Category: Israel

A new movement with the name “Progressive Dispensationalism” is growing and gives some hope for breaking the impasse in theology between Dispensationalism and other classical Evangelical views.   Most progressives are still pre-tribulation rapture proponents.  One cannot teach at Dallas Theological Seminary (the #1 school of Dispensationalism) and not hold to this view.   I should note that there were and are some who are mostly Classical Dispensationalists and who held to a mid-tribulation rapture, a pre-wrath rapture (Marvin Rosenthal of Friends of Israel), and a post-tribulation rapture.   The progressives are represented by Craig Blaising and Darrell Bock. In important ways, they move toward a Covenant Premillennialism in helpful ways.  I have had a dialogue with Craig Blaising.  Here are some of the amazing changes. 

First, there is a change in distinguishing the Mosaic Period, from Moses to the Death and Resurrection of Yeshua, as a dispensation of Law over against a dispensation of grace.   Both the Mosaic dispensation and the New Covenant dispensation were gracious covenants that included law.  The applicability of the Law is embraced. 

Secondly, both the Kingdom of God and the New Covenant are understood as having come with partial fulfillment, the already not yet sense of fulfillment that is the consensus of Bible scholars today.  The Gospel of the Kingdom was not just an offer of the Kingdom to Israel.  It will be offered again to Israel after the rapture, but a partial offer continues at this time for all people.  Also, the New Covenant will be fulfilled in fullness with Israel at the second coming of Yeshua. 

Thirdly, the identity of Messianic Jews is both still part of Israel and her election as well as part of the Church, the One New Man.  Yes, they will be raptured out before the tribulation, but that does not mean a loss of Jewish identity.  The Schofield idea that one is exclusively a member of one of three categories, Jew, Gentile, and Church, is no longer embraced. 

Of course, with the rapture view held by some, the Church and the Messianic Jewish members are not present at the end of the tribulation effecting making Israel jealous so they embrace Yeshua. 

In my interview, I asked the question, “How can you say you are still a Dispensationalist with such contrasting views to Classical Dispensationalism?”  The answer was that the key is in maintaining the distinction between Israel the nation and the Church, though one could be part of both. However, before Darby, there were restorationists (in regard to Israel) in Germany, the United Kingdom, and America that believed this.   I think the progressives make a more radical break than they want to admit. 

Yet, there are still weaknesses. The pre-tribulation rapture view is one weakness. Missing the vision for the last day’s revival and the gifts of the Spirit, including the five-fold gifts of Eph. 4:11 ff. are other weaknesses.  Yes, I see the Progressives as a breakthrough and hope that there is more to come.

When the first Messianic Jewish Congregations were beginning in North America (1970-1975), there was quite a bit of attack against the new Messianic Jewish movement.  We were told we were, “Confusing law and grace,” “Re-erecting the wall of partition” and “Going back under the Law.”  Some Reformed leaders also had a rejection on the basis of the wall of partition argument and the idea that ethnic Israel is no longer elect but affirmed the replacement theology idea that the true Israel of God is now the Church.  But that is a different argument that will be addressed in a later essay. Here we want to just note the Dispensational view. 

In classic Dispensationalism, there is still an election that pertains to the Jewish people, Israel.  Israel will be preserved and God’s promises to them will be fulfilled in the Millennial Age.  However, the Church is defined very much like some of the early Church fathers, as a third race and in spiritual and essential identity its members are not Jew or Gentile. This is clearly stated in the little C. I. Schofield classic, Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth.  “Neither Jew nor Gentile” in Gal. 3 is a proof text despite the text also saying, “Neither male nor female.”   One is part of one of only three mutually exclusive categories, Jew, Gentile, or Church.  

God’s purpose and plans require keeping the Jew and Gentile separate and as noted in an earlier essay, Israel will become God’s primary instrument on earth only after the Church is taken away before the tribulation.  Messianic Jews on this basis are wrongly confusing identities and callings. Living a Jewish life is not fitting for members of the Church.  A limited ethnic identity may be accepted like Italians, Poles, and Russians but no deeper real spiritual identity or Jewish election identity.  A Passover seder is unacceptable as is keeping the Sabbath. 

