As a refresher, “Kuyperian” refers to a Christian who acknowledges that Jesus created all things and that He cares about all that He created. A Kuyperian mindset seeks to honor Christ in studying theology and in building swing sets, in walking in the Spirit while walking down the halls of Congress, or to the voting booth. A disciple of Christ isn’t defined as much by what he does as much as Who he does those things for.
Abraham Kuyper loved Jesus and confessed that Jesus is Lord so much that he stopped being a pastor and got into publishing and politics. He started a daily newspaper and edited a monthly magazine. He energized Christian education at the grammar and secondary level, then helped to found a university where the students were free to study and steward every thumb’s width in creation. He saw Calvinistic soteriology and raised it with the implications of Calvinistic cosmology.
Kuyper himself was not a Dispy. No one is perfect. But he read the Bible right in many areas and obeyed with indefatigable obsession, he just didn’t do it with the intention to make the Jews jealous. That’s what we mean by the term “Dispensationalist.” Our type of Dispy is close to a certain type of Covy in that we don’t believe that there are two ways of salvation or that there are two totally separate peoples of God. All the elect, Jew and Gentile, are part of His people.
We also believe that there is still something special and unique about the nation of Israel. Before Christ, salvation came through faith in the coming Jewish Messiah. After Christ, salvation comes through a Jew, Jesus, but does not depend on a man changing his passport to Israeli colors. Americans, Russians, Canadians, Netherlanders, Germans, and more believe as part of the church. The current remnant of Israelites who believe are also part of the church.
But there is coming a day when the fulness of the Gentiles will “come in,” that is, be converted to Christ, and then “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25-26). There are national promises of salvation and blessing that remain to be fulfilled (per the New Covenant promise in Ezekiel 36 and Jeremiah 31). That’s what makes us Dispies.
We Kuyperian Dispensationalists believe God intends to make the Jews jealous through God’s fruitful blessing on our faith. Many of those blessings will be on earth and not just in “heavenly places” or in our prayer closets. We are the means of God’s ends, like a cue ball breaking the rack and sending balls all over the table. It’s a subordinate telos toward the ultimate end of God’s forever glory since “from Him and through Him and to Him are all things” per Romans 11:36.
Some more things still need to be said.