Ephesians 2
The Mystery of the Gospel Revealed
1For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles—
2assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you,
3how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly.
4When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ,
5which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.
6This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
11This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord,
12in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.
13So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.
~
Darby is noted in the theological world as the father of "
dispensationalism", later made popular in the United States by
Cyrus Scofield's
Scofield Reference Bible. However, Darby held a view that would today be called
hyperdispensationalist; for rather than identifying
Pentecost as the start of the church age, Darby writes
[12]:
"
Stephen formed the link between Jewish rejection and the position and state of the church which followed...Stephen was the closing of the Jewish ‘possibility of the dispensation.' But a new scene now opens—the regular Gentile form and order of the dispensation in the hands of the
apostle Paul, the apostle of the uncircumcision, the apostle of the Gentiles. Did he then derive it from the apostles? or was he indeed a successor to our Lord by earthly appointment and derivation? No; in no wise."
[13]
, 1820–1896, with his popular style spread Darby's teachings to humbler elements in society and may be regarded as the journalist of the Brethren Movement. Mackintosh popularised Darby, although not his hyperdispensational approach,
[14] more than any other Brethren author. In the early twentieth century, the Brethren's teachings, through
Margaret E. Barber, influenced the
Little Flock of
Watchman Nee and
Witness Lee[15]
As there was no Christian teaching of a “rapture” before Darby began preaching about it in the 1830s, he is sometimes credited with originating the "secret
rapture" theory wherein Christ will suddenly remove His bride, the Church, from this world before the judgments of the tribulation. Some claim that this book was the origin of the idea of the "rapture." Dispensationalist beliefs about the fate of the Jews and the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel put dispensationalists at the forefront of
Christian Zionism, because "God is able to graft them in again," and they believe that in His grace he will do so according to their understanding of Old Testament prophecy. They believe that, while the ways of God may change, His purposes to bless Israel will never be forgotten, just as He has shown unmerited favour to the Church, He will do so to a remnant of Israel to fulfill all the promises made to the genetic seed of Abraham.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nelson_Darby
~
Evidently, instead of reading a written work like its original author intended (“exegesis”), the impact of this philosophy probably led many Christians to
force ideas out of and into the Bible (“eisegesis”).
There
had to have been precisely 5000 men who ate the bread of Jesus in
John 6, not 5001 or 4999. Why? Because a true interpretation of the Bible must be a wooden, literalistic one – one that meets up to our modern standards of precision, not to the author’s own intention. Alas, Scottish Common Sense Philosophy largely assisted in the birth of Dispensationalism and its literalistic method.
[6]
One particular example of this literalism at work is when Dispensationalists require that the word “Israel” must always mean the literal nation of Israel anytime it is mentioned in the New Testament.
[7] Context, purpose, authorship, genre, and everything else related to exegesis are secondary (if not irrelevant). So, in
Galatians 6:16, where Paul uses the expression “Israel of God” to refer to both the Jewish and Gentile Galatians, dispensationalists are forced to say Paul is only referring to the national kingdom of Israel. But that’s just not true. As Cambridge scholar G.K. Beale remarked,
Since the dominant message is one of doing away with national distinctions among God’s people (3,7-8.26-29; 4,26-31; 5,2-12), it would seem unlikely that Paul would conclude the epistle by referring to those in the church according to their ethnic distinctives. This idea is especially unlikely since 6,11-18, as the conclusion of the epistle, is intended by Paul to summarize its major themes.
[8]
Therefore, to say “the Israel of God” refers only to the physical, “literal,” nation of the Jews in
Galatians 6:16, is just bad hermeneutics.
What is the Church?
Not only did Darby believe the church was ruined, but he also believed the church didn’t exist in the Old Testament. He said, “A Jewish church is an unscriptural fallacy,” and “the body of the church could not exist before the glorification of Jesus, for this would have been a body without a Head.”
[9]
Covenant theology, on the other hand, recognizes the overall continuity of God’s work in history; the New and Old Testaments may be different, but they are not alien to each other. If the church is a group of people that believe in God and God’s promises,
[10] then the church, at least in a very general sense, begins with Abraham. The church isn’t a radical new idea. It has historical and theological roots (just like the other aspects of a covenant, such as a meal of celebration, a seal of blood, a visible sign, etc.). That’s partly why so many New Testament authors like Paul and James refer back to Abraham’s faith as an example for today’s Christians.
As Robert Reymond says,
The Old Testament did testify concerning the future blessings which the Gentiles would share with the Jews (see
Gen. 9:26-27; 12:3 [see
Gal. 3:8]; 22:18; 26:4; 28;14;
Pss. 67; 72:8-11, 17; 87;
Isa. 11:10; 49:6; 54:1-3 [see
Gal. 4:27]…). What was not so clearly revealed in the Old Testament times was that the Gentiles would be on “a footing of perfect equality” (Hendriksen) with the Jews in Christ’s body, the church…Paul’s statements do not teach the radical conclusions which dispensationalists wish to draw from them, namely, that the Old Testament saints did not know that the Messiah would be rejected and suffer or that a distinction must be drawn between Old Testament Israel “under law” and the New Testament church “under grace,”
and that these people are two people of God who are “not to be intermingled or confused, as they are chronologically successive.”
[11]
Thus, what
is somewhat new is that God’s people in the New Covenant are made up of Jews
and Gentiles. In older covenants, God’s “chosen people” were normally comprised exclusively of Jews.
[12] But, in the new covenant, Gentiles are “grafted in” to the existing branch of the Jewish root (
Romans 11). This is the “mystery” Paul talks about in
Ephesians 3:
For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles – assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.
This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. (
Eph 3:1-6, ESV, emphasis mine)
Dispensationalists believe that this text says that the church was never mentioned or prophesied about in the Old Testament. However, that’s not what the text is saying. Paul says the mystery is that “Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of
the same body,” (emphasis mine). The Gentiles are added to the faithful remnant of Old Testament Israel (
Rom. 11). Today’s Christians are added to the existing group of God’s people.
That’s the mystery, nothing more, nothing less. It has nothing to do with Old Testament prophecies regarding the New Testament church or the inauguration of a new Dispensation of Grace.
http://www.realapologetics.org/blog/2010/06/14/darbys-method-of-biblical-intepretation/
, the impact of this philosophy probably led many Christians to force ideas out of and into the Bible (“eisegesis”