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DAVID HUNT
What Dispensationalism there has been in the
fundamental/evangelical realm of the Church during the past 150 years has not
only been betrayed, but virtually decimated in the house of her friends.
("Decimated": nine parts Covenant; one part dispensational [i.e.,
pre-millennial]). This seduction is [was] fostered primarily by leading
dispensational schools, such as Dallas Theological Seminary.
There are also a number of highly influential
leaders who are contributing to this dispensational devastation, such as Dr.
John F. MacArthur, Jr. He still claims to be a dispensationalist, and is
accepted as such in the IFCA, and elsewhere. But he has been
"reformed" by the Reformers--his associations and doctrines
make the fact all too evident.
David Hunt,
another front-line leader, is hand-in-hand with Dr. MacArthur in his doctrinal
contradiction of dispensationalism--all the while in good-standing fellowship
with the very source of Darby-dispensationalism, the Plymouth Brethren
assemblies.
"Beware of false prophets, which come
to you in sheep's clothing ... ye shall know them by their fruits"
(Matt. 7:5-20). The (kingdom) warning in the Sermon on the Mount is against
false prophets who are to be discerned by the quality of their lives.
The warning to believers (Church) is against false teachers who are to be
discerned by their doctrine concerning Christ (2 Pet. 2:1,2; 2 John
1:7-11) --not by their lives.
Prior to writing in March of this year to Dr.
MacArthur concerning his defection from dispensationalism (from whom there has
been no response), I wrote to David Hunt regarding his contribution to the
depredation of dispensationalism. My letter, (which he graciously answered) is
as follows:
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30 May 1991
Dear brother David
I am surprised to note that you are
defending John MacArthur's The Gospel According to Jesus thesis.
With your Plymouth Brethren background I should have thought the title
itself would have told you that John is promoting Jesus' Kingdom Gospel,
and erroneously applying it to the heavenly Church. You may have noted
the following statements by John:
Several years ago I began to study
and preach through the Gospel of Matthew. As I worked through the
life and ministry of our Lord, a clear understanding of the message
He proclaimed and the evangelistic method He used crystallized in my
thinking. I came to see Jesus' Gospel as the foundation on which
all NT doctrine stands (emphasis mine). Many different passages
in the Epistles became clearer when I understood them in that light
(Introduction, p. 15).
No passage in all Scripture attacks
modern-day easy-believism with more force than Matthew 7:13,14. It
is the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, and it amounts to the
Saviour's own presentation of the way of salvation. You will not
find a plainer statement of the Gospel according to Jesus anywhere
in Scripture (p. 179).
John doesn't seem to realize that Jesus
in His humiliation presented an earthly kingdom Gospel to Israel, and
later He presented a heavenly Gospel from His glorified position above,
via Paul, to His Church.
In his classic book, Grace: the
Glorious Theme, Dr. Chafer wrote:
According to both OT and NT, righteousness
and peace are the great words of the kingdom. The Sermon on
the Mount is the expansion of the personal righteousness, which is
required in the kingdom. The great words in this present
dispensation are believe and grace. Not once do
these words appear in connection with the kingdom teachings of the
Sermon (p. 164).
In his Peter vs. Paul, Wm. R.
Newell put it more strongly:
In His early ministry to Israel the
Lord Jesus gave none of the great heavenly truths for the
present Church dispensation. He but mentioned the Church, giving no
explanation. Nor were these vital Church truths revealed to the
Twelve.
Paul is the declarer of the Gospel
of the grace of God to us - Take Romans to Philemon
out of the Bible and you are bereft of Christian doctrine. For
instance, if you were to take Paul’s Epistles out of the Bible,
you could not find anything about the Church, or the Body of Christ;
for no other Apostle even mentions the Body of Christ (p. 6).
"Come over into [grace], and help
us," dear brother. The Church is in dire need of warning and
protection against the Covenant encroachment, no matter by whom it may
be promoted. |
Now to share portions of David Hunt's June 19,
1991 answer to the above letter, in italics, with our comments following:
In spite of my Plymouth Brethren background
and the fact that I am still in fellowship with the Brethren assemblies, I
agree with every statement you quote from John MacArthur (emphasis mine)
on the first page of your letter.
