Why am I a dispensationalist?

I dare the covenant theologians to listen to this entire episode because you may just agree.

Hmm.

Dare you?

1, 2, 3.

Welcome to the Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast community.

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Welcome to another edition of the RAP Report.

I'm your host, Andrew Rapaport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member.

We are here to give you biblical interpretations and applications for the Christian life.

And what I want to do in the episode today is to provide for you, well, the answer that.

The answer to the question I get asked very often, why are you a dispensationalist?

You know, I want to first encourage you to listen to the entire episode.

The reason being is that many people claim they understand what a dispensationalist is, and they believe that they will, that they are.

Maybe they grew up dispensational.

Whatever it may be, they end up arguing that they understand dispensationalism, they think it's wrong, and usually they claim to know dispensationalism better than dispensationalists.

Just saying.

Now, I know that I have been accused of being a leaky dispensationalist.

Okay, I get it.

That may be true.

But let me at least explain why I hold to the topic of dispensationalism, and I'm going to define it in a moment and see whether or not you might say, you know what, at least the way Andrew believes in dispensationalism, I can agree.

Maybe, maybe not.

And I will ask that if you find this helpful, please share it with your friends, especially those Covenant theologians, so that they might hear what I'm saying, maybe even engage.

Now, I will give you a way that you can engage with me.

If you disagree with me, just go to apologeticslive.com on a Thursday night, 8 to 10 Eastern time.

That is a show where anyone can come in and challenge me with anything.

So if you disagree with me, man, encourage you to come to apologeticslive.com on Thursday nights and let's discuss debate, throw down whatever you want to do.

We'll do it there.

All right, let's get into this.

So, first off, dispensationalism versus Covenant theology.

Let me start with what dispensationalism is not.

And then give a definition of those two words I just mentioned if it's new to you.

Dispensationalism is not an end times view.

It is not a pre millennial view as many will accuse.

Many think of dispensationalism just as premillennialism as a view of end times where there's going to be a rapture followed by a thousand year literal kingdom of Jesus Christ reigning on earth.

Many people that believe amillennialism, there is no millennium post millennialism that Christ will come after the millennium and the millennium could be a long period of time, not a literal thousand years.

Those two groups will end up saying and you also have historic pre millennials that wouldn't agree with dispensational premillennials.

All these differences.

But the real up seeing is that they have their views that dispensationalism is just an end times view.

That is not what dispensationalism is.

Premillennial dispensationalism is a byproduct of dispensationalism.

It is not a definition of it.

Meaning that dispensationalism is a hermeneutic.

That word just means the art and science of interpretation.

And so it is the rules that we follow different than Covenant theology on interpreting scripture.

It's really that simple.

And so it comes down to how we interpret dispensationalism is going to interpret God's word differently than covenant theology.

And that is what we're talking about.

We're not talking about the view of end times.

We're not talking about the dispensations and how God works through history.

Yes, all of that is part of the differences between dispensationalism and covenant theology.

But that's not the definition of dispensationalism.

Now for those who hold the Covenant theology, you would not appreciate if I said what's historically true that Covenant theology comes out of the Catholic Church because well it does that harmeneutic came from the Catholic Church.

What you actually hold to is not really Covenant theology, though that's the term we know it's actually Reformed theology.

In other words, the Reformers took their Catholic backgrounds, they still interpreted scripture with the same mindset of the symbolism and but what they did do is they rightly got rid of the magistrates and the traditions and said no, we're just going to look at what scripture says about itself.

And that is Reformed theology.

This is why I struggle when people ask me if I'm Reformed, because it matters on what they mean by that in a historical sense.

I would not be Reformed because I wouldn't interpret the Bible with as much symbolism as Reformed theologians would as a dispensationalist.

And so why would a covenant theologian be upset if I say that they're believing in Catholic theology?

Well, because it wouldn't be true.

Yeah, that's right, it wouldn't be.

But historically, that's where that hermeneutic came out of.

And let's be clear, it isn't a perfect conclusion to say, well, it came out of the Catholic Church because rightly, there were genuine Christians that existed before the Catholic Church that used a similar way of interpreting, using a lot of symbolism.

