PROGRESSIVE DISPENSATIONAL WAY OFF BASE!

Online there is posted a short article on Progressive Dispensationalism. Who wrote it is not important, and I have no intention of attacking the person. But What he wrote should be answered because it is misleading. Below are quotes from that article. Some of the points I will take the time to respond to and other points I will just let stand, because they are so far off, any thinking person would catch it! PD: "Both sides have good arguments (Classical and Progressive Dispensaionalism)." Answer: Both beliefs can not be right. Someone is not doing his homework. And clearly, the PD folks admit that what they hold is a compromise with Covenant Theology. Therefore, such a mixture is just plain stupid, and dead wrong! PD: "Everyone should be able to have a great deal of understanding and empathy. If they do not, I suspect they have not really studied the issue." Answer: This is false. It is because many of us have studied the issue into the ground, that we know for certain that PD is foolishness. Again, the founders of this view admitted that they wanted to be accepted by the Covenant folks. They were ashamed of classical dispensationalism! Empathy (to be empathic) implies emotions and we do not study the Bible with our emotions but with our objectivity. The PD folks want to take this into the realm of "feeling" because those who advocate such a few are younger guys who are not "strong" in their Bible study. They have been raised with secular psychology! PD: "God made one covenant of redemption to man(?) that has been progressively fulfilled. The first 'installment' was made with Adam and Eve in Eden when God promised to fix what was broken (Gen. 3:15). This was a covenant of redemption made by God to man. All successive covenants are further installments to this covenant." Answer: Where in the world did this guy get this view? Where is the covenant of redemption mentioned or found? There is no such thing! Even Charles Hodge and Louis Berkhof admit that such a covenant is "implied" but not "explicit" in Scripture. It was made at some time in eternity past, they argue. So our writer just follows what the covenant guys have said without any objective facts to back up their views! In other words, they proclaim doctrine without biblical doctrine to establish what they teach! Where does it say all successive covenants are further installments? What sorry teaching! PD: "The one covenant of redemption is the central focus." Answer: How can this be if there is no such thing as a covenant of redemption? PD: "The Edenic Covenant of redemption was extended first in the Abrahamic Covenant in that God's promises to Abraham provided an avenue through which the covenant of redemption would be accomplished. Answer: I do not know how to answer this because the writer bounces all over Genesis to try to make some point. Now he connects the so-called Edenic Covenant with the so-called Covenant of Redemption, which we cannot find in Genesis. Then he somehow connects this with Abraham or the Abrahamic Covenant. I'm just terribly confused, as you should be also! By the way, the only covenants I deal with are the biblical covenants that we can see, read about, and measure. And there is no such thing as an "Edenic Covenant." This is some kind of man-made idea that will not fly! I must have the word "covenant" in a Bible passage in order to call it "a covenant." PD: "The Mosaic covenant was an extension of the Abrahamic Covenant." Answer: Now we really went out to woo-woo land! I have never ever heard that the Mosaic was an extension of the Abrahamic. Some one is making up ideas as they go along! PD: "The eternal peace that is promised is redemption from the toil of the curse (2 Sam. 7:11)." Answer: What in the world is this PD guy talking about? 2 Samuel 7:11 is about the one thousand year millennial reign of Christ. It has nothing to do with "spiritual" redemption but it is about a political redemption in which the earthly kingdom is established. And peace is not mentioned here but "rest" is. And it is not mentioned as eternal. We know that the millennium ends in chaos and rebellion not "eternal" redemption. Again, the PD guys are fishing in a dry hole. How could anyone follow such crazy off base teaching? PD: The Abrahamic covenant is an extension of the Edenic covenant. There is not a distinct future for the physical descendants of Abraham." Answer: This is so silly I can't even answer it. How crazy is that last sentence! PD: "In the end, there is only one people of God, one New covenant, one heaven. ... There is no eternal distinction between the church and Israel." Answer: This is only partly correct. While the church saints will be in the millennial kingdom, and have work to do in it, there is a reminder in Revelation of the two distinct peoples of God, Israel and the church. I am convinced the PD guys do not read their Bibles. In the eternal New Jerusalem, Israel is specifically and separately honored, and so is the church. We read in Revelation 21:12 of the "twelve gates, ... which are those of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel." And, we read of the "twelve foundation stones ... with the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb" (v. 14). Is this not recognition of the distinctiveness of Israel and the church, and the fact that the two groups have separate recognitions even in eternity? Clearly, the PDs are not reading and studying their Bibles! PD: "God will bring Israel into the church which they birthed." "Israel will be assumed into the church." Answer: I have never heard of these two ideas. I don't know where they are found in the Scriptures! Again, this is an illustration of figment-of-the-imagination made-up theology! And some of you want to follow the views of PD? PD: "The covenant of redemption has been progressively revealed throughout Scripture starting in Eden. Therefore, I am a 'Progressive Dispensationalist.'" Answer: There is no proof for such an idea. Finally, to show that these man-made covenants that this PD is so enamored with, you must read pages 158-163 in my hermeneutics volume "Classical Evangelical Hermeneutics." There all the pages are given from Hodge and Berkhof that show that they admit the man-made covenants are not scriptural—which they are open and honest about. What a mess the PDs have made of the Bible! –Dr. Mal Couch