Answering the "Replacement Theology" Critics (Part 1)

American Vision ^ | 10/7/2005 | Gary DeMar

[xzins]

Sorry, but....

So, what you are telling me is that anything else that a man ever writes on any subject is not to be considered????

You just wrote, "...all of the Christians who were guided by the Holy Spirit were all so completely wrong."

I don't care about anything else you've ever written. I only care about the line above.

Sorry, but you are so completely wrong... :>)

(Besides it is true that "legal obedience was the condition for salvation." under the law. Paul says as much when he says that the man who lives by it will live. Does Paul not say, "it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous?" (Rom 2:13)

[tabsternager]

“You just wrote, ‘...all of the Christians who were guided by the Holy Spirit were all so completely wrong.’”

So, then, I take it you agree with me that all those Christians for 1800 years must have been right. Good for you to admit that.

So then you must now admit that dispensationalism is wrong because nobody believed it before Darby came up with the idea in the 19th Century.

You see, you cannot have it both ways. They cannot both be right.

[tabsternager]

Galatians 3:21: Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.

[Alamo-Girl]

Er, if I may…

So then you must now admit that dispensationalism is wrong because nobody believed it before Darby came up with the idea in the 19th Century.

Three points:

1. That claim has been challenged in these articles on the early church fathers and the foundations of dispensationalism:

First
Second
Third

2. In this instance, the absence of evidence would not be evidence of absence because the Church went through a phase of “book burning” – not just condemning but actually destroying documents which contained beliefs not accepted by Rome.

Enoch is an example. It was known to the disciples, quoted in Scripture, beloved for 300 years and then not just rejected but discarded and remained lost until approximately 1775 when surviving manuscripts were discovered in Ethiopia. The true antiquity was confirmed by fragments of copies found in the Dead Sea Scrolls which carbon date to 200 B.C.

The works of Tertullian are another example. From the Papacy of Damasus (circa 366:)

The “Decretum Gelasianum de Libris Recipiendis et non Recipiendis”

V. The remaining writings which have been compiled or been recognised by heretics or schismatics the Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church does not in any way receive; of these we have thought it right to cite below a few which have been handed down and which are to be avoided by catholics:...

the works of Tertullian...

These and those similar ones, which Simon Magus, Nicolaus, Cerinthus, Marcion, Basilides, Ebion, Paul of Samosata, Photinus and Bonosus, who suffered from similar error, also Montanus with his obscene followers, Apollinaris, Valentinus the Manichaean, Faustus the African, Sabellius, Arius, Macedonius, Eunomius, Novatus, Sabbatius, Calistus, Donatus, Eustasius, Jovianus, Pelagius, Julian of Eclanum, Caelestius, Maximian, Priscillian from Spain, Nestorius of Constantinople, Maximus the Cynic, Lampetius, Dioscorus, Eutyches, Peter and the other Peter, of whom one disgraced Alexandria and the other Antioch, Acacius of Constantinople with his associates, and what also all disciples of heresy and of the heretics and schismatics, whose names we have scarcely preserved, have taught or compiled, we acknowledge is to be not merely rejected but eliminated from the whole Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church and with their authors and the followers of its authors to be damned in the inextricable shackles of anathema forever.

3. The fourth century Epistle of Barnabas (not to be confused with the Gospel of Barnabas, a late sixteenth century pro-Islam fraud) – was one of those early manuscripts rejected by the Catholic Church, but unlike the above, preserved. In chapter 15, verses 3-5 it speaks of 7,000 years appointed to Adamic man as follows:

He speaks of the Sabbath at the beginning of the Creation, "And God made in six days the works of His hands and on the seventh day He made an end, and He rested on the seventh day, and He sanctified it. Consider, my children what this signifies: That He made an end in six days. The meaning of it is this: that in six thousand years the Creator will bring all things to an end, for with Him one day is a thousand years. He Himself testifies, saying, Behold the day of the Lord shall be as a thousand years. Therefore children, in six days, that is in six thousand years, all things shall be accomplished. And He rested on the seventh day: He means this, that when His Son shall come He will destroy the season of the wicked one, and will judge the godless, and will change the sun and the moon and the stars, and then He will truly rest on the seventh day.

This literal interpretation of one day equaling a thousand year was the Jewish interpretation of Psalms 90:4 (Sanhedrin 97a; Avodah Zarah Sa) and it was the early Christian understanding as well:

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. – Psalms 90:4 (a Psalm the Jews attribute to Moses)

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. - 2 Peter 3:8

The understanding of this meaning of “day” goes back to Genesis as follows:

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. – Gen 2:17

And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. – Genesis 5:5

The parallel is between Creation Week and the 7000 years appointed to Adamic man the last 1,000 being the millennial reign of Christ on earth as the Sabbath.

