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Guest Blog: The Crux (1 of 5)

Recently, blogger Marv (a.k.a asphaleia) posted an excellent series of discussion regarding his view of the redemptive plan of God. It winds up being a progressive dispensational model but was interesting enough to house here on the Bible Archive for consumption by friends and family. This is post 1 of 5.

Introduction
This post presents a theological model that attempts to capture the basic structure of the redemptive plan of God revealed in the Scriptures. It has been in a state of percolation since the days of my formal theological studies. I consider it to fall within the camp of Progressive Dispensationalism, though I don’t claim my presentation is representative of that camp.  It is my own take on it.

The model is intended to:

1. Be Christocentric. In God’s redemptive plan and in the flow of history, Jesus Christ is the center, the point, the crux. (The diagram itself turns out to be cruciform.)

2. Demonstrate the Israel/Church relationship:  not replacement, not parallel, not parenthesis.

3. Account for an immanent return throughout the church age.

4. Apply Daniel’s seventy weeks both to the first coming and the second.

I haven’t wanted focused on the various dispensations themselves, but that structure does seem to be present. It recently occurred to me that it does divide into the four dispensations typically described by Progressive Dispensationalists: Patriarchal, Mosaic, Ecclesial, and Zionic.  In this present form I refer simply to phases.

The diagram also incorporates seven themes I elaborate elsewhere from Genesis chapter 1:

  • God as Creator/Owner
  • God as King
  • God as Judge
  • God as Father/Provider
  • Light
  • Division
  • Time/Rhythm of Life/Sevens

Refer to the following chart (click for large version):

The primary foreground element is the line of promise running from Abraham to Christ. The structure that underlies this line is Israel, Christ being the point of it. (Green dot to white dot.)

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