Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about the early Christians and dispensationalism. The father of dispensationalism was J. N. Darby. He was an Anglican priest during the early 1800s who imagined that God had given him a special understanding of Scripture, which had been hidden from all other Christians for nearly 1,800 years. You see, for 1,800 years, virtually all Christians recognized that there were different covenants and time periods in which God worked with mankind.
They didn't necessarily call these covenantal periods dispensations, but they understood that there were different periods. In general, everyone recognized that there was the patriarchal period before the Mosaic Law, then there was the period during the Law Covenant with Israel, and finally there is the New Covenant, which Jesus ushered in and which includes all mankind willing to enter into it. Furthermore, all Christians believe that the New Covenant is the final covenant.
It's in effect now, and it will be in effect for eternity. They all believe that Christ would return in glory, and at that time the saints would be resurrected, those living would be caught up in the air with Christ, and this would be immediately followed by Judgment Day. But J. N. Darby had a novel view of things. He said that the New Covenant did not replace the Old Law Covenant. He said that we aren't in the final covenantal period. No, we're merely in what he called the Church Age.
Darby taught that in the Old Testament, God promised the Jewish people an earthly kingdom ruled by the Messiah, a son of David. When Christ came, he offered this prophesied earthly kingdom to the Jews. However, when the Jews of that time rejected Christ and his earthly kingdom, well then the promise was simply postponed. And as a result of that situation, the Church was established.
According to dispensational doctrine, the Church was unforeseen in the Old Testament, and it constitutes merely a parenthesis in God's plan for Israel. This parenthesis or Church Age will end with a secret rapture when Christ comes invisibly to take all believers, except Old Testament saints, to heaven with him. So when Christ returns, it won't be in glory to usher in the end of this system and bring about Judgment Day.
No, it will be invisible, and it will only be to rapture the Christians who are alive at the time and to resurrect the dead Christians. Then God will get back to his real focus, the fleshly nation of Israel. After Christians are raptured, then God will be dealing with Israel just as he did in Old Testament times. The temple will be rebuilt, sacrifices will be offered again, and all of the Old Testament feasts will be renewed.
In the future, the distinction between Jew and Gentile will be reestablished, and it will continue throughout all eternity. Furthermore, only later, after all of this has happened, will Christ come back in glory and usher in Judgment Day. Now, since no one else taught this doctrine, Darby decided that all of the existing churches in his day had missed the real meaning of the Bible and were apostate.
So he left the Anglican Church, and he helped to establish the Plymouth Brethren Church, who originally viewed themselves as the one true church. Now, Darby was an energetic, charismatic figure, and he traveled widely with his new message, which he preached very fervently, and it came to be called dispensationalism. Now, Darby was able to convince thousands of others that his view of Scripture was right, particularly evangelicals like D. L. Moody.
So over a period of about a century, dispensationalism grew from being a novel teaching to becoming the generally accepted doctrine of most fundamentalists and evangelicals. This was helped considerably by the Scofield Study Bible, which took Darby's system, tweaked it a bit, and then placed it in the pages of Scripture alongside the inspired words of God.
Now, originally, dispensationalists believed that the Jews would all turn back to God before the invisible return of Christ, which they all expected to happen during the 1800s. But since that never happened, that is, the conversion of the Jews, they've had to change their story. Since dispensationalists believed that God would soon be dealing again with fleshly Israel, then Israel needed to become a nation again.
Different Jews throughout the centuries had envisioned a homeland again for Jews in Palestine, but they had had no practical way to bring it about. It would have taken a miracle from God, and God did not bring about such a miracle. However, things were radically different in the 1800s. That's because in the 1800s, nearly the whole world, including the Middle East, was then dominated by European powers, and about 90% of all Jews lived in Europe.
