Reviving Dispensationalism
August 27, 2024
Host: Jamie Mitchell
Guest: Professor Cory Marsh
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 8/27/24. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Jamie Mitchell: Welcome today. I hope you’re ready to be stretched here at Stand In the Gap Today. I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell, director of church culture at the American Pastors Network. I can just about guarantee that today’s subject will be so unique, so challenging, and unlike what you normally hear on Christian Radio. The reason I can say that with such confidence through most of evangelical Christianity, it has been a slouching away from theological discussions, not some useless ivory tower angel on the head of a pin conversation, but fundamental truths and historical understanding on what we believe and why we believe it. Today, we want to take back some lost ground on theological understanding and consider what for a century was an important system of thought among Christians, but in the last 20 years has been pushed aside, demonized and mischaracterized. In doing so, I believe we have missed out on essentials of faith and have made the church a lot more vulnerable to false teaching.
Jamie Mitchell: I’m talking about the subject dispensationalism. Dispensationalist use the literal interpretation of the Bible and believe that divine revelation and God dealings with mankind unfolds through the Bible and it must be understood to understand the whole of God’s redemptive history. Dispensationalism by definition is an analytical system for interpreting the Bible that focuses on its attention on issues regarding the biblical covenants, Israel, the Church, and the end of days. Many have criticized this perspective of biblical hermeneutics causing many to abandon it and even today hearing the subject, you’re probably tempted to turn the dial, but don’t do it because today we want to discuss why dispensationalism needs to be rediscovered and why it’s important for genuine Bible believing Christians worldwide and to help me, a good friend Corey Marsh, professor of New Testament at Southern California Seminary and author of Discovering Dispensationalism tracing the Development of Dispensational Thought from the first to the 21st century. Welcome back my brother to Stand in the Gap.
Cory Marsh: Well, thank you so much, Jamie. I’m glad to be back from my three-peak appearances, right. I’m very honored by this.
Jamie Mitchell: Well, we don’t give away like a Sunday school perfect attendance pins, but I guess it is a badge of courage to come on this program and let me drill you with questions, especially with today’s topic of dispensationalism. I have to be honest, Corey, I’m not sure I have heard a radio program even utter that word in well decades, but I think today is going to be a great help to people. You heard my opening dispensationalism was one of the most well accepted and well respected theological schools of thought at one time. There were schools that were thoroughly dedicated to dispensationalism Bible conferences, authors that devoted much of what they wrote about the subject. Yet it has faded from the landscape. Can you give us a brief history of the movement and why has dispensationalism fallen on hard times?
Cory Marsh: Yeah, I’d love to, Jamie, when you ask why it’s fallen on hard times, I’m not too sure how accurate that is. I guess it depends on the sphere that we’re talking about because I would agree in academia it probably has fallen on hard times, but if you talk to some who are non dispensationalist and ask them about the general evangelical church culture, at least in America, they just by default think all churches just about are dispensational. So it depends on perhaps the sphere, the arena that we’re talking about, whether it’s on a church level or academic level where dispensationalism is on that. But to answer your question about a brief history, there’s some things too. There’s some important things to grasp here. One is we’re talking about a system. The ism of dispensationalism is relatively recent. Just like any theological system, we can trace it back to say perhaps the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.
Cory Marsh: Out of that Protestant reformation, you’re going to get both major movements, whether it’s covenant theology in time or dispensation theology in time. Both are thoroughly evangelical systems and can trace their lineage back to the Protestant reformation. But the systemizing of the theology probably did not occur until about the 19th century, whether in Britain or in the United States. That is debated. But here’s the important thing Jamie, and I hope that your listeners are able to understand this, is that the ideas that make up what we call dispensationalism have been throughout church history, going all the way back to the New Testament, into the Patristic era, into the medieval era, all the way to the Reformation era and into this modern era where now there is nothing within dispensationalism that is so unique or novel as is often characterized kind of almost cultic or something that was just invented just few years ago.
