A Few Words About Dispensationalism’s Origin & Influence

The stew that was Dispensationalism not only arose from the odd teachings of Edward Irving and John Nelson Darby as systematized by Scofield, Chafer, Ryrie, Pentecost, and others, it also folded into itself revivalism, common sense realism, Keswick and Holiness teaching, and Pentecostalism. Dispensationalism also found contributions from prominent Lutherans (Seiss), Reformed (Chafer, D. G. Barnhouse), many Baptists (Vance Havner), and of course the Brethren movement from which it arose. These various strains often jostled with one another but in the end they all adopted one variant strain or another of Dispensationalism. Indeed, even yet today the theology of Dispensationalism finds influences in the Reformed world as more than a few have argued that R2K is merely another variant of Dispensationalism. R2K certainly bears the mark of retreatism that was characteristic of Dispensationalism, as well as a Gnostic dividing the world into “worldly” (R2K’s common) and Spiritual.

What few people know is that D. L. Moody used Dispensationalism as a tool to reunite a fractured nation after the War of Northern Aggression. Moody, who was hardly one to be overly concerned with theological systematization, used Dispensationalism as a tool for sectional reconciliation arguing that has Jesus was coming back at any moment previous disagreements between warring Christians should be put aside and the business of saving souls should unite us all.

In many respects then Dispensationalism has been the religious glue that kept America together since Reconstruction ended. It also served as one of the means by which we have been enslaved by Israel. Dispensationalism so emphasized the ongoing integrity and necessity of Israel that all of World History was changed because of Dispensationalism’s errant premise that Israel remained God’s earthly chosen people and that all Christians were duty bound to bless Israel upon pain of divine retribution.

More Clergy Being Dumb … This Time Rev. Joseph Spurgeon

“These men who are trying to refute pastor Jerry Dorris are playing themselves and showing their foolishness. The irony of these posts is that in their scheme 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska is the actual ‘invader’ as a legal immigrant from the Ukraine and Decarlos Brown, Jr. is their American neighbor.

I am for ICE doing their job, our civil government protecting the border and even restricting legal immigration so that our nation can be preserved. But I’m also for treating individuals with respect and dignity as neighbors by proximity.

These men have lost the plot and are not as the Christians they profess to be.”

Rev. Joseph Spurgeon

1.) This began with Rev. Dorris writing a post saying he was politically against illegal immigration but that did not mean he would refuse to treat illegals as his neighbor. Rev. Dorris was clearly invoking the idea, from the Bible, of being a “good Samaritan.” Rev. Dorris was suggesting that all Christians must treat all illegals as neighbors.

2.) More than a few people (including myself) took exception to that, insisting that Rev. Dorris was making the parable of the Good Samaritan walk on all fours.

3.) Nobody has tried to refute Rev. Dorris as if he has not yet been refuted. Rev. Dorris has been refuted in spades.

4.) The irony that Rev. Spurgeon sees is not ironic in the least. He should know by now that the complaint that nearly all those involved have is not the immigration of white Christians into the nation, such as Zarutska. (She was Eastern Orthodox of some stripe.) The complaint is against bringing in those who are from, as the President has said, “third world fecal holes.”

** – Speaking only for myself, I think it unwise at this point to allow for any immigration at all. We need a period of adjustment.

5.) Decarlos Brown, and numerous other minorities in our country was a neighbor the same way that Ted Bundy or one of the Manson family members would be a neighbor if they moved next door.

6.) What Rev. Spurgeon (and Rev. Doriss) are doing to the parable of the Good Samaritan is they are replacing the poor chap in the parable who was beaten and robbed by the assailants for the assailants themselves who were beaten up because they fell down seeking to flee from the scene of the crime they committed. In that kind of Parable, Jesus would have expected the Good Samaritan to call the authorities to arrest those who had done the robbing.

7.) In the parable of the Good Samaritan it is clear that the chap robbed by the villains was the victim. What Pastors Dorris and Spurgeon are doing is turning the Robbers and Malefactors who did the beating in the Good Samaritan into the victim. In Pastors Dorris and Spurgeon’s world the third world equatorial immigrants who are here and who are bilking the system, who are essentially committing theft on a mass scale, and who are squandering our children’s inheritance by their massive fraud are the ones who are the victims and who need to have all the love and affection given to the genuine victim in the parable of the Good Samaritan. They have inverted the whole meaning of the parable. They have turned the parable of the Good Samaritan into one only a bleeding heart Arminian/Liberal could appreciate.

