Differences In Bible Interpretation

Transcript

GRM1137
5/17/2015
Differences in Bible Interpretation
Psalm 19; selected verses
Gil Rugh

We have recently studied the book of Daniel on Sunday evening and we have also been in some prophetic matters recently in our study of II Corinthians. So I want to talk a little bit about matters related to interpreting the Scripture.

Let me just back up a little bit and just quickly overview some things with you. God has chosen to make Himself known to His creation. He has revealed Himself. That revelation from God has really two parts, what we call general revelation which is His revelation in Creation available to all. It is general, it is available wherever you are in the world and then there is special revelation which is the specific revelation of His spoken Word.

Turn to just one passage in your Bible, Psalm 19. This Psalm includes both forms of revelation so just an example. In Psalm 19 you will note it starts out: “The heavens are telling of the glory of God and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.” And so down through verse 6 it tells that that is a continuing, ongoing revelation.

Romans chapter 1 says that His power, His invisible attributes are displayed in the splendor and wonder of creation.

Then verse 7 of Psalm 19 picks up: “The Law of the Lord is perfect restoring the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure. The precepts of the Lord, the command of the Lord” and He talks about the Word of God that God spoke and gave and that is what we call specific revelation. There is enough revelation in general revelation, the creation, to condemn a person but not to save them. That is the argument of Romans chapter 1 because sinful men suppress what God has revealed in the creation. In spite of its clarity and its wonder they are unwilling to acknowledge the God who is being revealed.

God’s special revelation, His Word, brings clarity, explains the God that we come to know through His Word. When we come to know Him through His Word in a saving way then we come to appreciate the splendor of the revelation He has given in His creation.

The revelation He has given in His Word is an inspired Word. In other words, the Bible is the Word of God. It is God speaking through man. There is a human element in it but God has selected the human authors, the human spokesman and their record according to what He wanted to reveal. The revelation is in words, you have to start with words. That’s why we believe in the full, verbal inspiration of Scripture, not just the thoughts of Scripture because the thoughts have to be expressed in words. We start with words. You start there with the language. When you go to learn a language where do you start? With some vocabulary. I pulled some introductory grammars off my shelf, Greek grammars. They all start the same place basically. You have to learn some words. If you don’t know the meaning of words how are you going to put sentences together, express thoughts and so on? So it is with God’s Word. The very words here are the words of God.

Then we are told the Spirit of God inspired the Word, inspired the writing, the record of the Word. The New Testament tells us that Peter wrote “That holy men of old spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” That guarantees that He used human authors but He guaranteed the accuracy of what they wrote. Then we have the interpretation and the interpretation has two parts: 1) without the Spirit of God you cannot understand the Word of God. The natural man does not understand the things that the Spirit of God has revealed. They are spiritually discerned and revealed as Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians.

When we come to study the Word of God as believers who have the Spirit of God that is where we are. Talk about principles of interpretation. How do we interpret the Scripture and there are differences of views here. We are limiting ourselves to those who claim to believe the Bible, believe it is the Word of God and in a general pattern accept it as it is given. I say that because there is much confusion that comes into “the evangelical world.”

I received a theological journal this week and was reading some of the book reviews. One of the book reviews was of two men who have written. They start and say, “We believe in the full complete inspiration of Scripture. It is the Word of God without error; however…” then they go on to talk about a method of interpretation that moves beyond the words to understanding the thoughts that are being communicated and when they are all done I am not sure I even know what they are talking about.

So we want to be careful. God gave His Word to be understood. It is a revelation. He didn’t give it to confuse us and those who believe the Bible is the Word of God generally, if you stay out of the scholarly world, believe God gave it to be understood and holds men accountable to their understanding it and putting it into practice.

What I want to do tonight is read you. I try not to read you a whole lot. So you can sit back, relax, don’t go to sleep. Listen. What I want to do is show the differences in interpreting Scripture that lead us to different convictions; primarily in the area of future things.

We have talked about reformed or covenant theology. I will be using those terms interchangeably and generally there are. There are variations within every system but generally reformed theology is covenantal theology. Its system of interpreting future things is different than dispensational theology which is our view that interprets Scripture literally.

