2. Dispensationalism and the Church
In its doctrine of the Church, Dispensationalism holds that the Jewish rejection of the kingdom caused Jesus to postpone the kingdom until the Second Advent, and to establish the church as an interlude between the two advents. They hold that the church is in no sense a fulfillment of the Old Testament but something entirely new and revealed for the first time to the Apostle Paul and that the Church Age will come to an end in the Rapture which it is alleged, is the first stage of the Second Advent.
Following the Rapture, Christ and His people are to be in the air for a period of seven years (the seventieth week, according to Dispensationalism, of Daniel’s prophecy). At the end of the seven years there occurs the Revelation, which is the public visible return of Christ and His people to the earth.
The key text on which this view of the church is based is Ephesians 3:3-7. As to the "mystery" mentioned by Paul in these verses, it is the mystery which was not revealed as it is now to the apostles, that the Gentiles were to be partakers of the same spiritual blessings as the converted Jews. The "mystery" that Paul speaks of was not completely unknown in Old Testament times, but was not so well known as it is now.
It was not unknown to Abraham for the promise given to him was that "in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." The Lord revealed that Christ was to be given as a light to the Gentiles and His salvation to the ends of the earth. The emphasis in the passage in Ephesians must be laid on the word as. The mystery was not formerly revealed as, that is not so fully or so clearly as under the Gospel. Stephen before his martyrdom spoke of Christ as being with "the church in the wilderness." (Acts 7:38). The Lord had a church in the world since He revealed Himself in His mercy and grace after the Fall.
In regard to the meaning of the Greek word ekklesia translated ‘church’ it is well to keep in mind that in the Septuagint, which was a Greek translation of the Old Testament and which was in common use in Palestine in Jesus’ day, the word ekklesia is used about 70 times to render the Hebrew word qahal, assembly or congregation. This translation was made in Alexandria, Egypt, about 150 B.C., by a group of 70 scholars, whence it received its name.
Consequently the Jewish people would have connected the New Testament Church with the assembly or congregation of Israel as it had existed in Old Testament times - - - - The glory of the Church under the New Testament dispensation is far greater than it was under the old. But regardless of the differences the church in the new dispensation is the continuation of that in the old, so that we who are Gentiles are, as Paul tells us, "no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit." (Eph. 2:19-22)" (The Millennium by L. Boettner).
"Another serious defect in dispensational teaching is its doctrine that many portions of the Bible are not meant for the Church age at all, that is, not for Christians, but that they are intended for a future Jewish-led kingdom. This follows from their belief that most of Christ’s ministry was taken up with preaching designed to prepare Israel for the Kingdom, but that when it became evident that the Jews would not accept the Kingdom the Church was substituted. This means that the Lord’s prayer, the Sermon on the Mount, the Kingdom parables, the Great Tribulation, the Book of Revelation chapters 4 to 19, and some say, most of the New Testament except the Pauline Epistles, are "Jewish" and "legal" and therefore do not concern the Church.
We point out, however, that Paul certainly did not make this distinction between the gospel of Grace and the gospel of the Kingdom of God. Rather, he identified the two, for late in his ministry he said to the elders from Ephesus: "Neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God. And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more." (Acts 20:24, 25) (The Millennium pp. 244-245 by L. Boettner).
Dr. H. A. Ironside, a dispensationalist and an ardent disciple of Scofield, acknowledges that the dispensational doctrine of the Church is of comparatively recent origin and that it was brought to the fore through the writings of Mr. J. N. Darby, the leader of the ‘Plymouth Brethren,’ who died in 1882.
When George Muller of Bristol came up against the Dispensationalist doctrines of the Brethren movement, he severed all connection with it. "The time came," he said, when I had either to part from my Bible or part from John Darby. I chose to keep my precious Bible and part from John Darby."
Dispensationalists lay special claim to "rightly dividing the word of truth." The above is instead a confounding of it, a darkening of it by a new-fangled exegesis which is alien to it.
