The distinction between essentiality’s for glory vs salvation must be considered.
There is only one truth; a half truth is a lie, period. There is only one gospel. If you blow that, it could be fatal. Change the elements and compounds of h2o by 1 oxygen molecule and you could blow someone up!
Regeneration allows for a person to take in information. conversion is the outcome of ascending to facts of the gospel message, i.e. ‘faith cometh by the hearing of the word of God’.
How much information is needed to be converted-that may be the 100K question! One thing is for sure, we do know this; no one gets into glory w/ a flawed theology; a Flawed theology is a 1/2 truth, hence it is a lie. Lies are sin and no sin gets into Heaven. Regeneration is not conversion and conversion is not regeneration; this distinction is key.
This causes rise to the question, ‘Could one be saved and yet hold to a bad theology?’ My opinion: Could a Mormon be saved and hold to Mormonism? Could a Jehovah’s Witness be saved and hold to JW theology? I would say this, they may be regenerated, but not yet converted; Those converted in these settings will show the fruit of conversion and truth and abandon these settings for purer settings.
Dordt and the essentials: TULIP. Is Calvinism the Gospel? Since the word of God is our standard and all of the above is derived from that standard, we assume safely that all those who are elect will understand these doctrines prior to entering into glory; You might ask, ‘Scott, are you saying that to be saved, you must have all these ducks in a row?’ No; I am not saying that; however, you will surely have seeds of these truths onboard. Over time, these seeds will grow and bear fruit of truth. No man is left in error. The truth sets one free! Free from what? Untruth.
Is dispensationalism error? Yes. Is it heresy, possibly; is it damning, I don’t believe so, but hey, I could be wrong. What is damning is the outworking of said theology. Quoting Gerstner again: ‘Dispensationalism, closely studied, actually deviates from all 5 points, crushing the flower altogether’. If the TULIP is crushed, can we say it is truth? If one is not ‘set free’ from error, can it be said that they are converted? If you look at my opening statements by Gerstner, it looks as if Gerstner is saying it may be damning. If Gerstner was alive and could respond, I wonder how he would respond here in light of what he said.
What do we say about men like MacArthur, Barnhouse, Boyce (I understand he eventually abandoned dispensationalism, prior to his death), Scofield, Darby, Moody, et. al? I will leave that to God.
