As we delve deeper into our study on rightly dividing scripture, a great deal of confusion and error in understanding the Bible would be eliminated if we only took the time to learn how to “rightly divide” the Word, and why we must do so as we are called to do in scripture (2 Tim 2:15).

The phrase “rightly divide” means to “make a straight cut.” That both history and God’s administration of it is divided into differing administrations (dispensations) cannot be honestly denied. God Himself has made “dividing cuts” all along the timeline of history; and although the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone has NEVER changed in ANY dispensation, the way God has revealed Himself to man – His unveiling plan for the ages – has been and still is being progressively revealed throughout each of the different dispensations within God’s timeline of both history past and history future.

For example, ALL of the Old Testament prophecies that are given in both the major and minor prophetic books were given to national ISRAEL, and NOT to the Church – not until the appropriate time AFTER Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, AFTER Israel had rejected both her Messiah and the Kingdom He offered them as a nation (**as He already knew that they would). Only AFTER these things occurred was the Church birthed – a SEPARATE ENTITY from national Israel (Acts chapter 2).

** (Zechariah 12:10 shows that the Jews must repent and BELIEVE upon Jesus as their Messiah because, in His omniscient foreknowledge, He knew that they would reject both Him and the kingdom at that time. They must at a future point come to “look upon Him whom they pierced.” And Zechariah 13:8-9 shows that, by the end of the Tribulation, 1/3 of them will).

The Church was NEVER God’s “plan B” but was instead already planned for from before creation because God is omnipotent and omniscient (all powerful and all knowing). He already knew the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:9-10); thus, He already knew that national Israel would reject Jesus as her Messiah and would thus reject His legitimate offer of the kingdom to them. The Church was in God’s plan from the very beginning, but not revealed until God knew the time to reveal her was right; that is AFTER Israel rejected Jesus as her promised Messiah and thusly also rejected the promised kingdom Jesus legitimately offered, exactly as God in His omniscience already knew Israel, at that time, would.

The Church is ONE BODY that is made up of BOTH believing Jews and believing Gentiles (Galatians 3:28-29).

The Church was a “mystery hidden in God” until it was time for it to be brought forth in God’s timing (Ephesians 3:1-11).

We are now living in the Dispensation of Grace – the Church Age. The Dispensation of Grace (the Church Age) began with the birth of the Church at Pentecost after Jesus’ ascension back to the Father, and will end with the rapture of the Church to Heaven BEFORE the 7-year Tribulation begins; because the PURPOSE of the Tribulation is not only for God to bring vengeance and justice to a wicked world, but most importantly to bring to salvation a remnant of ISRAEL so that ALL of God’s unconditional covenants to Israel can be fulfilled forevermore (Daniel 9; Jeremiah 30:7; Zechariah 13:8-9 – specific to Israel DURING the Tribulation, and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12; 1 Corinthians 15:50-58; Revelation 4:1 specific to the Church BEFORE the Tribulation).

In order to be able to “rightly divide” scripture, we need to read and study the “whole counsel” of God (that is, the full scriptures in their entirety). We must study them in this manner:

LITERALLY (this means that God means what He says and says what He means. We do not allegorize or spiritualize what God plainly states as truth).

GRAMMATICALLY (this means that although metaphor and simile, and imagery are used as linguistic devices, the truth is still the truth of scripture. For example, when Jesus says He is the “bread of life,” we understand that this is a literary way of stating the truth that Jesus is the only One who can sustain us spiritually – not that He is a literal loaf of bread).

DISPENSATIONALLY (that means historically – where and when events occur on God’s timeline), and to WHOM the recorded events occur.

IN CONTEXT (that means knowing who is being addressed in any given passage) and knowing what the theme or subject matter is being discussed in any book, passage, or verses. Reading in context means that we take the Testament, book, passage as a WHOLE and that we are not “cherry picking” verses out of the context of the entire passage, book, or Testament. We read the verses above any particular verse, and the verses below IT. We keep every verse in the entire context of the passage, chapter, book, Testament. We identify WHO is being addressed, and during what time period; and when we understand these things, we interpret and understand it all LITERALLY.