8.) In doing so Pastors Spurgeon and Dorris are ignoring the Scriptures that teach that one of God’s judgments against His disobedient people is to be cursed with being flooded with the Stranger and the Alien. When Pastors Spurgeon and Dorris write as they do people hear them say that “Christians should embrace God’s curse.” Quite to the contrary Christians who love God and their people will do all they can to not be visited with the curse. Pastors should not push principles (such as treating invaders as “neighbors”) that fault people for not wanting to be under God’s curse and for not wanting to have to live in their land where they are the tail and the stranger and alien is the head. (See Deut. 28:15f)

9.) Nobody, that I have seen in this conversation has denied the necessity of speaking the Gospel to the stranger and the alien while they are here. Nobody has insisted, as far as I can see, that the stranger and the alien are not image bearers of God. But the fact that the alien and the stranger need the Gospel and the fact that they are image bearers of God does not mean that we should become comfortable with the presence of the alien and the stranger in our midst. In point of fact, we should not.

10.) Rev. Spurgeon has been slow witted ever since I came across the good Rev. years ago. We make allowances for such people. However, it is those who are advocating for the kinds of things that Rev. Spurgeon is advocating for who have lost the plot and are not the Christian he professes to be.

11.) What Spurgeon and many like him have missed is that Genocide of the white Christian in the West is being attempted. Immigrants from third world fecal holes are the bombs that are being used in order to replace us. When one is in war one typically does not go out of their way to treat the bomb that is intended to wipe them out as a neighbor.

12.) Pastors like Dorris and Spurgeon are turning the Christian faith into a suicide cult.

American Empire

Tucker Carlson made a point in his monologue preceding his conversation with Meagan Kelly that with the American orchestrated Venezuela coup we are now officially an “Empire.” Tucker complimented Trump for being honest about that given Trump’s statement about seizing the oil.

My only beef here with Carlson is that he’s a little late to the party in announcing that the US is now an Empire. The US has been an Empire since 1865 with Lincoln’s victory over the South. That War changed these united States into THE United States and re-created America as Empire. So, the first turn to Empire in our history was internal. We went from being a Republic to being an Empire. The truth of that was seen in the Empirical Reconstruction brought upon the South and its Institutions. The South were the first people dragged into the Humanist Yankee Empire and forced to conform to the ways of the Empire. What the Constitution created as a “Nation of Nations,” was now transformed, via the work of Lincoln, into a unitarian Nation State.

However, our role as Empire did not stop with the Civil War and Reconstruction. Very shortly thereafter our Empire broke outside the bonds of territorial and continental USA. In 1898 we seized Cuba from the Spaniards. In that settlement we also took the Philippines but they objected and so between 1899-1902 we brought war to those islands before they acquiesced to US Empire.

From there, with the two World Wars the US made was to expand Empire. Now, the kind of Empire that was being built via WW I and WW II was not your typical Empire of land seizure and overt control but we were an Empire every bit as the Brits had been before they lost their Empire in WW II. The Empire we built in the first half of the 20th century was an Economic Empire. This is especially seen for folks who know anything about the Bretton Woods agreement which tied the world’s economy to the US Dollar. Americans like to think of how noble the US was in “freeing Europe,” during those conflicts but lives lost in battle is the cost paid for building Empire and Economically, after part II of the World War finished in 1945 we were the world’s Emperor along with the Soviet Union. And many wonder if the Soviet Union only existed at our behest in order to only give the appearance that we were being challenged so that the citizenry here and abroad in the “Free West,” would be frightened into accepting the US as Empire. There are more than a few who will argue that US and Soviet contretemps was all part of the game to manage the world.

Returning to the theme, Carlson’s observation that we are now explicitly an Empire comes about 160 years too late. Carlson may well argue that the mask has finally come off with Trump’s seizure of Venezuela and with Trump’s intimidating Greenland but for those with eyes to see that the US is Empire is very very old news.

