One of the teachings of dispensationalists from his perspective is that the current dispensation of grace was not predicted in the Old Testament, but that it was rather injected before the kingdom was established because of the Jews ' rejection of Jesus. Paul frequently mentions a secret that apparently has to do with the Gentiles. For example, in Romans 16:25, Ephesians 3:3 through 6, or Colossians 1:26.
I find prophetic passages in the Psalms and prophets which mention that the Gentiles would praise God or be reigned by Him. Paul also quotes some of these passages in Romans 15 verses 9 through 12. Here's the question. Did the early Christians have any particular opinion on why the inclusion of the Gentiles was a secret? Yeah That's the whole thing. The early Christians would have said there was no secret.
It's a few things were prophesied about in more prophecies in the Old Testament than the salvation of the Gentiles. Probably the prophecies about Jesus would be the only ones that would exceed the prophecies about the Gentiles coming to God. So it's everywhere throughout the Old Testament and very specific prophecies. You go all the way back to Genesis. God had told Abraham that through your seed, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And then in Malachi, I don't have it in front of me.
It talks about how, let me just see if I can find that. Probably you all know that. The early Christians quoted so frequently the prophecy in Malachi that the nations would be, yeah, I don't have it in front of me, would be offering a pure sacrifice. The Gentiles would be offering a pure sacrifice. The prophets talk about those who are not my people will be called my people, et cetera. And then as you mentioned, Richard, in the Psalms, there's a lot of prophecies about the Gentiles.
So yeah, it was no secret at all. In fact, when Jesus was a baby when he's brought to the temple, Simeon mentions that he would be a light to the Gentiles. I mean, so yeah, this wasn't an afterthought. And I'll just comment quickly on dispensationalism. And I'm assuming you do not buy into it. One of the conclusions I came to in the years after I left Jehovah's Witnesses, you know they have so many unique teachings that have never been taught by anybody in history.
And you know I got to wondering how little sense it made that some basics of the faith would stay hidden until 1870-something. How absurd? Why would God create His church? Why would the apostles teach the faith if it wasn't going to be understood for 1,800 years? And that doesn't apply to just Jehovah's Witnesses. So many things the Protestants teach. No one taught it before Martin Luther. And so are we to believe that for 1,500 years, no one understood the basics of the gospel until Martin Luther came along.
And the same with dispensationalism, that didn't come along until the late 1700s didn't become popular until the late 1800s. Are we to believe that no one understood all of these scriptures until the 1800s? Jude says, you know, hold fast or defend the faith once for all, handed to the saints. So it was handed down complete in the beginning. There's little details we don't know, like on prophecy and things.
But as far as the basics, if dispensationalism were true, it would mean that everyone was in darkness for 1,800 years, that the disciples of the apostles didn't understand these things that somehow people understood much later. And to me, that's just absurd. I think the faith was handed down complete by the apostles on all the major details. And yeah, we can hold to what was handed down from them.
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