NT Framework - The Arrogance & Fallacy of Covenant Theology

Precept upon precept and line upon line. The Bible starts out with simple theology of God, Man, and Nature and then adds to it over time. As God revealed more and more our understanding grew. Never did His slow revealing delete what was given before, instead it built upon it. And yet Covenant Theology completely upends this simple and prevalent principle.

More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com 

This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).

Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner. 

Transcript

Why Sacrifices Could Return

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament framework. Today, the full lesson from Jeremy Thomas. Here's a hint of what's to come.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

And then make a big to-do about this. Like, why are the Mosaic sacrifices going to come back? Well, they're actually not mosaic, but anyway. Um, mosaic sacrifices never saved anybody anyway, did they? But they say, well, Jesus is the last sacrifice. Well, he's really the only sacrifice for sin. I mean, he's the only one who could provide us salvation through his sacrifice. So, well, but why would that come back? Well, there's okay, before you jump to all these conclusions, you might want to keep studying and figuring out if there could be other purposes for sacrifices. Just as in the Old Testament, there were other purposes for sacrifices. None of them saved anybody. So they obviously all had other purposes. So maybe there could be other purposes for them in the future.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

God is an uncreated being that we will spend all of eternity studying, praising, and glorifying, and never be exhausted to learn more about Him. The God man, Jesus, is the most complex person to have ever lived. Fully God, fully man. And the Bible, his message to us is as complex as it is equally complex. How else can this complex God make himself known to us? And yet we fall into this trap, we as humans, that we must simplify the Bible to a core theme, one aspect that it can be understood in. And yet the Bible is a multifaceted diamond that we get to study. It is not a simple one-dimensional, two-dimensional picture. It is full

The Bible Is Deeply Complex

SPEAKER_00 2:00

of uniquenesses and complexities as the God of the universe tries to express himself to us. So why does the covenant theology so crudely distill it down to one basic principle and in the process miss the beauty of his message to us?

SPEAKER_01 2:22

We've been through the birth, life, death, resurrection, and the ascension of the king. And part of this is is complicated, right? Because, well, he is the most complicated person ever, being both God and man, so that shouldn't be a surprise. But some things that transpired in his ministry uh really altered the angelic conflict uh at least from the time of the cross and the ascension onward. And what we mean by that is that previous to the life of the king and previous to his death, the main strategic goal of Satan was to get rid of the Messiah, preferably at his birth. And we see many attempts uh in the Old Testament to destroy the deliverer when Satan thought that he may come or to destroy the line of David, things like that. And of course in Matthew 2 with Herod killing the baby boys in and around Bethlehem, that's an attempt at the Messiah's life. But he is successful at coming into the world. And uh but then he in his uh ministry during his life the temptations, the attempt to get him to utilize his divine attributes and uh to deal with the temptations. This was a great uh temptation in itself, but he was supposed to manage these in his true humanity and thereby become the pilot for the Christian way of life. In other words, what Christ is doing in his life is he's not using his divine attributes to defeat the temptations to sin and so forth, he's doing it by means of the Spirit of God, and he's showing us as sort of the test pilot of the Christian way of life. So there's a change in the way that the Christian life is to be lived after Christ, and this new way of living is involving you know the indwelling spirit as a base for us living by the spirit, walking by the spirit, and um, this is the new Christian way of life. So, what I presented basically is that hey, there's a change, there's a major shift that has transpired. And this this change is related to the death of Christ, it's related to his ascension, and then of course

Pentecost And The New Christian Life

SPEAKER_01 4:45

the origin of the church on the day of Pentecost. The problem is that not all uh theologians and and churches in the world hold that there's a major shift in Acts chapter 2, um, the day of Pentecost. So it behooves us to kind of look at at this time two basic theologies. We'll look first at covenant theology this week, and then in the coming weeks, we'll look at dispensational theology, because these two really differ widely on what is going on on the day of Pentecost. And so we really need to understand because the people who are covenant theology are essentially what we would call evangelical, they're underneath that umbrella. These are going to be people who believe in the Trinity, these are going to be people who uh believe in the deity of Christ, of course. Um these people believe in sola scriptura, you know, the scriptures alone. Um so, you know, they're under the evangelical umbrella, but there is a wide divergence in their view of scripture uh with dispensational theology. So if you're not aware, I mean you you you won't understand. You'll say, you know, I don't understand why you've got the Presbyterians and you've got the Reformed Baptists and you've got, you know, Lutherans and Anglicans and Episcopals, like what are all these people believing? Why do we differ from them? Because all those groups are essentially uh tend to be covenant in their theology. And uh so we want to talk about this um because it's very, very, very different. Um why? What what how are they viewing the scriptures? What's so different? Now uh when I when I broadly speak of denominations like that, I'm not being absolute. There are you know people in these groups that hold different ideas. Um but if you go to their creeds and to what they are supposed to teach and supposed to believe, that's essentially what I'm referring to. And I even thought about spending some time just going through the church history to to look at the creeds that were developed out of the Reformation, but I decided not to, uh, because it just gets so long. But so what we will do is just try to explain what covenant theology is and um then some of the uh impacts, some of the in the things that it causes, some of the outworking of it. And this this will have tremendous you'll you you'll a lot of people say, Well, I don't want to know all this, why do I need to know this other theology? Because it'll explain so many things in the world about what's going on in the church and why they have an outlook on this or that. It'll really help. So uh don't be one of the people that says, I don't want to know all that, and then come along later and say, Why do they believe this? I told you, you know, I'm telling you now why they are thinking the way they're thinking. So covenant theology has a really nice ring to it because there's these things in the Bible called covenants. And so we all see this term and we say, wow, oh yeah, covenant, that can't be bad. This has got to be great. It says covenant. Um now, this word covenant, the way they're using it is to refer to theological covenants, okay, not biblical covenants. When we talk about covenants here at Spokane Bible Church, what we're talking about will be things like the Noahic covenant. Um, we're talking about the Abrahamic covenant, we may be talking about the Mosaic covenant or the Davidic covenant

