Episode 232

Dr. Phil Stringer joins us on the Removing Barriers podcast to discuss whether dispensationalism is biblical. Critics say it is merely a theological fad of the 20th century that we must abandon for the frameworks of early church fathers. Increasingly, dispensationalism has come under intense scrutiny as a conduit to wrong theology, wrong eschatology, and even wrong politics. Are the critics right? What is dispensationalism and is it really just a new-fangled framework popularized in the U.S. by  Moody, Scofield, and Darby? What are the arguments for and against it? Is this a scenario where good Christian folks can just agree to disagree, or is it a salvific issue that demands immediate clarity and dogmatic adherence? Dr. Phil Stringer lends his wisdom, knowledge, and expertise on this subject with the hope that we can at the very least provide a starting point for Christians to study this for themselves. Dr. Stringer is the Vice-President of the King James Bible Research Council and vice president of Dayspring Bible College in Mundelein, Illinois. He is a nationally respected author and lecturer with a new book about Israel due for release in the summer of 2026.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Antisemitism that is raging is a big factor. You have to get rid of Israel and say that Israel’s place was taken by the church to make the basis for antisemitism. A lot of people have written on this and said the trends that led to the Holocaust in Germany started with Luther. But even when these folks do this and they so loudly proclaim it, replacement theology is dispensational.

[Jay]

Thank you for tuning in to the Removing Barriers podcast. I’m Jay and I’m MCG. And we’re attempting to remove barriers so we can all have a clear view of the cross.

[MCG]

This is episode 232 of the Removing Barriers podcast. And in this episode, we will be sitting down with our guest from episode 197. He’s the vice president of the King James Bible Research Council. He’s an author and lecturer and holds, among others, a PhD in the English Bible. Dr. Phil Stringer join us to discuss whether dispensationalism is biblical.

[Jay]

Hi, this is Jay. MCG and I would like for you to help us remove barriers by going to removingbarriers.net and subscribing to receive all things Removing Barriers. If you’d like to take your efforts a bit further and help us keep the mics on, consider donating at removingbarriers.net/donate. Removing barriers, a clear view of the cross.

[MCG]

Dr. Phil Stringer, it is indeed a pleasure. Welcome back to the Removing Barriers podcast.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Thank you. My absolute pleasure.

[MCG]

Great. Thank you for putting us in a busy schedule. I follow you on Facebook while the podcasts follow you on Facebook. And I see you all over the world in the Philippines and doing great work and provoking people there on Facebook as well.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Yes. I don’t provoke anybody. I’m just sweet, kind, gentle, fuzzy, happy person, but I seem to come across people finding need to express themselves with difficult terms.

[MCG]

He didn’t even try to explain.

[Jay]

He was just like, Yep.

[MCG]

We’ll leave it as that. All right, doctor. What is dispensationalism and the history of it? Let’s get into this.

[Jay]

All right.

[MCG]

Okay.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

And they say this first. I’ve been preaching for 53 years.

[MCG]

Amen.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

I started when I was three. I want you to understand that. That’s the only way I’ve been able to get 53 years in. But I have actually been preaching for 53 years and in independent Baptist circles, which has been 90% of my involvement. When I first started preaching, there was no debate about dispensationalism. Every Baptist I knew was dispensational. And that was true for decades. Just in the last few years, this has become a hot topic among independent Baptists. with people abandoning dispensationalism. It’s almost become a fad for young preachers to announce proudly they’re not dispensationalists anymore. And I talked to somebody the other day, he’s actually a lady preacher, Pentecostal preacher, and she said that all the confusion and division among Christians is caused by one word, dispensationalism.

And I said, well.

That’s very nice of you, ma’am, but by the way, I’m A dispensationalist. I have met since my earliest involvement in the ministry. So I’ll read you a definition of dispensationalism. This comes from the book A Spiritual War Against Israel, which my pastor and I have co-written, which we should be getting copies of early in June to make available to people. And this actually comes from a chapter that he wrote, one, how Israel fits into a dispensational view. And Pastor Jim Scudder wrote this definition. Dispensationalism is a theological framework that interprets the Bible as a series of distinct periods or dispensations in which God interacts with humanity in different ways. While the way of eternal salvation has been the same across all dispensations, this was that God works and deals with us and His service to Him changes. And I would say up front, everybody’s A dispensationalist, even if they don’t know it, if they don’t understand what dispensationalism is, and if they’re attacking dispensationalism. And I’ve asked folks, they say, Well, I’m not a dispensationalist. It’s a radical. It’s not taught in the Bible. It was invented by Scofield and Darby and all that. When was your last animal sacrifice? And so that has nothing to do with dispensationalism. Actually has absolutely everything to do with it. The idea of dispensationalism is that God has different sets of commandments and instructions for us to follow at different times, and those can be divided up and are called dispensations. There’s disagreement even among some good people about how many distinct dispensations there are. But if you study the Scripture and you take everything literally, you cannot put everything in the same period of time with the same set of instructions, in the same framework. You have to start spiritualizing some of it or mis-explaining some of it. So Independent Baptists, who by definition believe the Bible is sole authority, did not define things due to the teachings of famous preachers, denominations, headquarters, whatever. And so you would find all through the 50s and 60s and 70s, 80s, 90s, 20, 2000s, 2010s, until recently it was just almost automatic if you’re talking to an Independent Baptist. They’re dispensationalists. I believe everything said in each book of the Bible, but they cannot all fit together in the same process. And a prime example is animal sacrifices. You could not worship the Lord in obedience without animal sacrifices during a lengthy period of time. But animal sacrifices accomplished nothing in the worship of the Lord. Today, we are in a different, distinct period. You did not have anything like the church in the Old Testament era. Nothing from that. They worshiped as a nation or as families. They were not divided into groups of people like you have the local church you’re in. And I’m a member of Quentin Road Baptist Church in Lake Zurich, Illinois. There was no gathering of local churches like that anywhere during the history of Israel. But it’s commanded by God now. You cannot be right with God now without being involved in local church. So we have dispensations Even the people that scream the loudest against dispensationalism practice it. Everybody’s a dispensationalist, just some people don’t realize what they’re talking about when they get to this subject. When you talk about the history of it, again, as long as people have been dealing with the scripture and the different responsibilities given to the church from Israel, they’ve been dispensationalists. It’s not brand new, it’s always been there. Even before the Old Testament law, you had different instructions than what you had during the law. But a lot of folks get upset because they say, well, there’s no one place in the Bible that explains all of this. Well, that’s true. How many other subjects are there where there’s no one place in the Bible that explains this? It’s a matter of interpreting literally everything God said, and you cannot interpret literally everything God said without being a dispensationalist. There would begin to be a great emphasis on explaining it in a certain fashion, going back to John Darby and C.I. Schofield, Schofield Reference Bible, and then through prominent Bible teachers that came through Dallas Seminary, like Lewis Berry Schaefer and Dwight Pentecost and Charles Ryrie and a number of other folks through that era. And a lot of attention was paid to it. It got taught in more detail and people spent more time trying to explaining it. And so a lot of folks say, that’s when dispensationalism started with Darby and Scofield and these folks. And they’ll try to refute it by attacking Darby. Darby was not a Baptist. He’s A Plymont brethren. He had some different doctrinal ideas. They like to attack Dr. Scofield personally. A couple of books have been written about that. Yes, it’s true. Scofield was divorced during the time he was in the ministry. That’s not the issue in his doctrine. does his doctrine come from the scripture or not? And Dr. Scofield was human and you can find his flaws, but as thoroughly as he’s been investigated, I don’t think any of us want to be investigated that thoroughly and described in detail by folks with a motive and an agenda. And you’ll see, I just saw some of these posts today on the internet. the Scofield conspiracy, about how he tried to persuade all these people. Scofield took the Bible in these areas literally. Since it says this here and this here and this here, they must all be true. They must all be true statements. But they’re true statements in terms of commands for different distinct periods of time. And it’s always been there. has been more of an emphasis on explaining it in detailed fashion over the last 80 years. But you also understand over the last 80 years, you’ve had a great deal more publishing of books and a great more avenues for teaching. Everything from the development of Bible colleges all around the world to podcasts like the one that we’re on now. And a lot of subjects have been explained and analyzed and outlined in a more detailed fashion than what you’re used to finding in the past. So if you want to ask me when did dispensationalism start, when God gave the first set of instructions and then followed it up with a different set of instructions. We are not commanded to eat of all the trees of the garden except for one. When they got cast out of the garden, dispensationalism began. Now, they say, but everybody didn’t use that name. Everybody doesn’t agree whether they’re six or seven or eight dispensations. I personally think they’re seven. Good people can disagree over these things.

