Responding to “The Book of Acts – A record of Israel and their earthly prophesied hope”

I received the following article without comment from one of my readers. Therefore, I responded to it with the following.

The book of Acts – A record of Israel and their earthly prophesied hope.

A proper interpretation of the overall purpose of the book of Acts is essential to a correct understanding of the Bible as a whole. Because of this, it has long been a battleground for Bible expositors of all theological persuasions. Although there have been many theories advanced that attempt to explain its overall purpose, this paper focuses on the Acts 28 position as presented in the paper entitled “The Dispensational Frontier” by Charles H. Welch.
This view states that Israel was set aside after the apostle Paul’s pronouncement against them in Acts 28:28 and immediately following that Paul received the revelation of the Mystery that he writes about in the books of Ephesians and Colossians. Therefore, according to this view, Paul was preaching the truths concerning this newly revealed Mystery during the final 2 years of the book of Acts.

Who Are God’s Chosen People?

The following article is in response to an article of the same name, posted on the website “Devoted To Truth” at http://ecclesia.org/truth/chosen.html. Please compare the two articles as you read my paragraph-by-paragraph response to what is there written. Perhaps you could print that article so you can compare the two directly as you read my response.
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Introductory paragraph 1:

Calling dispensationalism a “system” is meant to accuse it of being an idea forced upon the Scriptures, rather than one drawn from them.  The fact is, though, that any means of interpreting the Scriptures is a “system.”  As soon as one passes beyond merely reading what the Bible says to trying to understand what it truly means, one will find that it is necessary to develop a means of doing so.  If one is at all honest, this means will be systematic, and will not involve “flying by the seat of your pants” and interpreting one thing one way and another thing another depending upon your own feelings about a particular subject.  The best system, of course, is one that maintains the integrity of Scripture, and that is drawn from its pages rather than forced upon it from our own ideas.  The question, then, is what kind of system of interpretation is dispensationalism?  To just say that a “system” is wrong, however, is to deny the student any logical and honest means of interpreting the Scriptures altogether.

Article on “Olam”

I received the following question:

Would you comment on this article?

http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/27_eternity.html

I would agree that there is an aspect of the hidden or the unseen in olam, as the article suggests. Yet the hidden or the unseen relates to idea of the “flow,” which I insist is the primary idea of olam, as well, for we know that, when one is standing by a river, one can usually follow the flow far, far off into the distance, and yet the true source of it is unseen. If one were ambitious enough to follow it to its source, one would probably find that the water flows from a spring out of the ground, and the true source of it remains a mystery, being unseen. Thus the unseen or the unknown is a part of the idea of olam.