We see it in the early Church Fathers.

When I say the Roman Catholic Church, I'm referring to the Church that exists today, which really didn't technically exist until about what, 1100 AD.

So they would claim they go all the way back to Christ, but their doctrines they hold to today weren't really solidified until then.

And so that would be something that we could debate about.

But just as I would not say that Covenant theology is Catholic, Roman Catholic theology, any Covenant theologian would get upset with me, and I could say rightly so.

But I say this to say, be careful, because when you make accusations about dispensationalism, that it's just about end times or it's just about the charts, the different dispensations, the way God works through history with his people, that's not what dispensationalism is any more than arguing covenant theology is Roman Catholicism.

Both are bad arguments.

So I hope at least you'd see that I will defend against bad arguments dispensationals make against covenant theologians as well.

Now, some will argue that covenant theology is more biblical because the word covenant appears in the Bible.

Well, when we do look at what a dispensation is, it's based on the covenant.

So dispensationalists would hold to, you know, five covenants, seven covenants, because they would.

Or dispensations, I should say, because they see five or seven covenants in the Bible.

Covenant theology would have three.

We can get into that in more detail maybe on a later show.

What I want to focus here on is, is mostly about the interpretation styles.

Maybe if I have time at the end, I will address the different dispensations.

So I think it's a bad argument to say that covenant theology is more biblical than dispensationalism because the word covenant appears in the Bible, because a covenant and covenant theology are two different things.

Therefore it's a fallacy of equivocation.

You're using the same word two different ways.

One is a covenant, a covenant, a contract between God and man.

The other is a theological system, really a way of interpreting scripture.

So with that said, let's address what we're talking about.

How do we interpret the Bible?

There are three things that we would say are the caum of dispensationalism, that is Latin for that which is without.

So in other words, you cannot have dispensationalism without these three elements.

The way it's.

The first one is often referred to as a literal, or some would use normal.

I actually prefer a friend of mine, Keith Fosky's language of a literal.

Sorry, a literary hermeneutic.

He's not dispensational.

He would be what's called progressive covenantalism.

It used to be referred to as New Covenant Theology.

And so even though he and I would not agree completely, I think his use of that word fits well, because what the idea of it is that we are going to take the Scriptures in its literary context.

In other words, we're going to see it in its literary style and interpret it that way.

And the.

The idea of literal, I think, is problematic, and many dispensationals do, because the way it's been attacked is to say that we take everything completely literal.

If I am say.

If I say I'm so hungry I can eat a cow.

None of you believe I can eat a literal cow only because you've never seen me eat.

I say that because I have eaten a lot of beef in one sitting, but it was not a whole cow, but it was five pounds.

And so the reality is, you understand that as an idiom, you understand that that's not meant to be taken literal.

And so that would be.

They call it a literary.

A literal style.

I think that that's problematic because people say, oh, you have to take everything literal.

Well, I think that many dispensationalists try to accommodate for that and try to correct it and use the word normal.

What they mean by normal is that different genres or styles of literature have different rules, and you would follow the normal rule for that literature.

I think that that still becomes a little problematic because it.

What it does is when you compare dispensationalism to covenant theology and you say that dispensationalism is normal, what does that say about covenant theology?

Well, the conclusion many would make is that it's abnormal.

I don't think that's a fair assessment either.

So I don't.

I don't like the normal because of the implication it has on Covenant theology.

So I really like the word literary.

And a literary harmeneutic is the idea of interpreting this, the passage of Scripture that we have, based on the literary style and the rules that apply to that literature.

So that's the first thing.

So I may be a little bit more unique in calling it a literary hermeneutic or literary style rather than a literal or normal.

A second major issue, and this comes out of this literary style of the looking at the way we interpret Scripture in what some used to call literal, others call normal, I'm calling literary.

The outcome of that is seeing more of a separation between Israel and the Church.

Now, notice I said more and not a complete distinction between the two.

A lot of the issue between Covenant theology and dispensationalism is the issue of how much continuity and discontinuity there is between Israel and the Church.