With the ongoing deterioration of the Plymouth
Brethren movement, both Open and Closed, such fellowship is understandable. It
is akin to the high esteem enjoyed by William MacDonald in his leadership among
the Brethren, notwithstanding his similar dispensational breakdown. One wonders
as to David Hunt's standing among the Brethren during his seven-year charismatic
experience.
It is certainly true that he agrees with these
aberrational statements of John MacArthur. In his recent book, How Close Are
We?, Harvest House Publishers, 1993, 323 pages, Hunt writes:
Confusion concerning the kingdom has relegated
many of Christ's teachings, such as the Sermon on the Mount, to Israel and the
millennial kingdom, causing Christians today to miss much of value for their
own lives.
As with all Covenant teaching, David Hunt has it
in reverse. Christians "miss much of value for their lives" simply
because the Church--including much of contemporary dispensationalism--is
centered in the OT, the Synoptics, the Sermon, and the Kingdom.
This legal ground causes Christians to be
deprived of the benefits of their position in Christ, the "all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ" (Eph. 1: 3). Blessed truth (for
Israel) that the Sermon contains, there is nothing in it that is not totally
superseded by the truth that the glorified Lord Jesus Christ gave exclusively to
His Bride via Paul in his Church Epistles. Nothing!
The Church today, the very Body of Christ, is
emaciated, being forced to subsist on the comparative husks of the far
country--Israel’s earthly country, far, far from their heavenly portion as
seated together in heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 2:6). He is known as Saviour
for birth, but rarely as heavenly Head and Life for spiritual growth and
maturity.
Thank you not, Dallas Seminary, John MacArthur,
David Hunt, and all other pseudo-dispensational leaders!
Some evangelicals go so far as to say the four
gospels [no, just the three Synoptics] are only for Israel and the millennial
kingdom, while the Epistles are for the Church. Yet it was in the Gospels that
Christ founded His Church, and it is there that we find the
foundational truths (p. 303). Just before His death, Jesus Christ told His
disciples that He was forming a new identity, which had never existed
before. He called it His Church (p. 191). [Emphasis mine]
No, He said "I will build My
church" (Matt. 16:18).
The early ministry of the Messiah was to
Israel. It was the "Gospel of the Kingdom" that was proclaimed
then, not the "Gospel of the grace of God" that we proclaim now
for the completion of the Body, the Church (Acts 20:24; (I Cor. 15:1-4).
The Twelve and the Seventy were given a
restricted ministry to the "lost sheep of the house of Israel,"
which will be resumed after the Rapture (Matt. 10, and 24:14), but not by us
in this Church dispensation of grace. Peter preached the Kingdom, the
Lordship and Messiahship of Jesus (Acts 2 and 3), but not Christ as Head of
the Body, the Church--the truth that was revealed personally to Paul by the
glorified Lord, and through him made known exclusively to the Body in
Ephesians and Colossians. (Selected)
The question is asked John MacArthur and David
Hunt concerning their co-statements that the foundational truths of the Church
are found in the Gospels: "What ever became of Paul?!" Below we will
consider more of David Hunt's new book, How Close Are We? In the meantime
getting back to his letter:
I find it difficult to reconcile your
statement that Jesus "presented an earthly kingdom Gospel to Israel"
in the four gospels [three Synoptics] then later the "heavenly Gospel...
via Paul" with Christ's clear presentation of the gospel to Nicodemus,
etc., etc.
Jesus preached the cross. Surely you don't
mean to say that none of the four Gospels has any application to the Church
today! Yet that seems to be the intent of Chafer, Feinberg, Newell, et al whom
you quote; with whom I disagree, great Bible teachers though they may be.
Though there is some secondary application in
"all Scripture," for whoever may need it, the primary and exclusive
truth of and for the Church is centered in heavenly Pauline-land. "If ye,
then [members of the Body], be risen with Christ, seek those things which are
above, where Christ [and the Church] sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your
affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye died, and your
life is hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:1-3).
The Eleven set out to obey the Lord to preach
the Gospel as they had learned it from Him; they didn't wait around until Paul
had gotten a revelation from heaven of some new gospel and had taught it to
them.
