I encourage anyone who is interested in learning more about the Mid-Acts or more accurately, Pauline Dispensational position to check out the links to the other sites I added in the left sidebar.
As you are reading this I am aware that you may be wondering what I mean by Pauline Dispensational/Mid-Acts. In brief, the Mid-Acts position is that, at about the time of the conversion of Saul or the stoning of Stephen, there was a change of programs. God temporarily ceased dealing with Israel and the prophetic program because of their rejection of their Messiah which occurred, not at the crucifixion but at the stoning of Stephen. We believe that this is clearly taught in scripture but has been ignored for nearly the last 2000 years and unfortunately, instead of recognizing this change and Paul’s authority as the Apostle of the Gentiles to whom was given a dispensation of the grace of God and the revelation of the mystery, the mass of the so-called Church, gravitated to replacement theology whereby God’s program just continues on with the Gentiles and they simply take the place of Israel and everything that applied to them now applies to the Gentile Church. Roman Catholicism even purports that “their” church begins with the “teachings of Christ”. Very interesting considering that Christ makes it very clear that he was there for the lost sheep of Isreal and Paul tells us he, Christ, came to confirm the promises made to the fathers. That would be the Jew’s fathers. “Methinks” they are confused.
Now you may contend “how can that be? I thought the Church began at Pentecost in Acts 2”. Yes, there was A church in Acts 2 but they were all Jews and what was happening there was all about what had been prophesied concerning Christ and God’s program with Israel. Whereas, Paul makes it very clear that the information that he received by revelation from Christ was not prophecied and was not known since the foundation of the world. In short, it was a secret (the mystery) which God had kept hid in himself until he revealed to this special Apostle, Paul, who was the chief of sinners and formerly a blasphemer. Why another apostle? Why Paul? There are clear answers.
This confusion is somewhat analogous to what occurred during the Reformation when something that had always been there was finally rediscovered. It is by the slight and deceit of men that these truths are hidden from the masses and more often than not they have been very successful in concealing the truth even when it is right in front of our faces. I believe this is exactly what has happened when it comes to “rightly dividing the Word of Truth” as Paul commanded Timothy to do.
Because of the lack of understanding of how the Bible is to be studied many have come to wrong conclusions and have missed things that are very clearly there. However, we simply choose to ignore them or gloss over them or reinterpret them when what we should do is to understand that the Bible says what it means, means what it says, to whom it says it.
That last one, “to whom it says it”, is the real sticking point for most of us. Unfortunately, it is state of the art Bible teaching to take a verse or passage completely out of its context and use it however one sees fit whether to beat the congregation over the head with it to guilt them into submission or to misapply it completely.
When you study the Bible you must realize that God is communicating with an audience so when you read a passage you must ask yourself a very important question: Are you a part of the audience that the passage, the book or letter was written to?
For example, God told Noah to build an Ark and it’s in the Bible but nobody today would purport that believers should therefore all get their hammers and saws and go down to the nearest Home Depot to load up on Gopher wood now would they? Of course not! Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there’s nothing to be learned from the story of Noah but I am saying that when it comes to God’s instruction to us today that not everything in God’s Word IS instruction for us. The only instructions that are to us must necessarily be addressed to us so it is important to know who “US” is, wouldn’t you agree?
This is why it is so important to understand that it is only Paul that refers to the Church as the Body of Christ. None of the four Gospels nor the Hebrew Epistle’s (They are called Hebrew Epistles because they were written to only the Jews. Just pointing out the obvious) ever refers to the Church as the Body of Christ but rather that Church is referred to as the Bride of Christ or the Little Flock and other terms but never as the Body of Christ. This is a truth that was not revealed until it was revealed to the Apostle Paul. You should be asking yourself why that is. As it has been said if you don’t ask the right questions you can’t get the right answers.
At any rate, I’ll not belabor the point any further here. I just wanted to give you a little food for thought, as it were. I hope you’ll continue to do your due diligence and please come back and don’t get frustrated when you see or hear something here or on the other sites I recommend, that doesn’t jive with what you’ve always been taught by your Pastor or Sunday School teacher. Just because you’ve not heard of it before or thought of it before doesn’t mean it’s not true. When I first learned of Pauline Dispensationalism and the Mid-Acts position I had a lot of questions and I kept on asking them and they were all answered and what’s more, they were answered very convincingly by the scriptures themselves.
I don’t expect anyone to take my word for but weigh the scriptural evidence that’s presented and make up your own mind. If your anything like me and most of those who have come to the Mid-Acts conclusion believing that Paul is our Apostle and that there are two different programs in the New Testament, meaning those books in the Bible labeled as such by men, you will probably wonder why you never saw it before because it’s so obvious once it’s pointed out.