Dispensationalism

Question 11092 The question of whether Christians should worship on Saturday (the Sabbath) or Sunday is one that generates considerable debate, particularly with the influence of Seventh-day Adventism and certain ...

Question 11044 The question of whether Christians should keep the Jewish festivals is one that surfaces regularly, particularly among believers who have developed a deep appreciation for the Old Testament ...

Question 11089 The question of what role the Mosaic law plays in the life of a Christian is not a new one. Paul spent considerable effort addressing it in his ...

Question 10065 The re-establishment of the nation of Israel in 1948 is one of the most significant prophetic events in modern history. After nearly 2,000 years of dispersion, the Jewish ...

Question 10008 The covenant described in Deuteronomy 29–30 is sometimes called the Palestinian covenant, though this name is increasingly recognised as problematic, since the term "Palestine" was not applied to ...

Question 10002 Once the basic principle of dispensationalism is understood, the next question follows naturally: how many dispensations does the Bible actually describe? The answer requires some care, because the ...

Question 10005 The covenant God made with Abraham in Genesis 12, 15, and 17 is one of the most consequential moments in the entire biblical narrative. Everything that follows in ...

Question 10024 Pretribulationism is the view that Christ will return to gather His Church to Himself before the seven-year Tribulation period begins. It is the position held here at Bible ...

Question 10022 Few doctrines provoke more debate among evangelicals than the Rapture, and one recurring challenge comes from those who argue that the concept is not actually taught in Scripture ...

Question 10023 One of the most common sources of confusion in eschatology is the assumption that the Rapture and the Second Coming are the same event described from different angles ...

Question 10094 Both historic premillennialism and dispensational premillennialism affirm that Christ will return before the Millennium and reign on earth for a thousand years. On this they agree, and the ...

Question 10136 Preterism is an approach to biblical prophecy, particularly to the book of Revelation, that holds that most or all of the prophetic events described in the New Testament ...

Question 10137 Futurism is one of the four major approaches to interpreting the book of Revelation, and it is the framework that flows most naturally from the consistent application of ...

Question 10153 The phrase "the blessed hope" has become so familiar in Christian vocabulary that it can lose its force through sheer repetition. But when Paul used it in his ...

Question 10132 The relationship between the Millennium and the eternal state is one of the most important structural questions in biblical eschatology. These are not the same thing, and confusing ...

Question 10148 The opening chapters of Revelation contain letters addressed to seven specific churches in the Roman province of Asia. These are not abstract symbols or generalised moral lessons. They ...

Question 10144 Inaugurated eschatology is a term that attempts to hold together two truths that Scripture clearly teaches: the kingdom of God has genuinely arrived, and the kingdom of God ...

Question 10145 One of the most important patterns running through the New Testament is the way in which certain realities are described as both present and future at the same ...

Question 10142 Few questions in biblical theology generate as much confusion as whether the kingdom of God is a present spiritual reality or a future physical one. The answer, as ...

Question 10143 The term "realised eschatology" is one that many Christians will never encounter in the pulpit but which has profoundly shaped how the New Testament is read in academic ...

Question 10162 On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel, and within minutes the new nation was recognised by the United States. For the ...

Question 10192 It is one of the most puzzling questions in all of eschatology. After a thousand years of Christ reigning visibly on earth, with perfect justice, universal knowledge of ...

Question 10009 Few questions in theology carry more weight than this one, and few have generated more confusion. The idea that the Church has permanently replaced Israel in God's purposes, ...

Question 10140 The phrase "the kingdom of God" appears dozens of times across the Gospels and the Epistles, yet Christians often use it without pausing to consider what it actually ...

Question 10007 The New Covenant occupies a unique position among the biblical covenants because both Israel and the Church claim it as their own, and the question of how it ...

Question 10170 The question of whether Jews lived in the land of Israel before the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948 is one that carries enormous political, ...

Question 10004 Within the dispensational family, not everyone reads the details in quite the same way. Progressive dispensationalism is a more recent development within the tradition, associated particularly with scholars ...

Question 10006 The covenant God made with David in 2 Samuel 7 stands alongside the Abrahamic covenant as one of the most significant unconditional commitments in the entire biblical narrative ...

Question 10001 Few theological terms generate as much confusion as dispensationalism. For some, the word conjures images of elaborate prophetic charts and date-setting speculation. For others, it represents a relatively ...

Question 10003 Dispensational theology and covenant theology represent two of the most influential frameworks for reading the Bible as a unified whole. Both are held by genuine, committed Christians who ...

Question 10042 The rapture is one of the most encouraging truths in Scripture for believers. It refers to the moment when Jesus will return for His Church, catching up all ...

Question 10050 Premillennialism is the view that Jesus will return physically to earth before (pre-) establishing a literal thousand-year (millennium) reign on earth. This position holds that the present age ...