It is important to understand the differences. I have brought three books and a couple of others that I am going to quote from that are criticizing dispensational approach to Scripture, a literal interpreting of Scripture as we have worked through as we went through the book of Daniel. What God has prophesied will come true as He has prophesied it. There is going to be a literal return to earth by Christ to set up a literal kingdom. The Jews will be restored to the land and so on. We take a literal view of future things.

So I have three books I brought that are critical of dispensational theology, of interpreting the Bible literally and I am going to read you sections. It is important for us to understand the differences and how serious they are and these men are going to express how seriously they take these issues.

The first one is a book called Backgrounds to Dispensationalism by a man named Clarence B. Bass. When he wrote this he was at Bethel Seminary in Minneapolis. It was first published in 1960. This is a reprint that was recently done in 2005. Basically the same book but it has a recent preface to the new addition. I first became acquainted with this book, I have the first edition from 1960 in my library because it was required reading at the Bible college I attended so that we would be familiar with the opposing view.

In the introduction to this book the preface to this new addition this man says, “Bass carefully distinguishes.” Now here is where we want to see part of where we are going. “Bass carefully distinguishes between pastor dispensationalists and the more elaborate and nuanced academic dispensationalists. Though such a distinction may be applicable to most theological traditions it is especially apropos for dispensationalism. The pastor dispensationalists far outnumber the academic version and dominates the public face of dispensationalism.” You get a flavor of where we are going. He is going to talk about pastor dispensationalism, lay dispensationalism and there is somewhat of a disdain for dispensationalists in the academic world and that will come out in this book and the other writings I am going to share. You get an idea here that it is important he singles out the pastor. He doesn’t say what the difference in the theology is between an academic dispensationalist, a pastor dispensationalist and a lay dispensationalist but his point is going to be there aren’t many academic dispensationalists anyway because anyone who is scholarly wouldn’t be a dispensationalist.

So let me read to you a few of the quotes from here. And I love it when they start out this way; this is by the author, Bass: “The book is not written in an argumentative manner. At all times an effort has been made to deal fairly and objectively with the ideas and events that come into view and the purpose is not to construct a case against dispensationalism. It’s hoped that an unbiased approach to the conclusion reached in this book will cause many seriously to evaluate their relationship to dispensationalism. The book has in view only one kind of dispensationalist, the pastor dispensationalist. The pastor dispensationalist is one who has been taught the dispensational system in seminary or Bible school or has learned it from the Schofield Bible.”

Now you see going to Bible school, college, going to seminary and reading the Schofield Bible that is all on the same level because in dispensational schools you are not really taught academically so whether you get it in seminary or Schofield Bible it is all the same.

“He believes tenaciously in the pre-tribulation rapture as the blessed hope of the church. He may use the dispensational charts when he speaks on Christ’s second coming.” That hurts but “He has not fully worked through to either the underlying presuppositions or the implications of dispensationalism.” You see he is basically illiterate when it comes to really understanding the system. He just holds it because someone told him it is true or he read the notes in the Schofield Bible.

“It is this pastor dispensationalist for whom the book has been written. The book is not therefore to be taken as a refutation of the academic dispensationalist. It is designed only to help the pastor dispensationalist understand the system.” I don’t have any idea what the distinction is. I am a pastor. I was taught the system by men who had earned doctors degrees from different schools. I don’t know what the difference is from different schools. I don’t know what the difference is except the pastor and the lay people don’t really know. They just took it on because that is what they were taught.

We come over to talk about literal interpretation. He says, “Principles of interpretation are crucial for this or any other system of thought” and then he quotes from someone who gives the alternative ways to interpret and then he summarizes. “The two basic principles of interpretation are thus available, the grammatical historical which is the literal and the allegorical. The literal method is that method which gives the word the meaning it would normally have according to natural construction and usage. The allegorical method is that method which takes the same word and seeks to find a deeper meaning than the natural one.” I have no problem with that.