Cory Marsh: That’s not the case at all. Come to find out, as we did in our book Discovering Dispensationalism, the subtitle says it all, we trace dispensational thought. When we say dispensational thought, we’re talking about dispensational ideas, things that would later, elements that would later be codified under the system of dispensationalism. We trace the ideas of dispensational dispensationalism all the way back to the first century, and these are certainly elements that were there all along. For example, in what we call the ancient Mediterranean era, from the time of the New Testament all the way to the fifth century, you have not only just the New Testament itself, and we can talk about this a little bit later of the word dispensation and how it’s used, but going into the earliest centuries of church history, what we call a Patristic era. You have scholars, you have people, you have theologians that understand reading scripture, especially the Book of Revelation literally.
Cory Marsh: And there was a dominant, what was called schism, which is now called pre millennialism. The era was characterized by a distinct expectation of a literal thousand year reign of Christ on earth, which we’ll talk about later in the show. But this idea was there very early as well as different views on the rapture Iraneus in particular in the second century held to probably what would be called a partial pre-trib rapture theory today. But the ideas were there all along as well as dividing up biblical history into successive eras. Generally seven successive thousand year eras that reflect the creation week. Now, these aren’t so neatly packaged today as dispensationalism, but you can see the germinal form of these have always been there and developed even into the ene era where you have a literal hermeneutics. They’re being applied, as I mentioned, an imminent or any moment return of Christ. There was also an anticipation of a bodily appearance of a future antichrist in this ene era going all the way up to the year 400, followed by a literal messianic kingdom on earth. These were common ideas at the time.
Jamie Mitchell: This is important, Corey, because the criticism is this is a new system and it’s nothing new. It’s all the way back in the agent of days. When we come back, Corey’s going to define it more for us. We’re learning about dispensationalism sensationalism. Don’t miss our next segment here at Stand in the Gala. Well, welcome back. We’re here today with Dr. Corey Marsh and we’re examining dispensationalism Now, if that word or idea is foreign to you, I’m sad and you need to lean into today’s program, but as we stated, dispensationalism is a system or a school of theological thought that approaches the Bible and history in a certain way so that we could properly interpret God’s word in God’s ways. Corey we’re talking in the first segment about the history and took back the whole idea that dispensationalism is not something new, though some of its critics would say that, but dispensational thought goes all the way back. I guess for understanding, especially for the layman who’s listening. Can you define dispensationalism?
Cory Marsh: Sure. You know what? I will start with what dispensationalism is not because as a New Testament professor and I teach dispensational classes generally I hear these errors, these mischaracterizations from students that come into the classroom that want some clarification. One is dispensationalism is not a hermeneutic in itself, meaning we do not impose the system onto the Bible. Dispensationalism is also not a system that was invented by one man or even so recently as I was just talking about in the last segment. And you know what Jamie, the most important thing to get is dispensationalism is not a specific system of salvation, meaning we do not teach. Dispensationalism has never taught that there are multiple ways of salvation, which is a common mischaracterization, I don’t know, a single dispensationalist who actually believes that we can be saved in different ways. That is a misunderstanding of what dispensations are.
Cory Marsh: Dispensations are never about salvation. Dispensations are about how the believer lives under God’s world and his economy throughout world history. But simply put, if I had to give a very simple definition of dispensationalism, I would say this, it is a theological system, perhaps a theological framework that results from a certain hermeneutic or interpretation. And that interpretation is a consistently applied grammatical historical hermeneutic, or we oftentimes call literal hermeneutic. And when you tease that out from genesis to revelation, you come to certain distinctions that the Bible itself makes. For example, dispensationalism makes a distinction between the church and national Israel because the Bible makes that distinction. Another distinction dispensationalism is known for is that we make a distinction between the church and the kingdom of God, which is still future to come. And when you apply that hermeneutic for the whole Bible, you see this incredible theme just emerging down all things.
Cory Marsh: The entire purpose of all of history is to the glory of God, that God is sovereignly ruling on his throne over all eras of world history and all things are to his glory. Several years ago, Charles Ryrie a very well-known dispensational theologian who’s since passed. He came up with what he called the squon or the essentials of what makes up the dispensational system, and I just pretty much said them right there. Some people take issues with it because it’s kind of reductionistic, but his point was, without these three points, you cannot have dispensationalism. And that is a consistently applied literal hermeneutic, which leads to a distinction between church and Israel, which emerges into all things the purpose of history to the glorification of God. Dispensationalism is a biblical theology because it’s inductive. Even the very word dispensation is a New Testament word. It’s oia in the Greek used nine times in the New Testament, 14 times if we include as derivative oromos, which gets translated as administration or management or how flaw or stewardship it is an actual biblical word used throughout the New Testament.
