A History of Dispensationalism

[Music] welcome to christ the center your weekly conversation of reformed theology this is episode number 666 my name is camden busey i'm uh here at the reform forum studio in gray's lake illinois delighted to be back today for a fun conversation an important one i'm sure many of our listeners many of you are going to be interested in this subject and have some familiarity with it even personally but to speak uh on the subject we have with us for the very first time on the program reverend michael glotto who is the associate professor of pastoral theology as well as the dean of the chapel at reformed theological seminary in orlando welcome to the program mike it's good to see you thank you camden it's great to be with you i love uh love the the not just the title but the but the focus of christ the center uh uh i think we have probably a lot of theological relatives in common yeah not just uh systematic but probably biblical theological too so it's a pleasure to be here absolutely oh it's our pleasure we're delighted to meet you kind of in this way this is the pandemic normal way to meet now pretty soon uh and uh we're happy today to be opening up uh a new ish book i've had it for a little while a pre-pub copy i don't know um exactly when it was published to the day but we're taking a look at a chapter from the new book covenant theology biblical theological and historical perspectives which is published by crossway edited by guy prentice waters nicholas reed and john meathers we're very thankful for this book it's tremendous as an enormous amount of contributors all folks you know either professors of i believe or somehow they're in tied to reformed theological seminary in its uh its networks uh but uh our guest today mike glotto has written a chapter titled just simply dispensationalism so we were joking beforehand this is entirely unintentional but in the lord's providence he saw fit to have episodes 666 on dispensationalism and uh we're going to look not just at the system of doctrine known as dispensationalism but looking also at its history and development i think to me that's that's fascinating there's so much there that i would like to know more about and this is what got me so excited about this particular chapter learning not just what dispensational is but its context in american history also its interaction with american presbyterianism if i'm not mistaken started in presbyterianism and then how that has been developing over the years into different stages and variations all the way up to christian zionism and even today with various new covenant theologies and and what we might say for you know progressive covenantalism and things of that sort so if you're interested in topics like this pick up a copy of the book you will not be disappointed i'm i'm working on scheduling interviews with a lot of contributors there are many many excellent chapters and i just haven't even been able to read a third of them yet but uh mike why don't you tell me a little bit about your work down at rts and particularly uh how you you came to contribute this particular chapter to this wonderful book uh glad to camden uh i guess one way of starting is by saying this is the subject on which i probably didn't want to become any kind of authority congratulations and you know you know you know because you're a pastor but sometimes the we don't get to choose what we do because we serve the needs of the church that's sort of my original trajectory uh when i was a seminary student somebody referred to francis schaefer is a prophetic generalist and i said that sounds like a good job description i think i'll do that and and although my original training uh is in old testament i very soon became involved in teaching preaching i spent 10 years at the seminary level teaching gospels as well and so even though now i'm primarily pastoral theology and preaching you know i've come through old testament and new testament and hermeneutics which was the focus of my study at westminster and so there are a lot of roads that meet in not only my background but there are a lot of roads that meet in the demands of pastoral work and i've been one of those academicians who tend to stand more at the intersections of things than being a specialist so that's part of it i guess being a somewhat qualified because dispensational involves it involves hermeneutical issues it involves biblical theological issues involves uh sociological issues indeed yeah um and uh in thinking about talking to you i actually remembered conversation in back in the 90s i was teaching a class in the pentateuch i think it was and progressive dispensationalism had come along and a lot of people in the dispensational tradition were finding that a more compelling explanation of how to read the bible and i said to my class i said you know uh we're gonna talk about dispensationalism but you have to realize that it's the classic or traditional dispensationalism is rapidly losing interest in the academic community and one very thoughtful and polite middle-aged student raised her hand and she said but it's still what everyone in churches believes and i said that's that's right that's exactly right that uh no matter if on the scholarly level there are questions being raised modifications being made people in the pew um take a long time to catch up with that and here we are 25 years later and some of these related issues are actually at play in the newspapers in terms of global affairs and things so when the project of the book on covenant theology was being put together i was asked if i would contribute a chapter because probably of a number of these factors old testament new testament hermeneutics a lot of pastoral and ecclesiastical work i don't think i don't think it was because they knew i had gone forward at a baptist revival to the sound of larry norman's song i wish we'd all been ready [Laughter] did you ever hear that song as a kid no i don't think so definitely not a church classic 1970s life was filled with guns and wars and everyone got trampled on the floor i wish we'd all been ready then there's a chorus two men walking on a hill one disappears and one left standing still i wish we'd all been ready yeah there's no time to change your mind the lord has come and you've been left behind that was i was a covenant child baptized as an infant and i should have just stuck with that but anyway i went forward at a uh at a youth revival to the sound of that song now i mentioned that um because i do want to make clear and i do make that clear in the article that we have a lot in common with uh dispensationalists and we should be thankful for ways in which uh dispensationalists and covenant theologians have stood together have you know the battle for the bible uh the upholding of the historic gospel uh the necessity of personal faith and repentance uh for salvation there's so many so many things that uh we need to make sure people understand that we're appreciative of uh even even as we're kind of launching on a little bit of a critique here and even in my college years or the para church ministry everybody's heard of that also at that time at least was primarily a dispensational brand uh and but yet i mean that that ministry had a pretty helpful impact in my life in terms of helping me be a disciple of christ so uh so my i don't know if ligand duncan uh whoever decided who wrote which chapters knew that i had come to faith through a rapture song but that just adds to my vitae on this subject i like it yeah we all need a new heading there uh you know some sort of uh miscellaneous or whatever i i it's interesting to hear you you speak we've been chatting uh the listeners who know uh even before we hit the record button about some points of biographical intersection in illinois and uh particularly down in southern illinois as as mike went to university of illinois which is not exactly southern illinois but um it's it's further south in chicago and people from chicago think it is and people uh people down south you know wish chicago was its own state and illinois might