“Dispensationalists insist, however upon a rigid application of an exact literal interpretation particularly as it has to do with Israel and the church. They insist on an unconditional, literal fulfillment of all prophetic promises failing to realize that by its very nature prophetic utterances are sometimes allegorical or symbolic.”

Now we just did the book of Daniel. I don’t know that I found any of those. We noted the symbolism used in conveying a prophetic message conveyed a literal truth. When we studied Daniel 2 the image of the man and the various metals symbolized what? Different empires. In chapter 7 the symbolism of different animals laid out something of the character in a symbolic fashion of literal coming empires. So they make a statement here but I don’t think it is supportable.

“The most important consequence of dispensational literalism is that it forces all prophetic Scripture into this originally defined pattern. This leads to exact futuristic fulfillment of every detail of early prophetic statements.” And he goes on to give examples. “The covenant with Abraham must be fulfilled in every detail to satisfy this principle of interpretation. Out of such literalness comes a dichotomy between Israel and the church. It is the pattern of rigid literalism” and I am not reading consecutively because I am not going to read you the whole book, breathe a sigh of relief. “If the pattern of rigid literalism is to be followed to its natural conclusion the same dispensationalist who insists that the unconditional promises to Israel must be literally fulfilled as to the land, seat of government, restoration of temple, etc., during the millennial reign of Christ must also believe that the New Jerusalem described in the closing chapter of Revelation will actually be the eternal abode of the saints continuing on earth.” And that is what we believe. I don’t know what the problem is.

We are going to find as we move this you will see a pattern. They are going to criticize literal interpretation but they follow literal interpretation in every area of Scripture except prophecy that has not yet been fulfilled. That will come out just to give you an advance; something to look forward to.

“The purpose of this discussion; however is not to refute the principle of literal interpretation but to reveal it for whatever merit it may have as a feature distinguishing dispensationalism from the church at all periods since its inception.” And I would agree. Down through church history primarily the church has not interpreted future prophecy literally. I think the New Testament does but the church deviated quite quickly from that.

“Actually the method of literal interpretation is preferred by this author, Clarence Bass but is used with a natural recognition that some Scripture is to be interpreted by its secondary or symbolic meaning” and he goes on here, “Especially eschatological literature which contains none of the conclusions which have grown out of dispensational literalism.” In other words I would agree on the principle of literal interpretation. That is what I would use except I don’t think prophecy that is yet to be fulfilled should be interpreted literally. Now this is a man exposing that system so you see where the differences do lie.

“When the principle of rigid literalism is applied to the promises of God to Abraham in instituting the nation of Israel two conclusions follows: God binds Himself to fulfill every promise to Israel exactly and since every detail of these covenants has not yet been fulfilled Christ’s future reign on earth will be for the purpose of fulfilling them in a relation to Israel distinctly different from His present relation to the church.” Well, that’s the way God has fulfilled everything He has fulfilled. When God told Abraham “You are going to go to your rest in the grave. Your descendants will spend 400 years in a foreign land and then I will bring them out and bring them into the land that I promised.” How was that fulfilled? 400 years meant what, something over 10 and less than a 1,000? No, it meant what? 400 years and they were going to be out of the land. What did that mean? Out of the land. So everything that has been fulfilled so yes, here in wise and distinguishing feature of dispensationalism that the whole of God’s redemptive relation to man is centered in His covenant relation to Israel. We do. We go back to the Abrahamic Covenant.

Jump over a hundred pages or so. Now look at it this way? Think of all I am saving you so you don’t have to read this. We come to the hermeneutical principle of literalness as the book gets toward its conclusion.

“The basic implications of dispensationalism arise out of its principle of literal interpretation.” You see this man has no problem calling it literal interpretation. As we move to more recent books they want to say “Well nobody knows what literal really is.” So it becomes a smoke and mirrors kind of approach. But “the basic implications of dispensationalism arise out of its principle of literal interpretation.” That’s right.

