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covenants, believing that their spiritual destiny is either to perish or become a part of the new religion that superseded Judaism (whether Christianity or Islam).1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.
INDEED.
And, the heart attitude seems to be crucial in such discerning projects.
At this point, I’d best hush! LOL.
Thanks for your astute observations so often timely and helpful to all with a heart to be helped.
Thank you oh so very much for all your kind words of encouragement, dear brother in Christ!
You got that right. Many of these Preterists have the audacity to lecture Roman Catholics on the doctrine of Sola Scriptura while they themselves deny the meanings of the scriptures themselves with their allegorical meanderings worthy of their patriarch Origen.
The preterist position reduces God to man's level. It is being argued that because we can't conceive of how it could be done that therefor it won't happen. I don't believe God will need to use any of man's inventions. If God wants to appear to the entire world simultaneously it will happen.
God said he made a human being out of mud...And he made a woman out of a rib that was created in the mud...
Now there’s a far-fetched story for ya...
And here’s a good one for ya...Some guy named Jesus claims he was dead...Didn’t have a drop of blood in his veins but he not only came back to life, but he says he now sits up in heaven...
Now you’d think if someone could believe THAT stuff, he wouldn’t worry about a little thing like clouds...
Actually, I think you’re quite right.
***The preterist position reduces God to man’s level. It is being argued that because we can’t conceive of how it could be done that therefor it won’t happen. I don’t believe God will need to use any of man’s inventions. If God wants to appear to the entire world simultaneously it will happen.***
You forget that the Lord Jesus took the form of a man. Would you mind telling me how a man can appear simultaneously to the whole world.
***And the entire world will see Him now that we have TV! ***
BTW, aparently you missed my correct observation that only American arrogance would presume that the whole world has TeeVee.
Perhaps.
But not absolutely so.
As long as one individual from each people group; language group; tribe saw Him coming on TV, I think at least some of those prophecies would be fulfilled. It's already highly likely that every tribe and language has SOME member/former member working and living in a city around TV. In another 5-10 years, it will be even much more likely.
But I fairly strongly agree with those who contend that God doesn't need TV for Christ to be seen by all individuals on earth. And, that He could do that any number of ways. He's not exactly . . . limmited . . . except, in a sense, in the minds of REPLACEMENTARIANS by REPLACEMENTARIAN CONSTRUCTIONS ON REALITY. LOL.
Certainly the coming IN THE CLOUDS as HIS 2ND COMING AS CONQUERING KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS TO VANQUISH SATAN AT ARMAGEDDON
WILL BE
A VERY OVERTLY VERY DRAMATIC COMING AND DOINGS ACCORDINGLY. The idea that such a coming transpired ephemerally in sort of a secret decoder ring affair is
beyond even ALICE IN WONDERLAND MATRIX MANGLED SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY PREPOSTEROUS.
It would be more reality based to believe in the tooth-fairy, Santa Clause and Big Foot all being relatives from Hoboken.
Your observation is incorrect, it just shows how little of the Bible you know.
The earth (not land), will have TV so they can worship the beast-the anti-Christ will make sure of it, along with getting his mark (666), something else that were also impossible a just a short time ago, but now with chip technology is very doable. (Rev.13:15-16)
I agree, but the fact remains that the technology now exists to make both the appearing of our Lord visible at once all over the world and the worship of the beast as well.
Also, the taking of the mark (666) with chip technology, and a cashless society,(note the Visa ads), making it impossible to buy or sell without it.
Add to this, Israel back in the Land in fulfillment of prophecy (Isa.11:2) and in control of Jerusalem, and we can see the outlines of the comeing events of Revelation.
We can also throw in for good measure, the UN, the European Union and our building up Babylon (Iraq) etc.
They do with the 2nd Advent prophetical scriptures exactly what the unbelieving Jews do to the 1st Advent prophetical scriptures, they attempt to reason them away with double-talk-'that doesn't really mean that'
If the 1st Advent scriptures were literal and fulfilled to the letter, (and they were) so will be the 2nd Advent ones as well.
We may not understand all of the details, for example, who would have thought that Christ would end up in a manger, in Bethlehem, due to the taxing of Rome and then return back to Galilee
That was a fact that prophecy did not reveal in scripture, and unbelieving Jews, not knowing that Christ had, in fact, been born in Bethlehem,(Mic.5:2) actually used that scripture justify their own rejection of Christ(Jn.7:40-43).
Thus, it is nonsense to say that we are to know in detail how each 2nd Advent prophecy will be accomplished-only that they will.
But one thing is very certain, this generation can see more clearly, with the return of Israel, their control of Jerusalem, new technology, the rise of ecumenalism-the return to Rome, the European Union, ancient Babylon being rebuilt, etc how things could happen.
I am stunned that you could say such a thing!
A Roman Catholic, according to the Bible is no better then any other unsaved person, he is just more deceived, thinking he is.
But it shows the deep, deceptive roots that ecumenalism has when you would defend Romanism as a postive anything!
Then scripture wasn't fulfilled. (Rev.1:7).
Your view of scripture is not much different then that who preach a false New Age (gnostic) Christ, that He came in spirit, but not physically.
All prophetical scripture will be fulfilled to the exact detail, including all eyes on earth,(Rev.1) seeing Him when He comes back in clouds (Acts 1)
I am sure those men and women, written about in Foxes book of Martyrs would disagree with you on how 'positive' the Papacy is.
Amen.
Amen
It is often said that eschatology is not a salvation issue. However, it is a salvation issue in the days when that eschatology is to be fulfilled -- as at His first advent. Those who were looking for the Messiah and knew that his coming was near at his first advent were the ones who received Him and what He had to say.
Christ said that in His Father's house there were many mansions, and He was going to prepare a place for us (Jn.14:2).
He was also going to return again for us (Jn.14:3)
That is a physical place and there is a generation that Christ will return for (1Thess.4:16), a generation that can cry out,
O death where is thy sting, O grave where is thy victory (1Cor.15:55), since that generation of Christians will know neither.
“Context determines what word meaning is used in a translation, and clearly, the translators knew that the context demanded ‘earth’ and not ‘land’ in those verses and books.”
Putting them in context means putting all of the verses concerning a particular prophecy together. Therefore, you are not putting them in context because you’re ignoring the very same prophecy in Zechariah and the word “tribes” in the verses.
Again, the Bible does not contradict itself. You cannot interpret a verse in a way that renders it in conflict with what is so clear elsewhere in Scripture.
I never said it was. If you just take time to actually read the bible instead at looking at it through a system, maybe you will begin to see what it actually says for yourself.
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