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covenants, believing that their spiritual destiny is either to perish or become a part of the new religion that superseded Judaism (whether Christianity or Islam).1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.
when
Verses 20,24 are not included in the report of the Olivet discourse as given by Matthew and Mark. Two sieges of Jerusalem are in view in that discourse. Luke 21:20-24 refers to the siege by Titus, A.D. 70, when the city was taken, and verse 24 literally fulfilled. But that siege and its horrors but adumbrate the final siege at the end of this age, in which the “great tribulation” culminates. At that time the city will be taken, but delivered by the glorious appearing of the Lord Revelation 19:11-21. The references in ; Matthew 24:15-28,; Mark 13:14-26 are to the final tribulation siege; Luke 21:20-24 to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. In Luke the sign is the compassing of Jerusalem by armies Luke 21:20 in ; Matthew 24:15; Mark 13:14 the sign is the abomination in the holy place. 2 Thessalonians 2:4.
21:24 And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.
http://bible.crosswalk.com/Commentaries/ScofieldReferenceNotes/srn.cgi?book=lu&chapter=021
Amazing that the note was originally written in 1907 (this is from 1917).
No Israel-yet.
Jerusalem not in Jewish hands-yet.
Still Scofield wrote about it in his notes as a certain future event that hadn't happened-yet.
In the last days scoffers would come because the Lord hadn't returned-yet.(2Pe.3
Yes, but not slicing and dicing per Scofield's Notes.
The notion that Matthew was for a primarily Jewish audience and Luke for a gentile audience clearly supports the reading that Matthew 24 was using "abomination of desolation" (familiar to Jewish audience) while Luke 21 would use Jerusalem surrounded by armies to describe the same event.
Where the dispensationalist goes overboard is to assume that Matthew is exclusively to the Jews while Luke is somehow exclusively to gentiles, and use that to cloud their interpretation of the texts, and, in this case, to foresee two entirely different events.
And, for the record, nobody came up with this erroneous view of two entirely different events prior to Scofield.
Levity is not allowed in the Religion section of FR.
"4 who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God."Did this event already happen in 70 AD at the destruction of the temple or is this still in the future?
This has been gone over before. One of Paul's metaphor for the church is as the temple. The picture is not of a Romanian creep taking up residence in a reconstructed temple building at the end of time, but of an arch-deceiver arising in the midst of the church. IMHO, yet future.
In order for something to be considered good satire it must have a least a bit of truth in it.
You are obviously not a good satirist.
The Man of Lawlessness: A Preteristic Postmillennial Interpretation of 2 Thessalonians 2 by Dr. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.
I personally have not worked through all the implications of 2 Thess. 2.
It may not be a damnable heresy, but it is most assuredly an aberrant teaching within the Church. It is divisive of the people of God by its very nature. It destroys the overall unity and purpose of the Word of God. It makes Christ appear as a schizophrenic wrt the races.
All that is not a good thing.
Are you sure about that??? Are you sure that others before him, like for example Spurgeon, didn't also foresee the return of the Jews to the Land of Promise when they read the words of the prophets in their Sola Scriptura Bibles.
Who's he??? another preterist???
An arch-deceiver arising in the midst of the church??? A scoffer perhaps ala II Peter 3? a preterist scoffing at the prophecies of the return of Jesus to the land of Israel?
That's not future -- it's a present reality within and without the church.
ping
I don’t get any of this and I’m not sure why it’s important. For one thing, there’s the statement to the effect that God has no active plan for the Jews because they’ve rejected Christ as the Messiah? I’m quite sure that there are Jews all over the world who convert to Christianity every day of every week of every year. Isn’t that “part of the plan”? I’m not trying to be obtuse; it’s simply an issue I’ve never researched or really been exposed to notwithstanding my lifelong, heartfelt beliefs and active participation in an Orthodox Christian community.
The context of this discussion is the destruction of the temple, and whether Matthew and Luke have two different events in view. If you have some evidence that would contradict my statement that no one taught this notion of two different events, one past and one future, before it appeared in Scofield’s Notes (or some other Irvingite/Darbyite pedigree), then please share it.
This interpretation is a direct outgrowth of the dispensational notion of the radical distinction between Israel and the Church. Spurgeon did not hold to any such erroneous view.
So just when did Cesar Nero sit in the Temple in Jerusalem????
But Spurgeon did believe that the Jews would be regathered to the land of Promise, didn't he??? Perhaps Schofield read some of his notes on the subject, and was influenced by them.
Your analysis is correct. The Jews’ future is tied to faith in God by Messiah Jesus, and their being regrafted into the people of God along with believing gentiles, which now goes under the identity of the Church. This has been the view of the Church for 2000 years.
This article is intended to exposes the dispensation error; that there is a future for the Jews apart from the new covenant Church. In fact, the most interesting part of their future happens after the Church is "raptured" from the earth, just before the second coming.
Preterists ignore their own inconsistencies while gleefully pointing out everyone else's.
That view is not unique to Spurgeon. There were many churchmen throughout the centuries, but especially in the last two or three among the Puritans for example, who believe that God would reestablish the Jewish people in the land after they turned to Jesus as Messiah in faith. The key here is after they believed. They also believed that this would happen in conjunction with a general increase in the effectiveness of the gospel throughout all the world. Many people in many nation would be coming to Christ. The Jews would be provoked to jealousy, and they to would come to faith in Messiah.
All this happens without a "great tribulation" or massive murder of Jews living in Israel, and without the secret "rapture" of the Church, without an antichrist, etc. The dispensational scheme is unnecessary to seeing a blessed future for Jewish people who some to faith in Jesus as Messiah and are regrafted into the people of God/body of Christ.
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