During the Middle Ages, a mixture of biblical teaching and Aristoliean philosophy developed known as scholasticism. There was an attempt to reconcile divine revelation with Aristotle’s human speculations.

“They developed a methodology in the academy and that’s where systematic theology came from,” says Jordan. “Aquinas, these guys, based on Aristotle’s Golden Mean—the greatest virtue—and they develop a systematic way of explaining God.”

Aristotle was a student of Plato, who was taught by Socrates. In my Dummies book on world history, it says, “Socrates was a critic. He lived to question, to pick apart assumptions . . . Plato depicted Socrates as intent on convincing his fellow Athenians to reexamine their ideas about right and wrong. Plato’s writings describe Socrates using a technique that’s been called the Socratic method ever since: Socrates asks the person he is talking to for a definition of a broad concept (such as piety or justice) and then tries to get the person to contradict himself with his answer.”

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Time is the way you measure the distance between phenomenon and events. If there’s no movement, there’s no time, which is why Plato’s idea that eternity is timeless doesn’t work.

“Eternity isn’t that there is no time; eternity is that time never ends—it just keeps going on and on and on because there’s event, event, event, event,” says Jordan. “Some time we get the idea that, ‘Well, in eternity there’s no time.’ Time is the way you experience what’s going on and when God created time, time is the phenomenal event in which all the other creation is experienced.”

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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 other Christian radio celebs such as John McArthur and James D. Kennedy, 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.

“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 gonna wind up looking for more than anything.”