would probably be better off if it was uh such as life uh here in in illinois the number 50 state in the union um but you know there's a lot of intriguing things going on i mean i i went to bradley university which is in peoria illinois uh central-ish illinois but still north of the capital uh springfield and there uh you know i attended um a a baptist church it was it was very much uh more in the macarthur vein of things many of the professors and the professors some professors many of the the pastors were graduates from the master seminary one was from dallas uh so you get a sense of the feel there but they were dispensationalists but yet absolutely committed to the inerrancy of scripture to expository preaching in a grammatical historical vein but yet they were all five except one all five point calvinists and the one was the dallas guy who was more four-ish you know calvinist so i i cut my teeth there really i grew up in the mainline presbyterian church a conservative one uh but you know that that was calvinist and held to held to the inerrancy of scripture as well a small country church but when i got to college you know i made a lot of friends in the in the campus ministry as well and started to hear all sorts of ideas about things i'd never heard of before you know i had not read uh you know the late great planet earth and i think the left behind series was just coming on the scene or just becoming popular at least hadn't reached my orbit yet and then all of a sudden you know it i'm i'm i'm being asked well don't you know about the rapture don't you know about the millennial kingdom and and all this ordering of things that i i completely foreign to me it's like a different religion and not i'm not saying it is a different religion but you get my point it was so foreign to me that i felt like i felt like what did i i was raised in the church and spent my whole life at the church uh and all of a sudden i never heard about these things was such a shock i'm wondering did you feel the same way when you encountered these things the popularization that happened around mid early 70s was and i don't know the specific catalyst for all that but uh my high school sunday school class in the church i grew up in that at least we spent two years with the teacher talking about the late great planet earth really uh now it was a mainline church where you know expos story study the bible inductive study of the bible wasn't the preferred way of reading the bible but yeah but um one one thing i mentioned in the article is we have to pay attention to sociological factors often when we look at these especially these eschatological shifts norm cohen wrote this uh work on in uh you can help me with the title it's footnote in in the in the article um about the whole millennial phenomenon as a sociological phenomenon and this is certainly true of the origins of dispensationalism uh but i would want to put my mind in terms of this popularization in the 70s i want to try to put my finger on some things you know social upheaval uncertainty certainly coming out of the 60s and the protest movements and then you had the american malaise where things just felt bad you had hyperinflation um and then perhaps too just the the waning voice of mainstream christianity i'm talking about mainline where the preaching of the bible wasn't i mean once you deconstruct the bible with critical methodologies you know what do you say on a sunday morning and the churches that were vital and felt a sense of urgency and so forth you know those tend to be bible focused and by that time so many good bible-focused churches have been depending on say dallas seminary and other similar institutions i've i've heard a story that i think was fairly typical it was told to me as a typical story there's a very well-known presbyterian church in the east it's now pca but back then it was still mainline and the pastor was a sort of a prince of pulpiteers he was a very notable expository preacher and the church was in the united presbyterian church and he would he would tell his young men who wanted to go to seminary who were going to the ministry go to princeton just get your degree just don't argue with anybody and i'll make sure you have a church when you get out so put up with the liberal theology it's just an expedience that same pastor one year when he went to speak at a bible conference when he learned there was an amillennial speaker on the on the agenda he left the conference it wouldn't speak wow so um so within the main within the northern prison church in particular at that time there's a certain pragmatism toward just getting along with the you know tolerating the liberalism we'll get our bible from the bible conferences we'll get our bible from dallas seminary we'll you know we'll depend up upon those conservative institutions and perhaps there was a little bit of a hesitation toward to depend upon the conservative reformed institutions because of the history of tensions you know with the the presbyterian uh splinters of the of the 20th century so and that's what i'm saying the the the the bible conference movement the in in in the in the dispensational institutions became the training ground for a lot of in this case northern presbyterians and so that would that would um uh perhaps explain some of your experience there in peoria yeah yeah yeah one thing was the local pca church uh near where i went to to uh college was you know effort had a history of dispensationalism and used to invite various people to come for these prophecy conferences bruce dunn was the pastor this is all prior to my time but the back in the history looking back i think in the 60s and 70s and then they would invite i think even dwight pentecost and others would come and and and speak on on bible prophecy but this is all within the presbyterian church in america uh you know post uh what is it 73 if i'm not mistaken yeah yes but that but that that always perplexed me so to read your article and to to start to put some of these pieces together is really helpful to me to understand historically and sociologically how some of these things happen i think i think i think there's a good thesis to be done here uh if there's the interest level but at least i was able to figure out some of this connection between southeastern michigan detroit essentially and st louis uh with ingles and darby and then ultimately in st louis you know schofield launches out of there um of course interestingly enough peoria is you know halfway halfway between and my ordination credentials i i have an opc friend by the way um you know the way people refer to their minority friend i have an rpc friend uh some of my best friends are opc people but uh i'm in the epc uh sort of there's a whole story there but um the epc started in 80 81 and i definitely remember encountering churches from the northern presbyterian church that were distinctly dispensational they mean good solid in terms of the proclaiming christ and belief in the inerrancy of scripture and so forth but i realized there was a whole family out there now what i didn't tie in and uh i don't have the background to do it at this point but you know there were certain sympathies even as the rpces the reformed presbyterian church evangelical synod uh with its insistence on pre-millennialism there's certain affinities to dispensationalism within that movement too and when the rpces eventually makes its way into the merger with the pca uh all that's to say even within the pca perhaps at least in a number of years ago you had people who more naturally thought in somewhat dispensational ways my colleague john meather actually has written a piece on this uh it's he's been challenged by my my wonderful history professor will barker on that point but but you certainly have like in the bible presbyterian church even today what i would say is clearly identifiable as dispensationalism uh kissinger's kissinger's survey of the history of interpretation of the sermon on the mount it's a scholarly work uh on the history of interpreting the sermon on the mount the chapter exemplifying