominational categorization and they came to just call themselves the Brethren he and Darby was a big figure within the Brethren movement they were based largely in Plymouth England they became known as the Plymouth Brethren so he was part of that movement and Darby through his interaction with some of these prophecy conferences with Edward Irving and others came into contact with these ideas of lacunza and develop those and Darby will write and preach and teach what we refer to as Classic dispensationalism this idea that God has worked through different dispensations and then in particular he has two different plans one for Israel that is yet to be fulfilled and one for the church which began as a unique entity with the resurrection of Christ in Pentecost so John Darby will teach those ideas you will promulgate those ideas very successfully through the mid and late 1800s and those ideas will spread to not only the British Isles but the United States and they will be taken up and developed and promulgated further by several different Scholars one of the most important is a guy named Cyrus Schofield and he was born in 1843 and died 1921 Schofield is a really interesting character um he uh joined the Confederate Army at age 17 fought in the Civil War he was at Antietam bloodiest battle of the war he was released from the Army and went home and then he was called up again to serve in the Confederate Army and he deserted to the north he vowed allegiance to the north to the union he then trained in law like Darby he became the youngest district attorney in the country he was district attorney of Kansas for her time he was a heavy drinker in his in this period of his life he was married had a child or two and eventually deserted his family because of his heavy drinking then he was remarried around that time he seemed to have cleaned his life up and he assisted with some of the campaigns of Dwight Moody who was a famous evangelist of that period of the 19th century um seems to have cleaned his life up um studied the scriptures um adopted dispensational thinking and began to teach dispensational thinking through various venues including some Bible conferences and prophecy conferences and in particular one called the Niagara Bible Conference which took place in Niagara on the Lake in Ontario Canada in the late 1800s Schofield is best known for a Bible and the notes that he published with that Bible which were published by Oxford University press first starting in 1909 and that's the Scofield reference Bible and it's through that Bible that lots and lots of clergy and laypeople came to imbibe dispensational ideas some without even realizing it and my my experience was kind of like that when I was 12 years old I received a Riri Study Bible and I'll talk about ryrie in just a second another proponent of dispensationalism and there are lots of notes in throughout the ryrie study Bible that go with the scriptures and like a lot of naive young Christians I assume that's what every Christian believed and I took on sort of a dispensational view of things um without realizing it I remember being asked to teach Sunday school once in my church and I laid out the plan of the future you know the Rapture The Seven Year tribulation I had no idea that other Christians didn't subscribe to that view of the end times and that's true not just with dispensation lists of course it's true with other group people in other groups covenant theology and other things a lot of people don't realize there's a difference so Scofield's influence um was huge mainly through his notes in the Scofield reference Bible um he became a congregational Minister eventually a pastor to church in Dallas which is still there it's now the Scofield Church the third person is that I mentioned is Charles ryrie he is still with us he's retired he taught at Philadelphia College of the Bible and where he was president and then he taught at Dallas Theological Seminary for a time and Riri I was very influential and published his own Study Bible as I mentioned uh there were several other Scholars there was a guy named James H Brooks who was himself uh influential to Scofield he's also the main guy behind that Niagara Bible Conference and several schools were founded to teach dispensational interpretations Moody Bible Institute in 1886 a Bible Institute of Los Angeles Biola um a little later I think 1908 Philadelphia College of the Bible a little later 1913 I believe and then Dallas Theological Seminary which some consider today kind of a flagship school for dispensational teaching that was founded in 1924. so several schools founded and dispensational teaching became common within a lot of protestant Evangelical churches in particular Baptist Churches also Pentecostal churches and that's the way it is today even some Presbyterian reformed churches um and it's a very common way of approaching scripture whether people realize that they're that they're thinking and approaching the Bible dispensationally or not so that's what we consider these guys are teaching what we would call the classical stage of dispensationalism and there were subtle changes uh within the work of some of these Scholars that came along especially some like Jade white Pentecost and John wolvard and others we see subtle developments within the ideas and the dispensational ideas but sort of generally we can lump them together because a new stage of dispensational thought came on the scene in the 1980s and is still with us today and we would call that Progressive dispensationalism and that has been taught its main proponents are Craig blazing Daryl Bach New Testament scholar and Robert Saucy some of its main proponents before I forget let me just show you a couple books