Acts chapter 15 and what I want
you to do is turn there and put a little marker
if you have it. Just mark Acts chapter 15 because
we'll be going there just a little bit later. We've been studying We began
to study a few weeks ago, and this will be the last night for
it, some of the eras of what we refer to or what's been referred
to as hyper-dispensationalism, ultra-dispensationalism. It began sometime back in the
mid to a little later 1800s. begin with men probably you're
not even familiar with, John Darby, E.W. Bulliger. Some of you may have heard the
name C.I. Schofield. But what we call dispensationalism,
or they would prefer hyper-dispensationalism, we've been looking at it. And
I've sort of probably have to apologize for you. I've been
burdened about this for a number of years now. I'll probably use this more just
to unload on you folks than anything else. But it has been a terrible
burden for me because I've seen this getting into the churches.
And as I said last week, this is probably one of the worst
eras in the churches today simply
because you see so many receiving this. receiving this into the
churches and sitting and listening to it. And really, I hope you've
seen the heresy in this. And it hurts you when your friends
start coming to you and telling you what they've learned, this
new thing they've learned. It's really dangerous. But one
of the main characteristics of what we call dispensationalism
that we've looked at is the dividing of history into these seven or
eight different stages. They go back to the age of innocence. We looked at that back before
the fall. They call that the age of innocence.
And then after the fall, you come to the age of what they
call conscience. And then after that, you go into
the age just after the flood, which would be the age of human
government. And then you go into the age of dispensation, they
call it, of promise. God made promise to Abraham,
and that age took us all the way up to the giving of the law.
And then the dispensation of law went to where Paul received
the gospel of grace. And then that's the dispensation
that we're in now, the age or dispensation of grace. And then
they go into what they call the thousand-year reign of Christ,
the physical or literal thousand-year reign of Christ. So that's one
of the things that distinguishes what we call dispensationalism.
You'll talk to them, they'll say, there's these different
ages that we divide the ages up. Now, what's wrong with that?
What's wrong with even doing that? What's wrong with these
dispensations, these periods of time divided up back through
history? What's wrong with doing that?
First of all, it's this. The Word of God says nothing
about such time periods. Absolutely nothing about such
time periods as this. That's the first thing. We ought
to stay a little closer to God's Word, shouldn't we? A little
closer to God's Word. Secondly, for the most part,
these headings make absolutely no sense. They're just not intellectually
serious in my own opinion. For instance, the age of conscience,
the dispensation of conscience just after the fall, what does
that mean? Does that mean that nobody before
that had a conscience? Does it mean that nobody after
that had a conscience? What do they mean by age or dispensation
of conscience? I noticed as I was studying on
this, you know the word conscience is never mentioned in the Old
Testament. The concept is there. Purge me
with hyssop and I shall be clean. Purge what? My conscience. Purge
my conscience from guilt. Wash my conscience and I shall
be whiter than snow. But in the New Testament, conscience
is mentioned over 30 times. So if it's an age of conscience,
then we're in the age of conscience, aren't we? More than that time
back there. And human government. The third
one was human government. That was between the age of conscience
and the age of promise. The age of human government was
between when Noah came off the flood
until The promise was given to Abraham. Just two chapters. Genesis
chapter 10, chapter 11. And I don't know why they call
those two chapters the dispensation of human government. I don't
know why they even call that there. Some of them might say,
well, that's when they begin to build cities and dwell in
cities. Well, all the way back in Genesis
4, Cain went out and built a city. Why not call that human government?