Cory Marsh: Dispensationalism is also historical. It holds to the historical context of scripture and its Dia chronic in its history, seeing history going somewhere. It is moving throughout the biblical storyline as opposed to being a historical. It is very historical and it’s also descriptive contrary to systems that are prescriptive according to their denomination or tradition. So if I had to James give a technical definition that incorporates these ideas, I would say this dispensationalism is a biblical theology that offers a view of world history which glorifies God through his dealings with creation by way of divinely governed economies advanced throughout scripture. It’s a distinct pattern of beliefs in theology that are the result of its approach to Bible study and of course that approach being a consistently applied grammatical, historical hermeneutic. And finally, I would say this, Jamie, because dispensationalism is consistent in its commitment to sola scriptura, it is a self-correcting system, meaning it’s never locked into any one particular thinker or institution.
Cory Marsh: It seeks to reform itself according to its interpretation of scripture and not according to a leader or a denomination since it was never founded by a single thinker or even a disciple of a single thinker. Contrary to evangelical systems like Lutheranism attached to Martin Luther or Calvinism attached to John Calvin, John Calvin or Wesleyan, a Methodism attached to John Wesley dispensationalism is trans denominational. It is always included those people within its ranks as well as non-denominational people. And as such, dispensational theology is able to correct itself and develop accordingly to its understanding of scripture alone and in harmony with that reformation principle. Sepa Rapo always reforming.
Jamie Mitchell: God never changes. He is consistent, he never changes, but his interaction with mankind over the centuries and over the, as we would say within dispensationalism, the different errors, explain that how as we look at those different errors throughout dispensationalism, there was a changing how God related to mankind. Is that a simple way to express that?
Cory Marsh: Absolutely. In fact, that Greek word oria, which the King James and other older translations translate dispensation is where we get our English word economy or even administration. Now, if you think of the presidential administration we’re under right now, the Biden administration, which is transitioning to another presidential administration, the rules that are governing the United States change. Now a lot of them stay the same, but there’s a new administration in place that is sort of essentially what a dispensation is. So God throughout various dispensations or economies or administrations changed the way he interacted with mankind. This was not a way for now different ways of salvation. As I mentioned earlier, they never were about how one point a believer was saved by works of the law and now they’re saved by grace. That is not the case. All dispensation was believed. Everybody who was saved is saved by grace through faith, and we can trace that back to Genesis 15, six with Abraham who believed God and it was credited him as righteousness.
Cory Marsh: But to your point to what you said, Jamie, you’re spot on. How God reacts to or interacts with people is different throughout the dispensations and you can see that plainly in the garden just with a vegan or vegetation diet, they were not allowed to eat certain foods, and then after the flood you now are able to eat certain foods. Then a law of wandering people. After Abraham, God starts dealing with one man and out of him comes an entire nation and then they’re wandering people until they’re given a charter or a law which turned them into a nation of people. Now they have laws that they’re to obey and express their faith, not to be saved by them, but to express their faith in young ways. Through them all the way going up to the way that God interacts with people. Now through after the New Testament, after the resurrection of Christ and the coming of the church or the birth of the church on the day of Pentecost, we a now express that same faith in Yahweh, but now through his son who has been revealed to us through all of these eras, even the millennial kingdom to come, anybody who was saved is saved by grace through faith in God himself.
Cory Marsh: But the way that God interacts with people throughout history has changed throughout the different dispensations.
Jamie Mitchell: I have about two minutes. Part of this discussion of dispensationalism is to understand the difference with covenant theologians and covenant theology. Can you take just a brief moment and just describe what are the two differences?
