Can the Jews Be Destroyed? A Message For All Those Who Say Israel Has No Future

(or a message for all Jew-haters determined to try to use force to insure that Israel has no future)

Replacement Theology --- This view teaches that the Church has permanently replaced Israel as the instrument through which God works and that natural Israel does not have a future in the plan and purpose of God. The many promises made to Israel in the Bible (especially the kingdom promises) are fulfilled in the Christian Church, in a non-literal way. The prophecies in Scripture concerning the blessing and restoration of Israel to the Land of Promise are "spiritualized" into promises of God's blessing for the Church. The prophecies of condemnation and judgment, however, still remain for national Israel.

Amillennialism --- This view harmonizes well with "replacement theology." It teaches that there will be no future kingdom. Rather, the kingdom promises are being fulfilled (in a non-literal way) by the church. The nation Israel will not enjoy a future millennial kingdom, nor will the Messiah rule over the world from an earthly Davidic throne in Jerusalem. The kingdom of God is being enjoyed today in the hearts of believers in a spiritual way, but the nation Israel has no future kingdom to look forward to.

See our articles: Ten Things That Will Be True When Christ "Comes in His Kingdom" (Matthew 16:28) and "Let Thy Kingdom Come!")

God has given an unfailing formula for the destruction of Israel. If you want Israel to cease being a nation, then God has indicated exactly what must take place. Every Jew-hating Muslim and every anti-Semitic Arab who is bent upon the destruction of Israel should diligently study these passages of Scripture, for in them is the secret of Israel's demise.

Also every Christian leader who denies that the nation Israel has a wonderful future in their land, under their Messiah, according to all the kingdom prophecies given by the prophets, should give serious consideration to what God has said must happen if Israel is to cease being a nation before Him.

Jeremiah 31:35-36 Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name: 36: If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.

God has appointed the sun to shine by day and He has appointed the moon and stars to shine by night. He also stirs up the sea so that its waves roar (see NIV translation of Jeremiah 31:35-36). God says that if these ordinances depart from before Him, then will the seed (descendants) of Israel cease from being a nation before Him! The Jewish people can take great comfort from this promise. Every day when they see the sun, every night when they see the moon and stars, every visit to the ocean when they see the waves in action---they can know that their preservation as a people is secure!

The enemies of Israel need to change their strategy! Instead of aiming their mighty weapons of destruction upon the Jews and Jerusalem, they need to aim their missiles at the sun, moon and stars! They could start with the moon and try to knock it out of orbit! Instead of spending time in their secret laboratories trying to figure out how to deliver chemical weapons, they need to devise a plan to neutralize the waves of the ocean! But as long as the waves are roaring, and the sun, moon and stars are shining, Israel's future is secure!

Jeremiah 31:37 Thus saith the LORD; If heaven above can be measured...I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD

If the enemies of the Jews get frustrated by trying to vaporize the heavenly bodies and trying to neutralize the waves of the ocean, then God has another strategy which is guaranteed to destroy the Jews. All they need to do is measure the heaven above! The vastness of heaven (the second heaven, that is, the universe) is beyond the comprehension of our feeble minds. Scientists, now equipped with the Hubble telescope, tell us that there are at least 10 times more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand in all the beaches of the world! And yet, the further we look into the vast expanse of space, the more stars we see. The universe cannot be measured by man, nor can the stars be counted.

The enemies of Israel again need to abandon their hostile attacks against Israel, and start to develop bigger and better telescopes! Because only then will God cast off all the seed (descendants) of Israel. Israel's future is secure until they are successful!

Jeremiah 31:37 Thus saith the LORD; If...the foundations of the earth [can be] searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD

If looking up and measuring the heavens seems to be a task too great, then the enemies of the Jews can look down and seek to search out the earth beneath! Man's greatest efforts at searching the earth beneath and digging and drilling into it have barely scratched the surface! But if man can dig to the center of the earth, then God will cast off the seed (descendants) of Israel.

