This is a nice series. Correct me if I am wrong. Does your former IFBx church consider those who do not hold to dispensational premillenialism (like us who are Reformed and reforming) as disobedient to the Word? Thanks.

Note to all: I’m with family right now and will be out of town returning Monday. No new posts until then.

No bad talk: agreed. The point I was trying to make is that I appreciate your patience with folks who disagree, please keep that working. This is why I said, “I am glad that you are kind to all your commentators.” I was contrasting my experience with the experience you allow your readers.

In the mean time, I have gone back and read all your posts concerning this issue. I now realize much of what I have said here is a repeat of what you have already covered. Thanks again for your patience. It is a type of confirmation to me that you have the same understanding of God’s Word from a completely different experience.

As I said before, I was taught by Arminian dispensationalists, warned never to agree with “replacement theology,” evil Calvinism, or anyone that thinks Israel and the church are not two separate peoples. As I began to allow the Holy Spirit to teach me God’s Word (let God’s Word speak for itself), I lost friends. But the faith God gave me brought me into peace that I never had before. Christ now became the real center of all my understanding – my whole life indeed. Before He needed to be defended, but now He, through His Word defends me! While on the “other side,” I was always angry with any reformed statements. The truth is, I recognized that I did not have a firm grasp of Scripture in the sense that Scripture alone did not form my understanding – my teachers did. My new “teachers” (really just witnesses) are mostly “dead” guys, but they are alive in Christ, and their words also live on, because they testify of Christ.

If this sounds as though I have arrived, I know I haven’t. This is why the Scripture from Ezekiel 16:60-61 (“Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant. Then thou shalt remember thy ways, and be ashamed,…”) is so important to me. God is all and in all. Of myself, well, I am ashamed!

LICJ,

Joe V.

I didn’t know of whom you spoke before. I really can’t speak to the matter as I wasn’t aware of the issue and didn’t see his side too.

The passages you bring up are helpful and pertinent to the discussion. I just don’t want the comments here to be about talking bad about other individuals, however. Just to let you know.

Thanks,

Bob

Concerning your recent update comment on your “Excursus” article, one of those commentators is a contributer of my being “banned” for this same position. I think you probably already figured that out. I am glad that you are kind to all your commentators. I particularly appreciate your statement about being careful not to read into the passage too much. A joy of being among the reformed is the more peaceful atmosphere, I believe, that is due to a firmer stance found from all the Scriptures using the same interpretive method with respect to the Old Testament as do Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament. I do not know if I wrote these particular sets of Old with New interpretation Scriptures before, but here they are.

1) Malachi 4:5-6 / Matthew 11:7-15; 17:10-13; Mark 9:11-13,
2) Joel 2:27-Joel 3:2 / Acts 2:16-21,
3) Deuteronomy 18:15-22 / Acts 3: 17-26,
4) Isaiah 61:1-3 / Luke 4:16-21

A particular section of the New Testament seems to me to seal your (and my) view, and though you mention this in your article, I think it good to write it here agian:

Hebrews 11:13-16 “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.”

It is interesting that “if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.” And this obviously included those mention further into this chapter because Heb. 11:39-40 says, “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”

Concerning the rebuilding of the temple and restoring Israel please compare Amos 9:11-15 with Acts 15:14-19.

More Scriptures concerning this temple, which I take is the centerpiece of a restoration of Israel, are these.
John 2:18-21
Acts 7:48-50
Acts 17:24-25
1 Corinthians 3:16-17
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
2 Corinthians 6:16
Ephesians 2:19-22

Joe V.

Blessings to you both,

Bob

As Bob has also clearly shown, Israel received all that God had promised her and forfeited it, finally, through her disobedience and unbelief. The absolute pillaging and destruction of Jerusalem, followed by the “salting” of that earth are clear signs of God’s abandonment of that former chosen nation.

Joe V.