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covenants, believing that their spiritual destiny is either to perish or become a part of the new religion that superseded Judaism (whether Christianity or Islam).1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.
Funny, that is the formula for making dispensationalists, not eradicating them.
Sure I did. What did I miss?
Will keep a look out for the refs as I get better physically.
Don’t feel like looking them up at present.
I would have thought that all the mebers of a group who scream (rather . . . . -ly . . . about Dispys going to other sources
would have been on top of all the prophetic verses they love to deride, dismiss, deny and ignore so chronically.
You either have them or you don’t, you use this excuse all the time, post them if you have them
Like the cultists do. See Eddy, Mary Morse Baker Glover Patterson.
They have itching ears, and will run, no gallop, after everypiece of “news”
In your dreams.
Run of the mill dispies get most of their theology from the corner "Christian" bookstore hawking the wares of folks like Hagee and Osteen.
I know literally dozens of folks that have attended dispensational Bible schools and seminaries that are now solidly Reformed non-dispensationalists.
I have yet to meet or hear of someone who came out of a non-dispensational background or attended a conservative school in the Reformed tradition that gave it all up to become a hard core dispie.
Possible, but unlikely. The migration, thankfully, seems to be the other way.
Prayer, education, and the power of the Holy Spirit.
Funny, that is the formula for making dispensationalists, not eradicating them.
= = =
INDEED.
Sometimes I care that my priorities are not your prioties.
Most of the time I don’t give a rip
Or Mormons when challenged "I'll look it up later and get back to you", then never come back
You are well enough to post online and add your caustic comments, but not "well enough" to look up your authority. Give me a break.
In case you missed it, Gary DeMar gives us an interesting example of how the dispies help God say what He means to say:
Chuck Missler attempts to get around the description of ancient war implements by claiming that the various Hebrew words “is simply 2,500-year-old language that could be describing a mechanized force.” The word translated “horse,” “actually means leaper” that “can also mean bird, or even chariot-rider.” He tells us that the Hebrew word translated “sword” “has become a generic term for any weapon or destroying instrument.” In a similar way, “arrow” means “piercer” and “is occasionally used for thunderbolt” and could be “translated today as a missile.” We are to believe that “‘Bow’ is what launches the [missile].” Is Missler trying to tell us that when Ezekiel wrote “bow” and “arrow” he really meant a launching pad for a missile? To follow his interpretive methodology requires us to believe that the meaning of the Bible has been inaccessible to the people of God for nearly 2500 years. Missler, like nearly all end-time prognosticators, breaks all the rules of exegesis. ( The Battle of Gog and Magog: Prophetic Deja Vu)
The last bunch of full preterists to join the forum were all banned as a group because, despite being given several opportunities to disavow Christian Identity along with its racism and anti-Semitism, they refused to do so.
By carefully checking my past posts you will see that I'm not a "full preterist". See here for example.
I know, topcat54 - it is a warning directed to anyone lurking, thinking they’ll try another run at infiltrating this forum. There is a “so what.”
Sorry. It looked like it was directed right at me.
I didn’t know that.
AMEN!
The real problem with dispensationalism is that it is basically a political motivation dressed up in theological clothing. Decent politics; faulty theology.
"For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel." -- Romans 9:6
The timing of events tells us quite a bit about why something occurs (which is one of the major reasons brain-dead schools no longer teach timelines.) What was happening in the mid-19th century (besides the creation of dispensationalism) that transformed the planet from an agrarian society to a mechanical society?
God has always taken for Himself a peculiar people and those people have been graced exactly the same way since the beginning of time -- with faith.
Anything that gives a pass to people now for the reward of some future earthly paradise is fooling themselves and the people they hope to help.
He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great." -- Luke 6:47-49"Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he is like:
So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation." -- Hebrews 9:27-28"And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:
They show their hands when they argue that Adam means white. They sometimes argue that Israel and Jews are no more special to God than Yemen and Arabs.
When the last group refused to condemn Christian Identity along with its anti-Semitism and racism, they were unceremoniously booted.
IMO that's what full preterism is to partial preterism -- a manufactured stumblingblock intended to confuse and mangle the truth of Christ risen today. Full preterism has been denounced by partial preterists as heresy.
Most partial preterists, if not all, are reformed, and therefore they see no value in ethnicity. We are "all one in Christ Jesus."
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