Thank you! I’m on the old calendar, though, so I am just about to head off for the royal hours for Nativity eve. Happy Epi/Theophany!
Христосъ рождается! Славите Его!
Christ is born! Glorify Him!
Whichever runs the scam closest to the way that they did back at the start of the scam would be the one.
You know what – rather than report this post, which is a definite slam against a large portion of this board’s membership in the way that is prohibited in GD, I’m going to request that you retract the post. Certainly there have been scamming evangelists and such. And equally certainly, there are a lot of people who honestly believe something you do not. Some of them might even consider it their duty before God to forgive you for being a jerk, which your post above would be prima facie evidence in their believing you to be one.
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That was also me.
Then let me clear this up: That’s exactly what I believe. Polycarp is convinced that in doing this I (and all others who dispensationalize in the manner I do) denegrate and trivialize the four gospels, and the Lord’s earthly ministry. To settle the matter, let me say that without the four gospels and what went on in those accounts, there would be no reason for Paul’s revelation. Paul’s gospel would be without a foundation. Jesus Christ is the foundation and pillar of truth of it all. (1 Cor. 3:11) But to say that what he demanded of his 12 disciples (or anyone desiring to become a disciple), during that time and during the first part of the Acts, is what the present church is charged with doing will not pass Scriptural inspection. Those demands were for a specific reason that was particular to that dispensation, which was about Israel and her covenant with God as his chosen people. The Acts is an account of the transition from law to grace; prophecy to mystery; Israel and those in the covenants of promise, to those who were/are "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise. (Eph. 2:12)
The four gospels are about who Christ was, and what he did. Paul’s revelation is also about this, but it extends it by revealing what it produced for the world at large–Jews and Gentiles alike.
christmas eve for me just got in from church. (gathering the pear tree, etc, from polycarp)
a happy epiphany to you, polycarp! i’ll catch up to you on the 19th.
OK, if I understand you correctly, I’ll agree with you there.
As long as you regard Christ’s teachings during His ministry as a main (tho not the only) guide for C’tian ethics today and Baptism/Communion as relevant rites for us today. (Truly hyper-dispies deny both.)
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Allow me to be more specific. What I believe we who are members of Christ’s body (the church) are charged to do regarding the written word, is to “rightly divide” it (2 Tim. 2:15-KJV). To me this means, “don’t apply doctrine to yourself that belongs to another dispensation.” In order to properly do this, one must distinguish between spiritual principles that are universal/foundational, and doctrine/precept that, while standing on the universals, is particular to the dispensation in which it is given.
The materials in a row of houses constructed by one builder will be uniform (universals), yet the design/blueprint (particulars) will normally differ from one house to another. The framing contractor who ignores this, presuming the builder wants all the houses the same, is going to have a rude awakening when that builder shows up on the job site to inspect the work.
Paul said in 1 Cor. 3:
**10 According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.
11 For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus ** Christ.(KJV)
The foundation, the blueprint, and the “Masterbuilder”:
Paul is the possessor of the blueprints for the building (particulars) that is to be constructed on the foundation, which is Christ. That foundation would be the sum of who Jesus Christ was (Matt. 16:16; John 1:1,14; 10:30; 14:6; Romans 1:2-4; Colossians 1:15-17; et. al.), and what he did ( Matt. 5:17; John 1:29; Heb. 10:12; the account of his death, burial, ressurection and ascension). In short, he was “the Son of the living God”–God come in the flesh–“resurrected from the dead.” If all this isn’t true then Paul says, “our faith is vain…and…we are of all men most miserable.” (1 Cor. 15:17-19)
The four gospels and what is contained in them is foundational to the grace dispensation and the church-, but the blueprint (doctrine) for the obedience of faith in them isn’t–that’s in Paul’s epistles.
Let me add one more important point to what I’ve thus far said: I do not believe the body of Christ, the present church in the world today, began in Acts 2. No doubt what was being formed by the 12 in the first part of Acts was a church (eklesia), but it couldn’t be the body of Christ. The body of Christ was a mystery (Eph. 3:9), not revealed in the prophetic scriptures(Rom. 16:25); the Acts 2 church and its activity was the beginning of the fulfillment of prophecies like Exd. 19:6 (compare 1 Peter 2:9), Is. 65:8, Hosea 1:11 (compare Acts 2:14,22); Joel 2:28 (compare Acts 2:16,17). Indeed, Peter himself said it was in Acts 3:24.
The body of Christ began with Paul (1 Tim 1:16). Although Paul, as a Jew by birth, was certainly in the covenants of promise, he could not be included in the Acts 2 program because, as Saul, he had blasphemed against the Holy Ghost (Matt. 12:31, 32)in his persecution and condemnation of the Acts 2 church (1 Tim. 1:13). Moreover, the perfect number of government in the Bible is 12–12 tribes, 12 disciples to rule over them (Matt. 19:28)–not 13. There is no way–scripturally–to fit Paul into this program without ignoring this, and many, many other obvious differences between what he and the 12 preached.
You surely have a right to your opinion, and have cited your own Biblical references for so thinking. But that is quite contrary to what the historical churches, including the Orthodox churches referenced in the OP, have believed for nearly twenty centuries.
OK, now I see what JMS is getting at, and I gotta side with Poly on this one-
While the Dispen’ist Model has its uses, this is where an over-reliance on it gets in the way, and I have to side with that version of Covenant Theology which regards the Church as being the continuance of the Israel Covenant as expanded to the world (a view which not all Covenant Theologians would concur.)
I was a proponent of covenant theology for awhile, and went along with the orthodox position that the present church is New Testament or “spiritual” Israel; until someone came along and pointed out that New Testament Israel is clearly revealed in Old Testament prophecy. (Jer. 31:31-34; Eze. 36:24-28; et. al.). Paul said that the body of Christ was part of a mystery, “not made known to the sons of men…hid in God…unsearchable” (in the prophetic scriptures). I don’t see how you can have it both ways. Moreover, he says in Romans 11:15 that they (Israel as a nation) are presently “castaways.”
Until I got outside of the orthodox establishment, and began to look at what the scriptures actually say (as opposed to what the establishment told me they said), I could not see these discrepancies. I have great respect for Iranius, Terttulian, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, et. al., and for the stands they took, but in the final analysis, I am going to be judged by what the book says, not what they said about it.