As an example, nowhere is the Church addressed in the Old Testament; NOWHERE. The major and minor prophetic books in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are ALL addressed to ISRAEL; to the Jews. They deal with Israel’s PAST and with what national Israel WILL BE enduring during the coming Tribulation (for example the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24-25; Mark 13; and Luke 21 are ALL specific to the JEWS – to ISRAEL).

The New Testament book of John is a transitional book between the Old Testament Covenant under LAW and the (then coming) New Covenant of GRACE. The book of John is a bridge between that which WAS – the Old Covenant – and that which was about to begin – the New Covenant. This new covenant, which was to be offered to ALL who would believe (both Jew and Gentile), would be briefly introduced to but not yet expounded upon by Jesus to His disciples just before His crucifixion. Later, the new entity Jesus mentioned as being “His Church” would be birthed in the book of Acts (chapter 2), and expounded upon throughout the epistles of the Apostle Paul whom God had called and ordained as the “apostle to the Gentiles” – to the Church.

The new Dispensation of Grace was instituted only AFTER Christ had finished His work of procuring and securing our eternal salvation at Calvary, and by His bodily resurrection and ascension back to the Father, thus postponing the Dispensation of Law (the final 7 years of that dispensation that will be completed during the 7-year Tribulation).

The birth of the Church at Pentecost (AFTER Calvary), as related in Acts chapter 2, marks the beginning of the newly begun Dispensation of GRACE; a dispensation unlike any other in time whereby God made ONE NEW BODY of believers of BOTH Jews and Gentiles who believe upon Christ alone for their salvation (John 3:16-18; 1 Corinthians 15:1-4).

Another unique aspect of the Dispensation of Grace is that, during this dispensation – that is, during the Church Age – the Holy Spirit is actually SEALED WITHIN each believer. This was not the case in any dispensation previous to the Church Age, nor will this unique indwelling and sealing of the Holy Spirit in believers be in effect during any dispensation afterward. The function of the Holy Spirit before the Dispensation of Grace was to “come upon” or “come beside” believers – leading, strengthening, guiding and enabling them. This function will again be the function of the Holy Spirit after the rapture of the Church; the event that will end this unique dispensation of Grace – the Church Age.

The identity, function and destiny of Israel and the Church are not the same. The Church and Israel are two separate and distinct entities. Both are loved by God, and both play distinct roles in God’s plan for the ages. We must never mix the two or assign to the Church any of the promises that were made specifically to Israel.

National Israel was promised by God an EARTHLY kingdom, while the Church is promised a heavenly one. Israel is God’s land and Jerusalem God’s city. God has placed His mark on both the land of Israel and the city of Jerusalem. God made certain specific unconditional covenants with Israel through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob concerning the land, while to the Church God has promised a heavenly kingdom eternal “in My (Christ’s) Father’s house.”

During the Millennial Kingdom on earth, Christ will rule from David’s throne in Jerusalem, Israel, fulfilling ALL of the covenants He made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their physical posterity. Those of us who are the Church will rule and reign with Christ on earth during the coming Kingdom, but it will be a redeemed and fully believing national ISRAEL who will be the center of earth’s rulership whose center will be JERUSALEM, God’s holy city.

During the Millennial Kingdom, we who are the Church, along with the Old Testament Saints and the martyred Tribulation Saints, will then be in our redeemed and glorified bodies. The others in the Kingdom will be MORTALS, both Jews and Gentiles who survived the Tribulation and who will ALL enter the Kingdom as believers, but still in their mortal bodies.

Thus, the Millennial Kingdom will consist of both mortal and Immortal beings. The Church will be ruling along with Christ, administering justice in the earthly kingdom – judging both the still mortal believing ethnic Jews and the believing mortal Gentiles who will have survived the Tribulation and who will have entered the Millennial Kingdom while still in their mortal bodies. It will be these mortals, both Jew and Gentile, who will marry, procreate, and populate the Kingdom for 1,000 years.

During this 1,000-year reign of Christ on earth, ISRAEL will be the focal point for all the nations of the earth. ISRAEL will at last enjoy ALL of the blessings that God has always promised that she would be given.

