Dispensationalism, in many respects a 19th Century offshoot of Reformed theology, holds that in the "Church Age" (basically from Jesus' resurrection until the pre-Tribulation rapture of the church, personal salvation can be found, for Jew and Gentile, only by knowing (or accepting) by faith that Jesus was the Messiah Who died for that person's sins. So far this teaching differs little from Reformation theology. Where dispensationalists differ from other conservative Protestants is in their belief that the Jewish people remain a chosen nation in the eyes of God in a way that America, France, Sri Lanka, Sudan, etc., are not. Thus, the claims for the glorious future for national Israel made in the Old Testament are still valid.
In dispensational theology, the church, God's people in the Church Age, will be raptured well before Armageddon and Judgment Day, usually just before the seven years of tribulation that will occur before Jesus Christ's Second Coming. During the period, Israel as a nation will accept Jesus Christ as its promised Messiah. Messianic Jewish preachers, 12,000 from each of their nation's 12 tribes, will spread the Gospel during a period of intense persecution of the remaining Christian believers by a one world government led by the Antichrist and a one world religion led by the False Prophet. National Israel will play an heroic role in the days before Armageddon, and the armies of the world will converge upon the Jewish state. Jesus Christ, returning as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and legions of angels, will destroy the armies of the world at the Battle of Armageddon, as indicated in Revelation 19. After that, Jesus Christ Himself will establish an earthly kingdom for 1,000 years, ruling a restored world from Jerusalem.
The dispensational distinctives are not heterodox. There have been many believers in a premillenial eschatology, including ante-Nicean church fathers, and Reformed and even Catholic theologians. However, the elements of national Israel's special role in end times events and the disappearance of Christian believers from the world well before Judgment Day are unique to dispensationalism. There are numerous schools of interpretation of the Book of Revelation and end times events. However, the right viewpoint on eschatology has nothing to do with personal salvation or the merits of Jesus' Substitutionary Atonement as payment for the sins of the individual believer. That is why the ancient creeds, such as the Apostles Creed, the statements of the early church councils, the Reformation era confessions, and the Council of Trent discussed only the existence of a final Judgment Day. None speculated on the details of end times events.
Some dispensationalists, such as David Hunt, Zola Levitt, Carl McCall, and Todd Baker, have tried to smear their opponents as believers in "Replacement Theology." a neologism contrived by dispensationalists as a smear tactic. In his article, Baker states, "Furthermore, it can be said without fear of exaggeration that the devastation imposed and inflicted on the Jewish people by the Church's anti-Jewish reading of Matthew 27:25 has shed oceans of Jewish blood issuing into a ceaseless stream of misery and desolation that horribly culminated in Hitler's Holocaust." However, Baker nowhere cites from any official doctrinal statement from the early church, the Middle Ages, the Reformation or Counter-Reformation era, or modern times, or from any major theologian, Protestant or Catholic, that supports his statement that the Christian church has read Matthew 27:25 in a manner that supports the blood libel. The only libel evident in his article is on Baker's reputation as an honest theologian.
The "blood libel" exists as a matter of folk theology, outside of the official creeds and confessions of the Christian churches. It is also true that the churches, especially the Catholic Church, did not do enough to counter these folk beliefs. Dowsing, haunted houses, St. Peter as the gatekeeper at the pearly gates, the existence of UFOs, and Halloween ghosts are folk beliefs as well. However, we would not judge the Christian churches just because many people believe in such things. Should we judge the Founding Fathers and the limited government and individual rights philosophy behind the Constitution because some Americans held slaves and some states still supported a state church in the first days of our Republic?
The predominant and historical Christian belief is that in the Church Age the Christian church is the "Israel of God," cited by the apostle Paul in Galatians 6:16. Despite what Baker might claim, this belief is no more anti-Semitic than the secular belief that America replaced Britain as the leading Western democracy after 1945 is anti-British. To say otherwise is as much an infamy on fellow Christian believers as and the insistence of certain Catholic traditionalists on "extra ecclesia nullum salus" and the belief of some Church of Christ adherents that those who are not baptized by immersion by a Campbellite minister are eternally damned.
The proper term for the historic Christian belief is properly called Covenantal Theology. The Westminster Confession of Faith gives the best explanation of this position. "This covenant of grace is frequently set forth in Scripture by the name of a testament, in reference to the death of Jesus Christ the Testator, and to the everlasting inheritance, with all things belonging to it, therein bequeathed. This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all foresignifying Christ to come,..., by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called the old Testament. Under the gospel, when Christ, the substance, was exhibited, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper: ...in them, it is held forth in more fullness, evidence, and spiritual efficacy, to all nations, both Jews and Gentiles; and is called the new Testament. There are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations. "
It is a historic fact that in the three centuries before the Holocaust, discrimination against the Jews was being eliminated, beginning in those nations most affected by Reformed theology: the Netherlands, Britain, and America. In the years after our war for independence, virtually all legislation and judicial rulings discriminating against Jews were eliminated in the thirteen states. The new Constitution denied the Federal government the authority to establish a state religion or to impose a religious test on its officeholders. Most of the new state constitutions did likewise. In our first century as a republic, Jews in America suffered far less discrimination than did Catholics, Mormons, and Quakers.
After 1880, anti-Semitism sharply increased in America as an offshoot of Darwinian evolutionary theory known as Nordic supremacy became increasingly popular. In the waning years of the 19th Century, America's intellectual elite, including the Northeastern WASP establishment, was pulling away from their Calvinist and orthodox Christian past under the sway of Biblical higher criticism and naturalistic philosophy. If God's revelation was viewed as at best flawed and at worst primitive fables, a new philosophy took its place, offering support to the adage that nature abhors vacuums. That philosophy was that of the Nordic "Superman," endowed by "Nature" to rule over the world and the lesser breeds, in other words, the "blond beast" of Nietzsche, exercising his "will to power."
This worldview, untempered by long traditions of individual liberty and representative government as in America or Britain, was a major focus of Nazism. To the theories of Nordic (Aryan) supremacy and the will to power were added anti-capitalist concepts taken from both Marxist and "throne and altar" critics of the free market, a major element of homosexual eroticism, as documented in the book, The Pink Swastika and occultism, as Hitler and other leading Nazis were fascinated with Hindu mysticism, ancient Germanic paganism, and even the Jewish Cabala.
Unlike Marxism, Nazism is not a comprehensive philosophy. It is eclectic in origins. However, none of the elements of the Nazi worldview were derived from Scripture or the historic Christian faith. Furthermore, numerous statements by Hitler and other leading Nazis evidenced their disdain for the claims of the Christian religion.
Baker states in his article: "The anti-Jewish interpretation of Matthew 27:25 is simply false because it plainly contradicts the general teaching of Scripture regarding the present and future reality of the Jews being God's Chosen People (Romans 9-11). This kind of misinterpretation of Scripture is dangerous because such a meaning has helped spawn and stimulate Christian anti-Semitism via the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, the Holocaust, and more subtly, Replacement Theology." The Crusaders persecuted Jews, as did the Inquisition. However, Baker overlooks the historical fact that the main targets of these events were in the former case Muslims and Orthodox believers and in the latter case Protestants and Muslims. The Russian pogroms had nothing to do with Western Christianity; I don't know what the attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church was in this matter. The Holocaust stemmed from Nazism, which was itself anti-Christian. As for Replacement Theology being cast in the same venue as these persecutions, Baker is nothing short of slanderous.