Some Praise For The Prophet Of Leaky Dispensationalism

Years ago I did a deep dive on Dispensationalism. I read over the course of time;

“Prophecy & The Church” – O. T. Allis
“Wrongly Dividing the Truth” – John Gerstner
“The Incredible Scofield & His Book” – Joseph Canfield
“Life Of Edward Irving: Fore-Runner Of The Charismatic Movement” – Arnold Dallimore
“Understanding Dispensationalists” – Vern Poythress
“Pre-Wrath Rapture of the Church” – Marvin Rosenthal
“House Divided: The Break-Up of Dispensational Theology – Bahnsen & DeMar
“The Israel of God: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow” – O. Palmer Robertson
“Dispensationalism: Rightly Dividing the People of God” – Keith Mathison

These are the ones I remember. I know there were other titles I can’t remember now. I also read many books arguing for Covenant theology in general.

Because of this study I’ve been adamantly opposed to Dispensationalism in all its expressions. Gerstner goes so far as to say it is heresy. Allis’ work is perhaps the most devastating to this “theology.”

It is because of this foursquare opposition to Dispensationalism in all of its varieties (even of the so called “leaky Dispensationalism variety”) that I find it difficult to join in with the legions of Baptists and others who are now mourning the death of John MacArthur.

That is not to say that I am not a little bit saddened. It is to say that my sorrow is not anywhere near where it was when Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Martyn Lloyd Jones, Van Til, Gordon Clark and others died.

As it pertains to MacArthur I respected his stand against Charismania and anti-nomianism (even though he fell into neo-nomianism in opposing anti-nomianism). I saluted MacArthur when he took on the Church growth movement and tore it apart. I saluted MacArthur when he refused to qualify his opposition to sodomy and other tough issues like the absolute requirement for a known Jesus Christ in order to be redeemed. These were issues that many other guys like Tim Keller or Billy Graham or Robert Schuller were constantly trying to nuance to death. To MacArthur’s credit he did not do that. I saluted MacArthur when he warned his Seminary students that it would be hard sledding in the ministry given all the opposition that they would have to spend their whole lives fighting. I could identify with that one. Of course, MacArthur stood against California Gov. Newsome during the Covid issue in Newsome attempt to keep the Churches closed. MacArthur was one of the few who did so. That perhaps, was MacArthur’s greatest moment.  In many respects John MacArthur was a man who could be admired because of these qualities.

I also admired him a wee bit because my Father-in-law admired him. Rev. Anthony Lombardi owned series after series of MacArthur’s taped sermons. I have that collection now sitting in my office. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to one. I always believed that I had better things to read or listen to, but my Baptist minister Father-in-law was smitten with John MacArthur. That stands to reason though since they were both Baptists and they were both Dispensationalists and they were both more than a little put off by the seeker sensitive movement.

For myself, I only ever read MacArthur’s book on Charismania and his two books on Lordship salvation issue. I thought Richard Gaffin’s book was better on the Charismania issue and I thought Mike Horton’s book was better on the antinomian issue. Also, several of the Puritans put faith in justification and faith in sanctification in a far superior way to MacArthur’s take. Still, that MacArthur was willing to take on the issues spoke in his favor, even if he didn’t get it completely correct.

Also, MacArthur clearly helped thousands upon thousands of people through his preaching, and writing. That is a good thing.

However, having said all that to honor him, I do pray that ministers who embrace leaky dispensationalism as did MacArthur did not will no longer be a presence in the Church today. I say this because I do not think Dispensationalism is a proper understanding of Biblical Christianity. I think the theology of that school is a hindrance to the furtherance of the  Christian faith.  It is sub-Christianity. If you read Allis and Gerstner they would say it is anti-Christianity.

Remember, it was MacArthur who boldly told his legion of followers that “We lose down here. Get over it.” This pessimism is a direct result of MacArthur’s leaky Dispensationalism. As long as the clergy believe that the Church and the Christian faith will be defeated in space and time history that defeat will become a self-fulfilled prophecy. The Church doesn’t need more clergy like MacArthur who not only believes this but who still think that the eschatological clock is tied to modern Israel and that we have an obligation to support Israel and is still looking for the Temple in Jerusalem to be rebuilt. These characteristics of Dispensationalism need to be eternally put to rest.