[MCG]

Right.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

But when did dispensationalism start? Garden of Eden. It’s been around for a long time.

[Jay]

I would like to ask, if I could, what do you think is the impetus or maybe the reason why dispensationalism is under attack? I’ll tell you what I think, and you tell me if I’m in the right ballpark here. It seems to me that with the, particularly online, with the rise and the prominence of reform theology, and these reformed teachers and preachers, and there seems to be now the path to attack dispensationalism. The argument is that, well, you know, it’s new, it only came about in the 1920s, and we have church fathers that never believed this nonsense. You have to go back to the early church fathers and look at what historical Christianity believed and taught. And I think perhaps that’s one of the reasons why it opens the door to the attack on dispensationalism.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

That’s 100% true. It’s only one of the reasons, but it is absolutely true what you said. I would connect several things to this. Reformed theology, particularly replacement theology, the desire to claim that there’s no such thing as Israel today and that Israel has no place in God’s plan. And there’s several motives for that. One of the big motives is, well, Calvin and Luther taught that. And so we want to give ourselves credibility by going to Calvin and Luther. Or they like to say the early church fathers never taught anything like this. I would beg to differ. I have right here as I’m sitting in my office, Insight, I have all 36 volumes of the Anti-Nicene, Nicene, and Post-Nicene Fathers, which is all the recorded writings of church figures from the first 300 years. And they were constantly discussing what was for today and what is not for today. They may not have put the term on it, but that’s dispensationalism. And so to say that they didn’t believe in dispensationalism, I think is completely false. They may not have organized it as clearly in their thinking as we do. Calvin and Luther claim not to believe in dispensations. They claim Israel was the church and the church is Israel. And yet you never see Calvin, and I have a complete set of Calvin’s commentaries in the next room, and I have a set of Luther sermons. They never asked anybody to offer animal sacrifices. They never suggested, you know, there were 11 things that led to capital punishment in the Old Testament law. And Calvin and Luther did believe that church states should sometimes kill people, but they didn’t go by the whole list, I promise. Old Testament Israel, if a son was rebellious and a drunkard, he was to be executed. Life would change if we tried practicing that. And Calvin and Luther never suggest practicing that. There was supposed to be capital punishment for adultery. Calvin had organized brothels in Geneva. So in some sense, they were dispensational, even though folks like to run to them today. And you can read Calvin’s Institutes or any of the early Calvinists. And there isn’t a section in their doctrines books entitled dispensations. But I repeat again, everybody’s dispensationalist, whether they like it or not, whether they admit it or not, whether they know enough to understand it a lot. The desire to go to replacement theology is a big factor. Covenant theology is a big factor. Anti-Semitism that is raging is a big factor. You have to get rid of Israel and say that Israel’s place was taken by the church. to make the basis for anti-Semitism. A lot of people have written on this and said the trends that led to the Holocaust in Germany started with Luther. But even when these folks do this and they so loudly proclaim it, replacement theology is dispensational. It’s claiming God was dealing with the nation of Israel then. He’s only dealing with the church now. That’s dispensational whether you want to admit it or not. There is a third reason, I believe, among Independent Baptists. We’re in the 4th generation of the Independent Baptist Movement. Our guys didn’t see how this started. They’re not aware of the battles that were fought or the things that led to the creation of a distinct movement among Baptists that became known as the Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement. And there is a spirit of rebellion among the young preachers. They want something beyond what their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers had. And they like to think of themselves as advanced. And I think a lot of them never grew out of their rebellious period as a teenager. And they’ve carried it in the ministry. And they think the ministry is changing everything. Let’s change the music. Let’s change the way we do everything. And if you’re changing the way you do everything, you have to change doctrine. And having a rebellious spirit is not a terribly unusual experience for people, for young people. for teenagers, but most teenagers grow out of it. We seem to have a generation of young preachers who have not grown out of their rebellious period they had as a teenager. They’ve carried it to their ministry. They make it the center of their ministry. They’ll take a church with the intention of changing everything. And they believe in change for change sake. And when they get to doctrine, they’ve got to change everything. They’ve just got to prove they’re not their fathers. They’re not their grandfathers. And I think that spirit of rebellion has led to this. Again, name me a prominent independent Baptist before the last decade that wasn’t a dispensationalist. I mean, name one. And so if you have a spirit of rebellion, there’s something to rebel against that’ll set you apart from everybody that went before you. And I really think this spirit of teenage rebellion never got processed And it’s not just Baptist preachers in their 20s and 30s, it’s our entire society in their 20s and 30s. Never seemed to have come out of them, this spirit of teenage rebellion. Unfortunately, it’s just about as true for Baptist preachers as it is for everybody else. And so I think that spirit of rebellion is a huge factor in this. I gotta be different than dad. I gotta be different than granddad. I gotta be different than the people before me. And I may be the new young guy at this church, but I can make it better than it ever was. because I’m different and I know more and I understand. And it’s not just dispensationalism, but I think dispensationalism fits right in this. I see guys at pastoring churches and they’re announcing they know so much more than the guy that founded the church, everybody that kept the church going until their time to come and be there. And now they are the new enlightened wisdom. And that attitude leads to hosts of problems, doctrinally every other way. is where I think the contemporary church movement comes from. And a lot of our Independent Baptist guys are trying to be contemporary church. They see some in the Pentecostal segments, some huge contemporary churches. And our guys try to copy that. Our guys are miserable at it, by the way. If you watch them, they don’t have any rhythm when they’re up in the pulpit platform trying to dance the way the Pentecostals do. The one thing that’s obvious is our guys have no rhythm whatsoever. I mean, they just can’t pull that off. Totally apart from right or wrong, they look ridiculous. They can’t make it work. And many of them will take a church of 300 announcing they have the plan to make it a huge mega church. And quickly it’s 200, it’s 100, it’s 50. Our guys can’t make all this stuff work. And some of the Pentecostal guys, I completely disagree with them, but they look like they were born to do this. You know, it’s their thing. Our guys just look like absolute idiots. They have no rhythm. They can’t put the pieces of that together. And all they really know how to talk about is how they reject what came in the generation before. And so my own belief is that while there are doctrinal issues here, I frankly don’t think a lot of these guys pay much attention to doctrine period. That these are more emotional and psychological issues. And if they’d worked out their teenage rebellion years when they were a teenager, I don’t think they’d be having all these doctrinal problems today.

[MCG]