dispensationalism his chapter on dispensationalism uses donald gray barnhouse as its exemplar wow and barnhouse was the pastor of the 10th creditor in church philadelphia you know prior to dr boyce so that i remember uh when i ran into that chapter thinking wow there there clearly is a dispensational thread within northern presbyterianism and by the way a great place in the bible to go to sort out whether you are or not a dispensationalism is i think sermon on the mount is a good place to go sure there are other places as well but is that an ethic for the people of god today is it an ethic for a future millennial kingdom um uh when when the church is raptured out of the world yeah i think it'd be useful just to spend a moment to talk a little bit about some of that early history but even back up before that we don't need to get into all the nuts and bolts of the system of dispensationalism i would encourage people to take a look at uh one of our other programs here on reform forum uh theology simply profounded a whole series on dispensationalism rob mckenzie our friend uh walked through that in in a lot of its details so many many hours of material there if you'd like to follow up and i'll include a link to that in the episode description for everyone listening but it would be worth at least you know asking the question about the word itself dispensation or dispensationalism that's become kind of the touchstone for this system but it's certainly not a word that's foreign to us presbyterians in our confession yeah uh it's uh if somebody doesn't read the confession before they become reformed or as they become reformed and then they they start to read through and they uh they find that the confession uses that very word uh in chapter seven paragraph six of the western confession like uh it can be a bit of a crisis so uh and i address that in the article um historically christians have agreed that there are periods in which i identify or distinct periods in which god administers his covenants if you will and that there are changes that take place between those epochs all progressing toward what paul says in galatians 4 5 is the fullness of time and he says elsewhere at the at the right time and so the term itself is not not necessarily revealing and i by the way in terms of resources vern poitras book understanding dispensation is it's just a wonderful book on on the whole subject of of dispensationalism but he goes into this um as does palmer robertson and his book christ the covenants uh it's not the fact that there are dispensations it's uh what what what we mean when we say dispensations so a dispensationalist sees a fundamental degree of discontinuity between these periods of history and in each period of history god deals with his people in a different way and he deals with them based on revelation specific to that period of history so every period every dispensation involves a new offer of god uh in order to to in as to how to relate to him and then a probation if you will of mankind and then inevitably mankind whether it's in the days of adam it's in the days of noah moses abraham ultimately fail until a future time in which god will sovereignly administer his kingdom and overcome people's failings but each period has its own revelation and on that basis dispensationalists and we're talking about traditional dispensationalists not the other movements which you've uh needed to here uh dispensationalists have have traditionally seen that um the the the period that we're now in the church age was unanticipated and not anticipated in the old testament and it is the new revelation that goes with our period of history uh what is most that what is uh fairly unique in in the dispensational scheme at the moment of christ come coming is that um there's a delay of what god would have done had the jewish nation accepted jesus as messiah and so that delay is going to be the until the future kingdom happens through the second coming of jesus so we're in this previously undisclosed period of time which is how they explain the word mystery say is it paul uses it in ephesians i don't think that's the best way to understand that term they say it was something hidden but now it's been revealed because israel rejected jesus so everything hinges upon the rejection of jesus and this is i know we're not getting into hermeneutics yet but to me this presents a tremendous hermeneutical leap because you have the old testament meaning something that it didn't mean until israel rejected jesus and that's that's that runs directly contrary to how the new testament writers treat the old testament yeah when they talk about the it's fuller sense it's it senses plenty or that the significance of scripture seen in the full light of jesus life death burial and resurrection uh it's it's what shines the light back on the full meaning of the old testament and so dispensationalism says you know it would not have meant those things had israel not rejected jesus yeah it's definitely contrary to what you know what we understand in reform biblical theology especially with one of our favorites here gerhardis boss this organic progressive unfolding and development of the old testament into the new we don't see those as a sharp distinction clearly their god is is is revealing himself progressively and in different ages and different times and it's important not only to understand what god has said but when and to whom and how uh but what we find in dispensationalism is is uh this particular type of hermeneutic we can discuss but also an a priori distinction between israel and the church which is right in line with with what you're speaking of there it it just given the categories that are adopted in advance the the old testament simply cannot mean what the reformed church understands it to mean yeah or what the apostles seem to be treating it as or the book of hebrews for example you know and and it's funny you mentioned that camden because the summer before i started seminary i was a bible study was dropped in my lap to lead at the at the church where i was a member and a deacon and for some reason i chose the book of hebrews there you go um and for me when i started learning about reformed theology in general i had been taught we believe what the bible teaches and so when i calvinism reformed theology wasn't that hard for me because it seemed to be pretty obvious and reading through the book of hebrews it seemed to be pretty obvious that the whole old testament was about jesus and in that kind of simple way at that time that i understood it but uh what you what you you you said ah priori and i think that's very important to understand in the beginning of the article i pick up on something that both robertson and poytheist poythers mentioned and um particularly poetry's if you're trying to talk to somebody about dispensationalism you're trading views respectfully and terribly sure yeah that you can often feel like you're picking at bricks on a wall but there's no cracks developing and dispensationalism is a very tightly developed system that if you it's like is it jenga will you pull out exactly right yeah yeah so you can pull out a lot of pieces but it doesn't destabilize the system because it's so tightly interrelated and um and and but but ultimately it is if you really continue to examine it everything depends upon this robertson used the word existential commitment uh this ah priori that israel and the church are two different entities that god continues a plan for each and we read the whole bible from that perspective and uh [Music] if you read the bible without that a priori um you don't you don't see that you know um you re you alluded to voss and we all probably familiar with vos's analogy of the acorn you know from acorn to oak tree if you do a 23andme test is that the right that works you know if you do a 23andme on the oak tree and the acorn it's going to come back as being identical right and so revelation is organic the same story that begins not just in genesis uh three because we know that eschatology precedes zoterology speaking my language anyway the