Posted on 02/04/2011 11:29:26 AM PST by RJR_fan
Bottom Line (last few paragraphs):
Based on the continuity of themes—wealth, kingdom, inheritance—Jesus’ teaching to the disciples should be considered of one piece with the parable of the rich fool. The section of Scripture, Luke 12:13–34, should be taken as a whole. And the immediate message was the disinheritance of Israel, and the transfer of the Kingdom to the New Testament church. This blessing, we are told, is the “Father’s good pleasure” (12:32).
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
Also, claims of anti-Semitism are very serious because anti-Semitism is not allowed at all on Free Republic. If your theological arguments leave other posters in doubt of your views concern Israel and race - make your position clear.
No way Jose! Only someone accustomed to tarring with a wide brush would take umbrage thus! Not all Christians swat mosquitoes with sledgehammers!
The dispensational system has some real strengths -- such as its commitment to God's inerrant Word, the divinity of Christ, the bodily resurrection (His, and ours at the end of time), the bodily second coming. It also has some weak points. When I gently and kindly point out the unbecoming elements of the system, the comely parts rush to the defense.
However, to revile as unbelievers those who share your faith in the essentials is foolhardy. Many of us once believed as you do now, but God showed us mercy. And He may well do the same for you. I am certainly asking Him to!
IMO dispensationalism is a sound political perspective masquerading as a religious ethos. In reality, they are worlds apart.
And I have never seen you post an anti-Semitic comment on this forum. Shame on those who wrongly accuse you of that despicable action.
"But there is further reason, and a pressing one today, why we should write upon our present subject, and that is to expose the modern and pernicious error of Dispensationalism. This is a device of the Enemy, designed to rob the children of no small part of that bread which their heavenly Father has provided for their souls; a device wherein the wily serpent appears as an angel of light, feigning to "make the Bible a new book" by simplifying much in it which perplexes the spiritually unlearned. It is sad to see how widely successful the devil has been by means of this subtle innovation." -- A.W. Pink, "A Study of Dispensationalism"
It was after I made my views perfectly clear that I was called and anti-semite, anti-Christ, had my salvation questioned, etc. What is the guard against that?
Do you believe God has been/is/or will be in the future married to two different and distinct people?
But what happens when a person has "made them clear" and the insult of "anti-Semite" is still flung around?
It would seem at that point the person making the accusation should either put up or shut up. Where's the evidence of "anti-Semitism," a terrible and ugly accusation (not to mention that "I have no problem at all questioning not only your sanity, sincerity and salvation" isn't the sweetest of sentiments, either.)
Thanks. It’s not like cherry picking a verse or two either.
Those are the kinds of questions that dispensationalists need to be asking themselves. The answer, so clear from Scripture, illustrates a main problem with dispensationalism.
Much along the same lines as Vernon Howell (aka David Koresh) thought that when the Bible said “the Temple in Jerusalem” it meant their compound in Waco Texas, and where the Bible said “the people of Israel” he meant a bunch of European descended Texans.
Absolute rot. As others have indicated.
Sorry Topcat, I have meant to reply but there was a Sabbath and Football game. I found your post interesting but it did not completely answer the question of whether or not he was taken out of context. Do you have his works? I would like to read that whole section. I dont want to spend 26 bucks on his book.
This Christian guy, Carl Trueman, has many posts on this blog Rushdoony about Rushdoony being as Holocaust revisionist and a racist. So, I dont know why this guy would lie about Rushdoony being a fellow Calvinist and all?
Also, attributed to Rushdoony was the remark that Jews revising the Holocaust numbers up, was a false witness against the Germans and worse than what the Germans did to the Jews.
But that’s not the worst of it. According to the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, holocaust denial was the worst thing about Rushdoony.
The false witness born during World War II with respect to Germany is especially notable and revealing. The charge is repeatedly made that six million innocent Jews were slain by the Nazis, and the figure – and even larger figures – is now entrenched in the history books. Poncins, in summarizing the studies of the French Socialist, Paul Rassinier, himself a prisoner in Buchenwald, states: ‘Rassinier reached the conclusion that the number of Jews who died after deportation is approximately 1,200,000 and this figure, he tells us, has finally been accepted as valid by the Centre Mondial de Documentation Juive Contemporaine. Likewise he notes that Paul Hilberg, in his study of the same problem, reached a total of 896,292 victims. Very many of these people died of epidemics; many were executed’… Did the Nazis actually execute many thousands, tens, or hundred thousands of Jews? Men to whom such murders were nothing had to blow up the figure to millions. Did the doctor perform a number of experiments on living men and women? A few sterilized women and a few castrated men and their horrified tears and grief are not enough to stir the sick and jaded tastes of modern man: make him guilty of performing 17,000 such operations. The evils were all too real: even greater is the evil of bearing false witness concerning them, because that false witness will produce an even more vicious reality in the next upheaval. Men are now ‘reconciled’ to a world where millions are murdered, or are said to be murdered. What will be required in the way of action and propaganda next time?
In other words, insisting that 6 million Jews were killed by Nazis is worse than what the Nazis actually did!
So, this sounds like an internal Christian battle to me. Did Rushdoony say the above? If he did, he is a lothesome anti-semite.
There is nothing inherently anti-semitic about the notion that God’s judged ancient Israel for their sin against God’s prophets and “the son of the landowner.” That what Jesus told them would happen if they did not repent (like Jonah and Nineveh).
You are right, there is nothing anti-semitic about the notion of G-d Judging Israel. However, G-d NEVER gave the nations the go-ahead to slaughter the Jews or engage in genocide and mass murder. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Pogroms, the Holocaust are all examples of the nations going way beyond what G-d has decreed for punishment. The nations will be judged harshly for this during the messianic era.