We believe in consistent literalism. That’s how we interpret what the Bible says about salvation, of the necessity to believe in Christ, about the consequences of not believing. Then he says, “I should like it understood in the most emphatic terms, I accept the principle of verbal inspiration of Scripture.” And he said earlier he prefers the principle of literal interpretation. “I cannot resist questioning, however, whether all prophetic Scripture should be interpreted literally.” At the end he says, “Not all prophetic Scripture can be interpreted literally. Dispensationalists however, insist that all prophetic Scripture must be taken literally. Logically carried out, this principle involves the dispensationalists in these extremes.” Here’s the extremes you will have to deal with if you interpret prophecy literally: “All Israel will be saved.” Romans 11, okay, that is an extreme. “The boundaries of the land given in the promise to Abraham will literally be restored during the millennium. Christ will return to a literal, theocratical, political kingdom on earth. Christ will sit on a physical throne in the city of Jerusalem in the state of Israel. The beast, antichrist and other persons mentioned in Revelation will literally appear. A city will actually descend from heaven in which God will have an eternal throne and from which will flow the river of life all of which are inherent in the system of contemporary dispensationalism. In light of the principle it is legitimate to ask whether dispensationalism is not oriented more from the Abrahamic Covenant than from the cross. Does it not interpret the New Testament in light of the Old Testament prophecies instead of interpreting these prophecies in light of the more complete revelation of the New Testament.? That is a foundational principle of Covenant Theology. You reinterpret the Old Testament in light of the coming of Christ. Everything is changed. What it seemed to mean when God gave it in the Old Testament we know now since Christ has come it didn’t mean that at all. I say, “Well wait a minute. That’s strange.” It’s not strange, it is just not true.

His solution and how do you interpret the New Testament? “May not the answer be found in the fact that the church is indeed the spiritual Israel, that the covenantal relations to God to Israel have indeed been passed over to the church, that the promises of Abraham may be fulfilled in some measure in the church, that the kingdom offered by Christ was a spiritual kingdom which was instituted in the hearts of those who believe?” And on it goes.

Then he quotes from another author: “In light of the New Testament the exaggerated emphasis on the land and nation instead of the promise of blessing seems like a religious anachronism. So the epilogue, the thesis of this book is: dispensationalism is not part of the historical faith of the church. It is based on a faulty hermeneutical basis of interpretation. I most strongly believe dispensationalism to be a departure from the historical faith and to be based on a faulty system of interpretation.” That is Clarence Bass, background to dispensationalism. It is available should you desire to have it.

Dispensationalism: Today, Yesterday and Tomorrow by Crenshaw and Gunn. This man studied at Dallas Seminary, Crenshaw. A forward to this book and this was originally published and it has been reprinted in 1984 with some updates added in the back but the forward to the book by a former professor at Reformed Theological Seminary. “The issue before the reader is not a few minor disagreements between those who basically uphold the same position but whether dispensationalism provides us with God’s good news and plan for history or instead the opinions of man imposed on the Bible.” It is going to be a question of whether the dispensationalists really even present the true Gospel.

“I commend to you with the prayer that God will use it to recover His church from the errors of dispensationalism.” I read these to you just so you will know when it is talked about, what about others? Well the attacks against dispensationalism are rather strong.

He starts out by talking in chapter one: “The literal hermeneutic.” “In this chapter we investigate what literal means.” No one seems to know precisely what literal meant but it was always a key word if one decided to abolish an opponent. This is when he studied with dispensationalist. He quotes from Charles Ryrie. “What it means to be literal? It gives to every word the same meaning it would have in normal usage whether employed in writing, speaking or thinking. It is also called grammatical, historical interpretation or the normal way words are understood” and then this man’s comments. “Such comments, however, to very little than restate the problem for then one must define normal.” Now here is where I said you start to get smoke and mirrors because we really don’t know what literal means. Well you say, “Literal means normal.” But, we don’t know what normal means. Well he says, “It’s just plain.” What does plain mean? Well know you see how can we communicate? How do we understand each other when we talk if we don’t know what literal means? My mother used to say when I was trying to explain something, “Spit it out.” We weren’t ones for a lot of adjustment. Just say what you want to say. Well, I don’t know what you mean. Okay.