Palestine itself was part of the Turkish Empire, which was very fragile and falling apart at the time. In the mid to late 1800s, an Eastern European secular Jew named Theodore Herzl began working to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Now, his motives had nothing to do with Scripture or any desire to serve God. In fact, Herzl was an atheist. His motive was purely political to escape the anti-Semitism that pervaded Europe and other Western countries.
His political movement to reestablish a Jewish state in the land of Palestine came to be known as Zionism. Now, Herzl was an energetic speaker and promoter of Zionism, and when wind of his movement reached the ears of Christians who had bought into the dispensationalism theology, they decided that this fit into their picture. So dispensationalists then got behind the Zionist movement.
For example, a dispensationalist evangelist named William Blackstone, he supported Herzl and his vision for a Jewish homeland, even though he was an atheist, and he began to vocally advocate the reestablishment of a Jewish state in the ancient land of Palestine. Now, the method to bring this about wasn't for everyone to get on their knees and pray to God that God would miraculously bring the Jews back to their former homeland.
No, in 1891, Blackstone presented what is known as the Blackstone Petition, which was signed by 413 Christian and Jewish leaders urging the United States to give Palestine to the Jews. Now, as I said, at that time, Palestine was part of the Turkish Empire, which was in a state of decay. Well, the U.S. State Department circulated the Blackstone Petition to the European nations, and everybody's thought was very pure and simple.
Hey, look, we're Europe and we're the United States, and we're strong enough to just take Palestine from the Turks and give it to the Jews. No reliance whatsoever on God and his power. And Christian fundamentalists Zionists were very active in both the United States and Europe in urging those world powers to establish this homeland for the Jews.
Well, then came World War I, and Turkey was on the losing side of World War I, and the victorious Allies took Palestine away from Turkey, and Britain was given control of it for a period of time. Well, of course, when this happened, both the Jewish Zionists and the Christian dispensationalists lobbied long and hard for Britain and/or the League of Nations to create this Jewish state in Palestine. And so the League of Nations gave Britain the mandate to establish this Jewish state there.
But Britain was also mandated by the League of Nations not to prejudice the rights of the Palestinian people who already lived there. The idea was that there would be two nations formed, one for the Jews and one for the Palestinians. Well, Jewish Zionists now began flocking to Palestine. Previously, Jews had made up only 10% of the population there, but now they were swiftly becoming the majority, at least in certain areas.
They also began smuggling in arms and were preparing clandestinely to illegally just take Palestine by force once the British mandate would end in 1948. And no sooner did the British leave than the Zionists began slaughtering non-Jews, both Arabs and Christians, and forcing entire populations out of the villages in which they and their ancestors had lived for centuries.
Well, the Arab world rose up in support of the Palestinian people, who they normally didn't feel all that strongly about anyway, and a bloody war ensued. Well, eventually, the surrounding Arab nations reached a ceasefire with Israel, and Israel became a state. Now, even though what the Zionists did violated practically every teaching of Jesus Christ, dispensationalists welcomed the new state of Israel as a blessing from God and as proof that what they had been teaching was right all along.
See, Bible prophecy is being fulfilled right in front of our eyes, they were saying. Of course, they ignored the fact that they were the ones who had engineered the establishment of the state of Israel. It was no miracle from God. They also ignored that almost none of these people were believers in Christ, and in fact, the majority of them didn't even believe in God. But God was supposed to be giving them this land, even though the majority didn't even believe in Him.
I mean, this was worse than any period of the Jews during the Old Testament, and God only gave them the land then when they were faithful to Him. But now, not only had they rejected God's Son, they had rejected God Himself. The man who was in charge of the War of Independence for Israel, David Ben-Gurion, was an agnostic himself. He certainly wasn't looking to God for help.
He was depending solely upon Israel's military preparation, its superior weapons, and its financial and moral backing by the Western superpowers. Well, so today, dispensationalists are having to change what they originally said. They're saying that Israel's conversion is going to come after Christ returns. The important thing is right now that they get in the land, and then Christ will return, and then they're going to be instantly saved. And that's how dispensationalism is preached in our day.
