Dispensationalists and infallibility.

So here’s a weird little phenomenon I’ve discovered. I’ve actually seen it many, many times throughout my life, but didn’t recognize what was underneath it till recently.

I was talking to a fellow Christian a few weeks ago; we’ll call him Ayokunle. He’s dispensationalist, which means he believes God has saved people in many different ways throughout history. Darbyists believe God used six different ways, ’cause we’re in the sixth dispensation. But most of ’em figure there are at least two dispensations—one before Jesus, one after Jesus. Before Jesus atoned for our sins, they figure God saved people because they were good—if they followed the Law, God saved ’em, and if they didn’t, he didn’t.

Is this true? Not at all. God saves people by his grace, and he’s always saved people by his grace. Paul of Tarsus’s whole argument to the Galatians about why they needed to stop it with the legalism, was that God’s never saved anyone by good works. Abraham included! We’re right with God because we trust him, not because we followed commandments. Ga 2.16 If we ever could be saved that way, Jesus died for nothing. Ga 2.21

Anyway, my discussion with Ayokunle is because he loves to quote the old saying, “God works all things together for our good.” I’ve written on it elsewhere, and it doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. I told him so.

ME. “There’s an entire book of the bible which refutes you. Ecclesiastes.”

HE. “Hm?”

ME. “ ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.’ Ec 1.2 Vanities have no value. They mean nothing. They’re meaningless. But nothing God does is meaningless.”

HE. “Ecclesiastes?”

ME. “It’s a good read. Check it out.”

HE. “That is Old Testament.”

ME. “Correct.”

HE. “I am a New Testament Christian. Old Testament doesn’t apply.”

ME. “The bible doesn’t apply?”

HE. “New Testament does. Old Testament is of the old things which have passed away. ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ Rv 21.5 New Testament.”

ME. “So you don’t think the Old Testament should be in the bible.”

HE. “No; it should be in the bible. It has good stories. It tells us the history of the Jews. But it’s passed away. It’s dead.”

ME. “We’re not to trust it anymore for instructions on how to live our lives.”

HE. “Correct!”

ME. “But the 10 commandments are in there.”

HE. “Oh, the 10 commandments are in the New Testament too. We follow them. But the rest of the commandments are dead.”

ME. “So we can eat pork and shellfish.”

HE. “Yes!”

ME. “And have babies with our daughters.”

HE. “No! Why would you have babies with your daughters?”

ME. “I wouldn’t; that’s nasty. But it’s an Old Testament command to not have sex with your daughter. Lv 18.10 And you say that command is dead, so…”

HE. “No! No one should do that!”

ME. “Oh absolutely. But you said God no longer forbids it.”

HE. “Well there are natural laws.”

ME. “True. But people break those all the time, which is why God gives us biblical revelation. But you say it’s not biblical revelation anymore.”

He didn’t know how to answer that, so he quickly changed the subject. But it occurred to me afterward: In saying the Old Testament no longer counts, he also basically revealed he no longer considers it infallible.

In fact a lot of dispensationalists like Ayokunle explicitly teach the Old Testament failed: It didn’t successfully do the job of saving people! That’s why God had to replace its system of works-based salvation with grace. The Law no longer counts because it failed.

So when these folks claim they believe in biblical infallibility… well, it’s not consistent with everything they teach about the Old Testament. They might consider the New Testament infallible, but not the Old Testament. ’Cause it failed.

I pointed this out to a different dispensationalist I know, and after a bit of objecting, he finally said yeah, I got something there. If dispensationalists believe the Law failed to save, and needn’t be followed because it failed, then they can’t properly claim biblical infallibility. At least not for the whole bible. New Testament is fine.

“Morons” for Jesus.

1 Corinthians 3.18-21.

After Paul and Sosthenes wrote about us being bricks in the Holy Spirit’s temple, they finally bounced back to the subject of wisdom, which they’d kinda left behind in chapter 2 so they could go off on a tangent about how the Corinthians weren’t yet ready for deep stuff, and how they (and we) are collectively God’s temple. But now we’re back to wisdom. Namely God’s wisdom, granted to us Christians through the Holy Spirit—not spontaneously, as proven by every stupid Christian you’ve ever met, but when we listen to the Spirit and follow Jesus.