story that begins in genesis 1 even uh is the same story that finds its realization at conclusion at the end of revelation so there's the organic character of scripture now what's hard having a conversation with someone is dispensationalism really rests heavily on proof texts and while covenant theology has its proof texts it's also an organic picture so you can't you don't get covenant theology by just looking at the pixels you get covenant theology by looking at the portrait right and that's not adding something on because the pixels make the portrait indeed but it's a and vos you'll know the section i'm talking about in the very beginning he he says the advantage of this kind of redemptive historical reading of the bible it it it frees us from an atomistic approach to interpretation so that interpretation is not simply the addition of word meanings into a total meaning but rather interpretation is the bible's a book of literature it's not it's not a it's not it's not the human genome you know it's not the periodic table and um honestly you know different people their brains work different ways and and especially in a and the modern age probably was necessary to give birth to dispensationalism because of the of the pitch toward more scientific atomistic you know empiricistic kind of thinking um so um just don't don't for your listeners don't get frustrated if you're having a conversation with a dispensational brother or sister you find out you're not making much headway right uh because the system does cohere and it takes a while to and by the way if you're if you have dispensational friends listening here we love you so i'm trying to deconstruct you but i guess we kind of are but um it does tightly cohere and uh and the reformed approach to the the redemptive historical approach is a more organic way of reading the bible i had a long-suffering pastor those three four years when uh i was attending this baptist church and he would meet with me for breakfast every wednesday morning and i'm so indebted to him and thankful for that but he was coming from a dispensational perspective and i was rustling through this so i'm i'm truly amazed that he had breakfast with me so frequently because i must have been just terribly precocious and just hammering on all these issues because i struggled with him i just did i didn't see it and we'd go back and forth and back and forth but i felt that very same thing you know you could you could go text by text and there are there are answers retorts other texts it it does hold together on its own terms you have to get deeper to these these foundations to talk hermeneutics to talk ecclesiology one thing that was helpful for me in our conversation eventually and there never was a real good answer to this but it's in romans 11 which talked about uh the natural branches and the unnatural branches but at the end of the day how many trees are in this metaphor there's only one tree and the root of it is christ so the question is how how we are connected to one another and this that raises a whole host of other issues in the than the typical response about replacement theology where you're getting away or you you hate israel you hate the jews because you replace them with gentiles which are unfair conversations but at the end of the day i i love my you know my dispensational brothers and sisters and and i admire them because of their unwavering commitment to god's word and we can have differences on how to interpret that and some of them very significant differences but i'm thankful for the commitment to scripture and if we can if we can just if that's our problem we can stand on the same foundation that this is god's inerrant infallible word and what he has said is the case and we need to live according to it let's you know i'll take that any day because the good dispensationalists will say show me from the bible amen amen yeah um and and you know uh you know this probably but you know in the in the when the evangelical theological society formed that is the scholarly society of bible-believing scholars bible affirming scholars it was dispensational and reformed people uh including i think of uh you know somebody like harold hohner from dallas seminary yeah new testament professor and dear friends with simon kistamacher who was my senior colleague and taught at rts stonehouse stonehouse is one of the co-founders from westminster that's another yeah um and yeah they all were working together and they recognized when they needed to pull together and have their have their disagreements uh if i could you said replacement and we need to get to that of course um because i think it does to me it's one of the more compelling pictures biblically if if the dispensations will just kind of listen to this i think it could help so it's often said of reform and here of course i mean hermeneutically reformed because we recognize many dispensationalist brothers and sisters are reformed in their sociology so when i say reformed i mean hermeneutically reformed uh redemptive historical um some it is often a a alleged that the reformed person believes in replacement theology that israel is replaced by the church and then when you put it that way how could god simply abandon his promises to israel and and and replace them and um yeah and maybe he'll replace us you know that's the thought well yeah yeah uh how are we to know the future way the church is going now you know but um well they take it as an affront against god's faithfulness that god is a liar that god that's how that's how it's received and we you know god all of god's promises are yes in christ and he didn't throw any of his promises out now dispensationalists plead with reformed people not to misrepresent their views on say the mosaic covenant was a merit-based covenant you know schofield said that in the first bible and they changed it and and they they get understandably upset if people still represent that as a dispensational view so it's really important in reverse for dispensationalists not to misrepresent reformed views replacement theology is not what any reformed person believes that i've read think of it this way abram looked at the stars abram looked at the sand of the sea and if he had had enough foresight and faith at that moment he would have said to himself you know one day we we jews are going to be a minority in this thing because the whole nations are going to be blessed through him yeah if you read the the closing chapters of isaiah where the return from exiles happened you've got egyptians and babylon running alongside jews saying can we go back with i mean there's an expectation that if god keeps his promises to israel the ones he made to abraham that one day jews would be a minority among the followers of god so what happens in the gospels jesus comes first to the house of israel as has been the history over the whole old testament it's only a remnant who really truly trusts in the lord and so jesus and there are multiple peril parables which reinforce this one one of the most clear is the parable of the vineyard yes absolutely yeah so the stewards of israel the official leaders not only progressively reject the prophetic message but they end up saying if we kill the sun we'll own the vineyard and in one of the gospels jesus actually has the crowd pronounced sentence it's brilliant uh rhetorically but he says this vineyard is going to be taken away from those wicked tenants and given to others who will produce the fruit in in keeping with uh god's god's desired god's purposes okay who were the first followers of jesus they were jews so you have this remnant of jesus himself being the remnant in a person but then his followers his jewish followers and pretty soon what's happening well gentiles are pushing their way in in fact in john's gospel it's the coming of the greeks that trigger the hour of glorification where jesus said is now's the time you know for for me to go to the cross so all that happens in the gospels and all that comes out of that in the rest of the new testament is just the natural outworking what god promised to israel