I think that many dispensationalists accuse Covenant theologians of seeing them as completely one.

That's not true for all Covenant theologians.

And when I say Covenant theologian, I also, I'm really referring to Reformed theologians.

I'm using that sort of interchangeably because I know that most people, when they talk about Covenant theology, they're really talking what we call Reformed theology, just historically, okay?

So please don't beat me up over those terms.

They are.

I'm trying to.

To be as careful as I can, but at the same time use the language many people are using.

So where you have a people in Covenant theology that would say that dispensationals see a hard divide, that is, there's no similarity between Israel and the Church.

I don't think that's true either.

I think that both groups see that there's some continuity and discontinuity.

Now, for those who want to say that Covenant theology doesn't see a discontinuity between Israel and the Church, I would ask the question, do you keep kosher?

Do you celebrate the Passover, which is commanded to be celebrated forever?

So if there's no distinction, then all Christians should be keeping the Passover forever.

It's a command.

So that would be an issue.

Now, obviously they don't keep kosher.

They don't keep the passer most.

And.

And therefore there is some distinction that they are recognizing between Israel and the Church.

Now the only question is how much distinction do you.

Do we see?

And so where I would see more of a discontinuity.

So Israel and the church would be more separated.

Covenant theologians would see more continuity, meaning that they would see more similarity between Israel and the church.

Now, I do think some of this comes out of the Catholic Church wanting to try to claim they are Israel, claiming an authority that.

That the church didn't have that specific group of peoples, especially after they split with the Orthodox.

So I say this just to say that I think that some of the influence may be from the Roman Catholic Church there, but there are a lot of similarities there.

Okay?

I'm not disputing that.

Now, we see in Romans where Paul will say that not all Israel is Israel, and this is the area where we have people that will argue.

So you see, it says not all Israel is Israel.

Therefore this must be the case that we have all of you know, the church is Israel.

Now, what they mean by that is that when a covenant theologian would say that is that God has his people, the believers, and he works with them through two different administrations.

And so you have God's people, God's chosen people, those who are redeemed, both Old Testament, New Testament.

And so they would say the.

Those are Old Testament, say Old Testament church and New Testament Israel.

In other words, it's the same body of believers, but some are in the Old Testament, some are in the New Testament.

Two different administrations, but one body of believers.

I could agree with that as a dispensationalist.

Okay.

But yet I see a distinction between the church and Israel.

As I said, Israel has to keep the Passover, keep kosher.

The church does not.

So let me try to explain this in a way that might be helpful.

Maybe it won't be, but I always like to start with areas that we would agree.

So if you believe in Covenant theology, I think you could agree with me that during the, the.

The Dark Ages, there was a view of the church that, to help define the church, that the theologians came up with a term that we would refer to as the visible or local church versus the invisible universal church.

Let me explain those.

If those terms are new to you, the universal or invisible church was referring only to believers and believers everywhere as the body of Christ.

This is.

No matter what church you go to, if you are redeemed in Christ, you're part of this universal, invisible church.

It's made up only of believers and believers everywhere.

The local or visible church is where people would gather, that would be made up of believers and unbelievers.

So it's not for believers only.

And it's local to.

To that, that group, that fellowship on a Sunday for the worship of God.

Now, I don't think anyone's going to disagree with me on that, whether Covenant theology or dispensational theology.

Taking that thinking, what I'd like to do is apply that to the Old Testament Israel.

Okay.

So instead of looking at Israel's one body, I think some of the distinction comes into.

Just as in the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, there was a fight over the church of distinguishing between a local group that gathers and those that are the universal church.

They tried to define that and.

And separate that.

I think we need to do the same thing with Israel.

Israel had a group as a nation.

It was made up of redeemed people and unredeemed people.

So as a nation, what I would call national Israel is equivalent to that local or visible church, let's say local or visible Israel.

It's made up of believers and unbelievers.

Where the spiritual Israel as Paul refers to, I'm going to say that's equivalent to the invisible or universal church.

In other words, it would be invisible or universal Israel.

I call it spiritual Israel.

In other words, that is made up of only Redeemers and the redeemed everywhere.