Question 10068 Throughout Scripture, God established several foundational covenants with Israel that define His relationship with them and outline His plans for their future. These covenants - the Abrahamic, Mosaic, ...

Question 10067 Absolutely. God's plan for Israel is not finished - it is ongoing and will reach its climax when Christ returns to establish His kingdom with Israel at the ...

Question 09002 The word "church" is one of the most familiar in the Christian vocabulary, yet it is also one of the most misunderstood. In popular usage it refers to ...

Question 09045 The phrase "Messianic Jew" describes a Jewish person who has come to faith in Jesus (Yeshua) as the promised Messiah of Israel. This is not a modern invention ...

Question 09043 The question of when the church began is not a matter of historical curiosity but a question with significant theological consequences. The answer determines how we understand the ...

Question 09038 The church and the kingdom of God are closely related, and in popular Christian language they are often treated as interchangeable. They are not. Understanding the distinction between ...

Question 09044 The relationship between Israel and the church is one of the most consequential interpretive questions in all of biblical theology. How a person answers it will determine how ...

Question 60071 Christian Zionism is the belief, held by many evangelical Christians, that the modern state of Israel represents a fulfilment of biblical prophecy and that God's covenant promises to ...

Question 60048 Few theological errors have achieved the global influence of what is commonly called the prosperity gospel; also known as the health-and-wealth gospel, word of faith teaching, or name-it-and-claim-it ...

Question 60066 British Israelism is the belief that the Anglo-Saxon peoples of the British Isles, and by extension the United States and other English-speaking nations, are the direct biological descendants ...

Question 07037 The phrase "eternal covenant" appears at several points in Scripture and raises an important question: what does it mean for a covenant to be described as eternal, and ...

Question 01021 The book of Revelation has generated more confusion, more speculation, and more wildly divergent interpretations than perhaps any other book in the Bible. Yet it opens with a ...

Question 7000 Few passages in Scripture have generated as much theological discussion as Ephesians 2:8-9. The debate centres on a grammatical question with enormous theological implications: when Paul writes "and ...

Question 60098 The claim that Peter and Paul preached fundamentally different gospels is associated with a strand of dispensational teaching sometimes called ultra-dispensationalism or hyper-dispensationalism. In its more extreme forms, ...

Question 9002 The word "church" is thrown around quite loosely today. People talk about "going to church" as if it were simply a building or a Sunday morning activity. But ...

Question 3039 If salvation comes only through faith in Jesus, what about all those who lived before He came? Were Abraham, Moses, David, and the prophets saved? If so, how? ...

Question 1121 Pretribulationism, the view that the Church will be raptured before the seven-year tribulation period, is sometimes accused of being a recent invention with little biblical support. Critics say ...

Question 10015 Paul frequently speaks of "mystery" in his epistles, and the mystery of the Church is one of the most significant theological revelations in the New Testament. Understanding this ...

Question 10016 This question strikes at the heart of God's faithfulness. Has God abandoned the Jewish people? Has the Church replaced Israel in God's purposes? These are not abstract theological ...

Question 10017 Few verses in the New Testament have sparked more debate than Romans 11:26: "And in this way all Israel will be saved." What did Paul mean by "all ...

Question 10018 In Romans 11:25, Paul speaks of a "partial hardening" upon Israel that will continue "until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in." This phrase—"the fullness of the ...

Question 10019 The law God gave to Israel through Moses at Mount Sinai has puzzled Christians for centuries. If we're saved by grace through faith, why did God give the ...

Question 12046 Christian Nationalism has become one of the most discussed and divisive terms in contemporary Christianity, particularly in the United States but increasingly in broader Western discourse. Some advocates ...

Question 7081 This question goes right to the heart of how we understand God's dealings with humanity throughout history. The relationship between law and grace is not one of contradiction ...

Question 10201 Revelation is among the most misread books in the Bible, and part of the reason is that readers approach it in isolation. In fact, it is the most ...

Question 60091 The Canaanite conquest narratives in Joshua are among the passages most frequently raised as moral objections to the Old Testament, and they deserve honest engagement rather than evasion ...

Question 009112 Paul uses the word "mystery" in a very specific and technical sense that differs from its ordinary usage. When we speak of mysteries today, we typically mean something ...

Question 10202 One of the most common objections to the pretribulational Rapture is the claim that the "last trumpet" of 1 Corinthians 15:52 must be the same as the seventh ...

Question 7083 The question sounds simple, but it touches on something of real theological importance. Did the rules change somewhere between Genesis and Acts? Were Old Testament believers saved by ...

Question 10029 The question of whether modern Jewish people are still God's chosen people sits at the intersection of some of the most important and most contested doctrines in Christian ...

Question 10082 Few eschatological questions generate as much confusion as this one. The idea that the Holy Spirit will be "removed" from the earth during the Tribulation is widely stated ...