Now, one of the perks of being Empire is that the Empire makes the peace. This is seen in history with the Pax Romana and the Pax Britannica. When both Rome and later Brittain stood astride the world each made the Peace. Sometimes that peace was made by sending troops across their far flung Empire to force peace and sometimes that peace was made by dictating the terms in any regional squabble. Empires become the World’s Sheriff, or as it is said today, “The Global Cop.” And that is what we are seeing with the Trump administration. Trump boasts about how many wars he has settled. That is what Empires do. You can bet the farm that the Empire is giving incentives that only Empires can give in order for these wars to be settled.

Of course Empires always fall. Rome did. Britain did. The Ottoman Empire did. The Austro-Hungarian Empire did. What is interesting is that when Empire’s fall it is often because they become over-extended and can’t meet all their responsibilities. Eventually, some aspiring Patriot who doesn’t want to live under Empire notices the weakness, rallies his people, and attacks the Empire. Before that though is the matter of the weakness that sets in. Often that weakness comes as a crisis of confidence on the part of the Empire. Rome’s unwillingness and inability to repulse a comparative handful of Goths is one example. The USSR’s inability to put down the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan is another. This almost happened to America’s Empire under the Carter administration in the late 1970s as a handful of students in Teheran pushed the US Empire to the brink.

Another thing that happens with the fall of Empires is a complete loss of the faith that built the Empire. Now, plenty of people during the existence of Empire see through the faith charade that keeps the Empire afloat. However, once Empire’s fall, they fall because there are no longer enough true believers in the old gods. We are seeing that happen now in the American Empire. Even as Trump tries to rebuild the American Empire there are plenty of people who see that the faith in the God of Liberalism can’t be sustained by the adopting and tolerating of all the competing faith systems that must be adopted and tolerated if a Liberalism turned multiculturalism is to work in keeping the American Empire stitched together.

Another thing that should be noted in this overview is something that Carlson brought out, and that is Empires die when there is no longer any core people left who built the Empire. Carlson used the example of modern London where one must be diligent in seeking to find a Brit in London. Carlson then pivoted to the next obvious example of the US that has been reduced from 88% white in 1970 to 63% white in 2025. Many of our large cities find the numbers even more drastically skewed. Empires cannot last if those who built the Empire do not last.

So … the mask is off and we are officially Empire. This means more wars, which means more of your sons – and in this egalitarian age; daughters – die in order to keep the Empire being the Empire. It means a increased bureaucratic behemoth. In our age it means an increase of technocratic innovation to keep the Empire functioning as well-oiled as it can. It means a lot of bad things that many of us have been screaming about for a very long time. For Christians, it means an increasing abandonment of our undoubted catholic Christian faith. Empires, are, by definition, polyglot. Polyglot entities require a polyglot faith and Christianity is not a faith that can allow other faiths to co-exist with it. At least Christianity of the purest content can’t.

Benjamin Franklin is reported to have told a woman who asked him, after the Constitutional Convention had done its work in forming a Government, what kind of Government had the Founding Fathers formed and his response to the woman was, “A Republic … if you can keep it.” We lost that Republic long ago and if Tucker is correct we have now moved into the open and unapologetic “Empire phase.”

I’m not going to like it.

Quote From RJR’s “The One & The Many,” & Commentary

“Wherever a society has a naturalistic religion, grounded on the concept of continuity, man faces the total power of the state. This is clearly true today, as it was in antiquity. The Scythians “worshipped the elements” and practiced veneration of ancestors, and the royal Scyths “ruled as despots.” The Parthians practiced a religion affirming continuity, and their monarchs had “nearly despotic” power and claimed the title of “Kings of Kings.” The list can be extended at length. Where there is no transcendental law and power in a separate and omnipotent being, then power has a wholly immanent and immediate source in a state, group, or person, and it is beyond appeal. The state becomes the saving power and the source of law; it becomes the priestly agency of its own total power and the manifest power of its divinity. Such a state becomes god walking on the earth, and its every tyranny is identified as liberty, because being and meaning are both identifiable in terms of the state. Since it is held that there is no law beyond the state, meaning is what the state defines, and liberty is what the state provides. In this faith, for man to be free means to be in the state. More than that, for man to be, he must be a member of the state, for being is one and continuous, and salvation is a metaphysical unification of all being.”

