"Does Progressive Dispensationalism Fit in Christ's Kingdom?" —an S2S rebuttal

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

This is Strength to Strength, and in today's recording we're going to do something different. We're going to be critiquing a view that is somewhat common within the Anabaptist world, and that is called dispensationalism. And the way we're going to do that is also different. Um, recently Anabaptist Perspectives did an episode with Julian Stalspoofs, and the title of the episode is "An Anabaptist Defense of Dispensationalism" by Julian Stalspoofs. And so we're going to be looking at this video, actually playing some parts of it, and critiquing that. And you might ask, why do that?

Well, one of our mission here at Strength to Strength goes like this: advance Jesus' kingdom by assisting the Church in earnestly contending for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, through tackling thought-provoking topics, by stimulating candid discussions, and by sharing faith-building testimonies.

And so, for those of you who've interacted with dispensationalists or, or, or grappled with this, um, these teachings of, of, of, of what is the Jewish people? What is their place today? Um, what is the state of Israel? Is that a is that Israel of old, or a different, whole different, um, nation? You know, there's these are conversations that sometimes some people say bring more heat than light. Well, our goal this morning here, um, is to engage this in a loving, Christ-like way, but yet also, um, with clarity, as we believe that, uh, the doctrine of dispensationalism, um, is not part of the faith once for all delivered to the saints. And so joining me today, um, is Greg Weaver, author of the book, uh, A Great Nation: Rescuing Abraham from Dispensationalism.

Um, some of you might have listened to some of his interviews or talks earlier here on Strength to Strength. Um, so we'll be he'll be he's joining us here. Welcome, Greg. And also, uh, Justin Zehr. Uh, Justin is part of the admin te-team here at Strength to Strength. He is from Ontario, uh, an ordained pastor there in a congregation called Grace Mennonite Fellowship, right, Justin? Yes. Yeah, okay. Good to have good to have you here with us as well. And so what we're going to do, um, is we're going to actually play parts of, uh, this video, and then we're going to respond to it. And we want to thank Anabaptist Perspectives for giving us the permission to do this.

And also, you know, this really isn't a critique necessarily of Julian himself. Uh, it really is a critique of, as I talked about earlier, this framework, or this hermeneutic that they use called dispensationalism. And there's many, many people, um, many Anabaptists who believe this, and actually I grew up in a church that taught this. Um, and so, uh, we're, we're, we're, we're critiquing an idea, um, a belief that we believe, you know, has, uh, ideas of consequences, and there are certain consequences that come with this belief that we, as I mentioned earlier, we believe is counter to Kingdom Christianity. Uh, and so we're going to go ahead and jump in here. We want to do it with we want to do this critique lovingly, like I mentioned, uh, but with clarity.

So what we're going to do is we're going to play a portion of this video, and we're going to start at the 30-minute mark and play it for three minutes. So I'm going to share my screen, and we're going to jump right in and do that.

With dispensationalism. One is what we call passage priority. You know, what does this mean? What we don't mean by this is that, uh, the New Testament is not relevant to our interpretation of the Old Testament. Um, of course, we want to see how the Old Testament is used and fulfilled in the New. Uh, what we do mean by this is that the authorial intent of a text, uh, does not change even as it is explained and fulfilled in the New Testament. Um, so an example on this, um, well, actually, before I go there, so authorial intent, when we're asking that question, uh, we're saying, what did the author mean to communicate? And trying to understand that.

I think this is a more helpful way of framing it than saying it's a literal interpretation, because authorial intent gives us space to consider, uh, allegory, typology, imagery, all of those things that are not strictly literal, but they are, uh, what the author meant to say in the passage.

And so we recognize there's imagery in Revelation, um, that is speaking of greater realities. Now again, I wouldn't parse that exactly the same way as a covenantal listener, especially not the same way as an all-millennial, but, uh, I would recognize that there's symbols that are pointing to something else. It's not describing exactly what this is going to look like in terms of the creatures and the beasts and everything that's going to show up physically on the Earth. Um, and so what did the author mean to communicate? We're after that. And so an example for this, what this would look like, uh, Hebrews, uh, sorry, Jeremiah 31, uh, 31 through 33 is a big block describing a future redemption of Israel.

