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covenants, believing that their spiritual destiny is either to perish or become a part of the new religion that superseded Judaism (whether Christianity or Islam).1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.
ping to #36 & #40
With all due respect, you are avoiding the issue, vis. that dispensationalists use the word "dispensation" in an entirely different manner than does the Bible.
The Bible never refers to Eden as a dispensation of anything. You know that and I know that. I’m not going to argue with your non responses to my point.
Most of Hanegraff’s show is him trying to get you to either
a) buy his newest book
b) give CRI money so he can use radio time to get you to buy his newest book.
I take it you haven’t listened to the show, then. You may want to sometime. Even if you don’t like him personally, his show usually has well-known and respected guests (such as Lee Strobel, Joni Earekson-Tada, R.C. Sproul).
You did not answer the question:
Was Eden a separate period or was it not? Yes or no.
And you are using the question to avoid the simple fact that your definition of "dispensation" does not match the Bible’s.
Eden was not a "dispensation" according to the way the Bible uses the phrase.
Fear.
You know what the truth is, and you are afraid to answer the question.
The phenomenon is real.
Was Eden a separate period or was it not?
You can try it but it won't work.
I noticed you are doing a great job of ducking the real issue, that dispensationalism has nothing to do with a biblical notion of "dispensation", with your question.
The smell of fear in the afternoon....ahhhhhhh.
Answer the question which came first. You already have been given the data about Eph 1:10 twice. Once this thread and once on another. That’s why I know the odor that’s in the air.
Is Eden a separate period? Yes or No.
No, because it still exists.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
non-responsive
“Was the Garden of Eden a unique period of time in the bible?”
I think it was unique, but not in the way you think, if I understand where you’re going with this.
My understanding is the word “dispensation” in the Bible means administration. You mentioned Eph. 1:10: “to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.”
That’s the NIV translation, “into effect” or “dispensed” or “administered.”
To my knowledge at least, the other verses that contain the word “dispensation” (and there aren’t many of them) don’t concern time at all.
So, you agree that Eden was a unique period of time.
Good.
What word would you use to describe “unique period of time?”
Thanks for the ping to this engaging sidebar, dear brother in Christ!
It was unique because it was before the fall. Not a “dispensation” as you believe. We were all born in Adam but we are born again in Christ by faith alone (Romans 5:12).
There have been only two covenants, works and grace, and there is and has always been only ONE olive tree (Romans 11).
The belief of dispensationalism that there are two separate peoples of God and, therefore, two plans for salvation I believe is totally unbiblical. God saved a remnant of Jewish believers, those who had the spirit of Christ within them. The NT gentile believers were an expansion of that remnant.
You still are not seeing the point.
You have agreed that “Eden” is a separate period in the Bible.
I could ask what things made it separate.
Instead, I asked what you would name the phenomenon of “a separate period” in the Bible.
What would you name that kind of defined period?
It’s very like talking with a Roman Catholic, isn’t it? Try to talk Bible, and all you get is unshakable dogma.
Eph 1:10 clearly uses the term oikonomia in the broader sense of “economy.” There really is little doubt of that.
The reality of separate periods of time revealed in the Bible’s survey of religious history cannot be denied.
Am I the one who’s being stubborn here???
Nope. Earlier systematicians and theologians had no hesitation in using “dispensation” to describe the differing stewardship-arrangements that are undeniable in Scripture. It’s only now, with the deadly-earnest commitment to preserve an unbiblical tradition against its Biblical challenger, that scoffers shrink from its use.
The irony: dispensations are not the distinguishing aspect of dispensationalism, any more than the rapture. ALL CHRISTIANS affirm dispensations, as ALL CHRISTIANS affirm the rapture.
Not sure how early you are talking about, but the common usage (if there was one) had to do with the distinction between what we call the Old Testament and the New Testament.
The Westminster Confession has this language:
5. This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law, it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all foresignifying Christ to come; which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called the old testament.The Westminsterian position is that there is one covenant of grace under two "dispensations", the Old and New Testaments. Thus it was common to speak of the "New Testament dispensation".6. Under the gospel, when Christ, the substance, was exhibited, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper: which, though fewer in number, and administered with more simplicity, and less outward glory, yet, in them, it is held forth in more fullness, evidence and spiritual efficacy, to all nations, both Jews and Gentiles; and is called the new testament. There are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations. (Chapter 7)
I know of no use of that term different from which agrees with the dispensational view Westminster prior to the appearance of JN Darby. E.g., no one before Darby would have made a theological distinction between the "dispensation of Noah" and the "dispensation of Moses".
But if you have some specific reference, I would enjoy seeing it.
ALL CHRISTIANS affirm dispensations, as ALL CHRISTIANS affirm the rapture.
Most Christians affirm the concept of "dispensations" as described above by Westminster. All orthodox Christians affirm the second coming of Christ. We have no need to differentiate what the moderns have come to call the "rapture", which usually is qualified with the words "pre-trib" by those who use it extensively.
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