Needless to say, there are passages in Scripture that dispensationalists quote in support of their position. I mean, John Darby didn't just make this up out of thin air. But the verses they use go against the great weight of the other scriptures. And with a few exceptions, nearly all of their proof texts are from figurative and apocalyptic passages of the Bible. And as we're going to be seeing later on, those kinds of passages have not had literal fulfillments in the past.
And so it's foolish to expect them to be literally fulfilled in the future. Now, I'm going to be coming back to analyze the proof texts that they use, but first, I want to lay out what the early Christians believed about all of these things. How did they understand the covenants or dispensations of God?
And as it is with all other topics I'm aware of, what the early Christians believed is what you will arrive at if you take all of the passages in the New Testament that deal with that subject, take them literally and seriously, and you will have what the early Christians believed. Now, in this case, we're going to be starting with various Old Testament passages which are later explained in the New Testament. So let's just quickly go through the Old Testament part of this.
In Genesis 22:18, God told Abraham, "In your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice." Now, it was through Abraham's fleshly descendant, Jesus Christ, that this prophecy was fulfilled. The New Testament tells us this. Paul writes, "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made." He does not say, "And to seeds," plural, "as of many," but "as of one," and "to your seed, who is Christ." So it wasn't the Jewish people in general that that prophecy is talking about.
It's one person, Paul says, and that is Christ. Furthermore, did you notice that it would be all the nations of the earth who would be blessed, not just the descendants of Abraham? So God had never intended that the Jews alone would be the people He blessed for all eternity, but God did enter into a special covenant relationship with the Israelites, the Mosaic Law, and He did give them an earthly kingdom. But God always knew that this would be a temporary arrangement. For one thing, the covenant was two-sided.
The Israelites had to be obedient and faithful to God, and He knew through His foreknowledge that they were not going to be. So the law was intended in reality as a pedagogue or guide leading the Israelites to Jesus Christ. However, Israel was unfaithful to God most of the time. God would chastise them, and they would repent and come back to Him, but before long, they would be unfaithful again, and He would allow their enemies to oppress them.
He would send prophets to warn them, and they killed or persecuted most of His prophets. As a result, centuries before Christ, God foretold through Jeremiah that He would establish a new covenant.
He said, "Behold, the days are coming," says the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them," says the Lord. "But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days," says the Lord.
"I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." Now, that passage says that the new covenant would be with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. But as we're going to be seeing in the New Testament, God had in mind far more than just the physical descendants of Jacob for this new covenant. Well, because of their unfaithfulness, God eventually allowed all of the Jews to be taken into captivity.
But He foretold that they would return to their land, and they did return to the land after the Babylonian captivity. There are numerous prophecies in the Old Testaments about the Jews returning to their land, but nearly all of them, or perhaps all of them, were written before they returned from the Babylonian captivity. It was that return that fulfilled those prophecies. Now, later, after returning to the land of Palestine or Canaan, the Jews were subjugated by Greece.
And one of the Grecian rulers, Antiochus IV, tried to stamp out Judaism. But under the Maccabees, the Jews eventually gained their independence from the Greeks. But despite God's warnings for them not to make alliances with the nations around them, the Jews became allies with Rome. But eventually, the Romans seized control of Palestine, and that's where things are when the New Testament begins. The New Testament starts off with a message that startled the Jews and should startle dispensationalists as well.
Before Jesus even began His ministry, John the Baptist told the Jews, "Do not think to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father,' for I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones." So God made it clear to the Jews that He was not impressed by whatever genetic relationship they may have had to Abraham. He could raise up children to Abraham from inanimate stones. If He could do that, obviously, He could raise them up from out of the Gentiles.