And in 31, it talks about what God's going to do in bringing a new covenant. It's the promise of a new covenant. Uh, different features of that, including writing, uh, God's law on their minds and on their hearts. And that thread is picked up in Hebrews chapter 8 and connected to the Church. So that what's happening in the Church is the fulfillment or a fulfillment of this covenant which God made with Israel. Now some will take that and say, well, this covenant is fulfilled in the Church, therefore the details of Jeremiah are no longer relevant. Um, it's all subsumed in the Church. There's a connection in Scripture between Jeremiah and Hebrews 8. And so the new covenant is the Church, and therefore God's done with the Jews.

The way I would understand that, and other dispensationalists would, is that Jeremiah chapters 31 to 33, uh, continues to mean what it meant to the original people, and its interpretation and application in the New Testament does not negate its original meaning. Now that doesn't mean that they're inconsistent. I would see what's going on in Hebrews 8 as an expansion of Hebrew, of Jeremiah, not a fundamental change.

So if you look at Jeremiah 31 through 33, it describes God's people returning to the promised land, being established under a restored king, rebuilding God's city. It specifically talks about the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob returning to the land. That's a reference to the nation of Israel, as opposed to Scripture sometimes talks about Abraham's seed, which can be the nation of Israel, can be believers, and it can be Christ. It's used different ways in the New Testament. But it seems to me that when Jeremiah says the descendants of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, he's trying to be specific and saying, these are the physical offspring of Abraham that are going to be brought back to the land and going to experience these things.

So I would see a partial fulfillment of Jeremiah 31 in Hebrews 8. It's consistent with the content, and there are aspects of Jeremiah 31, especially the spiritual aspects, that are realized now in the Church. But as a dispensationalist, I would say, that doesn't mean that God won't do the other things he said he would do. Okay, so that was four minutes there from 30 minutes to 34 minutes here in this discussion on Anabaptist Perspectives. And so Greg, we're going to turn to you. What are some of your thoughts here on this idea that he's presenting here?

Yeah, well, up front, I'd like to say that I'm glad to be responding to this type of video. Julian makes this topic an issue of hermeneutics, and I appreciate that. So many times we've had to respond to people who are trying to defend the current military actions of Israel. Julian doesn't go in that direction. I find that commendable.

And I think it's wrestling with ideas in the text, which is really where this conversation should stay. And also to his credit, I think he put some ideas out there that were new to some people, perhaps some dispensationalists, and certainly to some non-dispensationalists. And so he did a good job in that. And I was surprised, though, how many other people were surprised with some of his content.

I think a lot of people are more familiar with the old classical views of dispensationalists than they are the dispensationalism, than they are the more modern, progressive version. And as I think Julian mentioned, these views have been brought up or developed more recently in the last several decades. And I respond to some of these in my book, but I suppose that those details aren't always caught. But one of them would be the author of this book. This is Michael Voloch, and he quotes a number of different Protestant authors.

Michael Voloch, it's Darryl Bock, Blazing, there's a few of them. And they are the people that have kind of put this idea of passage priority out there. At least that's how I understand it. And so I read Julian's articles, listened to those videos several times, and I don't know if I understand all of his nuances. So I'm going to respond to the topic of passage priority somewhat more generally. Hopefully, I don't do an injustice to Julian's view.

But I think obviously passage priority has some complications that render it sort of inusable if you want to come out of the right place. Julian uses Jeremiah 31 to 33 as an example of passage priority.

But it's a little bit complicated to say that we understand a passage based on the author's intended meaning, how he intended it to be interpreted, without bringing some baggage into the new covenant that we certainly don't want. And I think even most dispensationalists wouldn't modern dispensationalists wouldn't want. So for example, Jeremiah 33:17 says, "For thus says the Lord, David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel." This is kind of universally agreed amongst dispensationalists that this has to be Christ coming to sit on the throne of David in the literal Jerusalem.

Passage priority, I suppose they would argue that Jeremiah understood this, and therefore we need to go with that view. But then he goes on to say, "Nor shall the priests, the Levites, lack a man to offer burnt offerings before me to kindle grain offerings and the sacrifice continually." So do you think Jeremiah realized that, oh, the kingship passage just must be taken literally? But I understand that even though I'm using the exact same words that the priests and the Levites won't lack a man to offer burnt offerings, that while that part's going to be, you know, negated with the changing of the covenants, and this is going to be, you know, spiritual priests and spiritual Levites, if you will, not literal.