The Gospel of the Kingdom that they were given
to preach was just that, and restricted to Israel. When all was said and
done--performing miracles, healing, demons subject to them, etc.--they know nothing
of the heavenly Church.
At the last moment, "when they, therefore,
were come together, they asked Him, saying, Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore
again the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6). A well-taught Sunday School child
today knows infinitely more concerning the Church than the disciples did at that
time, simply because they knew nothing of it.
Peter for one, years later and in the Church
dispensation, was struggling with Church truth. "Even as our beloved
brother, Paul, also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto
you; as also in all his Epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are
some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable
wrest, as they do other Scriptures..." (2 Pet. 3:16). There are far too
many dispensational leaders wresting, instead of resting in, the rightly divided
Word of truth.
Newell reiterates: "If you were to take
Paul’s Epistles out of the Bible, you could not find anything about the
Church, or the Body of Christ, for no other Apostle even mentions the
Body of Christ!"
The Apostle's Gospel concerned Messiah and
His Kingdom. It was specifically and repeatedly called "the Gospel of
the kingdom" (Matt. 4:23; 9:35; 24:14; Mark 1:14; Lu. 9:2,6). To assume
that our Lord sent the Apostles to proclaim "the Gospel of the grace of
God" is wholly unwarranted. In fact, "the Gospel of the grace of
God" was not preached nor even mentioned (or known) until Paul was
raised up and sent forth to declare it (Acts 20:24; Rom. 3:21-28; Eph.
3:1-3). (Selected)
I don't find that John MacArthur is teaching
Covenant theology nor that he has eliminated grace, only that he has
strengthened it. There are conditions (obviously) to the gospel, one of them
of course being that I must believe it and not add to or take from its truth.
Part of that truth is that Jesus is God; He must be or He couldn't save us. If
He is God, then He is Lord.
If you preach any other Jesus than that, you
are preaching another gospel! The new convert may not understand all of the
implications of what it means that Jesus is Lord, but if he believes in a
Jesus who isn't Lord then I don't believe he is saved.
I appreciate your writings and you as one who
has contended earnestly for the faith once for all delivered, but on this
point I presume we must disagree in love.
Now to consider some of the dispensational
aberrations in David Hunt's new book, How Close Are We?--Compelling Evidence
for the Soon Return of Christ. They will be taken as they come, beginning on
page 70:
It is vital to realize that Christianity was
not a first-century invention. Far from being new, it was the culmination of a
long Jewish heritage. The life-transforming gospel which the early Church
brought to the world was founded solidly upon the consistent message which the
Hebrew prophets declared for centuries. The apostles boldly used the OT
Scriptures to prove that Jesus was the Christ, the Savior of the world.
Wrong Gospel! David Hunt is writing here of the
Gospel of the Kingdom, which he, John MacArthur, and all Covenant-oriented
leaders insist is the only Gospel there is. Of course the kingdom Gospel is the
message that the Hebrew prophets declared for centuries; of course it proclaims
that the Messiah is the Saviour of the world. He will eventually save "all
Israel" for the Millennial Kingdom, as well as the Gentile nations, which
will be brought into that kingdom.
But that [kingdom] Gospel has nothing to do with the Gospel of the grace of
God, the Pauline Gospel of the Church (1 Cor. 15:1-4). That Gospel was
totally unknown in the Scriptures from Adam to Paul--and it is evidently unknown
to many dispensationalists today.
Dr. Chafer faithfully held the dispensational line, and being in Glory, his
writings yet speak:
Judaism is not the bud that blossomed into Christianity. Each sets up its
ground of relationship between God and man--the Jew by physical birth, the
Christian by spiritual birth. Each provides its instruction on the life of
its adherents--the law for Israel, the teachings of grace for the Church.
Each has its sphere of existence--Israel on the earth for all ages to come,
the Church in heaven. (Systematic IV: 248)
Of all those in the Body of Christ, anyone in Plymouth Brethren
"circles" should know and insist upon the Scriptural fact that
Christianity, the Church, is totally unique! She is heavenly; beginning
at Pentecost, completed at the Rapture. David Hunt knows that, hence
there is no excuse for making such a continuity statement as this.
"Consistency, thou art a jewel!"
