The argument is made in dispensational theology that Jesus Christ came to establish an ‘earthly’ Messianic Kingdom for the Jews. Dispensationalists further claim that the Jews rejected their Messiah, and that He established the Church instead [Hermon Hoyt in The Millennium, Four Viewpoints by Clouse, pages 84-90]. The claim of the Jewish rejection of the ‘earthly’ Messianic Kingdom and the establishment of a parenthesis church if pursued logically has grave implications for the doctrines of the sovereignty and trustworthiness of God. This doctrine is in direct conflict with the explicit teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ as recorded in John 17:4: I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.
If Jesus Christ finished the work that God the Father gave Him to to He obviously did not come to establish the Messianic Kingdom but the Church in its New Testament form.
Dispensational theology, therefore, takes issue with the declaration of Jesus Christ in John 17:4. Following are some declarations by prominent dispensational theologians giving their views on the Church.
Lewis Sperry Chafer writes: “In fact, hitherto unrevealed purpose of God in the outcalling of a heavenly people from Jews and Gentiles is so divergent with respect to the divine purpose toward Israel, which purpose preceded it and will yet follow it, that the term parenthetical, commonly employed to describe the new age-purpose, is inacurate. A parenthetical portion sustains some direct or indirect relation to that which goes before or that which follows; but the present age-purpose is not thus related and therefore is more properly termed an intercalculation.” [ Systematic Theology, 4:41]
John F Walvoord writes: “the evidence if interpreted literally leads inevitably to the parenthesis doctrine.” [Millennial Kingdom, 230]
J Dwight Pentecost writes: “The church is manifestly an interruption of God’s program for Israel.” [Things to Come, 201]
Charles C. Ryrie writes: “The Church age is not seen in God’s program for Israel. It is an intercalculation.” [Basis of Premillennial Faith, 136]
The Apostle Paul tells us:
Acts 20:28, KJV
28 Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.[/b]
Dispensational theology teaches that the Church, the Bride of the Jesus Christ, for which He died, is simply an insertion, a parenthesis, in God’s plan for Israel.