Or are you going to admit that they're going to go back to old covenant righteousness and offer sacrifices? Well, at least as an Anabaptist, for sure, that can't speak for every faith tradition, we wouldn't want to go that way. So are we going to argue that Jeremiah understood the first part of that message to be interpreted differently than the latter part of that verse?

Another one would be Zechariah 14. And I'm trying to use classical dispensational passages that they themselves have argued to be taken somewhat literally. Zechariah 14 is obviously a big one. And Zechariah 14, verse 14, we read, "Judah also will fight at Jerusalem, and the wealth of all the surrounding nations shall be gathered together, gold, silver, and a power and great abundance." Now, one of the reasons Julian mentioned being skeptical of the modern nation-state of Israel as being the Israel that God would use in the end times is because they haven't repented. And that's actually a great observation. That's one of the reasons many Orthodox choose to reject the nation-state of Israel, because they realized when Israel was taken into captivity, one of the conditions upon their return would have been repentance.

And they think that if they try to do it without repentance, they're trying to force God's hand and put God on their timeline rather than them being on God's timeline. And so they think the way that Israel will eventually be restored is when the Jewish people have sufficiently repented.

So if that's the case, then Israel is sufficiently repentant in Jesus before the restoration in order to be restored. How do we then explain that upon this restoration, Zechariah 14, Israel is still fighting its enemies? That sounds like an unrepentant Israel if you believe that they must enter the new covenant in order to receive their promises. So Michael Voloch promotes the use of what he calls passage priority, which he says allows him to use, I'm sorry, in addition, somewhat the same, to the passage priority is the concept of the historical, dramatical, hermeneutic, which he says allows him to recognize genre, symbolism, etc.

And they're not bound to all the crazy interpretations that some of the former dispensationalists had advocated for. However, there's obviously the question of who gets to decide which bit gets interpreted which way. And I think it's left to the interpreter. It's not like this is very easy to see in all the Old Testament prophecies.

And I think that's the thing about the crystal-centric hermeneutic is that we allow Jesus to interpret every bit of it. And we don't have to decide whether we want to take this literally or physically because we see how it fits Jesus, and Jesus will unlock that for us. And so I think there's less subjective reasonings amongst the crystal-centric hermeneutic.

So yeah, to hone in on this or to summarize this point, if we want to argue that Jesus defines the sacrifice, then why don't we just allow Jesus to also define Israel? Why do we use the crystal-centric hermeneutic to understand the sacrifice? But then when we come to Israel, we all of a sudden need to turn to a Jewish ethnocentric hermeneutic.

I think the more consistent way would be simply to allow Jesus to interpret, to open up, reveal every bit of prophecy, if that makes sense. So I don't know if any of you have any comments at this point. I have a few more thoughts on passage priority and why it's a difficult view to substantiate. But yeah, if you have any thoughts before I move along.

Yeah, no, that was great. Thanks, Greg, for explaining this idea of passage priority. And I like your push to keep it centered around Christ. And he's the one that prophecy was ultimately pointing to. And he's the main character of the Old Testament as well as the New. And yeah, it has to line up with Christ and his mission. It really does.

So Greg, do you touch on this concept in your book and word it the same way, this priority intent, this passage priority intent? Do you touch on that in your book? I know that you studied a good bit of this progressive, what's called progressive dispensationalism, which Julian kind of unpacks at the beginning of his talk. Progressive, we think liberal, right?

But it actually means it's kind of ongoing, developing, right? So this idea was kicked off in the 1800s, 1700s by Darby, which Julian actually acknowledges that. And then it has the classic dispensationalism. People like Julian want to distance themselves from it because, as you mentioned, there's a lot of crazy interpretations.

But yeah, so I know you studied, when you wrote this book, you really studied that a lot because that's important to you, that we're actually critiquing a current, accurate view of a lot of people. So yeah, so back to the question, is that passage priority? Did you talk about that in your book right here?