However, such definitions imply the rejection of other clear passages and in some cases explain them away.  First of all, this includes the clear definition verses on the identity of Jewish believers in Yeshua, Romans 9-11.  In Romans 11:5 when Paul speaks of a “remnant saved” at the present time, it implies that they are the remnant of Israel, not people who have left their identity as part of Israel for a new identity as a “third race.”  When Paul states that we are to follow him who magnifies his ministry so that we might see some of Israel saved, he connects this some as important in being connected to all of Israel being saved, for the acceptance of all of Israel would lead to life from the dead.  (Rom. 11:15)   As if this was not enough, Paul goes on to argue that those who follow Yeshua from the Jewish people are, “The first fruits” that sanctify the rest of the nation.  It is not possible to be a sanctifying first fruits of the nation if not a part of the nation.  The nation remains set apart and made holy by the sanctifying remnant.  

Paul’s practice is fully in line with this teaching.  He has no problem living a Jewish life and showing that he is still part of Israel.  He takes a Nazarite vow (Acts 18:18) and later brings a sacrifice completing this vow and professing that he lives as a Jew in Torah obedience (Acts 21).  Paul professes Jewish life loyalty through the rest of the book of Acts before rulers and lastly before his people in Rome. 

Jewish identity in Yeshua is not as neat as the three separate identities but is truer to the text.   The Messianic Jew is part of national ethnic Israel, its identity and destiny, and also a Jewish part of the One New Humanity of Jew and Gentile in Yeshua.  Things are much better today for Messianic Jews: there is much more support.  However, there is still pushback against Messianic Jews due to the conscious or unconscious bias of classical Dispensationalism.  We have to reject the wrong separation of Israel and the Church. Their destinies are intertwined. 

As a youngster of 12 -and-a-half years old, I first heard the teaching of the pre-tribulation rapture from Dr. Charles J. Woodbridge, of dear memory.  He was most impressed with an air of authority in his person.  He presented the familiar chart of the course of world history and the future from eternity past to the end, eternity future.  Between them were the seven dispensations. At the end of the present dispensation, the Church Age, the rapture of the Church would take place, and then the 7-year tribulation.  After this, the Millennium would come and finally eternity, the New Heavens and New Earth. Dr. Woodbridge was a graduate of Princeton and had been a faculty member of Fuller Theological Seminary.  How could a Princeton graduate embrace this theology?  I never found out.  I was completely convinced.  His presentation was so certain and his credentials so solid, that it was certainly not to be doubted.  I looked forward to being raptured and escaping the tribulation.  It was a joyful thought that was with me for the next 6 ½ years. 

At 19 years old, I gave up this doctrine. I could not find it in the texts of the New Testament when read in context. I explained this in an earlier essay.  I actually felt betrayed, though amazingly, I was confirmed under a Reformed pastor who did not believe this.  For all these years, in dispensational Bible Clubs, Word of Life Camp (which had a great and wonderful impact on my life), and dispensational churches, I was not only taught the pre-tribulation rapture but was taught that when one loses this belief, he or she is on the road to liberalism and backsliding.  It was considered a bullwork belief.  Why?  Because only this doctrine made sense of any moment possible return of Jesus.  How this fit with the signs of the times conferences is for another essay.  There is an explanation for them teaching these signs of His coming.  However, one reason for such passion for this doctrine was that any moment pre-trib rapture would keep us on our toes.  We would thus be ready so that the Lord would not come when we were involved in sin.  If we were sinning, how would we then feel?  How embarrassed would we be?   So, fear that He would come when we were not ready was a great motivator.  Yet there was a paradox. Since Dispensationalism taught that when someone accepted Yeshua, he or she could never lose salvation.  They would go up in the rapture even if backslidden.  Yet how many young people thought that they would miss the rapture due to sin.  For me, the issue was the joy of going up and not having to face the great tribulation.  We sang, “I’m going up, going up, going up to meet with Jesus, up to be with Jesus, up to be with Him, going up going up going up to be with Jesus in the sweet by and by.”

