Loveland Protestant Reformed Church

709 East 57th Street; Loveland, CO 80538
Services: 9:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. June through August)
Vol. 7, No. 24 Pastor: Rev. Garry Eriks Phone: (970) 667-9481

Homepage on Internet: http://www.prca.org

Contents:
Dispensationalism (II)
A Promise of Salvation (I)
Has the Seventh Day Arrived?

Dispensationalism (II)

In the previous issue we began to point out briefly what we believe to be the principle errors of Dispensationalism. Those errors include:

(3) its separation of Israel and the church. One of the fundamentals of Dispensationalism is Israel is Israel and the church is the church and never may the two be confused. This is contrary to Scripture's teaching that the OT "Israel," both nationally and spiritually, is the church (Rom. 2:28, 29; Acts 7:38, where "Israel" is called "the church in the wilderness"; Gal. 3:29; Phil. 3:3; Heb. 12:22-24, where Jerusalem and Zion are identified with the church; Rev. 21:9,10, where "the bride, the Lamb's wife" is identified with "the holy Jerusalem").

(4) its separation between Christ's work on behalf of the Jews and of the church, i.e., Christ is King of Israel and Head of the Church. The Scofield Bible even teaches that OT people were saved in other ways than by the faith in Christ's atoning work and that God has more than one plan of salvation. This is contrary to Scripture's clear teaching that Christ is the same Savior of the same people both in the Old and New Testaments (Gal. 3:28, 29; I Tim. 2:5,6; Heb. 11:6).

(5) its exclusion of OT saints from the "body" and "bride" of Christ. This follows, of course, from the separation that Dispensationalism makes between Israel and the church, and between Christ's relation to Israel as King and to the church as Head. It is also contrary to Scripture, which includes OT saints in the "household of faith" and numbers them in the body and bride of Christ (Eph. 2:11-18, especially verse 16, which speaks of the fact that Jew and Gentile are reconciled "in one body;" Rev. 21:9-10, where the "bride, the Lamb's wife" is identified with the new Jerusalem).

(6) its teaching that the Holy Spirit is gone from the earth during the seven-year period between the rapture and the revelation. During this period the Jews are supposed to be saved and brought to faith in Christ without the sovereign and gracious operations of the Holy Spirit. This, too, is contrary to the teaching of Scripture, that faith is the gift of God, through the Holy Spirit, and that regeneration or the new birth, which is essential for salvation, is the unique work of the Spirit (Jn. 3:3-8; Eph. 2:8-10).

(7) its teaching regarding the so-called "mystery" church. Classic Dispensationalism teaches that the history of the church in the NT is a "parenthesis" and that the church itself is a "mystery" never spoken of in the OT. This contradicts the teaching of Scripture which not only prophesies of the church, but actually views true Israel as the church and the church as Israel (Acts 15:13-18, where James applies an OT prophecy concerning Israel to the establishment of NT Gentile churches; Acts 7:38). Likewise, the church is not viewed in Scripture as a "parenthesis" but as the goal and purpose of all God's work in history. It is "the fullness of him who filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:22, 23), the "glorious church" which He presents to Himself by all His saving work (Eph. 5:25-27).

For all these reasons Dispensationalism must be rejected.

Rev. Ronald Hanko

A Promise of Salvation (I)

Without any specific question, a reader asks that I work out two passages from the prophecy of Jeremiah. It is well to quote the two passages first of all.

"Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock" Jer. 31:10.

"Behold, I will gather them out of all countries, whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again unto this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: and I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul. For thus saith the Lord; Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them" Jer. 32:37-42.

Because the request to discuss these passages does not come with any specific question, it is probably best to make a few remarks in general about them. They are very beautiful texts and the remarks I am going to make are very cursory.

The first remark that has to be made is that these words were spoken to Judah by Jeremiah just before the final captivity when Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem, burnt the city and temple with fire, and took the people away as slaves to Babylon.

Jeremiah had told the people, as God's prophet, that this was to take place because of Judah's obstinacy, rebellion, and wickedness.

But here Jeremiah comes with another word of God which was one of supreme comfort to the faithful in Judah. God would bring His people back again from captivity and restore them to the land of promise.

This great and blessed promise stands out all the more brightly in the light of the fact that Judah's entire existence was closely bound up with the coming of Christ. Judah's life in Canaan, according to the promise made to Abraham and the other patriarchs, was inseparably connected with the coming of the promised seed, the Christ Himself.

Humanly speaking, Christ could not come if God's people were in captivity. This was why, according to Ps. 137, the captives hung their harps on the willows and were unable to sing the songs of Zion. All the songs of Zion, after all, were about Christ's coming. Christ's coming was impossible in Babylon. So the songs of Zion were hushed and those who once sang them were now forced to be silent.

Thus the promise of God through Jeremiah here is the promise that through the return to the land of Canaan, Christ would certainly come as the Seed of the woman Who would crush the serpent's head.