I don't think I mentioned it in as many words, but what it advocates for is this, what Darryl Bock calls the both-and principle, where he says that a fulfillment in the church and a fulfillment in Israel, somewhat distinct from one another, they aren't mutually exclusive. And so I deal with that. I don't explain all the different hermeneutics because every time you open another hermeneutic, you have to explain it. And so in order to kind of keep it simple, I just kind of stuck with critiquing where they're trying to get at with that. But yes, you will find the both-and principle addressed in the book.

Thank you. Yeah, moving along, some more verses on who gets to decide what the author's original intention was. We actually have some New Testament verses that address this. And one of them is 1 Peter 1:10 through 12. And he writes, "Of this salvation, the prophets have inquired and searched carefully. Who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was dictating, when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that would follow?

To them, it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us, they were ministering the things which have now been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit from heaven, things which angels desired to look into." So here we have Peter saying that the prophets inquired of the things that they were speaking of because they didn't understand them. And it was revealed to them that they were not speaking these things for themselves, but to us. And I think the us is not we three here on the Zoom call, but to the apostles, to the ones who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, as he says in the verse.

And so Peter's saying that they didn't even understand. So I'm not sure how we can interpret this based on the author's intended meaning, if the author himself was uncertain of what it even meant. And then we also have the verse I'm sorry, Ephesians chapter 3, verse 1 through 6. Bit of a longer read, but it says, "For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for you Gentiles, if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of grace of which God if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, how that by revelation he made known to me the mystery as I have briefly written already, by which when you read, you may understand my knowledge and the mystery of Christ which in other ages was not known as it has now been revealed, of the Spirit to his holy apostles and prophets, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs of the same body and fortegers of his promise in Christ through the gospel."

So here he's saying that Paul's saying that he received by revelation things which the former people didn't know.

He says, "Oh, yeah, that have not been made known to the sons of man." But he says, "Now it's been revealed by the Spirit to his holy apostles and prophets."

So once again, we have evidence that the original authors didn't actually understand some of the things that they spoke of. So I don't think we have to understand what Jeremiah had to understand what he was writing or that we have to understand what exactly Jeremiah thought when he wrote these things. Because Paul's saying that these things that were written formerly have now been revealed by revelation in Paul's lifetime by the Holy Spirit, where he's finally understood how this all works. And then Paul is actually specifically saying that the thing that was revealed is how the Gentiles were going to be fellow heirs with the Jews in the same body. Passages like Isaiah 2, that all nations would come to Israel.

And some people thought there would be Torah observance that would kind of be this fellowship, this common way of life. And it's been revealed that, no, it's not going to be through Torah. It's going to be they're going to be protectors of these promises in Christ through the gospel, not through Torah.

And it's going to be the same body. And I don't know now. I'm not exactly sure where he draws the line on all these things, but there's certainly details that were missing.

So I think we'd have to be pretty careful to say that we can confidently know what the original authors meant, if the original authors themselves were unclear about this. And I'm not trying to say that everything was muddy back then. You couldn't understand anything. I think you did have some expectations, but it was less clear.

David Murray actually has a statement about this that I have always appreciated. He says, "Although the prophets did not have comprehensive and complete knowledge of Jesus, who does?" he asks. They knew enough to answer the who question. Their major questions were about the when and the how.

So I think that I do honestly feel that that is probably much more the framework in which the prophets would have thought. Michael Voloch is one of the he's this Protestant theologian I've been referencing. He promotes this idea of reinterpretation.

And this suggests the idea that the way we interpret he puts this thing in tension, this passage priority in tension with what he calls New Testament priority. And he thinks that we non-dispensationalists who look at the Old Testament through the lens of the new are imposing an interpretation that was foreign to the mind of the author. And so we're sort of putting a spin to the scriptures that they themselves did not intend to have done or have an interpretation they were not promoting, which obviously suggests that I mean, they don't obviously call this heresy, but to me, if you're deviating from the scriptures, then you're starting to lean in that direction. If Christianity does not have a foundation in the Jewish prophets and it meant something else, then you're starting to cut the feet out from underneath Christianity.

And this is actually a method that is used by many unbelieving Jews. And I'm not trying to imply guilt by association. But there is a certain unbelieving Jewish rabbi who's very militant, and he's got a lot of content on YouTube. And I've listened to him just to understand how Jewish people think about the law and the prophets.

