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covenants, believing that their spiritual destiny is either to perish or become a part of the new religion that superseded Judaism (whether Christianity or Islam).1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.
It could be, BUT---
God created the earth in 6 days...On the 7th day He rested...
A day to God is 1000 years to us...We've been here 6000 years, give or take a few...We're going into the 7 thousandth year, or the 7th day...The day of rest for God...
God brought forth life starting with the 5th day...Jesus showed up at the end of 4000, and beginning at 5000 years...
Just a coincidence??? Sure...I suppose...But I was just sayin~~~
Hos 6:1 Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.
Hos 6:2 After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.
If you look as those days as a thousand years each, there's a perfect picture of the restoration of Israel going into the Millenial reign of Jesus Christ...
These things are all over the Bible...
Have pondered forcable chip implantation.
1. I don’t believe it will be routinely allowed by God.
2. IF it is allowed at all by God, HE IS MORE FAIR THAN WE ARE and we don’t hold people responsible who’ve been even merely significantly coerced.
3. Still, I’d rather die than take the chip.
= = =
It is CONCEIVABLE that there is a symbolic meaning to forehead and hand but I highly doubt that’s the main meaning or import of those verses.
Not surprised the Preterist position would lean that way.
TRue. True.
All over the Bible.
However, I think we have to hold such things loosely.
Many of them may be quite right. Some of them not.
Our conjectures and extrapolated interpreations MAY not be any better in specific cases than those of the Contrarian Preterists.
I agree totally with both of your statements.
Christ returns for His Church before the tribulation since the Tribulation is not for the church, it is for Israel, (Jacobs trouble-Jer.30:7), the final week of Daniel's 70th 'week'.
The Church (Christ's Bride) will not go through the Tribulation, but will be in heaven at the time (Rev.19:7)
And it will be 'sold' as a way to stop ID theft as well.
When SS began it was claimed that the number would never be used as an ID number.
When driver licenses were issued, it was claimed they would never be used for ID purposes.
The chip will be sold as a positive good, just like 'background checks' for gun purchases are.
Amen.
No one could have imagined how Micah 5:2 would be accomplished, through a Roman tax demanding that Joseph return to Bethlehem.
Amen.
The Times are in God's hands and nothing can be done unless God allows it.
And the anti-Christ will handle that problem, since it will be required for everyone to worship him.
What is amazing isn't how sparse technology is, but how widespread it is and how today, with satellite technology we can envision the entire world seeing the return of Christ.
And that is why every translator put earth and not 'land' for the translation, no matter what their own escatological views were.
No one is ignoring Zechariah at all, what you are doing is making a single passage fit Zechariah in one regard, while disregarding it in the rest, for example, (Zech.12:9).
Zechariah speaks of nations surrounding Jerusalem and the Lord coming to save the city-which didn't happen in 70AD.
So, stop 'cherry picking' the verse.
Again, the Bible does not contradict itself. You cannot interpret a verse in a way that renders it in conflict with what is so clear elsewhere in Scripture.
And all the verses have to be looked at, not just the ones you want to, ignoring the rest.
'And it shall come to pass, in that day, that I will destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem'.(Zech.12:9).
The 'nations' didn't come against Jerusalem in 70Ad, only Rome did.
And God didn't destroy Rome or any nations.
So, when the Lord says 'land' in Zecharia, He is speaking of the Jews of the land, who mourn at the return of Christ and their recognition of Him (something that didn't happen in 70AD either.
The fact that Jews of the land will mourn when Christ returns, does not negate the other fact, that all of the earth will mourn as well.(Rev.1:7)
Both will happen.
The verse is very clear, every eye will see the Lord at His return, which didn't happen in 70AD
Which means that Preterism is false, since it states that verse is a past event that occured in 70AD.
Amen.
True, we do not have enough facts regarding the exact calender of man's existance (6,000 years plus)
No doubt, but it is coming and the anti-Christ will have amazing powers of 'persusasion' even able to deceive the elect if the days weren't shortened.
No true Dispensationalist is concerned about the events happening before us, because we have the 'blessed hope' of the Lord returning for his Church before the Tribulation and take comfort in these words (1Thess.4:18)
It is just amazing how those who can claim they believe the prophecies of the 1st Advent and that God accomplished the fulfillment of those prophecies in the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ, would have any problem with fulfilling the 2nd Advent prophecies, which haven't happened yet.
The real reason they are rejected is because they are for the Jew and not the Church. (Rom.11:11-21)
If the RC is fill of idols, then those are which it is worshipping, not Jesus Christ.
'Ye cannot serve two masters'
Wouldn't we agree that the RC mind is easier to reach than the heathen mind which is closed to God and Christ entirely? I know hundreds of ex-papists who are now Bible-believing Christians. I know very few atheists who have come to a correct understanding of Jesus Christ. They are simply farther from the truth.
Most people are not atheists, most people are religious and that is what sends most people to hell, believing in a false religion.
And that is why the anti-Christ will have a false religious leader, whose headquarters will be in Rome (Rev.17)
INDEED.
However, the seductions of satan have convinced many that
THEY PERSONALLY are sufficiently GRAND to defne what
GOD ALMIGHTY MEANT
BRAZENLY CONTRARY TO THE TEXT OF WHAT
GOD ALMIGHTY SAID.
And they don’t assert such as a possibility; a variation on a theme; one amongst many plausible interpretations! NO! They assert it as
GOSPEL FACT
when it’s the opposite.
Arrogance is too weak a word for that, imho.
Quite so. Quite so.
No one is ignoring Zechariah at all, what you are doing is making a single passage fit Zechariah in one regard, while disregarding it in the rest, for example, (Zech.12:9).
Zechariah speaks of nations surrounding Jerusalem and the Lord coming to save the city-which didn't happen in 70AD.
So, stop 'cherry picking' the verse.
Again, the Bible does not contradict itself. You cannot interpret a verse in a way that renders it in conflict with what is so clear elsewhere in Scripture.
And all the verses have to be looked at, not just the ones you want to, ignoring the rest.
'And it shall come to pass, in that day, that I will destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem'.(Zech.12:9).
The 'nations' didn't come against Jerusalem in 70Ad, only Rome did.
And God didn't destroy Rome or any nations.
So, when the Lord says 'land' in Zecharia, He is speaking of the Jews of the land, who mourn at the return of Christ
The fact that Jews of the land will mourn when Christ returns, does not negate the other fact, that all of the earth will mourn as well.(Rev.1:7)
Both will happen.
INDEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!
since it states that verse is a past event that occured in 70AD.
INDEED! AND THAT JUST ONE OF HUNDREDS OF SUCH BLOWS-CONTRARIAN PRETERISM/ REPLACEMENTARIANISM/ AMIL/ POST MIL AND ALL OTHER SUCH DOCTRINES OF MANISMS OUT OF THE WATER; OUT OF THE BALL PARK; OUT OF THE GALAXY.
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