A Refutation of
Dispensational Theology

Ga 3:6 - Show Context

It was the same with Avraham: "He trusted in God and was faithful to him, and that was credited to his account as righteousness."

Jas 2:23 - Show Context

and the passage of the Tanakh was fulfilled which says, "Avraham had faith in God, and it was credited to his account as righteousness." He was even called God’s friend.

3. God makes and then breaks His covenant with mankind for each successive “dispensation.”

The Bible says that God does not change and His covenants cannot be broken or changed.

Mal 3:6 - Show Context

"But because I, ADONAI, do not change, you sons of Ya'akov will not be destroyed.

Jas 1:17 - Show Context

Every good act of giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father who made the heavenly lights; with him there is neither variation nor darkness caused by turning.

Ge 9:16 - Show Context

The rainbow will be in the cloud; so that when I look at it, I will remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of any kind on the earth."

Ge 17:7 - Show Context

"I am establishing my covenant between me and you, along with your descendants after you, generation after generation, as an everlasting covenant, to be God for you and for your descendants after you.

Ge 17:13 - Show Context

The slave born in your house and the person bought with your money must be circumcised; thus my covenant will be in your flesh as an everlasting covenant.

Ge 17:19 - Show Context

God answered, "No, but Sarah your wife will bear you a son, and you are to call him Yitz'chak [laughter]. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.

2Sa 23:5 - Show Context

"For my house stands firm with God -he made an everlasting covenant with me. It is in order, fully assured, that he will bring to full growth all my salvation and every desire.

1Ch 16:17 - Show Context

and established as a law for Ya'akov, for Isra'el as an everlasting covenant:

Ps 105:10 - Show Context

and established as a law for Ya'akov, for Isra'el as an everlasting covenant:

Isa 24:5 - Show Context

The land lies defiled under its inhabitants; because they have transgressed the teachings, changed the law and broken the everlasting covenant.

Isa 55:3 - Show Context

Open your ears, and come to me; listen well, and you will live - I will make an everlasting covenant with you, the grace I assured David.

Jer 32:40 - Show Context

I will make with them an everlasting covenant not to turn away from them, but to do them good; I will put fear of me in their hearts, so that they will not leave me.

Jer 50:5 - Show Context

They will ask the way to Tziyon; and, turning their faces toward it, will say, 'Come, join yourselves to ADONAI by an everlasting covenant never to be forgotten.'

Eze 16:60 - Show Context

Nevertheless, I will remember the covenant I made with you when you were a girl and will establish an everlasting covenant with you.

Eze 37:26 - Show Context

I will make a covenant of peace with them, an everlasting covenant. I will give to them, increase their numbers, and set my sanctuary among them forever.

Heb 6:16-20

Now people swear oaths by someone greater than themselves, and confirmation by an oath puts an end to all dispute. Therefore, when God wanted to demonstrate still more convincingly the unchangeable character of his intentions to those who were to receive what he had promised, he added an oath to the promise; so that through two unchangeable things, in neither of which God could lie, we, who have fled to take a firm hold on the hope set before us, would be strongly encouraged. We have this hope as a sure and safe anchor for ourselves, a hope that goes right on through to what is inside the parokhet, where a forerunner has entered on our behalf, namely, Yeshua, who has become a cohen gadol forever, to be compared with Malki-Tzedek.

If it were possible for God to break His covenant with Israel, then He could also break His covenant with “the Church” and there would be absolutely no assurance that anyone could ever obtain eternal life. It would therefore be impossible for anybody to “believe (trust) God”, in which case there could be no possible hope for eternal life.

And just so there is no misunderstanding of the duration of God’s covenants ...

From Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary

Main Entry: everlasting

¹ev·er·last·ing

lasting or enduring through all time : eternal

Main Entry: eternal

¹eter·nal

1 a: having infinite duration : everlasting

b: of or relating to eternity

c: characterized by abiding fellowship with God

2 a: continued without intermission : perpetual

4 a: valid or existing at all times : timeless

Now that we have, I believe, shattered the “myth” of dispensationalism, let me explain what I mean by the phrase: “I follow a literal, historical, grammatical, and somewhat-dispensational approach to interpreting the Scriptures.”