So John MacArthur served his generation and now has been gathered to his fathers. We praise him for his strengths while not ignoring his weaknesses.

 

Meg Basham … Not A Wise Person

“Some people caught in this particular sin (sodomy) are lovely, kind, and brilliant people.”

Meg Basham
Author — Shepherds For Sale
Evangelical Female Algophile

This demonstrates how much sodomy has been accepted. Would Basham say the same thing about people caught in sin of necrophilia or bestiality?

She wouldn’t say that because necrophilia, bestiality, and pederasty (as just three examples) aren’t yet socially acceptable. But because sodomy is now socially acceptable one has to confess that at least some sodomites can be lovely, kind, and brilliant people.

Further, per the Meg Bashams of the world, if we don’t agree with her on this then we are being a hindrance to the conversion of these otherwise lovely, kind, and brilliant sodomites.

People like Meg Basham seem not to realize that sodomy is an expression of a serious mental disorder/disease. Do we commonly say that folks with serious mental disorders/disease can be otherwise lovely, kind, and brilliant people?

It’s all so twisted.

Now, having said all that, I don’t deny that some sodomites, no doubt, can be more lovely, kinder, and more brilliant than others when judging on a scale of comparison. However, that doesn’t mean that the means of converting them is ignoring their mental disorder/disease. One of the prerequisites of conversion is being confronted by God’s Law so that those in rebellion to God may see their rebellion that they might see their danger with the consequence that they might flee to Christ for His protective righteousness. Presenting the law to sodomites regarding their sodomy is the very definition of “loving them into the kingdom.” It is not loving them into the kingdom, contra the Meg Bashams of the world, to avoid reminding them of the wrath of God that is upon them for their sin.

Because of their mental disorder/disease I don’t want to see sodomites in place of public responsibility. I don’t want to see the sodomite Scott Bessant as head of the Federal Reserve and I don’t want to see him their because he has a mental disease and I don’t care how good he might be with money. I don’t want to see Rick Grenell as an advisor to the President in any capacity and I don’t care how brilliant he might be on foreign affairs. He has a mental disorder/disease that disqualifies him from that position.

The Meg Basham’s in the church are likewise a disease on the church. I know they are well intended and probably the kind of people you want as Nannies or Au-pairs for your children. But they have no business influence public policy with their inability to understand the world.

Dr. Stephen Wolfe Warring Against R2K … McAtee Warring Against All 2K Thinking

“‘Radical two kingdoms'” is radical only in separating nature/grace, general/special revelation, first-table/second-table, secular/sacred, and nature/scripture. The Reformed distinguished these without separating, and so they could affirm Christian nations, Christian magistrates, and Christian laws. In political thought, r2k is the least radical option. It is nothing but modern conservatism established as fixed, timeless principle rather than something prudential. Late 20th century conservatism is made the timeless politics of Jesus.

Otherwise intelligent people bought into this recent iteration of “two kingdoms” looking for some theological and tradition-based justification for their modern secularist political ethos.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe
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In political thought R2K is the most radical option because it embraces the classical liberal world & life view born of Enlightenment categories and reasoning and insists that such a libertarian view is Jesus normative for all times and places. R2K isn’t even Reformed, instead really being Anabaptist. If you will recall the Anabaptist movement was that movement now called the Radical Reformation.

Secondly, we would say that the Reformed did distinguish and not separate but they were only able to do so because they were living in a context that already presupposed Christianity as the starting point. The West no longer presupposes that and so political theory, like Stepen Wolfe’s “Thomism” will not be able to provide a unified theory of what it is that Natural Law teaches about political thought in the context in which we live today. This is proven by the fact that Wolfe here is warring against those who share his same Thomistic starting point. Both Wolfe (with his historical 2K view) and Escondido (with its R2K view) both are appealing to Natural Law and two Kingdom thinking and both are coming to diametrically different conclusions. Wolfe is here insisting that R2K has unnaturally divorced nature/grace, general/special revelation, first-table/second-table, secular/sacred, and nature/scripture but of course Dr. David Van Drunen and the R2K lads will just insist that Wolfe’s historical 2K school is unnaturally not seeing the proper distinguishing that must be done.