the only thing missing is what the land so that's we can talk about that as a separate thing if we have time but but look it's a perfectly natural organic process and you mentioned romans 11 that's what it's talking about right you have this vine and we know the vine is jesus and we know that branches are cut off those are the particularly the official leaders of israel the religious leaders who rejected him uh we have wild branches grafted in and some branches that are cut off can be re-grafted into the new testament overwhelmingly speaks of being jewish as something based not on ethnicity but on faith in christ right so uh it really takes a lot it takes something very material and substantial to go back and reread all that and come up with an israel church distinction uh if you're reading the gospels in in my in my view no i agree in in mine as well i mean there there also is this tendency uh to to read things in that this is the not the most precise of language but what what is said to be the literal meaning of the text or the the plain reading of the text it's not that simple because jesus also says i'm the door of the sheep and i've never met a dispensationalist who thought jesus was literally a door um but the plane meaning you know they when they see prophecies and promises given to the nation of israel when it talks about a temple they they will frequently demand that these things would come true in in the straightforward meaning not a metaphorical meaning that there literally will be a temple rebuilt the land will be the precise land of this geographic dimensions in the middle east that are described and etc and to find the ultimate fulfillment of these things in the person of christ even even when the bible says certain things are fulfilled in christ as in jesus was speaking about his body when he was talking about rebuilding the temple rebuilding the temple exactly there still needs to be the the kind of word for word literal fulfillment that you see in the old testament otherwise god is not faithful to his covenant people and and vern poitras is really good in his book on this he gives several examples of how even though dispensationalists insist on the literal or plain meaning that they're they're not consistent in how they do that and even to the point of dividing verses where one verse applies to the church one verse applies to israel uh i wasn't allowed to keep it in the article and it probably shouldn't have been but a funny story along these lines we could say it here we had a notable i'm not going to give names we had a very notable progressive dispensationalist come and speak give lectures on our campus back in the 90s it was a good time he spoke well of his uh of the emerging at that time progressive dispensationalism and i asked a question because you know i i went to westminster when the literary and approach to scripture was uh was very strong and it occurred to me so i asked the question and i actually find it i found a documented quote for the article here increasingly increasing literary awareness of the increasing awareness of the literary nature of the old testament had an impact on dispensationalists who became progressive disciplines sure and so i asked this uh very fine scholar i asked him that question i said has a literary approach that's become pretty strong among conservatives now did has that helped foster progress dispensationalism well he knew where i was going he said well he said if ezekiel said a temple i have to believe him in a temple and he was teaching at a very notable dispensational institution at the time and if you know me my personality wouldn't be surprised that i said to him well i know you have to believe that but you know he uh he kind of he didn't appreciate the humor sure because if he had given up on some of those fundamentals uh he probably would have been looking for he would have found a job he's a good scholar but yeah there are certain things and i was looking for a sociological term i i thought it was a reification but it's it's that's not the right word uh but one one term that might fit is vestigial there are certain vestigial beliefs even when larger pieces start to fall there's certain features that hang on even though the reasons for those features yeah um aren't necessarily still in place and i think that's one and for your listeners if they've never read edmond clowney's article called the final temple from uh the journal of the evangelical theological society uh uh back in the maybe early 80s late 70s it's just wonderful on this and i i don't mean to be uh cute because i don't think he means to be cute when he says it but i'm paraphrasing him if after jesus meets the woman at the well and says essentially no longer on gerizim no longer in jerusalem but everyone will worship in the spirit uh and you have to connect that back to what he was saying in chapter two about him being the temple jesus is the temple now present among us in the spirit he said if you're talking about sending jewish people back to a stone temple it in my words now it's like sending them to the back of the bus that's right once you've worshipped in the resurrected the spirit of the resurrected christ to then relegate a portion of god's people to back to its own temple is a regression it's not a progression of of salvation and that seems to be what the author of hebrews is castigating or warning warning the people of old covenant believers who have been brought into the new covenant but seemingly want to go back to the old they like the modes and methods of old covenant worship he said this is this is a re-sacrificing of christ in my understanding of that it's because the old testament organically gave birth to and brought about christ and if you don't like the christ you got you can't rewind the clock and ask for a different one i mean this this is naturally what we receive and we couldn't get anything better than that he's the ultimate well said i mean in in in hebrews leads toward that that chapter there in 12 where we have come to zion we have come to um the city of god the myriad of angels uh to a kingdom which cannot be shaken yeah and dispensationalists traditional dispensationalists believe we're not in the kingdom promised david yet david is not on his throne yet well hebrews 12 says we've come to a kingdom which cannot be shaken but all um all these things that were promised to earthly israel we're told in hebrews 12 now we've come in because christ himself has entered in we're there now and to say i want to go back is to it's like well that's what you're suggesting right it's like going back to egypt once you've been exactly that's exactly the point that's the illustration he says yeah yeah that's this is this is so helpful i think people are going to really appreciate this i'm curious if we can walk through a little bit of the history and the development of of the movement we go back to uh john nelson darby whose dates are 1800 to 1882. he was effectively the founder of the system known as dispensationalism but then we quickly move on to some other figures inglis and schofield and we get to dallas theological seminary i'm wondering if you might be able to provide a bit of a thumbnail sketch and even with the sociological and cultural context in view how did how did this arise what gave what allowed it to to to come to shape and then you know why how and why has it been mutating so great over the years and i'll go full thumbnail on you here camden so we can make sure we cover everything well i got nowhere to go but i want to be respectful of your time as well i won't get out of control but you know darby sees the uh kind of late industrial post-millennial kind of situation uh of of the of britain uh with uh you know the the the crown is the head of the church and uh nominalism and then you have the inroads of higher criticism in the biblical studies and i think was bonhoeffer who said when religion becomes civil it stops being either and so darby sees you know this this this nominalism that is not what the new testament or what the bible describes as being a follower of