Literal

I believe that Ruach HaKodesh inspired the recorders of the Sacred Message in such a way that every sentence, every word, every letter of the original autographs [those that were actually hand-written by the Prophet, Apostle, or their scribe] was delivered to mankind exactly the way that God intended them to be written, without diminishing the personality of the writer in any way.

I agree with the old adage, “When the literal sense makes sense, then to interpret in any other sense is to create nonsense.”

Grammatical

I believe that in order for the Scriptures to be correctly understood, the interpreter must strive to determine the correct grammatical context in which the text was originally written. For example, poetry must be interpreted as poetry; allegory must be interpreted as allegory; history must be interpreted as history; prophecy must be interpreted as prophecy. Thus when the Master said, “I am the bread of life,” He did not mean to imply that He just came out of the oven, and when He said, “I am the door,” He did not meant to imply that He had a lock and hinges.

Every language has its own idioms, and in order to properly interpret Scripture we must be aware of the language in which the text was originally written and the idioms that were common to that language. We must understand the text in the same way that those to whom it was originally written would have understood it. Thus when we say in English, “I was just pulling your leg,” we must understand that an English-speaking reader would understand it to mean, “I was just kidding.”

Contrary to what most interpreters believe, I believe that the original Apostolic Scriptures (the so-called “New Testament”) were written in the language in which those writers would have been most comfortable, probably Hebrew but possibly Aramaic (less likely), and then either translated or re-written, either by the original writer or by a trusted scribe, from Hebrew (or Aramaic) into Greek for transmission to the Diaspora. I believe (just my opinion,  feel free to disagree) that when Constantine ordered the destruction of all Hebrew scriptures, those original Hebrew versions were destroyed and were therefore lost to us. The Apostolic Scriptures were written by Jews, to Jews, in a Jewish culture, about the Jewish Messiah; in order to be correctly interpreted, they need to be interpreted in their original Hebrew/Jewish sense.

I also believe that when the Torah says that Moshe (Moses) wrote down the Torah as God delivered it to him (Exod. 24:4), it does not mean that twenty or so different individuals over hundreds of years wrote down scraps that were later assembled into the Torah and attributed to Moshe Rabbeinu.[4] The Messiah attributed the Torah to Moshe (Matt. 8:4; Matt. 19:7,8; Mark 1:44, Mark 7:10; Mark 10:3; Mark 12:26; Luke 5:14; Luke 16:29-31; Luke 20:37; Luke 24:27; Luke 24:44; John 3:14; John 5:45-46; John 7:19; John 7:22-23), He did not correct people when they said that Moshe wrote the Torah (Mark 12:19; Luke 20:28), and He confirmed that Moshe wrote about Him (John 5:46).

Historical

Every event occurs within its own historical context. In order to understand the writer’s intent, it is necessary to understand the historical and social context in which the events occurred and in which the text was originally recorded. For example, to think of ancient Babylon in terms of modern-day Iraq would be totally inappropriate. Likewise, to interpret the Apostolic Scriptures outside of their first-century historical Jewish context produces error. We must remember that when the Apostolic Scriptures were written, there was no “Church” as we know it today, and there were no “Christians”; there was only the Temple and the Synagogue, in which Messianic and non-Messianic Jews and Gentiles worshipped the God of Avraham, Yitz'chak, and Ya'akov together. The great question in the minds of many Christians today is, “Is it possible for Jews to be saved?” The question in the mind of the first-century Messianic Jews was, “Is it possible for Gentiles to be saved?”

Somewhat Dispensational

Part of the process of properly interpreting the Scriptures in their historical content is to understand that God did not reveal everything that He wanted man to know about Him all at once. Although Adam and Eve walked with Him in Eden, it is highly unlikely that they would know that He would become the atoning Sacrifice for their sin in Jerusalem 4,000 years later. When He called Avraham out of Ur, even when He had lunch with him by the oaks of Mamre (Genesis 18), Avraham probably had no inkling of the symbolism that would be provided by the Tabernacle hundreds of years later.