Yeah, I wonder if it’s because the parents never taught them why we did this.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Yeah, that may be. I do think we went through a generation in Independent Baptist circles where we almost discounted teaching. And there’s a difference between teaching and preaching, and both are biblical and both are needed. And we kind of discounted teaching when the Fundamental Baptist Movement was being built. Sunday school was a big deal, and the teaching and the training. And many of them had Sunday school, and they had training Sunday evening. And teaching held a higher prominence. There were Bible colleges everywhere, and men were spending more time actually studying the Scriptures. The curriculums in our Bible colleges were different than most of them than they are today. They studied many books of the Bible, which is almost not done today at any level. even in Bible colleges. I’m happy to say Dayspring Bible College where I’m the vice president. We’ve taken exactly the opposite approach to that. You probably get more Bible exegesis in books of the Bible. We actually have a goal to have a taped, recorded class on every book of the Bible. So when it comes to, you need so many hours of Bible exegesis for bachelor’s and seminars for master’s, and we hope at some point down the road to add a doctoral program to that. We want to get to the point we’ve got every single book of the Bible in a college course. And we have, I think, 24 of the books of the New Testament now. We’re working on adding every year. So we’re not part of that trend, I’m proud to say. But I’ve been around Bible colleges, teaching for 49 years, and visiting speaker and so forth, and I know a lot of college guys. The curriculums have changed. There’s less actual Bible teaching, and I think that leads to people not knowing. But once asked to say, okay, we may have had parents that failed, And Bible colleges that failed, at the end of the day, you do not have control over whether young people have a rebellious spirit or not. We’re in a culture that emphasizes, promotes, accents rebellion, and it takes self-discipline to grow spiritually to where that era of rebellion doesn’t affect you. And there’s a lot of young people who’ve had all the right opportunities and still have that spirit of rebellion, and they’re still teenage rebels when they’re 35. And I see that as the heart of this. I know that offends some people when I say that. I’m not trying to be offensive, but I really do believe that’s the issue. And the issue isn’t really any study of specific scriptures. When they started to go this route and they would get challenged, they said, oh, Scofield was a bad guy. You know, he and his first wife were divorced. They tell different stories of the divorce, which by the way is not unusual when you’re dealing with divorces for the man and the woman to have different stories. I don’t know exactly what Scofield was or wasn’t guilty of in his first marriage. None of that has to do with doctrine. What’s the Lord say? It’s specific words of scripture. And if you do not accept dispensationalism, you’re going to have trouble with a lot of specific places in the Bible. And a lot of us have felt when the Bible tells us to rightly divide the word of truth, that’s exactly the instruction. I could read about putting your opponents to death in the Old Testament. I hope you’re not applying that to this dispensation. I laugh at this because some folks say, you can’t criticize a preacher because the Bible says, touch not the Lord’s anointed. But that verse was about assassinating the king. Even if you want to say, well, the Lord’s anointed in that dispensation was kings, the Lord’s anointed, they are preachers. Touch not means exactly that. It doesn’t mean don’t disagree with. It doesn’t mean don’t criticize. If you want to interpret that and apply it to pastors, it means don’t physically attack them. And I’m willing to go with that. We are commanded not to physically attack people that the Lord has set up and used. But if you don’t practice some sense of dispensationalism, you’re living in endless confusion and endless contradiction.

[MCG]

All right, let me ask you this because I would imagine someone listening saying, hey, Dr. Stringer, it can’t be that simple. It can’t be the reason why folks don’t agree with dispensationalism is because they don’t have animal sacrifice anymore. They can explain it away with the fact that we don’t do it because of Jesus sacrificed on the cross or whatever the case may be.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Oh, right. And that’s exactly what they’re saying. But that’s dispensationalism. That is a change in God’s dealing with man. That is exactly Dispensationalism.

[MCG]

Okay, so you said that you hold to about 7 different dispensationalism. Tell us what are they and then tell us why would someone have less or more?

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Well, what you’re having to do is go through the scripture, systematic theology, begin to take a look at these things and see where everything fits, rightly dividing the word of truth. There were instructions from God to Adam. There were instructions from God to Noah. Hard to get past that. their instructions of God to Moses, the instructions of God, the church age. That’s 4. If there’s a literal millennium, and I believe there is, that is at the least a 6th. You had a fifth, a 6th. And good people would then say, well, a new dis, and there are good people say this, I don’t say it at all, a new dispensation started in the middle of the book of Acts. They’re called mid-Acts dispensation lists, so they’ve added one to the list. There are other people, including myself, who would say there’s a specific dispensation dealing with Noah when others would say not. And so analyzing the different dispensations requires a certain amount of Bible interpretation. And systematic theology is where you try to take everything that’s in the Bible and create a unified message where there’s room for everything there interpreted literally. It’s sort of like Bible prophecy. I don’t break fellowship with people over Bible prophecy. If God could have made Bible prophecy a lot easier if he wanted to, he could have said, book of Bible prophecy. And the next thing that happens is this, and the thing after that is this, and the thing after that is this, and after that is this. He didn’t. He scattered these statements about things to come all over the Bible. From early in Genesis to clearly to the Book of Revelation all the way through. So Bible students have to study these things try and put them in order. And that is a gigantic process. And good people, I remember I had a project when I was in Bible college in Bible prophecy class, Brother James Wooster. It’s a huge project, almost cruel to give students a project this big, but I don’t think that bothered him at all. Basically, this was our semester project. We have to take a card, take a stack of cards, and every event yet to come prophesied in the Bible, You have to put on a card and then you have to put them in the order in which they’re going to happen.

[MCG]

Oh, wow.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

And so you’re on this, okay, there’s this, and this and this. And you got your card. And then you say, but wait a minute, what about this? And you’re constantly shuffling the cards. And we didn’t catch it until we had to turn the projects in thinking, well, I wonder if I got it in the wrong order. He didn’t grade you on whether you had it in the right order. You can’t find two men that agree on whether it’s all right order, but whether you got them all. But it was a considerable learning process. It’s the same with dispensations. You have to say, okay, we have differing instructions for different times. What are the times? What are the instructions? How do they react to the different covenants God made with man? And that is a process. And it’s a process in which good people go through and disagree. Dr. Scofield made an incredible impact on this discussion, but when he produced the Scofield Reference Bible, which outlines seven dispensations, and as you’re going through the notes, this is where this dispensation ended, and this one started, and this is a reference back to that dispensation, and this is a look forward to this dispensation. And the Scofield Reference Bible had such impact that a lot of people have looked at things from that angle. It had impact on me. I have read some, I think, good writings from people who had some differences with that, and I don’t want to discredit everybody who did not get every piece of this in the same order and in the same way. That is a, frankly, a constant never-ending study. And it’s still a study I’m involved in. I remember at one point I was gonna teach the book of Isaiah to church I was pastoring. And Isaiah is tricky ’cause it jumps back and forth between the dispensations. Whether you wanna admit that or not, at times it’s talking about Isaiah’s time. Other times it’s talking about the first coming of Christ. Other times it’s talking about the second coming of Christ. Other passages are about the millennium. So I developed this code. I said, I’m gonna mark every verse and I’ll give this to the people when I’m teaching it. So I had a code, M for millennium and I for Isaiah’s time, one for first coming, two for the second coming. And I had a code, had several notations. And I’m writing this in a margin of my Bible and then I’m trying to keep it all sorted. Pretty soon I quit using ink and I started making the notations in pencil. Because you can erase what you put in pencil. You say, wait a minute, no, maybe this goes here, it goes there, it goes whatever. I just taught in January for 45 hours the book of Isaiah at Dayspring Bible College. And over the years, putting those things in place at least feels like it’s coming easier for me. I’m teaching this. I mean, man, I remember when I taught this one there and this was about that. That was, and again, you can say, well, I don’t believe in dispensations, but Isaiah talks about a time when the lion and the lamb will lay down together. When your kids will have pet asps. You know, instead of the kid, you need to go outside for a while, go out and play with your poisonous snakes for a while. That hasn’t happened yet.

[MCG]

Right.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Right now, if the lion and the lamb lay down together, you soon don’t have a lamb. It will be a different dispensation when all of the animal kingdom has been transformed. It’s a different time. Putting all those pieces together in an order really does involve study. So I don’t make a test of fellowship. I don’t criticize people because I think they say they got that wrong. I find a lot of people, if you don’t divide everything exactly the way they do, then you’re a heretic and they have to attack you and what I mean. But I don’t personally make this the test of fellowship And a fellow named Cornelius Stam became famous for teaching 8 dispensations and a different plan of salvation in each dispensation. I absolutely do not believe that. I believe it’s always been by grace from the Garden of Eden till the end of the millennium. I was just actually just trying to call and order some of Dr. Stam’s books, and I happened to catch him on the phone. Gracious, wonderful Christian gentleman, talked to me for hours, gave me a copy of every book he’d ever written, and just I have no doubt he loved the Lord and was a great, gracious Christian man. He believed salvation for this dispensation exactly as salvation is taught in the Bible, believed he was a saved man. And so I read his several volume commentary in Romans that I’ve read through and found interesting parts. Good people can be wrong about things. Attitude goes a long way. So I don’t fuss with everybody over the details of that. As I’m sitting here, I’m trying to think, The Scofield Reference Bible outline, is there a point I disagree with on dispensations? I disagree with him on some other things, and I can’t think of it offhand. I have a volume that was written just about Scofield and dispensations, and again, I can see it from where I’m sitting, but I haven’t looked at it in some time. I don’t know that I would want to fuss with people about that, but I do think it’s important you understand How far can you read in the Bible without understanding God changes his dealings with men? From the time Adam and Eve got kicked out of the garden, there’s a complete change in God’s dealings with men. A lot of these folks who are attacking dispensationalism don’t know what it is. Some of them think the only kind of dispensationalism is a belief in six or seven or eight different plans of salvation, which absolutely is not true. I certainly don’t believe that. was clear in my pastor’s definition of dispensationalism. Schofield didn’t believe that, or Darby, or any of the very famous teachers out of Dallas that have done a lot to influence people’s understandings of dispensations. J. Dwight Pentecott’s book, Things to Come, is fabulous on this, in my opinion. Other folks talk about dispensationalism And I don’t have the faintest idea what they think it is. So again, say, when did you make your last animal sacrifice? That has nothing to do with dispensationalism. It is 100% the story of dispensationalism. That is what dispensationalism is all about. There are different times when we have different instructions from God. Today, because of the sacrifice of Christ, we’re not instructed to offer animal sacrifices anymore. In the millennium, you’ll be told to let your lion and your lamb play together. I do not think that is God’s instruction for shepherds today, to let the lions in with the lambs. And honestly, I believe this sounds simplistic, been criticized for that. Sure I will be again. The book we have coming out in a few days, I’m sure will generate criticism like Pastor Scudder and I have never experienced before. We talked about that before we did the book. This may be my strongest point and weakest point all at once. I really don’t care when people criticize me. And maybe if I cared more, I would be more careful and more effective. But it doesn’t hinder me. Being criticized doesn’t hinder me. I really think this is more of a fad than it is a doctrine. The young preachers, some of them get furious when I say that. And again, I say, okay, invite me to your next animal sacrifice.