In the second place, this promise is clearly God's covenantal promise. Although it is a promise of return to the land of Canaan, it carries with it all the overtones of God's covenant. This is especially evident from vs. 38 of chapter 32. "And they shall be my people, and I will be their God."

Repeatedly this is the language used in Scripture to describe the essential character of God's covenant which He graciously establishes with His people. And this is precisely the language which God used when He originally established His covenant with Abraham (see Gen. 17:7). It is of more than passing interest to see that this covenantal promise was, also in Gen. 17:7, tied up with the land of Canaan. So remarkable is all this that there could not be one believer in all Judah who, upon hearing these words of Jeremiah, would not think immediately of God's promise to Abraham.

In the third place, the whole text demonstrates in a remarkable and unmistakable way the faithfulness of Jehovah God, the God of His people. Judah had done wickedly, more wickedly than the nations who worshipped not Jehovah. They had exceeded the corruptions of the heathen and had surpassed the evils of those to whom God had never revealed Himself.

The wickedness of the nation was true of the nation as a whole; it was true of the carnal and reprobate seed within that nation; but it was true too of the elect remnant which had given itself over to the sins of the nation. It must not be argued that the elect remnant had remained, through all of this, pure and holy. Never did that happen in all Israel's history, and never does it happen in the church. Their sins may not have been as great; they may only have been silent when sin abounded; their sin may have been that of omission - as is so often the case in the church. Good men keep silent out of fear when they ought to speak up. But they too were guilty of the sins which characterized the nation as a whole.

But God's faithfulness to His covenant and to the promise of His covenant shines brightly in the gloom of coming judgment. Indeed, it shines all the more brightly because it shines in contrast to Judah's unfaithfulness.

God's covenant is established, maintained, and fulfilled by the work of God's sovereign, free, and unmerited grace. No human cooperation; no human merit; no human side to the covenant; no conditions man must fulfill. It is all of God. What clearer message could there be than that?

Keep this issue, because we must return to this beautiful passage and more comments on it.
Prof. Herman Hanko

Has the Seventh "Day" Arrived?

We continue with the question from the last issue: "I'd be interested to hear your opinion on the age of the earth. Scientists believe it is millions of years old, but the Bible says God made it in six days. If we count up the generations mentioned in the Bible, we can conclude that Adam was created about six thousand years ago. This fits in nicely with the theological belief that the earth is now "six days" old (a day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day), and we are ready to enter into the seventh (Satan will be bound for a thousand years). The parable of the good Samaritan also fits in nicely with this theology. Both of these views make a lot of sense on their own, but they don't fit together. They seem to be mutually exclusive. Any comments?"

We answered the part of the question about the age of the earth in the last issue. We wish to comment briefly here on the suggestion that this new millennium will bring the coming of Christ and the end of all things.

It is indeed tempting to put II Peter 3:8 ("a thousand years as one day") together with the Biblical data concerning the age of the earth and to conclude that we have entered the seventh "day" with the dawning of a new millennium, and on that basis to predict and expect the coming of Christ in this millennium. Adding additional appeal is the fact that the world we live in is so corrupt that it is difficult for the believer who is eagerly waiting the coming of Christ to think that He will tarry yet another thousand years or more.

There are, however, several objections to this. First, there is the Biblical warning that no one knows the day or hour of Christ's coming, not even the Son of Man Himself! (Matt. 24:36). One might object that by saying Christ will come in this millennium we are not doing what Scripture warns against. We would point out, however, that our calling is not to count days or years (or millennia) but to believe that He is coming quickly (Rev. 22:7, 12, 20) and to watch and wait and work until He comes (Matt. 24:42-46).

Second, there is the fact that Scripture nowhere gives us any ground to conclude that this millennium is the last "day" of the world. The fact that 1000 years are as a day, or a day as a thousand years does not mean they actually are equivalent in God's plan.

Third, as we have pointed out and proved in previous articles, the thousand years in which Satan is bound do not begin in the future (or with the coming of the year 2000), but began with the first coming of Christ and the beginning of the New Testament era. That "thousand years," therefore, has already lasted about 2000 years of actual history, and who is to say how much longer it will last?

The fact that this "thousand years" of Revelation 20 has already lasted much longer than such a literal period of time is a reminder and warning to us, too, that we must be careful not to count days and years or to think that we have some inside knowledge (in spite of Scripture's warning to the contrary) of when Christ will come.

It is worth remembering, too, that through the history of the church it has always been a characteristic of a cult, a cult-leader, or a false prophet to make predictions (always unfulfilled) concerning the time of Christ's coming. There are numerous examples of this and every one of them stands as a reminder to us that our calling is not to count but to watch and pray.

But let us remember, too, that He comes quickly. Rev. Ronald Hanko

Last modified: 01-Feb-2002