Covenant Theology Versus Dispensationalism

SPEAKER_01 8:05

or the new covenant. These are all covenants that are spoken of in the Bible. We call them biblical covenants, but they're not talking about those. They're talking about what are called theological covenants. And you say, what are those? Well, they're they're theological extrapolations. Uh they're ideas that they think that they can gather from the biblical covenant. So, yeah, they read the Bible and they said, Well, yeah, this is a big idea that covenants are all through the Bible. So, what they did was they created basically one overarching covenant. Okay, and I'll have a picture of this in your notes. You have a picture of this if you get the notes. One overarching covenant, and they put all the biblical covenants underneath them. So that all these biblical covenants are outworkings of this one covenant. Okay. So they talk about three covenants, but essentially they function in terms of one covenant, okay? Now, that which is the covenant of uh grace. So I'll talk about it. So, theological covenants versus biblical covenants. Again, covenant theologians borrowed the idea of covenant from the biblical covenants that we read in the Bible, and they created one overarching covenant that would govern God's relationship to man, uh, particularly after the fall. That covenant is they call the covenant of grace. Uh, but they have three theological covenants works, the covenant of works, covenant of grace, and sometimes they talk about a covenant of redemption. Um, I have defined these here in a moment, but um, the reason they are called theological covenants is because they are not explicitly found in the Bible. You you simply will just not read about them. Uh so you may be wondering why did they talk about them so much? Why are they what controls everything in their way of thinking if they're not in the Bible? Well, covenants are, right? But so they just thought that they would join them all under one banner, particularly the covenant of grace. Now, um, here's Louis Burkhoff in his systematic theology many, many, many decades ago. And here's how he reasons about this and why there's only one covenant. He says, Well, the Bible teaches there's just one gospel, right, by which men can be saved. And because the gospel is nothing but the revelation of the covenant of grace, it follows there's only one covenant. Um you say, but no, there's all these covenants. The Noahic, there's the Abrahamic, the Davidic, the new, the, you know. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So what they've done again is they've made this an overarching covenant that basically is just outworking through these other covenants. So, really, in their mind, because there's one gospel, there's only one covenant. And it's salvific, see, it's all about the gospel, it's all about salvation, it's all about uh saving men. Okay. Now, um there are some implications to the covenant of grace that they've set up, as and we'll walk through this a bit more so you understand. Um, in their way of thinking, every passage in the Bible, okay, the entire Bible, is viewed through the lens of the covenant of grace, which they say is a salvific covenant because um the Bible and its covenants are all about how God saves the elect. That's what they think the Bible is essentially about. It's about how God saves the elect. That's what it's all about in their thinking. And you say, well, that it is all it talks about, yes, it does talk about salvation quite a bit. But is it all about salvation? Okay, well. Um, so the biblical covenants in their thinking are just outworkings of the covenant of grace. So you've got all these covenants, and all those covenants like the Abrahamic, the Davidic, the New Covenant, they're all just saying God will save the elect. And these are all fulfilled by Christ on the cross. So think about, let's think about the Noahic covenant. Okay, we've talked about these covenants in the framework series. Noahic covenant. After the flood, God made a covenant with Noah and all flesh, including animals, right? Now, he promised in that covenant he would never flood the entire world again to destroy all flesh that has the breath of life, right? Is that a salvific covenant? I mean, does God have a plan of salvation for animals? Not spiritual salvation. I mean, yes, to keep them around, preserve their species on the earth, yes, but it's it's it's not a salvific covenant. So in covenant theology, those details that I just described are just glossed over.

unknown 12:28

Okay?

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Because all these covenants in their mind are basically salvation. They're just saying that salvation, you know, will be provided by God. The Abrahamic covenant. We talk about the Abrahamic covenant. God called out Abraham, he made certain promises. Basically, we lump them into three categories. He would give them a land, a seed would come forth from them who would be the Messiah, and worldwide blessing. Blessing would go to the whole world through Abraham and his seed. Uh, specifically, of course, the Messiah that comes from him. So, again, um that covenant, which is repeated to Isaac and then Jacob and the 12 tribes, which we call Israel, this covenant we would say was made specifically with Israel, right? And um it's got lots of details. Things like land, you know, that they would have as an internal real estate that would be belong to them. Things like that. And they say, no, this is all just salvation by grace. And so again, all those details get washed out, and it's all just about salvation. Same thing for the Davidic. What's the Davidic? The Davidic covenant basically is made with David's house, right? That God would give them his house a eternal kingdom, and uh, there would be an eternal king that rules that kingdom, and he would sit on an eternal throne. And they say, Well, yeah, that's all just about the Messiah and just all about salvation. And same thing with the new covenant. They're gonna do the exact same thing, and they say, Well, all these things are just fulfilled in Christ, and so all these covenants can just be placed under the covenant of grace, and this is the one, this this forms the one people of God, okay, the one people of God that God is gonna say, these are quote unquote the elect. Okay, now this is this is how they view everything in the Bible. Now, if you've never thought of the Bible this way, it's difficult to think of it this way. So, what I ask people to do is try to put yourself in their shoes, try to understand from their point of view, uh, so we

Covenant Of Grace As Interpretive Lens

SPEAKER_01 14:30

can at least understand what they are saying. But all the details from these covenants just get kind of washed out and interpreted as metaphor, metaphors for salvation. Um, so we'll go through some of these, but like for example, whenever you have some detail in a covenant about the promised land, like uh Genesis 13, 14 through 17, when Abraham divides from Lot, and Lot goes over there, and Abram stays over here, and then God says to Abraham, Look at all the land around you, I will give this to you as your eternal possession. You know, walk throughout the land, see what it's like. This is the land that I will give you, and to your descendants after you. And they say that's just a metaphor for heaven, that they will never get that land, uh, or that they already got it, or something like that sometimes. Uh but they say that's just a metaphor, a salvation metaphor for going to heaven. If you talk about the temple in Ezekiel 40 to 46, how many of you are familiar with that temple description in Mel? I mean, that's seven chapters of the Bible. Ezekiel 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 4, 45, 46, 47, 40, 7 chapters of the Bible. Talk about a millennial temple that will be rebuilt by the Messiah. It'll have a Zadakian priesthood, and the Levites will be involved as well, and there will be sacrifices and all this stuff, and none of it has ever happened. And so what is are these chapters speaking about? Well, we're told there's salvation metaphors for the church, that this is a picture of the church. Because the church in the New Testament is called a temple, right? So, therefore, that was just talking about the church. So, all the details, I mean, it's very detailed. It's up on a mountain, and there's the dimensions of it are given, and there's a river that flows out from underneath the throne, and half of it goes into the Dead Sea and makes it pure water, the other half goes to the Mediterranean. And these are this, it's but it's all just the church. Okay, why? You say, well, why? Why would they interpret that? Well, because it's just a it's under the covenant of grace, and everything's just about salvation. So the details don't matter, okay. These are just metaphors. Um, when it talks about the sacrifices there, and then make a big to-do about this, like, why are the mosaic sacrifices going to come back? Well, they're actually not mosaic, but anyway. Um, mosaic sacrifices never saved anybody anyway, did they? But they say, well, Jesus is the last sacrifice. Well, he's really the only sacrifice for sin. I mean, he's the only one who could provide us salvation through his sacrifice. So, well, but why would they come back? Well, there's okay, before you jump to all these conclusions, you might want to keep studying and figuring out if there could be other purposes for sacrifices. Just as in the Old Testament, there were other purposes for sacrifices, none of them saved anybody. So they obviously all had other purposes. So maybe there could be other purposes for them in the future, but they kind of mock at this idea. And they say, well, see, in the New Testament, Paul says in Romans 12, therefore, you know, offer yourselves as a living sacrifice. And so they see this later passage that Paul wrote tells us that the real sacrifices that were being described in Ezekiel 40 to 46, which is all about the church, are that in the church we should offer ourselves as sacrifices. And no, there won't be any future literal sacrifices as described in those passages. It's all just metaphors for the church and living sacrifices. Um, when the Bible in the Old Testament within the covenants talked about economic prosperity of Israel, like you will be the head and all the other nations will be the tail. Or the, you know, the the mountains will flow with wine. You know, it's it's talking about the agricultural prosperity that they will have. They say, no, that's just that's just salvation metaphors for blessings in heaven and things like that. Uh and the political realities, you know, again, like with you know, Israel would be at the the head and they'll be the chief and they'll rule over the world. They say, well, no, that's just the church. So again, you know, like what I'm trying to show you is that when they view when they view everything, they're looking at it through the lens of the of the covenant of grace. So let's just chart this. I'll I'll chart it a couple ways. I'm gonna draw an eye here. My eye is not very good. Anyway, it's not very good, so I'm gonna undo that part. But let's just do this, okay? They're gonna look at everything in the Bible through the covenant of grace. So if you run across things like the Abrahamic covenant or the Noaic, you know, right, they're viewing that through a specific lens, as it's just a salvific, because the cut that's what the covenant of grace is. It's it's all about salvation. Saving the elect. Okay, so that that's a good Noaic covenant's gonna be about that. Again, I've tried to point out though, well, how would this relate to the Noaiic Covenant? Because the details are about animals and never flooding the world again and things like that. The Abrahamic, the Mosaic, right, the Davidic, the New. Again, they're all being viewed through a specific lens. So I took a course one time, and I didn't go very far in the course, but I took a few of the, I listened to a few of the lectures by a covenant theologian. And in the very first lecture in the course, he said, our interpretive method, our hermeneutic, how we interpret the Bible is the covenant of grace. That is our hermeneutic. It tells us how to read the Bible. So all this began, you know, most of it began at the time of the Reformation. People were coming out of the Enlightenment, they were looking for a way to understand the whole Bible, they were looking for a principle that would help them understand everything. Since covenant was such a dominant theme in the Bible, right? Then they said, okay, well, we'll set up the covenant of grace uh as an interpretive principle, and it will tell us how to interpret the Bible. Now, the rest of us, like here, we say, well, no, the way we interpret the Bible is we use the, we would just say literal hermeneutic, or sometimes we say the grammatical, historical, contextual hermeneutic. You know, you interpret passages in their context and they mean what they say. Um, but they would agree with that to a large extent, but then they would say, this is really the main thing that's controlling what it really means. The covenant of grace.

unknown 21:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Now, um, this this is obviously I'm going to show you a bunch of repercussions. Now I'm going to show you another picture of this so you you you have this firmly in your mind. Covenant of grace, okay, and we're just going to put it at the top, and underneath it, see, you can put the Noahic, the Abrahamic. So again, I'm just trying to express to you the prevailing thing in their mind is the covenant of grace, right? Mosaic, Davidic, and the new covenants. So they're just viewing these as outworkings of the covenant of grace. That's all they're doing. Okay. Everything, and since this the covenant of grace, which I'm now going to define carefully, since it's salvific, all these other covenants are salvific. Everything basically has. To do with salvation. Now, covenant of grace. Covenant of grace basically is this. Um, well, how how maybe I should define the covenant of works? Because they've got a covenant of works too. The covenant of works, they claim, was made between God and Adam. And the covenant was this if you and Eve will obey me perfectly, I'll give you eternal life. So it's a covenant of works. If you you and Eve obey me perfectly, I will give you eternal life. Now, of course, they failed. Everybody knows this. They know this, they agree with this. Genesis 3, the fall.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

Right?

