Reflections After Reading An Old Autobiography: (A. C. Gaebelein)

I have just finished reading an interesting autobiography by a major Bible teacher of the first part of the 20th Century named Arno C. Gaebelein.  The book is titled A Half Century: The Autobiography of a Servant. The book is beautifully bound and signed by the author, August 10th 1944.  Gaebelein died a year later.  I found several items of interest in the book that I thought I would like to share.

I should first say something about the subject.  A. C. Gaebelein was one of the most important teachers of what he called Dispensational truth in the halcyon days of America’s Prophetic Movement.  He was well acquainted with the likes of James H. Brookes, C. I. Scofield and many other premillenarians of the day.  He authored a number of books, the best of which (in my opinion) are Harmony of the Prophetic Word,  The Annotated Bible, The Angels of God, and Conflict of the Ages. He also wrote a fine exposition of the Olivet Discourse.

Gaebelein published his book in 1930 when Jehovah’s Witnesses were called “Russellites,” when Pentecostals were commonly denounced as heretical enthusiasts, and when Presbyterian pastors enthusiastically endorsed premillennialism.

Here are some reflections on his Autobiography:

1. The first thing is that Gaebelein was diligent.  He was very driven (as we say today) and made the most of his opportunities to teach himself the biblical languages, as well as Syriac and, because he at first worked as an evangelist to Jewish immigrants in New York, Yiddish (he also knew German, having been raised in Germany).

In the second place he was diligent.  Not only did he learn several languages on his own, he was constantly reading his Bible, writing books and pamphlets, editing his magazine “Our Hope,” and preaching.  He was very industrious.  He writes in one place about the importance of reading the Bible as a means of communing with God and refreshing the soul.  Without this, he believed it was not possible to maintain a right relationship with the Lord.

I was impressed by this conviction that attentive Bible reading and a living and open relationship with God were inextricably linked.  The Bible is the source of our sermons and our theology.  But it must also be the voice of the personal God to us.  It must be God speaking to us.  “Ministry,” he writes, “can only be kept by a real growth in the knowledge and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and such growth demands a diligent and prayerful study of the Bible.” (169).

In another place he mentions a small prayer-book which he carried around with him and made it his habit to consult and pray for people whenever he had a free moment.  Gaebelein placed a lot of emphasis on prayer: “True ministry must be born in prayer and communion with the Lord.  A ministry without prayer is barren.” (237).

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46. Contrary to dispensationalism’s claim that “the Church is a mystery, unrevealed in the Old Testament” (J. D. Pentecost), the New Testament writers look to the Old Testament for its divine purpose and role in the history of redemption and declare only that the mystery was not known “to the sons of men” at large, and was not known to the same degree “as” it is now revealed to all men in the New Testament (Eph 3:4-6), even noting that it fulfills Old Testament prophecy (Hos 1:10 / Rom 9:22-26), including even the beginning of the new covenant phase of the Church (Joel 2:28-32 / Acts 2:16-19).

Response: First, one does not have to be a Dispensationalist to hold that the mystery of the Church as the Body of Christ was not known in OT times (see Bruce, O’Brien, Barth).  The adverbial conjunction “as” in Eph. 3:5 is best seen in a descriptive sense asserting the difference in kind which the mystery discloses, rather than a restrictive way whereby more is known now than was known before.  Paul is speaking here of the entity which is the Church.  The Church is the Body of Christ which is entered into through the Baptism of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13).  According to Acts 1:5 (cf. Jn. 7:39) this baptism began at Pentecost.  It is this new revelation of the Body of Christ which it is crucial to keep in  mind since it is just not found in the OT.  Further, the mystery was covered up, “hidden,” or “not made known” (3:5), but is NOW revealed.  This surely supports the descriptive sense!  It wasn’t half covered up!

The Biblical Covenants and “Expansionist” Re-Readings

So far in our present studies in “Biblical Covenantalism” we have seen that what is known as Dispensationalism is not very well named.  Not that dispensations are foreign to Scripture, but the name does not describe the distinctive approach to the Bible and Theology that is quintessential to the system.  On the contrary, it brings to prominence things which are of far less importance than the matters we have been discussing with regard to the Covenants of Scripture.  It is the covenants, not the dispensations, which are crucial to this viewpoint.  One may argue back and forth about the dispensations; their number and features, without abandoning “Dispensationalism.”  But one cannot ignore the biblical covenants without destroying the whole system itself.