Question 10036 Two phrases in the New Testament sound similar enough to be confused but refer to entirely different realities. "The times of the Gentiles" and "the fullness of the ...

Question 10014 Eschatology does not float free from the rest of Scripture. The Bible's teaching about the last things is built on a covenantal foundation that stretches from Genesis to ...

Question 4071 Anyone who has engaged seriously with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit across different theological traditions quickly discovers that Christians who share the same Bible and the same ...

Question 11056 Acts 1:8 is the last thing the risen Jesus said before His ascension, and it was not a farewell encouragement. It was a structured programme. "But you will ...

Question 04108 Acts records four distinct episodes in which the Spirit's coming upon a group of people is described with enough detail to note the circumstances and sequence. These episodes ...

Question 04058 When Christians think about the future, attention tends to focus on the events of the end times: the rapture, the tribulation, the return of Christ, the millennial kingdom ...

Question 10066 Replacement theology, also called supersessionism, is the belief that the Church has permanently replaced Israel in God's plan, and that the promises God made to Israel in the ...

Question 12045 Baptists hold a remarkable and often underappreciated distinction in the history of Western civilisation: they were among the earliest voices in the English-speaking world to call for universal ...

Question 2029 The answer is yes — though it requires careful qualification. The full, explicitly articulated doctrine of the Trinity belongs to the New Testament, where the personal identities of ...

Question 4105 When Philip the evangelist preached Christ in Samaria, the response was extraordinary. People believed, were baptised, and the city was filled with great joy (Acts 8:8). Yet something ...

Question 4099 Acts 19:1-7 is one of those passages that regularly surfaces in discussions about the Holy Spirit, and it is often read through the lens of Pentecostal or charismatic ...

Question 1037 How should we read the Bible? This question lies at the heart of everything we do as Christians. Get interpretation wrong and everything else goes wrong with it ...

Question 1130 A common misconception about dispensationalism is that it supposedly uses different interpretive rules depending on which biblical era is being studied. Critics sometimes claim that dispensationalists read Old ...

Question 1120 This is a question that comes up regularly, and it's worth thinking through carefully. If we say we believe in a literal interpretation of Scripture, does that commit ...

Question 10020 Understanding the difference between conditional and unconditional covenants is essential for grasping God's purposes throughout Scripture. This distinction affects how we read the Old Testament promises, how we ...

Question 1014 Whether God revealed Himself and His purposes all at once or incrementally across time is not a minor academic question. It shapes how we read the whole Bible, ...

Question 1015 The Old Testament prescribes animal sacrifices; the New Testament says Christ has rendered such offerings obsolete. The Old Testament records God commanding the destruction of entire peoples; the ...

Question 10026 Many Christians treat the Old Testament as a kind of backstory — useful for context, but not particularly necessary once you have the New Testament in hand. Others ...

Question 01154 The wisdom books of the Old Testament — Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes — sit at an oblique angle to the great redemptive events of Scripture. There is no ...

Question 01159 Progressive revelation and dispensationalism are not merely compatible positions that can be held alongside each other without difficulty. Progressive revelation is the exegetical foundation on which the dispensational ...

Question 01166 The New Testament is unambiguous that Christians are not under the Mosaic covenant. Galatians 3:24-25 states plainly that the law was a guardian until Christ came, "but now ...

Question 0034 The good news is that we live in an age of unprecedented access to theological resources. Books that were once available only in seminary libraries are now accessible ...

Question 0013 In his final letter, penned in the shadow of martyrdom, the Apostle Paul issues one of Scripture's most memorable warnings about the future condition of the church. The ...

Question 3044 When we read the Gospels, we encounter the title 'Son of David' applied to Jesus with striking frequency. The blind call out to Him using this name. The ...

Question 0012 Paul's warning to Timothy about false doctrine in 2 Timothy 2:17 employs one of the most visceral metaphors in Scripture. Writing from his Roman imprisonment, likely in the ...

Question 1139 Paul's second letter to Timothy stands as one of the most personal and urgent letters in the New Testament. Written from a Roman prison cell, likely during Nero's ...

Question 1138 This phrase comes from 2 Timothy 2:15, one of the most important verses for understanding how to handle Scripture properly. Paul writes: "Do your best to present yourself ...

Question 7080 This question has caused considerable debate throughout church history so how we answer it affects everything; from how we read the Old Testament to how we live our ...

Question 10013 This question lies at the heart of understanding the Bible's storyline. How we answer it affects how we read prophecy, how we understand God's purposes, and how we ...

Question 10041 In 1 Kings 9:3, God tells Solomon: "I have consecrated this house that you have built, by putting my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will ...

Standing with Israel in Biblical Truth and Justice Q10141 Preamble As an Evangelical Baptist committed to the authority of Scripture and the unchanging promises of God, I find myself compelled ...