The Prophets knew that God would send His promised Messiah, but they were probably very confused about how Messiah ben Yosef, the suffering Messiah, could also be Messiah ben David, the Reigning Messiah. They obviously had some difficuly understanding whether he would be born in Bethlehem, come from Egypt, or be from Nazareth.

For me, the time periods that Dr. Scofield defined as “dispensations” are nothing more than convenient “mile markers” on the road of history to remind us of what God had revealed to man up to that time. This concept is also known as “progressive revelation.”[2] As we study the Scriptures, it is important to realize which time period we are reading about, and understand that the books in the Bible are not in chronological order. For example, the book of Job was probably the first book in the Tanakh to be written. It is believed that Job was a contemporary of Avraham (ca. 2100 BCE) who lived approximately 635 years before God gave the Torah at Sinai and two millennia before Yeshua came.

Job said, “But I know that my Redeemer lives, that in the end he will rise on the dust; so that after my skin has been thus destroyed, then even without my flesh, I will see God. I will see him for myself, my eyes, not someone else's, will behold him” (Job 19:25-27, CJB). Even though Job believed in an eternal God and his own resurrection, we must not make the mistake of assuming that he knew anything about the Torah or the death and resurrection of Messiah Yeshua.

What we find when we study the Scriptures and pay attention to the historical context, we find a progressive revelation, in which God reveals Himself to mankind a little at a time,

“To whom would He teach knowledge,
   And to whom would He interpret the message?
Those [just] weaned from milk?
   Those [just] taken from the breast?
For [He says,] ‘Order on order, order on order,
   Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there.’”

Indeed, He will speak to this people
   Through stammering lips and a foreign tongue,
He who said to them, “Here is rest, give rest to the weary,”
   And, "Here is repose," but they would not listen.

So the word of the LORD to them will be,
   “Order on order, order on order,
Line on line, line on line,
   A little here, a little there,” (Isaiah 28:9-13, NAS)

If we neglect this essential interpretive principle, we forget extremely important facts, like the fact that Avraham, Yitz'chak, and Ya'akov knew nothing about the Torah, or we believe that Jews before [or even after] Calvary were “saved” by obeying the “Law.” We also arrive at very erroneous conclusions like thinking that “Paul and Silas went around planting churches” or that when Jews become completed in their Messiah they become “Christians” and stop being Jews.

By neglecting the historical context of the Apostolic Scriptures, we wind up with such ridiculous assumptions as: “Jesus was a good Christian boy who went to church every Sunday,” and “the Fourth Commandment has been repealed and the Sabbath has moved to ‘The Lord’s Day’ on Sunday.” We fail to realize that the Shliachim (Apostles) who wrote the “New Testament” knew nothing at all of “the Church.”

In fact, “the Church” as we know it did not come into existence in the first century, the second century, or even the third century of the Common Era. In approximately 311 CE (which would be the fourth century), Emperor Constantine created a new Roman state religion by modifying the Roman version of the Babylon Mystery Religion, dressing it up with “Bible words,” and changing the names of the pantheon of “gods” and “goddesses” to the names of prominent first-century Messianic Believers, particularly the Apostles [MORE HERE], and called it “the Church” or “Christianity.” Up until that event, Judaism (which included Messianic Judaism, which was called “the Way,” as a sub-set, or sect of Judaism) was one of the many “authorized” religions of the Roman Empire.

“Wait a minute!" someone is saying. My Bible says, “The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch …” (Acts 11:26, NIV).