Then I found that this belief had no foundation.  I made an appointment with a beloved professor at The King’s College, Dr. Thomas McComiskey, who became a renowned Old Testament Professor.  He said that teaching at the time of the rapture was a tertiary matter.  Wow, I responded. I was taught this as a cardinal and foundational doctrine, equal to the resurrection.  This is why it was held so deeply and written in the doctrinal statements of denominations and churches. Acceptance of this doctrine was a condition of membership.  How did this happen?  It was because of the timing when the conservatives were pushing back against the liberals over 110 years ago and scholars wrote the Fundamentals, from which we got the term Fundamentalism.  It was at this time that Dispensationalism swept the American Evangelical world.  In this context, it became fundamental, but it is not.  I now see that this imbalanced teaching produced a conformity requirement, not in accord with Scripture.  In my view, it is not only tertiary but wrong and divisive. 

Dispensationalism embraced a fundamentally wrong view of the Torah of Moses.  Exodus-Deuteronomy was looked at as a dispensation of law that offered salvation based on keeping the Law or works righteousness.  There were grace notes in the Torah that one could embrace, but the thrust of the Torah was a works righteous covenant that would lead to failure. This would then lead those who saw the failure to the grace covenant, the New Covenant.  Thus, statements in the New Covenant such as our being no longer under the Law were misinterpreted to mean that we were not to study the Law so as to keep it in a way that was applicable in the New Covenant.  Dispensationalism was correct that the Law does reveal our need for grace and atonement, but the grace of forgiveness and blood sacrifice was deeply part of the Mosaic Covenant material.  So many sermons have been preached about not being under the Law in this wrong interpretation that it has produced a popular anti-nomian Evangelicalism.  Dispensational interpretation failed in two primary ways.  First, it failed to appreciate the much more adequate understanding of the use of the Law in the best of classical Christian writers, both Calvinist and Arminian (Methodist) and Anglican.  Secondly, it did not pass the test as fitting our more recent and better understanding of the Mosaic Covenant material based on archeological studies which prove that their approach was wrong. 

Classical Protestantism as named above saw three uses of the Law. The first was true to show how far short we fall and to awaken us to the need met by the Gospel. The Law is thus part of preaching the Gospel.   This does track somewhat with classical Dispensationalism.  However, there is then the second use of the Law, which provides civil governments with standards of righteousness and justice for ordering societies.  The loss of the place of the Law made classic Dispensationalists very weak in social justice influence.   The third use of the Law was as a guide to discipleship, a discipleship tool of the Spirit, and especially as applied in the teaching of Yeshua.  Classical Protestantism saw that parts of the Torah were not applicable in the New Covenant, in contemporary societies, but fit Israel in its ancient context.  They generally did a good job in sorting and applying.  They did miss the continued validity of patterns of life that were part of Jewish calling and identity and could be maintained without a Temple. 

Recent studies of the Mosaic Covenant material have shown that Deuteronomy especially (bamidbar) and the Decalogue are in the form of Hittite Suzerain/Vassal treaties which teach that Israel’s salvation as a nation was by God’s grace and not works.  Obedience maintains the position of grace.  This is emphasized again and again.  The late Samuel Schultz, my renowned Professor at Wheaton College wrote two books emphasizing this, Deuteronomy, The Gospel of Love and The Gospel of Moses.  The late Professor Meredith Kline also so argued in Treaty of the Great King. Kline argues that Mosaic Covenant of Grace, not Mosaic Law is the broader and more correct name for the material.  These views are promoted to this day by Professor Dr. Walter Kaiser and Professor Dr. Kenneth Kitchen in England and many others.  This deeply changes negative attitudes to the Law (Torah) and now scholars interpret the New Covenant Scriptures with a more comprehensive view of all the texts that are relevant.  As such being no longer under the Law means not approaching the Law as a works-righteousness system which was never its intent or seeing that though we are not under the New Covenant, the Mosaic Law is applicable in important ways.  Classical Protestants were right.  J. N. Darby broke from the Anglicans’ teaching, but the Anglicans were correct!  Messianic Judaism is more aligned with the Classical Protestant position but adds the continued applicability of the pattern of life that preserves a distinct people of Israel, the Jewish people.   Hence, Messianic Judaism.