Responding to Dispensationalism, Installation #7: Who are the Children of Abraham?: A discussion of Ephesians 2: Part Two

Who are the Children of Abraham?

Part 2 of the discussion of Ephesians 2

I submit that, if at any time in the future a physical temple is set up and sacrificial worship (as either an honorarium or memorial) is reinstituted, then that building and those sacrifices will be a blasphemy to Christ. If dispensationalism is correct in claiming that the ceremonial laws, rights and rituals of the Mosaic Covenant (the Old Covenant) will be reinstituted, then shouldn’t the sign of circumcision as a sign of corporate covenant obedience also be reinstated? And if so, then this teaching flies in the face of the Word of God that the Holy Spirit delivered through Paul, to the Galatians.

Galatians 1

6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

Galatians 2

3 But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. 4 Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery— 5 to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.

I believe that the advocate of a future temple Judaism must endorse a sort of digressive revelation because the whole of the New Testament is just that, a new testament, or a new covenant, and the old has passed away. Is it suggested that in this future epoch the words written to the Romans, the Galatians, in the book of Hebrews and elsewhere are voided? No, I’m certain no self respecting dispensationalist would say so, but how else is such a view of the temple supposed to be interpreted? Paul was obviously chastening the Galatian church because they had been fooled by false brothers that obedience to Old Covenant rituals was part of sanctification, and in the worst cases, part of justification—Paul called this another gospel; he didn’t say it was another preference, he didn’t say that they were simply imprudent, he called the Galatians fools! The new covenant plainly brings the Jewish man and the gentile man together in one group, not separated by ceremonies, ritual sacrifices, moons and Sabbaths, but identified together with Christ, and this is accomplished in a better covenant. Are we to believe that in God’s plan for redemptive history, He made a covenant with Abraham (which he planned to fulfill in Christ) then He had the old covenant set up to picture the coming Messiah, which would be put aside for the better, new covenant which was in Christ’s blood (which would eventually begin to see fulfillment in Christ) only for the new and better covenant to later, also be put aside so He could finish what He had only begun with ethnic Israel in the old covenant? I know that to say that the reinstitution of circumcision, ritual sacrifices and the temple will be for a memorial appears to be a clean and sharp answer that dispensationalism gives when it attempts to answer the critique of future animal sacrifices after Christ has been sacrificed himself, (once and for all, as put in the book of Hebrews), but it is neither clean nor right; you don’t have to have a memorial for a person who is not dead, and especial not for a person who is alive and who is in your presence.

The ordinance of communion is what Christ told us to practice until He returns, and what of the Jew in that dispensational future who reads the Word and hears Col. 2:16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ, or the words of Romans 4, Galatians 3, Hebrews 8, etc? The Jew in any future age will been given no authority subsequent to the writings of the New Testament to make him believe that those words will not also apply to him, but only to those who had passed in the age before. I know that we, present, new testament saints look at the commands of the Mosaic ceremonial and civil law and say, “…that is not for us…”, though Paul and others must look at it the same way we do, unless we are to believe that God will reveal more words in later years.

You might say that those Jews have precedence for rebuilding the temple and reinstating temple sacrifices because of the words of Ezekiel and other texts tell them to do this in the future, but this denies the New Testament interpretation of Ezekiel in specific and the Old Testament as a whole. The problem for dispensationalism remains, that revelation is progressive and there are many New Testament texts that explain how we should understand Old testament texts—even if that understanding is that they are not to be taken "literally"—as dispensationalists count things literal.