Bible, Theology & Philosophy

Republished with permission from Dr. Reluctant. In this series, Dr. Henebury responds to a collection of criticisms of dispensationalism entitled “95 Theses against Dispensationalism” written by a group called “The Nicene Council.” Read the series so far.

As I sat in the midst of the church council, comprised of at least a dozen gray heads, I was painfully aware that I was only 21 years old. They had asked me to consider being their pastor. That could not have been an easy decision for them, but I was going to ask them to do something much harder: change. As a fledgling separatist I could not join their church’s conference, but it would be simple enough for them to withdraw from it, right?

But they could hardly understand why I would ask such a thing. They had always been conservative and thought that holding to their solid tradition was enough, while the world changed around them.

Today, half a lifetime later, I am a gray head and I am struggling with the concept of change. Is it too late in the course of church history to propose another doctrine? Not so that I can teach it, but so that I can study it, a thorough “Changeology” needs to be developed. I must not be the only one who is longing to know when it is right and best to cut loose of old moorings, and when it is both courageous and wise to hold to the time-tested. Choose your hot-button issue: Bible translations, music, worship formats, personal separation standards, and probably any other you can imagine, the issue is: “to change or not to change?”

In my opinion Leith Anderson makes some good observations but comes to the wrong conclusions in his book Dying for Change, which is perhaps the volume most to the point. He says, “Two theological truths explain God’s relationship to change: immutability and sovereignty.” (11) He rightly notes that change is most often chaotic for man but never is for God. I disagree with some of his suggestions for modernizing the church, because we have different “non-negotiables,” but I appreciate his consistency.

The universe is finite. The events and objects that it encompasses are not limitless in number. Nevertheless, the sum of facts in the universe is so immense as to be incalculable. It is so vast that no finite mind could ever comprehend the whole. Indeed, a human mind is not capable of registering all of the events and objects presented to it at any moment.

The universe is a universe because each fact is related to each other fact in a seamless order. This order includes all of the facts in their connection to all other facts. Because of these connections, each fact points to other facts with varying degrees of directness. To affirm that the universe is ordered is also to affirm that it is significant and that each fact has its own proper meaning.

In addition to the material order of facts, the universe also encompasses a moral order. Within the order of the universe, moral realities such as courage and justice find a place. Virtue is possible, and so is vice—and neither of them is a mere illusion.

Even if we had to deal only with material realities and their connections, our finite human minds would be overwhelmed by the complexity of the universe. The existence of moral reality poses additional difficulties. If we wish to grasp the order of the universe, we shall discover that our task is exponentially complicated by having to account for moral nature.

Indeed, the material order of the universe is penetrated by and connected to the moral order. Material nature is infused with moral nature. To know a thing, one must know its use. Otherwise, we do not know whether we should do the things that we can do.

Because of these complexities, knowledge of the universe requires more than an acquaintance with facts. A mind that could comprehend all facts (all events and objects), and that could grasp all of their material connections, but that was incapable of perceiving moral realities, could not truly know the universe, for the most important features of reality would remain outside of its purview. Right knowledge belongs, not merely to the best fact-gatherers, but to those who are most capable of perceiving the moral dimension of the things that they see. Facts without values are—without value.

Biblical dispensationalism is not the easiest way to understand the Scriptures—but it is God’s way.

For example, the easiest way to “understand” the Book of Revelation is to spiritualize it, as literally thousands of Bible students have done for centuries. The more difficult way, and the way that guarantees God’s promised blessing to those “who [read] and those who hear the words of this prophecy” (NKJV, Rev. 1:3) is to recognize that Revelation is the capstone at the very top of the pyramid of written revelation, and that it builds upon and presupposes the truths revealed by God in the previous 65 books.

Revelation 2 and 3 can only be understood in the light of the book of Acts and the epistles, which offer God’s plan and purpose for the church. Revelation 4 to 19 deals with the application of the New Covenant to national Israel and her relationship to Gentile nations during the seven years that precede the second coming of Christ. Revelation 20 gives us the timing and duration of events during the kingdom that was offered to Israel by John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus in the light of numerous Old Testament promises.

Revelation 21 and 22 give us absolutely spectacular glimpses into the eternal state, which follows the 1,000-year kingdom of Christ upon the earth. Significantly, dispensational distinctions between the church (cf. Rev. 21:14), Israel (cf. Rev. 21:12, 13) and the Gentiles (cf. Rev. 21:24-26) are identified and confirmed.

So here is the divine challenge for understanding such complexities as the New (Abrahamic) Covenant: “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15). In this regard, it is no wonder that many Bereans “believed” and proved to be “more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica.” The reason? “They received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things [that Paul taught them] were so” (Acts 17:11, 12).

Two years after my whitewater rafting accident, my physical therapist dropped a bombshell in the form of a simple question: “Stephanie, have your doctors ever talked to you about MS?”

Little did he or I realize that less than a year later, my supposedly accident-related symptoms would take a dive, and suddenly all my doctors would be talking to me about multiple sclerosis.

Today, nearly nine years after my accident, I’m drafting this post in a Starbucks far from home. This morning I met with a neuromuscular specialist at the Cleveland Clinic. Again, MS was discussed—but only in passing. It’s been ruled out too many times to be a serious possibility anymore. The doctor and I talked about the pain, weakness, numbness, and other symptoms that have plagued me the last several years. Despite tests and treatments at some of the best facilities in the country, to date there’s been no firm diagnosis.

The doctor and I discussed my physical quality of life—how it has waxed and waned over the years, and how I try to live as normal a life as possible. But a subject we didn’t broach is something actually much more pertinent to how I keep going day by day: my inner, spiritual quality of life. It, too, has changed a lot since my accident: a waxing and waning faith, a growing and healing that no physician could ever attempt, a deeper experience of the person and character of God—all rooted in a deeper understanding of the gospel.

There is, of course, a whole world that exists in time and space independently of our minds and perceptions. Things that have extension through space we call objects. Alterations in those objects we call events. These objects and events together are what we typically call facts. The world of facts has real existence whether we perceive it or not, and in that sense it can rightly be called objective.

In principle every event and object is accessible, either immediately to our senses or else through the extension of our senses through instrumentation and other media. We can observe distant galaxies through telescopes, minuscule amoebae through microscopes, speeding electrons in cloud chambers, and so forth. The sheer number of facts that we could observe in any instant is so incalculable that, for our purposes, it might as well be infinite.

Most of these facts, however, escape our notice entirely. Even now you are sensing facts of which you are unaware. Perhaps you have failed to notice the sound of the air moving through the ductwork around you. Perhaps you have overlooked the texture of the ceiling or the intricacies of the pattern in the carpet. Almost certainly you are unaware of the weight of your clothing upon your body. The moment I mention such things, you notice them instantly, but until I did they were completely outside your consciousness. At any given time, we are taking account only of the tiniest proportion of the facts that are available to us, even when those facts are actually stimulating our senses.

The facts that we do sense often turn out to be different than their appearances. You are now reading what you perceive to be words on a computer screen, and you perceive the individual letters of which those words are composed. If you were to examine the characters more closely, however, you would discover individual pixels being lit with different colors. At a sufficient degree of magnification the letters would disappear and you would perceive only the pixels.

When you watch a movie, you perceive the appearance of objects in motion. No motion is actually occurring, however. You are really observing a succession of still photographs being presented in rapid sequence. Because each image registers slightly longer on your retina than it actually appears on the screen, your brain is able to meld this succession of stationary objects into an illusion of motion.