Cory Marsh: Yeah, I don’t know if I can do that in two minutes. I will try, but I would say their starting points are different. Everything begins with hermeneutics. Dispensationalism is inductive. It starts with the data of the text and branches up to the conclusions. Covenant theology is deductive. It starts with theoretical or theological covenants that are not in the Bible that can perhaps be inferred from scripture, but they’re not explicitly identifying scripture, even one covenant going in eternity past among the Godhead, these covenants, these supposed covenants are theological that they called covenant of redemption, covenant of works, and covenant of grace. All of history is subsumed under these covenants for the main purpose of the redemption of the elect in Christ. Dispensationalism is actually the system that emphasizes the biblical covenants, the factual covenants showing how time is just progressing and God is revealing more and more himself through each economy or each dispensation was everything leading to that future kingdom of God on earth. There’s probably going to be some who are covenantal hearing this going, wow, that is just way too simplistic. I understand, but in two minutes I would say that Jamie, everything boils down to the approach to scripture. Dispensationalism is inductive and the order goes Bible, then theology, covenant theology is deductive and their order goes theology. Then Bible, at least as I understand it,
Jamie Mitchell: Corey, that was amazing because that is so spot on and very easy to grapple. As dispensationalist, we do not reject the covenants. We embrace them, we understand them, we see them as history unfolding and God making these covenants with man, very, very important as my old professor Renny showers used to say, there really is a difference and we need to understand those very important differences. Friends, what we believe, and more specifically how we handle the scriptures, interpret the Bible is crucial to where we land, where we start and where we get to when we come back, how dispensationalism affects your doctrinal statement, your theological statement, what you believe, maybe even the church that you’re attending and what they believe. Come back and join us in just a few more minutes as we continue this great discussion here on Stand of the Gap. Well, thank you for hanging with us for this hour and listening in on an unusual conversation about dispensationalism with Dr. Cory Marsh. Corey, I want to make an application of why dispensationalism is so important for our faith and what we believe and what our churches believe as a dispensationalist. We have some very specific conclusions about biblical truth and I want you to share what some of these specific beliefs are. Here’s the first one and I think is very vital, especially in light of today’s news and what’s happening in the world. What do we believe regarding Israel and the church and the whole idea of the kingdom of God? Is there a difference?
Cory Marsh: Well, yeah, Jamie, as I mentioned, dispensational theology maintains a distinction between Israel church and the kingdom because these three are major themes in the Bible. They’re also major themes in dispensationalism because dispensationalism is a biblical theology, as I mentioned last segment. The overwhelming testimony in the Bible is that national Israel belongs to God. Israel is called the apple of God’s eye. Deuteronomy 32 10, they are called my people and God is their God. At Exodus six, seven, God himself promised that both the offspring of Israel and his individual Jews as well as the nation corporately will always be his, and that’s in Jeremiah 31 35 on the heels of the new covenant passage, and yet the church is also his. The church is the only institution that Jesus himself promised to build. That’s in Matthew 16. So whereas Israel is a covenanted nation of ethnic Jewish people, Christ is the head of the church comprised of both Jew and Gentile believer in Christ.
Cory Marsh: Colossians one is very clear on that. The Bible says that the church, not Israel, displays the quote manifold wisdom of God in Ephesians three 11, and Paul identifies Christians as one body. He likes to use the term in Christ and say in Romans 12, five and others, and the church is a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works, as he says in Titus two 14, Peter also explicitly calls the church God’s people or layoffs Theo in one Peter two 10, and when Peter borrows terms from the Old Testament to describe the church in the New Testament such as a holy nation or kingdom of priests, he does not intend to conflate the two peoples of God. Rather it’s because he pictures the church and Israel’s both being peoples, multiple peoples of God, but the distinctions of God’s people don’t end with that just between Israel and the church.
Cory Marsh: For example, how do we classify believers before the calling of Abraham and the Jewish nation like Adam, Enoch, Noah and so on? They believed in God and they lived during dispensations before the existence of both Israel and the church. Similarly, how do you classify Gentile believers in God who get saved during the tribulation period after Christ appears to receive the church to himself and the rapture? How about those who are born during the millennial kingdom and become believers? They aren’t the church or Israel. So for these reasons, dispensationalism prefers to use the designations Old Testament saints for those people before the calling of Abraham and tribulation saints for those who get saved during the tribulation because the church is no longer here and even Kingdom Saints to the classify those people of God who don’t neatly fit into either one of those categories, Israel, the church, but while Israel and the church are major biblical themes, perhaps the most major is the kingdom of God.
