This blog’s subtitle is “Helping you navigate this dispensation’s last days (2 Timothy 3; Ephesians 3:2). In this and subsequent posts, I’ll elaborate on its meaning. (But see my “Helping you navigate this dispensation’s last days”: What do I mean?,” November 11, 2020.)
In “Christ, our philosophical GPS,” I argued:
If Christ is the Wisdom as well as the Word of God, then He’s the cosmic GPS [global positioning system] that makes possible the intelligible relating of what is immanent within experience to what transcends it, the prerequisite to any sensible development of map-making and map-using.
Scripture’s data are “mappable.” Where are we denizens of the 21st century located on the map of God’s prophetic timetable?
Presupposed in what follows is the conviction that history is neither an evolutionary outgrowth of natural history nor an absurd parade of “one damned thing after another,” but a process of divine-human interchange under His control and direction.
This process will culminate in the manifest Kingdom of God on earth, which will continue through millennium-long Parousia of Jesus Christ and, ultimately, the everlasting New Heavens and the New Earth.
Different Dispensational Strokes for Different Folks
God’s has not dealt with humanity in the same way at all times.
He didn’t deal with Noah—who found favor in His sight (Genesis 6:8)—as He did with his neighbors, whom He destroyed in the Great Flood. (No relation.)
God set Abram-Abraham apart from all of his contemporaries and then God designated his seed, through his grandson Jacob/Israel, to inherit blessings that set them apart from every other family (Genesis 12:1-3).
During His earthly ministry, Jesus said He was sent (ἀπεστάλην, apostalēn; from ἀποστέλλω, apostellō, “to commission or send with authority”) only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel (Matthew 15:24). He made the few non-Israelites who impressed Him with their faith—that is, their taking Him at His word and acting accordingly—compassionate exceptions to this rule (Mark 7:24-30; Luke 7:1-10).
He commissioned (ἀπέστειλεν, apesteilen; from ἀποστέλλω, apostellō) disciples to proclaim that the Kingdom of God (not a universal “gospel” of salvation) was “at hand.” That is, toward them and their audience the Kingdom had advanced (ἤγγικεν engiken; Matthew 3:2; Matthew 10:7; Mark 1:15); He forbade them to do so among non-Israelites (ἐθνῶν, ethnōn, in this context, the “the nations,” “the Gentiles”).
After His ascension to the rights of God[1] (ἐκ δεξιῶν, ek dexiōn) in heaven, He commissioned his apostles to herald (not the salvation-bringing message of God, but the arrival of the Kingdom (in its “blade stage”), and not exclusively to the Jew, but to the Jew first and then to the nations. That is, first to the circumcised, then to the uncircumcised, Peter being the apostle to the former (with the exception of Cornelius and his household: Acts 10), Paul to the latter (Romans 11:13).
The Book of Acts is the inspired record of this roughly 33-year period. It was God’s way of dealing with mankind, a manner unprecedented and never to be repeated.
When this “Pentecostal” administration (οἰκονομία, oikonomia)—which was decidedly not one of grace (ask Ananias and Sapphira: Acts 5)—ended, it was followed by an oikonomia that was, and continues to be, such a dispensation. Paul declared that the salvation-bringing (σωτήριον, sotērion, an adjective, not a noun) message of God has been freely authorized (ἀπεστάλη, apestalē; from ἀποστέλλω, apostellō, but here the object is inanimate) to the nations, and it will get through (ἀκούσονται, akousontai) to them” (Acts 28:28, Sellers’s translation).
The distinction between Israelites and non-Israelites was of the greatest significance during the Acts period; so it will be again in the future manifest Kingdom. But not today.
Israel’s Most Favored Nation Status: Suspended
During the present dispensation of grace (οἰκονομίαν τῆς χάριτος, oikonomia tēs charitos; Ephesians 3:2), however, all nations are on equal terms, joint bodies (σύσσωμα, sussōma).[2] It is the first universal or global dispensation. God today is dealing with mankind, not as nations, but as individuals.
That’s where we are on the “map.”
This dispensation will end, not in wrath, but in the greatest display of grace ever, universal enlightenment—not universal salvation—for all who will be alive at God’s Kingdom blazing forth (ἐπιφάνεια, epiphaneia). Not all, however, will be permitted to remain alive.
God will restore Israel to her land[3] and David to his throne[4]—God will: Israel won’t restore herself (and didn’t begin doing that in 1948). The apostles, sitting on their own seats of God’s government (“thrones”) will judge the tribes of Israel, the mediatorial nation between heaven and earth.
The above summarizes—tendentiously and dogmatically—part of Otis Q. Seller’s map of Biblical prophecy, which affords us a GPS. We can’t intelligently move toward our destination if we don’t know where we are.
In the next post, I’ll show how Sir Robert Anderson’s 1927 The Silence of God planted a seed in Sellers’s mind. It will prepare readers for further posts on that seed’s yield and the conclusions he reached, painstakingly but progressively, over the next 60 years.
To Be Continued
Notes
[1] See Otis Q. Sellers, “The Rights of God,” Seed & Bread 187. Psalm 63:8, Psalm 110:1, Acts 7:55-56, Romans 8:34,Ephesians 1:20, Colossians 3:1, Hebrews 1:3, 8:1, 10:12, 1 Peter 3:22, Matthew 22:44.
[2] In Ephesians 3:6, Paul describes the nations—not contrasted with Israel, but including her—as joint-heirs, joint-bodies, and joint-partakers. In the Greek all three descriptors are plural: υνκληρονόμα, synklēronoma; σύσσωμα, sussōma; συμμέτοχα, symmetocha. Translating the second one as singular, which is often done, is unjustified and obscures the truth Paul is expressing: no nation enjoys “most favored nation” status.
[3] Isaiah 11:11-12; Jeremiah 23:3-8, 31:31-34; Ezekiel 37:21-25.
[4] Acts 15:16; see Amos 9:11.