Subsistence doesn’t destroy diversity: rather it enhances and empowers distinctions.
Category: dispensationalism
In the past, I argued against the liberal (or Kenotic Arian) view of Scripture by looking at what the writer to the Hebrews thought about Scripture. I could have argued from Paul, Peter, John and Christ but I was co-opting some of my studies on Hebrews to make the point. Anyway, there was a fundamental thread that should be seen throughout the entire post easily summarized as follows: the writer to the Hebrews sees God speaking the Gospel right now perfectly through others via the entirety of Scripture written in the past to affect change in the present to save from the future shaking. In fact, if I want a scripture summary, I’d probably just quote Isaiah 40 and what the voice of one crying out in the wilderness was to cry: Good News—God is here!
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Excluded Seed And Abraham
This post has some potentially graphic content.
I’ve been asked (in private and public) certain questions about the Abrahamic covenant. One question is If Abraham and his seed are to be blessed, and part of this blessing is The Land, then can we safely assume that all physical descendants of Abraham also receive the blessing? The question examines the promise of God and notes that its importance is in the physical and therefore Isaac (a physical descendant of Abraham) gets equal access to the promises as Ishmael (another physical descendant of Abraham) and by extension Esau (a son of Isaac).
At this point I have to take a step back from the text—but not for the sake of my own view on God’s covenant to Abraham and its historical outworking, rather for clearing out some potentially misconceptions. It is always helpful to consider the details of any situation: which turns to make, which stops are important, where to find the hotel…that’s what I normally do. But sometimes it is necessary to get a bird’s eye view of the thing and see how the lines interconnect, how they follow down another path, and how they accentuate the lay of the land. The problem is that my mind contains a different bird’s eye view than what your bird’s eye view may look like.
I started this series underscoring the importance of words and saying how their conveyed information was to be received by the primary audience to convey real information. This was then recorded for our benefit.
Look, I don’t plan to go into explicit detail on this post; there’s just too much: at least fifteen posts worth (that I really don’t want to write). I just want to paint in with broad strokes the way God’s Covenant to Abraham works out historically approaching the Incarnation. I’ll introduce some of these broad strokes with how it ties to a promise and from there give some general information on the connection. On some of these sections I might use the word “blossom” and I would want you to take notice of that since it directly correlates with a point I will make in a later post. So, for a moment, hold up the palette of covenantal colors that God used in Genesis 12-17 and prepare to paint a vibrant picture of God’s word caused to stand: