Answering the "Replacement Theology" Critics (Part 1)

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” 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:

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admits that the Church replaces Israel this side of the rapture: “We dispensationalists believe that the church has superseded Israel during the current church age, but God has a future time in which He will restore national Israel ‘as the institution for the administration of divine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.

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).

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.

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 come to faith in Jesus as Messiah and are regrafted into the people of God/body of Christ.

AMEN! "After belief." As we learned earlier, God may choose to cover the infant with grace, but if men are sentient and hear the Gospel, and still remain in disbelief, then they are without excuse.

I just read Spurgeon's sermon...

THE RESTORATION AND CONVERSION
OF THE JEWS (Ezekiel 37)

And you are right, Topcat, restoration of Israel comes only after the Jews have been given faith in Christ.

"Under the preaching of the Word the vilest sinners can be reclaimed, the most stubborn wills can be subdued, the most unholy lives can be sanctified. When the holy "breath" comes from the four winds, when the divine Spirit descends to own the Word, then multitudes of sinners, as on Pentecost's hallowed day, stand up upon their feet, an exceeding great army, to praise the Lord their God...The way in which Israel shall be saved is the same by which any one individual sinner shall be saved...
Israel is to undergo a Spiritual Restoration or a Conversion. The promise is that they shall renounce their idols and, behold, they have already done so. "Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols." Whatever faults the Jew may have besides, he certainly has no idolatry. "The Lord thy God is one God," is a truth far better conceived by the Jew than by any other man on earth except the Christian. Weaned for ever from the worship of all images, of whatever sort, the Jewish nation has now become infatuated with traditions or duped by philosophy. She is to have, however, instead of these delusions, a spiritual religion: she is to love her God. "They shall be My people, and I will be their God." The unseen but omnipotent Jehovah is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth by this ancient people; they are to come before Him in His own appointed way, accepting the Mediator their sires rejected coming into covenant relation with God, for so our text tells us: "I will make a covenant of peace with them." Jesus is our peace, therefore we gather that Jehovah shall enter into the covenant of grace with them, that covenant of which Christ is the federal head, the substance, and the surety. They are to walk in God's ordinances and statutes, and so exhibit the practical effects of being united to Christ Who hath given them peace. All these promises certainly imply that the people of Israel are to be converted to God, and that this conversion is to be permanent, for the tabernacle of God is to be with them, the Most High is, in an especial manner, to have His sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore; so that whatever nations may apostatise and turn from the Lord in these latter days, the nation of Israel never can, for she shall be effectually and permanently converted, the hearts of the fathers shall be turned with the hearts of the children unto the Lord their God, and they shall be the people of God, world without end..."

Not a physical tabernacle, but the perfect sanctuary of Jesus Christ. A converted Israel filled with Christians, just as the world is being filled with Christians. This is Spurgeon's take on Ezekiel 37. And he further states how this is accomplished...

"It is the duty and the privilege of the Christian Church to preach the gospel to the Jewish people, and to every creature, and in so doing she may safely take the vision before us as her guide...."
I was thinking, as I read this chapter just now, that of all the sermons which were ever preached, this sermon to the dry bones is the most Calvinistic, the most full of free grace, of any which were ever delivered. If you will notice it you will find that there is not an "if," or a "but," or a condition in it; and as for free will, there is not even a mention of it. It is all in this fashion: "Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live; and I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord." You see it is all "shalls" and "wills" and covenant purposes. It is all God's decrees declared, and declared, too, as if there were no possibility of man's resisting them. He does not say, "You dry bones shall live if you choose, you shall if you are willing." He doth not say to them, "You shall stand upright and be an exceeding great army if it pleases you to consent to My power." No, it is, "I will," and "you shall." As for will, it is altogether put out of the question, for how shall the dead have a will in the matter? And so, dear friends, I would have the gospel preached both to the Jew and the Gentile with a very clear and distinct note of free, sovereign, almighty grace. Man has a will, and God never ignores that will, but by His almighty grace He blessedly leads it in silken fetters. He never stops to ask that will's consent when He comes forth upon His errands of effectual grace, but He wins that consent by the sweet persuasions of His own omnipotent love. He comes arrayed in the robes of His omnipotent grace, and the most hardened of rebels see at once such an attractive force in the love of God in Christ, that with full consent against their ancient wills they yield themselves captives to the grace of God. I do not believe that the Jews, or anybody else, will ever be converted, as a usual thing, by keeping back any of the doctrines of grace. We must have God's truth, and the whole of it; and more distinct utterances concerning evangelical doctrines and the grace of God are required both for Jews and for Gentiles. Preach, preach, preach, then, but let it be the preaching of Christ, and the proclamation of free grace...
How shall we preach the gospel? Was Ezekiel to go and talk to these bones, but never to say a word to them by way of command? Was he to explain the way of salvation, but never bid them walk in it? No; after he had declared covenant purposes, he was then to say, "Thus saith the Lord, ye dry bones live." And so the message of the gospel minister when he has declared the purposes of divine grace, is to say to sinners, "Thus saith the Lord, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; trust Christ, and you are saved." Whoever you may be, Jew or Gentile, whether your speech be that of the land of Canaan or of a Gentile tongue, whether you spring of Shem, Ham, or Japheth, trust Christ, and you are saved; trust Him, then, ye dry bones, and live. Withered arm, be outstretched; lame men, leap; blind eyes, see ye dead, dry bones, live. The manner of our preaching is to be by way of command, as well as by way of teaching. Repent and be converted, every one of you. Lay hold on eternal life. "Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."

Who cannot give this a heartfelt "AMEN!" But it sure doesn't sound remotely like the dispensational spin. Israel, along with the rest of the planet, prospers by the hearing of the word of God. And as many as are appointed to eternal life will believe.

"So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." -- Acts 19:20

” When it didn’t happen, they merely moved the date up a few years.” (Chuck Smith, Dateline Earth: Countdown to Eternity, p. 26)

“. ... Forty years after 1948 would bring us to 1988.” (Chuck Smith, Future Survival)

“I’m convinced that the Lord is coming for His Church before the end of 1981.” (Chuck Smith, Future Survival)

That’s why God created erasers. Discerning the times is being alert and prepared for the Lord’s return. It is commanded, otherwise the attitude is the same as the preacher:(Eccl. 1:9)”The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

Exodus 12:11-12, “And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the LORD’S passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.”

Mat 16:3, “And in the morning, [It will be] foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O [ye] hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not [discern] the signs of the times?”

Matt. 25:13, “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.”

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