Ryrie introduces three reasons for the dispensational idea of literal. First, prophecies are to be normally interpreted according to the received laws of language.” That is Ryrie. Now he says, “But what it may be retorted are the received laws of language? What is the sound philosophy of language? Such statements express an extreme naivety concerning the contemporary, philosophical scene. Since Ludwig Whittgenstein studies in linguistic analysis no two philosophers have surfaced such laws on which they can agree nor a sound philosophy of language.” Well I guess since Ludwig Whittgenstein we have ceased communicating because we don’t know what the laws of language are. We don’t know what a sound philosophy of language is. We can’t talk about normal, plain, literal speech. Well then how do we communicate? Of course, it doesn’t make any sense. And he would interpret the Bible literally.

And then he quotes another man who lists some of the errors of dispensationalism and one of them is and I referred to this this morning. We will be talking about it in our study of 2 Corinthians that dispensationalist don’t believe that justification is based on the act of obedience of Christ to God’s law but only on His cross work. It is based on a literal hermeneutic. He believes in pre-millennialism and then he concludes “none of these errors have been corrected.”

And then you get to “Why aren’t we involved in the cultural and social issues of the world?” And that is one of his criticisms. “Pietism, another tendency of dispensationalism” and he thinks it is a bad one, “is preoccupation with the insignificant, with the attending retreat into pietism. Pietism is the idea that the political world is somehow evil and to be retreated from, that the individual Christian is his private spiritual life are the only concerns.”

And we don’t see the church called to rectify the cultural, physical ills of society and he will go on to explain why the Old Testament makes clear since the church is Israel we should be doing that.

One thing he says here as he talks about this withdrawal from culture. “Little or nothing is presented for our culture in dispensationalism.” Then he says, “No Mother Theresa can come out of this.” Mother Teresa is a goal? We want to produce other Mother Theresa’s? I don’t know where he is going with that but I thought you would like to hear it.

He goes on later in the book to talk about literalism as a presupposition of dispensationalism; “A literal and Jewish understanding of Old Testament prophecy, the Messianic kingdom with the result that these require a future fulfillment in terms of a resurrected Old Testament order with certain enhancement and variations. The dispensationalist defends his view of the Messianic kingdom by a literal interpretation of Old Testament prophecy.” That is true. We do. And then he goes on to list some of those again, “Christ will descend to the Mount of Olives, the Mount of Olives will be split in two” and on with the other things that we have talked about.

Jump toward the back here. Dispensationalism, their view of consistent literalism. “I believe that if one were to ask the knowledgeable dispensationalist to specify the fundamental element in his system he would probably say, ‘consistent literalism.’ The dispensationalist believes that consistent literalism is the basic key to the correct interpretation of Scripture and the only sure hedge against liberalism. The dispensationalist’s main criticism of the reformed theologian is that he spiritualizes or allegorizes which is to say he is not consistently literal” and that is a correct assessment.

He goes on to talk about the problems you have with literal interpretation and certain passages dramatically demonstrate the difficulty in trying to interpret prophecy with so called consistent literalism and one there are passages which refer to coming nations and so on that will be in the kingdom. He talks about “a problem exists for the theory of consistent literalism. Dispensationalists argue there is a future generation of Jews who will fulfill the Old Testament prophecies about a messianic age but some of these prophecies specifically mention the existence of ancient family and tribal relationships.” We understand we have the twelve tribes, book of Revelation, 144,000, 12,000 from each tribe. His response is: “These tribal and family relationships however, have been long lost. God has not been pleased to preserve these geological distinctions past the time of the New Testament. Once tribal and family relationships are lost they cannot be restored.”

Now I think of reformed people as being strong in sovereignty but I have a hard time following this. They have been lost in the sense we do not have the physical records. You think God is in heaven telling Gabrielle, “You’ve got to search more deeply, Gabrielle. I am sure we have records somewhere we could piece together.” What kind of statement is this? “Once tribal family relationships are lost they can’t be restored,” except by the God of heaven who never lost track. I don’t know. That is one of his arguments, how could you fulfill these prophecies literally? Do you know who the tribe of Benjamin is today? Do you know who the tribe of Manasseh is today? No I don’t but I don’t have to because I don’t have to put them together, God does. There are a lot of things I don’t know except I do know he is wrong, this guy.