SPEAKER_01 22:34

So, in the wake of the fall, then God made a second covenant, the covenant of grace. And in the covenant of grace, God made a covenant with Adam and all his elect offspring to give them eternal life. God made a covenant with Adam and all his elect offspring to give them eternal life. So, since the whole focus of the covenant of grace is on salvation, you know, having eternal life, especially just for the elect, then obviously this sets up the cross. They're thinking that when Christ is on the cross, the only people he's dying for are the elect. I mean, that's why they believe this. You say it's, well, no, they cite verses. No, they cite verses after the fact to try to prove it. It's not, it's not going from the verses. It's going from the covenant of grace and saying God made a covenant with Adam and all of his elect offspring that he would give them eternal life. Therefore, the only people that Jesus dies for on the cross are the elect. Like, this is the theological structure that's controlling how they interpret everything. Okay, look, what I'm trying to tell you is don't talk to these people about verses because it has nothing to do with the verses. It has everything to do with this idea. Okay, and it is a theological idea. Okay, it is not explicitly found in the Bible, it is a grid through which they are reading the Bible. As I said before, they will tell you it is their hermeneutic. It is how they read everything in the Bible. Now, this may all sound surprising to you, but hopefully not. But if you haven't been around covenant theology, then you probably wouldn't. But I mean, I teach this stuff all the time for years and years in dispensationalism course at the seminary, so I'm quite familiar with it. Now let's let's look at some of the let's say repercussions of this.

Israel Replaced And Real World Fallout

SPEAKER_02 24:41

The first of which is let me go back. Come on.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

PowerPoint. The first repercussion is there's only one people of God. Well, no, let's do this one. That's the second one. The first one is the ultimate purpose of God is soteriological, meaning that's a word for salvation. Okay, everything's about salvation. So every passage is viewed through the lens of the covenant of grace, it's salvific, so all the passages in the Bible are about how God saves the elect. Okay. And we've we've kind of been through this. Now, the second big implication of this is that there's only one people of God. These are the people known as the elect. Meaning there's no distinction between the church and Israel. The church has either superseded Israel or they have replaced Israel in God's uh purpose. Okay. So this is because they're viewing the entire human race as either the elect, you're either elect or you're non-elect. And so there's one people of God, the elect. Now that's not complicated logic. It's it's super easy. This is super, super simple to understand. Um, so those in the nation Israel who believe, people like Abraham, they were elect. When the nation Israel rejected their Messiah and he was crucified, the church replaced or superseded the nation Israel in the covenant purpose of God. Which means what? What does that mean about Israel in the future?

SPEAKER_02 26:11

There is none.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

God is done with the nation Israel. He's not, you say, well, what's going on in the Middle East then? What what is this nation Israel? 1948, 1967, Jerusalem becomes the capital. What's going on? It's just another nation like any nation on earth. In their thinking. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

It's just another nation.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

There's nothing special happening over there.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

So God has no longer a purpose for Israel. Okay. In fact, most of these theologians are pro-Palestinian, and they claim that Israel are occup, you know, they're the occupation, they have the occupation of the land that really belongs to the so-called Palestinians, and they enter into the political sphere to advance BDS, right? Which is boycott Israel, divest, you know, take your investments out of Israeli companies, and put sanctions on Israel. Now, this is what we would call people in the evangelical Christian church. This is what I'm telling you.

unknown 27:23

Okay?

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Why there are in Protestant evangelical churches a mass of churches who want to boycott Israel, want to divest of them, you know, in their investments, and sanction put sanctions on them. Um and they claim that Israel's at fault because they're occupying a land that doesn't really belong to them because God's done with Israel. Um this year earlier, sometime I don't know, a few months ago, I was reading a another book this year on uh the Holocaust, and this one was by a little girl named uh Anita Dittmann. She was a messianic Jew in Germany. Um she was young, you know, even before things really got underway in 1939. I mean, things were underway, but when they really got underway and she um went to a Lutheran, she had a Lutheran pastor there in Germany. And he didn't really follow all the Lutheran typical Lutheran stuff. I mean he actually believed that you know there was a future for Israel and God loved the Jewish people. Um but he was out of step with the vast majority of the Lutheran church in in Germany, of which many many Germans were were Lutheran. I mean, who was Luther? Well, he was a German, you know. So uh many of them were, but she was befuddled. I mean, she was confused. I mean, she was only like 13, 14. She's growing up through this, through the Holocaust period, as a messianic Jew, so she believed in the Messiahship of Jesus. And um when she didn't understand though, like how could she so many Lutherans in our country be against Jews? Like she didn't understand it because the Bible, God loves the Jewish people, they're the apple of his eye, he's made covenant promises to them. Like it didn't make any sense to her, right? But see, in Lutheran theology, when you've got the covenant of grace controlling everything and God is through with the Jewish people, then Nazi Germany is the logical end of that theology in that nation. It's to get rid of the Jewish people. I mean in fact, I read another book this year about it.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

Um Hitler's main goal was not to win the war.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

It was not. It had nothing to do with ultimately winning the war. It had ultimately to do with destroying every last Jew on the planet. That's what his main goal was. Um and that all was something flowing out of ultimately covenant theology, along with their other ideas. But ultimately, you know, obviously Satan's behind that, but without going into a bit long purpose on this, this is one of the implications of the covenant of grace. If you've only got one people of God, and it's the elect, then God's through with the Jewish nation. He has no future purpose for the nation Israel. And so we should boycott them, divest, sanction, and you know, those people over there now who live in the land of Israel, they're just occupants. And we should be pro-Palestinian.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

And that's why Anita Ditman, when she finally understood this by talking to her Lutheran pastor, she said they they started referring to the themselves as the real Christians, and these other Lutherans, they're not even the real Christians. And they meant it in the sense like because they don't believe the Bible, what the Bible's actually saying.

unknown 30:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Well, when you're blinded by the covenant of grace, sure, you don't understand what the Bible's saying because you're looking at it through a lens, and it's not the right lens. Um that's I just discussed all this. Um, the New Testament, third implication. Okay, so the first implication, just so we don't get lost, the first implication is the ultimate purpose of God is salvation. Okay, forget the details, like the land, forget the temple, forget sacrifices, forget all that. It's everything's just about salvation, right? Um, second, there's only one people of God, the elect. So, of course, when Jesus comes, he's only coming to die for the elect. And of course, the church has replaced Israel or superseded them in God's plan. God has no future for Israel.