[MCG]

I’m going to let Jay jump in, but This is what going through my mind, because you mentioned a little about the history of the Independent Fundamental Baptists, you know, the fourth generation. And correct me if I’m wrong in how I’m thinking about this, but it started with separation.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Yes.

[MCG]

And then, of course, we had the scriptural issue, the KJV. And then you have end times issues where we have now a new Independent Fundamental Baptist that actually have the end.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Yeah. NIND or whatever it is.

[MCG]

Independent Fundamental Baptist. And now it’s dispensationalism. Is it just, you know, lack of a better term, the time period rather than rebellion or anything is just that, hey, we started with, you know, the separation issue, then we go to the KJV issue and then we go to the end times issue. Now it’s dispensationalism. It’s just another branch of things that we have to deal with.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

I wouldn’t phrase it that way that I can understand what somebody would see that. If you go back and read first, second, third generation Baptists, the issue is literal interpretation of scripture. If the Bible says there’s going to be a thousand-year reign on the earth, there’s going to be a thousand-year reign on the earth. People still know that’s symbolic of something. How do you know? What does it say? Plain, clear terminology of scripture and the emphasis, you said separation, exactly right. When the movement started, they were saying we cannot be part of the long-established Baptist groups because they no longer interpret the Bible literally. So we have to separate. And our early influences in the Independent Baptist movement kept preaching literal interpretation, literal interpretation, literal interpretation. That means you have to find a place in your understanding for everything said in the Bible. So our guys were just quick to go to Yeah, I believe that the instructions given to Adam are not the same as the instructions given to Noah, are not the same as the instructions given to Moses, they’re not the same as the instructions given to the church, not the same as the instructions for the millennium, not the same as the instructions for the eternal kingdom. And we were just emphasizing literal interpretation, plain, clear statements of scripture. There’s got to be room in our systematic theology for everything God said. And when you adopt replacement theology, become anti-dispensational, a number of other things. You have to come to certain places and say, well, you can’t take that literally because you can’t make it fit. I’ll give you an example. Years ago, when I was president of Landmark Baptist College down in Florida, getting ready to teach a class on a book of Zechariah, had some car repairs that needed to be done, cars are going to be in the shop all day. I drive it and I take study materials with me to work all day while I’m waiting on a car. I take 3 commentaries on a book of Zechariah. And the first one was written in the 1880s, the second was written in the 1920s, and the third one was written in the 1980s. And the first half of Zechariah is a set of visions. All 3 commentators interpreted that literally, took it seriously, and these are what these visions say. But the second-half of Zechariah is God dealing with Israel in the tribulation period. Well, if you’re a replacement theology, and you believe God did away with Israel in the time of the Roman Empire, and Israel will never be a nation again, these passages, these verses are a problem. So I’m reading a guy who’s writing in the 1880s, and he’s saying, you can’t take the second-half of the book literally, because we all know Israel can never be a nation again.

[Jay]

Okay.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

The guy in 1920s, he’s saying, these verses are hard to understand. because the teaching is what God is going to do with the nation of Israel in the future. He said, that’s hard to believe that Israel could ever be a nation again. The Jewish people were scattered. There’s never been an example in history of a group of people being that scattered and ever becoming a nation again. But he said, the Bible says so. It’s got to be true. It’s got to happen. When I get to the commentary written in the 1880s, or 1980s rather, the guy’s having absolutely no trouble with Israel being a nation.

[MCG]

Right.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Because it’s a nation now.

[MCG]

Right.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Our guys, and I saw our guys independent Baptist movement, stressed literal interpretation. There must be room in your systematic theology for every statement in the Bible. And that the process of studying the Bible was a matter of rightly dividing the truth to understand what goes where. And that was the whole process. It was the approach. It’s how Bible study was done. And of course, people would have disagreements on this point or that point, again, trying to fit it in. God didn’t choose to make it easy for us. He could have made it much easier than what it is. And people the aircraft, well, give me a modern Bible so it’ll be easy. Even in the most easy language Bible, you still have this process of trying to put everything together, and it’s never easy. The word study, which is a command, is not a word that implies anything easy. Study is hard work. The growing Christian is studying the Bible. That’s hard work. He’s having to rightly divide it, put the pieces together, figure it out, figure out how it works, what goes where. And we looked at that as the process. Through 3 clear generations, that was a fundamental Baptist approach to the Bible. It is in this fourth generation and the younger guys in their 20s and 30s is where virtually all this comes from. That are saying, no, no, wait a minute. No dispensations. Israel’s not a nation. The people who claim to be Jews today aren’t. No millennium. And this is all new. And I do not honestly do not believe it comes from a study and misunderstanding of passages of scripture. It comes from this is what we want to believe. And ultimately, this is the hardest. If people automatically responded to the truth, we’d win everybody we witnessed to Christ. You give them the gospel and they would all respond. People believe primarily what they want to believe. They’re rarely ever convinced against what they want to believe. One of the disciplines of being a Bible believer is that we’re supposed to be studying through the scripture. And if we are, the scripture will give us commands we don’t like. It will tell us things we don’t want to believe, but we are not the authority. I, for example, don’t like the doctrine of hell. I mean, I really don’t. I wish I never had to explain it to anybody, but it doesn’t matter how I feel about it. It’s taught too clearly in the scriptures. The scripture is the authority. I’m not. We have a generation for whom they are the authority and it’s basically the same people, not 100%, but basically the same people denying dispensations are the one who are using a different Bible every week. They have flexible Bibles and flexible doctrine. They can say what they want to say, believe what they choose to believe. And they can even say to mom and dad and grandpa and the pastor that was teaching you 20 years ago, you’re wrong. I’m more enlightened. I know more than you do. I really do believe this is mostly a psychological process that all of a sudden we’re seeing dispensationalism attacked from every angle. I’m sure you’ll get attacked for letting me say that, but I honestly believe that is the case.

[Jay]

Okay, well, let’s let scripture speak for itself and let’s let scripture interpret scripture. You mentioned that in your opinion that there are seven dispensations. What are the scripture verses that we would point to? for each dispensation? And how is the entire framework of dispensationalism different from other frameworks, say, particularly covenant theology? You mentioned, go ahead.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Yeah. So how many of the 66 books to the Bible you want to go through? Everything in the Bible relates to this issue. Every verse in the Bible relates to it. But there are some very specific instructions to Adam and Eve.

