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covenants, believing that their spiritual destiny is either to perish or become a part of the new religion that superseded Judaism (whether Christianity or Islam).1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.
Why, Marlowe, You ought to know better than that!
Replacementarians build theological kingdoms in the sky—the high sky—the verrrrry high sky.
With visions of sugar plums dancing about . . .
and fluffy cotton candy for which to shout . . .
Just envision the Replacementarian heaven . . .
Fantasies upon top of fantasies
& nary a one touching reality
All just ectoplasms of their rantasies.
In their rubber Bible rearranged heaven,
There’s no 4 and 20 elders!
The Jewish Patriarchs have been errr
Fantasized out—very out—of existence.
In fact, any reference to Israel and
the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
has been whitewashed into oblivion.
Though there are a few hasty cases of
SPIRITUAL being plastered over a few
chisled in stone references to ISRAEL.
Usually with very garish bumper sticker
pieces of stretched rubber sorts of things.
And there’s no fruit trees by the River of LIfe.
There’s no music or dancing about.
There’s only dreary little boxes
on solitary little clouds with
Gabriel going around occasionally
whacking heavenly souls on their
knuckles for not reading Josephus
Studiously enough.
Some heaven! No wonder there are
few Jews there. At some point,
even they know an imposter SHAM!
###############
But I guess we shouldn’t be too hard on the Replacmentarian perspective.
It must be quite a trick to get the rubberized Bible into a Gordian knot sufficiently complex to provide for a sterile, dead, tiny white boxed little cell filled heaven
AND
Christ currently reigning over the earth with satan bound and sin and crime banished . . .
and still have to put up with CNN CENTER in Atlanta and all that CONTRARY evidence.
I wonder . . . does Contrarian Preterist Replacementarian theology come out of CNN Center?
Excellent points.
But, oh, dear!
You mean the REplacementarian position is . . . God forbid . . .
—double minded?
—inconsistent?
—hypocritical?
—schlocky rubberized pseudo”logic?”
—off the wall grasping at straws hither thither and yon?
Oh, my.
Who’d a thunk!
/s
What a fitting post in the season of
HO HO HO!
HA HA HA!
LOL! LOL! LOL!
ROTFLOL! ROTFLOL! ROTFLOL!
GTTM! GTTM! GTTM!
Have to give the Jr High Sunday school class some jokes to begin the session. That should be quite sufficient!
And not only that but Josephus does not say what they claim he supposedly said.
I get the feeling that our local group of non-preterist-Preterists and non-replacementatian-replacementarianists have no idea what they believe about the prophecies of the Bible (other than that they do not relate to Israel).
They claim that Christ was being totally and entirely literal when talking about "This Generation" in the Olivet Discourse, but then they allegorize every other event in that sermon to the point that it has no discernable meaning whatsoever.
They are entirely inconsistent in their insistence that they are being entirely consistent.
Isn't partial preterism like being partially pregnant?
Jesus said that every eye would see him when he came in the clouds. If everyone saw him, how come nobody recorded the event?
Ahhhhhhhhhhh
So . . . REPLACEMENTARIAN
FACTUAL PERSONAL ATTACKS
ARE NOW DECREED QUITE KOSHER
from the Replacementarian fantastical fantasized heavenly realm and the SPIRITUALIZED Papal Magicsterical, I gather.
I’m sure the Religion Moderator will be very impressed and bow to the new Replacementarian edicts.
Masterfully and accurately put.
I’m increasingly encouraged for the lurkers.
It would take an uninitiated lurker with some serious . . . intellectual challenges . . . to fall for such brazenly illogical hogwash.
Or else some demonicly blinded ones. There is that concern.
A more appropriate question IMO would be, what happened to the world beginning in AD33 (resurrection and ascension) and culminating in AD70?
The short answer is the end of one system and the beginning of another. The forty years was a time of transition.
Partial preterists do think that Jesus came in the clouds and that it was witnessed.
They’ll take you to Josephus’ hearsay accounts of stange happenings in the heavens at the time of Jerusalem’s destruction.
He “came in the clouds” in 70 AD and one day he’ll come to close up shop.
And they will, at the second coming. As I have said before and demonstrated from Scripture a number of times, not every "cloud coming" in the Bible is the bodily second coming.
Just read Daniel 7. He goes up, not comes down. All with clouds.
Clouds in the Bible are like God’s royal raiment or His divine chariot. To be identified as "coming in clouds" is to be identified as God Almighty Himself. That is why the priests tore their robes in Matthew. 26. They understood exactly what He was saying when He said they would see Him coming in clouds. It was not atmospheric conditions that caught their attention, but the image of God’s throne from places like Daniel 7.
“It doesn’t say land it says earth.”
