Biblically Optimistic and Gospel-Based
"For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled." (Luke 21:22)
Posted on 10/13/2009 1:38:21 PM PDT by topcat54
After writing “Debunking ‘Last Days Fever’ at Charisma” I received the following from a friend who got an email from someone who did not like my article. Here’s a portion of what the critic wrote:
I have preached through the Book of Revelation twice, verse-by-verse, in a 38 message series. I study the Greek New Testament nearly every day. I do not profess to know everything, but I am 100% convinced that Preterism is a fable and patently unbiblical. Gary North, Hank Hanegraaff, Demar [sic] and others flat out do not know what they are talking about. Many of them, such as the late North, have an anti-semitic bent, where he said that he would rejoice in the day that the Arabs pushed Israel into the sea! God’s immutable promise to Abraham is that he would “bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee” (Gen. 12:3).
A couple of preliminary points are in order. First, there are many people who have preached through the book of Revelation, some have even written commentaries (e.g., David Clark, David Chilton, Kenneth Gentry), who are very well versed preterists. Our emailer needs to take a look at Steve Gregg’s Revelation: Four Views—A Parallel Commentary and C. Marvin Pate’s Four Views on the Book of Revelation.
Second, I invited this man to come on my radio show to demonstrate that “Preterism is a fable and patently unbiblical.” I’ve made this offer to others who have written similar things to me in emails. So far no one has taken me up on the offer. Maybe this person will be different, but I don’t think so. I’ll let you know if he accepts my offer.
Third, Hal Lindsey tried the anti-semitism charge when he wrote his book The Road to Holocaust. Peter J. Leithart and I wrote The Legacy of Hatred Continues in 1989 as a refutation. It’s never been answered. We showed that it was Lindsey’s dispensational system that has it in for the Jews after the “rapture,” a point I made in my article in response to the “Last Days Fever” article that appeared in Charisma. Dispensationalists teach that two-thirds of the Jews will be killed during their version of a future Great Tribulation, and that prior to the rapture Israel has no prophetic significance since God is now dealing with the church. Lindsey describes the judgment against Israel in A.D. 70 as a “picnic” compared to his super holocaust that will kill billions of people, including two-thirds of the Jews living in Israel.[1] Kay Arthur, another dispensational author, has stated publicly that what lies ahead for Israel will make Hitler’s Holocaust look like “a Sunday school picnic.” In her novel, Israel My Beloved, “Arthur has the heroine standing in a massively destroyed Jerusalem, dead and dying Jews littering the ground around her as she whispers in horror, ‘Auschwitz was never like this.’” Let’s not forget Israel’s Final Holocaust by Jack Van Impe. Chuck Missler has called Auschwitz “just a prelude” to what will happen to Jews in the Last Days. Consider what Thomas Ice writes in his article “What do you do with a future National Israel in the Bible?”:
The Bible also indicates that before Israel enters into her time of national blessing she must first pass through the fire of the tribulation (Deut. 4:30; Jer. 30:5–9; Dan. 12:1; Zeph. 1:14–18). Even though the horrors of the Holocaust under Hitler were of an unimaginable magnitude, the Bible teaches that a time of even greater trial awaits Israel during the tribulation. Anti-Semitism will reach new heights, this time global in scope, in which two-thirds of world Jewry will be killed (Zech. 13:7–9; Rev. 12). Through this time God will protect His remnant so that before His second advent “all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:36).
In reality, it’s “all that’s left of Israel that will be saved.” In a December 2, 1984 sermon, the late Jerry Falwell said the following: “Millions of Jews will be slaughtered at this time but a remnant will escape and God will supernaturally hide them for Himself for the last three and a half years of the Tribulation, some feel in the rose-red city of Petra.”
Fourth, I don’t know why this person refers to the “late [Gary] North,” since he is very much alive. In fact, I just saw him yesterday! On North’s comment about Arabs pushing Israel into the sea, here’s what he actually wrote: “Should Israel ever be ‘ pushed into the sea,’ these people will have to face what the rest of us began facing early in life: the prospect of our statistically inescapable physical death.” North’s point is quite clear: If anything happens to Israel, either their being pushed into the sea or “converted to Christ,”[2] dispensationalists will have to do a lot of explaining. Their hope of the rapture will be gone, and they will die! Who does believe that Israel will be thrown out of their land? Dr. Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a dispensational premillennialist:
The present state of Israel is not the final form. The present state of Israel will be lost, eventually, and Israel will be run out of the land again, only to return when they accept the Messiah as Savior.[3]
Fifth, the use of Genesis 12:3 is curious since the “thee” is singular and refers to Abraham.