The theme of Jesus' preaching was the Kingdom of God. Did you know that there are nearly 100 references to the Kingdom of God throughout the four Gospels? Furthermore, most of Jesus' parables were about the Kingdom. Wherever He went, Jesus preached about the Kingdom of God. For example, Matthew 4 starts off saying, "From that time, Jesus began to preach and to say, 'Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.'" When Jesus commissioned His disciples, He specifically told them to preach about the Kingdom.
Matthew 10:7, He said, "As you go, preach, saying, 'The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.'" Now, the Kingdom of Heaven was obviously something different than the earthly kingdom that the Jews had had for many centuries. And yet, it was something that the Old Testament prophets had talked about. For example, in the book of Daniel, Daniel tells us, "I was watching in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven.
He came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom, the one which shall not be destroyed." He continues in that chapter, "I was watching, and the same horn was making war against the saints and prevailing against them until the Ancient of Days came, and a judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for the saints to possess the kingdom.
Then the kingdom and dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominion shall serve and obey Him." Now, the Jews didn't understand who this Son of Man was coming on the clouds of heaven, but we know that's talking about Jesus Christ. And it said that the kingdom would be an everlasting one and that all nations and peoples and languages would serve Him.
So there isn't going to be another kingdom. This is the culmination of everything in the scriptures, the Kingdom of God. And He said it would be given to the saints. Now, the Israelites are not referred to as the saints in the Old Testament. They rarely ever met that description. So this was something new. This was going to be given to the saints, to the holy ones. Of course, when we get to the New Testament, we find out who these saints are.
Did you know that the kingdom is the only thing that Jesus called good news or the Gospel? In fact, He made it the second petition that we should ask for when we pray. And what Gospel was it that Jesus said would be preached in all the world before the end? Well, He said, "And this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then the end shall come." So the kingdom is not some kind of sideshow. It is the ultimate.
And once it has been preached to everyone, then the end will come. Now, one unique aspect of this new Kingdom of God Jesus preached is that its subjects don't occupy a certain portion of the earth like the subjects of other kingdoms. The citizens of God's kingdoms are interspersed among all nations of the world. So its citizens live under two different kingdoms, a kingdom of this world and the Kingdom of God. But their allegiance is to the Kingdom of God.
Jesus told the Samaritan woman, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father." Now, despite that statement from Jesus Himself, dispensationalists imagine that earthly Jerusalem is going to be the center of worship again, that we're going to get back to an earthly kingdom. And of course, the reason they believe that is that evangelicals and Protestants and Catholics have never understood the Kingdom of God.
They don't even know there is such a thing and that we are members of it now if we are true disciples of Jesus Christ. And that's why they imagine that, "Oh, we're going to go back to an earthly Jerusalem again, an earthly Palestine," that anyone who understands the kingdom realizes that would be absurd. He has this supernatural kingdom that embraces the whole world. Why would we go back to something tiny again that affects only one tribe of people? God's kingdom has no earthly capital.
Now, if all of this was not astonishing enough to the Jews, Jesus told the Pharisees something even more startling. Luke 17, He said, "And when He was demanded of the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God should come, He answered them and said, 'The Kingdom of God does not come with observation. Neither shall they say, 'Look here' or 'Look there,' for behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.'" So what kind of kingdom is this? A kingdom that's within you.
Jesus was truly introducing something marvelously new, something revolutionary, not just another kingdom, but another type of kingdom, a kingdom that is within you. In fact, the Kingdom of God is the most radical proposal ever presented to the mind and allegiance of man. Daniel had already prophesied that this Kingdom of God would encompass all people groups, not the Jews in particular. Jesus made this clear when He told the Jews the parable of the vinedressers. He says, "Here's another parable.
There was a certain landowner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. And he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country. Now, when the vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the vinedressers that they might receive its fruit. And the vinedressers took his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first, and they did likewise to them.
Then last of all, he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' But when the vinedressers saw the son, they said among themselves, 'This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.' So they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinedressers?