[Jay]

Okay.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

And so there they are. We do not have the same instructions that Adam and Eve had. So that’s, again, dealing with a different dispensation. It is a considerable study to outline the whole thing. But you go anywhere in the Bible and you have to say, what does this fit with? There are very specific instructions about how to butcher and offer the lamb in the sacrifices. That doesn’t fit us. It’s true. It has to fit. in our systematic theology somewhere. So I have to come up with a time where that fits. And it’s not like. God says, okay, the next verse starts a new dispensation. Here we are. And I actually believe that some of the dispensations, there’s a little bit of overlap. Whereas God was fading out a time and a dispensation fading in another one. He didn’t dump everything. For example, God introduced baptism before he introduces the rest of the church age. And it’s like he gave each of the things we call the Baptist distinctives one at a time. So men could cope with this one, and then you add the next one, and then you add the next one. And then the veil rents at the temple, and the Old Testament law is gone. The first half of the book of Acts, Christians are having trouble figuring out exactly how that works. These weren’t all bad people. They said, well, what about this? And what about that? And what about circumcision? And what about eating of blood and so forth? And they even had a major church council. to try and detail out how all this worked as they’re moving from one dispensation to another. Paul comes across some people who were baptized with John’s baptism, and because word did not spread as fast then as it does now, and they had been baptized with John’s baptism in anticipation of the Messiah to come, but it happened after the Messiah had already come, and there’s some confusion there and some overlap. So when you talk about looking at scripture, it’s everything in the Bible relates to this. And you asked me something specific at the end of that and I had forgotten what it was.

Covenant theology.

[Jay]

Yes.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Okay. God gave several different specific covenants to man. And again, the covenants have some relationship with the dispensations. A lot of times people study them together for that. But there is a covenant, well, more than one covenant that goes through all the dispensations. God gave Israel an eternal, everlasting covenant, God’s words. That extends to all dispensations, even though God’s not primarily working through Israel today. But the covenant of grace, the gospel that was pictured in the offering of the lamb during the time of Abel, is a covenant that goes through all of this consistently. And that truth, again, there’s some different expression of it. People got saved by putting their faith and trust in the sacrifice for their sin and the Messiah to come. And they didn’t know what the Messiah’s name was. And we know what the Messiah’s name is now. We never say, A Messiah came before to the people. We say, Jesus. You know his name. We know the identification. And we don’t talk about his death the way they did in the Old Testament. We talk about his crucifixion because we have more detail than they had. But everything has to be made to fit. Again, you have endless chaos, endless confusion, and you listen to these people who say, there’s no such thing as specific periods of time or dispensations. Listen to the way they debate over what verses apply today and what ones don’t. I mean, do the verses about how to take care of your second and third and fourth wife, is that for this dispensation? When you find out in the New Testament that marriage is a picture of salvation, How many plans of salvation do we have? It’s obvious a different focus is placed on marriage in this period of time than was in previous dispensations. So you have to look at everything that fits in there and your systematic theology has to make room for all of it. And so you have to say, okay, pick a verse. How does this fit? Is there application for today? It is something that was clearly a picture that has been done away with. and we rejoice in the picture, but we know that it’s not on us today. I mean, how many national feasts do we have in the name of the Lord? How many animal sacrifices do we have in the name of the Lord? The instructions for the treatment of multiple wives, which never seemed to work out well for anybody, even when God didn’t speak against it in the terms that He does today, you have to find all of that, take all of that, and put it in His place. when the scripture says the time is coming when a person will die at the age of 100 and it’ll be like a child dying. That’s not this dispensation. That is a different period of time. And you have to fit that with the millennial kingdom. When the Bible talks about Jerusalem being the capital of the earth, is it the capital of the earth today? Clearly not. But it will be, unless you spiritualize all that. And if you spiritualize it at the end of the day, which verses do we spiritualize and which ones do we take literally? And everybody decides for themselves. Which is very convenient, by the way. I’d like to go through and say, hey, some of those verses about never lose your temper and all, that didn’t apply to me. I’d like to, but I just can’t fit that into a different dispensational period and say it doesn’t apply today.

[MCG]

Tell me, how does your belief in dispensationalism or your lack thereof affects your end times belief? Do they normally lean one way or the other based on how they believe in dispensationalism?

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Wow, there’s so many different versions of this. Because again, when you don’t believe in dispensations, you end up having confusion. I just finished preparing a class to teach on a book of Judges, teach in August in the Philippines, in September at day spring, and makes the phrase over again, every man did that which is right in his own eyes. That’s about what you have without dispensations. That’s what you have today. And give me two people that claim that there are no dispensations today and start asking them questions about this. They got different views on everything. And again, people come up with the view that they want to believe. This is why there’s so much false teaching in every area. People basically believe what they want to believe. There’s a certain discipline to say, I will believe what the Bible says, regardless of what I want. The Bible says vengeance is mine. God repeated that in three different dispensations. And that means vengeance is his. I was raised by Kentucky hillbillies. We were not in Kentucky, we were inner city of Indianapolis, but they were Kentucky hillbillies. Fussing, fighting, Hatfield and McCoy people. I mean that literally they grew up in the Hatfield area where the Hatfields were. And anybody does anything to you, do something worse to them. That was the fundamental rule of life. And then you start trying to follow the Lord and I may be able to absolutely prove this person did something wrong to me. And you know what I’m allowed to do to them? Forgive them, pray for them, do good to them. That’s not how I was raised. I’d like to find a loophole. I’ve read the Bible through several times. It’s just not there. Christian maturity is when you discipline yourself to believe the Bible instead of what you want to believe.

[MCG]

All right, definitely.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Throughout a big part of America’s history, you had Bible believing Baptist who wanted to believe that black skin was God’s curse on Cain. That used to be popular preaching. It really isn’t today. I haven’t heard anybody preach in decades, but when I was young, that was popular preaching. And that was ingrained in parts of the South. And as people began to try and mature in the faith, no matter how much that was ingrained in them, I was taught that as a child, by the way, no matter how much that was ingrained in them, you had to say, It’s not in the Bible anywhere. It doesn’t matter what I want to believe. So I don’t know what my neighborhood believes, my culture believes, my parents believe. It doesn’t matter what’s expected of me. What matters is what the Bible said and says. Good people can make honest mistakes understanding what the Bible says. But if you don’t start with that basis, It’s not spiritual maturity at all. It’s religious activity. And that is the challenge in rightly dividing the word of God and coming to grips and understanding it. And when people used to try and tell me that, the races, I said, okay, how many races are there? Nobody could ever answer that question. I said, if races are to be divided, I personally don’t believe there are races. I believe in one race, different characteristics, some tall, some short. Some very pale, some darker skin, some, hair is different. Some people’s hair follicles last a lifetime. Some of us, they don’t. Those are all just differences in my mind. I don’t believe in races. But if you did believe in races and you believe the Bible taught that, where does it teach it? How many races does it teach that there are? And I’ve never met anybody who could answer the question how many races they thought there were. You end up with endless confusion. If you do not discipline yourself to believe what the Bible says, and if you’ve never had that experience when you came to a moment in devotions or listening to preaching, where you said, Oh, I’ve been wrong. This is what the Bible says. This is not what I was taught. This is not what I want to believe. This is not. If you’ve never had that experience, you haven’t been growing in Lord. And the truth is, consistent Christian growth constantly requires that experience.

[Jay]

Yep.

[MCG]

Well, let’s go into a little bit of break, then we’ll come back on the other end and continue this discussion.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Okay.

[MCG]

You’re listening to the Removing Virus podcast. We’re sitting down with Dr. Phil Stringer, and we are discussing whether dispensationalism is biblical. We’ll be right back.

[Jay]

Are you looking for a consistent and reliable place to get all your Christian materials? Try ChristianBook.com. Started from humble beginnings in 1978, ChristianBook.com now offers a wide range of books, CDs, DVDs, homeschooling, and church supplies. Plus more. So whether you are a parent, a homeschooler, a pastor, or a lay person, ChristianBook.com can be a one-stop shop for all your needs. Click the link in the description section below and check out the vast array of Christian materials ChristianBook.com has to offer.

Okay, Dr. Stringer, you mentioned how dispensationalism is throughout pretty much every verse in the scriptures. It’s something that is pervasive. It affects pretty much every single doctrine. It affects everything. Now, what are the Bible doctrines? that you would say that are deeply affected by dispensationalism. In other words, if you don’t have a dispensationalist outlook, you’re going to get these doctrines wrong. What are those Bible doctrines that we should probably be very aware of in terms of how dispensationalism affects it? And how does it change for the worse apart from dispensationalism? Could you go into that?