We've got more human government now than they had back in that
age. And then you come to the age
of promise. When God called Abraham, He gave Abraham these precious
promises of the coming of Jesus Christ. But why call that an
age of promise? The promise began before that,
didn't it? Remember Genesis chapter 3 verse 15? The seed of the woman
is coming to bruise the serpent's head. That's the first promise
we have. Enoch, the seventh from Adam,
prophesied and promised that the Lord was coming with ten
thousands of his saints. We've had multitudes of promises
since then, so why even call that the age or dispensation
of promise? So secondly, it just intellectually
makes no sense. It makes no sense. And then thirdly,
This is what's wrong with this. When men begin to handle the
Scriptures in such a flippant manner, it's dangerous. And you can just about look out,
trouble is coming. And that's what's happened with
this dispensational doctrine that's been taught now for 150
or 60 years or so. It's dangerous. It's dangerous. When they came up with these
different ages, different dispensations, some people began to ask this
question. How did God deal with humanity
during those dispensations? And secondly, did God save differently
in some of those dispensations than He saved in the other dispensations? And the dispensationalist says
that he did. They reached the conclusion that
God indeed did save people differently in certain dispensations than
in others. In past ages, they say he saved by faith through
a sacrifice. And they say that was in the
age of conscience and in the age of promise. From Abel all
the way up through Abraham all the way to Moses, they were saved
by faith plus a sacrifice. And then they were saved by the
works of the law. From Moses' time all the way
up until the coming of Christ, they were saved by law. And then
when the Lord Jesus Christ came, they were saved by believing
the gospel of the kingdom. Remember, we looked at that last
week and the week before last too. And then in Paul's dispensation
of grace, they were saved by grace plus or minus nothing. And this is why we looked and
we read that quote by one of the main men in our day that
deals with this, Matthew McGee. He made the statement that there
were vital Gospels before the gospel of grace and there will
be vital gospels after the gospel of grace. That's why they make
that statement as they do. This is why I've emphasized the
last few weeks over and over again that God has had only one
way since the beginning of time that He has saved fallen sinners. Just one way. By grace through
faith. Nobody has ever been saved anyway
but by grace through faith. The gospel of redemption by representation,
by substitution, that's the way God has always saved sinners.
And that gospel is preached in the Old Testament. It was preached
by promise. It was preached by predictions.
It was preached in pictures and shadows and types. And you come
to the New Testament when the Lord Jesus had come and that
gospel began to preach in its reality that He has came, He
suffered, and He died. He fulfilled all the Old Testament
pictures and types and promises. And that's the gospel they preached.
That's the gospel we preach now. By grace through faith, through
a representative, through a substitute, through somebody else giving
Himself for us and satisfying on our behalf. Now before He
came, there was no other way to be saved. These men say it
was by faith plus a sacrifice. Well, why did they bring a sacrifice?
And why was there faith in that sacrifice? They looked through
that sacrifice to the coming of the Son of God in our humanity,
giving Himself for our sins. And those saints in the Old Testament,
they lived and they died in the faith of this one Gospel. These all died in faith. In the faith of what? That He's
coming. He's coming. The one that the
Old Testament prophesied of and promised of. And those sacrifices
pictured. He's coming. And He's going to
do what those sacrifices only pictured. He's going to do it
in reality. He's going to suffer for our
sins. And the Bible says, in the fullness
of time, God sent forth His Son. In the fullness of time. What
does that mean? God had a time. Before then,
He was prophesying, promised, He's coming, He's coming, He's
coming. And they waited for His coming. And then in the fullness
of time, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the
law to redeem them that were under the law, that we might
receive the adoption of sons. And when He was born, Simeon,
there in the temple, and it was said that He waited for the consolation
of Israel. He took the baby Jesus up in
His arms and He said, Lord, let Thy servant depart in peace,
for My eyes have seen Thy salvation, which You have prepared before
the face of all people, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the
glory of Thy people Israel. You know when Christ was born,
His birth had as much to do with the Gentiles as it did the Jews. It wasn't that he came to the
Jews and because the Jews rejected him, he had to revert to Plan
B. He came to send light to the
Gentiles as well as to the Jewish nation. God has always saved sinners,
therefore one way, whether they be Jew or Gentile, and that's
by His Son. That's by His Son. And the way you get around salvation
outside of a person, you just start talking about some other
way. Salvation is not in a way. Salvation
is not in a plan. Salvation is in a person. My
eyes have seen thy salvation. Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
And nobody has ever been saved. Apart from Him. Apart from Him. You say, Bruce, what did they
believe before He came? They believed on Him coming.
Remember when John came preaching in the wilderness and they went
out to Him? You remember what He told the people? You are to
believe on Him that is to come. Believe on Him that is to come.