christ and so and and and you have the social upheaval that creates a lot of uncertainty just like right now you know people like is the world i remember the 70s you know and people felt the same way then what's going on it's a little bit unnerving so he stiff arms the uh the official church eventually renounces his uh ordination and and and and he perceives in the bible this dualism between earthlings and and and heavenliness which uh sets him on this hermeneutical path um to um both make sure the church understands its other worldliness and to rest upon the literal teaching of scripture because higher criticism liberalism in general uh is not taking the bible seriously anymore now james inglis is sort of a go-between between britain and the states where he brings darby's teaching to the states but he's as a more appreciative of american denominational loyalties and so he's um he's he's wanting to uh distance what he's saying from darby's uh sectarianism um schizomatic kind of nature but um but as we've been talking about earlier in the in particular in the northern presbyterian church where uh the authority of the scripture is declining and traditional theological views are declining it's almost like a back to the bible kind of movement and he started the prophecy movement didn't he was he also involved in various publications in in how he proliferated these ideas yeah so you have the beginning and parachurch essentially right i see um and this would be a great kind of side lesson too like letting the church teach us instead of taking the church's teaching under advisement and getting our theology from itinerant people who yeah that's a huge issue with the old school and new school and all that going on and that probably explains too because moody is not a presbyterian moody is an armenian but you know he's uh continuing the new measures of finney and you know revivalism and um and and and and finds the other worldliness of dispensationalism uh a compelling system and so um so that would explain how dispensationalism permeates the sort of the non-denom bible church independent church movement but english who has st louis connections there's a pastor in st louis named brooks there's a man who uh comes to faith and is attending that church in st louis named schofield and so you can see kind of the chain developing from uh inglis who's based i guess in southeastern michigan but has a st louis connection and through brooks and the presbyterian church there in saint louis a northern presbytery interesting st louis is the frontier between the northern and southern presbyterian church and and while the southern presbyterians have great issue with dispensationalism st louis is an interesting place because there's a you know the two denominations are about it against one another scofield is the popularizer and it's i guess if there's one lesson you know we can take away from this you know and it goes back to finney as well there are certain people who see the opportunity to popularize and they know how to do it they know how to get the goods to market so to speak the prophecy conference is one of those vehicles and uh and and and schofield's study bible of course is the yes if you can get your notes right there right connected to the very you know word of god i mean that right that uh impacted and shaped just generations of christians and i don't know if schofield knew about the geneva bible but the reformers understood the value of of of having theological notes alongside to help the reader so schofield's bible and his comp and the prophecy conferences uh proliferate dispensationalism and the social conditions of america continue to feed the angst uh that uh makes it all plausible now it's interesting uh real quick even on the scofield reference bible to consider you can track a little bit of the movement or the development of of dispensationalism itself just through the editions of the scofield bible correct yeah you can look at things that were eliminated and see how maybe some of the sharp edges were were softened a little in palmer robertson's chapter in christ the covenants actually gives the references one particular one that is very informative is um in the context of of genesis um i don't have the ready reference here but um i think it might be 12 12 1. genesis 12. yeah uh schofield refers to exodus 19. so in genesis 12 you have god making the promised abram totally gracious totally unilateral all abraham has to do is trust the lord and act according to faith in exodus 19 israel is at the foot of mount sinai and god offers israel the law and israel's response is all that you've spoken we will do and scofield in that very first edition of the study bible describes israel as having rationally accepted the terms of the mosaic covenant and in doing so they went from being under a gracious arrangement with god to a works based right meritorious workspace arrangement with god and uh he's has another note elsewhere which might kind of soften that a little bit but it's very stark the way it says it and i think a lot of people probably still read the old testament that way abraham good moses bad abraham under grace moses is law and there are passages including in the new testament including like romans 7 that might mis if not read uh clearly could could lend itself to that the law came and it would paul says i didn't know about sin until the law came and uh but and i'm sure you've done programs on what paul means by the word law very uh very contentious or a lot of different views on that chapter but but here's here's the easy thing in terms of of exodus 19 israel was under grace when god gave them the law he had already delivered them from the house of bondage they were already a kingdom of priests and a holy nation uh deuteronomy 7 says the lord loved you not because you were greatest among the nations but because the lord loved you you almost see ephesians 1 right there you know god's good pleasure to graciously set his affection on israel and israel their whole sacrificial system was the means by which they could continue to live under grace and god's patience over let's see from 1450 until you know 586 god's patience with israel's continued covenant breaking and giving him opportunity after opportunity uh the it's impossible to read the mosaic covenant as a replacement of the abrahamic covenant if you if you read the the data uh fairly uh but that's how scofield clearly saw at the beginning and that's how even though that comment was removed in the second edition i i mentioned in the article ways in which that impression continues to be upheld now we don't want to say dispensationalists believe that salvation by works was how people were saved under the mosaic covenant much less saved that way today but but that can is it prejudice too strong a word or a prejudicial reading of the mosaic law sees the the the period of moses that's antithetical to the period of christ oh i think i think that's that's definitely the case uh in yeah just to just to summarize i mean the classic dispensationalism would say that israel was better off under abraham and messed up they should have held out for a better contract or something yeah or just decline the offer decline the offer and just stick with what they have and how that doesn't impinge upon god's character is also you know another problem i mean and the new testament tells us you know uh that even when they drank the water in the wilderness they drank christ when they were about when they went through the sea they were baptized into christ and and and jesus isn't the true bread because moses gave them false bread jesus is the true bread because he is the full fullness of what the bread moses gave was to point towards so moses was a servant in god's house and christ is faithful as a son i mean that's but it's the same house he was a servant in the house yes he wasn't an enemy of god but um and this is a a real problem with i'd say the majority of evangelicals who are antinomian today that they don't see the old testament laws having anything to do with the christian life today uh they