In fact, I will argue that that might include those who were not born of Abraham, such as, you know, Nebuchadnezzar.

I believe that in Babylon he.

He came to redemption.

We'll find out in heaven if I'm right.

Lots of debate over that.

You can have your view disagree with me.

Hey, apologexlive.com come join me.

But what I do want to point out is that as we look at that, it's the idea that there is a distinction between that visible and invisible Israel, what I call national and spiritual Israel, just like we make that distinction in the church.

So if you can accept that, that there could be that distinction, maybe you can agree with me.

And it's that distinction that helps me to understand Israel of the Old Testament.

There was many who would.

Would in a sense be God's people, God's chosen people, because they're born from Abraham.

But that doesn't make them redeemed.

They were not believers and we won't see them in heaven.

So just recognize that they would be part of that local, visible Israel, national Israel.

But then there's a separate part that's just than those that are redeemed.

Just like in the church that you go to, your church has those that are redeemed and probably some who are not hard to think about.

Yeah, I get it.

This is the distinction that I. I try to make with it just in my understanding.

Third point.

So first is a literary hermeneutic versus I didn't mention what covenant theology would have more of a spiritual hermeneutic.

I should actually explain that a bit more.

So in a literary hermeneutic.

The example I always give is Song of Solomon because I just think it's easiest.

I would look at Song of Solomon and look at that as a wedding procedure and honeymoon.

That's the way it's laid out.

It's a wedding ceremony and honeymoon ceremony.

So that's what I would see.

It is.

But if you're a covenant theologian and you have the hermeneutic that everything must point to Christ.

We'll get to that in a moment.

Then you got to find Christ in the Song of Solomon.

How do you do that?

Well, then you say Song of Solomon is actually talking about Christ and the church.

Now this becomes issue because as a dispensationalist, I say, yeah, but that's a thousand years before there was a church.

A covenant theologian would say, no, the Old Testament.

Israel is the church in the Old Testament.

Okay.

And so.

And I hope that you're seeing, I'm trying to be fair with both sides, point out the problems of both sides, point out the good things of both sides.

I don't think either one of them is heresy.

And I don't think.

I personally do not think we should be dividing, as people do on social media, over these issues.

I would really, really, really hope that this podcast would help bring unity.

Less division, more unity.

So we as believers would gather together to fight where the real fight is, and that's with the world and not each other.

Ouch.

So a covenant theologian would say the Song of Solomon as more about Christ and the church, which I wonder about, because there's some pretty sexual connotations in there.

And that's not what I would think of with Christ and the church.

But because they have to find Christ there, they're looking for that.

So they're going to make it more symbolic where I'm going to look at it more literary style and see it as a wedding we could look at.

This is why a byproduct of dispensationalism is premillennialism.

And I say it's a byproduct and not the purpose of it, but a byproduct of it is, when we come to Revelation 20, a dispensationalist in a Literal style would look at the.

The thousand year kingdom that's repeated six times in six verses.

And there's.

We would look at that and say it's a literal thousand years.

Because the text seems to indicate that a covenant theologian would look at that, say, no, the thousand years is symbolic.

For a long period of time.

Everything that it's describing is symbolic.

That would be the difference between what people used to call literal versus figurative or normal versus spiritual.

And so I'm gonna say, I will use the terminology between a literary hermeneutic versus a Christocentric hermeneutic.

Why do I say Christocentric?

Because it tries to focus on Christ in every passage and looking for him through throughout every verse of Scripture.

And the reason that they would do that is the third distinction that we would have, the third point of dispensationalism.

So you have the literary hermeneutic, you have the distinction, great greater distinction between Israel and the Church.

And the third is dispensationalism would be what we call doxological versus covenant theology, which would be more Christian Christological, meaning a covenant theologian would be seeing Christ in every passage of Scripture.

So they would look to find where that is.

And a dispensationalist would see God's glory.

That's what doxological means.

God's glory is the purpose of every verse of Scripture.

So I can look at Song of Solomon, say, this is the description of the love that we have in that.

That beginning part of marriage in that honeymoon phase.

And that is a godly marriage, the way we should be in our marriage.

And this is something that we should have.

And I could see a.

That as describing the love we should have for one another in marriage and continue to have that.

Granted, Solomon didn't quite do that so well, but that should be.

And that brings God glory.

Where a covenant theologian christologically is looking for Christ and, and looks for the church in that.

So the church is the bride.

The groom not being Solomon is Christ.

Now when you do that, because it's Christological, you're going to now, in a book like that, say, well, then how do you apply this a thousand years before there was a church?

Well, you start to see more continu.

Continuity between the church and Israel and therefore it fits.

Okay, did you hear that Covenant theologians, I actually can argue that you have some consistency in your position because it is a system that works together.

But just because a system works together doesn't make it right.

Because every religious group has a system that Works because when they're challenged, they find a way to make it work if they need to.

So just because a system fits together does not make it right.

Okay, So I hope that helps us with a definition of terms.

Lots of explanation to it.

I understand.

And maybe some dispensationalists are throwing me out of the kingdom already.

So are the covenant theologians.

But you guys could get together and throw me out of the kingdom.

So with that, let's get into why I am a dispensationalist.

I think the real core issue that we have between Reformed theology and dispensational theology, as I said, comes down to how we interpret Scripture.

Reformed theology is going to take more liberty in my view, take more liberty with the word of God in, in saying things, things that it may not say.

Now, notice I'm not saying it doesn't.

I'm saying I just don't know that it does.

In other words, I will want to be a little bit more restrictive to what the text like says in the authorial intent of the meaning, and not try to find either a spiritual meaning, a dual meaning, some meaning that I would take other than what is clear there.

Now, when you are looking to.

To find a Christological meaning, you're going to, you're going to look at the Scripture sometimes more symbolically than I would be comfortable with.

Let me give an example.

A friend of mine, Matt Slick, we.

We've debated a bunch of things.

We're good friends, disagree theologically on many things.

I'm Baptist, he's Presbyterian, I'm a cessationist, he's a continuationist, I'm dispensationalist, he's a covenant theologian.

You know, baptism, I mean, there's.

We can go on with different things we disagree on.

Now, Matt and I were discussing and debating dispensationalism versus covenant theology.

And one of an interesting discussion that we got into is the offering of Isaac.

Okay.

Matt says that the offering of Isaac is a type of Christ.

In other words, it's a foreshadowing of Christ.

The way he looks at it is that there's so much similarity that this was a type of Christ.

I take a more conservative position in saying that it has a lot of similarities.

There's a lot of similarities between the offering of Isaac and the offering of Christ.

But I don't say it's a type of Christ.

Why?

Because there's nowhere in Scripture where I see the offering of Isaac described as a type of Christ.

Now, was Jonah described by Christ himself?

As a type?

Yes.

So was Jonah three days and three nights in the belly of a fish, a type of Jesus being in the body, in the.

In the grave, three days and three nights?

Yes.

Yes.

Jonah was a type of Christ.

Why Scripture says so?

Notice what I'm.

What I did there.

Now, for any Presbyterians, let me appeal to you, the Presbyterians and not all Presbyterians, some reform for other Reformed folks would have.

This as well is a view that we would call when it comes to worship.

There.

There's this view of worship that, that people have that one would.

Some would say that as they look at it, that there is.

When we come to how we should worship, some argue we should only worship God the way Scripture explicitly says to worship God.

This is called the regulatory principle.

So Scripture has to explicitly say it for us to do it in worship.

The normative principle is that if Scripture doesn't say you can't do it, then you're okay to do it.

Let's give an example.

Can you have drums in a worship service?

Regulatory principle would say no, because Scripture didn't explicitly say that you can have drums.

Stringed instruments, yes.

So maybe a piano counts for that.

But drums, no where normative principle.

Well, Scripture doesn't say you can have drums, therefore you can.

Okay?

Do you understand how.

See how that works?

I applied the regulatory principle to how I interpret Scripture.

In other words, if Scripture doesn't explicitly say something, then I don't hold to it.

That's why, essentially, that is why I am a dispensationalist.

Because I do not want to go beyond what Scripture is going to say we can do.