When the absolute otherness of the heavenly Church is compromised, she is
thereby subjected to OT, Synoptic, Sermon, and Kingdom influences, causing her
to lose her Christ-centered identity. This is what exists in dispensationalism
today, fostered by Covenant theology without, and "progressive"
Neo-Dispensationalism from within. Sad to say, the principle of continuity,
commonality, is nothing new--the seeds having been sprouting all along for such
a baneful harvest as is being reaped at present.
As the Plymouth Brethren leader and Darby contemporary, James Butler Stoney,
lamented back in 1885:
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 exclusiveness is weakened or lost. Once heaven
as a present portion is surrendered, all the great privileges and
position of the Church are drained away.
The vast majority of saints among us (Plymouth Brethren) are more in
correspondence with the saints of the millennial kingdom than with the
Christian in the height of his heavenly calling and position, now.
At the same time John Nelson Darby, father of the Plymouth Brethren movement
as well as of our dispensational system of rightly dividing the Word of truth,
was mourning:
It is the chief burden for me as regards the Church that they are as
persons outside; not inside, entered through the rent veil of His flesh,
abiding in the light of the Father's countenance and gazing upon Christ in
His own divine perfectness with the eye that the Holy Spirit gives. This is
my daily, if not hourly, grief.
Hence the condition of dispensationalism today is nothing new--it is but the
product of long-sown seed. Dr. Bruce Waltke, in the Bock-Blaising book out of
Dallas, Dispensationalism, Israel and the Church (Zondervan 1992), wrote
this incriminating fact:
Reconstructed (progressive) dispensationalism essentially believes that
Christ inaugurated the fulfillment of Israel’s covenants and promises and
that the Church actualizes them. It denies that the Church is a parenthesis
within God's program for Israel.
"The thing that hath been it is that which shall be; and that which is
done, is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun. Is
there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already
of old time, which was before us" (Eccl. 1:9,10).
It is clear that the "saints" of all ages, which would certainly
include all Christians [!], accompany Christ from heaven when He returns to
the Mount of Olives at His Second Coming (p. 90).
Here is the major dispensational breakdown, of which David Hunt so definitely
contributes. Paul, in speaking of Christians, wrote: "For ye have
died, and your [Christian] life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who
is our Life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory"
(Col. 3:4).
Dr. Chafer had to contend with this error nearly 75 years ago:
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 exclusively to believers who comprise the Church. And there is
a more recent disposition to carry the same realities, which belong to the
saved of this grace dispensation over into the legal millennial kingdom
dispensation.
· Such assumptions are avoided when it is recognized that 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 IV:
327,328)
Those seeds of inclusivism, assumptions that Dr. Chafer sought to warn of and
avoid, have now come to fruition in the midst of his beloved Dallas Seminary.
What is this "gospel of the kingdom" which the two witnesses and
the 144,000 Jewish evangelists will proclaim and which leads to the martyrdom
of those who believe it? Many evangelicals distinguish between the gospel of
Christ which we now preach, and the gospel of the kingdom which Christ and His
disciples announced at the beginning and which will be proclaimed during the
tribulation period. They suggest that those who believe this "gospel of
the kingdom" are not part of the Church, but will be allowed to continue
on earth into the millennial reign of Jesus Christ.
Allegedly, this gospel pertains only to the millennial kingdom and was
offered by Christ exclusively to the Jews. When Israel rejected and crucified
Christ, it is maintained that the gospel of the kingdom ceased, the Church was
born and began to proclaim the gospel of the grace of God. Such a
"dispensational" view, however, cannot be sustained by Scripture (p.
300).
Watch now what happens when there is no distinction seen between the Gospel
the Lord Jesus preached in His pre-Cross humiliation, to earthly Israel, and the
post-Cross Gospel He preached through Paul exclusively to His heavenly Body, the
Church.
"The gospel of the kingdom" was the only gospel, which Christ
preached: "And Jesus went about all Galilee... preaching the gospel of
the kingdom (Matt. 4:23). It must therefore have been the gospel, which
Christ spoke when He told His disciples to "go into all the world and
preach the gospel" (Mk. 16:15).
There is no indication that He meant any other gospel than the one He had
preached and which He must have trained them to preach as well. Clearly, it
was the only gospel the disciples knew, even after the resurrection.
