the church
- Thread starter chrysostom
- Start date
Since the church of Rome is a made up as LDS, Islam, and JW, I asked chatgpt what Paul said when the translators say "Bishop", and that doesn't exist. I think the "church fathers" are people who went with the circumcision as Paul describes in Galatians, that exist in the first century letters. I think they are real. Just wrong.
Idolater
Popetard
Right at 0:57 he says, "I started studying the Bible with a true heartfelt desire to understand God's Word, but as I progressed, I found several passages that seemed to contradict".
Welcome to the club. That's not unique. That's true, for literally everybody who starts studying the Bible with a true heartfelt desire to understand God's Word.
Jumping right from that spot, which everybody who starts studying the Bible with a true heartfelt desire to understand God's Word encounters immediately, to Dispensationalism, is a GIGANTIC leap. But you guys just act like it's no big deal and obv. It's not obv to many people that some form of Dispensationalism is the correct resolution to the apparent contradictions in the Bible, especially when the Bible USED TO BE a little bigger than it is today, for like, 1500 years straight it was a little bigger.
I would say ESPECIALLY, given that the Bible for near 1500 years straight, it was a little bigger than it is today, in the Protestant communions, that Dispensationalism is a very big leap, to attempt to resolve the apparent contradictions that everybody faces when they first start studying the Bible with a true heartfelt desire to understand God's Word.
Literally everybody.
Idolater
Popetard
The solution to the apparent contradictions in the Bible is not obv Dispensationalism. Dispensationalism is a stretch explanation for them, a minority report. The majority report is some form of ancient Christianity, whether it's Catholicism, Ethiopian Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, English Anglicanism, or something like that. The next most popular view would be a Protestant communion like Lutheranism or Presbyterianism, or Congregationalism, or Methodism. But only after those would we start to consider any form of Dispenationalism.
This doesn't refute Dispensationalism, that's not what I'm saying, and that's not WHY I'm saying it either. You just, if you're any form of Dispensationalist, you need to defeat the claims that all these other Church traditions have. They all claim to precede Dispensationalism, in claims to being the Church in the Bible. Dispensationalism is claiming to be the Church that Paul talked about, the Body of Christ. Dispensationalism is not first in line, in making that claim. There are many older traditions ahead of them in line. So Dispensationalists can't just say, Oh we're obv first in that line. Not without defeating everybody else's claims, who have been staking their claims, for a lot longer than Dispensationalism has been around.
This doesn't refute Dispensationalism, that's not what I'm saying, and that's not WHY I'm saying it either. You just, if you're any form of Dispensationalist, you need to defeat the claims that all these other Church traditions have. They all claim to precede Dispensationalism, in claims to being the Church in the Bible. Dispensationalism is claiming to be the Church that Paul talked about, the Body of Christ. Dispensationalism is not first in line, in making that claim. There are many older traditions ahead of them in line. So Dispensationalists can't just say, Oh we're obv first in that line. Not without defeating everybody else's claims, who have been staking their claims, for a lot longer than Dispensationalism has been around.
Regardless of how big the Bible is, if two things contradict, then at least one of them is false, UNLESS they are true at different times and/or in different ways.
This is LITERALLY the definition of dispensationalism: that God does different things at different times in different ways.
So no, it's not a giant leap at all to dispensationalism.
In fact, if we start with the assumption that the entire Bible is true, because it is, then there MUST NEEDS be a way to either resolve or explain any contradictions within the text.
You can't do that by just waving your hands and saying "it's not really a contradiction, because it doesn't actually mean such and such."
Dispensationalism is the ONLY way to read the Bible that lets the words on the page mean exactly what they say, while resolving the contradictions, not by saying there is no contradiction, or by saying it means something else, or by mashing everything together as part of the same doctrine, but by saying that one side of the contradiction is true within one context, and the other side is true within a different context, even though they would necessarily conflict without those contexts.
For example, in the Mosaic law, and even in Jesus' ministry, Israel was to remain separate from the Gentiles, with the Gentiles being outside the covenants God made with Israel, yet Paul comes along and starts teaching that "there is no longer Jew nor Greek . . . we are all one in Christ," that there's "one new man" formed from Jew and Gentile, that we are "baptized into one body," and that the middle wall is demolished.
If you claim that there was no change (ie, no new dispensations), then the law still applies and the Jews must remain separate from the Gentiles, which contradicts Paul's teaching of "no distinction."
If you claim, as replacement theology does, that the Christian church has replaced Israel as God's chosen people, then you must ignore ongoing promises to national Israel, as explained by Paul in Romans 11.
However, when you take the dispensationalist view (and there are no other options besides these three), you recognize that God's administration changed, with the Body of Christ being a new entity different/separate from Israel, which allows BOTH teachings (Israel must be separate from Gentiles VS no longer Jew nor Gentile) to be true in different administrations.
To put it bluntly:
God once commanded separation between Jew and Gentile.
God now commands unity between Jew and Gentile.
Those cannot both apply to the same people at the same time.
Without dispensational boundaries, this becomes an ACTUAL contradiction.
This is one of the clearest places where dispensationalism is not an interpretive preference but a necessity.