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41. Despite the dispensationalists’ claim that the descendents of the patriarchs never inhabited all the land promised to them in the Abrahamic covenant and therefore, since God cannot lie, the possession of the land by the Jews is still in the future; on the contrary, Joshua wrote, “So the LORD gave to Israel all the land of which He had sworn to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it and dwelt in it… Not a word failed of any good thing which the LORD had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass” (Joshua 21:43,45).

Response: Here it is!  Read it again.  This is the passage with which they will beat into submission all those verses in the Prophets which continue to promise Israel a literal land.  What is to be done?  Surely Gen. 15 was fulfilled hundreds of years before Jeremiah bought Hanamel’s field (Jer. 32)?   Clearly, if we follow this kind of reasoning, when God promised Abraham and his descendants a specific geographical location on earth in perpetuity He was using hyperbole (btw, is hyperbole appropriate in contracts?!):

“I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.  And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.” (Gen. 17:7-8).

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Apologies for not posting for the a while.  Among other things I was doing a conference in MI.  Anyway, here are some more responses to the Nicene Council.  I again wish to stress that we ought to be able to discuss our disagreements without branding each other as heretics or any such pejorative term.  I certainly don’t have all the answers!  Albeit, I think I have something to say in answer to these “Theses.”   We are on Thesis 37:

37. Despite the dispensationalists’ claim regarding “the unconditional character of the [Abrahamic] covenant” (J. Dwight Pentecost), which claim is essential for maintaining separate programs for Israel and the Church, the Bible in Deuteronomy 30 and other passages presents it as conditional; consequently not all of Abraham’s descendants possess the land and the covenantal blessings but only those who, by having the same faith as Abraham, become heirs through Christ.

Response: Of course there are conditional elements in the Abrahamic Covenant.  In Genesis 17, for example, there is circumcision.  The question is whether the conditional aspects of the covenants can be reconciled with the unconditional aspects.  Our objectors direct us to Deuteronomy 30, and we are happy to go there!  But we shall have to read it more carefully than the Nicene brethren appear to have done.

Deuteronomy 30 is of course the locus classicus for the Land or “Palestinian” Covenant.  The reader is urged to study the whole chapter carefully.  Notice God predicts an apostasy based upon the blessings and curses in the previous three chapters (vv.1,17-18), but He also predicts a regathering (vv.2-5) and regeneration (vv.6-8).

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31. Despite the dispensationalists’ strong commitment to the “plain interpretation” of Scripture (Charles Ryrie) and its dependence on Daniel’s Seventy Weeks as “of major importance to premillennialism” (John Walvoord), they have to insert into the otherwise chronological progress of the singular period of “Seventy Weeks” (Dan 9:24) a gap in order to make their system work; and that gap is already four times longer than the whole Seventy Weeks (490 year) period.

Response: The 70 Weeks prophecy is not at all unusual in containing a long time-gap between one aspect of its fulfillment and its final consummation.  As with so many other OT prophetic passages, one often finds predictions of the first and second advents sandwiched together without any apparent time lapse.  An example is Micah 5:2:

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me The One to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth are from of old, From everlasting.”

Nobody doubts the literal truth of this prophecy when it speaks about a). the place of Messiah’s birth, or, b). the pre-existence of Messiah.  But there is a hermeneutical decision that has to be made about the prediction regarding, “the one to be Ruler in Israel.”  Those who prefer what might be called the “selective-allegorical” approach will say that Christ is now ruling spiritually over the Church, the “New spiritual Israel.”  Dispensationalists will look for a more literal interpretation of this part of the prophecy in line with the two other parts.  They are encouraged to do this because this is not the only prophecy of an actual Messianic Rule over ethnic Israel; a prophecy that is yet to be fulfilled (cf.  Isa. 9:6-7;  Jer. 33:14-17; Lk. 1:31-33).

What is a Biblical Covenant? – Part Two

A Biblical Covenant is a thing of tremendous importance for the student of Scripture.  For one thing, these covenants (made e.g., with Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses, David) were made by God Almighty Himself.  When God deigns to make a covenant with men one can be sure that He has some great strategic purpose in mind.  In which case it is crucial to pay close attention to what is stated, otherwise the intention of God forecasted in the covenant will be missed.