So here are some of his criticisms, he’s closing. First, “Consistent literalism is not the final key to proper Biblical interpretation. It is too subjective. The proper hermeneutic involves a study of how Scripture interprets other Scripture as a guide to what is scripturally normal language. One should not build a theological system on possible interpretations of poetic or apocalyptical passages when those interpretations require one to twist the clear meaning of straight forward didactic passages.” And I think, well we can be consistent you know and we don’t twist. Israel is Israel. I don’t find any passage in the New Testament that ever calls the church Israel.

“The interpreter should not be a rationalist who puts his own ultimate trust in his own personal sense of language. The interpreter’s personal sense of language is reliable only to the extent it has been sanctified by the Spirit in truth.” I don’t know what that means. It’s true you need the Holy Spirit but our sense of language doesn’t count? Now you’ve got some kind of heavenly language.

“What is truly objective interpretation? The ultimate objectivity is found in the divine subjectivity as expressed in ‘Thus saith the Lord of the written Word.’ The ultimate objectivity is found in the divine subjectivity.” That’s clever but I don’t know what it means. That is found in ‘Thus saith the Lord in the written Word,’ but I’m not going to interpret it literally. Well it’s like we know kind of approach.

Alright, “the issue is the question of what was normal language when God spoke about the future. Should we expect God to have spoken through the prophets about the future with the same language He used when He chronicled the history of the covenant people? Should be interpret predictive prophecy as if it were pre-written history, or futuristic newspaper reporting? One should not interpret the prophets as if their message is in the simple literary form of pre-written history. One of the greatest contrasts between reformed and dispensational understanding of normal language in the prophets revolves around whether the prophets ever spoke of the future in the past.” And we do, we have the prophetic past when they spoke about future events in past tense. All we have to do is how when God told Israel about future things. When God, the prophets came and told Israel the northern ten tribes are going to go into captivity for judgment. What did He mean by that? When God spoke through the prophet that Sennacherib, the king of the Assyrians could come up against Jerusalem but he wouldn’t shoot an arrow against it, there wouldn’t be a fight but they would return to their homeland and the king would be killed. In the morning 185,000 Assyrians were dead and they went back home and Sennacherib was killed by two of his own sons in the worship of Misrock, his god. How are those things fulfilled? By eschatological prophecy.

I have one more book. This is moving us to more recent time. This is originally 1987, second edition 1994. It gets referred to a lot. In fact a professor at Dallas Seminary gives it a good recommendation. He shouldn’t be at Dallas and this man is intelligent. His PhD is from Harvard University and then he also has a Doctor of Theology from a South African University and a Master’s degree from the University of Cambridge, a professor at West Minster Seminary when he wrote this. Understanding Dispensationalists and I am just going to jump in here further into this book and you will see there is just this arrogance.

I have shared with you Robert Thomas. Some of you are familiar with the writings of Robert Thomas who wrote a book on hermeneutics. He’s written other stuff. He wrote two volumes on the book of Revelation. I asked him one time, “Why do you think there are not more dispensationalists in the scholarly world?” He said, “Gil, you cannot be accepted in the scholarly world if you are a dispensationalist.” Well, I mean you presupposed it. It’s like you can’t get accepted in the scientific world if you are a creationist. It doesn’t matter how intelligent you are.

So you are going to see this arrogance come out. Here, “Most dispensationalists are unaware of some social factors contributing to a unified dispensationalist reading of Biblical texts.” Basically dispensationalists are unaware. That is part of their problem. We are back to they don’t really understand.

“When we advise the average readers of the Bible,” remember we are back down to the lay people. We scholars generally know better but he doesn’t think dispensational scholars do but “When we advise the average readers of the Bible that the meaning is plain what will they conclude? To lay dispensationalists,” now here comes one of his favorite expressions, “lay dispensationalists.” Plain meaning is meaning that they automatically see in a text when they read it against the background of the teaching and examples they have seen and heard from fellow Christians most of whom are themselves dispensationalists.” In other words, lay dispensationalists don’t have a clue. He talks you know like you are talking about grade school kids. They just know what they have been told. Now you tell them the Scripture means plain. All they know is they read the Scripture and think it means what the person that has been talking to them says it means. They have no ability to sort this out for themselves.