And if we wanna be wise, we gotta ditch what popular culture—including Christian popular culture, which has been fully infiltrated and corrupted by secular culture!—considers wisdom. Some of it is wise. Some really isn’t. In the United States, a lot of it is pragmatism—what works, as opposed to what’s good and right and moral. Most Americans figure if it works it’s good; then we go through all sorts of convoluted reasoning to explain why this also means it’s right and moral, and it’s not really.

Suppressing every other religion but Christianity, fr’instance—it sounds like it’d definitely make things easier for us Christians! And no doubt you can think of a lot of Old Testament verses which makes it sound right and moral. But is it moral to oppress people of other religions? Is it moral to obligate Americans to feign Christianity?—to go through all the motions, yet have no true personal relationship with Christ? What about when these hypocrites seek political power?—’cause they will; hypocrites love power. As you can see, the “wisdom” of Christian nationalism is profoundly stupid. But plenty of Christians fall for it.

So if you want wisdom, legit wisdom, listen to God.

1 Corinthians 3.18-21 KWL

18People must not delude themselves:

If any one of you thinks they’re wise in this age,

they should become morons so they could become wise,

19for this wisdom of the world

is moronic when compared to God.

For it’s written:

“The one who snares the wise in their subtlety,” Jb 5.13

20and again,

“The Lord knows the dialogues of the wise

—that they’re empty.” Ps 94.11

21So people must not promote other people,

for everything belongs to all of you.

22Whether it’s Paul, Apollos, Kifa,

the world, life, death, the present, the future—

everything belongs to all of you.

23And you belong to Christ,

and Christ belongs to God.

And, as the apostles add in verse 21-23, don’t divide Christianity into factions which follow one guru or another… because all these gurus work for the real guru, Jesus. Paul does, Apollos does, Kifa (i.e. Simon Peter) does, James does, John does, even John the baptist does. Likewise differing topics which Christians are free to debate about, like the world, life, death, the present, and the future: All of us get to speculate about ’em, and no one but Christ is the master of them. And us. Got that?

Blaspheming other people and things than God.

BLASPHEME blæs'fim verb. Say something about God (or holy things) which isn’t true. Slander.

2. Speak irreverently about God or holy things. Sacrilege.

[Blasphemer blæs'fim.ər noun, blasphemous 'blæs.fə.məs adjective, blasphemy 'blæs.fə.mi noun.]

As you can see, in the definition I just used (which I also used in my article on the subject), blasphemy is slander or irreverence towards God or holy things. And for some Christians, they insist only God can be blasphemed, and not holy things:

• Don’t speak ill of the LORD.
• Don’t speak ill of the LORD’s name; if someone uses his name for other stuff, like the names of altars and churches, you wanna carefully distinguish between the thing named for the LORD and the LORD himself.
• Don’t say evil things about the trinity.
• Nothing against Jesus.
• Especially nothing against the Holy Spirit, ’cause there’s no coming back from that one.
• For Roman Catholics, who believe the elements of holy communion literally become Jesus during the ritual, blaspheming them counts as blaspheming Jesus, so don’t. (One particular famous Catholic comedian will make Jesus jokes… but weirdly, will never make fun of the Eucharist, ’cause somehow that crosses the line.)

So don’t touch God; but these folks think it’s totally okay to blaspheme holy things, because they’re just things. They’re not God; they’re not divine; saying we can blaspheme them suggests they might be divine, but we worship nothing and no one but God. So you can’t blaspheme the holy bible, because we don’t worship the bible. (Or shouldn’t!)

Thing is… people kinda do have the ability to blaspheme the bible. If “blaspheme” means to slander, or speak irreverently about, of course there are people who slander and speak irreverently about bible. Antichrists do it all the time. When they say the bible’s a bunch of bunk, and claim it was written by delusional prophets, how isn’t that slander and irreverence? In other words, blasphemy?

