Posted on 06/21/2005 4:27:46 PM PDT by Buggman
The New Testament writers were writing over their heads. This happens when the writing is God breathed. I doubt if any of them thought it would be 2000 years. But we know.
It is truly amazing how many passages we must interpret differently to support our differing views. Still there may be something to help us reconcile. Something we agree on is that Christ is coming,
Rev 19:11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.
Matt 24:22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.
Put these two verses together in talking about Christ’s return. He is bringing his armies with him. The two sides are clear, one thinks the leaven is good, and will eventually choke out the evil. The other thinks the leaven is evil.
If this were Christ returning at the final judgment, why would he want to preserve the flesh (the old man)? On the other hand, if this is at the beginning of the 1000 years, the flesh needs to be preserved.
Another point on Israel. Surely you are not you looking for a legitimate temple and sacrifice? You notice all the people in the 70’s that made errors on prophecy. What about the early Brethren that got it right? Predictions 100 years ago that Israel would come together in unbelief. It is in their blindness that they seek to build a temple and continue their sacrifice. If they accomplish this, it will manifest their blindness. They do not understand that the sacrifice was finished at the cross. Still it is predicted that they will begin the sacrifices again, for in order for the sacrifice to cease, it must first start again. But, it will not be legitimate.
Amen.
We also have to deal realistically with the fact that since the appearing of Jesus Christ and the new covenant's arrival, it is no longer possible to become part of "Israel" by keeping purely old covenant prescriptions. Is a person who converted to rabbinic Judaism in the last century really a part of biblical Israel. I believe the honest answer, once you read and understand the New Testament, is "no". The only operable covenant today is the new covenant in Jesus Christ. It is the only way that people can approach God. All other approaches are a deception.
But why do you presuppose that it's speaking of the second coming, and therefore the only explanation is a literal one thousand years after?
Another point on Israel. Surely you are not you looking for a legitimate temple and sacrifice?
I'm not looking for any temple or sacrifice. I believe the temple and sacrifice types were fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Still it is predicted that they will begin the sacrifices again, for in order for the sacrifice to cease, it must first start again. But, it will not be legitimate.
Any sacrifice after God had destroyed the temple to confirm the transition of the people of God from physical Israel to the Church is illegitimte.
Both conditions are required to be truly Torah-observant.
Granted, but that wasn't what I was referring to. Go back, read the post in which I presented the Biblical case for a "functioning Jewish state in Israel," and actually look up the passages that I cited.
If you had, you would have realized that the whole reason that I said "Torah-observant" was because Yeshua told His Jewish disciples to pray that the day to flee would not come on a Shabbat! Ethnic, secular Jews who aren't trying to keep the Torah and Gentile Christians who regard the Torah as "dead" would have absolutely no problem with fleeing on Shabbat, or any other day. Only Orthodox Jews and Messianic Jews who were as "zealous for the Torah" as their first-century counterparts would balk at such a proposition. Ergo, a significant portion of Israel's population would have to be Torah-observant (in outward action) in order for the Lord's words here to make any sense.
I wasn't even getting into the issue of salvation; I was speaking of outward obedience to the Torah. You, by ignoring the passage cited and trying to twist the argument into a matter of soteriology, have done nothing more than create a straw-man.
You've also created a false dichotomy: "Either the person must be saved or he cannot keep the Torah (in an ultimate sense)." It's a false dichotomy because there was nothing in my post to even give the vaguest clue that I was speaking in the ultimate sense rather than in the outward sense. And in the outward sense, one can indeed keep the Torah without knowing the Messiah. Note that even Sha'ul, speaking of the days before he knew the Messiah, could truthfully claim that he was "regarding the righteousness in the Torah, blameless" (Phl. 3:6). He considered that outward observance to be loss in comparison to the Messiah (v. 7), but nevertheless, he claimed to keep the Torah even before his regeneration.