The enemies of Israel, having failed to obliterate the sun, moon and stars, having failed to neutralize the roaring waves of the ocean, having failed to measure the universe and count all the stars, still have one remaining solution if they are to destroy Israel. They had better start passing out shovels!

Those Christians who teach that the nation Israel has no future in the plan and purpose of God must face the same gargantuan obstacles as outlined above. How much better to simply take God at His Word and understand Israel's kingdom promises in the normal and natural and obvious sense.

That Israel has a glorious future centered in the kingdom of the Messiah is clearly seen in this passage:

5: Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.

6: In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.

7: Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that they shall no more say, The LORD liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt;

8: But, The LORD liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land

For I am with thee, saith the LORD, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished (Jeremiah 30:11).

actually, the roman catholic church fathers taught replacement theology, Augustine, I think, I need to look up the quotes

Church fathers[edit]
Many Early Christian commentators taught that the Old Covenant was fulfilled and replaced (superseded) by the New Covenant in Christ, for instance:

Justin Martyr (about 100 to 165): “For the true spiritual Israel ... are we who have been led to God through this crucified Christ.”[20]
Hippolytus of Rome (martyred 13 August 235): “[The Jews] have been darkened in the eyes of your soul with a darkness utter and everlasting.”[21]
Tertullian (ca.160 – ca.220 AD): “Who else, therefore, are understood but we, who, fully taught by the new law, observe these practices,—the old law being obliterated, the coming of whose abolition the action itself demonstrates. . . . Therefore, as we have shown above that the coming cessation of the old law and of the carnal circumcision was declared, so, too, the observance of the new law and the spiritual circumcision has shone out into the voluntary observances of peace.”[22]
Augustine (354–430) follows these views of the earlier Church Fathers, but he emphasizes the importance to Christianity of the continued existence of the Jewish people: “The Jews ... are thus by their own Scriptures a testimony to us that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ.”[23] The Catholic church built its system of eschatology on his theology, where Christ rules the earth spiritually through his triumphant church. Like his anti-Jewish teacher, St. Ambrose of Milan, he defined Jews as a special subset of those damned to hell, calling them “Witness People”: “Not by bodily death, shall the ungodly race of carnal Jews perish (..) ‘Scatter them abroad, take away their strength. And bring them down O Lord”. Augustine mentioned to “love” the Jews but as a means to convert them to Christianity.[24] Jeremy Cohen,[25] followed by John Y. B. Hood and James Carroll,[26] sees this as having had decisive social consequences, with Carroll saying, “It is not too much to say that, at this juncture, Christianity ‘permitted’ Judaism to endure because of Augustine.”[27]

Roman Catholicism[edit]
“ In this Torah, which is Jesus himself, the abiding essence of what was inscribed on the stone tablets at Sinai is now written in living flesh, namely, the twofold commandment of love. . . . To imitate him, to follow him in discipleship, is therefore to keep Torah, which has been fulfilled in him once and for all. Thus the Sinai covenant is indeed superseded. But once what was provisional in it has been swept away, we see what is truly definitive in it. ”
—Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Many Religions, One Covenant[28]
Supersessionism is not the name of any official Roman Catholic doctrine and the word appears in no Church documents, but official Catholic teaching has reflected varying levels supersessionist thought throughout its history, especially prior to the mid-twentieth century. Supersessionist theology is extensive in Catholic liturgy and literature.[5] The Codex Justinianus (1:5:12) for example defines “everyone who is not devoted to the Catholic Church and to our Orthodox holy Faith” a heretic and Catholic liturgy contains echoes of supersessionist theology. The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) marked a shift in official Catholic teaching about Judaism, a shift which may be described as a move from “hard” to “soft” supersessionism, to use the terminology of David Novak (below).[29]

Pope Pius XII held supersessionist views.
Prior to Vatican II, Catholic doctrine on the matter was characterized by “displacement” or “substitution” theologies, according to which the Church and its New Covenant took the place of Judaism and its “Old Covenant,” the latter being rendered void by the coming of Jesus.[30] The nullification of the Old Covenant was often explained in terms of the “deicide charge” that Jews forfeited their covenantal relationship with God by executing the divine Christ.[31] As recently as 1943, Pope Pius XII stated in his encyclical “Mystici corporis Christi”:

“By the death of our Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished; then the Law of Christ together with its mysteries, enactments, institutions, and sacred rites was ratified for the whole world in the blood of Jesus Christ… [O]n the gibbet of His death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross, establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race.”[32]

At the Second Vatican Council, which convened within two decades of the Holocaust, there emerged a different framework for thinking about the status of the Jews’ covenant. The declaration Nostra aetate, promulgated in 1965, made several statements which signaled a shift away from “hard supersessionist” replacement thinking which posited that the Jews’ covenant was no longer acknowledged by God. Retrieving Paul’s language in chapter 11 of his Epistle to the Romans, the declaration states, “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues… Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”[33] Notably, a draft of the declaration contained a passage which originally called for the “the entry of that [Jewish] people into the fullness of the people of God established by Christ;”[34] however, at the suggestion of Catholic priest (and convert from Judaism) John M. Oesterreicher,[35] it was replaced in the final promulgated version with the following language: “the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and ‘serve him shoulder to shoulder’ (Zeph 3:9).”.[33]

After the death of Pope John Paul II, the Anti-Defamation League stated that “more change for the better took place in his 27-year Papacy than in the nearly 2,000 years before.”[36]
Further developments in Catholic thinking on the covenantal status of Jews were led by Pope John Paul II. Among his most noteworthy statements on the matter is that which occurred during his historic visit to the synagogue in Mainz (1980), where he called Jews the “people of God of the Old Covenant, which has never been abrogated by God (cf. Rm 11:29, “for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” [NRSV]).”[37] In 1997, John Paul II again affirmed the Jews’ covenantal status: “This people continues in spite of everything to be the people of the covenant and, despite human infidelity, the Lord is faithful to his covenant.”[37]

The post-Vatican II shift toward acknowledging the Jews as a covenanted people has led to heated discussions in the Catholic Church over the issue missionary activity directed toward Jews, with some Catholics theologians reasoning that “if Christ is the redeemer of the world, every tongue should confess him,”[38] while others vehemently oppose “targeting Jews for conversion.”[39] Weighing in on this matter, Cardinal Walter Kasper, then President of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, reaffirmed the validity of the Jews’ covenant and then continued:

“[B]ecause as Christians we know that God’s covenant with Israel by God’s faithfulness is not broken (Rom 11,29; cf. 3,4), mission understood as call to conversion from idolatry to the living and true God (1 Thes 1,9) does not apply and cannot be applied to Jews…. This is not a merely abstract theological affirmation, but an affirmation that has concrete and tangible consequences; namely, that there is no organised Catholic missionary activity towards Jews as there is for all other non–Christian religions.”[40]

“ God’s grace, which is the grace of Jesus Christ according to our faith, is available to all. Therefore, the Church believes that Judaism, [as] the faithful response of the Jewish people to God’s irrevocable covenant, is salvific for them, because God is faithful to his promises. ”
—Cardinal Walter Kasper, May 2001[41]
Recently, in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium (2013), Pope Francis’s own teaching on the matter closely mirrored these words of Cardinal Kasper.[42] In 2011, Kasper specifically repudiated the notion of “displacement” theology, clarifying that the “New Covenant for Christians is not the replacement (substitution), but the fulfillment of the Old Covenant.”[43]

These statements from Catholic officials signal a shift away from a “hard” supersessionist model of displacement. Nevertheless, the references to the Church as the “new People of God” and the New Covenant as “fulfilling” the Old Covenant (irrevocable though it might be) imply a clear Christian superiority and thus comport with a “soft” supersessionism. It should be noted that fringe Catholic groups, such as the Society of St. Pius X, strongly oppose the theological developments concerning Judaism made at Vatican II and retain “hard” supersessionist views.[44] Even among mainstream Catholic groups and official Catholic teaching, elements of “soft” supersessionism remain:

The Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to a future corporate repentance on the part of Jews:
“The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by ‘all Israel,’ for ‘a hardening has come upon part of Israel’ in their ‘unbelief’ toward Jesus [Rom 11:20-26; cf. Mt 23:39]. ... The ‘full inclusion’ of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of ‘the full number of the Gentiles’ [Rom 11:12, 25; cf. Lk 21:24], will enable the People of God to achieve ‘the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,’ in which ‘God may be all in all.’”[45]

The Church teaches that there is an integral continuity between the covenants rather than a rupture.[46]
In the Second Vatican Council’s [47] (1964), the Church stated that God “chose the race of Israel as a people” and “set up a covenant” with them, instructing them and making them holy. However, “all these things…. were done by way of preparation and as a figure of that new and perfect covenant” instituted by and ratified in Christ (no. 9).
In Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism (1985), the Church stated that the “Church and Judaism cannot then be seen as two parallel ways of salvation and the Church must witness to Christ as the Redeemer of all.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersessionism

supersession
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersessionism

http://baptistbulletin.org/the-baptist-bulletin-magazine/replacement-theology/

Description

Replacement theology rejects the Biblical revelation concerning the Abrahamic Covenant that God established with the nation of Israel as an everlasting covenant with everlasting ownership of the land of Canaan (Genesis 13:14, 15; 17:7, 8, 19). Replacement theology claims that Israel broke the Abrahamic Covenant when it rejected Jesus Christ at His first coming. As a result, the covenant was repealed, and God forever rejected Israel as a nation. Israel lost ownership of the land and the everlasting nature of the Abrahamic Covenant. God will save individual Jews, but He has no present or future program for Israel as a nation. He has rejected Israel as His people and replaced it with the church. The church is now the Israel of God.

Replacement theology has immediate political implications. Some church denominations have even petitioned businesses to cut off trade with Israel so it cannot exist as a nation in the Middle East. Some groups have tried to influence the United States government to change its policy of support for Israel that has been in effect since 1948.

Replacement theology is more than another buzzword or mere theological hairsplitting. While we must respond with charity toward Christians with differing views and work to characterize them correctly, we must also study how our Biblical beliefs have practical implications.

Beginnings and Early History

For several years after the church was born in Jerusalem, it was exclusively Jewish in membership. The Jews who accepted Jesus as Messiah and Savior were persecuted severely by Jews who rejected Him. That persecution prompted Jewish believers to scatter to areas where Samaritans and Gentiles were predominant. Through their witness, Samaritans and many Gentiles became believers in Jesus and part of the church. Before the end of the first century of its existence, the church had become predominantly Gentile in membership.”1 As a result, the church began to experience significant changes from what it had been when it was mainly Jewish in membership.2

Within one hundred years after the apostles of Christ were gone, the “majority of Gentile Christians regarded the Jewish Scriptures as authoritative,” but began to think “of themselves as the true spiritual heirs of Israel,” and “claimed for themselves the promises which the Hebrews held that Yahweh had made to them.”3 According to Adolph Harnack, “The Christians held that, the Jews having been rejected by God, they themselves had become the chosen people.”4 They claimed that God permanently ended Israel’s unique relationship with Him as a nation, and replaced it with the church as His unique people. Thus, the Christians had become the Israel of God.

Some anti-Semitic Gentile church leaders played a key role in this significant shift from the original understanding of the Scriptures regarding the nation of Israel’s relationship with God. In response to Jewish attacks against Christian beliefs, some resorted to new methods of Biblical interpretation and wrote rebuttals with varying degrees of anti-Semitic content.

