Dispensationalism-Its teachings and origins.

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Dispensationalism, its teachings, and origins.

Dispensationalism teaches that men today live in the New Testament dispensation of Grace, using texts such as Galatians 3:19 and 3:24 to prove that the Ten Commandments were done away with altogether at the cross.

Dispensationalism teaches that there is a distinction between Israel of the Old Testament, and the Church of the New Testament, that the Scriptures must be divided to separate between works of the Law in the Old Testament, and the Grace of God in the New Testament, misapplying the term “rightly dividing the word of truth” as found in 2 Timothy 2:15.

It teaches that Christians are not bound by Mosaic law. It holds to a belief in premillennialism, Christian Zionism, and a rapture of the Church that will happen before the Second Coming of Christ, generally seen as happening before a period of tribulation.

The origin of this theory can be traced to three Jesuit priests;

Dispensationalism
Francisco de Ribera

(1) Francisco Ribera (1537-1591), from Salamanca, Spain. Ribera was a brilliant student who specialized in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He received a doctorate in theology from the University of Salamanca and joined the Jesuit Order in 1570 when he was just 33 years old.

Dispensationalism
Robert Bellarmine

(2) Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) one of the best-known Jesuit apologists, promoted similar theories to Ribera in his published work between 1581 and 1593 entitled Polemic Lectures Concerning the Disputed Points of the Christian Belief Against the Heretics of This Time,

Dispensationalism
Manuel Lacunza

(3) Manuel Lacunza (1731–1801). David Pio Gullon has comprehensively studied Lacunza’s eschatology as found in his monumental work, La Venida del Mesias en Gloria y Magestad (The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty).

Contemporary Protestant expositors of Bible prophecy have borrowed extensively from Lacunza. It is a sobering fact that many of the views on prophecy that are presently being taught by conservative Protestants have been borrowed from a Roman Catholic Jesuit priest!! Lacunza, however, departed from the run-of-the-mill futurists of his day by saying that:

• The coming of Christ will precede the millennium (Ribera and others were Amillennialists)

• The final Antichrist will not be a single individual but an apostate system that will arise at the end of the age.

To make a long story short, Lacunza’s work found its way to England around the same time as Burgh, Todd, Maitland, and Newman were expounding their futuristic views. And in a rather strange and unexpected twist of historical providence, his work was translated into English by Edward Irving. Irving’s translation of Lacunza’s work was first published in 1833, the very year the Oxford Tractarian movement got underway.

The writings of Ribera and Bellarmine, which contain the precedence upon which the theory of Dispensationalism is founded, were originally written to counteract the Protestant reformers’ interpretation of the Book of the Revelation, which, according to the reformers, exposed the Pope as Antichrist and the Roman Catholic Church as the whore of Babylon.

Dispensationalism was systematized and promoted by John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren in the mid-19th century.

It began its spread in the United States during the late 19th century through evangelists such as James Inglis, James Hall Brookes, Dwight L. Moody, the efforts of the Niagara Bible Conference, and the establishment of Bible Institutes. With the dawn of the 20th century, C. I. Scofield introduced the Scofield Reference Bible, which solidified dispensationalism in the United States.

Dispensationalism has become popular in Protestant evangelism, commonly found in nondenominational Bible churches such as the Baptist, Pentecostal, and Charismatic groups.

Dispensationalists believe that there are two time dispensations, the Old Testament period of salvation by works, and the New Testament period of salvation by Grace.

But the covenant and promises to Abraham are the covenant and promises to us today.

The covenant made with Abraham is the same covenant that we call the New Covenant today, they are the same.

If we look at Galatians chapter 4 which speaks on the allegory of Sarah and Hagar, we find that the old covenant, symbolized by Hagar, is a condition of salvation by works, which was not limited to an Old Testament dispensation. For the same reason the new covenant, symbolized by Sarah, represents salvation by faith in Christ alone, and was just as accessible in Old Testament times as it is today.

We must be clear that there are not two dispensations (saved by works in the Old Testament and saved by faith in the New Testament), but that salvation has always been by faith in Christ. The issue is not a time period, but the condition of the heart.

Note the statement that the apostle makes when speaking of the two women, Hagar and Sarah: “These are the two covenants.” It is said very clearly here that the two covenants existed in every essential particular in the days of Abraham.

Even so, they do today; for the Scripture says now as well as then, “Cast out the bondwoman and her son.” We see then that the two covenants are not matters of time but of condition.

Let no one flatter himself that he can not be under the old covenant because the time for that is passed.

The time for that is passed only in the sense that “the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries.” 1Pet.4:3.

There is more information on this subject to be found in the article posted on this site called “Dispensationalism, what is it, and what does it teach?”

Stay tuned also for additional light on the subject of the two covenants.

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