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To: blue-duncan; Quix; P-Marlowe; Buggman; Corin Stormhands; Alamo-Girl; Revelation 911; BibChr
Ping to an interesting review.

I'm fascinated that Ice is saying that the dutch reformers supported the biblical view of a future for national Israel.

I'd like to track that down.

2 posted on 09/01/2006 5:34:19 AM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain and proud of it! Supporting our troops means praying for them to WIN!)
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To: xzins
Ping to an interesting review.

I suspect a coming flame fest from the antidispensationalreplacementarianists.

3 posted on 09/01/2006 6:37:03 AM PDT by P-Marlowe (((172 * 3.141592653589793238462) / 180) * 10 = 30.0196631)
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To: xzins; P-Marlowe; HarleyD; Dr. Eckleburg; OrthodoxPresbyterian; Alex Murphy
I'm fascinated that Ice is saying that the dutch reformers supported the biblical view of a future for national Israel.

Ice is no historian. Look at how he twists the words of Schlissel, who wrote:

Whatever views were maintained as to Israel's political restoration, their spiritual future was simply a given in Reformed circles.
Note how Ice's commentary distorts these words which are ambiguous as to a future national entity for Israel:
This extract establishes that the "spiritualized" notion of "Israel" in Rom 11:25, 26, was known to and rejected by the body of Dutch expositors.
Huh?? His extract does no such thing. Ice's survey of Dutch thinking amounts to some misplaced quotes from Schlissel.

The Dutch rejected the dispensational, premil notion of a future millennial kingdom after Christ's return with Israel at the center. The Dutch rejected any form of theology where nations were separated along racial lines for salvific purposes.

Ice also comments:

Yet Schlissel is concerned that his Reformed brethren are abandoning this future national hope for Israel as they currently reassert a strong view of replacement theology.
His continued reference to "this future national hope for Israel" make it appear that Schlissel, et al support the disnepsatioanlist theories. They do not. Their views on future Israel is radically different from the classic and neo-dispensational ones.

There have always been Reformed theologians (aka supersessionist "anti-Semites") of all strips that have held to a future for the Jews, whether national or otherwise. That is nothing new. In fact, the Westminster Larger Catechism calls out specifically for the conversion of the Jews.

What Ice wants you to believe is that there exists a latent appreciation for dispensational-style Jewish nationalism in Dutch (Reformed) thinking. Such is not the case. Reformed theologians have consistently affirmed a coming of Christ before the millennial, not after. They rejected all forms of "chilaism", the notion of a millennium on earth with Christ physically present and Jews in charge.

For your added entertainment, here is a portion from the Belgic Confession, one of the documents that makes up the "Three Forms of Unity" commonly used as confessions within the Dutch Reformed community:

Finally, we believe, according to the word of God, that when the time predestined by God and unknown to all creatures arrives, and the number of the Elect will be completed, our Lord Jesus Christ is going to return from heaven, bodily and visibly, just as He once ascended there, decorated with consummate Majesty, and He will reveal Himself as a judge of the living and of the dead, having set this old world ablaze with fire and flame in order that He would purify it. Then truly all creatures, so as with men also with women and infants, as many as have thereupon lived, back from the beginning up unto the end of the world, will appear in the presence of this consummate Judge, certainly called forth by the sound of both the Archangel and by the trumpet of God. For all of the previously dead will then rise up from the ground and, by the Spirit, the soul of every one of them, in turn, will be united and joined together with their own body in which they had lived. Again, those who will be living up unto that ultimate day will be transformed in but a moment and a blink of the eye, clearly from corruption into an incorruptible nature. (Belgic Confession, Article 37)
Within the context of the phrase "the number of the Elect will be completed" comes the understanding of whatever is included in Romans 11 wrt the Jewish and gentile converts to Christ. While there may be a massive conversion of Jewish people prior to Christ's return (which I happen to believe as a postmillennialist), nothing requires a wholesale return of Jewish people to the Middle East region in order for this to be fulfilled. There certainly is nothing about Jewish nationalism in any of the Dutch confessions.
14 posted on 09/01/2006 8:05:32 AM PDT by topcat54
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To: xzins

Excellent article. Thanks much.


18 posted on 09/01/2006 8:30:56 AM PDT by Quix (LET GOD ARISE AND HIS ENEMIES BE SCATTERED. LET ISRAEL CALL ON GOD AS THEIRS! & ISLAM FLUSH ITSELF)
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