Taking Off the Glasses: Notes on Carl Copsey's New Series

Carl Copsey has started a three-part video series called Engaging Dispensationalists: Taking Off the Glasses. Each episode runs about six minutes, puts the verses on screen, states the dispensational view, and answers it. He says it is becoming a book, and he asks viewers for objections and passages he should cover. I watched all three episodes against the captions and set them beside my own paper, Pulling the Threads: Dispensationalism.

This post is my answer to his invitation. Where we agree, I want to point to what is already on this site. Where he has gone further than I have, I want to say so. Where his series hasn't reached yet, I want to hand him sources and let him check my work. I worked from YouTube's auto-generated captions, so if I have misheard him, tell me.

Every link below opens on the exact passage, with the sentence underlined.

Where we are working the same ground

Ended, not paused. In Episode 2 he reads Hebrews 8:13 as the first covenant being obsolete, not postponed, and asks why Jewish believers tempted to go back would be told anything but that the program was on hold, if it were only paused. My paper makes the same point from the same text: the apostles write like something ended, not like something paused.

Shadow and substance. Episode 3 reads Hebrews 8:5, Hebrews 10:1 and 1 Corinthians 10:4 together: the tent, the throne and the rock were real, and they pointed past themselves. For the temple side of that argument, see Ezekiel's vision and how Hebrews answers it, and, in Volume V, why the prophets used a physical temple to point to something greater. That one is written to a Jewish objector, so its tone differs.

One offspring, one people. Galatians 3:16 and 3:29 and Ephesians 2:12-13 carry his Episode 2 case. The same texts carry Paul's argument about Abraham's offspring in Part Six and the one-citizenship section of my paper.

David's throne now. In Episodes 1 and 3 he reads Acts 2:29-36 as the throne David was promised being occupied. My paper takes up exactly that, including the dispensational reply: the sharpest break sits at the millennium.

"Literal" means as the author intended. Episode 3 separates reading flat from reading as the author meant it. My paper turns the same distinction into a test of consistency: the claim to a plain reading, where literalism turns inconsistent, and the rule stated before the verse.

John explains his own pictures. Episode 3 walks through Revelation 1:1, 1:20, 12:9, 17:15 and 19:8. On the word he picks out in 1:1, see Part Six on "signified"; on 19:8, the linen and the saints' righteous acts; and on the imagery John's readers already had, Notes on the Page, chapter nine.

Revelation was written to be opened. Episode 1 sets Revelation 22:10 against Daniel 12:4 and points to the seven letters. See Revelation: A Walk-Through on 22:10, the sealed scroll in my paper, the seven real congregations, and the Walk-Through's first chapter.

Where he is ahead of me

Four of his arguments are better than anything now on this site. Episodes 1 and 3 read Acts 15:13-18 as James treating Amos 9 as fulfilled. Episode 3 reads Acts 13 as Paul treating the blessings promised to David as fulfilled in the resurrection. Episode 2 argues that the New Testament never splits Jeremiah 31 in two, using Hebrews 10:15-17. Episode 1 uses 1 Peter 1:10-12 and Romans 16:25-26 to say the unsealing came when Christ came, along with Luke 24:27 and 24:44 for Jesus' own method.

I searched this site for those passages. Amos 9 and Jeremiah 31 appear only as the dispensational side's texts. I owe readers those chapters, and Carl's series is why I now know it.

Romans 11, where we may part

Episode 2 ends by saying any system that needs a separate storyline for Israel has to explain why the apostles never mention it. Romans 11 is where I would press that, because Paul does speak there of Israel's future. My paper's position is narrower than the dispensational one: it does not close the national future of ethnic Israel in Romans 11, and Part Six lays out how partial preterists divide on it. That same page calls the Hebrews 10 objection the strongest reply my position faces, and Carl's Episode 2 is that objection, stated plainly. That is the live disagreement between his series and my paper, and I would rather name it than hide it.

What the series hasn't reached yet

Daniel 9 and the Olivet Discourse. His test is to follow the readings the inspired authors gave. I would apply it to how Jesus handles Daniel in Matthew 24. That is where my paper spends its first section: the seventy weeks and the clock, the gap that is selective inside Daniel 9, what "this generation" means, and who Jesus is addressing.

Which dispensationalism. The chart he describes in Episode 1 is the classical one. Charles Ryrie's three marks of the system, the difference between classical and progressive dispensationalists, and the two concessions the root of my paper makes all bear on that.

The history he says is coming. In Episode 1 he promises to look at what the early fathers taught later in the series. For that, Darby and the 1830s, why the history comes last in my paper, the two precedents before 1830, and the distinction that keeps this from being overstated are the places to start. Notes on the Page also covers the rapture, one people or two, and the kingdom already here.

What "soon" says about timing. He uses Revelation 1:1-3 and 22:10 to show the book was meant to be understood. What those time statements say about when is a further question. See Revelation's date and the case for Nero and the mark and the number.

The test cuts both ways

Carl's test is whether the first readers could have understood prophecy the way a system says to read it. I hold that test against the chart, and I hold it against my own reading as well. If he finds a place where my paper fails it, I want to know.

Neither of us is after a win. The reason to read any of this carefully is the one given in John 17:3. Anything in this post that doesn't send a reader back to it has missed the point.