And unfortunately, he uses this argument very effectively against Christianity in general, where he goes back and he goes through these passages and tries to show that, look, you Christians are putting meanings to these texts that were not that are incorrect. And he narrows down on interpretational language, the Hebrew language. He knows the Hebrew language very well. And it's ironic that these dispensationalists are while they need this crystal-centric hermeneutic, this understanding that the New Testament interprets the Old Testament, they need this in order to validate their own faith. But then when it comes to interpreting subjects pertaining to dispensationalists, they all of a sudden think that we're not allowed to use these. And it's like I don't think so once again, I'm not trying to say they're guilty by association, but we do need to think through these passages.

There's ramifications to these things. And I realize that many people perhaps have never listened or had conversations with some of these Jewish people, these people who are very anti-Christian. But it just has very much of the same ring to it. And I would just put out a I don't know, a very strong caution about that. Think through that very seriously because you're promoting ideas that can lead in very anti-Christ directions if you run into someone who knows his Old Testament very well. I'm not saying this to say that I think we don't have answers to these questions, but I think we can answer the dispensationalists every bit as well as we can answer the unbelieving Jew.

Yes, amen. So this whole idea that the meaning of every passage is found in that passage by itself once again, I don't want to put words into their mouths, but it sounds to me like you're interpreting a passage in isolation of the rest of the Bible. And I think that it's profoundly incorrect because the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus.

And we talk about Voloch and some of these Protestant authors at least talk about prioritizing the New Testament versus the Old Testament. Should we do which one? And they say, no, we should prioritize passages. And I think that all of those perhaps were somewhat off-center because we should prioritize Jesus. We should have a Jesus priority when we read the Bible. Here's the interpretive key.

And this does mean prioritizing the New Testament interpretation of the Old to some degree because if Jesus interprets all the scriptures, well, it's in the New Testament that we find Jesus' example, his teachings, and his apostles' teachings. And so of course, we would use the New Testament to interpret the Old Testament. So maybe we don't start by saying New Testament priority is Jesus' priority, but it ends up kind of being one and the same if we're understanding the New Testament correctly.

So in summarization of this point, I don't think that the author's original intention, whatever that may be, is the way we interpret the scripture. The thing that we should really be concerned about is what was the Holy Spirit's original intention when he inspired the scripture? What was God's original prophetic intention when he inspired the Old Testament scriptures? And how do we know what that original intention was, God's original intention was? Well, he showed up on the pages of human history in flesh to show us, to let us know what he meant by that. So when God saves Israel, the New Testament is what that looks like.

When he comes to dwell with his people, the New Testament tells us what that looks like. When he writes his law on the human heart, the New Testament tells us what that looks like. When the Messiah rebuilds the temple and sits on the throne of David, the New Testament tells us what that looks like. Psalms 2 I mean, I'm sorry, Acts 2 of Peter describes that. The body of Christ is not a secondary sidebar interpretation of the Old Testament. It is God's original intention. No passage and neither testament stand on their own. They stand as a unit, and they stand on Jesus.

And this whole thing of reinterpretation that we're giving it at some alien spin when we interpret it, we agree that the New Testament does not reinterpret the Old Testament in the sense that it gives it a new meaning. It brings out the true meaning God intended from the beginning.

So that is my thoughts for the passage priority. Yeah, do any of you have any thoughts before we move to the next clip?

Yeah, I just want to say, Amanda, what you shared there, Greg, the bride of Christ is a treasure to Christ. So to diminish and to say it's a sideline hobby or a side gig, it really takes away it's really anti-Christ teaching and doctrine to say that, well, originally, it meant something else, and the church is just sort of filling in until Israel is really ready. Yeah, I would agree that that's dangerous thinking because we're diminishing Christ's work and his bride, who I would think, as any groom, takes pride in and is preparing for with his whole heart, with his whole being because he's looking forward to the full consummation of this relationship, this marriage.

Right. If we communicated something like that to our bride during our courtship or engagement, I have a feeling we don't know how that would sound. And I think that maybe God would have similar sentiments. Amen.

Yes, I love the analogy you make here too in your writings as you prepared for this. You use the idea of the metamorphosis, right, from a caterpillar to a butterfly. This is not some kind of replacement. This is fulfillment. It's expansion. It's the monument that's here, and the shadows are now gone.

