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covenants, believing that their spiritual destiny is either to perish or become a part of the new religion that superseded Judaism (whether Christianity or Islam).1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.
Simple math.
It rained for 40 days and 40 nights. (Or was that "Prophetic Hyperbole"?).
There are roughly 60,000 minutes in a 40 day period. The rain covered the highest mountain in the world which is roughly 30,000 feet above sea level. That would mean that the rain fell at a constant rate of 6 inches per minute. I doubt anyone could survive even 5 minutes of that kind of downpour.
It should be obvious to anyone who interprets Scripture in light of Scripture that Jesus was using prophetic hyperbole.
If Jesus used "prophetic hyperbole" then why should we believe anything Jesus said? How do we know he wasn't using hyperbole when he said that we would be granted "eternal life"? How do you know that he wasn't using Hyperbole when he said he would be with us forever?
If Christ foretold the future by exaggerating it, then he was a False Prophet. You can't get around that. The Jews would have been justified in stoning him.
And that when He is seen, the Jews would convert (Zech 12:10)
It is amazing what you guys attempt to leave out.
Yet, all (except Judas)were saved men before Christ went to the Cross.
So, clearly their salvation was not based on what we have to believe to be saved, that Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead and is now at the right hand of the Father.
Their salvation was based on believing that Jesus was their Messiah and the Son of God (Mat.16:16)
The context is the Jews and their suffering, and only 1/3 survive to see Christ return in His glory. (Zech 13:9)
the highest mountain in the world which is roughly 30,000 feet above sea level.
That is the case in this era. Was it the case in the world that then was?
Sorry -- I don't see that John's text is limited to that first 26 AD coming. It can very well apply to that first preterist ethereal coming in 70 AD.
You know that it does not apply to partial preterist (like you find around here) because you know that we have consistently affirmed a future bodily second coming.
I know nothing of the sort. If partial preterists confess that Christ came in 70 AD in some way other than in the flesh, then John's text covers them.
Do you confess that Jesus Christ came not in the flesh but in some other way in 70 AD????
It doesn't say 'clan' it says 'family'.
Now, deal with the actual words in scripture-which in Matthew 24:30 is earth, not just the Jews see him as is made clear in Rev.1:7.
Moreover, that very verse contradicts what you are trying to push since the Jews didn't mourn for Christ as an only son when he appeared over Jerusalem.
As for John, Christ is speaking about the Apostles and disciples who are going to spread the Gospel.
Paul is speaking of the final Christian generation in 1Thess.4 that is taken home.
Christ mentions a generation that will not see death in Jn.11:26
Finally, 1Thess.4:16 doesn't say trumpet call, it says with the trump of God, which is God speaking
Rev.1: 10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet,
Rev.4 1 After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.
So, in reality while you claim to compare scripture with scriptures, you simply change the words to make them fit your own preconceived theological system simply ignore the differences.
A nice tidy system, but it is not the Bible.
Did the flood occur on a different world?
I suspect that the oceans were a lot lower than they are now. I suspect that much of the ocean water we see now is residual water from the flood. So if anything, 6 inches per minute is a conservative estimate.
Do you think the rain that God sent to destroy the earth came down like a gentle spring shower?
What history books are you reading?
There was no Roman Catholic church in AD70. There was no hierarchy and all the trapping we associate with Romanism. Your logic is failing you.
Because you choose not to.
It is difficult to carry on a discussion with someone who is intellectually dishonest to the degree you are.
Are we in the Millennial Kingdom now?
These dispensationalist discussions can be rancorous, but they don't have to be made more complicated by those kinds of misstatements.
Intellectual dishonesty is the hallmark of the preterist position.
I distinctly remember Paul writing a long letter to that Church.
But partial preterists also believe that Jesus Christ came in 70 AD in a way other than in the flesh. Am I correct????
A partial preterist is a full preterist who, when backed into a corner, denies that they are a preterist at all.
If you are referring to the "thousand years" of Rev. 20, the answer is yes. Satan is bound from deceiving the nations, and the saints are reigning with Christ.
The term millennial kingdom is a premil/dispensational notion that I prefer not to use since it connotes Jesus sitting on a physical throne in earthly Jerusalem at some indeterminate point in the future.
You are apparently as confused as the Roman Catholic church which admits to no other. It is no wonder that you cannot understand folks when they use normal terms in a normal fashion.
Amen to that --
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