They said to him, 'He will destroy those wicked men miserably and lease his vineyard to other vinedressers who will render to him the fruits in their seasons.' Jesus said to them, 'Have you never read in the scriptures, 'The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone?
This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.' Therefore, I say to you, the Kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it?'" So being a citizen of the Kingdom of God does not depend upon being a fleshly descendant of Abraham or Jacob, but rather on bearing the fruits of God's kingdom.
And as we see from the rest of the New Testament, Jesus isn't talking about some other nation like Persia or Greece, but rather people taken out from all nations who make up this new kingdom. When the Roman centurion came to Jesus and asked him about healing his servant, we read, "When Jesus heard it, he marveled and said to those who followed, 'Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel.
And I say to you that many will come from east and west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the kingdom,'" talking about the Israelites, "'will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'" Again, Jesus said to the Jews near the end of His ministry, "I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city.
Then on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her, how often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.
See, your house is left to you desolate. For I say to you, you shall see me no more till you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" Now, I don't know how Jesus could have made things any more clear that God was rejecting the fleshly Jews, the kingdom was being taken from them, and that their house was left desolate to them, and that terrible punishment was awaiting them for the blood that they had shed. And He mentioned just the prophets, and we know later it was killing God's own son.
And Jesus never said there was going to be a second kingdom, an earthly kingdom for the Jews. No, He only preached one kingdom, the Kingdom of God, which is open to everyone who produces the fruits of it. Now, Christians have always understood that. That's the historic faith that was taught in the very beginning and was taught for 1800 years. But today, out of fear of being called anti-Semitic, Christians today deny that the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome was God's punishment on Israel.
Talk about having to be politically correct. That's carrying it to a point of absurdity. And the Bible makes that so clear, and Christians have always believed that. You know, what I've seen is that although dispensationalists claim that they are committed to taking the scriptures literally, they ignore so many of Jesus' plain statements. Actually, what it is, is that they want to take the apocalyptic passage of scriptures literally, and they want to take the clear statements symbolically.
One of the reasons why dispensationalists have things all mixed up is that they don't grasp the fact that the commandments of God's kingdom and of the new covenant far surpass those of the Old Testament. But this is something the reformers never understood. They taught that the moral teachings of the Old Testament are still the standard for Christians. And that's why evangelicals see no contradiction between Jesus and His kingdom and the violent return evil for evil state of Israel today.
But you see, that's not how things are in God's kingdom. It's no longer the strong and powerful who will inherit the earth. Rather, it's the meek. Instead of hating our enemies, citizens of God's kingdom are to love them and to pray for them. Instead of retaliating against our enemies, we are to turn the other cheek.
Also, through Jesus, we've learned that some of the provisions of the Mosaic law were only given because of the hard-heartedness of the Jews, such as the provisions of the law about divorce, and those have been changed for citizens of the kingdom. Another thing, we are no longer to take oaths. There's also a greater focus on the inner person, not so much on the outward things.
Now, for the first 300 years of Christianity, all Christians understood that being a citizen of God's kingdom meant that we couldn't go to war or occupy high positions in an earthly government. The kingdom of God doesn't work through earthly might, nor does it reward anyone with earthly powers and earthly riches. What it cares about the most is mercy, love, and justice. Now, Jesus instituted His kingdom while He was here on earth. It's not something that's going to happen in the future. It's a present reality.
What will happen in the future is that it will come back in power and bring an end to all of the governments on earth. But if we aren't citizens of His kingdom now, we're not going to be given the opportunity after He returns. And that's true regardless of whether we are Jews or Gentiles. What Jesus asks of us is that we enter into and maintain an obedient love-faith relationship with Him.
His kingdom is open to anyone who bears the fruit of it, but we can't bear kingdom fruit unless we are connected to Him as branches on a vine, as He explained in John 15. The main New Testament text that dispensationalists use to support their claims is Romans 11. Let me just read some of the pertinent passages from that chapter. Paul says, "I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not, for I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not, but through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Now, if their fall is riches for the world and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness? For I speak to you Gentiles inasmuch as I am an apostle to the Gentiles. I magnify my ministry if by any means I may provoke to jealousy those who are my flesh and save some of them.