All they had to do was wait for Paul, and Paul did not preach the Gospel of
the kingdom. He preached and taught the Gospel of the kingdom of God, not
that of the kingdom of heaven, the earthly millennial kingdom. The mistake David
Hunt is making, and most all dispensationalists today, is that there is no
difference between the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of God. Contemporary
dispensationalists have made them synonymous, and when that is done, the
exclusive heavenly Body and Bride becomes inclusive of all "saints" of
all ages.
It (the Gospel of the kingdom) was also the gospel that Paul preached:
"And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching
the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more [Paul, to the Ephesian
elders]" (Acts 20:25). "And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own
hired house during his imprisonment in Rome, and received all that came in
unto him, preaching the kingdom of God" Acts 28:30,31).
The Messiah preached the Gospel, which brought saints into the kingdom. The
ascended and glorified Lord Jesus Christ now preaches the Gospel through Paul
that brings saints into the Body, the heavenly Church.
Dr. Chafer ever rightly divided the Word of truth:
The phrase, "fellow-citizens with the saints," must be received
in its restricted meaning as also the fact that this spiritual structure is
built on "the foundation of the apostles and [NT] prophets." God
has had His saints in all dispensations, but they of the past dispensation
have not formed any part of the Church.
Saints are sanctified ones set apart unto God. That NT saints are
advanced to a higher position of standing than the OT saints is revealed in
Hebrews 10:10, where we read, "We are sanctified through the offering
of the body of Jesus once for all."
This sanctification, or sainthood, could not be realized until Christ
died and rose again, for it is characterized by position in Him, which
position could be accorded only to those who are by the Spirit united to the
risen Christ.
It is true that all saints of all ages will be gathered eventually before
God in a new heaven and a new earth (Heb. 11:39,40; 12:22-24); but the OT
saints were no part of the New Creation in Christ, nor were they
built upon the foundation of the NT apostles and prophets. (Ephesians,
p. 89)
None were in Christ until baptized therein by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
The Church is an all-new Creation. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new
creation; old things are passed away, behold, all things are become
new" (2 Cor. 5:17).
Dr. Chafer insists upon the distinctiveness of the New Creation:
Of the New Creation it is written: "in Christ" (2 Cor. 5:17;
Gal. 3:26-28; 6:15, etc.). It is such knowledge-surpassing truth as this
which advances the NT revelation over that of the OT. It must be obvious to
the most casual reader that no such relationship is contemplated in the OT,
the Synoptics, or even John's Gospel until the record is given in the Upper
Room Discourse.
It is not until the record is given in this Discourse that the word
appears in the entire Sacred Text that the saint is "in Christ."
The first reference to this organic, vital union between Christ and the
saint occurs in John 14:20, which reads, "At that day ye shall know
that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you." Even the knowledge
of this marvelous union is deferred unto "that day," which day,
according to the context, is the Day of Pentecost. (Systematic V:
144)
Dr. Charles Lee Feinberg asserts:
To be saved by faith is not synonymous in the Scriptures with being a
member of the Body of Christ, the Church. There have been saved saints
before the Church dispensation, and there will be saved saints after the
Church dispensation has closed (at the Rapture), that will not be
reckoned as a constituent part of the Body. How much confusion there is from
a wrong conception of the nature, origin, purpose, and constituency of the
Church!
When is the Church seen divided under tribal distinctions? Their
redemption is related to the Blood of the Lamb, just as that of Adam and
Eve, or Abel, or anyone else in the history of man, but that does not put
them in the heavenly Body of Christ.
Those disciples at the time our Lord spoke to them were not part
of the Church; and all agree that the Apostles lived in a transitional
period from the Law dispensation to the dispensation of Grace. Surely
Peter's message given him in Matthew 10, as he preached according to the
express charge of Christ, was vastly different from his message in Acts 10
in the house of Cornelius, again in the express leading of the Lord. (Millennialism,
pp. 257,293)
There were no Christians, no Church to be "in Christ," until
Pentecost--not until there was a crucified, buried, risen, and ascended Head
seated at the right hand of God, Head over all things to the Church, which is
His Body. Paul was a Jewish saint (Saul), but he had to be recreated "in
Christ."
"Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that
they might be saved. For I bear witness that they have a zeal for God, but
not according to knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness,
and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted
themselves unto the righteousness of God" (Rom. 1-4).
"But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto
faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our
schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by
faith" (Gal. 3:23,24).
"But what things were gain to me [as a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as
touching the law, blameless], those I counted loss for Christ. Yes,
doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord ... and be found in Him, not having mine
own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith
of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith" (Phil. 3:79).
I recently wrote David Hunt concerning his anti-dispensational claim that all
saints of all ages are "in Christ":
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18 January 1993
Dear brother David
While you surprised me with your pro-MacArthur stand, now you both
shock and disappoint me with your non-dispensational statements in The
Berean Call of January 1993.
You address a questioner as follows:
First Thessalonians 4 says it will be "the dead in
Christ. You don't think any Jews could be included in this number.
Why not? Jews who believe in Christ today are in the Church. Jesus
said Abraham looked forward to Christ and though he didn't understand
as fully as we do today, he is, therefore, "in Christ."
Surely all saints, Old and New Testament, must be "in
Christ."
When Jesus returns to the Mount of Olives, "all the
saints" come with Him (Zech. 14:5). The OT speaks of saints as
much as the NT. You say the OT saints are Israel. What about Adam,
Enoch, et al? When Christ cried, "It is finished" and the
veil of the temple was ripped from top to bottom, "many bodies of
the saints which slept arose" (Matt. 27:51-53). These were OT
believers redeemed by the blood of Christ. I see no reason why they
cannot be part of the Church, and thus resurrected at the Rapture. If
not resurrected then, when?
You say they will be resurrected "at the end of the
Tribulation along with those Tribulation believers who were
martyred." But Revelation 20:4 specifically limits that
resurrection to the Tribulation martyrs who believed and were slain
after the Rapture.
Furthermore, for OT Jews to be part of the Church no more
nullifies the distinction between Israel and the Church than for Jews
who believe today to be part of the Church. It is the Jews who are
alive at the Second Coming who will inhabit the land of Israel under
Christ's reign during the millennium.
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First of all, David, one does not have to be a member of the heavenly Body,
in Christ, to be referred to as a "saint." The term also stands for
outside-of-Christ OT and Kingdom Jews. See extensive Concordance listing.
There were many believers, saints, prior to Pentecost, but no in-Christ Christian
saints--not one. Dr. Charles Lee Feinberg wrote:
The Church as a Body is impossible without the death of Christ through
whom she is reconciled to God; without the resurrection of Christ by which
she partakes of His resurrection life; without the ascension of Christ by
which she is formed into an organism through the baptism of the Spirit. The
Church had her origin, then, with the descent of the Holy Spirit of God on
the day of Pentecost. (Millennialism, p. 133)
As far as any believer or saint being in Christ prior to Pentecost, or after
the completed-Body Rapture, Dr. Chafer wrote:
Over against the emphasis which is given to the truth ["in
Christ"] in the teachings of grace (mentioned 130 times), is the
corresponding fact that there is no hint of a possible position in Christ in
any teaching of the Law or of the Millennial Kingdom. The
Christian's present position in Christ was not seen even in type or
prophecy." (Systematic IV:98)
Let me kindly remind you that believing Jews who are a part of the Church
since Pentecost are no longer Jews, but Christian saints--as are Gentile
believers (Gal. 3:20). But that will not be true of believer-saints after the
Rapture, nor was it true before the Day of Pentecost. There are no
non-Christians in the Source of the Christian life.
Much of divine blessing is determined for Israel, all of which is
anticipated in her covenants and prophecies. But no covenant or prophecy
brings that nation [or any individual of it] into heavenly citizenship or
into marriage with the Lord Jesus Christ. --Chafer (Systematic
IV:142)
I appeal to your Brethren dispensational background once again, David.
Dispensationalism, indeed the Church, is in dire need these days of all possible
help, and that can come only by doctrine derived from the rightly-divided
Word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15).
(There was no response to this
letter.) [May 1993]
Also, see comments in withChrist.org:
"Evangelical
Humanists," and Journal 2/9.1/2007 |