Posted on 10/26/2007 9:00:59 PM PDT by topcat54
Replacement theology has become dispensationalism's latest prophetic boogeyman. If you want to end a debate over eschatology, just charge your opponent with holding to replacement theology. What is “replacement theology,” sometimes called “supersessionism,” and why do dispensationalists accuse non-dispensationalists of holding it? Here’s a typical dispensational definition:
Replacement Theology: a theological perspective that teaches that the Jews have been rejected by God and are no longer God’s Chosen People. Those who hold to this view disavow any ethnic future for the Jewish people in connection with the biblical covenants, believing that their spiritual destiny is either to perish or become a part of the new religion that superseded Judaism (whether Christianity or Islam).1
“Replacement theology” is dispensationalism’s trump card in any debate over eschatology because it implies anti-semitism. Hal Lindsey attempted to use this card in his poorly researched and argued The Road to Holocaust.2 He wove an innovative tale implying that anyone who is not a dispensationalist carries the seeds of anti-semitism within his or her prophetic system. This would mean that every Christian prior to 1830 would have been theologically anti-semitic although not personally anti-semtic.
As Peter Leithart and I point out in The Legacy of Hatred Continues,3 it’s dispensationalists who hold to a form of replacement theology since they believe that Israel does not have any prophetic significance this side of the rapture! Prior to the rapture, in terms of dispensational logic, the Church has replaced Israel. This is unquestionably true since God’s prophetic plan for Israel has been postponed until the prophetic time clock starts ticking again at the beginning of Daniel’s 70th week which starts only after the Church is taken to heaven in the so-called rapture. Until then, God is dealing redemptively with the Church. Am I making this up? Consider the following by dispensationalist E. Schuyler English:
An intercalary4 period of history, after Christ’s death and resurrection and the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, has intervened. This is the present age, the Church age. . . . During this time God has not been dealing with Israel nationally, for they have been blinded concerning God’s mercy in Christ. . . . However, God will again deal with Israel as a nation. This will be in Daniel’s seventieth week, a seven-year period yet to come.5
According to English and every other dispensationalist, the Church has replaced Israel until the rapture. The unfulfilled promises made to Israel are not fulfilled until after the Church is taken off the earth. Thomas Ice, one of dispensationalism’s rising stars, admits that the Church replaces Israel this side of the rapture: “We dispensationalists believe that the church has superseded Israel during the current church age, but God has a future time in which He will restore national Israel ‘as the institution for the administration of divine blessings to the world.’”6
Dispensationalists claim that their particular brand of eschatology is the only prophetic system that gives Israel her proper place in redemptive history. This is an odd thing to argue since two-thirds of the Jews will be slaughtered during the post-rapture tribulation, and the world will be nearly destroyed. Charles Ryrie writes in his book The Best is Yet to Come that during this post-rapture period Israel will undergo “the worst bloodbath in Jewish history.”7 The book’s title doesn’t seem to very appropriate considering that during this period of time most of the Jews will die! John Walvoord follows a similar line of argument: “Israel is destined to have a particular time of suffering which will eclipse any thing that it has known in the past. . . . [T]he people of Israel . . . are placing themselves within the vortex of this future whirlwind which will destroy the majority of those living in the land of Palestine.”8 Arnold Fruchtenbaum states that during the Great Tribulation “Israel will suffer tremendous persecution (Matthew 24:15–28; Revelation 12:1–17). As a result of this persecution of the Jewish people, two-thirds are going to be killed.”9
During the time when Israel seems to be at peace with the world, she is really under the domination of the antichrist who will turn on her at the mid-point in the seven-year period. Israel waits more than 2000 years for the promises finally to be fulfilled, and before it happens, two-thirds of them are wiped out. Those who are charged with holding a “replacement theology viewpoint” believe in no inevitable future Jewish bloodbath. In fact, we believe that the Jews will inevitably embrace Jesus as the Messiah this side of the Second Coming. The fulfillment of Zechariah 13:8 is a past event. It may have had its fulfillment in the events leading up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Contrary to dispensationalism’s interpretation of the Olivet Discourse, Jesus' disciples warned the Jewish nation for nearly forty years about the impending judgment (Matt. 3:7; 21:42–46; 22:1–14; 24:15–22). Those who believed Jesus’ words of warning were delivered “from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10). Those who continued to reject Jesus as the promised Messiah, even though they had been warned for a generation (Matt. 24:34), “wrath has come upon them to the utmost” (1 Thess. 2:16; cf. 1 Thess. 5:1–11; 2 Pet. 3:10–13).
Before critics of replacement theology throw stones, they need to take a look at their own prophetic system and see its many lapses in theology and logic.
Read Part Two of this article...
2. Hal Lindsey, The Road to Holocaust (New York: Bantam Books, 1989). The address for Bantam Books is 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York.
3. Gary DeMar and Peter J. Leithart, The Legacy of Hatred Continues: A Response to Hal Lindsey’s The Road to Holocaust (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 1989).
4. Inserted into the calendar.
5. E. Schuyler English, A Companion to the New Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 135.
6. Thomas Ice, “The Israel of God,” The Thomas Ice Collection: www.raptureready.com/featured/TheIsraelOfGod.html#_edn3
7. Charles C. Ryrie, The Best is Yet to Come (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1981), 86.
8. John F. Walvoord, Israel in Prophecy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1962), 107, 113. Emphasis added.
9. Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, “The Little Apocalypse of Zechariah,” The End Times Controversy: The Second Coming Under Attack, eds. Tim LaHaye and Thomas Ice (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2003), 262.
But, according to Dispensationalism, one is a Jew who has the right blood. They are the special ones.
"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel." -- Mark 1:15
"Therefore say I unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you [chief priests and elders of the people], and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof."[Matthew 21:43]
That nation according to the prophets will be the one that returns to the Land of Israel from the Diaspora.
