NEW SERIES -- Amil Tough Texts: How Do the Amil's Interpret This Text? #1 Jer 23:5-8

by Antonio da Rosa
[Edited Wednesday, July 11]

I started taking a class called "Issues in Dispensationalism" yesterday. These are the two required reading books:

Issues in Dispensationalism

and

Progressive Dispensationalism: An Analysis of the Movement and Defense of Traditional Dispensationalism

Both books are collections of essays on various subject by compentent authors (Zane Hodges even contributes an article entitled "A Dispensational Understanding of Acts 2). The first book has 12 articles and the second has 17. I am half done with the first already.

I am glad that I am taking this class as it has renewed my interests in things dispensational. I am proposing a series of posts (any of the blog contributors may take up the series as well!) that deal with texts that the Amillenialists must deeply ignore or spiritualize (so that it is highly unrecognizable to the uninitiated).

In Charles Ryrie's landmark book, Dispensationalism Today, published first in 1965, he had this to say about Dispensationalists' approach to the interpretation of the Scriptures. Discussing the Dispensationalisms consistently literal or plain interpretation of the bible in general and prophecy in particular, he notes:

"And it is this very consistency - the strength of dispensational interpretation - that irks the nondispensationalist and becomes the object of his ridicule."

Noteworthy is Craig Blaising's trek to Amillennialism when he concludes "that consistently literal exegesis is inadequate to describe the esstential distinctive of dispensationalism. Development [read change] is taking place..."

Apparantly it is the proper and traditional dispensationalist's consistently literal hermeneutic that irks the Progressive Dispensationalist as well!

Our text for this first installment in this series is a passage describing the culmination of the Davidic kingdom and fulfillment by Jesus Christ:

Jer 23:5-8

"Behold, the days are coming," says the LORD,
"That I will raise to David a Branch of righteousness;
A King shall reign and prosper,
And execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.
In His days Judah will be saved,
And Israel will dwell safely;
Now this is His name by which He will be called:

THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.

"Therefore, behold, the days are coming," says the LORD, "that they shall no longer say, 'As the LORD lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,' but, 'As the LORD lives who brought up and led the descendants of the house of Israel from the north country and from all the countries where I had driven them.' And they shall dwell in their own land."

Notice that Jesus, as the Davidic King, "shall reign and prosper,
and execute judgment and righteousness in the earth."

Notice also that ethnic Judah and Israel have a future as a people distinct from the church. They will be saved and dwell safely in the land.

Notice finally that a new oath will replace and old oath. The ethnic "descendants of Israel" will speak of God's regathering of them from far countries where they will "dwell in their own land".

What is the Amil interpretation?

Antonio da Rosa