I’ve been caught up in a couple interesting articles over on Sharper Iron. One is a story of one man’s journey out of dispensationalism, another is a story of why a former Lutheran is a classic deispensationalist. The comments are a wild ride through a sticky debate, to put it mildly.
At some point I want to type out my own story of leaving dispensationalism. But for now, I thought I’d compile a few helpful resources on the Dispensationalism question. Of course you can check out that category in my own blog, but here are a few resources. If anyone else wants to share something along these lines, please chime in.
My friend Nathan Pitchford, of Psalm 45 Publications and Reformation Theology, has several excellent articles on the topic. His article on the Abrahamic Covenant sticks to the OT witness about that covenant and explains how it fits with Hebrews’ spiritual perspective on the land promise.
Vern Poythress has an excellent book about this issue, available for free online: Understanding Dispensationalists. He presents Scriptural arguments against Dispensationalism, but does so in a charitable and helpful way.
There are also several articles and resources on Dispensationalism compiled at Monergism.com.
I have also been greatly helped by O. Palmer Robertson’s books on the Scriptural covenants. I’ve reviewed his books The Christ of the Covenants and The Israel of God on my blog. His books influenced my series of posts called Understanding the Land Promise, which presents a good explanation of my views. I also once posted an excellent power point presentation, from a friend of mine, on how to view all of Scripture from a covenantal perspective. The presentation is called The Advance of God’s Kingdom, and I found it extremely helpful.
Bob, you’re whole land promise argument rests on the supposed fulfillment of the promise in the kingdom of Solomon. That’s the lynch pin of your whole argument when the Bible doesn’t even specifically refer to that as the fulfillment of the land promise. You would think that if that was it, the Bible would have said something about it.
Will,
I think we’re going to have to disagree here. I take Josh. 21:43-45 and 1 Kings 8:56 as saying nothing of God’s promise about the land wasn’t fulfilled.
Furthermore, the promise said they would inherit the land forever, but they didn’t do that exactly. Reason is the promise was conditional, and for a while God kicked them out of the land. The New Testament shows us the promise is expanded to include the whole kosmos (Rom. 4), and Gentile believers share in it (Gal 3, Eph. 6:3).
The entire biblical teaching on land has to be taken into account, not just a literal understanding of Gen. 15 or 22.
Blessings,
Bob