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The practical application of Dispensationalism is a complete mess. I've also heard people say that OT Israel is God the father's bride and the Church is Jesus' bride (apparently the Holy Spirit is single). Regardless of this, I have become convinced that Dispensationalism is merely a Zionist Trojan horse used to give Zionism a veneer of theological legitimacy.

Also, the fact that Dispensational theology wasn't developed until until the 19th century should be a major red flag. Yes, the concept of God dealing with humanity in different ways throughout history was a thing, but drawing the sharp distinction between Israel and the Church didn't come about until almost *two millennia* after Christ. Dispensationalists try to deflect this criticism in a few different ways. 1) is to say that Covenant Theology isn't that much older, only predating Dispensationalism by a few hundred years. 2) is to conflate premillennial eschatology (which does have a historical basis in the early church) with Dispensationalism and while all Dispensationalists are premillennial, not all premillennialists are Dispensational.

What's so frustrating about most Dispensationalists is they have it in their head that their belief is "Biblical" and people who don't agree with them are "imposing systems on the text". One of the big issues is that Dispensationalism does have a basis in the Bible so it's not like Dispensationalists don't have their fair share of proof texts to defend what they believe. However, the best Biblical defense for Dispensationalism comes from minor prophets like Zechariah in the Old Testament and when you deal with prophecy, you run into a whole other set of challenges (Dispensationalists often tout their "historical-grammatical method of interpretation, but rarely mention genre). One of the basic rules of interpreting the Bible is you start out with passages that are clear and use those clear passages to help gain an understanding of passages that aren't so clear. What Dispensationalists end up doing is using OT prophetic passages to form their understanding of theology and then interpret NT passages that deal with the Church and Israel based of a theological framework they developed without consulting the whole Bible.

Passages like [Matthew 21:43](https://biblehub.com/matthew/21-43.htm), and [Romans 9:6](https://biblehub.com/romans/9-6.htm) are very difficult for Dispensationalists to deal with because it flies in the face of their "two peoples of God theology".