There's no other there's nothing else needed in Christ and the New Covenant. We are as I'm sure you may be touched on these verses already, but the idea that if you're in Christ, then you're Abraham's seed. So it's that fulfillment idea.

So thank you for kind of, yeah, for helping us see some of the inconsistencies and the dangers, really, in what dispensationalists call this passage priority. I would agree with you. We look at the scriptures as a story that leads to Jesus. Yeah, Brian. So to go back to pick up on your comment about metamorphosis, I think that is an important subject as well.

And that actually is really important to the conversation there about the meaning of the seed of Abraham, which I don't know the what is it, minute 33:25. This is discussed in the interview, Julian's interview there, where the statement is made that the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob can be believers of Christ in Israel. It's used in different ways in the New Testament.

And this is obviously trying to get at the idea that the double fulfillment is not mutually exclusive. However, Paul addresses this in Galatians 3:16-17. And he says now to Abraham and his seed, where the promise is made, he does not say, "And to seeds as of many, but as of one, and to your seed, who is Christ." And this I say that the law, which was 430 years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect.

So Paul specifically says here that the promise was not given to more than one. He said it was a singular seed. It wasn't the plural seed. And he addresses the two communities that dispensationalists are trying to bring into the promises. That is, the Jerusalem as above, the church, and Jerusalem, which is below, which is the capital city of the Torah kingdom.

Paul says that they cannot the two covenants cannot be heirs together. The two cities cannot be heirs together. And the Torah people and the people of the Spirit cannot be heirs together. Now, this certainly isn't meaning that the people in the Torah kingdom can't be saved, but they would have to come out of the Torah kingdom and into the New Covenant, Israel, the Israel of God, as Paul goes on to explain in the end of Galatians. So the two covenants have corresponding cities, Jerusalem below, which now is.

And Paul says, nevertheless, what do scriptures say? "Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman, she will not be heir with the son of the free woman." So he's saying specifically that they can't be heirs together.

Now, obviously, progressive dispensationalism sees that thinks that the fulfillment is in Christ, and the Jerusalem, which is below, will be included, participate in Christ. And so Christ is, in some sense, creating one body out of the two, even while they remain distinct and separate, which I'm not quite sure how you say that's one. But this is going back to the language of metamorphosis. I think there's a common mistake that's made with this interpretation. That is, what happens when you give somebody from the Torah kingdom the Spirit? When God gives them his Spirit, will they undergo transformation, receive the new birth, and they're baptized into the church?

Amen. And the church, as it baptizes people as a people who have been transformed, metamorphosis again, Israel, they are the church is a transformed Israel. It's Israel that has undergone metamorphosis. And the Gospel always works the same way. I've never seen someone get baptized into Israel or into the Torah kingdom under the New Covenant. It's a one-way street. You don't go from the church to Israel. It's always from Israel to the church. So just like you never see a caterpillar undergoing metamorphosis and remaining a caterpillar, so Israel does not remain Israel after it has the Spirit. Participation in Christ requires fulfillment. It requires transformation. If there's no transformation, then we're not fully participating.

We cannot remain in the caterpillar stage, nor can we remain in a cocoon or anything short of the butterfly. We need to become something new. And so I think that this suggests a salvation of Israel void of the transforming power of Jesus that takes the believer or takes somebody from unbelief to faith and takes metamorphosis Israel into its full butterfly stage, which is the church.

Amen.

And Ephesians 19:22 speaks, obviously, of one body of the Jew and Gentile. And he says that they are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. It wasn't two foundations. It was one foundation, and both of them were within that. So this one body that they are being built together in, this one temple, is seated upon one foundation, and they need to be taken to one. It's not one foundation with two bodies. It's one foundation and one body. So I think you have to understand the seed of Abraham and its fulfillment within the greater narrative of the New Testament. Also noteworthy, Julian suggests that the seed of Abraham needs to be the physical descendants of or he thinks it looks like it's a reference to the physical descendants of Abraham there in Jeremiah 30:33.

However, Abraham is promised to become the father of many nations. And the word nations can also be translated Gentiles. So he says that Abraham is going to be the father of many Gentiles. And so Gentiles and Jews are the children of Abraham. And so they are both the seed of Abraham. And when we say the church is the seed of Abraham, it is at least the inclusion of the seed of Abraham, the offspring of the seed of Abraham, Christ.