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Yeah, there’s different approaches even to dispensationalism. Folks who teach different plans of salvation by different dispensations have a terrible problem too. And a lot of times folks are reacting to them when they do that. For example, Bible prophecy. There are no dispensationalisms and no dispensations. Is there a millennium? And there are premillennial non-dispensationalists who say, Yes, there’s going to be a millennium. Okay, fine. Is that not God changing his dealings with man drastically? Or, if you’re trying to be more consistent, you say, Well, there is no millennium. All that discussion, that thousand years, is symbolic. Why do we pick that number to be symbolic when we don’t every other number in the Bible? Or let’s say the Book of Revelation is all symbolic about church history and everything in the Book of Revelations is fulfilled in some events in church history.

[MCG]

Oh, wow.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Okay. Well, who decides what events those were? You get five amillennialists together and pick any event in the Book of Revelation and you get five different explanations, which leads to a great deal of confusion. But most people who say they’re against dispensationalism grew up being taught dispensationalism, and they actually practice it and believe it when they say they don’t. And so that makes your question hard to answer. But they’ll all come to points, and it’s very different depending on who you’re listening to or talking to. They’ll come to a point where they say, well, that’s not for today. Or they’ll go to something in the Old Testament and say, that is for today. And again, it’s mostly, what do I want to believe is for today? And what do I not want to believe is for today? But you do have outside of Baptist circles, whenever you got to this subject, the primary difference was arguing Bible prophecy. And that comes other things. There are folks who are not dispensationalists, who will come at you in a heartbeat and say, you can’t eat pork. Pork was forbidden. That’s the Old Testament law. And you even see the example. Peter had trouble at a new dispensation. He’s on his way to see Cornelius, a Gentile, and God gives him a dream. And in the dream, he sees animals that the Old Testament forbids to use as meat animals. If you ever looked at the list, there’s 80 animals you’re not supposed to eat, according to the Old Testament. If you ever looked at the list, most of them are in a problem. The Old Testament forbids eating vultures. No problem. I’ll practice that in this dispensation. Forbids eating eagles and ferrets and all kinds of things. However, I would say I go through the list of 80, there’s 78. It’s okay. I never wanted to eat anyway. But there’s rabbit. A lot of people found rabbit as a great meat animal, but then there’s the hog. It looks to me if God ever designed an animal to be a meat animal, it’s the pig.

[MCG]

Don’t go there, brother.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

I don’t know. If I’m offending you, forgive me.

[MCG]

No, no, no. I don’t eat it, but– I don’t.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Care if anybody eats it or not. More for me. It’s a long story.

[Jay]

Go ahead.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

But that’s clearly when God told Peter, rise, kill, and eat, Peter argued with God. These were forbidden. Forbidden by who? And the question, forbidden by who, when? And Peter’s taking a higher standard than God has on this. And God makes it very, very clear these animals could be meat animals. The Old Testament could be meat animals now. But everybody comes to a different point in this discussion. If somebody says, hey, I believe we should worship on Saturday, we might disagree, but say, well, hey, that worked out. But somebody says, I think I can have five wives today as long as I treat them all right, we gasp in horror. That’s A dispensational issue. whether anybody wants to come to grips with it or not. That second, third, fourth, fifth wife, that was not immorality under the Old Testament law. I’m promising you it’s immorality today, and it is not for this dispensation. So, but how you say, what doctrines does it affect? What teacher are we talking about? Because they can pick and choose. Nobody says every instruction given in the scripture is applicable for today, and you have to obey it today. Nobody says that. So you sort of pick and choose what you want.

[Jay]

Well, let’s take an obvious one that’s affecting our country and our world today, the discussion over Israel.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Sure. And again, Pastor Scott and I have a book due out early June.

[Jay]

About this issue. Great. Because it seems like even…

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Spiritual war against Israel, title of the book.

[Jay]

Yeah, it seems like among Christians, there’s a split that has just sharply arisen. Maybe it was always there and we just never saw it, but sharply arisen where you have some that say that modern day Israel is not the Israel that God made all the promises to in the Old Testament.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

And that’s what the book is all about.

[Jay]

Right. So this seems like something that’s directly affected by whether or not you are dispensationalist.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Absolutely. And many of the attacks on dispensationalism are coming from folks from that perspective. But I kind of think it’s in order it’s the other way around. They haven’t turned against Israel because they abandoned dispensationalism. When they want to blame the Jews for all the world’s problems, oh, wait a minute, dispensationalism is a real problem. And you’ll see some of these people, and some of them are political commentators. Tucker Carlson’s example, all of a sudden, he’s doing programs about how terrible dispensationalism is. When did Tucker Carlson ever care about Bible doctrine? All the years he’s been immediate. But once he took the extremely strong position against Israel, all of a sudden, dispensationalism is a problem and a serious problem. And I have a chapter in the book that I wrote on this. It’s titled Putinistas, Phony Conservatives, Pseudo-Libertarians, and Propagandists. And you have all these people who now all of a sudden they’re prime topic because Israel and as a result they have to attack dispensationalism. Tucker said the other day he hated dispensationalism. This is a guy who doesn’t go to church. Why does he care about doctrine or Bible prophecy one way or the other? And it illustrates a point I made in the book. People hire folks to be propagandists. Countries do, nations do. We just had a lady plead guilty to taking payments from China, California. She’s a social influencer. She got paid by China to take certain positions. And in the United States, you can be an agent for another country, but you have to register with the federal government. She never registered with the federal government. She’s been prosecuted. She pled guilty. She’s actually become a mayor since this happened.

[MCG]

Oh, wow.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

She just resigned from being mayor. And I believe the number one reason people go down these roads is cold, hard cash. There is money to be made by expressing Iran’s viewpoint or Russia’s viewpoint or China’s viewpoint. And then all of a sudden, when people do that, they find themselves having to address doctrinal issues to make it consistent with what they’re doing. And then other people get wrapped up into listening to their favorite social influencer, media influencer. Back in my youth, 60s, 70s, there was a guy named Marshall McLuhan and he wrote a book entitled The Medium is the Message. And the theme of the book was your content doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is what form you say it in. People listen to the form. And I read that way back then. I just got it out the other day. I don’t think it mattered much. I wasn’t very impressed by the argument back then. But it seems today People don’t get their positions from a book, they don’t get their positions from a teacher, they don’t get their positions from a lecture. Everything comes on social media. And I commend people like you that are trying to make sure the truth is in that mix. I’m from a different era. I tell everybody, not only do I believe in dispensations, I’m so old, I was saved in a different dispensation. I am not a social media guy, even though my stuff is everywhere, because the graciousness of people like you that involve me in things. My mind doesn’t work that way. I do not get information from social media. If I can’t read it in a book, it doesn’t really register with me. But that’s not true today. A whole generation, they have to see it on the internet, see it, hear it. And Tucker Carlson’s and Megan Kelly’s and Candace Owens and all these folks who are saying things over and over again on the internet are having incredible influence no matter how bizarre what they say is. When Candace Owen is telling me that Charlie Kirk was a space traveler, traveling through this space travel, space travel, time traveler, I’m saying, yeah, right, I’m impressed. And all they have to do is go on the internet and say this and a certain group of people gravitate to it. And it’s the only way they’re going to learn anything is if they see it on the internet, or come to any conclusions is they see it on the internet. And I think sometime back, and probably lots of others, but China, Russia, Iran began to realize this was the way to impact Western culture. And all of a sudden, all kinds of conservative social media influencers completely changed positions, everything was different, and if it’s in Pravda, The Russian newspaper, and they only have one newspaper run by the government. If it’s the Improvada on Monday, it’s on their broadcast on Tuesday. If the Iranian publicists say it on Monday, they’re saying it on Tuesday. And I said that, I say that in the book, and I’ve said it, people said, nah, that couldn’t really be happening. Well, just this week, we had a lady, social influence meter plead guilty to doing this very thing, being paid by China. I think if China’s doing this, he’d be hard pressed to get me to believe Russia and Iran are just so moral and noble they wouldn’t do it. And actually Putin’s been caught at it before in Europe. And if he would do it in Europe, I can’t imagine he would hesitate to do it in the United States. And a lot of that, I think, is simply cold, hard cash. That’s where the money is to be made.

