Reading God's Words the Way He Gave Them
Every reader of the Bible has a method, whether he knows it or not. The first mark of a dispensationalist is a commitment to one method, applied everywhere: the plain, grammatical, and historical sense of the text. Most Christians who love the Bible read the Gospels and the epistles this way. The dispensationalist's distinctive is that he keeps reading this way when he comes to prophecy and to the promises God made to Israel.
Reading a passage in its normal sense: the meaning its words carry by the ordinary rules of grammar, in their historical setting and literary context, as the author intended his first readers to understand them. It is often called literal interpretation, where literal means plain, not wooden.
God Means to Be Understood
“And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.”HABAKKUK 2:2 · KJV
When God gave Habakkuk a vision, He told him to write it so plainly that a reader could run with it. Moses was to write the law on stones very plainly (Deuteronomy 27:8). When the Levites read the law to the exiles who had returned from Babylon, they gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading (Nehemiah 8:8). God does not hide His meaning behind a code that only specialists can break. The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple (Psalm 119:130).
When you read a promise of God, do you ask what it meant on the day He made it, or what you would like it to mean now?
Loading the rest of this article
For Deeper Study
- Basic Bible InterpretationAmazon Roy B. ZuckA practical, step-by-step guide to the grammatical-historical method by a longtime teacher at Dallas Theological Seminary.
- Protestant Biblical InterpretationAmazon Bernard RammA long-standard textbook on the history and principles of interpretation, with a strong case for the plain, grammatical sense of Scripture.
- The Interpretation of ProphecyAmazon Paul Lee TanA thorough defense of reading prophecy plainly, from a dispensational and premillennial teacher.
- Has the Church Replaced Israel? A Theological EvaluationAmazon Michael J. VlachA careful survey of the view that the church has superseded Israel, its history and arguments, with a biblical case for Israel's future.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
As an Amazon Associate, Theologica earns from qualifying purchases.
What Is Dispensationalism?
Dispensationalism is a way of reading the whole Bible that takes God's words in their plain sense, sees Him ordering His household through distinct stewardships, keeps His program for Israel distinct from His program for the church, and trusts Him to keep every promise as He gave it.
Open Doctrine