Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Basic Introduction to Dispensationalism

My last post was in response to a blog that was against Dispensationalism, but since there are a lot of readers/friends that might not be entirely or accurately familiar with what Moderate Dispensationalism teaches, or at least what I believe, I decided to put together a post to help explain what Dispensationalism.

Explaining Dispensational theology in one post is about as explanatory as describing an internal combustion engine by saying that it burns gas and turns a shaft to run a car. By that, I mean that Dispensationalism is such a vast and complex topic that a cursory explanation does little more than create a thousand questions in the minds of the readers, and in this case, almost every reader is going to have a thousand different questions than any other reader! However, I think it is important to make an attempt, if simply to help provide a well-rounded experience when it comes to Bible doctrine, as well as to open up dialogue with people who have never seen the Bible in this light.

Buckle up: here we go!

Monday, April 26, 2010

A Response to Anti-Dispensationalism

I know of few people that describe themselves as "anti-dispensationalists." Many I know would distance themselves from Dispensationalism, calling it "Ruckmanism," of all things, but until recently I had heard of very few people that would actually believe that Dispensational theology is unbiblical. For instance, the church I grew up in did not teach what I call Rightly Dividing, that God dealt with different people differently at different times in history: i.e. Adam was given different commands than Noah who was given different commands than Abraham, etc. Israel was unquestionably required to keep the WORKS of the Law: yes they were a picture of Christ, but they had absolutely no clue about that! Also, Jesus taught meekness and non-violence, but to Jews only, while Paul taught forbearance as much as possible and called people fools, directly contrary to Christ's command in Matthew 5:22.

Then, even more recently, I saw a link to a blog posted by someone: the title of the blog actually stated that they were against Dispensationalism. I eventually came to find that they were post-milleniallists, which started to make sense, and I was asked by a couple of people to respond to the blog post in question. This is that response: I hope you can at least learn something of my stance, even if I'm not able to change your doctrinal stance.