49 Religious Lies Jesus Told Me to Stop Believing - #24 The Bible Is to Be Dispensationalized Away

Summary

The speaker challenges the belief that most of the Bible belongs to past or future eras and therefore does not apply to Christians today. He calls this “dispensationalizing” the Bible away: dividing history into periods in which God supposedly acted differently, then treating many biblical teachings and examples as irrelevant to the present.

He recounts learning to listen for God’s voice through journaling. During that practice, he says, he felt God tell him that although some things changed after Jesus’ death—such as the ceremonial law and certain penalties—the greater part of Scripture remains relevant. He presents the Bible’s sections as follows:

• Old Testament: Offers patterns that remain applicable, and its promises are reaffirmed in Christ. He cites 2 Corinthians 1:20, which says God’s promises are “yes” in Christ.
• Gospels: Show Jesus in action as an example to follow.
• Acts: Provides a pattern for the continuing growth of the church.
• Epistles: Resemble the guidance God continues to speak into people’s hearts.
• Revelation: Portrays the ongoing conflict between good and evil and the adversary’s eventual defeat—an experience the speaker says believers encounter in life and see reflected in the world.

The speaker says he had previously treated the Old Testament as being only for Israel, the Gospels as a record of Jesus’ past ministry, Acts as merely the church’s beginning, and Revelation as only about the future. He came to believe that this effectively excluded most of the Bible from his own life. He describes changing his view as a difficult process and says he repented of allowing those ideas to keep Scripture from him.

He also rejects other arguments that, in his view, discard portions of the Bible:

• Only material written after Jesus’ death applies.
• Passages involving violence, anger, or judgment should be rejected because they do not fit a selective picture of Jesus as loving.
• Ordinary readers cannot interpret Scripture and must rely entirely on linguistic experts.

His central message is that believers should not casually surrender parts of the Bible as irrelevant. His repeated motto is: “I can live the Bible.” He encourages listeners to reclaim Scripture and seek to experience its teachings and examples in full.

Suggested Reflection Practice

The speaker recommends looking up the verses associated with this topic, journaling about them, and asking God what he wants the reader to understand about the Bible: how much of it they can live and whether any of it should be set aside.

He closes with a prayer of thanks and an affirmation of freedom from the belief that the Bible must be assigned away to other eras.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Primary speaker: Mark Virkler, speaking from personal experience and presenting his interpretation of Scripture.
• Divine source as described by the speaker: God or the Lord, whom the speaker says communicated with him during journaling. This is reported dialogue, not a separate audible speaker in the subtitles.
• Unnamed people whose views he recounts: A television preacher who limits applicable Scripture to material after the cross; a teacher who rejects passages that conflict with a selective view of Jesus’ love; and a person who says accurate interpretation requires specialized linguistic training.
• Biblical source cited: 2 Corinthians 1:20, along with references to the Old Testament, Gospels, Acts, the epistles, and Revelation.