That is, believe on Him, the Lamb of God that is taking away
the sins of the world. He is coming. And when I say
He's coming, John was meaning He's going to the cross. He's
going to finish the work. Believe on Him which is to come. We look back, don't we? We look
back to the cross. They look to the cross. They
were saved by looking to Christ's coming. We're saved by looking
to Him who came. You're in Luke chapter 1. Look
at this, Luke chapter 1 and verse 67. The dispensationalists are always
trying to tell us that the Lord Jesus Christ came to set up an
earthly kingdom. He came to set up an earthly
reign. And because they rejected His reign, then He had to set
up another kingdom, the kingdom of God's dear Son. But as we
look at even these passages here when He was born, it tells us
that That's not why He came. He didn't came. That's why He
said, My kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom is not of this. It's not an earthly, pompous
kingdom. It's not a kingdom of outward
show. It's not. And boy, we've got 2,000 years
to look back and see that the kingdom of Christ has nothing
to do with this world. I haven't seen any people, any
saints with crowns on their head, have you? We've seen some with
their heads cut off. We've seen them put in boiling
oil. We've seen them hung and fed to beasts. We've never seen
any sitting on a throne. That's because Christ's kingdom
is not earthly. It's not worldly. And look here
at what Zechariah, John the Baptist's dad said when John was born here
in Luke chapter 1 and verse 67. And his father Zacharias, John
the Baptist's father, was filled with the Holy Ghost and prophesied
saying, Blessed be the God of Israel, for he hath visited and
redeemed his people. He hath raised up an horn of
salvation for us in the house of his servant David." A horn
of salvation. His heart is upon salvation,
isn't it? as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which
have been since the world began." The prophets weren't talking
about any kind of an earthly kingdom. "...that we should be saved from
our enemy and from the hand of all who hate us, to perform the
mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant."
The oath which He swore to our father Abraham, what oath was
that? In you shall all the families
of the earth be blessed. In Christ, in your seed. That
was the covenant. That was the promise. That He
would grant us that we being delivered out of the hands of
our enemies might serve Him without fear. Now He wasn't talking about
the Romans. He was talking about another
kind Kingdom, look at this, in holiness and righteousness before
Him all the days of our life. He's talking about a Kingdom
of righteousness. and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. And thou,
child, shalt be called the prophet of the highest, for thou shalt
go before the face of the Lord to prepare his way, look at this,
to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission
of their sins through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the
day spring from on high hath visited us. to give light to
them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide
our feet in the way of peace." What's Zacharias saying? The
Son of God is coming and He's setting up this glorious kingdom,
this spiritual kingdom. And what does that pertain to?
His mercy, the knowledge of salvation. the knowledge of remission, forgiveness
of all our sins. Let the world have this pomp.
What means more to you? To sit on a throne or to have
your sins forgiven? To be in a kingdom of pomp and
human glory? To have people bow down to you
or have God to be your heavenly Father? To have pomp outwardly
in all this pompous dress or to have peace with God in your
heart? Zechariah said, here is the kingdom that He is setting
up. He is coming. He is coming. God raised up a
horn of salvation. And then we go over here in chapter
2. Look in chapter 2. This is where you find Simeon
making the statement that I just quoted to you. And look in verse
37. Here's what the widow said when
she came in and saw the baby Jesus. In verse 37 of chapter
2, she was a widow of about four score and four years, which departed
not from the temple. Her name was, was it Lydia? Lydia? What was her name? Anna. Anna. Couldn't even think of
her name. Parted not from the temple, but served God with fasting
and prayers night and day. And verse 38, she came and in
that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of Him
to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem. So what kind of a kingdom were
they expecting? Well, it was one of the knowledge
of salvation, remission of our sins. That's what they were talking
about. Did the apostles of Christ understand
this at the beginning? Did Peter and John and James
understand remission of sins at the beginning through the
blood of Christ? No, they didn't. I'll be the first one to admit,
they did not know, they did not understand that Christ was going
to die, that He's going to be raised again from the dead. They
didn't understand that at first. But they understood it when He
rose from the dead. They didn't wait until the Apostle Paul revealed
it to them. When the Lord Jesus raised from
the dead, He opened their understanding, and beginning at Moses through
the prophets and the book of Psalms, He taught them in all
the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. And He opened their
understanding and said, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved
Christ to suffer, to rise from the dead the third day, and that
repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name
among all nations. And that's what's being preached
today, is it not? The apostles begin to preach
that there in the book of Acts chapter 2. The apostle Paul came
on the scene, he began to preach it, and you and I are still preaching
it today. And then somebody comes along
and says, well, there's all these different Gospels. And when Christ
was born, He came to set up a kingdom. They rejected Him as the King.
And because they did that, we had to go to Plan B. And now
we're being saved by grace. And someday the age of dispensation
of grace is going to end and they're going back to the kingdom.
And people are eating that up to the breaking of my heart.
