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covenants, believing that their spiritual destiny is either to perish or become a part of the new religion that superseded Judaism (whether Christianity or Islam).1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 I love the KJ. It is the abuse and false doctrines that have arisen because of this. If you read that article carefully it condemns the similar practice in Romanism. It is the deception of pietism as Paul taught in the letters to the Corinthians.
Read the article that is not the case. It is the cult and yes it is a cult that has arisen from unlearned men. It is lengthy but very well thought out. It is also the most scathing rebuke I have ever seen but appropriate in the light of the way our Lord rebuked the Pharisees and Sadducees. They still exist today and their leaven must be discerned and avoided as well as it moves people way from Christ-likeness to angry fundamentalism (stone people to death crowd) which is what these blokes were during Christ’s time here.
Great subject — start another thread and let’s discuss it.
And you?
Bible, NT, OT and Psalms in parallel. Currently Ezra, Psalms and Matthew.
Currently re-reading J. Gesham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism, because some of the problems that infested the church then are popping up again. (Why do the emergents think they're new and fresh?). Stalled in the middle of Thomas Boston's Crook in the Lot. Most recently in the past, Meredith Kline's God, Heaven and Har Magedon. And work related crap (specifically, Ralf Hildebrandt The Book of Postfix), of course.
Various and sundry audio bits. Way of the Master, James White's Dividing Line. Apologetics.com's weekly program. John McArther. Ingris Schleuter's Crosstalk. All when they look intersting, ignored when not. White Horse Inn.
Member in good standing, not under discipline, of a local EFCA church.
Took the TV out about a year ago.
Good for you. I haven't watched with any regularity since Babylon 5 finished it's run, around the turn of the millenium. Too much dreck, too much waste of my precious time.
We are like grass. Who wants to explain to God why they pissed away so much time watching Gilligan's Island?
Why?
Honestly trying to gauge your state, in order to make a proper answer.
No one is denying that Jesus will come again, and once again I have no idea what a “preterist” believes, I can only know what the bible says by intentional study. If any man lack wisdom let him ask the Lord for some.
I will and will love having you on there. You are a great brother and defender of the faith. I’ll ping you and others when I start. I am very busy getting ready for a mini-vacation and will start it when I get back from Canada on the 18th.
As long as Jesus is my Lord and Saviour, I don't care if I have an extra chromosome. :-)
A preterist believes what you have been defending for some 200 posts -- that the abomination of desolation is past, along with virtually all of Matthew 24 -- including the "coming of the Lord" in verse 30.
Jesus returned to build his temple,He returned as God coming to his people and that's what Malachi says will happen.
We have ample words in prophecy and scripture to know that. Where we differ is that I believe that Christ is on his throne today, has been for a couple thousand years and that the temple being rebuilt is Christ and his church, but apparently you think he needs a chair someplace in Jerusalem. If that were true then you really need to built on an addition to your house if he and the Father are come to dwell with you.
The new Jerusalem is Christ's people, there is plenty of scripture that tells you that, and in fact Augustine wrote a book called just that, The City of God.
From what I can see, some really have aproblem believing Christ when he said his kingdom was a spiritual kingdom, that he has returned and is building the temple, one lively stone at a time. Is there an end? Of course, and nobody knows when it will be. If we didn't believe that Christ was coming again, why then do we watch?.
In the postmil. and amil. thought when did the 1,000 yr reign occur?
Ping me. I'm interested.
Once again let’s note for the record it says "the sign of the son of man in heaven shall appear". It quite plainly does not say that that Jesus will physically appear anywhere.
I take it you have never read Josephus. The account of all that happened surrounding the sack of Jerusalem and destruciton of the temple in AD70.
Chipper, if you are satisfied with not being able to exegete a single passage of Scripture and not being able to compare Scripture with Scripture, that’s fine by me. You can get your eschatology from modern pop futurists if you wish.
But please do not pooh-pooh the preterist view when you are incapable of such exegetical work.
Your emperor still is not wearing any clothes.
But you said “all creation is under the curse”. Aren’t the righteous part of creation?
Chipper, you are merely demonstrating yet again that you cannot exegete a simple text of Scripture. You do realize, do you not, that not every "coming of the Lord" means the second coming?
Amils generally believe that the "thousand years" spans the time from Christ's first coming to His second coming. Many postmils believe that as well, however postmils generally see progress in the positive effect of the gospel over time. That’s why some postmils believe that the "thousand years" begins sometime during the inter-advent age.
Baloney -- read it again for the first time:
"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." [Mt 24:29-31]
It says clearly: "they shall see the Son of man coming". If that is not a physical coming, then just what kind of coming is it???
Like Mt 24:30??? What kind of coming was that???
Well, comparing Scripture with Scripture and seeing what the Bible mean when it speaks of "coming in (or with) clouds", it is a coming consistent with what Jesus said to the high priest in Matt. 26:64, "Jesus said to him, ‘It is as you said. Nevertheless, I say to you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.’"
If we apply a Jewish mindset, and not a futurist/dispensationalist one, and read, for example, Daniel 7, we will see what Jesus was referring to:
13 "I was watching in the night visions, And behold, One like the Son of Man, Coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, And they brought Him near before Him. 14 Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, Which shall not pass away, And His kingdom the one Which shall not be destroyed.This is speaking of Jesus ascension to the Father when He received the throne of the promised kingdom (i.e., the throne of David in heaven). The visible evidence of this event on the earth was the ending of the old covenant system as represented by the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the old temple.
Ver. 30 And then shall appear the sign of the son of man in heaven, &c.] the son of man himself: just as circumcision is called the sign of circumcision, #Ro 4:11 and Christ is sometimes called a sign, #Lu 2:34 as is his resurrection from the dead, #Mt 12:39 and here the glory and majesty in which he shall come: and it may be observed, that the other evangelists make no mention of the sign, only speak of the son of man, #Mr 13:26, Lu 21:27 and he shall appear, not in person, but in the power of his wrath and vengeance, on the Jewish nation which will be a full sign and proof of his being come: for the sense is, that when the above calamities shall be upon the civil state of that people, and there will be such changes in their ecclesiastical state it will be as clear a point, that Christ is come in the flesh, and that he is also come in his vengeance on that nation, for their rejection and crucifixion him, as if they had seen him appear in person in the heavens. They had been always seeking a sign, and were continually asking one of him; and now they will have a sign with a witness; as they had accordingly. (John Gill, 1809)
Are you asking in order that you might learn to interpret the Bible correctly? If so then read post #579.
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