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What is the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament? This is a question Christians have pondered since the time of the Apostles, arriving at widely varying conclusions. Some see a radical distinction between the Old Covenant religion of Israel, and Christianity’s New Covenant faith. Others see the relationship as a more continuous progression. As the 21^st century begins, many are taking a new look at the old debate, and coming to new understandings. After studying the topic in depth, I have come to feel this is a question of prime importance.

I am going to argue that the Bible is basically one continuous story from beginning to end. It tells of how God has acted in His creation and in human history throughout time. It begins with God creating the heavens and the earth, and it ends with a new heaven and a new earth where all is restored to its original intent. In between Genesis 1 and Revelation 22, a great story of redemption unfolds. God calls to Himself a people, provides a way of reconciliation, and acts to make that reconciliation a reality in the cross. Every part of the story – even those parts which are yet to happen in history – is related to every other part.

We can compare the flow of biblical history to a road or a path. It has a beginning and a destination. Along the way there may be twists and turns, but the road makes continuous progress toward its goal. So it is with the Bible. The historical circumstances in Abraham’s time may look very different from the situation we now live in, but Abraham was on the same road of faith we travel. He walked ahead of us on God’s path, leading toward the same goal. Each period of history builds on and incorporates the ones before it, with no conflict between them.

To use a different illustration, we can compare the Old Covenant and the New Covenant not as two different things, like apples and oranges. Rather, they are the same thing in two different stages of development, comparable as an apple blossom is to an apple or a rosebud to a fully bloomed rose. They are very different in appearance, but fundamentally they are same thing. The Old Testament is preparation; the New Testament is the goal. The Old Testament is prediction; the New Testament is fulfillment. They are not two different things, they are the same thing in two different forms.

You may ask why I am making such a point of this. As this series of articles progresses, I hope it will become clear. Many errors have crept into Christian theology because we have misunderstood this principle of continuous, progressive revelation. Every verse of Scripture must be understood in relationship to the overall story, to its place in the flow of God’s revelation. Looking at a verse in isolation from its context can lead to a totally false interpretation. This means that we cannot study the New Testament without seeing its intimate relationship with the Old Testament.

I have heard it said many times that the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New Testament. The Old Testament God is seen as judgmental, harsh, and strict. Jesus (it is said) shows us a different God of love, mercy, and grace. Before, we had a God of wrath; now we have forgiveness. This kind of thinking is fundamentally wrong. God has not changed. God hates sin – and loves sinners – just as much today as He ever did. God does not have a split personality and His ways do not vary over time.

The idea of a sharp division between the Old Testament and the New Testament goes back to a false teacher in the early church named Marcion. He understood Paul to be saying that the law and everything associated with the law is bad, evil, and outdated. He called the Old Testament "God of law" a false God. He therefore threw out most of Old Testament and preached about Jesus’ "God of love". The Church in the second century decided this teaching was wrong, and declared Marcion to be a heretic. But his ideas still live on today.

The more I have studied this subject, the more convinced I am that Marcion’s heresy is one of the most destructive ideas the Church has ever encountered. He is dead wrong. The God of Moses and the God of Jesus are the same God. The law of the Old Testament was not a mistake – it is a vital part of God’s revelation to us. It is still very relevant to us as Christians. Our Bible should not be divided into separate parts. It tells God’s single story from cover to cover.

Over the past 100 years, many evangelical Christians have been taught a type of Bible interpretation known as Dispensationalism. This theological system is especially common when talking about prophecy, the end of world, and the second coming of Jesus. The dispensational school of thought divides the course of Bible history into separate periods (usually 7) known as dispensations. For example, the dispensation of law begins with Moses and the 10 commandments. We are said to be living in the dispensation of grace, beginning at Pentecost.

God is said to have acted in very different ways in the different dispensations. The rules God expected people to live by in earlier period have changed, and no longer apply to us. Likewise, the promises God made to one people in one period cannot be automatically applied to another dispensation. This way of thinking is so common in our day that it is almost universally assumed. Most people don’t know that this is a fairly new way of interpreting the Bible. Before the early 1900s and the introduction of the Scofield Bible, very few Christians emphasized these sharp distinctions between historical periods.

At one level, this teaching makes sense. There is a difference between human life before sin in the Garden of Eden, and human life after Adam sinned. God has revealed more truth from time to time. But the new "dispensations" are not totally new or radically different from each other. Each one flows naturally from previous times. To return to my analogy of the road, each historical period takes us one step farther in same direction along God’s intended path. As I understand it, God’s work in history never makes a total about-face to go an entirely new direction. Everything is moving toward a single goal, which God had in mind from the beginning and which has never changed.

Dispensational teachers would disagree. While they may envision a unified goal at some time in the future, they see God’s work today in two distinct parts, running on parallel courses at the same time. On one hand is Israel, God’s chosen people from the Old Covenant, who still live under the dispensation of law to this day. On the other hand is the Church, an entirely separate New Covenant people operating under different dispensational rules. After the coming of Jesus, the road of history split into two different paths, one for Israel an one for the Church.

I once heard a dispensational teacher say it is impossible to understand prophecy unless you understand the distinction between Israel and the Church. He sees them as two entirely separate groups of people, operating under different rules. He applies most prophecy literally to the nation of Israel. The Temple, the Red Heifer, and the political situation in the Middle East are constant themes of His teaching. This is the version of prophecy teaching most people have heard. It is so commonly taught on Christian radio and TV that it is almost assumed as undisputed fact. I will return to the subject of prophecy later. For now, I want to dispute the fundamental assumption that Israel and the Church have different roles in God’s plan.