Dear friends are eating that up. One more thing before we look
at the two issues that I mentioned last week. Let me just say something
about the word dispensation itself. To my understanding, and maybe
you who know more about definitions in Greek than I know can look
this up, but to my understanding, the word disposition, My disposition, my mind went
blank. What's the word? Dispensation. Dispensation. Boy, I may not be able to finish.
I tell you, my mind is just... But the Word itself has little
or nothing to do with time. There's just a few places that
it's mentioned in the Scripture. And Paul mentions this in Ephesians
chapter 2. If you have heard of the dispensation
of the grace of God, and the word means three things, but
two of the things, it means one is dispensing. It's easy to see
how that comes out of dispensationism. If you have heard of God dispensing
His grace. Aren't you glad today God's dispensing
His grace? Aren't you glad He poured some
out on you, dispensed some out on you? He's been doing that
for a long time, dispensing His grace, especially in the New
Church, the New Testament. The second meaning of this word
is stewardship. It's only used three times in
the Gospel, every time it's in the book of Luke, and every time
it's translated stewardship. when the Lord Jesus was telling
about the rich man who had a steward that had been unfaithful in his
goods. And he called him and said unto him, What is this that
I heard of you, given an account of your stewardship? For you
may be no longer a steward. That word stewardship, dispensation. Dispensation. So there you have
dispensing. Paul said, God has called me
to dispense. His grace. He said, I am a steward
of the manifold grace of God. And it is required in a steward
that a man be found faithful. So what is dispensation? It is
God dispensing His grace through His church. We are stewards,
aren't we? We are stewards. God has entrusted
us with His Gospel. And we are to be stewards. We're
to guard that gospel. We're to take it to all the world.
Preach the gospel to every creature as He's given us command. So
the best I can find out about dispensation, it doesn't even
have anything to do with different times. Let me look now at these two
issues right quickly, and this will be our last study on this,
so this will be the last thing we'll look at. I gave you two
quotes last week. that we can look at, and I want
you to turn over to the book of Acts now, in Acts chapter
15, and I'll make this quote to you, and then we'll begin
here in Acts chapter 15, and we'll hurry through this. Here's a quote. I'll not even
tell you which one I got this off of, you wouldn't remember
their names anyway, but if you'd like to know any of this, but
here's the quote. John the Baptist and Christ and the twelve apostles
preached the law to the Jewish nations. If you are seeing commandments
in your gospel, you are on Jewish ground and not grace ground. In other words, when Christ came
and His apostles were preaching up to sometime during the late
part of the book of Acts, they were preaching law. And the law
has certain commandments that it carries with it. And if you
are hearing about commandments, then you're hearing the wrong
gospel. You need to hear the gospel of
Paul's grace. That's what he said. The dispensationalists
say that Peter was on the side of these Pharisees here in Acts
chapter 15. I was amazed when I read this
statement. I almost fell out of my chair
when I read this statement. You who are familiar here with
Acts chapter 15, where Paul and Barnabas was there at Antioch,
and these Jews came down from Jerusalem, from Judea, and they
taught the brethren, except you be circumcised after the manner
of Moses, you cannot be saved. And boy, it got Paul and Barnabas
stirred up. They had a disputation, a very
sharp disputation with these people. And they said, well,
let's go up to Jerusalem and settle it. And one of these dispensationalists,
I read it myself and I couldn't believe it, he said when they
got up to Jerusalem, Peter was on the same side as those Pharisees
because that's exactly what he preached. That he preached you
had to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses or you could
not be saved. And him and Paul had a disputation
and Paul had to straighten him out. Now that's what they say. But what did Peter, what was
Peter's opinion about the law and the gospel? How did he say
he was saved and everyone else there at Jerusalem was saved?
Let's read it here in Acts chapter 15 and look in verse 7. Here's where they said again
in verse 5, it was needful, necessary, to circumcise the Gentile believers
and command them to keep the law of Moses. And verse 6, And
the apostles and elders came together to consider this matter.
