Rightly Divided

Dispensationalism cuts history into boxes and gives each box its own rules. Israel gets the Law. The church gets grace. The two are kept apart on purpose, and whatever Yahuah said to one is filed away from the other. Ask why, and the answer is almost always four words out of 2 Timothy 2:15 — rightly dividing the word of truth. The Greek word behind "dividing" is a road word. It means cutting straight ahead, the way a man cuts a line across open ground and does not wander. Paul told Timothy to keep the road straight. He did not tell him to saw the book in half. A hundred years ago that verse got printed with study notes beside it explaining where the cuts go, and generations of readers have taken the notes for the text. The result is a Bible where most of it was written to somebody else, and a reader who has been taught to skip the parts addressed to him.