There’s another good example of not interpreting Scripture in light of Scripture. Who do you think “tribes” referred to? Here’s what it says in Zechariah:
Zechariah 12:10-14: “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son. On that day the weeping in Jerusalem will be great, like the weeping of Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. The LAND will mourn, EACH CLAN BY ITSELF, with their wives by themselves: the clan of the house of David and their wives, the clan of the house of Nathan and their wives, the clan of the house of Levi and their wives, the clan of Shimei and their wives, and all the rest of the clans and their wives.
John 17:15 Jesus was praying for His Disciples, as you’ve said. And note that Jesus was praying for all believers whom He was given. That is for our comfort too. Do you really think God’s will is for the Disciples to endure, for the Hebrews to endure, etc., but that His will makes an exception 2,000 years later by pulling out Christians so that they won’t have to suffer when all the others did?
As for 1 Thes. 4, compare the following verse in Matthew:
Matthew 24:31: And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
with
1 Thess. 4:16: For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
Do you see the similarity? That’s what is meant by interpreting Scripture in light of Scripture, as opposed to through a tunnel as dispensationalists tend to do.
“Clearly 70 AD was not a time of tribulation such as the world had never seen before or would ever see again.”
The Great Flood left only 8 survivors on the whole Earth. Do you think the “Great Tribulation,” according to dispensationalists, will be worse than that?
Have you ever heard of apocalyptic hyperbole? It’s in the Bible and that type of phrasing was used in other places, for example:
Ezekiel 5:9: Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again.
Daniel 9:12: ...Under the whole heaven nothing has ever been done like what has been done to Jerusalem.
Yeh -- its one of those "not in the flesh" second comings that John warned us about [I John 4:2-3].
The enormity of what he was doing was beyond their understanding. I think that this is similar to discussions about Mary. If she truly understood who he was and what he was going to do, why would she go with his brothers to bring him home.
The Apostles had recognized Jesus as the Son of the living God, but they did not understand he was going to sacrifice himself to save us. After the transfiguration the Apostles were still confused asking why hasn't Elijah come first. Jesus had told them what was going to happen, but it wasn't until it did happen that they understood.
I realize that you do not care to read everything I’ve written, but this has been addressed on several occasions from a biblical perspective. E.g.,
Second, Jesus was using dramatic hyperbole or a proverbial method of speech taken directly from the Old Testament. Note the words spoken by Ezekiel regarding the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. "And I will do among you what I have never done, and the like of which I will never do again, because of all your abominations" (Ezek. 5:9). Does this passage teach that Israel endured the worst judgment in human history in the 6th century B.C.? No. No one believes that the destruction wrought by the Babylonians was worse than that of the Romans in A.D. 70. The point is that the destruction will be severe, excruciating and unique. Similarly Daniel says, "by bringing upon us a great disaster; for under the whole heaven such has never been done as what has been done to Jerusalem" (Dan. 9:12). "And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, even to that time" (Dan. 12:1). "The language of v. 19 [i.e., Mk. 13:19 the parallel to Mt. 24:21], as also of Dan, 12:1, which it cites, uses traditional expressions to denote severe tribulation, not simply of Israel but of other people also." (65) For example, such language is even used to describe the anguish of the Egyptians after the tenth plague. "Then there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as was not like it before, nor shall be like it again" (Ex. 11:6; cf. 9:18; 10:14). "The cry of anguish sent up by this destruction will be unique, just as the disaster will be unique." (66)Morison writes regarding Matthew 24:21, "It is superlative in its relation both to the past and to the future. We might explain this superlative mode of representation by the freedom which is universally assumed and accorded in popular speech. Men speak unhesitantly, when referring to anything remarkable, of the 'highest,' the 'greatest,' the 'extremist.' It is an idiom of hyperbolism." (67)
Where in scripture does it say that the throne of David is in heaven????
•He (Jesus) vindicated His ascension to the right hand of the Father by displaying the "all authority" had been granted to Him in heaven and on earth
•He assumed the throne of David in heaven
•He bound Satan from deceiving the nation
•He initiated the task of putting everything under His feet
•He dismantled the old covenant system of types and shadows once and for all time, ending the old covenant priesthood by assuming the new covenant priesthood of Melchizadek
•He instituted the new covenant, ending Judaism as it was then known and constituted
•He temporally punished "this generation" of apostate Jews for their complicity in killing "the son of the landowner"; these were the "days of vengeance"
•He removed the kingdom from old Israel and its leadership and passed it on to the holy nation under the authority of the apostles
•He ratified the permanent union of Jews and gentile into one new man, an expanded new Israel
Between turkey duties, I just have to give this an AMEN!
And contrary to what seems like an even split on this forum, the vast majority of Christians believe every word of this.
I hope you stuffed topcat's post in there as well. That's where it belongs --
If you ever tasted my Thanksgiving feast, you’d realize the compliment you just gave Topcat. 8~)
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