Cory Marsh: World history is according to dispensationalism, at least leading to that kingdom of God on earth where Jesus will reign physically from the throne of David in Jerusalem and will rule with his saints over multi-ethnic nations in accordance with prophecy. This means world history is not conflated with the eternal state as another evangelical traditions. As creation began temporally in the garden of Eden, it’ll come to a definitive end as we experience it being capped by that millennial kingdom of Christ’s earthly reign with the saints. Matthew 19 28, 2 Timothy two 12 and Revelation 20, verse four to six, I think Michael block is helpful in his book, he will reign a biblical theology of the kingdom of God. He says that when Jesus has completed this reign from his glorious throne, he will then hand his kingdom over to God the Father, and then the eternal state will commence. The point of this, Jamie, is that scripture portrays the idea of the people of God in ways far more sophisticated than say covenant. Covenant theology and other systems allow contrary to covenant theology, for example, that subsumes all believers of all times into a singular entity or understands the Christian Church as superseding or replacing ethnic god’s people, dispensational theology, views both Israel and the Christian Church as well as believers living before Israel and after the church as people’s plural of God.
Jamie Mitchell: This is important, Corey, because of our next subject, and that is future things and the end times and prophecy because both the church and Israel, and as you’ve already mentioned, the kingdom of God have specific outcomes, specific things that will take place, explain how Dispensationalist looks at the end times and future things.
Cory Marsh: For starters, let’s just consider the genre prophecy. Prophecy is a biblical genre, so much so we even have a whole section we call the prophets in the Old Testament, but there’s prophecy in the New Testament as well. Prophecy is the understood, literally it is futuristic. When we’re thinking of prophecy, there’s different ways the word is used. Sometimes it’s used as in say, just teaching or preaching, but more times than not in the New Testament and elsewhere in the Old Testament, anything prophetic is future predictions and this to be understood literally, which makes it distinct from the very popular genre that often scholars will call apocalyptic, apocalyptic, cannot be divorced from say, an allegorical interpretation or a highly spiritualized interpretation looking for multiple meanings. Prophecy has one intended single meaning. Roy Beam has an excellent chapter in their book discovering, or excuse me, dispensationalism Revisited where he says it’s crucial.
Cory Marsh: All those passages were in the Old Testament where God says this will happen, and then you will know I am the Lord depend on a literal fulfillment of the future. So a prophecy timeline if I had to boil it down, Jamie, for you from a dispensational perspective, the next thing on the clock is the imminent appearing of Christ for his church, what we call the rapture promise in John 14 verses one to three, one Thessalonians four 17 and elsewhere, we are waiting for the son of God to be revealed from heaven is 1 1 8 says There are no signs proceeding that Jesus comes back to return for his church to receive to himself. It is a going up with Christ into heaven, which is not the final destination, but it is a temporary holding place, but is one of bliss. So the rapture happens first. That’s the next on the prophetic calendar, followed by the tribulation period, that awful seven year period where Antichrist will or the man of lawlessness, he’s referred to as in Paul’s language or the beast of Revelation 13, that’s going to emerge and play off being the Messiah himself and is going to dupe just about everybody who’s left behind, but there is still salvation by God’s grace.
Cory Marsh: During that period, people will come to the Lord during the tribulation period, but the church is no longer here. It is in heaven with Christ. Then after that seven year period comes the return of Christ, and that’s from a futuristic perspective. Sequentially Revelation 19, Jesus returns with the armies of heaven with us following him on horses, and that is when he establishes his millennial kingdom, which is Revelation 20, the very next chapter sequentially to establish that kingdom of God on earth that lasts for a thousand years. Following that is that wonderful thing that we call the eternal state. Not much given to us on that. It’s Revelation 21 and 22, but the Bible does close by picturing that final destination of believers, the new Jerusalem filled with distinct multiple peoples of God. In fact, revelation 21, verse three says, behold the dwelling place of God is with man.
