Tommy McMurtry continues to spread false information about dispensationalism and we will continue to correct his distortions and false reasoning. This will be accomplished by the Grace of God, of course. Here, we discuss his fifth video in the series.
The topic at hand is, “The Church and Israel.” McMurtry begins by stating that the reason most people are dispensational is because of Israel. Obviously, he has no facts to back this up, so we can just as easily state the reverse: most people are pro-Israel because they choose to be honest students of the word of God and look at the Bible dispensationally. To put it another way, I am pro-Israel because the Bible teaches a pro-Jewish stance. (Rom 11:28) Paul and Jesus knew that most Jews were lost, they still loved the nation. (See Rom 9:1-5, Luke 19:41 and Luke 23:34 where Jesus forgives them for killing him) Anderson and his ilk do not share this attitude. Bible Believers follow the Lord Jesus Christ and Paul in their attitude towards the nation of Israel. Andersonites do not.
After making up this supposed fact, McMurtry continues on by committing an error that I call “HYPOTHETICALISM.” I define Hypotheticalism as the attempt to discredit an idea by making up a ridiculous situation and seeing if the idea still works. Sometimes, much to the questioner’s dismay, the idea still works. In this case, dispensationalism actually has an answer to all of McMurtry’s questions, even in this ridiculous scenario.
It is very telling that the ENEMIES of Christ committed the same error in Matt 22:23-28. This also happens when we’d street preach in my hometown which is home to a big university. Students would ask, “Can God make a burrito so spicy that even he can’t eat it?” Of course God can eat any burrito, that doesn’t mean God isn’t omnipotent. His ability to eat even the spiciest burrito ever made only proves that he is omnipotent. Same with McMurtry, we will answer his question even if he thinks he has a “gotcha”.
McMurtry asks, “When did the disciples cease being part of Israel?” The answer is this: Spiritually…when they got into the Body of Christ. Physically….. never. In the Body of Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile. Gal 3:28 – “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” But look at Paul, who years after he got saved still wrote in Rom 11:1, “I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.” Clearly, he is spiritually a Christian, but physically a Jew. The same can be said of the other disciples of Christ.
As for the time, it either happened when the Lord breathed on them (John 20:22) or at Pentecost (Acts 2). Bible Believers disagree about that exactly. But the answer to McMurtry’s question is somewhere in that span of 50 days. Not before and not after. To get further in depth as to the actual mechanics of salvation before the cross, please see this.
He asks, “Did they lose promises to Israel because they got saved?” The answer is yes. They are still Jews in the flesh, but THE FLESH IS DEAD (Rom 6 and many other places). See how that works?
McMurtry uses this question to set up his hypothetical situation that he thinks will stump a dispensationalist. He wonders about if a church member was lost but still made it through the Tribulation. This formerly lost church member then starts to preach in the Millennium, what we preach today about the future return of Christ. He then runs into us (by “us”, McMurtry means “them” because he doesn’t think dispensationalists are saved.) and gets mad at us for abandoning our religion and now following a new one.
This scenario all leads up to McMurtry’s main question: Would we consider ourselves to have switched faiths? He says, Absolutely not. I say absolutely yes. Let us see if the Bible can show who is right and who is wrong.
McMurtry doesn’t know it, but he just shot himself in the foot. There are many differences between the Church Age and the Millennium. These differences will, once again, prove that either dispensationalism is true or else the Bible has contradictions. This will also prove that the true religion (if you allow me to call it that) of the Church Age is different than the true religion of the Millennium.
The first issue is that no one who has heard the Gospel in the Church Age will make it through the Time of Jacob’s Sorrow (also called Daniel’s 70th Week or the Tribulation). II Thess 2:8-12 – “And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Notice from the text that ONE OF the reasons for the Antichrist’s coming is to damn people to hell who rejected the truth. If you heard the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ before the Rapture, your goose is cooked. You are lost and you will be deceived into taking the Mark of the Beast and going to hell. (Rev 14:10,11)
This demonstrates one of the worst consequences of the false doctrine of the post-Trib Rapture of the Church, recently made famous by Anderson. I know that Anderson would never preach this, but lost people are smart. If you even hint that they can have a chance to get saved after the beginning of the events of Matt 24, then they might just take you up on it. They might put off salvation. But after the true Rapture of the Church (Pre-Trib), then they will not be able to get saved as per II Thess 2. Anderson’s doctrine damned their souls to hell. That ought to matter to you.
So, McMurtry’s little story doesn’t hold water. NO ONE who heard the Gospel from the Church Age and rejected it makes it into the Millennium. But we will continue to play along…
One of the main characteristics of the Millennium is the fact that Jesus Christ is reigning in Jerusalem (Matt 5:35) and sitting on the throne of his father, David. (Luke 1:32) If he is there and not up in heaven, then how would FAITH be a part of salvation? Faith is defined in the Bible as, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Heb 11:1) If you can see him, then how can you receive him BY FAITH? Answer you cannot. Salvation cannot be by faith in the Millennium and no honest person can pretend that salvation through faith is the same as salvation through sight. So the man in the hypothetical situation CANNOT preach the same as today. Again, McMurtry’s scenario doesn’t work.