Reading The New Into The Old

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Third implication: the New Testament is read back into the Old Testament. Now, this is interesting and also somewhat frightening. The New Testament, in their perspective, the New Testament sets aside and corrects the literal interpretation of the Old Testament. Notice this is this is not going to be my words, okay? The words correct are words that they state in their own journal articles. So they're saying the Jews were wrong and to read the Bible, the Old Testament, literally, okay? Here's from the Westminster Theological Seminary Journal. The Reformed exegete approaches the Old Testament prophets from the perspective of the unity of the covenant. Remember? I mean, how many times? I'm not, I did not make this up, okay? This is not Jeremy Thomas. Okay, this is their stuff. That unity of the covenant is a covenant of grace. That's what they're talking about. The New Testament sets aside and corrects literal interpretation of Old Testament prophets.

SPEAKER_02 32:53

Now, if that's what's going on, there's a number of things that I'm going to open the Bible here in a minute.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

We're going to go to some of these passages and see what they do with them, okay? But if they're correcting it, then that would mean that their interpretation was wrong in the Old Testament. They weren't supposed to be reading it literally, but this has a number of very big implications for believers that lived back then in the Old Testament. Like, what were they supposed to do with the Bible if they couldn't understand it?

SPEAKER_02 33:20

Like, this doesn't even make any sense, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:26

So the New Testament's read back into the Old Testament. Again, this the temple, remember, that's it's described as a future rebuilt temple with sacrifices and so forth. And they say, Oh, that was just shadows. The reality is Christ, and Paul described the temple as the church. So now the church is the temple, and Ezekiel 40 to 46 has been fulfilled. We shouldn't expect that. Sacrifices in the future temple can't possibly be that. Um, those are interpreted by Paul, you know, as through Christ, and the believer is to sacrifice his body as a living and holy sacrifice. So again, it's all been fulfilled. Land promised to Israel, that can't possibly refer to some real estate in the Middle East with borders. Uh, even though it says all this stuff, but we needed to wait until we got the New Testament to really understand it, is what they're saying. You had to wait till you got the New Testament to understand what these passages really meant. So the land that's just heaven, that's the ultimate destiny of the one people of God, the elect. Okay, so from their own words, okay, so this is Vern Poithras. He's a covenant theologian. He says, since the existence of Israel itself has symbolic and heavenly overtones from the beginning. And I mean, I just honestly, I read that and I'm like, huh? I mean, it was a guy named Abraham walking around from Ur to the land of Israel through Haran. Okay, we know the story, right? I mean, does that have so many symbolic and heavenly overtones? I mean, like, what are you talking about? Um He says, but since it's that way, the fulfillment of prophecy encompasses these same overtones. The eschatological time, the end time, is the time when the symbolic overtones in the very nature of Israel itself are transformed into reality. And he's talking about in a heavenly reality. It's just like anotherly reality. Not anything like in the land that God promised them that God said, Hey, take a walk around this land, look at it all, see it. Not the land that God took Moses, remember, and stood him in a place and showed him all the land. Not that.

SPEAKER_02 35:24

Moses was supposed to know that that's about heaven.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

Here's another one by Vern. Pre-eschatological prophetic fulfillments. That just means things that have already been fulfilled in the past. He says they have a hermeneutically different character than do eschatological fulfillment. In other words, here's what he's saying. Put in simple language, because he's writing it sounds complicated. He's saying, okay, we have prophecy that was fulfilled in the past, right? I mean, we know that. A lot of stuff was fulfilled around the first coming of Christ. What he's saying is, when you interpret things that are related to the second coming of Christ, you have to interpret them differently. You can't follow the same method. You interpreted those one way. You can't take that same method and employ it and use it over here to interpret future things, future prophecy. They don't, they're not the same. That's what he's saying. And you say, what? It was all just what they're saying is all just shadows in the Old Testament. And now we know the reality in the New Testament, but it could not be known by people during the Old Testament period. So the Jews were wrong about their expectation of an earthly kingdom with Christ ruling on David's throne over the nations. That's what they're saying. This is all wrong. They were all wrong. And of course, they would say anyone who's a dispensationalist is also wrong. Fifth part of this aspect of the New Testament being read back into the Old Testament, it simply means that Old Testament passages could not possibly be understood on their own terms. Nobody in the Old Testament knew what it meant. That's what this is saying. Nobody in the Old Testament knew what the Bible meant, what God was promising in the covenants, or any of that. You had to wait until you got the New Testament, then you can read it back into the Old Testament, and now we know what it means. But they didn't.