At the end of this 1,000-year earthly reign of Christ on this present earth, all of the lost dead from every dispensation who have been temporarily housed in Hell (also called Sheol in Hebrew and Hades in Greek), along with Satan, every fallen angel, every demonic spirit – ALL fallen entities and ALL lost and eternally condemned souls will at last be judged by Christ at the Great White Throne Judgment. ALL will be found guilty and ALL will be thrown into the eternal Lake of Fire there to endure great anguish and torment for eternity. This final judgment ENDS all 7 dispensations throughout TIME.

After that, God will create a new heaven and earth. The Holy City – the New Jerusalem – will “come down” from heaven and will occupy a place in the atmospheric heavens somewhere between the third heaven and the new earth. This New Jerusalem will be the abode of the glorified Church. The glorified Church will be able to move freely between there and the new earth where the new land of Israel and the redeemed city of Jerusalem will forever be the center of the earth (Revelation 21).

At the end of the 1,000 years after the judgment of the Great White Throne, Time as a created construct will end and will merge forever into what will be the “eternal now.” This will at last be the great culmination of everything that God began from the instant He created the angelic realm. This will be eternity where there will NEVERMORE be any sin, any pain, any death, any heartache, any disappointment, any impurity of any kind, nor will there be any remembrance of this former earth (Isaiah 65:17).

Creation will, at long last, be all that God had intended for His perfect creation to be. Sin, Satan, Death, Hell, Time, and the Grave will have been forever vanquished, and Christ will reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lord’s over the new heaven, the new earth, from the New Jerusalem forever.

This is why we must learn to “rightly divide” the Word of God so that we do not misapply or misinterpret scripture. Always remember to approach scripture literally, dispensationally, grammatically, and in the proper and full context of the entirety of the whole counsel of God (both testaments). If we do this, then all errors in understanding, all seeming contradictions, and all misapplications will dissolve as we begin to see the whole counsel of God – penned by 40 different men over a period of 1,600 years – dovetailed seamlessly together – no contradictions, a seamless melding of God’s perfect Plan of the Ages.

Rightly dividing the Word shows us just how incredible this one-of-a-kind, inerrant, infallible, immutable, God-breathed, absolutely supernatural book really is.

One of the biggest and most misleading arguments Calvinism (Reformed Theology) uses is the false premise that God predestines some sinners to Hell with no chance of salvation because HE withholds from them the very ability of them to BE saved. They justify this outrage against God’s character by saying that He can do this thing because He is SOVEREIGN, and as such, He can do whatever He chooses.

Well God IS sovereign; that fact is completely Biblical. What is NOT Biblical, however, is the false assertion that because God is sovereign, He can and does act in a manner that directly contradicts both His intrinsic character and nature. In other words, God CANNOT be or do ANYTHING that negates or contradicts His own character – the very essence of who and what He is.

Is God utterly sovereign? ABSOLUTELY. Does His sovereignty bind or prohibit Him in any manner, or cause Him to act contrary to His nature? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

ALL MANKIND stands guilty before a holy God. “For ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). ALL of fallen, sinful mankind stands guilty and justly condemned before holy God (Romans 3:10).

There are none who are less or more guilty than anyone else – ALL of fallen mankind stands guilty before the One who is the fountainhead, the superlative – the very essence of that which is Justice, Holiness, Righteousness, Mercy, Love, Grace. The Ancient of Days is the very wellspring of each of these, and is the very essence of these ideals before whom all humanity stands “condemned already” (John 3:18).

So, the Calvinist and reformed theology position is that God’s sovereignty thus allows Him to act CAPRICIOUSLY – to arbitrarily choose to save SOME of humanity while condemning others to an eternal Hell for no other reason than that He can do so because He is sovereign.

Now, if this is true, then this is a HUGE deal for EVERY SINNER (which we all are). IF the Calvinist doctrine of “unconditional election” is Biblical, then that has unequaled and devastating ETERNAL consequences for those who would be destined to an eternal Hell with absolutely NO possibility of EVER being saved. Yet this is precisely the tenant of Calvinism – that God PREDESTINES SOME sinners to receive saving grace, yet He PREDESTINES other sinners to Hell with NO POSSIBILITY of receiving saving grace; that He can be justified in doing this because He is sovereign, and as such, can do whatever He wants merely because He can.