This battle between Wolfe and Van Drunen really is a sight to behold. They are each suffering from an unbiblical dualism and yet Van Drunen is essentially saying to Wolfe that Wolfe’s problem is he is not consistent in his dualistic world and life view.

In the end it is better to speak of One Kingdom, One Lord, with varying Christ ordained jurisdictions. This delivers one from this hopeless warfare of how much dualism is enough dualism while avoiding a monism that might arise without recognizing any jurisdictional distinctions ordained by the Sovereign God and His Christ.

Dr. Richard Gaffin On Eschatology … Rev. Bret McAtee on Dr. Richard Gaffin

“This period between Christ’s resurrection and return, the period of the church, is distinctively and essentially eschatological; it is, in fact, as we have see, a phase in the coming of the eschatological kingdom. That kingdom significance of the church is apparent by reading Mt. 16:18-19, in the light of the great commission (28:19-20); the keys of the kingdom are to the doors of the church.”

Richard Gaffin
In The Fullness of Time — p.80

On the whole I agree w/ this quote by Gaffin but there is something subtle here that is going on that I do not agree with in the least. You will note, if you read carefully, that what Dr. Gaffin is doing here is that he is compressing into one reality the idea of the church and the Kingdom making those ideas to be synonymous.

I do quite agree that the times we live in — the times between Christ’s ascension and His return — are indeed eschatological times. Indeed, it can be rightly said that we have been living in the last days since the Ascension of Christ and the last days of the last days since Christ’s AD 70 judgment return. We wait only now for the final day. However, all of our living now is eschatological. The kingdom has come and while the fullness of the Kingdom awaits we, who have been united to Christ already have the fullness of the Kingdom in principle as we have died with Christ, been resurrected with Christ and are seated in the heavenlies (ascended) with Christ. The “not-yetness” of the kingdom should not eclipse the already and nowness of the kingdom. Like Tolkien’s elves in his trilogy we Christians live in two worlds. We live now in the age to come and yet we still live in this present wicked age.

Returning to the idea of church and kingdom we would note that while the Church is part of the kingdom the church is not the whole kingdom. The kingdom is expansive. An argument might be made that the Church is to the Kingdom what the hearth fire is to the home or what the armoury is to a battle but the kingdom is far more expansive and broad than the church. When we limit the kingdom so that it is exactly synonymous with the Church what we do is cut off the leavening power of the Christian message from every other area of life.

This is the difference between postmillennialism and amillennialism. Amills typically want to limit the kingdom to the church while postmills see a dynamic relationship between kingdom and church but do not limit the kingdom to be 100% identified only with the church.

A Few Words On The Relationship Between Old Testament and New Testament

Whereas in the Old Covenant the progress of Redemption covers over a millennium and is concerned with the ongoing process that repeatedly points to the growing understanding of the Messiah and His work, the New Testament is not about process but is concerned with revealing that end point of the progress of Redemption.

It’s the difference between reading a novel in its beginning chapters and discovering and working through the inciting incident (Genesis 3), and the rising action (conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman (Gen. 3 – Malachi), and the climax of the novel where all is resolved (Gospels). Yet, even in the New Testament there remains a progress of Redemption inasmuch as we read and see the movement of the incarnation and humiliation of Christ to the exaltation/ascension-session of Christ. Then from there the progress of Redemption continues with the growth of the body of the ascended Christ (Acts-Revelation).

The OT, thus has a different kind of progress of Redemption theology than the NT because it is process, while the NT progress of Redemption is end point or climax, though as we have seen the idea of redemptive progress is not completely absent from the New Testament. However, it is the progress of Redemption accomplished and applied as opposed to the progress of redemption anticipated.

And yet because the Scripture is written with a proleptic dynamic (the reality is in the anticipatory events) even the progress of Redemption retains a end point feel. Because the Gospel is part of one story that begins in Genesis and because all men throughout history have been saved by the same blood of Christ the Gospel climax that is most illuminated in the New Covenant is already present in the Old Covenant like the promissory spark that will eventually become a five alarm fire.