What nobody seems to get:

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Ill., stands as one of the premier institutions in the world for evangelical theology and yet it is clueless.

“You can take systematic theology courses there, and read all the systematic theology textbooks, but there’s one thing always missing,” explains Jordan. “They talk about theology. They talk about anthropology, the study of man. They talk about angelology, the study of angels and the spirit world. They talk about soteriology, the study of salvation, and ecclesiology, the study of church. They talk about escatology, the study of last times.

“But there’s one thing that’s never there. You know what it is? It’s Israelology. I’ve never been able to figure out why somewhere, somebody didn’t say, ‘You know, you can’t understand the Bible if you don’t understand the nation Israel, so why don’t we add to our theology some Israelology.’

“You can come with me to my study; I’ve got a dozen different authors, different schools of theology, other systematic theology books. Look through all of them from Louis Sperry Chafer (who is the most voluminous dispensational theologian) to Charles Baker, who would be in our camp, all the way the over to Birkhoff and Dabney and Strongs or to the modern guys and they won’t have ANYTHING, or very little, about Israel and nothing in a real study.

“Paul says, ‘I don’t want you to be ignorant about Israel and the mystery program for the Body of Christ.’ You see, Satan’s policy . . . it’s to the Adversary’s advantage to get you to confuse the two so that you’re trying to be somebody you’re not.

“And Paul said, ‘Boy, you better not do that; there’s something right up early on in your Christian life you need to get ready for.’ ”

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Pastor J.C. O’Hair, the great Chicago dispensationalist preacher, used to say all the time, “You can’t understand the Bible unless you understand Israel.”

“A lot of folks think, ‘Well, we understand about Paul, his apostleship and so forth,’ and they think that makes them Grace Believers,’ says Jordan. “No, that made them good Mid-Acts Dispensationalists. But there’s a whole lot of Mid-Acts Dispensationalists who are just as legalistic as the guy who doesn’t know anything about dispensationalism at all!

 “I’ve learned that when you come to the place where you don’t have any wisdom of your own and you’re willing to be weak enough not to know anything, and you’re willing to let God know it and tell you about it through His Word, you can come to some real understanding about some things.

“Jesus said, ‘If a man will to know the doctrine, he’ll know it.’ It’s a matter of your will. It’s not you choosing to not know it yourself or let it be what your church or theological school says.

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Fundamental to the intended literal interpretation of Scripture is making the distinction between the earthly program God gave Israel and the heavenly program given Christians, the Church the Body of Christ.

Jordan explains, “If I’m looking for the life of Israel, I’m going to look for physical institutions—a literal, visible, physical nation with a literal, visible, physical priesthood with literal, visible, physical ordinances, and identifying marks and signs, and land and a government.

“When I’m looking for the Body of Christ, am I looking for land, or buildings, or organizations? I’m looking for some spiritual life.

“That right there, in my own personal opinion about all of this, is probably the single most important issue that nobody in the history books pays any attention to. Almost nobody.”

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Covenant Reform theologian and Calvinist preacher R.C. Sproul, who is a huge, huge name on national Christian radio, hanging out with many of the other Christian radio celebs, gives this doctrinal statement on one of his websites:

"We believe the (Christian) church is essentially Israel. We believe the answer to the question, ‘What is a Jew?’ is, ‘Here we are.’ We deny that the church is God’s Plan B. We deny that we are living in God’s redemptive parenthesis. We are the Israel of God, princes with God and the ecclesia; the set apart ones.”

Now, as a Gentile, Sproul is obviously aware he’s not a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The term Jew in the Bible is ALWAYS a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—ethnic Israel. Gentiles are never referred to as Jews in the Bible.

Jordan explains, “When Sproul reads Jew, he says, ‘Oh, we won’t take that literally. We’re gonna spiritualize it. We’re gonna study it allegorically. That’s really an allegory.’

“And that difference in approach to the Bible . . . R.C. Sproul is a saved Gentile, a member of the Church the Body of Christ, but he doesn’t know the fullness of what that means to him because he’s caught in a system that won’t let him study the Bible literally.

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“A lot of folks in the conservative fundamentalist camp do the same thing. They get on the TV and say, ‘Jesus said you’re going to receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you and be witnesses unto me in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem. That’s your hometown.’ They all say that.

“The problem is if you read two verses beyond that verse in the Book of Acts, the angel looks at those guys and says to them, ‘Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye here gazing?’

“You see, it’s easy to fall into the trap if your system needs you to do it, and the greatest motivator to not take the Bible literally and to allegorize it is that it helps your system out, and that’s something you got to be real careful about.

“The first and probably the most fundamental element of dispensationalism is studying the Bible literally. Because when you take the Bible literally, you won’t do what Sproul did. You understand what he said? He said, ‘We’re not dispensationalists; we believe we’re Israel!” You can’t take the Bible literally and believe that!

“The true church today is the life of Christ in us. When you look for your kin folk across the ages of church history, that’s what you’re going to wind up looking for more than anything.”