ryrie has written a summary of dispensationalism used to be called dispensationalism today now it's just dispensationalism in which he gives a description of the history of dispensationalism and some of the main tenets of dispensationalism of course he defends those tenants he defends the literal hermeneutic there have been a couple books defending a progressive form of dispensationalism um this is one of the most complete and comprehensive and it's called Progressive dispensationalism it's by blazing and Bach and again they give a history of dispensationalism and then they Place their own views within the context of previous forms of dispensationalism before I forget I'm going to go ahead and recommend another book if you want to read a non-dispensationalists uh evaluation of dispensationalism I would recommend Vern poitris's understanding dispensationalists okay he gives a good appraisal and what I like about poitris he's ironic he's um he's interested in engaging in civil discourse civil dialogue with dispensationalists he admits that there's an internal coherence and consistency within dispensational systems of interpretation so I think that's a healthy way to initiate dialogue and that's what Vern poitris does so if you want to come at this topic from someone outside the dispensationalism that's what I would recommend so what's the difference between classic and Progressive dispensationalism uh we could plot um classic dispensationalism and Progressive dispensationalism on on a line like this let me back up a second and say that the other major approach that systematic approach to Bible interpretation is called the covenant theology and um it was articulated before dispensationalism by at least 50 years if not more um by mainly by folks coming out of the reformed tradition John Calvin uh Johann Coches and others Covenant theologians see instead of seeing God having two distinct plans for Israel and the church and God still having plans to continue his his fulfillment of promises for Israel they see the church as a continuation of the people of God which in the Old Testament was Israel and now is the church so I would represent by that by an arrow all right rather than a separating line Covenant theologians Advocate that or affirm that God has worked in different Covenants one was the Covenant of works which he initiated with Adam in the beginning so if Adam obeyed then there would be blessing and they'd have a good relationship if Adam disobeyed the Covenant would be broken well we know how that ended up the Covenant of works Adam broke that and then immediately God initiated another Covenant called The Covenant of Grace and this is important for non-covenant folks to understand Covenant theologians affirm or assert that the Covenant of Grace began after Adam right so the Mosaic Covenant is included within that Covenant of Grace so uh God's promises to Abraham God's uh Covenant with Moses and Israel and God's New Covenant with through Christ with all of us that's those are all different phases of the same overarching Covenant of Grace okay so there is continuity between um the dispensation under Moses and the dispensation through the church in the church and some critics of covenant theology refer to it as replacement theology because they say the church simply replaces Israel as the people of God and um I'm not I'm honestly not sure if Covenant theologians probably a lot of them aren't happy with that term it's almost a gives a negative stigma but in a real sense they would say the church now takes up the Fulfillment of promises given to Israel instead of taking um a consistently literal hermeneutic Covenant theologians are happy to read uh figuratively into a lot of the Prophecies of the Old Testament and say those promises are fulfilled figuratively now in the church for instance the promise of land yes God promised Abraham land for his descendants but now that is fulfilled figuratively in the church um you know we have a home in the Eternal state in the future in heaven a new heavens and a new Earth that's the land that God has promised and that he'll give not only Israel but all the church so all those um sort of concrete promises given to Israel the Covenant Theologian will say those are realized figuratively by the church now so the church in other words there's no uh future plan for the nation of Israel per se that is specially designed for them that's going to be taken up at some Future Point Jews people of Israel now are blessed to the extent that they are part of the church and no more okay that's the view of of covenant theology and I represent that by this Arrow um combining there's continuity all right Progressive dispensationalists they along with classic dispensationalists they affirm that God has distinctive plans for Israel and the church and the church is something new and different that's what they assert however unlike classic dispensationalists Progressive dispensationalists will say some of those Old Testament promises are being fulfilled figuratively by the church now so we can't say we can't make a strict separation as some classic dispensationalists have made so as you can see they're taking a step towards covenant theology by saying yes God has distinctive plans for Israel in the church but there is some continuity between Israel and the church in some ways the church does fulfill some of those promises that were just given to Israel so I would represent Progressive dispensationalists uh sort of a both and with you know the arrow to symbolize continuity but there is that division as well okay um and that's where we are today except for one other view that I want to talk about very briefly and that is a group of folks that call themselves the