That is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
anti dispensationalism is a waste of time since they do not rightly divide the Word of Truth- Scripture.
The Jews/ Israel are not the church and those who oppose the doctrine are forced to spiritualize all the literal and physical promises God beginning with Abraham and all his descendants with Israel.
hope this helps !!!
What a sweeping accusation! Rightly dividing the Word of God is not something that dispensationalists (dps) have a corner on. In fact, although I don't deny that there are some dsp who do a pretty good job in the word - people like Chuck Smith, who is with the Lord now, yet it seems to me that the deeper one gets into the dsp doctrine, the more likely they are to misinterpret much of the Bible. I listened to Chuck's teaching over a long period and grew spiritually as a result and I think this is one reason why - because he never spoke much about the doctrine of dsp. In fact, in all of his teachings that I heard, he never even mentioned it.
On the other hand, I found those who major on dsp in their teaching, are more likely to present questionable teachings on the rest of scripture. Take civic's two accusations above for example. Both of them are untrue.
1. I'm sure there are many anti -dsp who do not rightly divide the Word of God, but to say or even imply that ALL anti-dsp do that is an extreme falsehood.
2. To say that we anti-dsp are "forced to spiritualize all the literal ... promises of God ... with Abraham and ... his descendants with Israel", is also not true. Some verses are meant to be spiritualized and some are meant to be taken literally. We're not FORCED to do either, rather we attempt to see how the author intended his words to be taken. The dsp, on the other hand, will say they take all of scripture literally, but they don't. They spiritualize many verses, just like we do. In fact, if anyone takes ALL of scripture literally, they are definitely misinterpreting a TON of verses.
Look at the words of Jesus for a perfect example. Numerous times He spoke words that obviously were NOT literal. "If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out." "I go to awaken him (Lazarus) out of his sleep." etc. On the other hand, much of what He said was literal. Much of prophecy is obviously not to be taken literally- other parts ARE. Many prophets speak of the judgment on a nation using symbolic, not literal terms - stars are falling from heaven, the sun will not give it's light and the destruction of this nation is like a horde of locusts, etc. Revelation has literal passages, but it seems that the majority of the book is symbolic.
I have found the same principle to be true with Calvinism, which I believe is also a false doctrine. My wife and kids and I began to go to a new church years ago. We loved it. The people were family-friendly, the teaching was very good, the fellowship was very good, etc. After several months of attending there, I just happened to ask one of the pastors what they believed about the doctrine of Calvinism. "Oh" he said, "we are reformed (which means Calvinists) in our beliefs here." In the several months we attended, I never heard one word about Calvinism, even though that's what they believed.
By way of contrast, years ago a Christian couple, who happened to be our landlords, attended a church that was saturated with Calvinism. When the couple, after a fairly long time, told the pastor that they didn't believe in Calvinism, he told them to leave the church - in fact, he was extremely rude about it, labeling them heretics. They mistakenly thought that they could continue at that church, even if they didn't accept Calvinism.
I want to know Christ.