We saw in the last post that Covenant theologians impose extra-biblical covenants like the “Covenant of Grace” upon the covenants of Scripture.  This flattens out these covenants and allows the covenant theologian to pronounce them “one” while ignoring the details within.  We believe this to be a serious error.

Although helpful work has been done regarding the parallels between the OT covenants and ancient Near Eastern treaties, it should not be forgotten that, as Charles Scobie says, “Considerably more significant for the biblical understanding of covenant is the way the term is used in the OT itself.” – Charles H.H. Scobie, The Ways of Our God, 475.  The covenant made with Noah in Gen. 9:8-17 is obviously an unconditional covenant (it is made with the creation as well as with man).  God promises Noah, who found grace in His sight, that He would preserve the planet in perpetuity (see 8:22), thus ensuring there would be a history upon whose stage the events of the Old and New Testaments, together with their effects, would be played out.

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26. Despite the dispensationalists’ interpretive methodology arguing that we must interpret the Old Testament on its own merit without reference to the New Testament, so that we must “interpret ‘the New Testament in the light of the Old’” (Alan Johnson), the unified, organic nature of Scripture and its typological, unfolding character require that we consult the New Testament as the divinely-ordained interpreter of the Old Testament, noting that all the prophecies are “yea and amen in Christ” (2 Cor 1:20); that “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Rev 19:10); and, in fact, that  many Old Testament passages were written “for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor 10:11) and were a “mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past” (Col. 1:26; Rev 10:7).

Response: Firstly, Alan Johnson is not a Dispensationalist.  But since Scripture is a unified and organic whole, certainly we must, in some sense, “interpret the New Testament in light of the Old.”  Every Bible interpreter must do that.  What responsible Bible student would deny it?  Where would our biblical worldview be if we did not allow Genesis 1-4 to guide us as New Testament believers?

The question is, “To what extent can the New Testament be used to interpret the Old?”  The passages cited do not answer this question for us.  2 Cor. 1:20 speaks to the Divine provenance of the Gospel preached by Paul and his companions.  The verse does not say “prophecies” but “promises.”  In context the promises are those of the Gospel.  However, because Christ is the Fulcrum of the outworking of God’s decrees it would not be amiss to relate every promise to Him.  But this hardly gives Christians license to give the OT promises a complete makeover so that they look nothing like the original statements.  Likewise 1 Cor. 10:11 tells us that the OT stories “were written for our instruction.”  The context is Divine recompense upon evil works (v.6).  To enlist the passage to teach the legitimacy of an ill-advised mixture of allegorical/typological/literal interpretation of the OT is to be guilty of  ‘textual kidnapping.’

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24. Despite the dispensationalists’ partial defense of their so-called literalism in pointing out that “the prevailing method of interpretation among the Jews at the time of Christ was certainly this same method” (J. D. Pentecost), they overlook the problem that this led those Jews to misunderstand Christ and to reject him as their Messiah because he did not come as the king which their method of interpretation predicted.

Response: It is not advisable to refer to Dispensational interpretation as “literalism” – so-called or otherwise, as this leads to misunderstandings and misrepresentations (See below).  It is far better to treat the Bible the same way one would treat any other book.  It seems preposterous to us to scout around for an alternative hermeneutics just because the Bible is the Word of God.  In fact, it is precisely because the Bible is the Word of God to man that one would expect it NOT to require some esoteric interpretation unless very good reasons could be given for doing so.

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18. Contrary to the dispensationalists’ structuring of law and grace as “antithetical concepts” (Charles Ryrie) with the result that “the doctrines of grace are to be sought in the Epistles, not in the Gospels” (Scofield Reference Bible – SRB, p. 989), the Gospels do declare the doctrines of grace, as we read in John 1:17, “For the law was given by Moses; but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ,” and in the Bible’s most famous verse: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Response: Dealing first with the Scofield quote, we are at least glad to get a reference!  But let’s reproduce the whole SRB quotation: “The doctrines of grace are to be sought in the Epistles, not in the Gospels; but those doctrines rest back upon the death and resurrection of Christ, and upon the great germ-truths to which He gave utterance, and of which the Epistles are the unfolding.  Furthermore, the only perfect example of perfect grace is the Christ of the Gospels.”

The only thing Scofield appears to be pointing out here is the Protestant view that the unfolding of the DOCTRINES of grace are in the Epistles.  That is why evangelicals tend to fetch their doctrinal underpinnings from places like Paul’s epistles to the Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, etc., more than from the Gospels.