DISPENSATIONALIST "CHRISTIAN" ZIONISM -- Is there now "neither Jew nor Gentile", or not?

Once upon a time, I was but a wee child in Reformed Theology, taking my first baby-steps into the beautiful Cathedral of Calvinism as a young Debater for Jerry Falwell's world-beating Liberty Debate Team (Our Creed: "Defeat Harvard. Defeat Navy. Defeat American Catholic. Defeat everyone. Crush them all, every time, no exceptions. Win every single National Championship, every year.... because as long as we Calvinists keep winning, Jerry won't excommunicate us for being Calvinists!!".)

Since a Debater is always expected to be able to immediately argue either side of any given question, I spent a lot of time in the local used book-store picking up various books on philosophy and theology and politics and economics... anything I could get my dirt-poor hands on for $2 or $3 dollars a copy. Anything to familiarize myself with multiple intellectual perspectives and multiple modes of argumentation.

Now, in the course of my researches, I happened across a little book entitled War Cycles, Peace Cycles by Richard Kelly Hoskins of Lynchburg, Virginia, regarding the short and long-term economic effects of Monetary Expansions and Contractions in the context of fractional-reserve lending. Hoskins was by no means an uneducated fellow (a capable Financial Advisor and Econometricist, some of his works are still occasionally cited today), but I was singularly disturbed by several passages in which he seemed to suggest a Racial component to Fractional-Reserve Lending (which he called "the Babylon System") versus his contrary suggestions for Joint-Venture Lending.

The further I read, the more it was apparent to me that Hoskins regarded "Israel" as The White Race, the Adamic Race descended through Abraham, and that all Non-Whites were considered to him to be zuwr "strangers": Pagans at worst, "Samaritan" Christians at best... but never "Israel".

And so, being the young fool that I was, I did what any young fool would do... I looked Dick Hoskins up in the Lynchburg, Virginia phone book, and called him at his house.

I asked him what he would make of my spiritual position -- a Confessing Christian by Faith, mostly Prussian German by Ethnicity, but with a little 1/16 smidgen of Sioux Nation mixed in 3 or 4 generations back on my mother's side.

Hoskins informed me, quite cordially and without any rancor whatsoever, that God considered me to be a mixed-breed Bastard and that "A Bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD." (Deuteronomy 23:2) He advised me to marry "one of my own kind".

Well, I decided at that point (even before I knew him to be the godfather of the "Phinehas Priesthood", the most violent expression of the Christian Identity movement) that even if he was a good money-runner, Dick Hoskins' theology was a barrel full of wet, smelly, foolish Scheißdreck, with which I would have no truck whatsoever. The Christian Creed is this: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28, KJV).

Unfortunately, however, "Christian Identity" (derived not from pagan Nazism but rather from its bastard godfather, British Israelism) is not the only theology which Racially divides the Body of Christ into Jew and Gentile, "Israel" and "Not-Israel", Blood and Blood-lines.

The future dispensational kingdom involves a racial prejudice favoring the Jews above even saved Gentiles during the millennium. As such it re-introduces the distinction between Jew and Gentile and replaces Faith with Race as a basis for divine favor. Consider the following citations from leading dispensationalists: (DISPENSATIONAL DISTORTIONS PART TWO, Redemptive History Distortions ~~ Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., Th.D.)

However, with the establishment of the New Testament phase of the Church, the distinction between Jew and Gentile has been abolished. This was the whole point of Peter's vision of the sheet filled with unclean animals in Acts 10: "What God has called clean, let no man call unclean." Thus, there is no separate Jewish program exalting them over saved Gentiles. THE CHURCH, which includes Jew and Gentile in one body, is the fruition and culmination of God's promises to the Jews. In evidence of this, we should note that Christians are called by distinctively Jewish names in the New Testament. "He is a Jew, which is one inwardly" (Rom. 2:29). Christians are called "the circumcision" (Phil. 3:3), "the children" and "the seed of Abraham" (Gal. 3:7, 29), the "Jerusalem which is above" and the "children of the promise" (Gal. 4:24-29). In fact, Christians compose "the Israel of God" for we are a "new creature" regarding which "circumcision availeth nothing" (Gal. 6:16).

