I received a well written comment on a recent YouTube video where I debated a premillennial dispensationalist. It was a great conversation, and you should check it out!
Anyway, one commenter said this:
“The biggest critique people try to levy against dispensationalism is found in the Scofield Bible if I remember, but the word ‘dispensation’ is found in the KJV as well. People like to say it’s a new idea and they reject it on that premise alone, but the issue with that is it is in scripture and they cannot accept that it is. People are going to throw ‘biblicism’ around too, but the issue with that also is it just shows people do not submit to scripture as their final authority. They submit to what the ‘church’ tells them to believe, people don’t want to critically think about these issues. The KJV is used over the Greek and Hebrew as well because most people are not scholars and even if you do have one of the apps that can show you all the Greek along with the English some times I think people tend to forget not everybody is a linguist either and don’t understand everything about language in general. They barely understand English and it’s expected to know Greek also? A lot of people who like to twist scripture are known to go to the Greek also. I would also say just because something is new should not also make something false either. Been thinking about Galileo recently. Imagine being thrown in prison over an issue that probably doesn’t even matter in the grand scale of things. People become very dogmatic in their views and don’t want them challenged usually. While it is true covenants are also in scripture they should not negate that dispensations are there too. People want to stay settled in what they have accepted as truth and don’t want to challenge what they accept to be true. We can all say we believe the God of the Bible, but what does that really mean if we haven’t tested all things like it expects us to do?
Despite attempting to make this crystal clear in the discussion, and both of us agreeing, it’s still not clear enough, that the word dispensation existing in the Bible does not prove dispensationalism true.
EVERYONE BELIEVES IN DISPENSATIONS
This article may be helpful to clear this up further.
I prefer to use the language of Covenant, but I’ll go ahead and grant the validity of the use of the word “dispensation.” There’s no issue there. Are we on the same page now? Probably not. Anyway…
There are 2 key areas of difference between Dispensationalism and the entirety of historical Christianity. Dispensationalists believe:
- Israel is a separate chosen body apart from the church.
- We must interpret prophecy plainly and at face value, avoiding metaphor or symbolism.
These are the key areas that discussions about dispensationalism should be about. Not if the word dispensation exists in the Bible.
Dispensationalism is a new idea, not because the word dispensation was never used until John Darby came on the scene in 1830. Dispensationalism is a new idea because these teachings about Israel and prophecy were never broadly taught prior to him.
If the dispensationalist wants history on their side, they’ll have to abandon their central argument that the word dispensation exists (of course it does), and begin to argue that the early church believed God didn’t actually have one chosen people, but two or more separate chosen people with separate plans.