Cory Marsh: He will dwell with them and they will be His people’s plural, ou and God himself will be with them as their God. So throughout eternity, distinctions are kept. As Israel is inscribed on the 12 gates and the churches on the 12th foundations forever, nations coming to bring their gifts to the king. It’s going to be a wonderful, wonderful, blissful, unimaginable period if we can even call it a period, because history is capped off as we know it in that thousand year millennial kingdom. So that’s in a nutshell, Jamie. The next thing is rapture, tribulation, return of Christ, millennial kingdom, and then the eternal state
Jamie Mitchell: And all of this, Corey, along with our understanding of how the law worked in the Old Testament, how grace is at work now, that we don’t reject the law. All of this, we have the theological understanding when we have the right, as you use the word framework, a dispensational framework, that really what helps us develop these roadmaps through the Bible, isn’t it?
Cory Marsh: And even the law, does it bear on the Christian life, not in the sense that it did for Old Testament Israel, but Paul says in Romans 1514 that these things were written for our instruction. We come to know God through reading things that may not directly apply to us, such as the log to Israel, but we come to know things like creation and the entrance of sin and even redemption starting in Genesis three on all of these happened within different dispensations for our to grow in our biblical literacy, to grow closer to God. So the law is important for the Christian, but not in the sense that say the reforms think it is where we’re still under the law. Paul makes it very clear in Romans 6, 4 14, we’re no longer under law, but under grace.
Jamie Mitchell: Amen. Amen. You see, friends, the way you start approaching God’s word leads you to some very specific conclusions. That is the power, that is the importance of understanding dispensationalism. In the final segment, I want Corey to address why Dispensationalism has been criticized and why some rejected today. Join back here in just a few moments as we conclude today’s Stan in the get Well, it’s been a joy to have Dr. Corey Marsh with us again. We had him on once talking about biblical literacy, another time about heaven and hell, Corey, what a blessing you are. But before we finish up, can you just take a moment and tell people how to find out about you, your ministry, Southern California Seminary, the wonderful resources you have, how can they tap into that?
Cory Marsh: Sure. First of all, thank you, Jamie. I do want to say thank you for having me back on Stand in the Gap radio. I appreciate your ministry and what’s going on under the American Pastor’s Network. So there’s a privilege for me to be back on here with you. Your listeners can find me and probably in two major places, or the easiest one is where I teach at Southern California Seminary, which is in East County San Diego. The town’s called El Cajon can find me online there. I’m the professor of New Testament. I also direct our THM program, and I’m currently serving as the president of our regional ETS Evangelical Theological Society chapter. But my emails and the way to get ahold of me is they’re on the website at socalem at a Southern California seminary@socalem.edu, as well as at my local church, I have the privilege to serve as scholar and residence at Revolve Bible Church in San Juan Capistrano. Your listeners can find me there too. We’re an expository biblical preaching church members of the IFCA and God is doing some wonderful ministry with us right now at that place. So your listeners can find me there at either SCS at Southern California Seminary or revolved Bible Church.
Jamie Mitchell: Well, here’s a final question or maybe a final thought that I think is important and a fair one in regards to dispensationalism Corey, and that is why has there been, and why are many Bible teachers, theologian, pastors critical of dispensationalism, what would they say if you started to talk to them about dispensationalism and they either didn’t like the idea or they were negative about it? What is their criticism?
Cory Marsh: Yeah, correct. Actually, you just described the majority of my world. I interact a lot with academics and different scholarly societies that I’m in. Oftentimes, I’m sort of the loan dispensationalist presenting a paper or publishing an article or something like that in a journal. But I’ll tell you this, Jamie, there are most, I would say, I don’t have the metrics to prove it, but I want to say 99%, but let’s just say 90% of the critiques against dispensationalism are based on mischaracterizations misunderstandings of what we believe there has been. And this goes ties back to your first question that I didn’t have time to get to about why has it fallen on hard times? And I said, it depends on which arena we’re thinking of the church or the academy. In the academy, it sort of has been overshadowed. That is dispensation has been overshadowed by the popular level ideas of dispensationalism because dispensationalism is built on a literal hermeneutic, meaning everybody can read the scriptures whether you’re five or 105.