The One and the Many
R. J. Rushdoony

1.) It is more accurate to say that where the God of the Bible is not owned and worshipped in a social order the consequence is that the State will absolutized and so worshiped, whether in a de facto or de jure sense. The citizens will become subjects and all will believe that “in the state we live and move and have our being.”

2.) All social orders must have transcendence in order to operate. They can choose either from a transcendent, transcendent (the God of the Bible) or they can create an immanent transcendent. Of course, an immanent transcendent is a contradiction but when a transcendent, transcendent is rejected then something must serve in its place. What happens with an immanent transcendent is that something subjective (usually the State as seen in history) is inflated with a pseudo objective transcendence so as to become that reality against which all other realities find their point of reference in order to find definition.  When this happens the social order, as a whole is in transgression against the first commandment.

3.) Perhaps one of the most glaring examples of this in history occurred during the Soviet Show Trials of the 1930s. In that setting Stalin put on trial Communists who had been with Lenin during the success of revolutionary Marxism. They were the old lions of the revolution; Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, and  Radek. These men went into the kangaroo court show trial where their guilt was predetermined. Though innocent, they pled guilty to the charges of treason brought against them. Now, many have offered that the false admission of guilt was due to threats against family members of the accused by Stalin. However, the accused knew that Stalin was no man to keep his word. No, their admission of guilt was because they believed the State was God (the transcendent, transcendent). They had based their whole lives as revolutionaries upon the premise that the State was God. Now, the State (their God) was insisting they were guilty and being true believers they confessed to the guilt that their God said was theirs. If your God says your guilty, you are guilty whether you think you are or not.

4.) In this phrase “because being and meaning are both identifiable in terms of the state,” means that if and when the state becomes a social order’s transcendent, transcendent then the state becomes the arbiter of being and meaning. If you are a chameleon, then whatever color you are placed in as a background becomes the standard by which you know what color to turn to. In the same way when men make the state the transcendent, transcendent they play the chameleon to the state. All being and meaning are determined for the individual in the social order by the state in its metaphorical coloring.

5.) All of this is why Socrates chose to drink the hemlock as opposed to be banished by the state. Death was a better choice then to lose one’s being by being banished from one’s meaning maker.

6.) When this kind of situation obtains then reality becomes increasingly inverted. As Rush notes above, Liberty becomes tyranny and tyranny becomes liberty. We are seeing this in our culture. Reality is being set on its head. Men are women, and women are men. Marriage has no stable meaning and can include all kinds of permutations. Theft by taxation is called “paying your fair share.”

7.) Touching this statement by RJR; “it (the state) becomes the priestly agency of its own total power,” communicates that the tyrannical state playing the transcendent, transcendent not only will claim the authority of “King,” but also will exercise the power of “Priest.” This means that the state will mediate its own “salvation” to those living in the social order. Now, because everything is upside down in tyrannical orders as described this means that what is called “salvation,” will indeed be “destruction.” For example, playing the role of Priest, mediating salvation, the current tyrannical state in the West as said; “in order to be saved we need to import millions of third world people into our lands. This will give us more cheap labor.” However, in the mediation of this salvation, the West is being destroyed. Bureaucrats who work for the state often play this role of priest for the state.

8.) All this proves that a God or god concept is inescapable. All this proves that Atheism is a myth. All men take either the God of the Bible as God or they embrace a false god. There is no such thing as someone or some culture who.which has no god.

9.) When RJR uses this phrase; “salvation is a metaphysical unification of all being,”  Rush is talking about humanist salvations. Humanist salvations require uniformity of all. This is due to the fact that all godheads must have unity. If the state is the god in the social order then all in the social order must be one with the god of the social order. Unification of all being is necessary. This truth explains why Rome persecuted the Christians who would not pinch incense to Caesar. In their refusal to pinch incense to Caesar they were committing treason inasmuch as that refusal was a denial of the metaphysical unification of all being.

Random Observations On Dispensationalism & A Reading List For Dispies

All of this in the context of reading Daniel G. Hummel’s “The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism; How The Evangelical Battle Over The End Times Shaped A Nation.”

In 1957 A. W. Tozer warned that;

“A widespread revival of the kind of Christianity we know today in America might prove to be a moral tragedy from which we would not recover in one hundred years.”