And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up and
said unto them, Men and brethren, you know how that a good while
ago God made choice among us that the Gentiles by my mouth
should hear the word of the gospel and believe. I wonder what gospel
he preached. Bags to ask the question, doesn't
it? Did he preach the same one Paul was preaching? In verse 8, God, which knoweth
the hearts, bared them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even
as He did unto us, and put no difference between us and them,
purifying their hearts by the works of the law. I know what
he said. By faith. I was talking with
a dear Reformed Baptist this week, and
he said, well, I'm glad to hear that there's another Reformed
Baptist there in Newcastle. And I said, brother, I'm not
a Reformed Baptist. If faith can't purify the heart,
if love and hope and the Holy Spirit can't purify the heart,
there's no sense going back to Moses. No sense going back to
Moses. He can't do it. He can't do it. Verse 10, Now therefore, look
here at what Peter said about the law, Now therefore, why tempt
you, God, to put a yoke upon the necks of the disciples, which
neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? and to come here and say that
Peter believed and preached that he and everybody else was saved
by the law? He said it's a golden yoke that
we can't bear. And boy, that it was. We don't
know very much about it, do we? We know a little bit about the
moral law. We know a little bit about the Ten Commandments law.
We don't know all the rigor, every day what they had to go
through to keep this law. My goodness, it was awful. And
Peter said, you're trying to bring us now under this law and
gall in our necks? Well, Peter, if you're not saved
by the law, how are you saved? He tells us in verse 11. I love
the way he puts it. But we believe that through the
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved even as they. And you know how we love to twist
that and make a play on these words. Peter didn't say, They
shall be saved like we are. He didn't say that at all, did
he? He said we Jews are going to be saved just like the Gentiles. We have to be saved their way.
How are they going to be saved, those dead dog Gentiles? By grace
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he said that's the way we're
saved. That's the way we're saved. So to have people to come here
and tell us that Peter preached and believed and held to the
works of the law to be saved. Peter was writing in his first
epistle, chapter 1 and verse 9 and 10. Listen to how he puts
this. He said, Receiving the end of
your faith, even the salvation of your souls, of which salvation
the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied
of the grace that should come unto you." And they tell us that
Really and honestly, the Old Testament was prophesying of
the works of the Law that was to come unto you? Peter said,
no, it's grace. They told us grace was coming.
And then he turns right around and said, now listen. Listen
to me, you believers. Gird up the loins of your mind
and hope to the end for this grace that is to be brought unto
you when the Lord comes. So the way Peter tells us, it's
grace from the beginning to the end, isn't it? When he said,
we shall be saved, he had already been saved. So he's saying we
have been saved, we are being saved, and we shall be saved
by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. They did not preach the
works of the law for salvation. They did not. They did not. Now what do they mean when they
make this statement? I quote, If you see commandments
in your gospel, you are not on grace ground. What do they mean
by that? Well, I think I know what they
mean. I'm not for sure and I don't want to misrepresent them. But
I know last week you and I looked at Les Feltick's statement where
he denied that Paul preached repentance. Let me read that
quote to you again. Most people are putting out the
plan of salvation and they are saying, you have to repent. Yet we cannot find any of this
in Paul's letter to the church age believers. You can't find
where Paul commanded men to repent. And yet he said he went from
house to house doing that, didn't he? So, he's saying, I guess,
if you're seeing a command to repent, then you're not on grace
grounds. You're on the Jewish grounds.
One of them made this statement. He said, look at the difference
between John the Baptist's gospel and Paul's gospel. And then he
quoted this when John the Baptist went preaching, the men should
repent. And he said, John said that men
must bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance. And he
said, look at the difference between Paul's gospel of grace
and John's gospel. John went and preached repentance
and bring forth fruit worthy of repentance. Listen to Acts chapter 26 and
verse 20. This is what the Apostle Paul
said after telling Agrippa that he saw this vision. He said,
I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but I showed
first to them of Damascus, then at Jerusalem, then Judea, and
then to the Gentiles that they should repent and turn to God
and do works worthy of repentance. That sounds just like John the
Baptist, doesn't it? And it's because they had the same gospel. I want you to turn to another
place. Look in II Thessalonians right quickly. 2 Thessalonians,
and look in chapter 3. 2 Thessalonians chapter 3. You know, when the Lord Jesus,
when we're born into His kingdom, His kingdom has rules. The kingdom
of Christ has laws. He has commands. And to say otherwise
and to teach otherwise It would be antinomianism, wouldn't it? You have no law. You have no
rule. But Christ is a King, and He
has His subjects. And His subjects are subject
to His rule, His command in His Kingdom. And this here is just
a little example. Look here in 2 Thessalonians
3. Look in verse 10. Even when we
were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work,
neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some
which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command
by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work and
eat their own bread. There is a command. Lo and behold,
there's a command. Paul said, we command you by
Christ that if you're a lazy, busybody person, go get a job. Get off of welfare. Get your
job. Support yourself and your family.