That is exactly part of the problem that arises when we ignore the historical context. If we understand that the writers of the Apostolic Scriptures spoke Hebrew, and that the original autographs were penned in their native Hebrew and then later translated (or totally rewritten) into Greek for transmission to the Gentile and Hellenized (Greek-speaking) Jewish believers in the Diaspora, then we can figure out how the word “Christians” wound up in the book of Acts in our English Bibles. The word “Christ” is derived from the Greek word Christos, which means “anointed.” The Hebrew word for “anointed” is Mashiach, or Messiah. So what Luke actually wrote is that “it was in Antioch that the talmidim for the first time were called ‘Messianic’” (which was probably a term of derision). That sentence was then translated literally into Greek, and since before that time there was no concept of (or Greek word for) “Messianic,” the Greek-speaking translators had to “coin” a completely new Greek word that could convey the meaning of the Hebrew word for “Messianic.” To the root word Christos they added the suffix “ianous.” The intended readers would have had no problem at all understanding what Luke meant by the newly-coined Greek term for “Messianic.” Centuries later, the Greek word Χριστιανούς (Christianous) was simply transliterated into English and wound up as “Christians”.

Please note how the Complete Jewish Bible[3] translates this passage: Then Bar-Nabba went off to Tarsus to look for Sha'ul; and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. They met with the congregation there for a whole year and taught a sizeable crowd. Also it was in Antioch that the talmidim for the first time were called ‘Messianic.’” (Acts 11:25-26, CJB)

Of course, the same would apply to the word “Christian” in Acts 26:28 and 1Peter 4:16.

It would be grossly unfair to call this a “translation error,” but for us to think that the first-, second-, and third-century Messianic believers thought of or referred to themselves as “Christians” would be totally anachronistic.

The Bottom Line

I hope that this has helped clarify my use of the term “somewhat dispensational” to describe my historical approach to Biblical interpretation, though now having written this explanation, I wonder if there is not some term that I should use to better state this method, and in time I will probably find that word and use it. My ultimate intention for the use of “somewhat dispensational” was to mean that to arrive at accurate conclusions about the Scriptures, the interpreter needs to remember that God has revealed His will to men in progressives stages, that all of these stages must be considered in their historical context, and that the so-called “dispensations” provide us with convenient names to use to guide us through those periods of history, much as we use chapter and verse designations to guide us through the text.

I hope that this has served to clarify my position.

  1. According to the most popular interpretation of End Times theology, at the end of the thousand years of Messiah’s physical reign on earth, Satan will be loosed from captivity and will lead a final war where he leads the unjust in a final uprising against Messiah. Since all those who enter this period are assumed to be among the “redeemed,” who are the unjust who join Satan in this final conflict? This requires that there will be some born during this period who are not “redeemed.” If there is no “Salvation Gospel” for this “dispensation,” does that mean that everyone who is born during this period is eternally lost? [BACK]

 2. Progressive revelation is the concept that the sections of the Scriptures that were written later contain a fuller revelation of God compared to the earlier sections. [MORE HERE]  [BACK]

 3. The Complete Jewish Bible [at the time of this writing] is the only English version of the Bible fully Jewish in style and presentation that includes both the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible, “Old Testament”) and the Apostolic Writings (B'rit Hadashah, Renewed Covenant, “New Testament”). Even its title, the Complete Jewish Bible, challenges both Jews and Christians to see that the whole Bible is Jewish, the Apostolic Writings as well as the Tanakh. Jews are challenged by the implication that without it the Tanakh is an incomplete telling of their history and faith. Christians are challenged with the fact that they are joined to the Jewish people through faith in the Jewish Messiah, Yeshua (Jesus) — that because Christianity can be rightly understood only from a Jewish perspective, anti-Semitism is condemned absolutely and forever. In short, the Complete Jewish Bible restores the Jewish unity of the Bible. Also for the first time the information needed for the synagogue readings from the Torah and the Prophets is completely integrated with similar use of the Apostolic Writings. You can get more information on this unique Bible version HERE. [BACK]

 4. Clearly those sections that speak of Moshe’s death were added after his death by someone else, probably Joshua. It is also known that long later the text was edited for clarification by others, like Ezra, who updated the vocabulaty, grammar, and some of the place names, because vocabulary, grammar, and place names change over time. However, we can be sure that the vast bulk of the Torah was actually penned by Moshe himself or was dictated by Moshe to trusted scribes. [BACK]

Minor revisions on Tuesday, 18 July 2023