SPEAKER_02 37:23

And all their expectations were wrong.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

In other words, as Porthra says, one must compare later scripture, meaning New Testament, right, to the earlier scripture, meaning Old Testament, to understand everything. So again, this isn't me. I'm not saying this. He says this. Such comparison, though it should not undermine or contradict grammatical historical interpretation, goes beyond its bounds. So he's saying, hey, there's more than just grammatical historical interpretation. We have to go beyond that. We have to go beyond the grammar and we have to go beyond the context. Okay. It takes account of information not available in the original historical and cultural context. And all he's meaning there is it's taking information that was not available to them. In other words, the New Testament, and we're going to read it back. We're going to read it back. And the New Testament, therefore, explains everything in the Old Testament. Which means you can't understand the Old Testament on its own. You have to have the New Testament. Now, let's go to the next implication, and this will be the last one we deal with. But this is how the New Testament authors quote the Old Testament. You know, when you read the New Testament, right, you're going along, and then there'll be a quote from the Old Testament. Usually they'll put it in like all caps or something like that, so that you know this is from the Old Testament. You can look over in your margin, you can find the reference and go back and look at that original context, right? So here's what they do: they say all the various fulfillment formulas. So if it said, so it is fulfilled, or this is that which was spoken by, you know, Isaiah or somebody. They say all those fulfillment formulas mean that whatever is quoted after that is directly fulfilled on that occasion, and we should not ever expect

Acts 2 Joel And Fulfillment Claims

SPEAKER_01 39:10

it to be fulfilled in any other way. I'm going to take you to one that's very important because it's on the day of Pentecost. It's Acts chapter 2, verse 16. Acts chapter 2. Let's go there. I just want to show you what's going on. And hopefully this will also help you study your Bible, read your Bible, right? Which is always a good idea. Acts chapter 2, we have the day of Pentecost. There is an event, right, where there is this great noise of a rushing wind, and then there's this visual of these tongues that are, it says distributing themselves as fire. In other words, I mean, how fast does fire distribute itself? Around here, if you get a fire at this time of year, it's very, very rapid. So these tongues of fire were moving very rapidly from person to person in the room, mainly the twelve. They began to speak in other languages that they'd never studied, right? And the group, all this brought a great, much larger crowd to the area where they were all gathered. And you know, you can hear them there in verse 6, they're saying, when this sound occurred, the crowd came together. They're bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own uh that Greek word is dialect. Dialect, not just language. Like we all speak English, right? But some people say to me up here, Where are you from? They know I'm not from here because they can hear uh the twang from Texas, right? Uh now I speak the same, we speak the same language, but I there's this particular dialect, you know, that we speak in Texas, and it's not the same as the people in Boston. They got their own. And uh yeah, we all speak the same language. But the great, the interesting thing about Pentecost was, yes, different languages, but also with the nuances from specific regions throughout the Roman Empire that that spoke a specific way. And they're hearing this and they're amazed, it says, Well, why are not all these who are speaking Galileans? You say, Well, what does the Galileans have to do with it? Well, they were considered a country bumpkin. I guess we'd say today, like people from Georgia, or something like that. Like they're not educated, you know. They they you know, and then if you're from New York, you know, maybe you're like highly educated and intellectual, but if you're from Georgia, you know, you're probably inbred. Um, that's how the Judeans thought of the Galileans. It's the way it is. That's how they thought of them. You know, it's it was a lot like the urban versus rural in our country today. You know, people in the cities think they're all up to speed on everything. People in the country, they're just stupid people. And, you know, they're saying, you well, aren't these all just stupid people? I mean, how could they be speaking all these other languages with such finesse, even in the same dialect? That's what and um then the mentions at least 12 different places there where they're speaking various languages from all these regions with the specific dialects and nuances. How is this, you know? And they all continued verse 12 in amazement, and everybody's perplexed and say, Well, what does this mean? Others said, Oh, they're full of sweet wine. So their interpretation is these people are drunk. Um, but Peter then stands up and he begins to give his explanation for the tongues, right? And he says there in verse 15, he says, For these men are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only the third hour of the day, meaning it was 9 a.m. And uh, you know, not many people getting drunk at 9 a.m., at least not in the first century. So uh he says, but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel. That little phrase, this is what? What covenant theologians and others will say, well, that's a fulfillment formula. What Peter is about to say as an explanation for tongues fulfills the passage from Joel. Okay, now the Joel passage here that Peter starts quoting in verse 17 down through uh verse 21 comes from Joel. You can look in your margin. It's uh Joel 2, 28 to 32. Joel 2, 28 to 32. And this passage is in a context that is talking about the coming of the Messiah, okay, the second coming, and the great catastrophic events that will transpire when he comes back to set up his kingdom on earth. Okay? So let's just read verse 17. Let's read through it. I will pour forth of my spirit on all mankind, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Now I just want to ask a question here. Did anybody in Acts 2 dream dreams, see visions, or prophesy? Or did people speak in tongues? Which one did they do? Speak in tongues or have visions and dreams and so forth?

SPEAKER_02 44:24

They spoke in tongues, right? So why did Peter say this passage?

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Why did he quote Joel? Let's keep going. Even on my bond slaves, both men and women, I will in those days pour forth of my spirit, and they shall prophesy. Again, nobody really prophesied. All they did was speak the great deeds of God, which were what the miracles Jesus had done in his life. There's no prophecy going on about the future. It was just the miracles that Christ had done were being recounted in these foreign languages. That's what was going on. Verse 19, I will grant wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke. Did you see blood and fire and vapor of smoke on the day of Pentecost? Anybody see those great catastrophic interventions in the world? No, they didn't happen on the day of Pentecost. The sun, verse 20, will be turned into darkness. Did that happen on the day of Pentecost? No. The moon into blood. Did that happen? Blood moons? No. Before the great and glorious day of the Lord shall come, meaning these are the events that transpire right at the second coming, right? And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Okay, so he quotes that whole passage, Peter does, and he says, you know, this is my explanation for tongues. I uh I cite Joel 2, 28 to 32. Question. Did Joel, anywhere in that passage that we just read, did Joel prophesy tongues? Did we ever read anybody speaking in tongues? Did Joel ever talk about people speaking in tongues? Did he ever forecast that?

SPEAKER_02 46:04

No.

unknown 46:06

No.