If you don't, don't name the name of Christ. Don't name the
name of Christ. And he said that's a commandment,
didn't he? A commandment. Is there commandments? under
the grace? Yes, there is. There is. There are rules of Christ's kingdom.
So there's the first thing. There's the first thing. First
thing they said. First issue. If you're seeing
commandments mixed with your gospel that you say you believe,
then you're not on grace ground. Aren't you glad when the Lord
saves you, He takes control of you? He subdues you, He gives you His commandments.
He gives you grace to keep those commandments, though you see
sin mixed with it and you're burdened over it. But you love
it. You love the rules of His kingdom. The second issue is
this, and I read this quote to you last week. Let me read it
again. The four Gospels, this is including the words of Christ,
the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are not binding
on the church today. But they are for the kingdom
age. Only Paul's 13 epistles are truly
binding on the church until the rapture of the church just before
the tribulation. And then they go on to say even
Paul's epistle to Hebrews is not binding on the church because
that epistle was to the Jews who were saved under the kingdom
of the gospel. So, there you go. And one of
the reasons they say this, that Christ's words aren't binding
on the church today, is because they say that Christ and Paul
preached two different Gospels. So naturally, Christ's words,
the Gospels, the four Gospels, are not binding on the church.
It wouldn't be if he taught a different Gospel, would it? Listen to this
quote, another quote by Les Felty. He says this, now listen to this.
Now to make my point, how did people back from Adam, Abel,
Seth, Noah, and all the way up to Abraham, how did they come
into a right relationship with God? And the answer is that faith
plus nothing? No, no way. But rather it was
faith plus sacrifice. They could not approach unto
God without a sacrifice. We cannot either. Can we? Approaching
to God apart from Jesus Christ and Him crucified. You can't
do it. Coming up to the cross, even
in Christ's own earthly ministry, did Jesus ever teach the concept
of salvation by faith and faith alone? No. What were they to
do? They were still to be adherent
to the law of Moses, They had also the added responsibility
of repentance and water baptism plus their faith. But faith alone
would not cut it. Now let me ask you the question.
Did Jesus Christ, the Son of God, when He was here in our
humanity, did He ever preach this concept of faith alone for
salvation? A baby in Christ could answer
this if He read His Bible. Listen to this. As Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be
lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but
have everlasting life. For God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him
should not perish. He that believeth on Him is not
condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already. Let
me go on a few more verses. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
John 5, 24, He that hearth My words and believeth on Him that
sent Me hath everlasting life. and shall never come into condemnation. John chapter 6 verse 40, This
is the will of Him that sent Me, that every one which seeth
the Son, and believeth on Him, hath everlasting life. And what did Christ say to that
sinful woman in the town? Her whose sins He just wiped
away, thy faith has made thee whole. Did Christ preach the
concept of faith for salvation? He absolutely did, didn't He?
He absolutely did. Are the words of Jesus Christ
binding on the church today? And when they say that, we know
the whole Bible is the words of Christ. We know that. The
Spirit of God moved upon those men in the Old Testament. The
Spirit of Christ, and He did the same thing with His apostles.
But they're speaking here about the four Gospels. The words of
Christ in the four Gospels. Are those binding on the church
today? Can you imagine this, brothers
and sisters? Can you imagine being without this? Blessed are
the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. How
much comfort have you found in that passage to your poor broken
heart? Throw this away? This ain't binding
on us? Fear not, little flock. It's
your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Lay up
not for yourself treasures upon earth, where moth eats and thieves
break through and steal. Lay up for yourself treasures
in heaven. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness
and all these things shall be added unto you. Verily, verily,
I say unto you, love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do
good to them that hate you. Pray for them that despitefully
use you. I need that so bad, don't you?
That's comforting my poor, tempted, afflicted heart instead of holding
grudges. The Lord said, Bruce, pray for
them. Pray for them. The Lord Jesus Himself said when
telling about the man who built his house upon the rock, He said,
He that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth. I'll show
you what kind of a man he is. He's like a man that built his
house on a rock. And the floods came and the rain
descended and beat upon that house and it didn't fall. But
he that heareth these sins of mine and doeth them not, he's
like a man that built his house on the sand. And they tell us
that these words are binding. I don't know what else to call
that but heresy, do you? One more Scripture and we'll
close in this Scripture. Look here in 1 Timothy chapter
6. 1 Timothy chapter 6 in verses 1 through verse 4. 1 Timothy chapter 6. There are several passages of
Scripture we could read, We won't for the sake of time, but look
here in verse 1. 1 Timothy chapter 6 verse 1. Let as many servants as are under
the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the
name of God and His doctrine be not blasphemed. 1 Timothy
chapter 6 verse 2. And they that have believing
masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren.
but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved,
partakers of the benefits. These things teach and exhort.
