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covenants, believing that their spiritual destiny is either to perish or become a part of the new religion that superseded Judaism (whether Christianity or Islam).1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.
I don't know where you get this, for the second Adam is the one through whom we attain that rest. You will have to define the term
We Christians are exempt from the wrath of God because of the blood of Christ. We are already dead to this world and alive with Christ in God! (Col 3:3)
If any of my brothers and sisters in Christ do not see the wrath of God coming they may be surprised but not destroyed.
The operative part is whether they do or do not see Christ coming. (Parable of the Ten Virgins)
I do not fear the train either.
BTW, I like the metaphor of being on the train!
Maranatha, Jesus!!!
For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father." -- Ephesians 2:14,18 "For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us...
I just don't recognize all the choppiness of a dispensational time-frame. There is "before Christ" and there is "after Christ." And throughout both those time-frames, there is only salvation by God's grace through faith.
What once was only longed for has now appeared, and nothing is true or real or meaningful but Christ risen.
With apologies to AG, it's like a train that ran off the track
Here’s a better analogy that AG will appreciate. Maybe the bible is like the mathematical novel Flatland. Some move along in one dimension and that’s all they see. Others move about in other planes
666,lol
The intensity, my intensity . . .
is not per se over ‘damage’ to authentic Believers hidden in Christ.
it is about folks who do not know The Lord hindered, prevented from Knowing Him
unnecessarily
because of the Preterist . . . perspective.
I understand that Predestination is Biblical . . . to a point.
I do not share the seeming absolute Calvinist position by a long shot. Not even sure I go as far as A-G does. I think there’s deliberate mystery there.
I’m convinced that we have choices and that the choices are real choices and make a difference in people’s lives as well as our own.
Some of those differences make the difference between Heaven and Hell for folks . . .
Parental choices result in teen suicides.
At least some suicides, if not most, end up needlessly in hell because of parental choices.
Preterism and it’s deception about END TIMES prophecies prevents many thousands if not millions from entering The Kingdom of God who would otherwise wake up and
JOIN THE FAMILY.
THAT’S the train I face every time I see a Replacementarian post or thread.
That’s MY reality.
There are mysteries and sequences which I believe God designed us not to know for now, maybe not until that moment or afterwards.
However, in terms of
choppiness . . .
I’ve talked to loopy Eastern mystics very out of touch with reality that had a more coherent construction on reality than the Replacementarian position I read on this thread.
I’m literally shocked that such convoluted English phrases and sequences of sentences come out of folks professing to Know Jesus.
Just my reality.
Adamic men are the descendants of the mortal Adam. The ancient Jewish belief which I am describing here is that he was appointed 7,000 years in parallel to Creation week and his banishment - the last 1,000 years being the Sabbath, Christ's reign on earth. Thus concludes the "realistic, national" promise.
Last Adam:
When the 7,000 year calendar is over, this heaven and earth will be gone, replaced by the new heaven and the new earth populated by those of us whose names were written in the book of Life of the Lamb from the foundation of the world. Thus concludes the "transcending, universal" promise, the preexistent Messiah, Jesus Christ by Whom and for Whom "all that there is" is.
It is not an either/or - not for the Jews (who cannot see the later) - and not for us (who sometimes cannot see the former.)
The "choppiness" comes into play when we look at history and the history of the future as recorded in Scripture, especially involving descendants of Israel.
Christians aren't "blinded" - aren't subject to the wrath of God - and God is not provoking us to jealousy. (Romans 11, Deut 32)
I know that the Jewish belief is "in the world to come" and that world is a physical reality. I don't know if it's also spiritual, but I would guess so.
However, everything that they believed has been clarified in Christ, whether they believe it or not, so I can't buy an Adamic rest for anyone unspiritual.
The meek will inherit the earth -- even that would imply spirituality, as both Moses and Christ are said to be meek
JOIN THE FAMILY.
You said so before. Trust the LORD. Our Saviour will not lose one he intends to have.
You often bring up the suicide of young people as evidence for parental neglect, and I agree with you 100%.
Christians should be ever mindful that Satan is real and tries his best to beguile every man.
And every man should be aware that Christ will always provide a life-preserver to those who ask for it...
"There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." -- 1 Corinthians 10:13
I love this verse, not only for its assurance, but for the fact it tells us the allure of Satan is "common to man." It's the human condition.
But God has mercifully given us the two-edged sword of His word which proclaims Christ as king and savior, and promised us the covert of His wings.
"The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower." -- Psalm 18:2
And as my family and I prosper by this understanding, so does anyone who has been so graced.
The operative point is that God is faithful. He keeps every single promise even if we Christians see no "need" for it.
I must head out now. See y'all later!
I also don’t understand how “preterist beliefs” prevent untold numbers from going into the kingdom either
Yes and some of those "promises" are curses
Again, you are obviously confusing this with dispensationalism. It is the theology of "The Notes".
In fact, in the futurst scheme Messiah the King is offering sacrifices, not resting, per the literalist reading of last chapters of Ezekiel.
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