I Speak as a Man

Somebody Posted:

Question to Dispensationalists:
Is Abraham part of the “church” or part of Israel?

I answered:

Abraham's promise has nothing to do with the Church, nor about Christ, only Israel, all Israel - even though genealogies have been lost, whether a person knows he's Israeli or not, even if the only Jewish ancestor he happens to have had was thousands of years back and all his other subsequent DNA has only ever been only Gentile - it's about them.

I'm not sure what Jesus meant when He said, "Abraham rejoiced to see MY day; and he saw it, and was glad". 

But when Paul said things like that Abraham was promised:

that he should be "heir of the world"; and 

that he really "looked for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God"; and 

that the patriarchs were really looking for "a heavenly country"; and

that the 'Seed' was singular, not plural - and that it was about Christ; and

that the promise that "all families of the earth shall be blessed" in his Seed announced the gospel in advance and foresaw the justification of the heathen by faith; and 

that the whole Ishmael/Isaac story was an allegory of the fact that the Promise was never going to revolve around a mere ethnic identity but around 'promise'; 

and that Gentile believers in Jesus were therefore accounted as the 'seed' just as truly as Jewish believers in Jesus are...

...he mustn't have meant - he couldn't have meant - surely not - that that's what the Old Testament actually really meant! 

So I'm not sure what Paul was doing there either! 

And I'm quite sure they didn't know what they were saying when they said Christ was sacrificed "once for all". Because everybody who knows how to read knows the whole world is going to have to offer animal sacrifices for a thousand years in future, or be cursed. 

I know, I know - Jesus said the time was coming and already is when Jerusalem would not again be the place of worship. I'm not sure why He didn't qualify that by adding, "...until the next Dispensation when the old rule will resume..." 

And Revelation! The way John alludes to all the Old Testament prophetic imagery (like temple, river, city, manorah, manna, etc.) and gives it all an entirely Christ-centred, gospel-shaped meaning! Without mentioning Israel's future at all! What was he thinking! 

But anyway. It's just really a pity the Old Testament wasn't as clear to the Apostles - nor to any first-century Jews - as it is to Dispensationalists today. They probably didn't understand ancient Hebrew, Greek, grammar, literary methods and logic as well as graduates of "_____ Theological Seminary" do today. So it wasn't their fault.  

I'm being facetious. 

Or as Paul said, "I speak as a man".