If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words,"
look at this, "...even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
to the doctrine which is according to godliness, he is proud, knowing
nothing." The words of Jesus are wholesome. Hold some words. It is our conclusion, yours as
well as mine, that the whole Bible is binding on the church
from Genesis to Revelation. Whatsoever things were written
aforetime were written for our learning, Paul said to the Gentile
church. Genesis is for us. Leviticus is for us. We are just
rightly divided. Revelations is for us, the Gospels
is for us, the whole church, the whole Word of God. In conclusion,
I have one more statement to read to you. And I think I know why this dispensationalism
arose to begin with, and I think I know why it continues and continues
its downhill spiral, getting worse and worse. It's out of
pride. It's out of pride. Men want some new thing. That's
never changed. They want to tell some new thing. I remember back, I saw it back
in the mid-seventies, people going around preaching some of
this stuff. It was just pre-millennial then. But instead of going and
preaching the gospel, somebody would ask some of these preachers
to come and preach. They weren't preaching the gospel. They'd
preach on eschatology. They'd preach on some of the
last things because they saw that stirred up the carnal interest
in things. And it's pride. It's pride. I was reading the introduction
of Matthew McGee's The Kingdom Gospel and Our Gospel of Grace,
and here's what he said. During the Dark Ages from around
500 A.D., to 1500 AD, the public was not permitted to have access
to Bibles. Only the clergy could look upon
the Word of God. They then dispensed only tiny
morsels to the masses, often twisting the meaning for their
own financial or political gain. And by the time the Reformation
began, virtually all Bible truth had been lost or distorted. I'm not for sure that's so. I
think it was among Catholicism, but Catholicism wasn't the only
denomination in the world. I'm not much of a Baptist, but
there was Baptists back then, wasn't there, Mr. Baker? They
had the truth. Other men had the truth. I go
on. After their farmers got Bibles
back into the hands of the common people, people began to try to
reconstruct the proper church doctrine which had been lost.
This was very difficult because they had been steeped in all
manner of heresies for centuries. Different groups had varying
degrees of success correcting some areas of doctrine while
failing to correct others. Some false doctrines were changed
into new, different false gospels. In many cases, not one of the
hundreds of denominations or sets has ever made it back to
the pure doctrine of the early church. And here's what I detected
in this statement. Nobody's made it back. Nobody's
made it back to this pure doctrine but us. We're here now and we're
making it back. We're going to get you back.
And as I read that, I thought of Morganism. You know what Joseph
Smith said? The church has lost the gospel.
And it's been restored. I've got these plates. And we're going to restore the
Gospel. That's why they call it the Church of the Latter Day
Saints. This is the Church and it's restoring
the lost Gospel. And here these fellows come along
and say, all truth has been lost. And they've been trying to get
it straight ever since. And I think he's saying, now
we've arrived. We've arrived. That's pride,
isn't it? when this first started among the Plymouth brothers.
Some of you read George Mueller. He was a Plymouth brother, but
he wasn't like these fellas. Some of you read George Mueller.
Bless his heart, he was a faithful man, a child of God. John, what's his name? Mr. Baker. Can you think of the guy
that started this mess? My mind's gone again. No, he's
the other guy. Darby. Darby. Darby Mueller was
at a meeting one night where Darby was preaching dispensationalism.
And Mr. Mueller asked a question, which
you would have too if you'd have been there. You'd have said,
wait a minute. And Mr. Mueller asked the question. So
Mr. Darby just jumped all over him,
skinned him alive. And Mr. Mueller left the service that
night and he said, I begin to realize I was going to have to
give up Mr. Darby or give up my Bible. Which one do you think he gave
up? He gave up Mr. Darby. He gave up Mr. Darby. Pride is all in the world. It is pride. I hope this has
been a help to you. Maybe you'll run into somebody
down the road or something and you'll hear this and maybe you
can say something to them.