25 Ridiculous Arguments Disrespecting Dispensationalism and Dispensationalists

The article makes good points, although I don't like Dan Phillips' tone (which is why I don't like Pyromaniacs website). But he does deal with the common arguments put out against dispensationalism. I have noticed how snarky the former-dispies are in their new found amillenialism views, just like the former Arminians in their new found Calvinism. Folks, the fruit of your view should promote Christ above all and not a self-preservation, elitist, snobby attitude.

Here are a few that I think are worth reading:

#13: "Dispies are over-literal."

Have you actually heard a dispensationalist lay out his hermeneutic? People who offer "over literal" as a seriously critique of dispensationalism have seemingly never read a book dealing with hermeneutics, written by a responsible dispensationalist. Try this for an interpretive principle:

When the plain sense of Scripture makes good sense, seek no other sense. Therefore, take every word in its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning, unlessthe facts of the immediate context, studied in the light of related passages and fundamental and axiomatic truths, clearly indicate otherwise.

It's a totally dispensational hermeneutic, and it's an equally dandy Reformed hermeneutic -- or should be. There's quite the chasm between saying "Of course God isn't literally a 'rock',and saying "Mount Zion -- oh yeah. Has to be the universal Christian church!" Dispensationalists are what all Reformed folks would be, if they were consistent in their hermeneutics.

# 9 "It isn't a spiritual hermeneutic."

Gosh, this one's such a hanging curveball. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Where to start? First, take off that "Plato is my homey" T-shirt, so we can talk. Oops, didn't see that "The Docetists are my crew" T-shirt underneath. Off with that too. So, tell me: the resurrected body of Jesus -- carnal? Or spiritual? I'll play the Jeopardy music while you look up 1 Corinthians 15:44f. (Hint: God made matter. He's really okay with matter. Matter matters. Sin ruined matter, the regeneration will redeem it.)

Finally, if none of that helped you out of your decoder-ring quagmire, this thought: try not to be more "spiritual" than God, 'kay? When God said Messiah would come from Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), He knew it meant "house of bread" -- but He meant the city anyway. I imagine what a CT would have done with that, before fulfillment: "What God is really saying would have been perfectly clear to the Jews. It was symbolic. Messiah would come from 'the house for bread,' from the storehouse of God's spiritual nourishment, and He would give life, as bread does. Those wooden literalists who look for fulfillment in an actual city are perverting the Word to their carnal imaginations."

Trying to out-spiritual God is really stupid.

#8: "You can't prove all those dispensational distinctives and prophetic features from the New Testament alone!"

Um, Bunky? Three words? "Plenary verbal inspiration." Dispensationalists do what all Reformed folks say they do: they believe in the whole Bible. Sort of got that idea from Jesus. So, just as no Reformed guy worth anything would accept such a demand as "Prove sovereign-grace election solely from 1 Chronicles 1:1," so no dispensationalist who believes in the principles of the Reformation should rise to the demand, "Prove every detail of your system from 1/3 of the Canon!" There is no passage that teaches everything that every other passage teaches. If so, God would have inspired a Bible with one verse.Or perhaps a better statement would be that God did inspire a Bible with one verse. It's just a really, really long verse. And so, no believer in Reformed principles should indulge in trying to impose such a faulty premise. It's simply not Reformed to do so.

End quote.