That early Judeo/Christian understanding was discarded by the Catholic Church and was never picked up (AFAIK) by the Reformation. But surely the belief was “dispensational” to coin the modern term.

BTW, the Jewish year is 5768 from Adam’s first moment on earth – so under that calendar, Christ is not due for approximately two centuries and change. Using the Christian calendar, 6000 years more or less have already elapsed. The difference is a dispute over the amount of time the Jews were exiled in Babylon.

Personally, I eschew all of the doctrines and traditions of men across the board – so I really do not have a dog in this fight.

However, I strongly aver one should not argue against dispensationalism on the basis of “absence of evidence as evidence of absence” though I find that an excellent argument in the science debates because the geological record is not so easily erased by man.

The bottom line is this:

Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. – Matt 25:13 (ending the parable of the ten virgins.)

Maranatha, Jesus!!!

[xzins]

Dispensationalism existed as an understanding of the different eras in religious history. Justin Martyr clearly believed in a 1000 year reign of Christ on earth. He wrote in ca. 150 AD.

Besides that you have already agreed that Eden was a separate period in religious history.

You wish to argue doctrine, and I wish to look at the facts of what is an is not apparent in the Bible.

BTW, what would you call that period of time we know as Eden?

[xzins]

Excellent points, dear sister in Christ.

Many ignore the fact that “dispensation” is a coined term to describe a phenomenon just as “trinity” is a coined term to describe the phenomenon. The difference is that “dispensation” is a Greek word that does appear in the bible, and it is used in Eph 1:10 in roughly the way that modern dispensationists use it.

[tabsternager]

“Dispensationalism existed as an understanding of the different eras in religious history. Justin Martyr clearly believed in a 1000 year reign of Christ on earth. He wrote in ca. 150 AD.”

Martyr was a premillennialist, not a dispensationalist.

Again, Dispensationalism began with Darby in the 1830s. Never did any theologians before Darby teach that there were two peoples of God and two plans of salvation or a so-called “pre-tribulation rapture.” In fact, at the time Darby was considered a heretic.

[tabsternager]

In answer to your argument, please see my post 107.

[Quix]

I’m skeptical it’s worthy the least bit of a meaningful response.

[Quix]

Very well put.

[Quix]

It’s hard to believe the future “Great Tribulation” could be worse than that.

= = =

All we can do is lead the horse to Scriptural waters . . .

we have no power to make them drink understandingly.

Lots of people, including a host of archeologists and anthropologists of the last century or so have said similar things about hyperbole and Scripturaly literal interpretations.

And they have been REPEATEDLY PROVEN WRONG FOR A HUNDRED YEARS OR SO.

[Quix]

“He’s not the man we believed him to be,”

= = =

Sorry my sense of him has been confirmed.

But my initial reading of his off the wall UNBiblical positions and the attitude he asserted them in troubled my spirit exceedingly. I believed that sooner or later, God would deal with him accordingly. Evidently that dealing has begun.

Such should be a warning to all of us . . . particularly those who have a tendency to believe that God does not say what He means nor mean what He says.

[Quix]

As continually repeated, dispensation is a biblical word. And Ephesians 1:10 is the expression of it that gives rise to it being used as an "economy" or style/ordering of an era.

There is everything biblical about that concept IF the Bible does demonstrate that there are unique divisions in history that clearly should be viewed as a whole.

As a way of ordering thought and biblical history, who, for example, would argue that The Garden of Eden was not a unique whole?

. . . We must have different eyes. For my part, I cannot deny what my eyes clearly see.

INDEED. THX.

[Quix]

Love the way you present truth.

[Quix]

Never did any theologians before Darby teach that there were two peoples of God and two plans of salvation or a so-called “pre-tribulation rapture

= = =

What a preposterous statement.

Fascinating.

So . . . what was it like to have known personally every theologian of the last 2,000 years?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your insights and encouragements, dear brother in Christ!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your encouragements, dear brother in Christ!

[Alamo-Girl]

Never did any theologians before Darby teach that there were two peoples of God and two plans of salvation or a so-called “pre-tribulation rapture.”

God's revelations are the only teachings that matters to me.

But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. – I Cor 1:24

Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. - Matthew 22:29

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, [they] are spirit, and [they] are life. – John 6:63

But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. – Matthew 4:4

For my thoughts [are] not your thoughts, neither [are] your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For [as] the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper [in the thing] whereto I sent it. – Isaiah 55:8-11

But the Comforter, [which is] the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. – John 14:26

Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, [even] the hidden [wisdom], which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known [it], they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

But God hath revealed [them] unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned.

But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. II Cor 2:6-16

To God be the glory, not man!

[Quix]

EXCELLENT SCRIPTURES . . .

OF COURSE.

AS ALL ARE.

And fittingly applied.

Thx.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your encouragements, dear Quix!