SPEAKER_01 46:06

Yeah, then why did he quote it? So here's what covenant theologians do, okay? Before we go into what the meaning is, here's what they do. All the various fulfillment formulas, this being one of them, this is that, and in quoting Joel, are said by covenant theologians to be directly fulfilled, even if it defies the literal meaning of the text. Now we just read the literal meaning of the text. People will dream dreams, they will have visions, they will prophesy, there will be wonders in the sky above, signs on the earth below, blood, fire, vapor of smoke, sun turning to dark, moon turning to blood. Okay, all those things they say, forget all the details. Those things will never happen, or they were never intended to be understood that way. The way they were to be understood was people will speak in tongues. Now, at this point is where if you're in a conversation with somebody who's talking like this, you would say, Well, did the second coming happen at this time? And the most logical of them will argue that in a sense he did by means of the Spirit. And that is the second coming. Others will be a little less extreme, and they will say that the kingdom came at this time, although the king didn't, but that the kingdom the king came in AD 70 through the Roman army, so about 40 years later. And these people are known as full preterists. Full preterists. A full preterist believes that all of the all of the prophecies regarding Christ's second coming have already been fulfilled, including the entire book of Revelation up through chapter 19, chapter and 20. The whole book of Revelation has already been fulfilled in AD 70. That'd be like David Chilton, Max Planck. Um then others would go even further. I'm sorry, they wouldn't go as far. People like uh R. C. Spruell, who was a partial preterist. So he says, yeah, most of the book of Revelation and most of these things were all fulfilled in 70 AD. But yeah, there's still going to be a future second coming. So they would disconnect it. It would be less consistent to their position. I mean, I tell you to be careful who you listen to. Well, I should probably tell you to be this more. Be careful who you listen to because do you really know everything they believe? And if they believe a lot of this stuff, I mean, how viable are their other ideas going to be? And by the way, they make it this all sound really good. But I mean I'm giving you kind of bottom line stuff so you can see. But if you're just reading them, I mean most Christians would read their stuff and go, yeah, this makes total sense. Because it's they've refined it to where it seems to make sense to people. And they use certain Christian buzzwords and passages, and that makes people go, Oh yeah, this is right. Um but they're gonna say none of this was is to be fulfilled in in any kind of literal way, like it's described here in Joel.

SPEAKER_02 49:25

Um what just wrote well, we'll deal with it in a minute.

SPEAKER_01 49:32

Okay. But if a passage from the Old Testament prophet Joel, for example, is said to be in the New Testament fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, that must mean that Pentecost fulfills the whole complex of Second Advent prophecy in Joel. Old Testament details of geophysical catastrophism must be reinterpreted metaphorically. And that's exactly what they do. And people let them get away with this, and people give millions and millions of dollars every year to these churches and pastors. Moving on. This is all the stuff about preterism. If you don't think that this is common, when I lived in Fredericksburg, one of my friends from where I grew up in Paris, Texas, happened to live in Fredericksburg. He went to the church at the end of our street that we used to walk to when we'd go on a rock walk. I think it was called Journey. It was a Journey Church. And he went to that church, and his father-in-law was the pastor of that church, and I started talking to him about the book of Revelation and stuff like that, and he said, Oh, that was all fulfilled in 70 AD. He was a full preterist. A guy I grew up with in Southern Baptist Church in Paris, Texas, a little podunk town, a bunch of stupid urban people or rural people, right? And he was believing this stuff. And he was in youth group with me. And he grew up and now he's believing all this stuff, and God's done with Israel. That's it. Church has replaced Israel. Second coming all happened in the 70 AD. So if it was in Par if it was in Fredericksburg, Texas, a town of 10,000 people, and one of my friends from high school who lived, happened to live in that town believed it, I guarantee you it's in this town. All over the place. Because this is this is growing. Preterism is getting popular. Preter is just Latin for past, past fulfilled. It's already been fulfilled. Is this really how we're supposed to read the Bible? Are we supposed to just gloss over the details and just say they're symbols or metaphors of salvation? When the Bible uses a fulfillment formula, does it always mean direct fulfillment? When I say direct fulfillment, what I mean is, of course, there are passages that are directly fulfilled, something like this. The Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Well, where was the Messiah born? Bethlehem. That's a direct fulfillment. It's a one-for-one correspondence. It's very easy to understand. This one here in Acts 2 is a little more difficult because you're supposed to ask yourself, well, why would Peter quote a Joel II passage

Applicational Fulfillment And Passage Priority

SPEAKER_01 52:00

that doesn't even speak about tongues? Why would he cite this passage to explain the tongues? The simple answer is what he's doing is what's called an applicational fulfillment. What do we mean by application? I take lots of Old Testament passages, and you know, we quote these right out of the Psalms and we make an application to our lives, even though it was not written to us. I mean, it's written for Israel. It might be about King David's life, it might be about the nation of Israel at that time, some promise or something for them, right? That's the meaning. And then we make an application of it to us. And that's what Peter is doing. There's one point of similarity here in what Joel said would happen in the last days prior to the second coming that explains the tongues. And it's the fact that his spirit would be poured out. And that's his explanation. Why aren't people speaking in tongues? Well, they're not drunk and they're not crazy. But what has happened? There's been a pouring forth of my spirit. Verse 17 is where Joel mentions it. He also mentions it in verse 18, there, pouring forth of my spirit. And then, just so we know everything is kosher with this, no pun intended, we go to verse 33, where he's not quoting Joel and he's explaining. 2.33. Therefore, Peter says, coming to his conclusion, having been exalted to the right hand of God, speaking of Jesus, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured forth this which you both see and hear. What did he pour forth? Well, the Spirit who gave them utterance to speak in tongues. That's the only part of Joel's prophecy that he is interested in. He's not saying, and we should forget about the blood, fire, and smoke, and we should forget about all these geophysical catastrophes. And he's not definitely not saying, and Joel is completely fulfilled, and this will not be fulfilled in connection with the second coming, which is still future. He's not saying that at all. He's just making an application. We call this applicational fulfillment. Okay. Now, um, does the Bible actually do this? In other words, we have to learn how to read the Bible. Uh, I in my classes, one of the one of the examples I use, which has become a huge dispute in Christian circles, is what day of the week Jesus was resurrected on. Was it Wednesday? Was it Thursday? Was it Friday? You know, was it what way? What would what day was he crucified and what day was he raised? And the reason this is a controversy is because in the Gospels, it'll say things like, on the third day of the week he rose. Other places will say he was in the tomb three days and three nights. Right? And when an English speaker reads that, that phrase, three days and three nights, what do we all think as far as the length of that?

