Amen, brother. "To the Law and to the Testimony, if they speak not according to this it is because there is no light in them". The Church needs to have binding and loosing power as it pertains to applying the Holy Scriptures to new challenges. But the moment they decide that they have the power to change "times and Law", they invalidate themselves.
I've read many of your posts and find you to be a very bright light here on FR. What is your definition of "replacement theology".
Thank you very much for saying so.
What is your definition of "replacement theology".
It is the false belief that either God has transferred all of Israel's promises to the Church (while, conveniently putting all of the curses for disobedience upon the Jews) or that "Israel" is more an idea than an actual nation (defined by bood, culture, and history) and that the natural Jewish branches were ripped out wholesale and replaced with ingrafted Gentile ones.
The true understanding is that while the unbelieving Jewish branches were broken off so that some of the Gentiles might be grafted in, they were not "replaced" by those Gentile branches. Rather, we Gentiles have been adopted into God's greater family, not to replace the natural children, but so that the family might be even larger, since it is God's promise that the day will come when the natural branches are grafted back into their natural tree:
Behold then the kindness, and the severity of God; on those having fallen, severity; but on you, kindness, if you continue in the kindness. Otherwise you also will be cut off. And those also, if they do not continue in unbelief, will be grafted in. For God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut out of the natural wild olive tree , and were grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree ; how much more these being according to nature will be grafted into their own olive-tree?andFor I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, lest you should be wise within yourselves; that blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the nations has comes in. And so all Israel shall be saved; as it is written,
There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob. For this is My covenant with them, when I have taken away their sins.Indeed as regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes. But as regards the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes. For the free gifts and calling of God are without repentance.
(Rom. 11:22-29)
. . . if their slipping away is the riches of the world, and their default is the riches of the nations, how much more their fullness? . . . For if their casting away is the reconciling of the world, what is the reception except life from the dead? (vv. 12, 15)It therefore behooves us to love our brothers, even those who are currently out of fellowship with the Father and the firstborn Son, rather than lord it over them.
It also behooves us to not try to change the household rules to suit ourselves. That the Father has not placed them as a burdensome prerequisite to adoption is a demonstration of His love for us, not an indication that the rules themselves have changed.
I suspect that you and I are in essential agreement on the majors, even if we dicker around a bit on the minors.