[Jay]

But none of these people that you mentioned have any sort of, like they don’t even go to church, like you mentioned. They don’t have any biblical. So why would they attack specifically dispensationalism? Cold hard cash.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Dispensationalism is in the way of the things they’re being paid to promote.

[Jay]

Is it that they understand that support for Israel, maybe perhaps the root of support for Israel in the United States, is pinned or underpinned by dispensationalism? So they have to attack that.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

And that’s more people.

[Jay]

Okay.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

They didn’t care anything about the Bible or spiritual issues before. They stake their reputation and I believe their income on being anti-Israel all of a sudden have to become theological because there are too many people in the United States who take the Bible literally and they get their support from Israel from reading the Bible and those are the people that are reacting Tucker Carlson had a huge following among evangelical Christians, so he started down this path. And all of a sudden, what did his way? A man who never spoke about dispensationalism for or against, or any other doctrine of the Bible for or against, finds dispensationalism is in the way of the political theory he is promoting, whatever the reasons. Megyn Kelly attacking dispensationalism. When did Megyn Kelly ever speak about the Bible? or any Bible doctrine, pro or con about anything, but now she’s a fervent enemy of dispensationalism. And there is a pull to the Catholic Church for some of these people, I would have to say too, which has never believed in dispensationalism, but Candace Owen has become Catholic. megyn kelly says she’s renewing her Catholic faith, and Tucker Carlson says he’s studying Catholicism. He’s also studying Islam, so I’ll let you sort out how all that works together. But all of a sudden, doctrine has become an issue for these people. because sound doctrine is in the way of their politics. And they begin to realize this basis for the approach many topics. Why was America anti-abortion for so long, and why is at least half the country still anti-abortion? They believe the Bible. Why have we believed God had a special mission for the Jewish people and for Israel, and that Israel will yet function in God’s plan? They believe the Bible. And you have all these national governments who have political agendas that are contradicted by belief in the Bible. So the people that are promoting these things, everybody I know that’s promoting Iran is attacking Israel and is attacking dispensationalism and et cetera because the doctrine is in their way. And so people believe what they want to believe or think they have to believe, and they believe what they get paid for.

[MCG]

Yeah something going through my mind here because as you were mentioning about Putin and stuff like that what came to my mind I think it was last Christmas or even two Christmas ago Putin actually had a commercial on I think it was on YouTube but it was wherever it was it was distributed on social media in the West. And basically the premise of the commercial was that he was being Santa Claus. And he came into a home where a boy was being raised as transgendered and he swapped out the toys from girl to boy and all this stuff and whatever the case may be. And I don’t remember the exact point of the commercial, but that’s definitely political for the West and that he has to deal with.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Yeah, point of the commercial is that he was a conservative Christian. That commercial was really tied to the invasion of the Ukraine. He wanted America to quit supporting and sending weapons to the Ukraine. And he’s saying that the Ukrainians were Nazis and he’s a conservative Christian. He is a Russian Orthodox. He calls himself a Christian. He’s a member of the Russian Orthodox Church. He talks constantly about promoting Christianity in Russia, But what he means by promoting Christianity is promoting the Russian Orthodox Church. Other groups that identify themselves as Christian can face persecution. And you see that in part of the Ukraine that he’s conquered. Ukraine had religious freedom, all kinds of churches in the part of the Ukraine has been conquered by Russia. Every non-Russian Orthodox Church has been closed. But he describes himself as a conservative Christian. And he tries to make that point by his opposition to homosexuality. I do believe there’s Bible opposition to homosexuality, but it takes more than that to make you a Bible believing Christian. But again, it’s propaganda. And the statement that the Ukraine had a Nazi government was absolutely complete total propaganda. And Tucker Carlson, it was the first change I noticed in Carlson when he started campaigning all of a sudden against the Ukraine with every fiber of his being. It was important that Russia conquer the Ukraine. Why should he care? I mean, I care because I believe in a concept of freedom. I don’t believe nations should go around invading and conquering other nations. But why was this so important to him that Russia conquer the Ukraine? And that’s when I began to wonder if he was a paid agent with that, because what else could explain the dramatic change? And of course, you’ve watched him since then on and on and on, the steps that he takes. But no, social media is the way the world communicates. Some of us were not raised in that. It doesn’t register with me. how to do it, why it works. It doesn’t work with me, but I am thankful that there’s a growing generation of folks like the two of you who do get it and are trying to make sure that in that mix of information on social media, there is the truth. And I think that’s a great thing. I think it’s a calling that some of you folks have, that as I was growing up, there was no such calling. None of us had it. None of us thought about it. People debated whether we should even have programs on radio, whether it was worth the time or not, when I was early in the ministry. The world has changed. Communication has changed. I am a dinosaur. It’s too late for me to be anything but a dinosaur. I was joking somebody about that today, was trying to teach me some of the finer aspects of media communication. And I said, it is too late for the dinosaurs to evolve. And we are what we are, and there we are. But I know a number of folks doing what you folks are doing. I am very grateful for you. People like you make it possible for me to say what I want to say in the form of social media, where I’ve never recorded a program on my own if my life depended on it. I’m all over social media because of people like you. This is my second program today. I honestly believe you have a calling from God to do this. I’m grateful for it. It’s a unique aspect of the ministry. I believe there are people have callings in the bus ministry, but 200 years ago, nobody had a calling to the bus ministry. So you’re the generation past me, and I thank God for it. needs to be done. All of these truths need to be distributed as many ways as they possibly can. I was on a program recently called Both Sides. I was kind of surprised at it. The person who invited me to be on this program, and I disagree on everything. I mean, everything. And as a lady, lady preacher, but she said, what I try to do is come to issues, Christians debates, and have somebody on and I get 50% of the time, the person I have on gets 50% of the time. I figured that was a trick, to be honest. I’ve been in these programs where they just yell at you and all that kind of thing. She was actually very gracious and I really got to talk 50% of the time. We disagreed on everything that came up on that program. I mean, everything.

[MCG]

Oh, wow.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

That kind of open discussion just doesn’t happen much. It is people with an agenda and a significant part of social media is people with agendas that are non-Christian. And so it makes what you two are doing, and again, I have a number of friends that are doing it all considerably younger than me. I have a number of friends that are doing it, and it’s very important. I believe it’s a ministry people are called to, and I’m grateful for it, and that it’s being done. But that is the way truth is communicated, and error for that matter today.

[Jay]

Yeah.

[MCG]

Let me ask you this, though. Maybe this might have you step out of character a little bit, but what are the strongest arguments against dispensationalism?

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

The strongest argument is there’s no one place in the Bible that this is all explained.

[Jay]

Okay.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

That’s true. That’s true of a number of doctrines, by the way. The information about them is scattered throughout the scripture. And that’s more true about dispensationalism than about anything. It’s everywhere. But folks say, show me a passage that gives me the 7th or 6th or whatever dispensations in this passage. There’s no such passage. Show me a place that says that you have to study scripture that way. Well, again, studies show thyself approves, rightly dividing the word of truth, I would say does that. And then people say, show me the second passage that says that. And not really sure that there is a second passage that says that. And so people will come at it from that direction. A lot of the arguments they use really don’t hold up. They say the early church fathers weren’t dispensational. I say read them. They were discussing what you were supposed to keep from under the Old Testament law and what you could not keep, and they were debating it endlessly for 300 years. So I don’t buy that argument, but if you say it’s not in one place, that’s probably true.

[Jay]

Now, when it comes to dispensationalist, covenant theologian, these different things, in the grand scheme of things, Does it really matter? Are we splitting theological hairs here, or is this a hill to die on?

