musterion
Well-known member
First, my own understanding of Mid-Acts Dispensationalism is briefly this:
God chose a nation through whom He promised to someday bless the whole earth. That nation was Israel and that choosing involved various covenants. Christ Jesus came as Israel’s promised Redeemer, and through Israel – His nation of priests – He would redeem the whole world.
The problem is, Israel rejected Him. Not every individual Jew did so but Israel corporately, as a nation, despised Him and had Him crucified by Rome. But rising from the dead and ascending into Heaven, His apostles preached that if Israel repented and believed on Him as their Messiah, He would return to establish the long-awaited Kingdom, just as God had promised and as the Old Testament prophets had foretold.
But once again, Israel refused to bow to her Messiah. After the leaders stoned Stephen to death, God temporarily set Israel aside and temporarily suspended all fulfillment of prophecy.
At that point, God began to usher in the previously unmentioned dispensation of grace, which is now in effect and will remain so until He decides to bring it to an end.
During this age of grace, salvation is no longer to the Jew first. Previously unknown blessings and riches are promised equally to Jew and Gentile alike on the simple basis of faith alone in Christ’s death, burial and resurrection for the individual’s sin, without works of any kind either to be saved, stay saved or prove that one is saved, for God knows those who are His.
That is my understanding of MAD stated as briefly as I can state it.
Now the question is, Why do people who reject MAD seem to find it more intolerable than other doctrinal systems with which they also do not agree? I have found two basic reasons.
1. They don’t really understand MAD because what they have heard is not accurate. They believe a straw man version of MAD. In response, MADs try to clarify our position but usually with limited success.
2. They do understand MAD, or enough of it to hate what it implies for their own doctrinal position. I’ve found this to be the most common of the two, at least on TOL.
When you dig deep enough, informed objections to MAD (#2 above) tend to stem from one of two related roots. The opponent to MAD believes either (a) that the Christian Church has in some sense inherited the promised blessings, signs and covenants that God made solely with, or intended only for, national Israel, or (b) that the Christian Church has replaced national Israel outright. There is usually overlap between these two positions as they do stem from the same root, but objections boil down to one or the other.
Objection (a) can be seen in the opposition to MAD by Pentecostals, charismatics, various cultists and works-oriented members of Christendom who have been deceived into adopting Israel’s deactivated covenant works or sign gifts as necessary to salvation today, or necessary to their sanctification – some version of water baptism being the #1 expression of this error. Thus very, very few within Christendom today truly believe as Paul taught, that salvation is received by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone without works. THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS but almost all opponents of MAD, if they’re honest, will admit that they believe some degree of human religious effort [works] is involved in either getting themselves saved or keeping themselves saved. According to Paul, all such are believing a false gospel (Gal 1:8-9).
Objection (b) is straightforward enough among those denominations and cults that have adopted some variation on Replacement theology, wherein it is believed God will never again deal with Israel as His nation and all of His promises (and even warnings) have already been fulfilled in the past and/or fulfilled in the Christian church; hence the foolish "Zionist" label that is sometimes thrown against MADs as well as other dispensationalists.
In my opinion, even though they claim to uphold the entirety of God's Word (which they invariably and falsely accuse MADs of not doing), those holding to either of these dual errors deny the reliability of God and His Word because He has promised to someday once again deal with the world via Christ's redeemed nation Israel. However, He will do this ONLY after He has ended this dispensation of grace wherein there is “no distinction” between Jew and Gentile. In the meantime, He is not sovereignty judging anyone for error; He is not opening the ground beneath the feet of lying teachers and false prophets. He has given His Word and His Gospel of grace. For now He has nothing more to say. Such is grace!
So while some, by God's grace, do come to see the revelation of the mystery (Eph 3:8-9), the leaven of the errors described above - taking what God intended only for Israel while rejecting all He's given to the Body of Christ, and you can't have both - can only compound, spread and grow worse as this age of grace draws to its inevitable close.
