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hello all...a question for you: Is Dispensationalism a valid way to interpret scripture? Or is it "too new to be true"? What do you think? This seems to be the province of evangelicals at Dallas Theological Seminary & the A.G. church. This thinking has spread into a hundred books about the Rapture and Armageddon. So how about it? I am trying to gather opinions. For my opinion, see the videos at: [url]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqes76eRvG3wF8laIS-JzYg[/url]
Take a look. They are all short & informative, and more are coming.
hello all...a question for you: Is Dispensationalism a valid way to interpret scripture? Or is it "too new to be true"? What do you think? This seems to be the province of evangelicals at Dallas Theological Seminary & the A.G. church. This thinking has spread into a hundred books about the Rapture and Armageddon. So how about it? I am trying to gather opinions. For my opinion, see the videos at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqe...G3wF8laIS-JzYg
Take a look. They are all short & informative, and more are coming.
I accept it as valid. If you understand that Israel was under the law and that the church is not, you are a dispensationalist whether you realize it or not.
The word dispensation, used in the King James, is translated from the Greek word oikonomia which is used in 1 Cor. 9:17 and Eph. 1:10 to refer to a stewardship or an administration. Dispensations have to do with the way God deals with certain groups of people at certain times in human history. God deals differently with the church then He did with Israel, and with how He dealt with the Gentiles before Israel. It also has to do with how God will deal with man during the Millennial kingdom. Each dispensation has certain things which are unique to it. One difference between Israel and the church is that in the dispensation of Israel, to be a priest, one had to be a male of the tribe of Levi. But in the dispensation of the church every believer, male or female, is a priest. Another difference between the church and Israel is that in the dispensation of Israel only a very few believers were endued with the Holy Spirit, and the enduement of the Spirit could be removed once the purpose for the enduement was completed, or because of disobedience. The builders of the temple for example were endued with the Spirit for the completion of that task. But in the dispensation of the church every believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and though the filling of the Spirit which is different from the filling of the Spirit is lost when you sin, and restored when you confess the sin to God, the indwelling of the Spirit is never lost.
These are some of the differences between the dispensations or administrations.
Last edited by Michael Way; 06-29-2019 at 08:38 PM..
After 40+ years of Protestantism, I eventually got tired of the mental exercises and the new revelations coming along every so often. They’re had to be a baseline and authority somewhere far beyond a modern lone person with a Bible. Christianity has been around for 2000 years, and the Bible almost as long... which is key to my line of thinking.
Nowadays, I no longer feel like neither I, or the preacher at church “x”, has to reinvent the wheel to “keep up” with the times and find brand-spanking-new things in a book 2000 years old.
This issue and many others were hammered out and agreed upon through a conciliar process years ago by people much smarter and wiser than me.
Those are the ones I look to for answers to these questions. I could read the Bible left-right, up-down, side-to-side, and through the algorithms of a computer, but really there’s no need to go beyond the community that decided what books would actually be in the Biblical cannon in order to interpret the scripture they themselves passed on to us.
The Eastern Orthodox (who I align with mostly, yet not in a position to convert due to logistical issues) and what would become the Roman Catholic Church, do not accept the premillennial doctrine, and that’s good enough for me.
There is view that dispensations is the conditions which God will put of man to view His condition for a judgment ,.......... Like a first dispensation from Adam to the Cross of Christ was the conditions were the devil and his hoards had spiritual authority over and God had very limited authority over .......Then the second dispensation was from the cross of Christ to the collapse of the antichrist where God gave the power of the grace of God to the saints for victory, and the devil was a defeated foe but still was there .................Then the third dispensation was the devil was removed from the earth and man is there in a sinless existence to thousand years where sin and the devil comes back in the end of time ,,, then the final judgment of God creation
hello all...a question for you: Is Dispensationalism a valid way to interpret scripture? Or is it "too new to be true"? What do you think? This seems to be the province of evangelicals at Dallas Theological Seminary & the A.G. church. This thinking has spread into a hundred books about the Rapture and Armageddon. So how about it? I am trying to gather opinions. For my opinion, see the videos at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqe...G3wF8laIS-JzYg
Take a look. They are all short & informative, and more are coming.
A.G. Church? Do you mean Assembly of God? If so, the Pentecostal denominations would hardly be called Dispensationalists as one of the hallmarks of dispensaltional theology is that the gifts of the Spirit were for the dispensation of the new church before the canon of scripture. The Assemblies most definitely believe in the operation of the gifts of the Spirit for today.
A.G. Church? Do you mean Assembly of God? If so, the Pentecostal denominations would hardly be called Dispensationalists as one of the hallmarks of dispensaltional theology is that the gifts of the Spirit were for the dispensation of the new church before the canon of scripture. The Assemblies most definitely believe in the operation of the gifts of the Spirit for today.
After 40+ years of Protestantism, I eventually got tired of the mental exercises and the new revelations coming along every so often. They’re had to be a baseline and authority somewhere far beyond a modern lone person with a Bible. Christianity has been around for 2000 years, and the Bible almost as long... which is key to my line of thinking.
