“Dispensationalism isn’t a heresy,” friends have reiterated lately. I agree. In the history of the Church, that is technically true. But it gets the overall message of Scripture, Old and New Testaments, so wrong, that it gets awfully close. It blatantly contradicts the big picture of what the New Testament authors, echoing the Old Testament, teach.
One friend notes that some in the Church have taught that the Sermon on the Mount is Law and not Gospel. This radical Law-Gospel contrast completely misses Jesus’ point in those verses, which is that righteousness goes far deeper than an external conformity to OT Law. No, keeping the Law does not justify. On this all have to agree. But true righteousness, a righteousness that is a part of salvation, is of the heart. Yet beyond this, there have always been those in Dispensationalism who have taught that the Sermon on the Mount doesn’t apply to the Church at all, but only to Israel, before its rejection of Christ when He was on earth, and not again until its reestablishment after the Rapture. And I’m not only talking about Ultradispensationalism here, but old school, classic Dispensationalism.
In like manner, there have always been Dispensationalists who taught that none of Jesus’ parables were for Christians or the Church, but only applied to Israel after the Rapture. And again, I’m speaking of Classic Dispensationalism, not Ultradispensationalism. One of the things John MacArthur caught a lot of flack over from Dispensationalists was that, even though he was a pretrib Rapture man, in his Bible commentaries he interpreted the parables as applying to the Church and not just Israel.
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.” We all line up on this basic glorious fact. But go too far down the road in the history of interpretation in mainline Dispensationalism, and things get really crazy really fast, in areas that can’t be considered merely side issues.
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