In closing, I ask only (according to the Hebrew logical-interpretive method of "how much the more?")... if the heretical British-Israel/Christian-Identity Racialists pervert True Christianity by dividing the People of God along Racial lines, then how much the more do Dispensationalists also pervert the Word of God and divide the People of God along equally Racialist lines?

Those aren't Quotations from Richard Kelly Hoskins... granted, they may sound like Christian Identity quotations, but they aren't.

These are nothing less than direct quotations from the leading lights of Dispensationalism in America -- Ryrie, Pentecost, Walvoord, Hoyt, Hunt, Thomas Ice. (I could've quoted Hagee, I suppose, but the man is absolutely freakin' nutbar).

All that I did was to replace "Israel" with "The White Race", and replace "Gentiles" with "Non-Whites".
Does Dispensationalist "theology" destroy the Racial equality of the Body of Christ? What you see is what you get.

We see the full-blown Arminianism of your position here. Obviously, God has no significant role in salvation and is sprinkling plenty of prevenient grace on non-Christian Jews for you to accomplish the work of their salvation if only mean-spirited persons would stop saying naughty things.

Not the only reason, no. But if it was impossible for us to put stumbling blocks in the path of the blind, why does the Bible command us not to?

Besides, how do you know that God hasn't predestined me and others like me to be the instrument by which some of the elect are brought into the Kingdom? Indeed, your attack betrays that you don't really understand your own Calvinism all that well, since by your implication, the Apostles could've sat on their hands and never left Jerusalem, and yet somehow God would just make all of the elect believe miraculously. (Which He could have, but He doesn't seem to have worked that way.)

And if our actions have no bearing on bringing people to the Lord, then why did Sha'ul say,

For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the Torah, as under the Torah, that I might gain them that are under the Torah; To them that are without law (mistranslation--the word here is anomos, which means "lawless" or "wicked"), as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to the Messiah,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel's sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you.
--1 Corinthians 9:19-23

You are actually attributing to OPie a position more powerful than that of Satan.

No, but I am attributing his words to the Adversary.

You may disobey scripture and pretend that there is something wrong with the plain teachings of Christ and His disciples . . .

There's not a darn thing wrong with the "plain teachings" of Yeshua HaMashiach or His apostles--there have been, however, a number of errors in the way those temporally and culturally separated from the original text have interpreted it.

Now, show where I have disobeyed Scripture or taught incorrectly from them--using specifics and real exegesis, not broad generalities--on this forum, and I will be happy to repent. If you cannot, then I suggest that you publicly withdraw the ad hominem.

(As warning, so I won't be accused of running away later, I'm going to be gone pretty much all weekend after five o'clock or so tonight, so if you don't get an answer back right away, it's just that I'm not near a computer.)

And, while it undoubtedly makes you feel extra special and extra holy, dribbling Hebraisms is just annoying.

I'm sorry that you find the original Hebrew names of our Lord and His Apostles annoying.

As opposed to those evil stupid Jews in the New Testament like Paul and Peter and who actually wrote it and taught,

In case you haven't noticed, I've been citing Sha'ul and Kefa (Peter), as well as Yeshua--obviously I don't think they got it wrong. But I do think that Sha'ul has been broadly misinterpreted, which was apparently happening even in his own day: "As also in all his [Sha'ul's] epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction" (2 Pt. 3:16).

. . . like Jesus, doctrines extremely offensive to most Jews of their time and ever since?

Yes, but those offensive doctrines are not what you imagine them to be. Yeshua never taught not to keep the Torah, just the opposite (Mat. 5:17-19). And Sha'ul taught that Jews should remain Jewish (1 Co. 7:18) and actually sacrificed in the Temple to refute the charge that he was teaching Jews not to keep the Torah (Acts 21:20-26). He even taught that the whole Church, Jew and Gentile alike, should keep the feast of Passover (1 Co. 6:6-8).

Yeshua was offensive simply because of who He is, but His enemies were never able to convict Him of any sin, least of all the sin of teaching against Torah, or even of teaching from it incorrectly.

Sha'ul was offensive because he was brining the Gentiles into the Church in record numbers without forcing them to circumcise--that is, to give up their nationalities and become fully Jewish. Read Acts 22 carefully. Sha'ul's audience listens in peace and apparent respect all through his personal testimony, through his witness that Yeshua is the Messiah and was raised from the dead. It is not until he announces his mission to the Gentiles that they erupt into anger (vv. 21-22)--and it was that part of the Gospel, that Gentile as well as Jew had a place in God's Kingdom, that put Sha'ul into chains.