Now let’s take a look at what non-dispensationalists (mostly postmillennialists) believe about the future of Israel. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Westminster Larger Catechism, in the answer to Question 191, outlined the hope for a future conversion of the Jews. Part of what we pray for in the second petition, “Thy kingdom come,” is that “the gospel [be] propagated throughout the world, the Jews called, the fullness of the Gentiles brought in.” In his commentary on the Larger Catechism, Thomas Ridgeley (1667–1734) wrote, “Hence, we cannot but suppose that those prophecies which respect [to the conversion of the Jews], in the latter day, together with the fullness of the Gentiles being brought in, shall be more eminently accomplished than they have hitherto been.”[4] Ridgeley spends a number of pages refuting “ancient and modern Chiliasts, or Millennarians”[5] and defending what can only be described as postmillennialism over against premillennialism.
We freely own, as what we think agreeable to scripture, that as Christ has, in all ages, displayed his glory as King of the Church, so we have ground to conclude, from scripture, that the administration of his government in this world, before his coming to judgment, will be attended with greater magnificence, more visible marks of glory, and various occurrences of providence, which shall tend to the welfare and happiness of his church, in a greater degree than has been beheld or experienced by it, since it was planted by the ministry of the apostles after his ascension into heaven. This we think to be the sense, in general, of those scriptures, both in the Old and New Testament, which speak of the latter‑day glory.[6]
* * * * * We have, hence, sufficient ground to conclude, that, when these prophecies shall have their accomplishment, the interest of Christ shall be the prevailing interest in the world, which it has never yet been in all respects; so that godliness shall be as much and as universally valued and esteemed, as it has hitherto been decried, and it shall be reckoned as great an honour to be a Christian, as it has, in the most degenerate age of the church, been matter of reproach. . . . In short, there shall be, as it were, a universal spread of religion and holiness to the Lord, throughout the world.[7]
Ridgeley knew his history well enough to know that the majority of theologians in the seventeenth century held to an advancing kingdom through the proclamation of the gospel which includes the future conversion of the Jews. Amillennialist Johannes G. Vos, in his commentary on the Larger Catechism, takes a similar view.[8]
In the same way, the Westminster Directory for Public Worship instructed ministers to pray “for the Propagation of the Gospel and Kingdom of Christ to all nations, for the conversion of the Jews, the fullness of the Gentiles, the fall of Antichrist, and the hastening of the second coming of the Lord.”[9] In 1652, a group of eighteen Puritan ministers and theologians, including both Presbyterians and Independents, affirmed that “the Scripture speaks of a double conversion of the Gentiles, the first before the conversion of the Jews, they being Branches wild by nature grafted into the True Olive Tree instead of the natural Branches which are broken off. . . . The second, after the conversion of the Jews.”[10]
What dispensationalists like the person who claims that preterists have an anti-semitic streak need to explain is how their regard for the future of Israel means that two-thirds of the Jews will be slaughtered before the promises are fulfilled (Zech. 13:8) in what Charles Ryrie has described in his book The Living End as “the worst bloodbath in Jewish history.”[11] Then they need to answer what postmillennialists have always believed: “the conversion of the Jews.”
Endnotes:
[1] Hal Lindsey, The Road to Holocaust (New York: Bantam Books, 1989), 220.
[2] Personal letter from Gary North to Peter Lalonde, April 30, 1987.
[3] Stated on Dallas, Texas, radio program (KCBI) in a debate with me on May 15, 1991.
[4] Thomas Ridgeley, Commentary on the Larger Catechism, 2 vols. (Edmonton, AB Canada: Still Waters Revival Books, [1855] 1993), 2:621. Ridgeley’s original work was titled A Body of Divinity: Wherein the Doctrines of the Christian Religion are Explained and Defended, Being the Substance of Several Lectures on the Assembly's Larger Catechism and was published in 1731.
[5] Ridgeley, Commentary on the Larger Catechism, 1:558–562.