We are not leaving any of the prophetic content laying on the ground. We're picking it both them. Both of them find completion and fulfillment. It's not lacking because it has through the seed of Abraham, God has been faithful to both the Gentiles' children and the Jewish children of Abraham. Yes.

That's so true. And right along with that, somewhere, he makes the point that when you become a Christian, you're still American or you're still European. And while that may be true, it gets complex if we try to retain our ethnic identity and we make that a real deal. And so I think we could see a lot of the Jewish people in the early times and throughout history have converted to Christianity, have identified Jesus as their king, and have sort of lost their maybe ethnicity or their Jewishness in a sense. And I don't think there's any strength in trying to retain both. Our true identity must be in Christ. And who cares whether we're African or Canadian or European?

And maybe our wives are something else. It really doesn't matter. And I see the dividing of nations as a result of sin and evil. And Jesus is here to bring back oneness and unity and bringing back everybody into the family of God, how it was originally supposed to be. And ethnicity is a sideline issue and should not be brought into the conversation, really, is my opinion.

Yeah. And the Jewish people that have converted and become part of the church and lost their Jewish identity, are they going to all get transported back to Israel to be part of the millennial kingdom? What if they don't? Have they lost out on any of the fullness of Christ, any of the fullness of the promise because they're Jewish and they didn't know about it?

I think we know the answer to that question.

Yeah. So we're really getting into some of this kingdom theology, right? A nation that is around the whole globe that we're part of where Jesus is king. And that's right. And so we have more in common with the Russian Christian than what I do with my American neighbor here.

And that's a reality that we really need to keep coming back to and saturating ourselves in because, as you're pointing out, just nationalism draws us in so quickly. It's just inherent to our Adamic nature. Yeah. And I'd like to add to that nationalism idea. I don't know if I'm right on thinking on this, but I almost wonder if there's a reason why we have such a drive towards nationalism. We want to promote our nation and protect it and build it. And I'm wondering if our earthly nationalism is a perversion of what God really intends, that we should be promoting a nation, but it needs to be the nation of God, and that we're building His kingdom.

We need to pour that energy into Him and not just be bound to an earthly view of nation. And so, as Julian was grappling with national Israel and maybe the church as spiritual Israel and trying to separate or define the two as two different entities, I think that's because our mind tends to go earthly, but really, we need to see the nation that God is intending to build and put our whole heart into defending and building that kingdom, that nation.

Amen. Yeah. And those are some of the consequences of dispensationalism results in nationalism. I mean, that's just baked into the DNA of the United States, of the USA Christians. If we can just get the right president in there and keep blessing the nation-state of Israel, wow, we're going to be blessed. I mean, that's been preached from many pulpits. And it's very materialistic. It's very nationalistic stuff there. Okay. Well, we better keep moving along. So, Greg, do you have anything more you want to add here, or should we jump to our next frame?

Let's keep going. I have a few more thoughts on the nationalism, but we're going to be listening to that clip here a little bit later. So I'll save them for then. Let's move to the next clip. All right. Here we go. We're going to jump to the 36-minute, 50-second timestamp, and we'll play a little less than a minute here. All right. Here we go. So that would be the one feature, what we call passage priority or authorial intent, and especially regarding the Old Testament. It does become fundamentally an issue of hermeneutics.

And there are different principles of hermeneutics between dispensationalists and covenantalists, especially how we understand what the New Testament authors are doing when they cite the Old Testament in making applications maybe that are beyond what was originally intended. Does that give us license to do the same? I would say no.

And again, difference to the degree to which that's the case. The example I have in mind where I heard that done was somebody who was a classic covenantalist reformed, where they glossed over well, it was this argument. The apostles allegorize the Old Testament, so we can too, was essentially the argument to which I would say no. The apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they were speaking inspired scripture. That doesn't give us license to do whatever we want with the Old Testament. They are doing specific things in specific contexts and so forth. Okay.

Yeah. All yours good. So in this little clip here, Julian is questioning whether we have the right to go beyond the New Testament authors in interpreting the Old Testament. And this is an interesting point because we would like to ask the same question because, as a non-dispensationalist, I don't think we should go beyond the New Testament authors anyhow. And that's precisely what I see the dispensationalists doing when they interpret the Old Testament in ways that are not necessarily supported explicitly or by implication by the New Testament. And so I think that there is a dispensationalist who's going beyond, taking the license to go beyond Christ and the apostles.

