Replacement theology (supersessionism) teaches that the church is the replacement for Israel and that the many promises made to Israel in the Bible are fulfilled in the Christian church, not in Israel.
Major problems exist with this view, such as the continuing existence of the Jewish people throughout the centuries and the revival of the modern state of Israel.
If Israel has been condemned by God and there is no future for the Jewish nation, how do we explain the supernatural survival of the Jewish people over the past 2,000 years despite the many attempts to destroy them?
How do we explain why and how Israel reappeared as a nation in the 20th century after not existing for 1,900 years?
Click on the blue headline link at top to read more about how Israel and the Church are separate.
Editor
To read Part 1, click here
To read Part 2, click here
Excellent 3 part presentation utilizing Scripture to scrape away centuries of Church accretion which has blurred the distinction between the church and Israel. Perhaps your subscribers would like to have some faces to go with the centuries of compounded confusion and purposeful misleading.
Gaius, a church bishop, was the first church father to interpret the Millennium as symbolic thereby rejecting the book of Revelation which would necessarily negate most of the OT prophecies, as 278 of the 404 verses in Rev are near quotes from OT prophecy. Later, in like fasion, Eusebius also rejected Revelation due to its apocalyptic nature, and he with other church notables, Clement and Origen, began preaching against the premillennial view which was held by the early church until this time (4th Century).
Origen, commonly noted as the ‘father’ of the allegory, began a quest of allegorizing (spiritualizing or explaining away) those prophetic passages that asserted the promises to Israel – which is more than 4/5 of OT prophecy – after all the Jews rejected their Messiah, they have been dispersed, and the ‘Holy Land” is in ruins. Surely these prophetic passages are not now meant for Israel – maybe they are meant for the church?
John Chrysostom, the “Golden Mouth” was a very influential church father who took a very vitriolic view of the Jews, hence accelerating animosity toward the Jews while at the same time accelerating the allegorical view of Bible prophecy.
All of this culminated with Augustine who, in his work City of God, Book 20, explains away and ignores most of the promises to Israel and the Jews and declares Israel an enemy of God to be placed under the Messiah’s footstool when He comes to reign (Psm 110). He then interprets the City of God to be Christ’s earthly kingdom – the current church in our current age. The church is “militantly’ fighting against Satan and his minions. Augustine, being the leading church father at the time, incorporated all this into church doctrine (circa 428) which still thrives throughout Christendom today – more popularly known as ‘Replacement Theology.’
Luther and the reformers cleaned up the Christ/salvation issues but left the church/Israel conundrum untouched. Essentially, the reformers, like Augustine, ignored Bible prophecy in its literal context by allegorizing it, thus allowing this ‘jaded’ replacement view to continue today. This view is held by over 2/3 of today’s seminaries. Only a few seminaries hold to a consistent literal-historic hermeneutic which properly allows Scripture to interpret Scripture instead of man usurping the authority of God over Scripture as in the case of Augustine, et al.
Two books for comparison, for today’s ‘Watchman on the wall’. “More than Conquerors”, by noted amillennialist, Wm Hendriksen; and “Russian Events in Light of Bible Prophecy”, by a little known pastor, Louis Bauman. Note, both books were published several years before…
It appears my initial post was too long – it got chopped off. These two books give one the contrast between an unbiblical amillennial view and a “stay with the Word of God’ view of the Ezekiel 38-39 conflict which we can see shaping up before our very eyes. Bauman’s book is reality before our eyes. Hendriksen’s view is prosaic nonsense. Jesus wanted us to know prophecy for He said in John 14:19, “I teel you these things, so when you see these things you will believe.”
R, Marcus, Tyndale Seminary graduate student, Master of Messianic Studies
We greatly appreciate you putting “faces” to the destructive reasonings and explanations made by learned men.
Anti-semitism is a satanic influence/prejudice because it is against God’s own chosen people, therefore it is against God’s own decisions.
Thank God that through the ages He calls out His own and we hear Him, know His voice, and follow Him. And nothing, and no one can snatch us out of His hand!
Editor
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