[6] Ridgeley, Commentary on the Larger Catechism, 1:562.
[7] Ridgeley, Commentary on the Larger Catechism, 1:563–564.
[8]Johannes G. Vos, The Westminster Larger Catechism: A Commentary, ed. G. I. Williamson (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2002), 552–553.
[9]Quoted in J. A. DeJong, As the Waters Cover the Sea: Millennial Expectations in the Rise of Anglo-America Missions, 1640–1810 (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1970), 37–38.
[10]Quoted in Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope: Revival and the Interpretation of Prophecy (London: The Banner of truth Trust, 1971), 72.
[11]Charles C. Ryrie, The Best is Yet to Come (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1981), 86.
"For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled." (Luke 21:22)
To the futurist, “And so all Israel will be saved” means except for the untold millions that will die in the genocide of futurism’s “great tribulation.”
God didn't just go eenie, meenie, miney, moe and pick Israel out of all the other nations. Abram was a man out of Ur of the Chaldees (probably Iraq area) that Genesis 12 speaks of:
1 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.
2 "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."
4 So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.
6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring [a] I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.
8 From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD.
Abram's name was changed to Abraham
Genesis 17:5 No longer will you be called Abram ; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.
Through Abraham's lineage came Jesus Christ the savior of the world. Why would any true Christian ever curse or revile the nation that God created to bring salvation to us all?
Whichever is the actual truth, to imagine that someone who believes that it is in the future is in any way CAUSING it to happen is utterly foolish. Either that, or vicious, lying propaganda. Either way, it is a shame for any decent Christian to utter it, or to publish it.
DG
So any prophecy (or intrepretation of a prophecy) that says Israel will be persecuted is anti-semetic?
That would have to include Jeremiah, who prophesised Israel would be destroyed by Bablylon and that the Jews would be killed, persecuted, and scattered to the winds. A prophecy that has already taken place.
If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. - John 15:20
Would interpreting the above scripture to mean Christians will be persecuted make someone an anti-Christian?
Your premise is not valid. An interpretation of scripture that indicates some group will be persecuted in the future does not make you anti-anything.
What is anti-Semitic?
The belief that Jews can find faith in Jesus Christ in this day and be regrafted into the root, becoming true children of Abraham by spiritual circumcision, receiving eternal life by the power of the Holy Spirit?
Or the teaching that millions of unbelieving Jews living in and around Judea will be slaughtered in the futurist "great tribulation" while Christian Zionists do their best to see that as many Jews as possible emigrate to Israel, thereby increasing the number slaughtered?
See post #9.
Would you agree that Christian Zionists who work to bring about the emigration of Jews to Israel while teaching that the "great tribulation" is just around the corner, these Zionists would be guilty of the blood shed during the "great tribulation" when millions of unbelieving Jews will be slaughtered? Are they not complicit by proving the means for Jews to move to doomed Israel?
Absolutely NOT! If I were a person (such as I imagine that you are [please correct me if I am mis-stating your position]) who believes that nothing happens which is not the exact will of God; then I would be compelled to believe that whatever “Christian Zionists” do is what God wills. If He chooses to bring His people back from exile, that is his will. If, then, He chooses to kill 2/3 of them, that is His will. Either he will do it, in the future,or already has done it in the past.
Either way, you have no ground for condemning either what God wills, or the people he uses (zionists) to accomplish that will.
On that same note, could the modern State of Israel have come into existence; and been miraculously preserved in several wars (when completely outnumbered); if that was not the will of God?
DG
No. ALL Isreal means ALL of Isreal - Both Great Houses - and all of the predicted strife and death happens PRIOR to the tribulation.
All of the Prophecy is rolled up at the sound of the seventh trumpet. So the binding of the two sticks (Ephraim and Judah), under one government happens before that time. So by the time of the 7th trumpet, Judah, the witness of the Covenant in Moses, already KNOWS her Messiah.
Probably the war of Magog is the catalyst, in which, not only Judah is nearly destroyed, but also Ephraim. Though Ephraim is as many as the sands of the sea, Ephraim is made to be harder to find than the gold of Ophir.
