Posted on 08/07/2006 6:18:10 AM PDT by topcat54
David Brog has written Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State. The ten reviews I read on Amazon were quite favorable, and it is being advertised on WorldNetDaily. The fact that the Foreword was written by John Hagee, author of Jerusalem Countdown, From Daniel to Doomsday, Beginning of the End, and Final Dawn over Jerusalem, is a clear indication that the book’s thesis fits with the modern-day prophetic system known as dispensational premillennialism. I doubt that the book covers what this article reveals.
In my debate with Tommy Ice at American Vision’s Worldview Super Conference (May 26, 2006), Ice pointed out that one of the unique features of the dispensational system is that near the end of a future, post-rapture, seven-year tribulation period, Israel will be rescued by God. After nearly 2000 years of delayed promises, God will once again come to the rescue of His favored nation. Ice and other dispensationalists imply by this doctrine that they are Israel’s best friend, and anyone who does not adopt their way of interpreting the Bible is either anti-Semitic (Hal Lindsey) or a methodological naturalist (Tommy Ice).
In the debate, I wanted Tommy to explain how a belief in Israel’s glorious future results in the slaughter of two-thirds of the Jews living at the time the Great Tribulation nears the end of its seven-year run. I quoted the following dispensational writers to show that there is no glorious future for “all Jews who are under siege,” to use Tommy’s words, in the dispensational version of the Great Tribulation.
There are geopolitical implications to the dispensational system that some people have picked up on.
Dispensational theology as it relates to Israel is alarming to some Jewish leaders as well. Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, asks, “To what extent will a theological view that calls for Armageddon in the Middle East lead [evangelicals] to support policies that may move in that direction, rather than toward stability and peaceful coexistence?”(2) The most probable scenario is that prophetic futurists will sit back and do nothing as they see Israel go up in smoke since the Bible predicts an inevitable holocaust. It is time to recognize that these so-called end-time biblical prophecies have been fulfilled, and Zechariah 13:7–9 is certainly one of them. Those Jews living in Judea prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and who fled before the assault on the temple were saved (Matt. 24:15–22).Convinced that a nuclear Armageddon is an inevitable event within the divine scheme of things, many evangelical dispensationalists have committed themselves to a course for Israel that, by their own admission, will lead directly to a holocaust indescribably more savage and widespread than any vision of carnage that could have generated in Adolf Hitler’s criminal mind.(1)
1. Grace Halsell, Prophecy and Politics: Militant Evangelists on the Road to Nuclear War (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1986), 195.
2. Quoted in Jeffery L. Sheler, “Odd Bedfellows,” U.S. News & World Report (August 12, 2002), 35.
Gary DeMar is president of American Vision and the author of more than 20 books. His latest is Myths, Lies, and Half Truths.
Permission to reprint granted by American Vision P.O. Box 220, Powder Springs, GA 30127, 800-628-9460.
Agreed. See my post #6
Then they are lost.
No one is going to be saved without faith in Christ.
lol. From what I understand, there are about 5 groups of "Jews" in Israel, the black Ethiopians and Christians on the bottom. Oh well, the last shall be first.
But God has blinded them. Now what?
Maybe we should help Israel's enemies destroy not just two thirds of the Israelis but all the Israelis. Then there would be no more Israel at all and Armageddon will be averted. Right?
Ya Ya, lost, blind, enemies of God, screwed, etc., etc., etc., Don't you ever tire of doing God's job for him?
No one is going to be saved without faith in Christ
Ya right. Nobody is going to be saved unless they believe like you do. I think people should let Jews interpret their own writings. They've been doing it 2,000 more years than all of you Johny-come-lately's.
The Torah Jews interpret their own writings. No one is stopping them. The ones who toss the word out and do their own speaking go another direction.
Not understanding your response.
I have no problem with P-M's question, but mine has always been, "Why do you have to post dispensational threads so you can be against them?"
Why not post some brief synopsis of preterism and show us what you are for?
Do preterists not post what they stand for because (1) they're embarrassed to say, (2) because they don't know, (3) because it's too hard to explain, (4) etc.
I don't think they can stop being Jewish anymore than the Apostle Paul stopped being Jewish. As you quoted, he said, "My kinsmen after the flesh."
Paul was both Jewish and Christian.
I have to agree with xzins. What God considers a Jew is not what mankind does, right?
Have you ever considered asking Jews what they consider to be Jewish? Logic 101.
Yes, they say as long as they are in the tribe, they need not worry about salvation, they're already saved. Is that right, or not?
I think God considers Jews (those kinsmen after the flesh) to be Jews.
There is discussion of "an Israel of God," but that is clearly a metaphor. The same with those who are Jews "inwardly."
They have legitimate spiritual meaning when they are used, but they do not negate the existence of those who are "Jews after the flesh." The presence of these racial Jews makes it necessary to consider some or all prophecies as relating to their group and not to the church.
It is possible that:
(1) All "Israel" prophecies relate only to the church.
(2) All "Israel" prophecies relate only to racial Israel.
(3) Some relate to the Church and some relate to racial Israel.
Time will tell, of course, but one would be negligence not to ponder the fact that racial Israel is again occupying their ancestral land.
Being Jewish is a spiritual condition, we learn that from Abraham. In Exodus, many so called Jews were destroyed for being only in the flesh.
The bible teaches that there are both racial Jews and what we call "spiritual" Jews.
Everyone falls into one of the 3 categories above. Which are you?
Jewish by heritage.
Christian by faith.
I suppose you realize you're denying scholarly history to say that there is no "race of Jews."
Go here to these sites at UC Davis and Fordham Univ.:
http://philo.ucdavis.edu/zope/home/bruce/RST23/chart.html#325-1517
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/jewish/jewishsbook.html
Actually, Jewish by heritage and religion.
A Christian Jew by grace.
Jesus was Jewish.
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