Nowadays, I no longer feel like neither I, or the preacher at church “x”, has to reinvent the wheel to “keep up” with the times and find brand-spanking-new things in a book 2000 years old.
This issue and many others were hammered out and agreed upon through a conciliar process years ago by people much smarter and wiser than me.
Those are the ones I look to for answers to these questions. I could read the Bible left-right, up-down, side-to-side, and through the algorithms of a computer, but really there’s no need to go beyond the community that decided what books would actually be in the Biblical cannon in order to interpret the scripture they themselves passed on to us.
The Eastern Orthodox (who I align with mostly, yet not in a position to convert due to logistical issues) and what would become the Roman Catholic Church, do not accept the premillennial doctrine, and that’s good enough for me.
Interesting; dump Sola Scriptura for the authority of the Church (whichever denomination seems most likely to you). It's a start. Now look into what Jesus promised for our "guide," and consider how you might be able to determine that it is happening. Have you ever noticed that proponents of both sources of authority claim that their deliberations are guided by the Spirit, but neither tells you why you should think so other than their declaration that they are.
Just for fun, what do you think of Paul's list of "the fruit of the Spirit?"
hello all...a question for you: Is Dispensationalism a valid way to interpret scripture? Or is it "too new to be true"? What do you think? This seems to be the province of evangelicals at Dallas Theological Seminary & the A.G. church. This thinking has spread into a hundred books about the Rapture and Armageddon. So how about it? I am trying to gather opinions. For my opinion, see the videos at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqe...G3wF8laIS-JzYg
Take a look. They are all short & informative, and more are coming.
Valid? Yes. I lean more toward Covenentalism, though.
Interesting; dump Sola Scriptura for the authority of the Church (whichever denomination seems most likely to you). It's a start. Now look into what Jesus promised for our "guide," and consider how you might be able to determine that it is happening. Have you ever noticed that proponents of both sources of authority claim that their deliberations are guided by the Spirit, but neither tells you why you should think so other than their declaration that they are.
Just for fun, what do you think of Paul's list of "the fruit of the Spirit?"
Sola Scriptura was easy to walk away from. Nothing about it adds up.
The authority of the church took a little more time. All I’ll say to that is I don’t believe the Orthodox to be just another denomination as viewed in the Protestant world. They can and do trace their roots all the way back to the very beginning. Many of the things they get flack for “adding” were being practiced in the earliest days of Christianity.
Their interpretation of scripture seems far more authoritative and sensible, if one is to believe in the Christian faith at all.
The Holy Spirit is our guide, I get that. This is where I really have issues. Many claim the spirit guides them in the interpretation of personal scripture study.
Now, I have a really hard time believing the Spirit that Jesus talks about is the same one that has divvied up Christian believers into 20-40,000 different groups and denominations. That’s still several hundred if you boil it down to basic beliefs. Very little agreement, yet they all claim to have guidance from the Holy Spirit.
I myself tend to think the Holy Spirit has led me in the direction of the Orthodox.
In the age of relativism, I guess they appear no more valid than anyone else. I just happen to not be a relativist.
Sola Scriptura was easy to walk away from. Nothing about it adds up.
The authority of the church took a little more time. All I’ll say to that is I don’t believe the Orthodox to be just another denomination as viewed in the Protestant world. They can and do trace their roots all the way back to the very beginning. Many of the things they get flack for “adding” were being practiced in the earliest days of Christianity.
Their interpretation of scripture seems far more authoritative and sensible, if one is to believe in the Christian faith at all.
The Holy Spirit is our guide, I get that. This is where I really have issues. Many claim the spirit guides them in the interpretation of personal scripture study.
Now, I have a really hard time believing the Spirit that Jesus talks about is the same one that has divvied up Christian believers into 20-40,000 different groups and denominations. That’s still several hundred if you boil it down to basic beliefs. Very little agreement, yet they all claim to have guidance from the Holy Spirit.
I myself tend to think the Holy Spirit has led me in the direction of the Orthodox.
In the age of relativism, I guess they appear no more valid than anyone else. I just happen to not be a relativist.
I considered the Orthodox for awhile, but icons and a few other things kept me from transitioning. I'm Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. My parents were originally WELS Lutheran (mother) and Episcopalian (father), but they eventually became obsessive dispensationalists (though they didn't know what that term meant) who were too heavily influenced by TBN and their own eschatological interpretational whims. In the mid and late 1990s, they got swept up in trying to predict the end of the world by reading the Bible out of context and running with wild ideas (2008 was my dad's conclusion, based on the idea that a generation was 60 years, and that Israel's 1948 statehood was the calculation base). This kind of nonsense caused me and my teenage brother all kinds of problems. We weren't taught to navigate other important matters, like sexual morality, etc. Everything revolved around the 'end times.' There was no positive fruit from this dispensationalism. It led my formerly stable family astray -- that and the isolationist, 'me, God, and my Bible' tendency that permeates much of modern American Christianity (which goes against the book of Hebrews 'do not forsake the assembly' passage). Everyone interpreting the Bible individualistically just leads to chaos. I had no clue how to interact with other members of the church body properly. This all explains why I've come back to conservative Lutheranism, what with amillennialism and a more proper, historical, contextual, and united view of the church and its doctrines.
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