Is Dispensationalism a cult?

I think that you start off with an idea about the Bible that makes it difficult to truly understand how the Bible should be understood. The Bible is a narrative of the story of God reaching out to mankind so that we slowly continue to gain understanding. It is an on-going narrative that will ultimately come to its conclusion when all things are made new. The Bible tells the story only up to the point of 2000 years ago but also leaves us some vague sign posts into the future.The climax of the narrative up to that point 2000 years ago is the resurrection. Christianity all hangs on that. If we conclude, as I have, that God bodily resurrected Jesus then we have a place to start to find out just what we can learn from the Bible. If we start with an inerrant Bible and then look at Jesus and the resurrection we lose the sense of the narrative and wind up with a skewed image of God and His message for us.I think that the biggest reason that Christians want to understand the Bible as being the Word of God as opposed to the word of God, (IMHO Jesus is the Word of God), is that we want definite answers and understanding. As humans we don’t like ambiguity. We want clarity and so if we can go to a passage in the Bible and come up with some statement that will give us an answer we can then erase all doubt and be done with it. Life isn’t like that and the Bible isn’t either.You mention that the virgin birth is important to you. It is after all really only in 2 of the Gospels and not even mentioned in the Epistles.I suggest that the reason it is important to you is that Christianity sees Jesus as being God in the sense of one substance with the Father. If Jesus is just conceived normally like anyone else then we again have a more ambiguous understanding of that, whereas if we have an immaculate conception then we can feel that we have now shown that Jesus is God.I’m not denying the virgin birth but let’s just say that it didn’t happen that way. Let’s take a minimalist view and say that Jesus was conceived normally. Matthew and Luke were anxious to establish within the Jewish community the sense of Jesus being the fulfillment of their scriptures and so it is quite conceivable that the account of the virgin birth is a legend that they wrote, not as a lie, but something that the Jewish community would have understood as being legendary. That would actually be pretty normal in that era.So if Jesus was conceived normally where does that leave us? In one sense Jesus tells us that we are in a sense to turn in love to God and creation and allow our lives to be touched by God’s Holy Spirit so that it becomes less about us and our selfish desires and more about Him and the job of reflecting His love into the world. In a sense we are called to be little Christs. John tells us that the Word of God was with creation from the beginning and that in Jesus this Word became incarnate. In that sense John essentially is saying that God’s Word is perfectly incarnate in Jesus. Now that certainly leaves a lot more ambiguity about the understanding of the Trinity but so what. As long as the bodily resurrection is an historical reality then does it really matter whether the virgin conception is historical or legendary? It only is important if you are intent on proving an inerrant Bible or if you are intent of having a clear cut picture of Jesus as God with no ambiguity. It is the resurrection that gives us confidence that we can take the message, (as it shows God the Father that Jesus prayed to has confirmed the life and teaching of Jesus), that Jesus espoused and gain an understanding of our lives and more specifically the Bible. It is then that when we read the Bible, understanding that it is written by human authors with both personal and cultural influences that I think that God can truly reach out to us through that Holy Book.The point is that we don’t need to have definite answers. It isn’t doctrine that is supposed to unite us. We are to be united with His love for us and by His love being reflected through us.

That all plays back into legalism and the idea that if we follow the various laws that we can get what we want from God, whether it be in this life or the next.Jesus and Paul for that matter made it clear that it is all about the heart. Do we do the right thing simply because we know it is the right thing and that is what our heart desires.That is one reason, (other than the fact that I think it is bad theology), that the whole argument about dispensationalism bothers me. It is essentially trying to figure out what we have to do to get in good with God, which is completely contrary to what Jesus espoused.Interestingly enough from a Christian point of view, it is similar to the OT Jews. They were constantly trying to figure out, when and what it would look like when the messiah came to them. In the end none of them got it until the resurrection and even then most of them missed it.The point is, is that we should be considering how we can image God and reflect His love into His creation which includes people, other life forms and the planet itself. We should stop worrying about judging who is in and who is on the outs with God and trust in His perfect judgement. (That is scriptural.)BTW I don't see that I'm disagreeing with you, it is just a comment.