Now, was that the only point of contention? No. Kefa and Yochanan (John) were arrested because of the offense of holding the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem--and by extension, the whole nation--accountable for Yeshua's death: "Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man's blood upon us" (Acts 5:28).

However, at no point was the issue ever that the Apostles were teaching Jewish believers not to keep the Torah, not to circumcise their children, not to keep the Sabbath, etc. Every time they were accused of such, they refuted it.

And why did this preservation of which you speak so glowingly take 1800 years for some Messianic Jews to actually believe?

It didn't. We have the (hostile) testimony of the early Church fathers that Messianic Jews were alive and well, if a minority, well into the fourth century, and that they were not universally rejected by their Gentile brethren--Justin Martyr is on record as saying that he accepted them as true Christians, if "weak" and John Crysostom's anti-semetic rants reveal that there were indeed Gentile believers who were joining the Jews in keeping the Feastdays of the Lord. Moreover, Shlomo Pines, an Islamic scholar, has found texts proving that Messianic Jewish believers survived well into the 11th century. It was not coincidental that Christopher Columbus and his crew left on the midnight of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain--his diary, though professing Christ, also shows distinctly Jewish terminology. In fact, the entire Spanish Inquisition was mustered for the purpose of hunting down Jews who had professed Christ (under duress or otherwise) but who kept Torah and Jewish tradition. And Martin Luther wrote two tracts, Against the Sabbath Keepers and Against the Judaizers which showed that in his day he was also in fact encountering Christians who wanted to keep the Torah.

The fact is that God has always kept a remnant of believing Jews to Himself, just as He promised, and we see repeatedly through history Gentiles like myself who have seen in the Scriptures that we too should keep the Torah--not for salvation, and not to put ourselves "under the Law" (i.e., under its punishments, under its fear), but because our Lord and Savior did, and we want to be like Him.

However, the fact is also that in every instance since the fourth century, those who have done so have been persecuted by the government-sanctioned Church as being "too Jewish" and "heretics"--so it's hardly surprising that we have never had much political power. Those who wanted to follow a Jewish Messiah in a Jewish way had to keep their heads down, or be persecuted, tortured, and killed.

It was only in the last two centuries, with the religious freedom that we take for granted in America, that Messianic synagogues could come about. And it is also because of America's acceptance and love for the Jewish people, inspired in no small part by Dispensationalism and Evangelicalism, that the walls have been slowly coming down. We're finally at the point where the overwhelming majority in Israel (75%, according to one poll that I've not been able to find online) accept Messianic Jews (that is, born Jews, not Gentiles like myself) as nevertheless being fully Jewish and able to make aliyah. We're seeing Orthodox Jews like Avi Lipkin crusading to give Christians in Israel their own representation in the Knesset.

Even many Jews who don't yet accept Yeshua as the Messiah are doing something unprecedented: They're reading the Gospel accounts. They're finding out what He taught on the Torah. They're recognizing Him as being one of their own in body, mind, and soul.

Has there been a recent turnaround? Yes, but it is not one disconnected from history, nor from the Bible. And it is the Bible that we must ultimately accept as our mutual authority.

You've challenged me to show how the whole Church could've gotten it wrong for 1800 years. I've shown that not all did, that there has always been a remnant. The only counter to that is to say that well, they weren't accepted by the Church as a whole, so they must've been wrong, and heretics. Of course, that not only is a faulty appeal to popularity, it also ignores the fact that the Reformation was kicked off because a young monk was willing to stand on the Word of God against what was then 1400 years of Church tradition. I am willing to do the same.

So let's put an end to appeals to popularity and tradition and get to the Word of God: Show me from the Bible that I am wrong--and not by a single verse ripped out of context (Gal. 3:28, which as P-Marlowe has shown is being just as falsely used to promote homosexuality), but by careful exegesis.

You can start by either showing how the Church is partially blind until the fulness of the Gentiles is come in, and that it is an enemy of the Gospel because of the Gentiles, or concede that "Israel" in Rom. 9-11 really does mean the Jewish people who are currently in disbelief.

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