Cory Marsh: And when you do that, you get to these ideas saying revelation of all the incredible bizarre scenes and visions and beasts and stuff like that. And it makes for really good popular movies and popular level books and video games and things like that. It just lends itself naturally to a literal reading of scripture of what these things may be. So unfortunately, I would say there have been far too many lay level untrained unex ideas of what dispensationalism actually holds to because of these popular level forums. And so on the academic side, it’s sort of looked at as a relic almost made fun of at times. But when you start describing and explaining what we actually believe and how inductive it is and exegetical and has the support of hundreds of years, it is fun to be able to clarify some of the misunderstandings. I brought a few up at the early part of the show.
Cory Marsh: The biggest one is that we supposedly teach multiple ways of salvation. And the reason why they’re reformed especially would think that about us because their entire system that is coming, theology is a redemptive system. The entire thing is based on the redemption of the elect. Therefore, they look at all of history as this redemptive history, and the Bible’s just one textbook how man is saved, and that sort of gets imposed on what we believe as when they hear dispensations, they’re thinking, oh, salvation, redemption. That’s how people were saved in different dispensations, which cannot be further from the truth. Dispensationalism zooms up and looks at all things of the glory of God. God is glorified by the redemption of the elect and Christ of course, but it’s also glorified by those who are in hell because his justice is on display. He is glorified by the animal kingdom, by nature, by all things are to the glory of God.
Cory Marsh: Even salvation that Paul says in, excuse me, Ephesians one 11, I believe it is, that we were to the hope and praise to the glory of God, to the praise of His glory, that his salvation even has a higher goal that is to the glory of God. So when you explain these things to critics of dispensationalism, sometimes, not always, but sometimes it clicks and goes, oh, perhaps I’ve been thinking of dispensationalism wrongly based on something that was handed down to me from a left behind book or from a popular level book, perhaps in the seventies by Hal Lindsay or something like that, which had good ideas in them but weren’t so technical and exegetical as we would like according to a dispensational framework, which is based on grammatical and historical context of bring Scripture.
Jamie Mitchell: Corey, there have been many, many bible colleges, Christian colleges, bible conferences that have a great history in dispensationalism and has moved away and almost theologically speaking is very vanilla. Can they be reclaimed and are you seeing any of that in your opportunity to interact? And we’ve got about two minutes left.
Cory Marsh: There have been some books that have been recently published that have been highly critical of dispensationalism and even to the point of mocking how no seminary holds to it anymore. And if they do, they can all be fit into this one little say closet over here. There actually is a very strong voice of academic dispensationalism, not only Southern California Seminary, but Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, Shepherd Theological Seminary, Appalachian Bible College, Central Bible Theological, Central Theological Seminary, excuse me, Central Baptist Theological Seminary, even Master Seminary, and they have journals peer reviewed academic journals. So there is a strong academic dispensational voice just as what we do at SCS Southern California Seminary. We have SCS press, which is publishing academic works from a dispensational framework. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get the attention that other more reformed ideas get more covenantal ideas, and I would trace it back to even publishing houses some.
Cory Marsh: The theology has had the market on academic publishing for many years while dispensationalism by its very nature was a local church movement. It was homegrown just reading the Bible literally. So it doesn’t really lend itself to a highly technical monographs and dissertations because you’re just sticking to what scripture says. You can’t be too creative with it. So that sort of blossomed into this idea where the academic market is more for at least in the evangelical world, for the covenantal or progressive covenantal or reformed Baptist ideas. While dispensationalism is looked at this relic ever since the greats have passed on, that is Louis Berry Schafer, John Ver, Charles Ryrie, Alvin McLean, Dwight Pentecost, sort of the golden era of Dallas Theological Seminary. But Jamie, we’re still here and it’s encouraging. There is a lot of younger dispensational scholars who are pumping out works, and I’m privileged to be perhaps part of that crowd that are doing some peer reviewed work and publishing books and articles, and hopefully to be able to get a fairer and wider reading in the academic community.
Jamie Mitchell: Cory, thank you as always. You’re a treasure to the church and friends how you interpret the Bible matters. Stand firm in your faith. Stand firm in what you believe. It takes courage, and as I always say, live and lead with courage. We’ll see you back here tomorrow for another great program on Stand in the Gap today.
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