I also brought up another point in a previous article about the fact that you are not allowed to witness for the Lord in the Millennium. If you do, the penalty is death. Zech 13:3-5 – “And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the LORD: and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied; neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive: But he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth.” So if we run into anyone preaching we are to tell his parents to kill him. Again, McMurtry’s scenario doesn’t work.
So let me ask you this, if you take away the coming of Christ, salvation by faith, and soul winning, do you have the same religion as today or a different one? I don’t feel that I need to answer that question. You already know the answer.
McMurtry proceeds to say that Jews claim we (Christians) are part of a new religion. McMurtry believes that the Jews are wrong and that they are part of a new religion. Here again, as many times before, McMurtry is partly right and partly wrong.
Yes, we are a part of a new religion. The Temple is now irrelevant (and destroyed) and the Holy Spirit is now within the believer. (I Cor 3:16) We can’t lose our salvation (Rom 8:38,39) whereas before, an OT believer could (Eze 33:13). No matter how antisemites want to word it, in the OT God was primarily concerned with the nation of Israel. In the NT, God is primarily concerned with Gentiles. We could go on and bring up sacrifices and holy days, but we have already covered a lot of this material before.
He claims that REALLY the Jews changed religions and not us. That is true in the sense that, after their temple was destroyed in 70 AD, they had to invent what is called Rabbinism to deal with the fact that their system of sacrifices was impossible to fulfill. So in that sense, McMurtry is correct. The religion of the Orthodox Jews goes only back to the years after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.
So his question of “Would we consider ourselves to have switched faiths?” is a poorly worded question. Lots of what McMurtry says is poorly worded and we have provided many examples.
He claims that the New Testament Church is the continuation of the Old Testament congregation. We would agree that both are what God was primarily dealing with at the time. Nothing else about this is true. McMurtry aims to go much further and prove that they were the same. He gives a few verses that supposedly “prove” this. We will look at his verses.
McMurtry continues on to Heb 8:7-9 – “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.”
I’m sorry, but I am not prepared to stretch the limits of my imagination to the point that this verse says anything like, “the NT Church is the continuation of the OT congregation”. The verse simply does not SAY this. Neither the word “Church” nor the word “congregation” are in the passage. The word “continuation” does not appear either. The passage is talking to the “house of Israel and with the house of Judah.” The covenant is not primarily aimed at born again Christians.
McMurtry might want to say (this is me being very kind…) that the new covenant in the passage is talking about the church. This becomes a problem when you look at the context. Heb 8:11, “And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.” How that fits with the job of the Church to preach the Gospel is anybody’s guess. If you want, as McMurtry apparently does, to apply this passage to the Church, then why are we knocking on doors or what exactly are you preaching from your pulpit? I hope it is clear that this passage is not talking about what McMurtry claims. It is fulfilled in the Millennium, not the Church Age.
I desire to be done talking about the mess that McMurtry made of this passage, but he makes on more egregious error that must be dealt with. He claims that the New Covenant is “between the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ.” Andersonites believe that if you add from the Scriptures, then you are not and cannot be saved. See my article here. If this were true (we know it’s not), then McMurtry is in big trouble, because that is NOT WHAT THE TEXT SAYS. How do the Andersonites not catch this? As usual, they are not very careful with words.
Next, McMurtry goes to I John 2:18-23, “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: (but) he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.”
He uses, “They went out from us…” to prove that the Jews left the original faith (whatever that is, it’s never defined) and so therefore, Christianity is not a new religion. But Jews and the nation of Israel are not in the context. “…Denieth that Jesus is the Christ.” should not be limited to the Jews. Yes, it is true of the Jews, but it’s also true of Atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, and a whole bunch of apostate Christian groups and possibly even Muslims. So you could apply the text to about half of the world’s population, but McMurtry focuses on the Jews, in order to prove his point. This is deceptive.
People can leave the faith and this is prophesied all through the Bible. Look at II Pet 2:1,2 – “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.” The verses in I John 2 are about more than just the Jews.
From here, McMurtry goes to Rom 11:17, “And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree;” The “olive tree” of vss 17 and 24 is Israel (Jer 11:16 and context). “Some” of Israel is cut off. (vs. 17) but not all. So us Gentiles (vs 13) are graft in among the saved Jews. I don’t see how this has anything to do with “the NT Church is the continuation of the OT congregation” except in the general sense of who God’s dealings are primarily aimed toward. These thoughts are expanded on by Paul in Eph 2, which along with Eph 3, are some of the clearest passages in the Bible about dispensationalism.
This reminds me that I need to do an article about Romans 11: Scripture with Scripture and In Context. I have listened to and read Anderson’s teachings on the chapter and he CONVENIENTLY (by that I mean intentionally) ran out of time before he could get to the conclusion of the chapter, which again, teaches dispensationalism.
McMurtry finishes his video by going to Rom 9, Gal 3, and Gal 4. These texts and his comments about the “seed” have all been dealt with in my article about Gal 3.
His final statement is “True replacement Theology is replacing Jesus Christ with the Jews.” If you think that is what dispensationalism does, then I don’t know what to say to you… I refuse to comment on such a ridiculous comment. McMurtry and Anderson have a problem, not with me, Doctor Ruckman, Scofield, or dispensationalism, but with the GOD WHO WROTE THE BIBLE. This has been demonstrated through around 50 pages of material and again in a couple of days when we look at part 6 of McMurtry’s series.
Vake Biblia 