So what I look to do there is say if Scripture is going to say, hey, this is something, then I say that if it doesn't say it, I do not feel at liberty to look at other passages of scripture and start to apply a meaning that may not be there.

Even if it works really good, that you can put a whole system together and go from Scripture verse to Scripture verse to come about a conclusion, okay?

And so that's really what causes me to be a dispensationalist.

I. I am afraid to stand before God and have God tell me that I said something.

Was God's word, God spoken that he didn't say?

Now may God tell me that I did not go far enough.

He very well might.

But I don't want him to say that I went beyond his word and said it was his word.

Does that least make sense?

So if you accuse me of.

Of being bad, being A heretic being, a, you know, this dispensationalist that has false teaching.

All these things I've been accused of because of my view, because I claim to be dispensational.

At least hear this part.

The reason that I hold to these views of how I interpret Scripture and hold to dispensationalism is because of the fact that I fear God and I'm afraid to go beyond God's Word, saying it's God's Word.

So at least understand why I do that.

If I'm wrong, I'm wrong because I fear God too much.

I don't want to go beyond what he says.

My view with some notice why I said some.

I'm not saying all.

The view I have with some covenant theologians, Reformed theologians, is that I. I fear they take too much liberty with God's Word jumping all around the Bible and saying this is the way Scripture is.

And what they've done is jumped around and proof texted a bunch of things and gave God's Word a meaning that God's Word didn't have.

Now, when cults do that, I argue that that's Satanic.

Now, I'm not saying Reformed theology is Satanic, but it is Satan who twists God's Word.

Right now, I'm not saying that any covenant theologian or reformed theologian is doing that purposefully.

They're doing it because they have a view that God's Word is not a normal book.

I, as a dispensationalist, am going to interpret God's Word using the rules of language.

A covenant theologian or Reformed theologian is going to say that God's Word, the Bible, is not a normal book, so you don't interpret it with normal rules.

Now, I agree that God's Word is definitely not a normal book, but I don't think we need different rules for it.

And the reason being is God gave us His Word in language, and he gave rules for language.

And so we know how to interpret in language.

And therefore I look to those words and say, this is how it should be.

So that is why I hold to this view, because I look at the language of scripture.

The styles, whether it's historical narrative, whether it's poetry, whether it's prophecy, whether it is instructional.

And I will interpret it in that style using those rules of that genre of literature, rather than seeing the whole Bible as if it's one style of literature and.

And interpreting it with a Christocentric view of seeing how it.

How we take one passage of Scripture and another past Scripture, because It uses the same words or language and say, well, they have the same meaning.

Meaning, I would interpret each of those separately and then understand the meanings of each separately to see if they are together.

So where a covenant theologian would look at the Old Testament, say that the.

We use the New Testament to interpret the Old Testament.

I would say that the New Testament informs our understanding of the Old Testament.

But we must interpret the Old Testament in its context, its literature style, in its historical context, its spiritual context, all of that grammatical context.

We interpret that, then we interpret the New.

But the New will inform the Old.

Great example.

In the Old Testament we have a reference to Israel, the nation of Israel, coming out of Egypt.

Out of Egypt I will call my Son.

But in Matthew, that refers specifically to Jesus Christ.

Now if you had just the Old Testament, that passage would apply to the nation of Israel, but the New Testament informs us.

So we see is that God had a double meaning there.

We would not.

I don't want to add a double meaning, but when God puts a double meaning, I'm okay with it because, well, it's God's word.

So when he speaks of Israel, out of Israel, I will call my Son in the Old Testament, I'm going to interpret that as Israel in the Old Testament.

But when I come to Matthew, I'm going to say, but God had that as a prophecy for Israel.

If.

Notice I said if.

If that was exactly what Matthew was quoting, because we actually don't know that because Matthew did not say.

And I'm drawing a blank right now.

I think it's Micah.

He didn't say the prophet Micah said he just referenced something.

And so was that a reference that people knew at the time as a prophecy of the Messiah that wasn't recorded in Scripture?

That's possible.

I do think it might be referencing the Old Testament passage If, if it's in Micah, I can't remember exactly right now, but.