new covenant theology and they are they prefer to refer to themselves as part of covenant theology part of that school of thought but they have made some modifications that actually moves them closer to dispensationalism so um this is the new covenant theology new covenant theology is especially common among Baptists especially calvinistic Baptists um it's as far as being espoused in a clear way it's a fairly recent development over the last couple decades but adherence of new covenant theology will say their ideas also go back to the Reformation in embryonic form right New Covenant theologians are very similar to Progressive dispensationless right they differ from covenant theologians by insisting that there is something very new going on in the church when when the church is established and they will Advocate a stronger break with the Mosaic law then Covenant theologians will Covenant theologians will see continuity between the Mosaic law and the law of Christ and in particular they'll say the moral aspects of the Mosaic law are still with us and they're still binding on us New Covenant theologians will see a a more distinct break with the Mosaic law and they'll say the the law of Christ the New Covenant makes the Mosaic law obsolete and there is something new happening in the church however uh proponents of new covenant theology do not see a distinct plan for Israel being fulfilled in the future so they most of them believe in a literal Millennium that's coming they're pre-millennialists but they don't uh they don't conceive of that as a giving special place to Israel so uh it's going to be at a church in the Millennium right and Israel is not going to be distinguished they're not going to have special role that's what makes them differ with uh progressives Progressive dispensationalists both progressives and classic dispensationalists see a coming Millennium in which Israel will have it a land they'll have their land as promised and they will rule and Christ will rule through them and they'll actually a lot of dispensationalists believe they'll actually take up the sacrificial system again for a thousand years and they will sacrifice animals in Israel not to point ahead to the type the figure of Christ but to point back to Christ's sacrifice um so if you read passages like the last eight chapters of Ezekiel there's this very detailed description of Israel in the future and the Covenant Theologian will say all of that is figurative it's going to be it's going to be fulfilled figuratively dispensationalists will say well no that's just giving us a picture of this future millennium in detail the land will be divided up in a very specific way the tribes of Israel will the redeemed Israel will be there and uh they'll take up the sacrificial system again to celebrate what Christ has done the sacrifice he made and then within that world Gentiles will also redeemed Gentiles will also have a role to play in administering God's Kingdom so um I hope I made that a little clearer where these different groups fall um I'm going to end with some of the Tendencies within dispensationalism that we've seen during its history um one of those is and I talked about this in my last Periscope on the history of fundamentalism one of those is pessimism all right for better or worse a premillennial view and in particular a pre-millennial dispensational view um leads one to a spouse that the world's going to get worse unlike post-millennialists would say it's going to get worse and uh there's a literal person's gonna come the Antichrist before the end of time and Christ is not going to return to a triumphant Church he's going to return to a Fallen Earth in which uh havoc and evil are rampant and so dispensationalists have tended to highlight and point out aspects of world events that affirm that view that affirm that things are getting worse right again for better or worse that's what they've Affirmed and that pessimism is intention with an Evangelical view of things especially among American evangelicals that we can save America if we just pray enough if we if we can bring Revival if we can vote for the right president or Congressman we can redeem America and return it to these Christian values allegedly that we had in a previous time that optimism is in tension with this pessimism that's prevalent among a lot of evangelicals this pessimism I think the worst effects of it can be that people are discouraged from doing anything in the world to try to improve the world because they feel like we're on a sinking ship so we should focus if anything we just focus on evangelism saving Souls forget about social justice forget about helping the environment because it's all doomed and I don't think that's a healthy now I'm editorializing I don't think that's a healthy direction um what I would say and here this is my thoughts right I'm giving my opinion what I would say to my fellow dispensationalists I still consider myself in that school uh yes ultimately we believe Christ is going to return to it very troubled Earth I would just uh push back on that by saying we don't know his timeline completely and while we're here we need to live and act redemptively for people here and for the Earth we need to try to bring the kingdom of God to the Earth while we're here as his agents and we don't know for sure just like the folks living in the 1700s didn't know and the people in the early 1800s didn't know God may still bring widespread Revival to society before the end we don't know for sure whether it's going to get better before it gets worse or if it's going to get absolutely you know worse and worse from this day forward dispensationalists are known for their apocalypticism trying to read Bible prophecy into