It seems like a lot of twisting of Scripture and hypothisizing about the future in order to bring about some trendy political end that changes by the decade.
Psalm 69:22
Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap.
69:23 Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not; and make their loins continually to shake.
69:24 Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them.
69:25 Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents.
69:26 For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten; and they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded.
69:27 Add iniquity unto their iniquity: and let them not come into thy righteousness.
69:28 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous.
69:29 But I am poor and sorrowful: let thy salvation, O God, set me up on high.
69:30 I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving.
69:31 This also shall please the LORD better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs.
69:32 The humble shall see this, and be glad: and your heart shall live that seek God.
69:33 For the LORD heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners.
69:34 Let the heaven and earth praise him, the seas, and every thing that moveth therein.
69:35 For God will save Zion, and will build the cities of Judah: that they may dwell there, and have it in possession.
69:36 The seed also of his servants shall inherit it: and they that love his name shall dwell therein.
Who inherits Zion?
Claims of what??? that the word "nation" in Matthew 21:43 is singular and not plural??? It's right there in every KJV Bible. You will have to take that up with Matthew, and Beza and the KJV translators since you claim to be smarter than they were.
***IOW it wasn’t time for the kingdom to be restored in the first century
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” — Mark 1:15
“Therefore say I unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you [chief priests and elders of the people], and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.”[Matthew 21:43]
That nation according to the prophets will be the one that returns to the Land of Israel from the Diaspora.***
You know that I am completely amused that you think there is something particularly special about your use of the word nation, especially since the people you claim to return to Israel aren’t or won’t be a “nation” but a simple multitude of the same family (remember definition 2) from many “nations.”
And, since the current “nation” of Israel isn’t bearing the fruits we know it can’t be them. They are nothing more than a secular and apostate nation.
Why would Christians be second class believers?
Matt. 15:24-28 But He answered and said,"I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Then she came and worshiped Him, saying, "Lord help me!" But He answered and said "It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs." And she said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters' table." Then Jesus answered and said to her, "O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire,"And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
The image may be tough to think of ourselves as the "little dogs", but what does it matter we are saved. How will the "haughty" remnant of Israel react to see so few of their all too clever brethren and so many of us, who are among the first to believe.
***Claims of what??? that the word “nation” in Matthew 21:43 is singular and not plural??? It’s right there in every KJV Bible. You will have to take that up with Matthew, and Beza and the KJV translators since you claim to be smarter than they were.***
What you are engaging in here is what is called a bait and switch. I have never denied that the appropriate translation is nation. It isn’t a very nice tactic. But, sadly, it is what I have come to expect.
And, since you are now trying to change the argument, I suppose you have no intelligent rebuttal. Does this mean you concede the point?
And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.
Jesus said not a word? Why?
If you want to believe that Christians are “second class” and are “dogs” just because we don’t happen to have the right blood in our veins, then that is your affair. You are even free to justify it with Scripture if you must.
I just want it on record that the ones engaging in this racial preference nonsense aren’t the partial Preterists. We don’t see the racial superiority of anyone. We believe God is not a respector of persons.
“Yes, we dispensationalists know that, but we look not only at the immediate churches that then existed. but we look to them as types of churches that would be representitive of particular periods in church history.”
Where in the Bible does it say that the seven churches have a double meaning?
“The generation that Christ was speaking of was the Jews, who would not cease to exist until all things were completed.”
That sounds very nice, but look at the phrase logically:
The Disciples ask Jesus when? Jesus answers by telling THEM (He says “you”) to watch for the signs. Then Jesus tells them the Jewish race will not be extinct until these things happen?
To my mind, that’s a nonanswer, unlike the following:
Mat. 16:27-28: “For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
Yes, nice and straight forward, unlike the dips and dives of dispensationationalism
I think you are getting this wrong. The Jews are saved last. They will suffer the worst and they will be the fewest of any group to be saved. Once saved by the blood of Jesus they will be like the rest of us, Christians.
***I think you are getting this wrong. The Jews are saved last. They will suffer the worst and they will be the fewest of any group to be saved. Once saved by the blood of Jesus they will be like the rest of us, Christians.***
Contrast that with the gospel we preach. The Lord has not cast away his people whom he foreknew. Even now and today men from THIS nation, tribe, tongue and people are being saved according to the election of grace. And so, all Israel is being saved. For of him and through him and to him are all things.
So you are saying that God is incapable of doing a sovereign work in their lives and circumcising their hearts to know him??? My my my -- and that coming from a Calvinus.
You sure danced around it enough to make a maypole out of it.
***You sure danced around it enough to make a maypole out of it.***
No, what I disagree with is your insistence that a 1st Century word have a 21st Century definition. And, a hyper-literal one at that.
Chew on that a while.
***So you are saying that God is incapable of doing a sovereign work in their lives and circumcising their hearts to know him??? My my my — and that coming from a Calvinus.***
Let me see if I understand you....
It is your contention that just for the Jews, just because they have the right blood in their veins, God will perform an Unconditional Election and regeneration just so he can get this kingdom going???
Well, apart from the fact that the Lord could have done it 2000 years ago and saved his special blood people wholesale slaughter and dispersion, I’d like to be clear, YET AGAIN, that I don’t believe in this EXTREMELY distasteful form of racialism by Dispensationalists. I don’t believe the Lord saves people just because they have the right blood in their veins.
THAT IS NOT THE GOSPEL! I believe it is against the Gospel.
Oh, and it is Calvinists, not Calvinus. One is an identity label of those who have the correct gospel and the other is the inspiration for my name, a beer.
Do you get this from the Bible, or are you making it up?
"For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God." -- Romans 2:28-29
You'd think that alone would be sufficient to convince.
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