BOTH are captured and lead into slavery in Egypt and Assyria. It is only by GOD that they are saved from it, and they KNOW IT, Both of them do. He goes before them as in the ancient days, and the battle is won against insurmountable odds. And when that happens the remnant of Ephraim jumps for joy in the west.
The Prophecy is *not* anti-Semitic. It is the Prophecy. It WILL come to pass, even as it is written.
The belief that Jews can find faith in Jesus Christ in this day and be regrafted into the root, becoming true children of Abraham by spiritual circumcision, receiving eternal life by the power of the Holy Spirit?
Or the teaching that millions of unbelieving Jews living in and around Judea will be slaughtered in the futurist "great tribulation" while Christian Zionists do their best to see that as many Jews as possible emigrate to Israel, thereby increasing the number slaughtered?
You're just repeating the same logical error I addressed in the earlier post?
Jerimiah said the Jews would be persecuted. It doesn't make you an anti-semite to believe Jerimiah.
Jesus said his followers would be persecuted. It doesn't make you an anti-Christian to believe Jesus.
John, in the book of Revelation, says Jews will be persecuted. It doesn't make you and anti-semite to believe John.
Are you familiar with a logical fallacy called the false dilemma? That's what your argument amounts to. You present an either/or question, when in fact there are more options.
A person can believe that the Jews are loved by God (and can find Jesus) AND that the Jews will be persecuted in the future. It's not an either/or question, you can believe both.
C'mon, you can do better than a tranparent logical fallacy to defend your position. Only the simplest of the simple-minded would fall for that argument.
Appeal to emotion. You describe the details of persecution in a way to make people feel bad if they believe in a future persecution.
Ad Hominem attack. You describe people as being evil for holding a position, even if they believe that is what the Bible teaches.
Straw man. You misrepresent the actual beliefs held so you can attack a distored version of their beliefs. They believe there will be a WORLDWIDE persecution of the Jews come the end times, so it matters not whether they live in Israel or Omaha.
Christian Zionists (as you call them) aren't helping Jews move to Israel because they believe they will be killed there. They believe God gave the land of Israel to the Jews, and any Jew that wants to return to their homeland has a right to do so.
The question was that of anti-Semitism.
But, are you saying that Christians don’t “feel bad” about their scenario regarding the fate of unbelieving Judaism? Their expressed theology should make them “feel bad,” shouldn’t it?
Straw man. You misrepresent the actual beliefs held so you can attack a distored version of their beliefs.
Actually, no. Many futurist “Friends of Israel” take Zechariah 13:8,9 as a future destruction of 2/3s of the Jews living in and around Judea during their “great tribulation”. E.g., well-known FOI John Walvoord wrote:
The purge of Israel in their time of trouble is described by Zechariah in these words: "And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith Jehovah, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part into the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried" (Zechariah 13:8, 9). According to Zechariah's prophecy, two thirds of the children of Israel in the land will perish, but the one third that are left will be refined and be awaiting the deliverance of God at the second coming of Christ which is described in the next chapter of Zechariah. (Israel in Prophecy (Grand Rapids, MI: [1962] 1988), p. 108)Christian Zionists (as you call them) aren't helping Jews move to Israel because they believe they will be killed there. They believe God gave the land of Israel to the Jews, and any Jew that wants to return to their homeland has a right to do so.
If Christian Zionists believe, as many do, that millions of unbelieving Jews will perish in their future “great tribulation,” why is it that they are not working harder to prevent/postpone/delay emigration to Israel by these people. Yet many Zionists organizations actively fund such activity.
Actions speak louder than words.
But this mass slaughter happens to Israel, unbelieving Israel. So not “all Israel” is saved in any literal sense. Much of Israel perishes.
So there must be an interpretation of the phrase “all Israel” that is not based purely on genetics.
Generally speaking, because they are explained incorrectly. The false assumption is that they are speaking of future (from our perspective) events. They are interpreted as being about divine wrath being poured out on future Israel for no apparent reason. This is anti-Semitism at it best.
Many millions of Jews today and through time have accepted Jesus as Messiah and will be caught up in the Rapture if alive.
Yes, but according to futurism many millions of unbelieving Jews will be slaughtered during their great tribulation. For no apparent reason other than they are Jews. The good news is that Christians get off scot-free in the “great snatch” while Israel, the so-called “apple of God’s eye,” gets all the bad news in the “great tribulation”.
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