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covenants, believing that their spiritual destiny is either to perish or become a part of the new religion that superseded Judaism (whether Christianity or Islam).1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.
Not at all. Without referencing Scofield’s Notes, you show us from the Bible where "the sign of the son of man" must "literally" mean the second coming.
If you come back and say something like, "but it looks like the second coming to me" or "but everyone knows it the second coming", then we will now that your emperor is not wearing any clothes.
Give it a shot Chipper and see what you can do. Exegetes some Scripture for a change.
As I said, what part of "law and prophets" are you doubting?
A) Transformed lives don't accomplish jack squat when working in groups, meaning groups can't be transformed
B) God doesn't plan on transforming lives in the future, or
C) The "transformed life" is but a temporary phenomena.
AMEN!
"So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." -- Acts 19:20
Prevailed at what?
"So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." -- Isaiah 55:11
This earth is not corrupt. Matter is not corrupt. That's the belief of gnostics, and wiccans and Al Gore. Man's nature is corrupt. And that's an important distinction.
This earth was created by God for His glory. And as the word of God is preached through the world to all men, the earth itself will benefit.
If one man on the side of God can move mountains, what can 100 men on the side of God accomplish?
For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." -- Mark 11:22-24 "And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.
This is why, too, the dirt of Israel is no more holy than any dirt on earth. It is the Holy Spirit which indwells men according to the will of God that counts as what is holy and what is not.
So then you do believe it, but you have nothing specific to say about it? Secular Israel as it now stands could go one for many generations or centuries and nothing could happen, is that it?
I just asked you a simple question and never said anything about the second coming. That is what you inferred from it. Is the question too hard for you??? Why am I not surprised. Take a stand for once. Take pride in your 70 AD interpretation. Don't run from it.
Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and keep ye deluding yourselves until that day when I will return unto you and finally accomplish Myself what ye could not do in My Name.
" -- Mark 11:22-24, Pretrib Dispensational VersionThe belief that we are in the end times is eminently more credible than the preterist fantasy of yours that the sign of the Son of man appeared in the heavens over Jerusalem in 70 AD??? LOL
And
And
The Free Republic Flat Earth Society
“A) Transformed lives don’t accomplish jack squat when working in groups, meaning groups can’t be transformed”
Transformed lives don’t accomplish jack squat without a warrant from God; election. It is the “many-few” principle.
Mat 22:14 For many are called, but few [are] chosen.
1 Tim. 4:1, “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;”
2 Pet. 2:1-2, “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.”
Jhn 15:18, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before [it hated] you.”
1Jo 3:13, “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.”
You're arguing with Christ.
"The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it." -- Luke 16:16
This is one of the scariest things I can imagine -- a man of the cloth telling people something terrible is going to happen according to some pagan timekeeper because it is supposedly Scriptural!
Think how this might be used by evil men to wreck havoc and blame it on fate.
Read your verse again!!! Where is the word "fulfilled" -- particularly regarding the Prophets???
"...he shall watch the mountain groweth before him until it fills the whole earth, even unto crushing all the saints beneath it...and keep ye deluding yourselves until that day when I will return unto you and finally accomplish Myself what ye could not do in My Name"
What better way to neuter the word of God and dull the sharp edge of the Gospel than to admit defeat before the battle?
"Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before..."
Based on what?? Some warped view of prophecy invented by some folks 150 years ago that has been discredited for its prognostications over the decades?
God does have a sense of humor. To have secular Israel raised up in 1948 really set off the end times date setters. And now we all are just sitting back watching them twist in the breeze. 1948 1967 1988 2007 2012 ??? Every time one date passes another gets invented. And another book written. And another prophecy conference called. And the beat goes on.
sign of the Son of man appeared
As I said, if you wish to actually do some hard work and exegete Scripture and show us conclusively how "the sign of the son of man" must mean the second coming, please do so. Otherwise recall you are the one sitting with the naked emperor.
This earth is not corrupt. Matter is not corrupt. That’s the belief of gnostics, and wiccans and Al Gore.
The earth and all creation is under the curse of God because of His judgment on sin and like Jericho, must be purged with fire.
Gen. 3:17-19, “...cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
Rom. 8:22-23, “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”
2 Pet. 3:10-14, “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.”
Do Preterist's believe any other prophesies are left to be fulfilled. If so, what would they be? For example, what of the 1,000 year reign?
I'm sorry. If I must repeat myself the answer is "yes". Otherwise I be suffering from the same dysfunction that says Matt 24 and Luke 21 are speaking of two entirely different events.
Several:
Matt. 24:36ff
Matt. 25:31ff
Acts 1:11
1 Cor 15:23b,24,51ff
1 Thess 4:17,18
Rev. 20:7ff, all of 21 and 22
There are probably others.
Specifically, of the "thousand years" since most preterists are postmil or amil, we view that time as running either a) from the first coming of Christ to His second coming, or b) from some undetermined time in the inter-advent age up until the second coming.
Belief is a result of election; not a requirement for it.
And how did God ordain that men would believe?
By the preaching of the Gospel.
And what occurs when men are transformed by the word of God?
All good things.
So since we agree on the method, we're just arguing numbers. Christianity is not a men's club. It is the operating principal of all existence, and as the Gospel is preached, more and more men will know that, by the grace of God, and be converted to Christ.
How do we know this?
At the time of Christ there were dozens of Christians. Today there are over one billion Christians.
Doesn't that look like a God-breathed exponential trend to you?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.