For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion. That blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written, 'The deliverer will come out of Zion, and he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob.
For this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.' Concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, even so these also have now been disobedient that through the mercy shown you, they also may obtain mercy.
For God has committed them all to disobedience that He might have mercy on all. Oh, the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out. Now, what I've observed is that dispensationalists club you so hard with this passage that they want you to forget everything else the New Testament says.
Dispensationalists quote this passage in a way to make it say that the fleshly Jews are still God's chosen people and that they will all be saved merely because they are fleshly Jews. Often, dispensationalists will jump all the way back to Zechariah to claim that God says that they're going to be all instantly converted to Christ in one day.
Now, whether we're talking about dispensationalism or any other spiritual topic, you never build a belief system around one New Testament passage, particularly when that same topic is discussed in many parts of the New Testament. You have to bring together all of the passages that deal with that subject. And I think anyone who looks at all of the New Testament passages on the topic of Israel will have to admit that this passage of Romans, as used by the dispensationalists, is an exceptional passage.
After all, the place of Jews and Gentiles in God's kingdom and the promises made to Abraham receive a considerable amount of attention in the New Testament. The entire first half of Romans is dedicated to that topic, nearly the whole book of Galatians, significant parts of Ephesians and Colossians, the whole epistle to the Hebrews, and parts of 1 Peter and the Gospels. We've looked at some of those passages tonight, but there are many, many others that teach the same thing that we've already seen.
So if this passage in Romans 11 is saying that the fleshly Israel is still God's special people, not the Israel of God, well, that would contradict the rest of the New Testament. So let's analyze it a little bit more carefully. I'm going to be using some insights here I gleaned from the early Christians. When a person reads the first 10 chapters of Romans, it would be easy for him to come away with the impression that the Jews are now a people that God has cursed and that there's no chance of salvation for them.
So Paul begins chapter 11 by explaining that God has not barred the fleshly Jews from being part of the Israel of God, being part of God's kingdom. In fact, he points out that he himself is a fleshly Jew. So in taking the kingdom away from the natural Jews, Jesus didn't mean that no fleshly Jews could be part of His kingdom. God has not rejected them in such a way that He now hates them and has locked them out of His kingdom.
The statement that dispensationalists particularly like to use from Romans 11 are verses 25 and 26, where Paul says, "Blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel will be saved." Now, dispensationalists use that passage to say, "See, all Jews are going to be saved." But is that really what Paul is saying? If so, then it's not true that there is no partiality with God, as the scriptures tell us. It's not true that there is neither Jew nor Greek.
All Israel, what does that mean? Does that mean that every Israelite who has ever lived will have eternal life? How can it? Jesus told so many of the Jews in His day that they were headed to Gehenna, eternal damnation. He even said it would be better for Sodom and Gomorrah on judgment day than for those Jews living in His day that He preached to. Well, does it mean every Jew living at some particular time in the future?
Well, if you hold to a Calvinistic view of salvation, that interpretation might sound reasonable. God just arbitrarily picks people to be saved, and so He can arbitrarily pick a certain generation of Jews. But the scriptures tell us that God desires that everyone be saved. So if He was going to arbitrarily just pick a certain person for salvation, then He would obviously pick everyone because His desire is for everyone to be saved.
Actually, there's nothing mysterious or unusual about those two verses I just read if you read the entirety of the epistle to the Romans. First of all, notice that Paul uses a transitional word, so, or at least that's the word used in the King James. The Greek word there is actually houtos, which is usually translated thus or in this manner. It always refers back to what was just said. And so we need to look at what Paul just said before we get to those verses.