He was referring to Dispensationalism.

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In 1967 there was an updated version of the C. I. Scofield Dispie Bible released. One of its most significant updates was a note on Genesis 12:1-4 where the Holocaust (TM) was introduced into the notes. The new note clarified that God’s promise to Abraham- “I will curse those who curse you” — was;

“A warning literally fulfilled in the history of Israel’s persecutions. It has invariably literally fulfilled in the history of Israel’s persecutions. It has invariably fared ill with the people who have persecuted the Bagel – well with those who have protected him. For a people who commit the sin of antisemitism brings inevitable judgment.”

Now, the kicker here, that is not in the notes, is that the Bagels and Christian Zionists were the ones who got to define what antisemitism meant.

Look, when I see this stuff, it only convinces me that as a Christian I am playing on team stupid.

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Charles Ryrie in his 1965 book he authored sought to bring Dispensationalism up to date. Ryrie wrote that the main distinctives of Dispensationalism were;

1.) The distinction between Israel and the Church

2.) Literal and plain hermeneutic
3.) Overall point of history was to glorify God

Ryrie’s first essential fails to take into account that OT Israel was the Church in its cocoon stage. The distinction between Israel and the Church was always the distinction between caterpillars and butterflies. Ryrie’s Dispensationalism always insisted (and still insists) that God, after the death, resurrection, ascension, and session of the Lord Christ, still has a plan for Israel that is tied to God’s eschatological and redemptive clock.

Ryrie failed to understand that God is eschatologically and redemptively done with Israel as a nation-State. Modern Israel is irrelevant to God’s ongoing macro plan of redemption or eschatology. And “No,” Romans 11 does not prove me wrong.

Ryries second point requires asking the question, “By what standard.” All Protestants who believe in the inerrant, inspired and infallible word of God believe that Scripture should be read via a literal and plain hermeneutic. However, reading the Scripture via a literal and plain hermeneutic looks very different when somebody sane does it as compared when a Dispensational comic book theologian does it. For example, when there is Sensus Plenior in the text to read the text that way is to read it according to its literal and plain hermeneutic. For example, when the text requires a archetype and type reading to read it in just such a way is to read the text according to a plain and literal hermeneutic. For example, to make a proper distinction between allegory and parable and then to read those aright means a plain and literal hermeneutic is being used. The point is, is that Dispensationalism doesn’t get to claim that it alone is reading the Scripture according to its original intent while everyone else is limping along trying to keep up with the Comic Book interpreters. When Dispies slice and dice the Scriptures into seven compartmentalized epochs, when Baptists refuse to see the continuity of Scripture so as to not bring covenant children to the Baptismal font, when Pentecostals insist that speaking in tongues is required for believers, they are all not reading the Scripture according to its plain and literal meaning. However, Dispensationalists exceed all in this category.

Everyone agrees with Ryrie’s #3… we just don’t agree with how the Dispie thinks history is going to glorify God. For example, the Dispie thinks that history will glorify God with doom and despair being the necessary keynotes before Christ return, whereas Biblical eschatology theology understands that the King is going to return to a world where the Great Commission has been fulfilled.

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A reading list to cure what ails the Dispensationalist;

1.) John Gerstner – Wrongly Dividing the Truth
2.) O. T. Allis – OT Prophecy & The Church
3.) Gentry/Bahnsen – House Divided: The break up of Dispensational Theology
4.) Daniel G. Hummel – The Rise & Fall of Dispensationalism
5.) Steven Sizer – Zion’s Christian Soldiers: The Bible, Israel and the Church
6.) Steven Sizer – Christian Zionism
7.) O. Palmer Robertson’s “The Israel of God”
8.) Allison Weir — Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel

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“The dispensationalist believes that throughout the ages God is pursuing two distinct purposes: one related to the earth with earthly people and earthly objectives involved, while the other is to heaven with heavenly people and heavenly objectives involved.”

Lewis Sperry Chafer
Systematic Theology – p. 448

Dispensationalism is NOT Christianity. This sets the Abrahamic covenant on its head and works to the end of keeping the Bagels as God’s chosen (earthly) people. That is total trash thinking and largely explains where we are today with our problems with the Bagels.

But how different is this from Doug Wilson’s advocacy of “The Covenant With Hagar” crapola?