But I think that's okay.

Then God would have a dual meaning.

So.

But what I'm going to do is interpret both Old Testament, New Testament in their individual context.

And then I'm going to let the New Testament inform the Old where it's giving some more information.

Because I believe in a progressive revolution revelation that the revelation came about and we.

We got more revelation, more information.

That's what we learned from the covenants or what we might call dispensations.

So what we see here is that I am taking a dispensational view because out of a fear of God, I want to be more restrictive in My interpretation and not beyond what I think God's word says.

Can you agree with me that that's a fair thing to do?

I'm not saying that I'm absolutely right.

I'm not saying covenant theologians are absolutely wrong.

But I am saying that when I stand before God, I want to be able to say that I didn't go beyond His Word.

I did not take something that he did not say and say he said it.

And a dispensational view leads to that.

Let me take a little bit of time since I have to explain the dispensations.

As I said, I believe in progressive revelation.

We throughout history got more revelation.

With more revelation, we got more understanding of God and how he deals with people.

Each of the covenants that we see in the Old Testament, whether it's the one with Adam or Noah or Abraham or Moses or David, if you want to debate whether that is one or what I will.

What we would call the new covenant, which is with Christ or what some would see in dispensationalism, we would see a seventh covenant being the millennial kingdom.

But when we look at those covenants, what do we have?

We have new revelation because God is speaking.

We have new rules.

Don't do this and do this.

New instructions of how God's going to deal with his people.

And in each of those times, there's changes that he makes to the way he will work with his creation, his people, those created in the image of God.

And so with each covenant comes new instruction.

Each of those covenants we would call a dispensation.

Now, do God's people change?

Again, it depends.

Invisible versus visible, how you're going to deal with that.

I would say that there is a, if you want to say, universal people of God that spans all of creation, that there are those who are universally God's people, redeemed people that are all believers everywhere throughout time.

And all of them, I could agree with that.

But it doesn't mean that everyone throughout time was believer, our believers.

So you just understand how I'm using that.

So when we.

We see the dispensations, it deals with the way God.

God works in different periods of time with his people.

And they are all tied to a covenant that God makes with his people for that time period.

So I hope that helps you to understand a little bit about what I mean, maybe not others, but what I mean when I refer to a dispensation.

Therefore, I personally believe I'm more covenantal than covenantalist because I hold to you know, seven covenants and not just three.

So I hope this is helpful.

I hope that you, you got something out of this to realize some differences.

My real hope in doing this episode is to encourage each of us to maybe put down our arms against one another, have a little bit of forbearance and long suffering with those we might disagree with theologically.

I can guarantee one thing to all of you listening and myself, we are all wrong in our theology somewhere.

That's right.

We don't know where, because if we knew where, honestly knew where we were wrong, we would change that.

But we don't know where that is, and that's why we don't change it.

And so because of these two different views, people come to different conclusions in Scripture.

And so a covenant theologian may not all Presbyterians would come to this where Baptists wouldn't, to an infant baptism because they would see the covenant, that the covenant is for the family.

And therefore when a child is born, they're born into a covenant relationship with God until they get to some either age of accountability or point where they're accountable for their own actions.

And so they would be baptized as a sign of being in the covenant.

That doesn't mean they have a guaranteed ticket to heaven any more than baptism, sorry, circumcision, did for the Jewish people.

And so they see an equivocation between baptism and circumcision, and they see a circumcision was something that was done as a sign to the, the Jewish males to bring them into a covenant relationship with God, such is baptism.

And therefore that would be done two children.

That's a consistent view with a covenant perspective.

Now, there's Reformed Baptists who would disagree with that.

They would still say that they hold to a covenant theology.

Of course, there's those covenant theologians that say that those people aren't really covenant.

But, but that is something that we end up seeing.

There is still distinctions even within covenant theology.

So I, I'm pointing this all out just really with a heart's desire to get you to see that we need to have a little bit more unity within the body of Christ.

That's, that's my goal and my hope for this episode.

So if you, if you disagree with me again, apologexlive.com Thursday night.