So starting with verse 17 of this 11th chapter of Romans, Paul tells us, "If some of the branches were broken off and you, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree, do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, 'Well, branches were broken off that I might be grafted in.' Well said.
Because of unbelief, they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be haughty, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either. Therefore, consider the goodness and severity of God on those who fell severity, but toward you goodness if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. And they also, if they do not continue in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.
For if you were cut out of the olive tree, which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these who are natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree? Ah, this explains everything. Earlier in this same letter, Paul had explicitly said that not all Israel is really Israel and that He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, but rather He who is one inwardly. So in a sense, we all have to become Israelites.
We all have to become Jews in order to be saved. It's the Israel of God that will be saved. Now, the early Christians were divided as to whether the rootstock refers to Abraham or to Jesus, but either way, we are grafted into something that already existed. Regardless of who the root is, there's no denying that the trunk of the tree grew through the Israelite nation. Gentiles could still be saved in the Old Testament, but generally, that was by becoming part of Israel.
Paul says that many of the natural branches, meaning the fleshly Israelites, were broken off, and we Gentiles, referred to as wild olive branches, were grafted into that trunk and rootstock that goes back through the nation of Israel, back to Abraham. When we are grafted in, we become part of Israel, the Israel of God. And according to what we saw Jesus say in His letter to the church of Philadelphia, the fleshly Jews who have been broken off the tree are no longer true Jews. He calls them the synagogue of Satan.
But the good news is that the fleshly Jews can be grafted back onto the tree of Israel, just as we can be grafted onto it. But Paul says that they can be grafted back only if they do not continue in unbelief. We'll all be branches on the same tree, the Israel of God. That's why Paul says, "In this manner, all Israel will be saved.
No one who believes in Christ as their Lord will be left off of the tree, whether they are fleshly Jew or fleshly Gentile." So there's no room here for anti-Semitism or for us Gentiles to think that we are better than the Jews. Well, what about verse 28? It says, "Concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers." Well, here Paul shows that God practices the very thing He preaches. He has told us to love our enemies. What about Him?
Well, Paul tells us that even though the fleshly Jews are enemies of the gospel, God still loves them. He still works to draw them back to Him. Jesus died for the Jews just as He did for the Gentiles. So if God loves the Jews, we should love them as well. We're called on to love everyone, our friends and enemies alike. And the history of persecution of Jews by Catholics and Protestants is shameful. And please don't stumble over the word election.
John Calvin has done such a remarkable job that most Christians automatically think predestination when they hear that word. But the Greek word carries no implication of predestination, nor did the English word election before Calvin. In both Greek and English, elect simply means to choose. For example, in a few weeks, there's going to be an election here in the United States. It means that people are going to be choosing who they want to represent them in Congress and in various state elections.
So Paul is saying that when it comes to God choosing who is going to be in His kingdom, He still loves the Jews as much as He loves all mankind. What about verse 29? "For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." Now, that verse isn't so clear to either us or to the early Christians. Now, it's easy to list what the verse doesn't say. It doesn't say that God has two sets of chosen people, the Israel of God and fleshly Israel. It doesn't say that all Jews are going to be saved.
It says nothing about the Jews returning to the land of Palestine. In fact, it says nothing about dispensationalism at all. I think it ties in with verse 33, where Paul says, "Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out." God's plan of salvation for mankind is irrevocable. And His plan started with Abraham, worked through natural Israel up through the coming of the Messiah. Jesus was born a Jew.
He was a physical descendant of Abraham. And He preached almost to Jews alone. The 12 foundation stones on which He built His church were all Jews. So the rootstock and trunk of the church are both Jewish. At the same time, God's plan has always been that all of the nations of the earth would be blessed through Abraham. None of that has changed, and none of it will ever change. I certainly realize that tonight I haven't answered every issue concerning dispensationalism.