For example, Justin Martyr (AD 100–165), who defended Christianity against a Jewish enemy, claimed Christians “are the true Israelitic race,”5 and asserted that the Biblical expression “the seed of Jacob,” when properly understood, now refers to the Christians, not the Jews.6 Tertullian (AD 145–220), prominent church theologian from North Africa, interpreted God’s statements to Rebekah concerning the twins (Esau and Jacob) in her womb (Genesis 25:23) in the following manner: Esau, the older brother, represents the Jews; and Jacob, the younger brother, represents the Christians. He indicated that God thereby revealed that the Christians would overcome the Jews and that the Jews would serve the Christians.7 Origen (AD 185–253), the president of the school of theology in Alexandria, Egypt, greatly influenced the church’s acceptance of the allegorical, or spiritualizing, method of interpreting the Bible in contrast to the literal, historical-grammatical method. This method allowed him to claim that the word “Israel” in the Bible can mean the church, not national Israel.8 Cyprian (AD 195–258), bishop of Carthage, stated that he “endeavoured to show that the Jews, according to what had before been foretold, had departed from God, and had lost God’s favour, which had been given them in past time, and had been promised them for the future; while the Christians had succeeded to their place, deserving well of the Lord by faith.”9

Effects on the Church

Replacement theology played a significant role in producing major changes in two areas of organized Christendom: ecclesiology and eschatology.10

Ecclesiology (the nature and function of the church). Replacement theology contributed significantly to the development of Roman Catholic views on the nature of the church. Because Gentile leaders concluded that the church is now the Israel of God, they began to appropriate to the church things that God had instituted specifically for the nation of Israel. Since God gave Israel priests, early Gentile church leaders began to call church leaders priests.

Since God gave Israel a multitiered priesthood, with one high priest at the top, regular priests under him, and Levites under them, church leaders progressively built a multitiered priesthood for the church with bishops, monarchal bishops, metropolitan bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and one high priest, the pope.

Since God gave Israel continuing blood sacrifices with animals, church leaders progressively changed the significance of the church’s communion service from a memorial of Christ’s death for the sins of mankind to a continuing sacrifice for sins.

Eschatology (the final events of the world and humanity). Replacement theology prompted the rejection of Chiliasm, the church’s original view of eschatology. Chiliasm taught that Jesus Christ will return to the earth in the Second Coming, establish God’s earthly political Kingdom, and administer God’s rule for the last one thousand years of this present earth’s history. (Today this view is called premillennialism.) Chiliasm was the predominant view of orthodox Christianity from the first to the third centuries AD.

Ancient Jews believed and taught that in the future, God’s Messiah would establish God’s earthly political Kingdom and administer God’s rule over the world for the last age of this present earth’s history. Although this view of eschatology was based on Old Testament prophecies, was taught by Christ and His apostles, and was the original view of the church, the replacement theology of some anti-Semitic Gentile church leaders prompted them to reject Chiliasm because it was a Jewish view.

Augustine (AD 354–430), bishop of Hippo, published the influential Tract against the Jews.11 The influence of anti-Semitic views and Greek philosophy upon his thinking prompted him to reject Chiliasm. Augustine applied the allegorical method of interpretation to the prophets and The Revelation of Jesus Christ, avoiding the implications of some of the millennial passages in the Bible.12

Augustine developed a new eschatological view called amillennialism. This view denied a future earthly political Kingdom of God over which Christ will administer God’s rule for the last one thousand years of this present earth’s history. Augustine introduced the idea that the church is the Kingdom of God foretold in Daniel 2 and 7 and Revelation 20. He was the first person to teach the idea that the organized Catholic (universal) Church is the messianic Kingdom, and that the Millennium began with the first coming of Christ.13 He stated that “the Church even now is the kingdom of Christ, and the kingdom of heaven.”14 According to this view, the history of this present earth will end at Christ’s second coming, and the future eternal state will begin.

Augustine’s allegorical amillennialism “became the official doctrine of the church,” and Chiliasm went underground.15 The Roman Catholic Church adopted, strongly advocated, and maintained replacement theology and Augustine’s amillennial view throughout the Middle Ages. Believing that it was the kingdom of God on earth foretold in the Bible, the Roman Catholic Church asserted that it had the right to enforce its beliefs and policies on all people, including political rulers, pagans, and Jews. As a result, it developed into a powerful religious political machine that dominated every aspect of life in western Europe.