world events whether it's our president or world leaders and those kinds of things I think that's I don't think that's unhealthy but personally I think we need to do that with a loose grip and we need to understand that we have limited knowledge um and we may be right and we may be wrong a lot of dispensationalists got excited in 1948 after World War II when Israel was re-established as an as a nation um because in a premillennial dispensational understanding of the end times it requires Israel to be in existence and to rebuild its Temple and to reinstitute its sacrifices okay that leads me to the other tendency within dispensationalism and that is what would be called Christian Zionism and that is a tendency of Christian evangelicals to support the nation of Israel and um sometimes even sometimes almost in a blind way believing that God has a plan for Israel in the future some Christians especially dispensationalists they sort of give a pass to Israel on the political stage as far as Israel's National decisions the way it treats its neighbors the way it treats the Palestinians who were living in that land before Israel was reconstituted or its neighbors like Syria and Lebanon Etc foreign now I think most dispensational Scholars give a more measured view I know the official statement of Dallas Theological Seminary is that you know we support Israel but we don't give them a pass as far as their actions in the world we still need to evaluate them on the same standard of justice that we do other other nations right so but among I've seen it among non-scholars there is sometimes I think um a blind approval of Israel and their actions and a tendency to frame whatever Israel does just right to give them a more easy evaluation then say you know Palestine or Lebanon and that's that's a movement that's associated with dispensationalism I did what I didn't put here which is maybe even more obvious is that I mentioned is a Fascination among dispensationalists with world events and how those might relate to prophecy there's still prophecy conferences today there's a lot of popular books like Left Behind the Left Behind series um uh people like David Jeremiah John Hagee um you know every year there's a whole new slew of prophetic prophecy books trying to speculate about how world events relate to prophecy I think that could be good I mean there could be good or bad aspects of that as well so um I've shown you the books those are the books I'd recommend if you want to go deeper on this topic that's about all I'm going to share today I wanted to mention one thing coming soon in just a couple weeks I am going to have a um a Christian history mini course for anyone who's interested in just getting a better understanding of the complete history of the church it's going to be a few sessions of webinars not here on Periscope but on another site and I'll be advertising that through my Twitter account and through my site 21centuries.com in the days ahead so if you're interested in learning kind of getting a primer on the complete all 21 centuries all 2000 years of church history be on the lookout for that and I'll say more about it um I'm going to open it up if anyone has any questions I can try to answer those before I sign off if not then I may call it quits does anyone want to ask a question before I'm done about anything I've said dispensationalism or anything else I'll wait because there's a couple second delay all right if I could dance I would dance right now to entertain you while we're waiting but I can't do that all right I don't see any questions coming up so I'm going to sign off again thanks for watching whether you're you're here now or whether you're watching later and uh if you have any other questions you can email me Chris at 21centuries.com uh okay we do have a question how many uh dispensations are there I think in the usual classic dispensational scheme there are seven but there are variations even among Scholars so there's one dispensation from Adam to Noah typically there's another from Noah to Abraham two there's another from Abraham to Moses there's another from Moses to Christ some also see one from Christ to Christ's first coming to a second coming that's five some make the The Seven Year tribulation another and then the Eternal state would be seven I think all of these views by the way whether you're a millennial post-millennial pre-millennial they believe in the Eternal state um thank you thank you very much and that's Michael appreciate that Michael typically I've seen seven dispensations which of course sounds great because seven is a number of completion right which gives it even more appeal but all these all three of these views believe in an eternal State even dispensationalists after the millennium after the literal thousand years of the new Heaven and the new Earth um there's going to be the Eternal state okay I'm gonna sign off thank you again if you have any questions send me an email or comment below this post or video wherever you see this all right God bless um let's keep talking about this stuff let's talk about it in a civil and peaceful way let's seek to understand each other uh before we accuse or call each other names let's talk about this stuff help each other come to a better understanding of it all and let's keep our eyes on the very most important doctrines and things the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes and we need to tell others about it and uh it can save Sinners so on this short time we have on Earth let's use our time wisely and uh yeah sign off there thank you

Channel: Chris Ross

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Length: 48min 27sec (2907 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2016