He goes on, “Too frequently non- dispensationalists meet lay dispensationalists.” Now you note here, he doesn’t say, “lay non-dispensationalists meet lay dispensationalists.” “Lay dispensationalists meet lay dispensationalists because non- dispensationalists by the fact they are non- dispensational have a superior intellect.” So non- dispensationalists have to deal with lay dispensationalists. That’s the common person who doesn’t really have an understanding of the system that he is saying he believes.

“Too frequently non- dispensationalists meet lay dispensationalists who are shocked to discover that anyone would hold views different from theirs. Their first reaction may be, wonder whether the non- dispensationalist is a genuine Christian. Their reaction is understandable if the hermeneutical stress on plainness has discouraged dispensationalist pastors from alerting their congregations to differences of interpretation among evangelicals and it has caused members of the congregation to regard deviation from their in-group interpretation as a repudiation of the Bible itself because the meaning is plainly there.”

Yet each of these writers I have referred to questions whether even dispensationalists present a true Gospel. But of course it is dispensationalists who are biased and think that those who disagree with them may not even be Christians but I read you in the one he doesn’t think they have the Gospel correct. If you don’t have the Gospel correct you are in a world of hurt.
Lay dispensationalists, lay dispensationalists; they never refer to a lay non- dispensationalist because non- dispensationalists by virtue of holding to their system. And it doesn’t matter whether you are pre-millennial, covenantal millennial, a-millennial, post-millennial, they are all okay. It is the dispensationalists that we all agree with.

Alright, Marilyn tells me, “Please don’t read that stuff before you go to bed.”

62, next, “What about the fear of subjectivity and the insistence on the plainness of the Bible?” “Here again a good principle is involved, namely the principle of the perspicuity of the Bible,” (The clarity.) “The things necessary for salvation are said so clearly in one place or another that even the unlearned may come to a sufficient understanding of them. However, that does not mean that all parts of the Bible are equally clear.” So even we unlearned can understand the Scripture on the doctrines of salvation because there it is plain but you understand the unlearned don’t realize that plain doesn’t include the whole Scripture; the stifling arrogance in their treatment. It is like they are dealing with grade school and here, why is dispensationalists popular? “Dispensationalism offers certainly in interpretation to the ordinary Bible student.” This language, who’s an ordinary Bible student? That is one of the appeals. “It offers certainty in interpretation to the ordinary Bible student. Over again the scholarly difficulties and multitudes of unanswered questions involved in thorough going grammatical, historical interpretation dispensationalism ensures its student of the availability of the Bible to the ordinary reader.” Who is the Bible written to? You think those wandering shepherds, Israel in the Old Testament were linguistic scholars sorting through the prophets? “Let’s see, in light of Wittgenstein (and he must have been a Jew, “Stein”) I wonder what the prophet really meant? We’ve got to sort this out in light of…” It was written to ordinary people. I mean the New Testament written to people who were expected to understand the Old Testament. You understand that when we referred to what the Bible said about Abraham in Romans 4 in our earlier study today, the Romans are 2,000 years removed from Abraham, the culture of that time and so on but they are expected to understand it; the ordinary Bible reader, ahhh.

69, “Can we agree that one of the issues perhaps the key issue most distinguishing dispensationalists from non- dispensationalists is the interpretation of the Old Testament? The question of literalism in interpretation. Hence interpretation of prophecy is a key theological issue to consider.” And I would agree. I say that is the issue because this man would agree that Israel’s history should be interpreted literally, that all the prophecies given in the Old Testament should be interpreted literally. We don’t disagree on that. We even agree that the prophecies about the first coming of Christ to be born in Bethlehem and so on were fulfilled literally. So it all comes down to, is there any reason why we should all of a sudden change and assume now and he is going to go on to this, there is a different system to be used.”