Once again, you have attempted and failed to obscure the issue. The simple fact of the matter is that a Jewish state in Palestine is an enormous embarrassment to the traditional eschatology that you hold, so rather than admit that the preservation of the Jewish people and the restoration to the land of their fathers after nearly two millennia is a miracle wrought by the grace of God, you try to find all sorts of little theological loopholes so you can ignore the facts of the times we live in.
In doing so, you inadvertantly slander God's Name, for He Himself declared:
So says the Lord ADONAI: I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy name's sake, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. And I will sanctify My great name, which was profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. And the nations shall know that I am ADONAI, says the Lord ADONAI, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the nations and gather you out of all lands, and will gather you into your own land.I've pointed this out to you many times before, but let's go over it again. Notice the order: For His Name's sake, God will first bring the people of Israel back into their land, and then He will cleanse them and put His Spirit in them--that is, bring them into the New, Messianic Covenant. The first part of this has already taken place. The second part will occur at the Second Coming (cf. Zec. 12-14, Rev. 6-7, etc.).And I will sprinkle clean waters on you, and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from your idols. And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.
--Ezk. 36:22-26
You choose not to believe this, not because your objections have not been answered in abundance over and over again, but because you are wed to a tradition of men that says that God is through with Israel forever as a special nation (never mind that Paul spends three chapters of Romans proving that He is not), that the Church is "Spiritual" Israel, and therefore God will only fulfill His promises (prophecies) to the Church and that in spiritual type (allegorical interpretation). Like the Pharisees that Yeshua denounced, you are guilty of "making the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have delivered" (Mk. 7:13). Since God stakes His very Name on His ability to keep His promises exactly as He has delivered them, what do you think such lawyering of His Word does to His Name?
If and when I have time this weekend, I will read your posts more carefully to see if there is any argument that you make that has not already been answered. As I observed in my last round of posts, we've reached the point of going in circles, and with the weekend coming on, I don't have time to reiterate the same-old-same-old for the Nth time, especially when you simply ignore counterpoints taken from Scriptures outside of the Epistles.
Until then, God bless, and have a restful weekend.
What do you expect the world to be like when Christ returns? Are you looking for things to get better, or worse, for the Church?
I feel that when he comes, he will be to put a stop to the madness. I think that the leaven in the Kindgdom is evil. "And he will gather out of his Kingdom all things that offend ..."
Any sacrifice after God had destroyed the temple to confirm the transition of the people of God from physical Israel to the Church is illegitimte.
I agree completely, but I still think that Israel will restore their sacrifice. Illegitimately! Remember, they do not understand (blindness in part). The sacrifiec will cease when their eyes are opened.
Well, this appears to be yet another axample of your equivocation.
Rabbinic Jews, aka orthodox Jews, are not zealous for the Torah. They are merely zealous for the rabbinic interpretaion of the Torah. It is zeal weithout knowledge. The same appears to be true for the many messianics. They distinguish themselves from other Christians not by the zeal for God's law, but rather zeal for humanist interpretation of God's law handed down throught the rabbis.
What makes this even more odd is the gentiles who try to be more "Jewish" than the Jews.
The fact remains that neither you nor anyone else can prove that the modern secular state of Israel is a fulfillment of divine prophecy. That's why I asked for the definition. That's why your own definition proves that such is not the case.
Rather than it being an "an enormous embarrassment to the traditional eschatology", it confirms that futility of futurist eschatology wrt to national Israel.
And soteriology is at the heart of the matter. The traditional echatology, which you denigrate, places the proper emphasis on the salvation of Jews and inclusion in the Church, rather than focusing on a national entity which has passed away from God's redemptive program.
What is the chronological list of significant events you see from your perspective?
Start with --
1. Ascension of Christ...ca. 33 AD...
End with --
X. New Heavens & New Earth
Amen. The Triune God of Scripture is clear on this.
It sounds pretty much like the amillennial sequence. Are there differences between your list and amillennialism?
By what name is this eschatological model called?