Effects on the Jews

Replacement theology played a key role in the persecution of Jews by the Roman Catholic Church and Roman Catholic political rulers for centuries to come. In the name of Jesus Christ, hundreds of thousands of Jews were slaughtered as “Christ killers,” and numerous others were uprooted and forced to move to other countries.

Recent Catholic leaders have worked aggressively to reverse their historical antipathy toward Jews, starting with Nostra Aetate, a 1965 Vatican II document often credited as a breakthrough in Catholic/Jewish relations. John Paul II promoted Jewish relations and Holocaust awareness as major tenets of his papacy. Pope Benedict XVI, a German who grew up during World War II, shows similar interests. But in February 2009, Roman Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson was widely quoted as denying the Holocaust occurred, provoking another break in Catholic/Jewish dialogue.

Though the 16th century Protestant reformers broke away from the Roman Catholic Church in several key areas of ecclesiology and doctrine, many of them continued to reject Chiliasm as being “Jewish opinions.” Many of the reformers maintained the amillennial view that the Roman Catholic Church had adopted from Augustine. As a result, in much the same manner as the Roman Catholic Church, they believed that they had the right to enforce their beliefs and policies upon all people, including Jews. This does not mean that all the reformers advocated persecution of Jews. However, one certainly did.

Martin Luther adopted a strong anti-Semitic disposition toward Jews, and wrote and preached extremely vitriolic statements of hatred against them.16 Adolph Hitler read Luther’s statements to the German people to justify the systematic elimination of millions of Jews in the Holocaust of World War II. Today such views are not regarded as mainstream Lutheran thought; some conservative Lutheran groups sponsor outreach ministries to Jews.

Covenant theology began to develop as a system of theology in the Reformed churches of Switzerland and Germany in the 16th and 17th centuries; passed to the Netherlands, Scotland, and England; and eventually came to America.17 Advocates of covenant theology adopted replacement theology in relationship to the nation of Israel. As a result, they claimed that, because Israel rejected Christ as its Messiah, God forever rejected the nation of Israel as His people and replaced Israel with the church as His people. Thus, the church is now the Israel of God and has inherited the blessings that God originally promised to national Israel. This meant that national Israel lost forever its rightful claim of ownership of the land that God gave to it in ancient times. If carried to its logical conclusion, this would mean that the church is the rightful owner of the land.

Conclusion

Dispensationalism, with its roots in the early church’s original view of eschatology, provides clear and consistent methods of interpretation—methods that will lead believers to understanding Israel’s continued place in God’s plan for the ages.

Renald E. Showers (ThD, Grace Theological Seminary) represents the church ministries division of The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. He is a guest speaker at the 2009 GARBC Conference. This article is an excerpt from Dr. Showers’ new book on replacement theology, to be released this summer.

Notes

1. Kenneth Scott Latourette, The First Five Centuries, vol. 1 in A History of the Expansion of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1970), 74.

2. Ibid., 84.

3. Ibid., 84.

4. Adolph Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, translated and edited by James Moffatt, vol. 1 (N.Y.: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2d ed., 1908), 69; quoted by Latourette, The First Five Centuries, vol. 1 in A History of the Expansion of Christianity, 84.

5. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 1994), 267.

6. Ibid.

7. Roberts and Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, 151, 152.

8. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1973), 791.

9. Roberts and Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5, 507.

10. For a thorough, scholarly treatment of this subject, read Ronald E. Diprose, Israel in the Development of Christian Thought (Rome: Istituto Biblico Evangelico Italiano, 2000).

11. Ibid., 94.

12. Augustine, The City of God, Book XX, chap. 6, trans. by Marcus Dods (N.Y.: Random House, Inc., 1950), 717.

13. Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed. s.v. “Millennium.”

14. Augustine, The City of God, Book XX, chap. 9, 725, 726.

15. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed., s.v. “Millennialism.”

16. The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. VIII, Isidore Singer, managing ed. (N.Y.: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1904), s.v. “Luther, Martin.”

17. Charles Caldwell Ryrie, Dispensationalism (Chicago: Moody Press, 2007), 214-218.

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