“What is literal interpretation?” “In a sense, nearly all the problems associated with dispensationalist, non-dispensationalist conflict are buried beneath the question of literal interpretation.” So now he is going to quote Charles Ryrie’s definition of literal. That is simplistic so he has to go on and give us a language study. You feel like you are in second grade. “Let’s use an example: the word ‘battle.’ The word ‘battle’ can be a noun. The word ‘battle’ can be a verb. It can be used in different senses and so it has a variety and range of meanings.” Don’t we know that? How do you start out? “See Spot run.” Then you put it in simple sentences and when you are helping your kids when they were little with learning grammar and that you say, “Well, put that word in a sentence.” So defining literalism. Then he goes, “Well, there are three ways you could interpret literalism” and the one that we would call literal interpretation he calls “flat interpretation.” He doesn’t like literal because that makes those who interpret allegorically look bad. So let’s call it flat interpretation. Who wants to have flat interpretation? So he likes that. Although he admits “In the history of interpretation literal was used for historical, grammatical interpretation” but dispensationalists are using it for bad motives so they shouldn’t use it.

And he goes on, “Plain interpretation. For lay dispensationalists the plain meaning will be the meaning that occurs to them in the context of their already existing knowledge of the prophetic system of dispensationalism.” That never happens to reformed people that they come to the Bible with their reformed view. I mean, that is what he is arguing for but there are no lay non- dispensationalists, just lay dispensationalists who don’t understand language and then it really kills me. Ryrie has two earned doctors’ degrees from two different countries. Some of you have read some of Ryrie’s books. He has written a number of books. He has been the head of a doctrinal program in a seminary and yet after he quotes his interpretation of literal “his statements might still be presupposing an inadequate view of how sentence meaning and discourse meaning arrives.” Poor Ryrie, with all his education, he doesn’t understand how words and sentences can have a variation in meaning; poor guy.

So you can see it is not just lay dispensationalists. He talks down like he’s talking to a second grader when he evaluates Ryrie. Ryrie unfortunately gives the appearance of talking about first thought interpretation. “He’s still not moved beyond words in sentences and communicative acts.” I mean this disdain.

104, I’ve got to read you this. Here is the distinction: “Therefore, prophetic predictions with regard to the near future have a character distinct from prediction about the latter days.” So all prophecies have been fulfilled they are different kinds of prophecies and they were fulfilled with a flat interpretation, literally. Predictions about the latter days that are yet future they are to be interpreted differently. Why? Well, he’s got a PhD from Harvard; because he said so.

“Fulfillment in the latter days, eschatological fulfillment in the broad sense of eschatology is a different matter. There the symbol is superseded by the reality and hence straight line reckoning about fulfillments is no longer possible. Pre-eschatological prophetic fulfillments have a hermeneutically different character than eschatological fulfillments. The point is this – for almost any prophetic passage touching on the latter days one can claim that it has a straight line, obvious fulfillment in the millennium though such an interpretation is possible, is it necessarily required?” You know you take away every argument, the proof is on you. Who says there are two kinds of prophecies in the Old Testament? “All the prophecies that were given through all the history of the Old Testament up to the coming of Christ were fulfilled literally but God never intended that those prophecies that are yet future would be fulfilled literally.” And he says dispensationalists don’t understand. I think it is clear and I had a couple of other things to read to you but I can’t. Breathe a sigh of relief. I work them in at another time.

We believe in a literal interpretation of Scripture and it is a slippery slide. The next time I am going to read you something on the slippery slide.

Let’s have a word of prayer. Thank You Lord for the fact that You have revealed Yourself. Thank You for the clarity of that revelation. Thank You for the fact that it was given that we might know Your will. It was not given to be the domain of scholars, the intellectual to impress the wise. It was given to the simple, those who would bow humbly before You, have the Spirit of God, who can read Your Word, delight in it and know its meaning and live in light of its truth. Lord may we be ever grateful for the treasure we have entrusted to us, with the truth of Your Word. Bless us in our service for you in our week before us. May our testimonies be strong and clear; may we be bold with the Gospel and may we honor you we pray in Christ’s name, amen.