So I would ask the same question in return. And also, inasmuch as our hermeneutics, our Christocentric hermeneutics, inasmuch as we go beyond what's explicitly laid out in the New Testament, I don't think that is necessarily a violation or taking liberties that we ought not to because if we are using Christ to interpret the scriptures, Christ and the apostles to interpret the scriptures, then we're not going beyond them, even if we make statements that are implications of the principles that they used.

So I think that it is the interest of the non-dispensationalists, at least the version I'm trying to promote, to stay within the framework of Christ and the apostles, which is simply to think that we can interpret some things with Christ as the key that maybe the apostles I mean, I don't think the New Testament expected to have the space to interpret everything out of the Old Testament that could have. And I think we all kind of take the liberties to use Jesus to interpret the Old Testament. I don't think that's a problem. I don't think it's a violation of where we're going beyond them, but rather, we're taking what they have, the key that they have given us, and trying to use it consistently with them.

So hopefully, that clarifies. It's not something that I need to spend a lot of time on. It's just an area I wanted to flag where, I guess, as a non-dispensationalist, I would see them violating or doing the same thing that they think that we're doing.

So that's pretty much what I have. If we can't go beyond the apostles who were speaking inspired scripture, then why can't the dispensationalists do that with the Old Testaments? Sure. Yes. I would agree, Greg. And so let's go ahead and just jump into the next about two and a half minutes here at the 41-minute timestamp, and we'll just continue this conversation.

So I have a quote here. Maybe I'll try to summarize it. This is from Craig Blazing. He gave a talk a couple of years ago, Progressive Dispensationalism as Kingdom Theology. And in talking about the relationship between Israel and Gentiles and the church, I think the way he frames it here is really helpful. He says, "Progressive Dispensationalism does not see Christian identity and ethnic national identity as mutually exclusive." So he's talking about Christian being Christian and being Jewish. And he says, "These are not mutually exclusive. The church is not a replacement for Israel or a redefinition of Israel, but it's not an alternate group of people in contrast to Israel. In progressive dispensationalism, the church is a Holy Spirit-created communion that penetrates and transverses" and he's using technical language here "but penetrates and transverses ethnic national groupings, uniting individuals therein to Christ Jesus and to one another in a spiritual renewal network that extends across all people groups and nations."

So what he's saying here is the church should not be seen as a people group alongside Gentiles and Jews. Rather, it is the group of those who are redeemed and in Christ, and there's overlap between the church and nations. So when somebody becomes a Christian, they don't cease to be Jewish any more than I cease to be American of German-Swiss history just because I'm a Christian. I maintain my ethnic identity even as I become a Christian. And those who have that ethnic identity as Jews, as Israel, are involved in covenant blessings that don't apply to those of us who are Christians but are Gentiles. They maintain the ethnic identity. God made promises to Abraham and to his descendants and to the nation of Israel.

And those promises have significance for the nation of Israel in the future, to a degree now, but in particular in the future in a restored, redeemed Israel. Anyway, that feature of the Israel church distinction is, I would say, the other main thing that would separate a dispensationalist from a non-dispensationalist.

Most non-dispensationalists, in fact, all that I know of who have thought carefully and tried to put it together systematically, would see Israel in one way or another being fulfilled in the church. Okay. Go ahead, Greg. Yeah. So I've heard several variations of this argument already. And some people find it fairly persuasive, and I, of course, don't, so surprised. But there's a significant difference between how dispensationalists use identity, ethnic identity, national identity, and how I believe it's used in the New Testament and how we use it today. So I don't think it's as simple as saying that, "Oh, we still identify as Americans or somebody of Swiss-German descent," because we're not hanging any kind of spiritual significance on our earthly ethnicity, identity, national identity.

It's simply used to communicate where we're from, things like that. We're not saying, "Oh, we're going to inherit special promises from God because of our ethnicity." We don't try to claim any promises from God based on identity. That's a significant difference. It's not the same thing. When Paul talks about Jewish believers or the New Testament authors in general, that doesn't automatically mean that, "Oh, therefore, Israel is a valid nation before God that God has future plans for." It just simply is identifying who these people are and where they're from.