Come on in, let's discuss it the second hour.

I usually, if we have a guest, we will deal with the guest for the first hour.

But if there is a, you know, the second hour, we deal with different things.

Anyone that can come in.

So if if you want, you could challenge me there.

I but I do hope at least this has been helpful to understand my perspective on why I hold to dispensation.

Dispensationalism.

You want to call me a leaky dispensationalist or is my, one of my co hosts on Apologetics Live says I'm the leakiest dispensationalist he's ever known because I agree with him on a lot of things as far as the views of Israel and the Church.

You might accuse me of being so leaky that I may not be dispensational.

Well, maybe you have a different view of dispensationalism than dispensationals have.

Or maybe I have a different view of view.

Maybe I shouldn't call myself that.

Well, I can call myself a reportian because my last name is Rapaport and but I, I, I'm just trying to be faithful to God's word and not go beyond God's word.

So I hope this is is helpful.

I, you know, I'm doing this partially because if, if you haven't seen the art, the magazine Fight Laugh Feast magazine and has a entire magazine issue devoted to basically attacking dispensationalism.

And fine, they asked whether I would write an article giving my testimony coming from a Jewish background.

And no, I'm not dispensationalist just because I'm from a Jewish background, but they wanted to get my testimony coming from Jewish background coming to Christ in an issue where everything else I probably disagree.

I haven't read everything yet, but I have read some.

And so I think that I might disagree with some of the conclusions they've come to.

But I'm okay with writing an article in there.

Why?

Because I think we need to have a little bit more unity where we agree.

And I think we need to stop with tribalism within Christianity dividing.

What is it Satan would love more?

The enemy would love Christians to be divided.

And so often we are helping his cause.

So I plead beg passionately of you as a listener to please consider unity over division.

Can we disagree?

Yes, clearly.

You see, I disagree with those that hold to aspects of covenant theology.

Does that mean I can't get along with them?

No, I can get along with them and I can see where they make valid points and, and maybe there's times where they make better points than I make.

But I want to be faithful to my understanding of God's Word and they want to be faithful to their understanding of God's word.

And let's try to work together in that, to learn from one another.

Am I convincing you to be a dispensationalist?

No, I think that's really up to God to do.

I would say that I. I just would encourage you not to go beyond what God's word says.

And let's be careful in that.

That's.

That's my biggest concern.

I would hope it's one for you as well.

If you're convinced, convinced by covenant theology, congratulations.

But it's.

It's something that I. I'm just not going to be convinced of, at least right now or hold to because I am too scared of going beyond what God says.

And so I hope that that explains my view.

Hope it gave you, if nothing else, food for thought.

I hope that this gave you something to think about.

Please, I don't care if you believe in Covenant theology, Reformed theology, but don't misrepresent dispensationalism.

And if you're a dispensationalist, please don't misrepresent Covenant Reformed theology.

Let's be faithful to what we hold to and honest with what others hold to not misrepresenting them because it makes a better argument for us.

So therefore, I just want you to consider that.

I want you to think about that.

I want you to pray about that.

Go to God's word and see.

I hope this has been encouraging to you.

I hope that is exalted God edified and equipped the saints.

If you are a believer in Christ, I hope this was edifying to you.

If you're not a believer in Christ, may I evangelize you and tell you that as someone who is not a Christian, you have broken God's law, just as I have.

And you need to repent.

You need to turn from trusting yourself as a good person, trusting your good works.

Turn and trust Jesus Christ.

That's what all of us must do to be converted.

So I hope that that is helpful, educational and encouraging to you.

May you share this episode with others.

Let others know about this so they too may learn.

Maybe you know a covenant theologian that needs to hear this because maybe they're too strong on the issue.

Maybe a dispensational is too strong on the issue.

Share it with them.

Maybe you just want to encourage others.

So it would be a great help if you wouldn't mind sharing this session, this episode with friends.

Go text it out to five friends right now.

Just share this right now in whatever app you have.

Share with five friends via text.

That would be wonderful.

And so I do thank you for listening all the way to the end and encourage you to continue studying out God's word.

And with that, that's a wrap.

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