Thing is, the people who insist only God can be blasphemed, wanna limit the use of the word “blasphemy” to God. When you’re slandering the bible, “slander” is fine. When you’re slandering God, “blasphemy” is the appropriate word. Because slandering God is a much bigger deal than slandering his prophets and apostles. One indicates the damaged relationship we have with God; the other just indicates we lack reverence for holy things and people. And a damaged relationship with God is obviously the bigger deal.

My own personal habit is, like those people, to only use “blasphemy” when we’re talking about slandering God, and not when we’re talking about slandering a church, a book, a preacher, a Ten Commandments monument, and other such things. But I gotta agree that yeah, technically, slander and blasphemy are the same thing.

And that’s a fact we see in the bible, ’cause the authors of scripture use βλασφημέω/vlasfiméo, “blaspheme,” to talk about other things than just God.

Dual citizenship… and picking a side.

Many Christians are fond of saying, “This world isn’t my home. Heaven is.”

To a degree that’s true. We’re part of God’s kingdom, with Christ Jesus as king. We recognize his reign, or try to; and follow him, more or less. Or at least we expect—despite our unloving, unkind, impatient, fruitless behavior, he’ll nonetheless graciously recognize us as his followers when he takes over the world. Maybe he will.

In the meanwhile we’re also citizens of our nations. I’m a citizen of the United States. As are many of TXAB’s readers, which is why I so often get U.S.-centric. Of course I realize this site gets readers from all over: You might be a citizen of Canada, China, France, Indonesia, Israel, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and Singapore… and that’s the top 10, so if I didn’t mention your nation you’re just gonna have to enlist more of your friends to read, and bump up your stats. Anywho as Christians we’re all fellow citizens of God’s kingdom. Yet we simultaneously have allegiances to our respective homelands.

In the U.S., if you’re both a citizen of this country and another one, we call you a “dual citizen.” We have lots of ’em. Officially the U.S. only recognizes one citizenship: Ours. (So pay your taxes. It’s why Americans who don’t even live in the States are still required to pay American taxes.) When people become Americans, our citizenship oath requires ’em to renounce their previous citizenship. But if their original homeland doesn’t care about that, and still counts them a citizen, they’re dual citizens. Most of the dual citizens I know are also Mexican citizens, and take full advantage of their Mexican citizenship whenever they’re in Mexico. One friend’s from the U.K.—and when he visits family in the U.K., he’ll even switch his accent from Californian to Londoner.

But here’s the catch with dual citizenship: The time might come when you gotta pick one nation over the other.

Say you were a citizen of both the U.S. and Russia. And say we went to war. (Hope we never, ever do, but let’s just say.) Well, you have to pick a side. Especially if you work for the government—of either nation. Neither country will let you stay neutral. You’ve gotta be wholly American, or wholly Russian. (Or you’ve gotta flee to Argentina.)

Well, that’s how Christians are when it comes to our national citizenships. I’m a dual citizen of God’s kingdom, and the United States. So what happens when the States does something hostile to the kingdom? Right you are: I gotta pick a side. And I’ll just bluntly tell you now I’m picking Jesus. Like any immigrant, I may have been born American, but I choose citizenship in his kingdom. So Jesus takes priority. Don’t even have to think about it.

Much as I love the United States, I’m fully aware when Jesus returns, he’s overthrowing it. When he raptures his followers to join his invasion, we’re gonna help him overthrow it. I’m gonna help him overthrow it. Willingly. Gladly.

If that sounds like treason against the United States, it totally is. And if it makes you as an American feel uncomfortable, it should. Because as a Christian you need to pick sides. This isn’t a hypothetical situation, y’know. Jesus is returning. Not “could return”: Is returning. Not in some “spiritual sense,” by which most folks think imaginary. He’s literally, physically coming to earth to take it over. Maybe not in our lifetimes… but maybe he will; we don’t know.

So where’s your allegiance? ’Cause when he returns, you’re gonna be on one side or the other. Better not be the wrong one.

“I don’t speak in tongues. Therefore nobody does.”

I have an acquaintance, whom I’ll call Themistocles, who describes himself as a “soft cessationist.” That’s a term which means a lot of different things to the various people who use it.

