Posted by
ValiantForTruth on Wednesday, May 28, 2008 9:38:15 AM
I did not always hold to Covenant Theology, but was born into the kingdom surrounded by hyper-Scofieldism. I was tutored in Dispensational Theology and tried to make sense of it. This gives me some insight into how they think.
This theology was invented in the mid 1800s [Re. John Darby]. It gained popularity with the publishing of the Scofield Bible in 1909. Since this is the means that the Dispensational Theology came to be known, it is absurd to imply that its influence was felt in colonial America.
Built on the pretense of literalism, the opponents of Scofield were labeled as theological liberals. The OT imagery of the Messianic Kingdom like Isaiah 35 and 61 was lost to them. In a book of symbols the period of time of 1000 years lost its significance of completeness as in all the ‘given ones’ will enter the kingdom and none of them will be lost.
For our purposes the Covenant Theology holds that the promises made to Abraham are fulfilled in the NC Church. There is only one people of God made up of both Jew and Gentile. The millennium is here now in the Gospel age. The age to come is the eternal state where the redemption purchased by Christ is fully realized.
Dispensational Theology holds that the promises made to Abraham are yet to be fulfilled in the modern state of Israel. There are two peoples of God: Israel and the Church. The millennium is to be realized in the age to come. Both sides agree that the binding of Satan occurs during the millennium.
Now my complaint is not with the historic premils, but with the dispensationals who hold to an unbiblical view of the Church as being something less than the ‘fulness of Him who fills all in all’ [Ephesians 1:22-23]. Also, they disregard the preeminence of Jesus Christ as the final authority on OT interpretation. The OT means what He and His apostles say it means.
It is my opinion that the colonials’ view of the kingdom led to the Revolution and that if they had been dispensationals there would have been no Revolution. The influence of Scofieldism today in America makes us content to live under tyranny waiting for the kingdom to come.
Scofieldism weakens the churches of their mission by robbing them of the knowledge that the kingdom of God is here now and that Christ is King over all now. The glorious age of Messiah spoken of by the prophets and defined in the NT as the millennium is here now. In colonial America the Christians that believed this influenced their culture and the world.