At a seminar held at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in November 2002, some two dozen pastors, academics, journalists, and members of the public-policy community heard an abridged form of the paper below and then engaged in a discussion with the author.I have highlighted the comments of one participant since they reflect my own views in large part. David Coffin is pastor of New Hope Presbyterian Church in Fairfax, VA.
David Coffin: I fear that as soon as I open my mouth in this discussion, that label “supersessionist” is going to be laid on me as a term of reproach. Anyway, a couple of things seem strange in the argument of the paper. One is that, at least on my understanding of typology, it is odd to insist on an abiding presence of the type as relevant and significant when the antitype has come. This insistence contradicts a good bit of New Testament teaching concerning the superiority of Christ over the Mosaic economy. In this light I find a “both/and” insistence passing strange. I can’t imagine the writer of Hebrews saying, “Yes, we have the earthly priesthood, and we ought to continue with the sacrifices, even though the antitype of the priest, Jesus, who is superior to the old and all-sufficient, is now present.” It doesn’t strike me—and I suppose this is another example of that baneful spiritualizing—that this is consistent with the New Testament’s teaching. But then, if the New Testament “spiritualizes” the Hebrew Scriptures, shouldn’t we as well?
Second, I can empathize with Dr. Mouw entirely on the difficulty of Romans 11. But it seems to me that if anything is clear in that chapter, it is the significance of the tree metaphor. The tree surely represents God’s covenant people, the outward recipients of his redemptive promises. But, Paul explains, a portion of that people has been broken off, and a portion that didn’t originally belong has been grafted in. That tree is going to continue to grow. You folks who have been grafted in, says Paul, don’t you get proud, because you’re not the whole deal—you’ve been grafted in. If the Lord wants to graft back the portion that had been broken off, he’s perfectly free to do so.
Now, what Paul says in this text strikes me as utterly inconsistent with the proposal that in fact there is some other tree growing, one that will continue to grow, with respect to which the Lord is going to fulfill some sort of promises apart from the main tree. That is not to say that the Gentile converts or the church supersede the people of Israel—rather, believing Jews and Gentiles together now constitute the true Israel. The church represents the continuance of God’s care for his redeemed people à la the promises of Isaiah that Dr. Mouw mentioned.
And it isn’t just Romans 11; it strikes me that Ephesians 2 is extraordinary in this respect. Paul says to the Gentiles, Look, you folks were once “separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (v. 12, RSV). Here Paul, using a variety of phrases, insists upon the same thing. To be separated from Christ is to be alienated from Israel, is to be without hope and without God.He continues: “But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ.” The point of all this is that we are reconciled into one body with the covenant people, the spiritual descendants of Abraham. Then he goes on to say, “You are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure . . . grows into a holy temple . . . the dwelling place of God” (vv. 19–21). In the light of this teaching it is hard to see how anyone might say, “But in the meantime, God’s covenant promises, which always seem to refer to one people, actually refer to two, and these others have a separate existence as another temple, another commonwealth, and so on.”
A note with respect to Dr. McDermott’s taxonomy: Newsweek magazine used to call Francis Schaefer a fundamentalist, and that always struck me as odd. I studied with Dr. Schaefer, and he was like no fundamentalist I knew. These terms get thrown around rather loosely. In addition, though I liked the first part of the taxonomy, it seems to me that there ought to be further distinctions—for instance, a place for confessional Protestants (cf. D. G. Hart’s The Lost Soul of American Protestantism).
But more broadly, consider that even a relatively popular theological dictionary (InterVarsity’s New Dictionary of Theology) concludes its entry on “Israel” by saying that Christians should not offer unequivocal support for the policies of the modern state of Israel, “which arguably has no particular theological significance.” It strikes me that a good case could be made for the fact that although God is still dealing with the descendants of Abraham after the flesh, as Paul puts it, this redemptive intention has no relevance to the modern, secular state of Israel, or to the land. There’s nothing untoward about such a stance, since the book of Hebrews itself seems to say, at least on my reading, that the people who were promised the land and didn’t inherit it, but remained in faith, were proving that they didn’t focus their hope on the promise of earthly land in the first place but were looking for a heavenly city built by God. They didn’t inherit the land, but their faith remained because it went through the land to a better promise, which they did inherit.