For some of them it means regular ol’ cessationism—they believe God turned off the miracles in bible times, and he’s not turning ’em back on till the End Times. Why they call it “soft” is because they’re not deists—they don’t believe God created the universe to run (and run down) on its own, without his involvement or presence; that he’s left to pursue other interests. They accept there’s a God in the universe who hears their prayers… and sometimes even answers them. But he doesn’t do miracle-miracles. Doesn’t raise the dead, doesn’t let us Christians feed 5,000 people with only one person’s lunch, doesn’t cure cancer unless it’s through natural processes. He’ll empower “miraculous” fortunate coincidences, like having a ministry sent a check at just the time the bill came due, and for the precise amount of the bill. Or someone will offer us a job just as we’re praying for one, or we’ll bump into a friend whom we can help just as they’re asking God for help. Stuff like that, which you’ll have a difficult time convincing skeptics are literal act-of-God miracles.

For others, they believe sometimes God does actual, just-like-in-the-bible miracles. Yep, even though it’s not the End Times yet. The sick cured, the dead raised, multiplied resources, rain despite a drought, water turned to gasoline, crazy-large crops and crop yields, prophetic dreams, and so forth. They believe this stuff because they recognize it’s foolish to say “God doesn’t and won’t” when the scriptures not only say no such thing, but bluntly instruct us Christians about how to deal with such things when they happen. But what makes ’em still call themselves cessationist instead of continuationist is they believe these legit miracles are rare. Profoundly rare. Almost never happen. And most miracle stories are exaggerations, fraud, or fiction.

In Themistocles’s case, he’s “soft cessationist” because he’s cessationist… but knows cessationism has no valid biblical basis, and doesn’t wanna believe in it. It’s just that cessationism is what he grew up with; it’s what his church still teaches; he’s still surrounded by cessationists; he’s pretty sure he’s never seen a miracle. He’d sure like to see one. Till he does, he’s gonna fall back on the belief he grew up with: Cessationism. It’s “soft” in that it’s the comfortable cushion he’s currently resting on, till a real live miracle brings him to his feet.

Themistocles would likewise like to believe in speaking in tongues. But he’s got his doubts about the people who currently do it. Plus it’s never happened to him. And he’s asked God for the power to do it! But thus far, he’s pretty sure God hasn’t empowered him to do it, and he’s been praying for it for years. So the longer time goes on, the less and less he believes God even empowers it anymore.

Of course the way he first expressed this to me was by saying, “Well I’ve never spoken in tongues. I’m not even sure it’s a gift for today.”

“Speaking in tongues must be in an actual tongue. Bible says so.”

I heard this saying again recently. It’d been a few months. I hear it from time to time, but I haven’t given the subject its own article, so here y’go.

It’s a claim some cessationists make as part of their overall argument that speaking in tongues stopped in bible times, doesn’t happen anymore, and every continuationist church which still does tongues is either wrong, delusional, deceived, or devilish.

(And yes, because the Holy Spirit empowers tongues, claiming it's devilish means they're actually blaspheming the Holy Spirit. I know; some folks claim attributing the Spirit’s works to the devil somehow isn’t blasphemous. Okay then; how would they like it if every time they did a good deed, we said, “No they didn’t do it out of goodness; it’s all part of a satanic scheme to lead people astray; don’t trust them!” You know, kinda like they do with politicians from the other political party. Betcha it’d outrage them, or at the very least annoy them a bunch. Betcha they’d call it slanderous. And since blasphemy means slander, they’re blaspheming the Spirit. Whoops. Better repent! Okay, digression over.)

So in their churches, they forbid tongues. Yeah, I know there’s a bible verse telling us not to do that, 1Co 14.39 but they do it anyway. And how they justify it is with the saying in the title: “Speaking in tongues must be in an actual tongue. Bible says so. You are not speaking an actual tongue. You’re speaking gibberish. That’s not biblical. That’s devilish. And we oughta forbid devilry.”

That’s right: In every place in the bible where we read about tongues, and speaking in tongues, these folks insist the ancient Christians were speaking other human languages. Because weren’t they doing just that on the first Christian Pentecost?