SPEAKER_02 55:03

72 hours. Why don't we think that?

SPEAKER_01 55:05

Well, because that's that's what it means in the West. I mean, you've got to count the three days, you've got to count the three nights. Every day is 24 hours, so we just do the math. 24, 24, 24. It's not that complicated. 72. Therefore, Jesus was in the tomb 72 hours. But here's the problem.

SPEAKER_02 55:25

That would mean then that he was raised on what day?

SPEAKER_01 55:31

He couldn't have been raised on Thursday, on the third day, because that wouldn't be a full 72 hours. It's got to be after the 72 hours. It would mean he was raised on the what day? The fourth day. Does the Bible ever say that he was raised on the fourth day? No. Repeatedly, every single time, it says he was raised on the third day. So when we read that phrase, we really don't know what it means unless we know what it meant to the Jews who wrote it. Isn't that what's important? To know what they meant by their phrases? Of course. We have all sorts of metaphors, figures of speech in our language. And if foreign people come to America and we're talking to them and we use those, they're gonna be like, huh? In fact, I used one today, I just used a figure of speech with one of our young people here. I said, Did you get your ears lowered? He had no idea what that meant. And that's because it was a generational, you know, we don't, that's not really used anymore, right? But um the same thing is true. If if they say three days and three nights, we need to know what that meant to them, just as he needs to know what I mean by your ears got lowered. And if we don't explain it, he didn't know what I'm talking about. And that's why we have to go in, and what I'll show when I go through dispensationalism is I'll show that we're not interested in doing this. Okay, this idea of looking at the scripture through a covenant of grace or one unifying principle. What we use is what's called passage priority, meaning that we look at every passage. I'm gonna draw a bunch of eyes up here. These are all eyes, looking down at the plan of God, down through history. And in each generation, there are meanings of terms and words and phrases that we have to consider inside the lexicon from that generation. Right? I mean, these lexicons change. I have a Webster's dictionary from 1828. They were using words differently then, the same English words were different then, meanings are different than they are now. What happened? It just the the usage changed over time. So you can't you have to look at the lexicon from each generation. Let's just say the lexicon from Noah's day, right? The lexicon from Moses' day, the lexicon from David's day, the lexicon from Daniel's day. This is what you have to do. Otherwise, you don't understand. And there are still phrases in the Old Testament, we don't know, we're like, I don't know what we don't know what it is. We're not sure what it means. There's some strange statements. We're like, oh, what's this one about Abraham's or Jacob's thigh? Like, what is that all about? Like nobody knows what the cultural practice was, so we don't we don't really know what it means. We can just kind of just take a stab at it. But this is our goal. Our goal is to look through each lexicon in each different period of history because we want to give each passage its own priority, meaning those passages can be understood on their own. They don't need later text to come back and explain what they meant. Every passage is its own priority. You give it priority. You don't go other places and try to get the meaning for another passage in some other place. That's like going to the Declaration of Independence and deciding what it means by a Supreme Court decision in 2024. And that's ridiculous. You can't do that. You have to go back to the founding fathers. You have to be immersed in their documents, you have to understand how to use the phrases and get the meaning there, and that's what tells you what the Declaration of Independence means, regardless of what the Supreme Court said in 2024. See? Passage priority. Okay, so I'll walk you through

Romans 11 Warning And God Keeps Covenants

SPEAKER_01 59:10

this next time, but I'm going too long. The main thing to see is that there is a whole branch of Christianity who today, as you can see, this is a breeding ground for anti-Semitism. Not saying they have to be anti-Semitic. I'm just saying it's a breeding ground for anti-Semitism. It's very, very dangerous what is happening. And Paul warned about it in Romans 11. He says, Hey, you're the nat, you're the unnatural branches. We're the wild branches that have been grafted into Israel's olive tree to enjoy the blessings from their covenants. And he says, Hey, do not get arrogant against the natural branches. Who are the Jews? He says, Because if God could graft you in as a wild olive branch, how much easier would it be to graft them back into their own tree? And he says, I tell you a mystery. When the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, guess what? Then all Israel will be saved. Then will come about what Jeremiah wrote, and the new covenant will be fulfilled. To the church? No. Fulfilled to Israel and Judah. The very covenant partners that God entered into a covenant with. In the end, we still have to ask ourselves that crucial question. When God makes a covenant or a contract with someone, say Israel, is he actually going to keep it with them? Or do the parties change? And we have slippery, slippery game being played. It's very dangerous to start playing with contracts. You don't change the terms. They're very, very specific. And if God said he's going to give them the land, if God says he's going to build a temple, if God says there's going to be sacrifices and we don't understand it, guess what? We need to get over it. Because he totally understands it. And we just haven't figured it out yet. But he's got it all figured out. And our responsibility is not to fix or correct, as they said, the Old Testament. Our responsibility is to understand it as God intended, according to passage priority. It's very frustrating. That's why Anita Dittman was like, why aren't we being killed in Germany? Why? Why? Because somebody erected a theology.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:20

And that theology said God was done with Israel.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:25

Yeah, this is very serious.

Find Visuals And Leave A Rating

SPEAKER_00 1:01:28

Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spokane Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app. And until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.