Regarding your parable. It is severely flawed in it's premise and meaning.
And he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country.
First, G-d doesnt "lease" to the Jews the law and prophets and then go away. G-d is always present. G-d has no "physical son". David, Solomon and Israel are all called G-ds son, or first born.
38 But when the vinedressers saw the son, they said among themselves, 'This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.'
G-d has given the vindressers (Jews) an everlasting covenant and G-d will NEVER taken away this covenant or "vineyard", therefore this is a false premise. Jesus even admited that the authority rested in the Pharisees.
Matt23: 1Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, 2Saying The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: 3All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.
They said to Him, "He will destroy those wicked men miserably, and lease his vineyard to other vinedressers who will render to him the fruits in their seasons. 43 "Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it."
Again, this a false. No where in scripture does G-d turn over his covenant to non-Jews. The Jews will be punished, return to the Land, rebuild the temple, re-institute sin sacrifices and the gentiles will come to Jerusalem to learn of the law. No nation will EVER replace Israel. (Isaiah 2:3, Ezek 44, Jer 16:19 etc).
Does God Divorce Israel? Israel divorced? NO!
Hmm, well, is present Jerusalem the “new” Jerusalem?
I don’t believe it is, which would make the writer a post millenialist with the Hebrews having been dispossessed by the New Covenant.
Small wonder at the reactions and thanks for the clarification.
That may be the price for truth. Have a nice day.
Yep...how I see it.
Thank you. While I disagree with your interpretation of Scripture in places, I wholeheartedly agree that even though I may disagree with you in some of the particulars, it is out of a great love and respect for our shared salvation that I still consider you a Brother.
The Marcoin heresy that I reacted to so violently is, bluntly put, a vile, evil twisting of Scripture that no blood-bought Christian could ever tolerate much less agree with. For others to attempt to smear their Brothers with this heresy by linking a disagreement about Eschatology to this...bunk...is beyond the pale, especially given the fact that the core tenant of the Dispensational view is that God, being One, does not change and is the same yesterday, today and forever.
The core tenant of the Marcoin heresy is that YHWH was a false God and that Jesus replaced Him. That’s blatent, bald-faced paganism and I and those other Dispy’s that I know will have no part of it. I, naturally enough, can’t speak for some of the larger names in the Dispy camp as I don’t know them personally, but those who I do know would never hold to this heresy, or even a shade of it, as we were accused of by others.
Now, that being said, you said that Dispensationalism holds some weak spots. While I am not greatly versed in the various schools of thought within the Dispy camp, I am fairly well schooled in the Scriptures as a whole and would like to address some of the areas that you see as a weakness, beginning with the charge that Dispy’s hold to the idea that God is a polygimist (sp?).
I reject this idea in the understanding that the Godhead, consisting of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, is made up of three Persons but only one God.
In the Old Testament (Deut. 6:4), we are told that “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God [is] one LORD:” or, literally, that YHWH elohim is YHWH. This provides our first point of reference that the LORD God is One God and not multiple gods.
Furthermore, the Old Testament and the New Testament both lay out the seperate personhoods of each portion of the Trinity. As each portion of the Trinity can have it’s own will, can speak and can love, this proves that each portion shows the hallmarks of personhood. Furthermore, each person in the Trinity has a different function. The Father chooses who will be saved, the Son redeems them and the Spirit seals them. Other proofs can be shown if you wish, but I suspect that you agree, since most who hold to the Reformed viewpoint uphold the Nicene Creed, which is as complete a description of the Trinity as you can find in one place in the early writings.
All that was to say this. If Israel was the wife of the Father, and the Church is the Bride of the Son (Lamb), then why is it polygami to say that two of the three persons of the trinity are wed to different groups of people? I understand that there’s some confusion in regards to historical Israel as opposed to Spiritual Israel, but again I don’t see a problem here, especially if the prophets were correct in stating that all of Israel will be saved. Historical Israel is the wife of the Father, Spiritual Israel (the Church) is the bride of Christ and both are considered the people of God. Where’s the problem?
Yep...a dastardly Replacment Theology stance indeed. And it’s completely vile.
For the record, I believe RJR was of the opinion that God’s judgment against national Israel was limited in time and space to first century Jerusalem circa AD70. The Crusades, the Inquisition, etc didn’t factor into revealed divine judgment. They were human atrocities. Even if he were to suggest that the numbers are not as what is generally accepted, he makes his feelings for the atrocity of the Holocaust quite apparent.
Regarding your parable. It is severely flawed in it's premise and meaning.
That the gospel parable, not my own. As is what you find objectionable in most of the rest of your comments.
Does that still mean I’m the anti-Christ?
The guard against that is to stop accusing other Christians of being heretics and anti-semetic just because they don’t believe your Replacement Theology, which IS anti-semetic.
By stating the following “However, what you’ve described sounds similar to the theory of the dispensationalists who had Israel as the wife of the Father in the OT and the Church as the wife of Christ in the NT. Sounds like the Marcion heresy.” you attempted to link me, as well as all Dispensationalists, with a vile, repugnant heresy that was the very definition of anti-semetic in that it claimed that YHWH, the God of Israel, was actually a demiurge or Satan in disguise.
Furthermore, it is a well established fact that Replacement Theology, which you subscribe to if you defend your statement that God has divorced Israel and has/will marry the Church during the Marriage of the Lamb, is anti-semetic in that it directly led to the evils unleashed on the Jews during the 20th Century.
Finally, I question your salvation for two reasons. First is your attack upon Dispensationals to the point that you question their actual purpose and salvation. (I’ve seen you multiple times stating that Dispensationism is born of Satan. How much more can you accuse us of?)
How can you say that you’re born again if you hate your own Brothers and how can your posts be construed as anything other than hate and disdain towards us?
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