Posted on 08/10/2006 12:22:56 PM PDT by OrthodoxPresbyterian
A Young Fool encounters Foolishness
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.
One passage which stood out in my mind read as follows:
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.
Dispensational Zionist Foolishness
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).
Comparing Foolishness with Foolishness
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?
Consider the following:
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.
God Damn all Racial Theology.
Satan was always under limits by God (Job 1-2).
Still God does give him power over that which he does rule (within limits)
We were talking in the context of the world's systems, not Christians, who have left the world system and been born again into the Kingdom of God.
But, even a Christian can turn himself back to Satan, even though he can never lose his salvation
Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world'(2Tim.4:10)
1 John 5:18
Well then we agree that Christians are in the Kingdom, Jesus is ruling it and us.
It doesn't matter if they recognize Him or not, He still rules the world.
.Matthew 13:24-38, tells of the Kingdom of Heaven, yet the children of that, the good seed, live in the world first. Verse 41:
The Son of Man ....shall gather out of His kingdom, all things that offend, and the tares do not go to Heaven...
The earth is His kingdom.
In some sense, Christ is the Kingdom, and all in Him are already in the kingdom. When He comes again, then those future events will unfold, but He is at once, both present and future, and so is His kingdom.
Certainly those are excellent Scriptures re any Scriptural contentions.
I still think that the major thing about The descendants of Jacob is that they are A FULFILLMENT OF GOD'S PROMISE, COMMITMENT, COVENANT to HIS BUDDY, HIS FRIEND, Abraham.
Further, thaty God is using them as a super illustration to mankind and then to ALL Creation of many things about God's priorities, Majesty, Grandeur, Grace.
Certainly He will use the Church similarly but The Church is still "merely" GRAFTED IN. We were not the original main branch.
Just as God forgives us our shortcomings as we persist in our faith in Him; confess, repent etc. . . . God is able to forgive Jacob's descendants according to HIS SCRIPT in HIS TIME.
Doesn't mean an alternate route to salvation though I don't know how to persuade the naysayers of that. It's just a fact. Just because we don't understand the mediculous.
Certainly we are all still equal before The Cross.
Certainly The Cross is still the fulcrum of all history and all creation.
But God is a long way from being done using the descendants as an object lesson; an illustration; an embellishment of His Glory. An abundance of yet-to-be-fulfilled Scriptural prophecies make that super clear.
LUB,
AMEN!
All history leads up to the cross and all history flows from the cross. From before the foundation of the world God ordained Christ to die and be resurrected from that cross for your salvation and mine.
And your tag proves it. 8~)
Merely? I'll quote from topcat's 713...
"Again, the language does not support limiting this to mere "blessings". The believing Jews and gentiles have received all the promises made to Israel. Because, as Paul tells us in Gal. 3, the promises were really made with the Seed, Jesus Christ. "Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, 'And to seeds,' as of many, but as of one, 'And to your Seed,' who is Christ" (v. 16). All those who are "in Christ" are part of Abraham's true offspring and thus received the promises and blessings..."
Here's an excellent link...
Ah, the Augustine's paradox; "Lord, command what you will and give what you command." Val Til is one who understood.
I was thinking how most Christians apply this paradox in just about every situation except salvation. Most of us believe God controls all things yet we must pray for things. God controls our lives yet we pray that we get that job promotion. If God grants it we thank Him that He gave it to us. If we do not get the promotion we feel that, that wasn't what God really desires for us. This is instinctive behavior for Christians. Only in salvation do we feel we make a choice.
True enough.
AND
those truths have
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
to do with displacing Jacob's blood descendants from their unique Covenanted blessings and promises in and from God Almighty.
Absolutely nothing.
Many good points in the doc.
Not a shred of it convinces me of a microgram's worth of Contrarian Replacementarianism but anyway.
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