Acts 2.4-11 ESV

4And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

5Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. 7And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? 9Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

If the first instance of speaking in tongues consisted of foreign languages, they figure every instance of speaking in tongues must be that. Forget “various kinds of tongues;” 1Co 12.10 ESV they insist there’s only one kind: Foreign languages. Nothing else.

To a cessationist the Spirit doesn’t do tongues anymore anyway; the whole argument is moot. But let’s say he did: Then all tongues would be in foreign languages. And if our tongues aren’t, they’re not really from the Holy Spirit. Whether we’re faking it or the devil’s empowering it, they won’t always say. Sometimes because they’re not absolutely sure they’re right, and don’t wanna unintentionally blaspheme the Spirit. But some of the bolder cessationists have no trouble with saying it’s the devil, and blaspheme away.

Here’s the funny thing: In the United States, a large number of these cessationists who say tongues must be foreign languages, don’t know any foreign languages. Most Americans only speak English! (And not well.) So if they ever overheard me praying in tongues, and the Spirit decided for whatever reason that my prayers would be in Urdu, they wouldn’t know a lick of Urdu, and continue to presume I’m doing it wrong, and am probably demonized. They haven’t the discernment necessary to judge me properly. And I’m not even talking about supernatural discernment… which they wouldn’t practice anyway, ’cause cessationism.

Nope; all they know is they hear “argle-bargle-dirka-dirka” and it makes ’em angry. Same as one of my former bosses, who was a huge racist and didn’t want us employees talking about him behind his back: “This is America! Speak English!” Largely this is just the cessationist variant.

You, collectively, are the Holy Spirit’s temple.

1 Corinthians 3.10-17.

From time to time Christians talk about how you, singular, individually, are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

’Cause the Spirit is sealed to every individual Christian. Ep 1.13 He lives in the heart of every single believer. And whatever God lives in is, properly, his temple. If he lives in you, it makes you his temple. If he lives in another Christian, it makes that person a temple. Dozens of Christians are dozens of temples. Billions of Christians are billions of temples. Get it?

But this isn’t accurate. God has only one temple.

As was kinda emphasized in the bible. Moses built the portable temple at Sinai, which English-speaking Christians call “the tabernacle,” and that was the temple for 4 centuries till Solomon ben David built a permanent one of gold-plated cedar in Jerusalem. The Babylonians burnt that down; Zerubbabel ben Shealtiel built another of stone; Herod 1 and his successors renovated it; the Romans eventually destroyed it.

But regardless of the structure, the scriptures emphasized there was one place, and only one place, where the LORD intended to meet people and receive worship and sacrifice. It was the one and only place they kept his ark, representing his relationship with Israel. It was the one and only place his name dwelt Dt 12.11 —his name, not the LORD himself, ’cause obviously the Almighty can’t be contained by a mere building.

Now it’s not that other people didn’t try to build temples for the LORD. Jeroboam ben Nabat, king of Samaria, feared losing subjects to the king of Jerusalem, so he built two more temples. They didn’t have arks, but Jeroboam put gold calf idols in them, figuring that’d do… and since there’s an entire command against idolatry in the 10 Commandments, God and his prophets condemned Jeroboam’s temples ever after. After the Jerusalem temple was destroyed, Egyptian Jews in exile constructed a temple to the LORD in Alexandria, and Samaritans constructed a temple to the LORD at Mt. Gerazim. But neither of these temples were commanded nor authorized by God. He had his own plans. Always had.

And once his temple’s veil ripped open, top to bottom, Mt 27.51 it signifies God wasn’t interested in being worshiped from Herod’s stone building any longer. He was gonna build a temple from entirely different stones: Living people. Living stones. Christians. Every Christian.

The Holy Spirit dwells in me, but I’m not the Holy Spirit’s temple. I’m only one of the stones of his temple. As are you. As is every Christian. We’re parts of his temple. Because the temple us us—collectively. The Spirit doesn’t have billions of temples; he only has the one. Same as always.

I know; you thought each individual Christian makes up an individual temple of the Spirit, right? ’Cause that’s the way it gets taught in our individualistic, individualism-valuing culture. Nope. We, collectively, are the Spirit’s temple.