That’s the whole argument of Hebrews. Calvin understood this. In the Institutes he says that those who want to have Israel focus on the land reduce Israel to a herd of swine who could be satisfied with the things of this world when God was promising them something far more wonderful than a bit of terra firma.
One more thing that I’d like to note—even though I feel a little on the outs of the discussion, since I’m apparently one of these spiritualizing, supersessionist people: I very much appreciate the argument that if you do grant that some promise to Israel with respect to the land remains, then the Old Testament conditions for the present enjoyment of the land are absolutely critical. From this vantage point, a secular state has a very iffy claim on that land. But to carry this argument further, isn’t it true that you can’t conclude ethical injunctions from providential appointments? It seems to me that here is a fundamental failure of moral logic. God says to Moses, “You go tell Pharaoh, ‘Here’s my precept: let my people go.’ But I’m going to harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he isn’t going to do it.” Moses had in view, then, a providential appointment; yet the precept for Pharaoh to follow was “let my people go,” not “bring yourself into conformity with God’s providential and prophetically revealed appointments.” It follows that even if there were some kind of prophetically revealed appointment with respect to Israel and the land, it would still be the duty of people to follow the precepts of God with respect to continuance in the land, and not try to bring to pass God’s providence, which he will effect on his own terms. If someone could say to me, “Dave, God has appointed that you are going to wreck your car on the way home,” it would still be my duty not to go out looking for a place to wreck but to drive safely and leave providence to God.
...
David Coffin: Yes, you can jam things into a system, but allegations are not arguments; the charge has to be shown. And yes, you can use data selectively; but you have to use some data, that which strikes you as most relevant.
I think one of the elements of genius in the paper is its attempt to show the reader that he cannot pick and choose from the Old Testament with respect to the promise of the land. That is, Professor McDermott grants divine warrant for the claim of the land, but then insists as well on the conditional elements of the covenant —i.e., that there must be justice in the land. This more biblically integrated view is attractive as a theoretical framework for bringing some good to these broken circumstances. I continue to think, however, that it rests on a serious theological mistake. In Genesis 17, we have the covenant in the circumcision of the flesh, an everlasting covenant—and if you don’t keep the covenant, the circumcision of the flesh, you are cut off from the people of God. In Galatians, the Apostle Paul deliberately says that if you are circumcised, you will be cut off from the people of God. So there’s an everlasting covenant that the New Testament says, in fact, is now fulfilled in Christ, and you are not permitted to re-establish it or use it further as a religious rite. Who can argue that the promise of the land is more abiding than the requirement of circumcision?
But there is another theological mistake at play in our discussion. I hope I don’t sound cold and bloodthirsty, but it seems to me that it’s wrong to think about foreign policy in terms of the particular needs of brothers and sisters in Christ in different countries. In the war for the Commonwealth, there were Christians from Scotland who were fighting Christians from England. In the American Revolution, Christians from England were fighting Christians from America. And in the War Between the States, Christians from the South were fighting Christians from the North. In that conflict, in fact, there was the possibility that two of the greatest theologians of that period—Dabney and Breckenridge, say, or one of the Hodges— might shoot each other on the field of battle. One could not properly support a particular side simply because there were believers present; the question turns on truth and justice.
The spiritual unity of the body of Christ is a profound reality for me personally and as a pastor, but the policies of nations cannot be determined by the particular sympathies we may have with brothers and sisters in Christ. There are believers who may have to suffer under a terrible government, a government whose policies lead them to be the subject of the just retribution of other nations, even nations largely made up of their fellow believers. Sound geopolitical thinking needs to be rooted in clear geopolitical principles, and cannot be guided simply by our concern for fellow Christians.
Evangelicals and Israel A Conversation with Gerald R. McDermott
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