The basic assumption of dispensational theology is that the Old Covenant is still in effect for the nation of Israel. God now has two different people: Jews and Christians. Jews who accept Jesus as their Messiah become Christians and move into the New Covenant. But Jews who do not accept Jesus are still God’s chosen people. God expects them to continue to operate under the Old Covenant dispensation of law. Christians (whether from Jewish or non-Jewish background) operate alongside them as a separate people under the New Testament dispensation of grace.

I believe this assumption is biblically incorrect. God does not have two covenants with two groups of people in effect at the same time. God made a single covenant, beginning with Abraham. It was elaborated under Moses and the prophets, and has now been fulfilled in Jesus. The New Covenant Jesus offers is not actually "new". It is a "re-newed" covenant, the natural outgrowth of God’s work, and what He always intended for His chosen people. There is no longer any distinction between Jew and Gentile as far as God is concerned. Both come to Him through the only way of salvation available: faith in the Jewish Messiah, Jesus.

Biblical Israel and the modern Christian Church are basically same thing. God does not have two separate people. Israel is the rosebud, the Church is the rose. Now that the rose has come, the rosebud no longer exists as a separate entity. The bud has become the rose. The Church is what God had in mind when He called Abraham. Our relationship with Him through faith is what the Law of Moses was pointing to. The plan God had in mind from the beginning has now come to its climax in Jesus. That plan does not move backwards or return to a previous stage.

What is my biblical basis for saying this? In Genesis 12:1-3, God calls Abraham, promises to bless him, and promises that "all nations" will be blessed through him. I believe Jesus was referring to this promise when, in the great commission, he sent His followers out to make disciples of "all nations" (Matthew 28:18). The promise God made to Abraham was to be fulfilled in the preaching of the gospel.

Wasn’t this promise given to the physical descendents of Abraham, the Jews? This is what people assume God was saying in Genesis 17:1-8. But Paul quotes this very passage in Galatians 3:16. There he says that the promise to Abraham’s "seed" does not refer to many descendents, but to one "seed" of Abraham, Jesus the Messiah. Paul then reasons that this eternal promise has now been fulfilled in the Church, so that "if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise" (Galatians 3:29).

This is an extremely important verse. It clearly makes the connection I have been suggesting between Israel and the Church. God’s true Israel – His chosen people – is now made up of people from every nation, not only Jews. The promises have been inherited by those of us who follow Abraham’s Seed, Jesus the Messiah. We enter the covenant God made with Abraham through faith in God’s promise, exactly as Abraham did. It is the same covenant, now renewed in the Church.

In fact, the phrase "New Covenant" comes originally from Jeremiah 31:31-35. There God promises to make a new covenant "with the house of Israel", in which he will write the law on their hearts. Jesus quotes this prophecy in the upper room during the last supper. This new covenant is offered to all who follow Him. We are "the house of Israel", and God’s law is written on our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

This is what Peter says to us as Christians: "You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, now you are the people of God" (1 Peter 2:9-10). In this passage Peter quotes several titles and phrases originally given to describe Israel, and clearly applies them to the Church. According to Peter, the phrase "God’s chosen people" today describes all who believe in Jesus, whether Jewish or Gentile by birth.

When I talk about the Church inheriting the promises God made to Israel, I am not being anti-Semitic. It is not that the Church has replaced Israel. Rather, the true Israel of God has now expanded to include people from every nation who follow Israel’s God through faith in His Messiah. We are deeply indebted to our Hebrew heritage. The Old Testament is our bible; it is our foundation and we need to understand it. But it can only be understood in the light of what God has now done in Jesus. The New Covenant incorporates and moves beyond the Old, just as the flower incorporates and moves beyond its bud. The road of God’s salvation which began with Abraham now goes through Jesus. There is no other road.

What this means in practical terms is that the modern religion of Judaism is not part of God’s plan today. The Jewish people as an ethnic group are no different in God’s eyes from any other national people or religious group. We are indebted to Israel because the Messiah was revealed through them and as part of their tradition. But there is no longer any difference in God’s sight (Galatians 3:28). Jews can become part of God’s chosen people by putting their faith in their Messiah, just as Gentiles can. Apart from Christ they have no special status. The nation of Israel today is just like any other nation in God’s eyes.

This conclusion is so dramatically different from popular dispensational teaching, it may sound shocking. Their entire view of end time events depends on Israel (made up of Jews who do not accept Jesus) and the Church playing different roles in God’s plan. They expect that at the time of the rapture, when the Church is taken out of world, Israel will return to center stage in the divine drama. The temple will be rebuilt and Jesus will return as a Jewish king-messiah to rule over national Israel with a physical government based in Jerusalem. As we shall see, I do not expect this to happen. It is not part of God’s plan.

I know many people will find my disagreement with the popular view controversial and disturbing. My view is now a minority among evangelical Bible teachers, but I am not alone in it. Serious scholars are coming forward to say that the standard interpretation of prophecy over the past 30 years has been wrong. Dispensational theology has misunderstood the whole system of bible history and prophecy.

It is important to get this right. This article has centered on Dispensationalism’s basic foundational mistake – treating Old Covenant Israel as a separate phase of God’s work, totally apart from the Renewed Covenant and the Church. This assumption leads to many errors and misunderstandings. The next article will continue this discussion by looking specifically at several key themes of end times prophecy. I challenge those who may initially disagree with my viewpoint to read, pray, and study it objectively. I think it makes a great deal of sense.

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