Awaiting the usual suspects to hurl false accusations of Replacement Theology in 3, 2, 1....
If he is Israel,
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
is he no longer YHvH,
the creator of the universe ?
So.
First, bflr for later reading.
Second, my current strongest distinction for dispensational teaching is that:
Israel = the unfaithful, whoring, divorced wife of God the Father.
The church = the unmarried, betrothed, Bride of Christ.
I have yet to see a commandment telling us to figure out future prophecies.
These arguments that the millenial prophecies were fulfilled during Jesus’ earthly ministry neglect to take into account the millenial prophecies in Revelation, issued after his earthly ministry was over, which match up quite nicely with the OT prophecies.
Everything...
Romans 8, 9, and 10 remain...The description of the Millennium in Revelation remains...The parables in the Gospels remain...Plus thousands of verses in the O.T. remain...
You can't knock out the Millennial reign of Jesus Christ with a few, 'what ifs'...
Dispensationalists, given their so-called "literal hermeneutic," are bound to interpret such passages literally, thereby assign the fulfillment of these prophecies of Isaiah to a future earthly millennium in which Israel co-exists with Gentiles under the reign of the Davidic king (See Walvoord, The Millennial Kingdom, 302-304; and Pentecost, Things to Come, 503-508). In effect, this amounts to the restoration of the monarchy as Jesus takes his place on David's royal throne and rules the nations from this restored Israel.
Yes we do...unapologetically...
That would be Romans 9, 10 and 11...
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The suppositions advanced in this post can only be offered through a deeply flawed hermeneutic that ignores several factors:
o Jesus' flat, literal statement to Pilate: "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight; that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is not my kingdom from hence." (Jn. 18:36)
o conformance to the law of double reference, of the appearances of Jesus The Anointed One: "So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for him shall he apppear the second time without sin unto salvation." (Heb. 9:28); also "I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at the appearing and his kingdom. ... Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing." (2 Tim. 4:1,8)
o a yet-to-come war against the reconstituted nation Israel, existing separately from the person of The Christ, when He will instiute the dead, risen, and reenfleshed David as His earthly Viceroy. (Zechariah 14)
o a yet-to-come millenial kingdom in which overcoming believer-disciples will be resurrected to reign with Him for a thousand years: "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years." (Rev. 20:8)
o a complete differentiation between the Kingdom of Heaven (KOH) and the Kingdom of The God, whose features are as follows:
A lengthy paper resolving the error of confusing these two kingdoms
A table comparing the two kingdoms
It will be very helpful if one reads through the paper so as to better follow the colors in the pictorial chart. It is difficult to imagine that a confessing believer discipled Biblically could come to the conclusion to which the imaginations of the author of this post prefers to a literal-historical interpretation.
"... And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation, even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest; as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness." (2 Pe. 3:15-17)
In the above, I have bolded the word "unlearned," which is better rendered not as "untaught" or "ignorant" but as "undiscipled." That is, fault comes from those who try to gain the ability to teach others from their own unsupervised reading, when they themselves have not been discipled by an accepted discipler-teacher that has cleaved to that plan of Christ which He initiated with His Own disciple-apostles, a procedure they were commissioned under his authority to teach and commission other disciples, and upon which His Church was to be founded.
Amillenialism can not be a mark of a literal-historical hermeneutic, which can be defended, and in which one cannot lie. I believe it can only be a product of reasonings not arrived at by a metaphorical interpretation in which the basis only results in perpetual unresolvable argument and confusion. Beware.
"But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever." (2 Pe. 3:18)
Massive non sequitur. It all looked good until this last paragraph.
Maybe I missed it. Christ hasn't returned yet, either to rapture his saints (Matthew 24:31 which corresponds to Revelation 6:17, Revelation 14:14) prior to his wrath.
Nor has Jesus returned yet seated on a white horse at the head of the host of the saints of the 1st resurrection (Revelation 19:11).
Satan hasn't been chained and cast into the pit (Revelation 20:2,3) "that he should deceive the nations no more." There is a whole lot of deceivin' goin' on and the god of this world seems to be pressing to the pedal to the metal. Just look around.
Where are the resurrected saints ruling and judging,(Revelation 20:4) "reigning with Christ for a thousand years"? "A thousand years" is not TWO thousand years.
As much as I disagree with the pre-tribbers, dispensationalists, univeral churchists, zionists, nothing compares with the impossibility of preterism/amillennialism or whatever it is called.
But is this how the New Testament interprets these messianic prophecies regarding the servant of the Lord?
In order to answer this questions, we must see that the gospel writers interpret these prophecies from Isaiah as fulfilled in the messianic mission of Jesus.
In Hosea 11:1, Hosea predicted a time when “Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” But in Matthew 2:15, the evangelist tells us that Hosea’s prophecy was fulfilled when his parents took Jesus to Egypt to protect him from Herod’s “slaughter of the innocents”
The ramifications for this upon one’s millennial view should now be obvious. If Jesus is the true Israel of God, and if the New Testament writers apply to Jesus those Old Testament prophecies referring to Israel as God’s son or servant, then what remains of the dispensationalist’s case that these prophecies remain yet to be fulfilled in a future millennium? They vanish in Jesus Christ, who has fulfilled them!
The author in these quotes has exposed the logical fallacy at the heart of chr*stianity (any and all kinds of chr*stianity). Supposedly chr*stians believe in J*sus and the "new testament" because they "fulfill" the prophecies of the "old testament." Yet the only grounds for that belief (that J*sus fulfills the prophecies) is the assumed authority of the "new testament" and J*sus to authoritatively interpret those prophecies. But if the authority of J*sus and the NT is assumed, then one is not basing one's chr*stian belief in the prophecies to begin with. One is instead beginning with an assumed belief and then falsely claiming that belief is based on "old testament prophecies."
That is why all forms of chr*stianity--from the most ancient liturgical to the most snake-handling "fire baptized," from the most liberal to the most conservative, from the most anti-Semitic to the most Judaized "messianism," from the most mainstream to the most "out there"--is utter bunk.
Paul tells us that Abraham believed the very same gospel that he preached to the Gentile Galatians.
This is no different from the islamic claim that Abraham was a moslem. It is a later, invented religion retrojecting itself into the past in order to claim a legitimacy it does not possess.