I would literally need to write a book to do that. But we have looked at several things tonight. First, dispensationalism is not the historic faith. Nobody taught this before the year 1800. So to believe in dispensationalism, we have to believe that every Christian was wrong for 1800 years. That for some reason, God gave J.N. Darby special revelation that he had kept from the church for 18 centuries. I mean, even the associates of the apostles knew nothing about this.
We also have to believe that for some reason, God chose to reveal these hidden things in scripture to a man who didn't understand the doctrine of the two kingdoms or non-resistance. Far more than that, Darby had no concept of the present reality of the kingdom of God. He said that the Sermon on the Mount applied to some future kingdom age, not to Christians. He also stressed unconditional eternal security.
So we're to believe that God had kept His church in the dark for 1800 years, and then He revealed these things to a false prophet who contradicted so many of the historic fundamentals of the Christian faith. Yet Jesus told us to beware of false prophets. So why would God make us go to a false prophet to get a proper understanding of the end times? This situation is essentially the same dilemma that I faced when I was a Jehovah's Witness. That's what I grew up as.
You see, they have their own prophetic system as well. And on the surface, it makes just as much sense as dispensationalism. It all fits together. Now, their focus isn't on the country of Israel. It's on the date 1914. This was the year when the Gentile times were supposed to end. And right on schedule here, World War I breaks out in 1914. And most world historians consider 1914 one of the major turning points in human history. So that gives credibility to the whole prophetic system of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Now, there are serious flaws when you start digging in and doing some independent research to look behind what they do claim. But on the surface, it definitely makes sense, and that's why so many people have joined the Witnesses. But when I started doing my own research when I was a Jehovah's Witness and reading the original writings of their founder, Charles Russell, I realized that he was a very sincere man, and he was right on a number of important issues like the two kingdoms.
But clearly, he was a false prophet. The things that he predicted, none of them turned out the way that he thought. The only thing he got right was the year 1914, but what was supposed to happen didn't happen the way that he had predicted it. So I thought to myself, under the biblical definition of what makes a prophet true or false, this man was a false prophet. And Jesus told us to beware of false prophets.
So why would Jesus use a false prophet to be the person that he gave an accurate understanding of end-time prophecies? It didn't make sense. I could not believe that my Lord would do that to us, to tell us to beware of them and then use one as His means of revealing what was happening in the end times. Well, you see, I have to ask the same question about dispensationalism.
Why would God choose a man who had no understanding of His kingdom, who preached a false gospel, who taught the Sermon on the Mount doesn't apply to us Christians? I mean, the early church would have called that horrendous heresy. And yet he would choose this man as his special instrument to reveal these secrets in scripture about the end times that were hidden from everyone else for 1800 years. You see, it just simply doesn't make sense.
After recording the message you've just heard, I've had a number of conversations with various kingdom Christians on the topic of Israel and dispensationalism. And they've asked me many sincere questions on the subject, questions that I didn't address in the original message I gave on dispensationalism that you've just heard. So I've decided to record another message on this topic that will answer various issues I didn't have time to address in the first message.
Now, the second message wasn't listed in Scroll Publishing's 2011 catalog, as I didn't prepare it until after that catalog had gone to press. But it is now available. And here are some of the questions we'll be looking into in the second message on dispensationalism. One, what about some of the claims of dispensationalists such as there will always be a distinction between Jews and Gentiles, that prophecies about Israel are not fulfilled in the church?
I'll also be addressing the question, is the creation of the modern state of Israel a fulfillment of Bible prophecy? We'll also be addressing the question of what is a Jew today as defined by the Jews themselves and by the state of Israel? What I found out on that question will come as quite a surprise to most of you. It was to me.
We'll also discuss the fact that was certainly new to me and will be, I think, to most of you, that many Orthodox Jews today reject the state of Israel and the claims that it has anything to do with Bible prophecy or with God. You'll get to hear what these practicing Jews today have to say on the whole matter. If this first message has left you with any questions in your mind, hopefully by the end of the second message, they'll be answered.