All Things Seen & Unseen

We should remind ourselves that our title text comes from the 'letter-essay' written by the apostle Paul to the Roman church around AD 55-57 from Corinth.  This consideration needs to be emphasised; we too quickly imagine that Paul was writing to us when it is more accurate to say that Paul was writing to his contemporaries in the first century AD in the capital city of the Roman Empire. He was not writing to 1 21st century disciples.

The revising of dispensationalism we talked about in the last post in turn gave way to a th ird form of dispensationalism wh ich began in the 1980s called progressive dispensationalism (PD).  One of the major features of this new dispensationalism was that its adherents began to subject one of C. C. Ryrie's defining criteria -literal interpretation- to closer examination and found it wanting. At the same time, dialogue took place between some dispensationalists and nondispensational 1 theologians which brought about more understanding and greater unity between the two opposing groups. The PD group believes that God has one plan of salvation. T hat plan is being unfold ed through a series of different ad ministrations (dispensations) but they emphasise the unity of the dispensations.  However, the PD group still hold s to the main dispensational tenet that Israel and the Church are distinct ; nevertheless, they also h o ld that both receive blessings through the A brahamic...

Dispensationalism 1 began at the time of John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) in the 1820s into the 1830s, a well-educated Anglican clergyman who became its chief systematiser. Darby had a life-changing experience in which he realised profoundly the importance of the scripture's teaching of being in union with Christ in 'heavenly places'. He concluded that the true Church was 'heavenly' in character.