ISRAEL'S
MESSIANIC KINGDOM
Miles
J. Stanford
The third major
leakage of Covenant Theology into Dispensationalism concerns Israel’s
Millennial Kingdom.
KINGDOMIZATION
--
After Dr. Chafer’s Homegoing in 1952, Dallas [Theological Seminary, Dallas,
Texas], and similar dispensational schools and organizations, began to
soften and blur the sharp Pauline distinctions of the rightly divided Word.
The inevitable result has been that the Church is deprived of her heavenly
identity. She begins to take on the earthly characteristics of Israel, its
New Covenant, its Sermon, its Law, and its Kingdom.
As far back as 1875, Mr. J.B. Stoney said:
I fear there is
a tendency abroad to exaggerate the standing and state of the OT saints
in order to make little difference between the Church and Israel, and
thus the heavenly distinctiveness is weakened and lost. The aim of the
enemy from a very early date was to draw the saints from their heavenly
calling (see Hebrews). Once heaven as a present position and portion is
surrendered, the great privilege and position of the Church, the Body of
Christ, is drained away.
For some time the
catchword from seminary to church has been “kingdom.” Dispensational
distinctions have been broken down to the point where: 1) The Church is a
phase of Israel’s future millennial kingdom; 2) There is a recognition
of a present form of the theocratic kingdom: “now/not yet.”
No wonder the Church is being flattened out and bound to the horizontal
plane of Israel’s kingdom! Little wonder believers are being deprived of the
knowledge and benefits of their vertical heavenly position in the Son at the
Father’s right hand. This is not grace teaching, and hence not Church
teaching. It is simply a fall from the cutting edge of Pauline
Dispensationalism to the earthly law-oriented realm of Covenant and
Theonomic theology.
One of the contributing factors to the kingdomization of the Church is the
breakdown of the distinction between the “kingdom of God,” and the ‘”kingdom
of heaven.” During the last 20 years or so dispensational leaders have been
forsaking the distinctiveness of the kingdom of heaven as set forth in
Matthew, more and more making it synonymous with the kingdom of God. But
when the kingdom of heaven is no longer considered to be strictly Israel’s
coming Messianic Kingdom, there emerges a loss of the scriptural separation
between earthly Israel and the heavenly Church. Grace is made to partake of
law.
CONTEMPORARY
CONFUSION --
Nearly 50 years ago Dr. Chafer warned:
It has been a
constant disposition on the part of certain writers to invest OT saints
with the same position, qualities, and standing as those which belong to
the believers who comprise the Church.
And there is more recently a disposition to carry the same realities
that belong to the saved of this dispensation over into the kingdom
dispensation and to Jews and Gentiles alike. Such assumptions are
avoided when it is recognized that to the Church alone is
accorded the heavenly position and glory. Of her alone it is declared
that each of her members who make up Christ’s Body is made meet to be a
partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. (Systematic
Theology III: 327).
Nearly 75 years ago
Dr. Newell predicted:
Failure to
rightly divide between Kingdom and Church will lead to a wrong
conception of the Bible, and a false interpretation of its truth and
application of its promises.
One of the first things that will happen will be to spiritualize
the kingdom promises of the OT and attempt to make them apply to the
Church of this dispensation. This only results in confusion and
conflict.
Conditions today in
the seminaries and churches could not have been more accurately predicted!
Dr. Donald K. Campbell, president of Dallas, wrote in the book, Essays in
Honor of J. D. Pentecost, 1985 (p. 155):
The two opposite
viewpoints of premillennialism and amillennialism are still with us,
though some modifications are taking place. Some premillennialists now
view the present Church dispensation as the first phase of the
fulfillment of the promised messianic kingdom, in that believers now
experience the spiritual blessings of the kingdom, such as the blessings
of Israel’s New Covenant.
This is indicative
of the dispensational impoverishment of the Church. Take Israel’s New
Covenant away from these Neo-Dispensational “modifiers,” and “progressives,”
and their entire house of cards will collapse!
Dr. C.A. Blaising wrote in Bib Sac of July/Sept., 1988, p. 276:
It is amazing
that in the writings of Walvoord, Pentecost, and Ryrie published in the
‘50s and ‘60s, the heavenly/earthly dualistic language is gone. A
distinction between Israel and the Church is vigorously asserted and all
the theological structures of distinction are present, except
[that’s all it takes!] that the eternal destinies of the two peoples now
share the same sphere. [In Christ?]
Consequently, the heavenly/earthly distinctions are dropped. Thus is
begun a slow movement [30 years] away from the scholastic,
classic, absolute distinction [between Israel and the Church]
found from Darby to Chafer.”