don't see the grace of the law or uh another subject for another day the law is a rule of gratitude i mean the law preaches christ and all his fullness that passover lamb the perfect specimen that died in the place of the firstborn on that night i mean that's not the gospel um and uh the priest who stood ministering before the lord with the names of israel on his uniform that's not the gospel yes the law of moses makes us realize how far short of god's will we fall but it doesn't introduce the illness it just gives us the diagnosis in a way that and on the other side too and i mentioned this in the article uh it is wrong to see the abrahamic covenant as not as unconditional in the sense that there were conditions attached to the abrahamic covenant it was to believe the lord genesis 18 uh god says you know if if uh if if you if you trust in me then i'll fulfill my promises genesis 26 to isaac abra i blessed abraham because he obeyed my statutes law commandments and ordinances you know uh faith and obedience are never disconnected even though they're discreet right and so the overplaying of the unconditionality of the abrahamic covenant and the over emphasizing of the conditionality the mosaic creates this perception that they're they don't have much to do with each other whereas one they're actually organically the development of one of the same covenant perhaps that might play into how there can be such a disconnect between israel and the church even in in the millennial period where the church has to be removed through the rapture so that god may resume his his plans and purposes with ethnic israel and then how even these two groups of people might remain in distinct realms or at least distinct areas or purposes even on into the new heavens and the new earth that perhaps that helps with the fertilizing the soil as it were yeah i think that's a good observation yeah i'm wondering uh you know things progressed with with dallas theological seminary think of schaefer and walvard and pentecost i mentioned pentecost earlier dwight pentecost i'm curious about uh ryrie and then moving on into the the presbyterian tradition just out of on my own personal history i wonder if you could help me on some of this because it's interesting to think how especially in the north uh the northern presbyterian churches several of them you know gravitated this way as something of a remedy to liberalism rather than going you know maybe toward the areas that other more conservative denominations went such as the orthodox presbyterian church but how how did this come about even sociologically speaking that these that these that this the dispensationalism continued to grow and even flourish in certain quarters of presbyterianism um one thing i think is uh explains that is and i put it this way there's a reason there's never been an amillennial movie um it would be boring compared to uh and by that i mean right dispensationalism dispensationalism with its end times structures is a very dramatic uh suspenseful kind of a narrative that appeals to the heightened watchfulness of people during uncertain times and i don't mean to dismiss it all to sociological and psychological uh factors but uh you know there were the the ten virgins who were to keep their lamps trimmed uh you know there's a certain watch on this you know the the coming lord we look like a thief in the night and and uh the suddenness of christ appearing and then the importance of being ready and there is there you know there's there's a continuum of dispensational primal all the way through post-millennial and it's a matter of degrees all within there are more optimistic all males who probably don't perceive the antithesis between the kingdom of christ and the kingdom of this world there are more pessimistic almails who feel something more of the urgency of that antithesis and um uh i think probably during this time mains the mainline churches are probably predominantly almil and post mill which doesn't quite create that sense of urgency whereas the post the premium eschatology does uh touch on that sense of urgency that's one thing um the the the marketing brilliance if you will of the popularizers whether it's scofield uh or lindsay's late great planet earth we shouldn't leave out ryrie study bible because you know charles robbery study bible was the go to study bible of the 70s and 80s yeah before the new geneva became available and the jerry jenkins left behind series books well there was even the movie thief in the night i saw in a theater when i was probably i don't know early teens so that's certainly one factor um the relative disconnect between the law and faith that was amenable to revivalism conversionism decisionism you know the the crusades of the 50s 60s and 70s the big evangelical crusades that put the emphasis on the decision rather than on discipleship um those are some factors that come to mind are there others that i'm missing that are softballs uh you're you're throwing me candy not that i think of i mean these are this is enlightening to me i'm curious if you've seen any any any movement on this or if you can uh wade into the prophetic waters yourself and and and see the trajectory of dispensationalism especially you know more in recent eras we've seen uh you know movements like christian zionism but now progressive dispensationalism and the new covenant theology and progressive covenantalism is that the end of the road uh is there going to be some sort of further development where are we now and where might we be in 10 years um the one obstacle and i just had a conversation with a woman last week on this she was totally open to me describing some of these things to her she says now i still is a very sincere you know state i still struggle with you know how if god promised israel the land how could that not still be in play and so i do try to answer that briefly in the article um bruce walkey use uses an analogy uh i'm not getting it precisely right but if i promised you 50 and then later i said here's a thousand dollars you would not say to me where's my 50. and he uses that as analogy god promised a land to israel the language of land is inheritance when you come to the new testament it never talks about land but it does use the word inheritance certainly an inheritance is always with reference to christ himself the fullness of the godhead and all that is christ in other words the the inheritance of the believer in christ is god and we have a down payment by the way in the holy spirit which is ephesians 1. so to to look to the land as fulfillment of that when inheritance now has been directed toward god in his fullness is uh is is uh almost trivializing what what the new testament tells us another good part of the answer to this question is the land is answered in new heavens and earth and amen yeah anthony hokema's book the bible in the future has a good treatment of that so it's not that reformed people ignore the land but they say it's more than uh what did belinda carlisle saying heaven is a place on earth it's it's the whole earth is going to be god's territory um so that's one thing the land thing has to be answered credibly and sincerely secondly the the any the future of of jewish people and you and i know this that you know the romans 11 language of then all israel shall be saved that can be understood as being jews and gentiles as we know them now or it can as john murray understood it to refer to some future stirring up of of of jewish people to reclaim the promises that were theirs but which um uh they through those who rejected messiah uh failed to embrace so those two things now um you mentioned christian zionism this is a this is a bit of a sticky thing because christian zionism is the view that that christians have a moral spiritual obligation to support the nation of israel today that 1948 was the fulfillment of of prophecy and that god will in and through the modern state of israel established the messianic kingdom uh in jerusalem on mount zion um james jordan and i mentioned in the article there james jordan points out there's a real inconsistency