God chose a nation through whom He promised to someday bless the whole earth. That nation was Israel and that choosing involved various covenants. Christ Jesus came as Israel’s promised Redeemer, and through Israel – His nation of priests – He would redeem the whole world.
The problem is, Israel rejected Him. Not every individual Jew did so but Israel corporately, as a nation, despised Him and had Him crucified by Rome. But rising from the dead and ascending into Heaven, His apostles preached that if Israel repented and believed on Him as their Messiah, He would return to establish the long-awaited Kingdom, just as God had promised and as the Old Testament prophets had foretold.
But once again, Israel refused to bow to her Messiah. After the leaders stoned Stephen to death, God temporarily set Israel aside and temporarily suspended all fulfillment of prophecy.
At that point, God began to usher in the previously unmentioned dispensation of grace, which is now in effect and will remain so until He decides to bring it to an end.
During this age of grace, salvation is no longer to the Jew first. Previously unknown blessings and riches are promised equally to Jew and Gentile alike on the simple basis of faith alone in Christ’s death, burial and resurrection for the individual’s sin, without works of any kind either to be saved, stay saved or prove that one is saved, for God knows those who are His.
That is my understanding of MAD stated as briefly as I can state it.
Now the question is, Why do people who reject MAD seem to find it more intolerable than other doctrinal systems with which they also do not agree? I have found two basic reasons.
1. They don’t really understand MAD because what they have heard is not accurate. They believe a straw man version of MAD. In response, MADs try to clarify our position but usually with limited success.
2. They do understand MAD, or enough of it to hate what it implies for their own doctrinal position. I’ve found this to be the most common of the two, at least on TOL.
When you dig deep enough, informed objections to MAD (#2 above) tend to stem from one of two related roots. The opponent to MAD believes either (a) that the Christian Church has in some sense inherited the promised blessings, signs and covenants that God made solely with, or intended only for, national Israel, or (b) that the Christian Church has replaced national Israel outright. There is usually overlap between these two positions as they do stem from the same root, but objections boil down to one or the other.
Objection (a) can be seen in the opposition to MAD by Pentecostals, charismatics, various cultists and works-oriented members of Christendom who have been deceived into adopting Israel’s deactivated covenant works or sign gifts as necessary to salvation today, or necessary to their sanctification – some version of water baptism being the #1 expression of this error. Thus very, very few within Christendom today truly believe as Paul taught, that salvation is received by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone without works. THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS but almost all opponents of MAD, if they’re honest, will admit that they believe some degree of human religious effort [works] is involved in either getting themselves saved or keeping themselves saved. According to Paul, all such are believing a false gospel (Gal 1:8-9).
Objection (b) is straightforward enough among those denominations and cults that have adopted some variation on Replacement theology, wherein it is believed God will never again deal with Israel as His nation and all of His promises (and even warnings) have already been fulfilled in the past and/or fulfilled in the Christian church; hence the foolish "Zionist" label that is sometimes thrown against MADs as well as other dispensationalists.
In my opinion, even though they claim to uphold the entirety of God's Word (which they invariably and falsely accuse MADs of not doing), those holding to either of these dual errors deny the reliability of God and His Word because He has promised to someday once again deal with the world via Christ's redeemed nation Israel. However, He will do this ONLY after He has ended this dispensation of grace wherein there is “no distinction” between Jew and Gentile. In the meantime, He is not sovereignty judging anyone for error; He is not opening the ground beneath the feet of lying teachers and false prophets. He has given His Word and His Gospel of grace. For now He has nothing more to say. Such is grace!
So while some, by God's grace, do come to see the revelation of the mystery (Eph 3:8-9), the leaven of the errors described above - taking what God intended only for Israel while rejecting all He's given to the Body of Christ, and you can't have both - can only compound, spread and grow worse as this age of grace draws to its inevitable close.