Since there is this
development (among dispensational seminarians) of relating the Church to
Israel’s Millennial Kingdom, we will share some material by Dr. Chafer to
the contrary:
The teachings of
the Kingdom have not been applied to men in all ages; nay, they have not
been applied to any man. Since they anticipate the binding of Satan, a
purified earth, the restoration of Israel, and the personal reign of the
King, they cannot be applied until God’s appointed time when these
accompanying conditions on the earth have been brought to pass.
The kingdom laws will be addressed to Israel and beyond them to all the
nations which will enter the Kingdom. It will be the first and only
universal reign of righteousness and peace in the history of the world.
One nation was in view when the law of Moses was in force in the
earth; the individual is in view during the dispensation of grace
[sic]; and the whole social order of mankind will be in
view when the Kingdom is established on the earth.
The Church is not once mentioned in relation to the teachings of the
Kingdom, nor are those teachings applied to her; for her part in the
Kingdom is not to be reigned over, but to reign with Christ, her Head.
She, being the Bride of the King, is His Consort. She will be under the
heavenly teachings of grace, and her home will be in the bosom of
the Bridegroom in the ivory palace of the King.
The King will rule with a rod of iron. Sin and iniquity will be rebuked
instantly and judged in perfect righteousness. Clear conception of the
glory of the Kingdom is lost if it is confused with the dispensation of
grace [sic].
There is a dangerous and entirely baseless sentiment abroad which
assumes that every teaching of Jesus must be binding during this
dispensation [sic] simply because He said it. The fact is
forgotten that the Lord Jesus, while living under, keeping, and applying
the Law of Moses, also taught the principles of His future
Kingdom, and at the end of His ministry and in relation to His
Cross, He also anticipated the teachings of Grace. If this
threefold division of His teachings is not recognized, there can be
nothing but confusion of mind and consequent contradiction of truth.
The teachings of Grace are perfect and sufficient in themselves.
They provide for the instruction of the child of God in every situation
that may arise. There is no need that they be supplemented, or
augmented, by the addition of precepts from either the Law of Moses or
the teachings of the Kingdom (IV: 224).
MILLENNIAL SAINT --
Mr. J. Butler Stoney, Darby contemporary, gives us another slant on the same
distinction between the Church and Israel’s Kingdom:
The difference
between this present dispensation and that of the millennium is very
distinct. The Christian is now joined to Christ and is one spirit with
Him. Since I am united to Him, He is my Life; “the law of the Spirit of
life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and
death” (Rom. 8:2).
“The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son
of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). Here I have
died, and my life is hid with Christ in God. The future earthly kingdom
saint will live here on earth, but he will not be united to the Lord
Jesus, he will not be dead to the flesh and the world, and he will be a
man living in all the commandments and ordinances of the law blameless.
This then is the great difference—the heavenly saint has a standing of
complete deliverance from the man in the flesh; while the millennial
saint will be through grace empowered by the Spirit to do what God
requires from man in the flesh. “For this is the covenant that I will
make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will
put My laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts” (Heb.
8:10).
Again, the way into the Holiest of All is now made manifest. We—the
heavenly believers--have “boldness to enter into the Holiest by the
Blood of Jesus... through the veil, that is to say, His flesh” (Heb.
10:19, 20). The earthly millennial saint, though cleansed of his sins by
the Blood, cannot speak of being inside the veil, because his
dispensation is connected with this earth. If we admit that our position
as worshippers is inside the veil, we must admit another great
difference between a heavenly and an earthly saint.
One more difference is to be noticed: the saint united to the Lord Jesus
in heaven, knowing deliverance in Him and worshiping in the Holiest of
All, has a place in heaven prepared for him by the Lord Jesus Christ,
which an earthly kingdom saint never could have.
True, he can speak of knowing the Lord of heaven and earth wherein
dwelleth righteousness, when all things are made new; but he cannot
speak of having a place prepared for him in the Father’s house, and
still less speak of being raised up together with Christ, and made to
sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:6).
Thus we see the difference in status between the heavenly and the
earthly saint. First, the connection with Christ is different, the
saints during His rejection being united to Him in heaven, a privilege
not known by, nor granted to, any other class of saints—neither to the
OT saints, nor the millennial saints (Ministry X:36, 37).
In the one case,
that of the earthly or millennial family, the law will be written in
their hearts (Jer. 31:33), the inclination to do evil will be
superseded. In the other family, the heavenly, that is, Christian, the
Lord Jesus Christ is written in their hearts by the Holy Spirit; a great
and important distinction, and indicating that the Christian’s blessings
are in association with the Lord Jesus who has gone within the veil.” —W.J.
Hocking.
Webcurator note:
At times, Dr. Chafer's dispensational writings are an antinomy of the heavenly
nature of Pauline Dispensationalism and the system of age-ism created by
C.I.Scofield. Did the erroneous concept of a "dispensation of grace," a
"church age," a "dispensation of the church," contributed to the "grounding to
earth" of the Church as well? This theory is ably put forth in R.A.
Huebner's Dispensational Truth, Vol. 1.
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