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covenants, believing that their spiritual destiny is either to perish or become a part of the new religion that superseded Judaism (whether Christianity or Islam).1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.
Something is wrong in this timeline since we know that both Annas and Caiaphas were still alive in the AD30s (cf. Acts 4:6).
What was the source for your dates?
How do you figure?
Not much except they didn’t die on those dates but were removed from the priesthood.
Amen. That's why I'm postmil and not a fantasy futurist. The only thing I left behind was my Scofield Notes.
You mean no one after the rapture follows Jesus Christ? Do you have a text to support your theory, Thou Quibbler of Terms?
The Word says all things are restored.
In order to be a priest much less a high priest, one has to be 30 years old. If he was atleast 30 years old in 18 AD when appointed, then he would have been 60 years old and thus dead by 48 AD. Incidentally Annas was apparently his father-in-law not his father.
The Word says all things are restored.
Yes, that is referring to the Kingdom being established.
There are still aspects of the curse present during the Millennial reign of Christ, such as death.
These are removed in the New Heaven and Earth (Rev.21-22)
The time lines are the years that they were high priest. One had to be at least 30 to be a priest and I assume a few years on the job to learn the ropes and get the gelt to buy the position from Rome and some reputation with the other priests. You can find some history here;
http://www.livius.org/caa-can/caiaphas/caiaphas.htm
Interesting, the last you hear of Caiaphas is Acts 4:6 with his son, Annas, the next high priest but no mention of his father, Annas, as was the case with the trial of Jesus. In fact there is no mention of the high priest by name after Acts 4.
Of course this all assumes that a) the bones discovered are actually his, b) that the dating is accurate, and c) all your assumptions are valid.
BTW, I went back and checked the Greek in Matt 26:64. In the phrase "you shall see the son of man" the word "you" is plural. So any of the men standing there could have witnessed the events in AD70. They did not all need to personally witness it. The same is true when the Jews offered this self-malediction; "His blood be on us and on our children" (Matt. 27:25). Not all those Jews personally experienced the sack of Jerusalem in AD70, but many no doubt did.
I still do not know what that means, esp. in light of the fact that there is still sin in the futurist millennium.
Oh Well — he missed a good show. Too bad.
Please, topcat, can't we atleast have a few moments of silence to mourn poor Caiaphus ---- a man who died before his preterist time -------------------
and a few moments more to mourn that ridiculous theory of yours built upon him that just fell to pieces.
[sniff!!!]
I'll trust that Christ knew what He was talking about and that all the narratives fit. It's better than the futurist fantasy.
” I went back and checked the Greek in Matt 26:64. In the phrase “you shall see the son of man” the word “you” is plural.”
Odd, I went back to my old Summers, “Essentials of New Testament Greek” and he says it’s a contract verb in the middle voice, future tense, 3rd person singular which would correspond with the opening of Matt 26:64, “Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”. Jesus is speaking directly to the high priest, not to an audience or any one around him.
“Jesus saith unto him, ....: nevertheless I say unto you,..... Hereafter shall ye see ...”
= = =
Brazen FALSEHOOD yet again.
BTW, it is
SCRIPTURE that describes satan's being bound during the millenium
AND IT IS SCRIPTURE
that THEN describes
him being loosed for a season--evidetnly a relatively short season--to tempt those born during the millenium.
AND IT IS SCRIPTURE
that THEN describes
him being bound to the bottomless pit and, so to speak, the key being thrown away.
Replacementarians who have a problem with those descriptions and that sequence have a bigger beef with God and His Word than they ever imagined having with Dispies.
Thankfully, GOD IS FAITHFUL IN EXECUTING HIS WORD EMPHATICALLY AND TO THE TINIEST DETAIL.
Witness the "higher criticisms" and secular, hostile archeologsts
of the last 100+ years
WHO ALL EMPHATICALLY INSISTED
that this or that Biblical detail
HAD to be symbolic, literary license, figurative etc. because it just COULD NOT be literally true . . .
only to have subsequent diggings prove every detail to be literally and precisely true.
The Replacementarians are in philosophical bed with such forces hostile to Scripture, God and the Truth.
They, too, shall find God's Word emphatically and precisely and overwhelmingly LITERALLY proven true repeatedly in coming months and years.
Their contrariness on such scores will not hinder God's fulfillment of His Word a gnat's burp's worth.
Nor did the disciples who fled when they saw the abomination of desolation (Jerusalem surrounded by armies).
Oh my — another new definition for the “abomination”. So now the “holy place” [Mt 24:15] is the hills and valleys outside of Jerusalem, not Jerusalem or the temple??? and the Roman armies are “the abomination” and not Cesar Nero???
= = =
INDEED. The Rubber Bible twangs yet again in a DIFFERENT off-key.
Don’t you just love that preterist “exegesis” or whatever they call it???
= = =
Replacementarian ‘exegesis’
. . .
= Replacementarian expanding rubber stretching just to accommodate yet another far-fetched prickly absurdity pretending to be Biblical.
Don’t you just love that preterist “exegesis” or whatever they call it???
It does have the markings of desperation.
Say anything to hide what the verse is referring to in Daniel.
= =
INDEED!
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