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

That’s a fair question and an interesting question. During the same time fundamental Baptist movement is coming, you had the fundamentalist modernist controversy affecting a much wider group in the United States. And oftentimes, different fundamentalists work together, Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, dispensational, non-dispensational, premillennial, amillennial, post-millennial. Those folks worked together. They worked together in evangelistic crusades. And you can point to some great things were done by God, by people who were crossing lines. And so that thought process, and I’ve wondered about that thought process, why shouldn’t we do the same thing today? We need each other more than we ever did today. Why should we be worried about these things? And I understand the argument. My problem is the old interdenominationalists who could say, Let’s put everything else aside except for the five fundamentals of faith and work together on that. I don’t know where any of them are today. I have a friend who’s a King James guy, and I do a lot of King James stuff. He’s excellent on the King James Bible, but we just can’t do anything together because he cannot talk about the King James Bible without talking about the 8th dispensation and putting that in the middle of that subject. And I don’t believe that. I just don’t see anybody who’s able to do that today. And I don’t know how we could get there where they could. One of the best King James teachers I know is a vicious anti-Semite. I don’t go on his program anymore. And we’re not going to talk about the King James. We’re going to be arguing about anti-Semitism. It seems to me that vast majority of people, maybe all of us, have lost the ability to deal in that fashion in the day and age in which we’re living. And I actually think social media is part of that. Because everybody can have their unique perspective presented to a significant number of people on social media. People who never would have had an audience before social media. And they don’t have the people skills to pastor a church. They don’t have the ability to draw a group of people together. But you can push a few buttons if you know what buttons to push. And you’re on social media and you’re speaking to who knows who and where. And I was in Australia a couple years ago and family came up to me and they were visiting from the nation of Cook Island. I didn’t even know there was a nation of Cook Island. They said, oh, it’s so wonderful to meet you. You’re our Wednesday night Bible teacher at church. He said, we play your videos on Wednesday night.

[MCG]

Oh, wow.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

I’m thinking, really? You know, I didn’t even know the country existed, much less the church existed. We’re in a whole different time of communication. And so no matter what your thing is or your point is or your the thing that just excites you, you have the chance to present it to the whole world. And I think the result of that has been, it’s very, very hard for us to narrow ourselves down to one or two truths and work together on those one or two truths. We no longer have mass meetings or just the gospel is preached. You couldn’t get people to come. Those have faded out and been replaced by all kinds of things. And we are so divided for good or bad, I don’t think there’s any way to go back to the great interdenominational meetings. And so the question, because then does this matter? Well, do we want our churches to be a constant debate about little things? It appears we have to define ourselves more than we ever did to avoid having mass confusion. And so these things aren’t splitting hairs. They have practical consequences. And in this day and age, and I’ve seen guys try it, I’ve preached for guys that tried it, our church is just going to be about the gospel. And various people come in and pretty soon it’s not about the gospel at all. It’s about debating the finer points of the eighth dispensation or whatever. I have tried to fellowship with folks that are true fundamentalists. They believe in salvation by faith. They believe in the fundamentals of faith in spite of the fact we have differences and it rarely works. Differences will come up and I don’t think it was ever splitting hairs as such But I think it’s harder than ever to talk about not dealing with these things.

[MCG]

Yeah, I think you have a good point there when you mention social media because, as you said, social media allows us to go into a silo that your generation never had the opportunity to.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

That’s right.

[MCG]

You mentioned Charlie Kirk assassination and the guy that has been charged and allegedly pulled the trigger was in some kind of furry group. I’ve never heard of no furry group or whatever the case may be, but that he could be raised in a a Mormon church and grew up very religious, was able to put himself in a niche that, you know, how many people out of the 8 billion people in Earth would be in a furry group? Maybe 100,000? Who knows?

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

I was preaching in a town and they had me in a hotel and there was a furry convention in town. I’d never heard of them. But many of the people at the furry convention were in the same hotel I was in. And I just had some amazing experiences trying to talk to them. And so I I’m mentioning it on Facebook. And people thought I was making it up. They didn’t believe there was any such thing, you know? I said, No, this really happened. I’m talking to these people. They told me they were this, that, and the other. Guy barked like a dog, and the people didn’t believe me. Of course, now as it’s spread wider, it’s obvious. I think everybody knows they’re there. And frankly, the Kirk assassination really opened up people’s minds to this. But these are people who’ve taken the position. that, we know the argument that you’re whatever gender you choose to be. Well, if you can be whatever gender you choose to be, why can you not be whatever species you choose to be? And that is how crazy this has gone. And the furry thing has spread one way. Not in books, not in public meetings. It’s the internet.

[MCG]

All right, Dr. Phil Stringer, is there anything you want to talk about on dispensationalism that we didn’t ask you?

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Again, it can be a huge subject, but I jest again, stress again. You go through the Bible. Everything you read should be interpreted literally. It fits somewhere. You need to study. It’s hard work, rightly dividing the word of truth to put everything in its proper place. Everybody does that to some degree. We all need to be doing it all the time. And it is a barrier to a lot of false teaching, even barrier to false politics. right at the moment in which we’re sitting here having this program. And so it’s been interjected. You have politicians discussing dispensationalism. When would that ever have happened?

[Jay]

Right.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

But that’s where we are. But everything in your Bible is true. You have a King James Bible, everything is true. Everything in it should be interpreted literally. And the process of Bible study is not figuring out what you do or don’t want to respond to today. It’s about rightly dividing it, dividing it is a command from God. putting it in the right place. And that’s Bible study.

[MCG]

Study to show that self-approval of the God of work that needed not to be ashamed. Rightly dividing.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Rightly dividing the word truth.

[MCG]

But Solomon also said, Much study is the weariness of the flesh.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

That is a fact.

[MCG]

Yeah. All right, tell us about your book that’s coming out in a few.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

The book is called Spiritual War against Israel. I have a page copy of it here. I just met with pastor about it this morning. I think the book is due out to be out June 10th.

[MCG]

Okay.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

We’re gonna get it earlier than that, which is just a few days. It is 18 chapters, 275 pages, dealing with the attacks on Israel from a biblical sense, historical sense. I wrote 11 of the 18 chapters. The pastor wrote seven of them. He wrote the chapter on dispensationalism that I quoted from. It will be out again in just a few days. Anybody can contact me. through Dayspring Bible College. You can go to the Dayspring Bible College website. We live on campus at Dayspring and we get our mail at Dayspring and so forth. And I’ll be glad to talk with them more about it. There is going to be a series of promoting it on radio and TV and podcasts as soon as it’s available in a few days. If you wanted to have Pastor and I both come on or Pastor come on sometime just to talk about that book, we would love to do that, but just contact Dayspring Bible College. If you want more information on it, and we’d be glad to get it to you, it is important. It will be attacked just because of talking about having written a book. We get attacked every day. It’ll be attacked viciously, but I think it absolutely disproves the anti-Semitism of our day biblically, historically, politically. It talks about how important it is. And I made a statement just a couple of days ago on Facebook. Because I’m coming across new examples of anti-Semitism every day.

[MCG]

Do you go causing trouble again?

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Sorry.

[MCG]

Do you go causing trouble again?

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

No. Pastor said that the other day that I go looking for controversy. I don’t. But I don’t run from it. That’s the point.

[MCG]

Amen.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

I would prefer everybody agree with me about everything, but I’m not going to be intimidated by controversy. That goes back to being raised by Kentucky Hillbillies. My dad taught me you never back down. He always said, knowing that you were intimidated and afraid hurts worse than being beaten up. And that was actually good training for the ministry, though he was unsaved at the time. I’m sure if you told him, hey, get him ready to be a preacher, he’d have thought you were crazy. But no, I don’t. But I do understand that it comes with the territory and that there’s a lot of folks with a very vicious spirit that have been attracted to this doctrine. And that shows up when you’re talking about, what I said the other day was, there’s more anti-Semitism in the United States today two years before the next presidential election than there was in Germany 2 years before Hitler was elected.

[MCG]

Oh, wow.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

And that is a frightening thought.

[MCG]

Oh, Dr. Schlelstringer, we’ll be in touch. I’m going to send you an e-mail and we’ll have you and your pastor on to talk about the book.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

We will look forward to it. Love you folks. Appreciate what you’re doing and glad any time to participate with you. Thank you. My absolute pleasure. God bless.

[Jay]

Thank you so much for listening to the Removing Barriers podcast. Make sure to rate us everywhere you listen to podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, or Stitcher. Removing Barriers, a clear view of the cross.

[MCG]

Thank you for listening. To get a hold of us, to support this podcast, or to learn more about Removing Barriers, go to removingbarriers.net. This has been the Removing Barriers podcast. We attempted to remove barriers so that we all can have a clear view of the cross.