But does this belief reflect God’s intrinsic character and nature, or is this belief actually a slap in the face of the very essence of WHO God is? Does God’s sovereignty mean that He can or does act in a manner that is outside of His intrinsic nature? This is the question we will examine.

Only a genuinely sovereign God could offer fallen man the freedom to choose to accept or reject His freely offered gift of salvation by grace.

The “god” of Calvinism and reformed theology is RESTRICTED, not by God’s sovereign abilities, but by what CALVINISM THINKS or ASSUMES His sovereignty is.

The truth is that only a truly sovereign God is ABLE to freely offer salvation by grace to WHOSOEVER WILL accept it. It is because of His supreme sovereignty that He is ABLE to offer ALL of fallen mankind the SAME OFFER of grace that NONE of us deserves. Only He can do this BECAUSE He is sovereign.

None of us are worthy of God’s grace. ALL of us are guilty, justly condemned sinners deserving of Hell. God would have been completely within His sovereign righteousness to condemn us ALL to Hell.

When Adam CHOSE to rebel – when Adam fell BECAUSE he chose rebellion over obedience – God could have done any one of these things:

1. He could have obliterated Adam, Eve, and the entire creation that was tainted by Adam’s rebellion.
2. He could have made a new race of humans with NO CHANCE of rebelling and NO CHOICE of freely loving and obeying his creator – in other words, God could have made an automaton with NO chance of rebelling and NO freedom to choose to love or reject God’s love, or
3. He could have destroyed everything including the angelic host and been complete within Himself. Because God is BOTH singular and diverse, He is a TRI-UNE being complete within Himself. Yet God did NONE of those things. Instead, God did the unthinkable. In fact, He had already planned to do the unthinkable BEFORE He ever spoke the words “Let there be…”

What was this unimaginable choice God made? That GOD HIMSELF would die in our stead to pay the infinite penalty of sin for ALL of His fallen creation. That God the Father would send God the Son – the 2nd Person of the Tri-une Godhead, to pay the penalty for the sinful rebellion of all mankind that God FOREKNEW – knew beforehand – that Adam was going to choose (Isaiah 46:9-10; Revelation 13:8).

God Himself had already chosen to send His Son to redeem sinful man. Because He IS Love and Mercy, as well as being Righteousness and Justice, it was by HIS own death that He made provision for the redemption of fallen man by His own sacrificial death, burial, and bodily resurrection. God Himself had already determined (before the foundation of the world) that His Son would pay in full the penalty of sin that His (God’s) own Justice and Righteousness demanded. He could do this, not because He HAS love and mercy, but because He IS in His very essence, Love and Mercy personified, just as He also IS, in His very essence, Justice and Righteousness personified. He IS these things. These superlatives – these traits, do not merely describe Him; they ARE WHO HE IS. They are His very character and nature.

God who IS Love, CANNOT act in any way or in any manner that is anathema to His very Nature. He IS both Love and Justice; both Mercy and Righteousness. This is the entire point and the necessity of Calvary.

For God to offer salvation to only SOME guilty sinners and not ALL guilty sinners would be for Him to Violate His own character and nature – it would Violate WHO HE IS. It would also violate His Sovereignty by making Christ’s death INSUFFICIENT for the atonement for Sin that has infected ALL mankind. It would violate both His character of Mercy and His character of Justice.

The truth is this: the words of scripture are clear and unmistakable; WHOSOEVER means JUST THAT. ALL means ALL (Romans 10:13), and Christ stating emphatically that HE is the propitiation for the sins of THE WHOLE WORLD means exactly that – His death paid the penalty for the sins OF THE WHOLE WORLD. Period (1 John 1:2).

When God plainly states that He “is NOT WILLING that ANY should perish (and He is speaking perishing eternally) but that ALL should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9), then He means EXACTLY THAT. He is not willing for ANY to perish eternally, so He has provided a way of salvation for all who will receive it (John 3:16-18; 1 Corinthians 15:1-4; John 1:12; John 3:36; John 5:24; Acts 16:30-31).

The gospel of God’s grace from the Garden of Eden to the end of the Millennial Kingdom and into the onset of eternity has ALWAYS been God’s grace freely offered to “whosoever will.” Any other position constitutes the preaching of ANOTHER GOSPEL, which is both forbidden and cursed by God (Galatians 1:8-9).