with that that belief because according to classic dispensationalism the restoration of israel and and and and the rebuilding of the temple all these things happen after the church is out of the world it's not something that's happened that's going to happen while while the church is present christian church is present that efforts to anticipate the second coming go against the plain teaching of scripture because the the lord will come unexpectedly so the christian zionism which is probably the most powerful form of dispensational he actually has an internal contradiction to dispensationalism but i think the reason it's so appealing is that it appeals to christian nationalism there's this sense that america is an exceptional nation and we need to be sure to say the providences of god toward america have been extraordinary as if all providences are not but and so we identify with israel as an elect people we identify or we see reflected our own national experience now we're feeling tensions right now because for some people america has not been an exceptional experience over over time especially but this christian nationalism uh is really hard to chip away at because it threatens again people's security and um it it it feels like a bit of a threat to uh to try to say we should treat israel as good statecraft that's diplomatic work would treat them by the way the only functioning democracy in the whole region there's all kinds of good reasons to be a friend of israel but it does help us kind of gloss over the the the downside again i mentioned this in the article some of america's policies where israel have actually been the hardest on christians in the middle east i remember meeting a friend who was from bethlehem and he had an arab name and i said so when did you become a christian he said my family's been christians for a thousand years he grew up in bethlehem which in which is in the palestinian territory which has been embargoed it's been life is very hard there um christians in the orthodox and and you know the the syria iraq and those regions life has been very hard because of some of american foreign policy this is not easy stuff and it's it's almost like a third rail though if you start to talk about america holding israel accountable on a policy level it immediately you know he invokes the you know the penalty flag of supporting you know i will bless those who bless you god said to abram absolutely and i even mentioned the article one news story in which a currently serving government official has cited dispensational theology as a basis for american national policy so this is not pie in the sky stuff um and i'll mention along with that the the ability of politicians across the spectrum to know what they need to say to get different people's votes and this is my personal view it's not the view of my institution it's my personal view because i've known this going back 30 years of key political strategists talking in these terms we know what we need to say in order to get evangelical christians to vote for us and and yet um we have to if we look at the old testament law and see what is what is christian behavior like it doesn't always match up with the actual real world actions of of and i'm talking about politicians of every stripe so we need to be sly serpents innocent as doves and no uh know the times as it was said of the sons of izakar wow it's it's uh interesting to see all of the developments here and and who wouldn't think of it initially but just how influential dispensationalism has been and continues to be even in even in american politics i mean it's all over the place and who would have thought that uh from this this uh british guy back in the 19th century that they would have such a wide-ranging influence you asked me about these other developments you have progressive dispensationalism that said the people of god are one people the plan of god is one plan that was revolutionary and charles ryrie in his book dispensationalism today pretty much says those aren't dispensationalists anymore and the fact that they call themselves progressive dispensationalists doesn't mean they're just getting with the times progressive it means they see a progressively unfolding plan in the scriptures there's a separate chapter on that in the covenant theology book there's another development that's come on the heel uh sort of on the heels of that called new covenant theology which doesn't insist on a separate program for israel and and and and yet still resists the full degree full level of continuity between the old and new testaments that the reform of you takes there's a separate article in new covenant theology right but um it's like the the proverb of xena on the greek you know greek philosophy said uh you know you can never get anywhere because once you go halfway you still have halfway to go and i think honestly if somebody would step back and say why are these modifications happening from classic dispensationalism to progressive dispensationalism to new covenant theology and now there's something called progressive covenantalism like it just continues to move toward more and more perceived continuity and and one thing that's helping this is actually seeing how pre-reformation people read the bible for a thousand fifteen hundred years um the one thing that still remains i think that's gonna that's still holding people back is this idea of regenerate church membership which you can talk about about sacraments but but it is encouraging to see the the increasing degree of continuity people are seeing between the new testament and the old testament uh because of of of all things it can it it it enables us to preach the gospel from the old testament and it's not just the old testament was like the gospel and and and you'll you'll this is probably one of your theme verses at christ the center but you know when they when they when they drank from the rock paul says in uh in first corinthians 10 and when they ate the bread and when they were baptized and see they they drank christ himself and this was of course edmond clowney's wonderful uh exposition in the unfolding mystery that it wasn't just some things that were like christ the shadows and types of the old testament were just not only not like christ but they were the presence of christ before the incarnation yeah means of grace and uh yeah and so we preach the gospel from the whole bible just like the apostles did not just from the new testament amen i think that's a useful thing to think about especially we mentioned earlier the confession of faith chapter seven but you look at chapter seven section five and then chapter eight section six talk exactly about those things which are which are key differences uh on certain points with dispensationalism it's been tremendous to think about this and our approach to scripture helps us all to become i think a little bit more self-critical and think about our own presuppositions for minutically speaking but also theologically and to think about the ways in which sociology and psychology might influence our our or our theological choices as well but this has been really useful i'd encourage people to take a look at the book uh covenant theology biblical theological and historical perspectives i'll put a link to that in the episode description and particularly this chapter dispensationalism by your guest today michael glotto mike it's been a pleasure thanks for joining me today camden thank you so much god bless you and god bless your listeners absolutely uh take a look at rts you can look at the orlando campus but the whole system over at rts.edu lots of good going on there and you can stay tuned we're going to have a lot more conversations i hope with people speaking about different chapters within this book and we're online at reformedforum.org where you'll find information about all of our programs and events and online courses all that fun stuff i want to thank everybody for listening we hope you join us again next time on christ the center you

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Published: Thu Oct 01 2020