GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 184

What Is Replacement Theology Part 2

Israel Is No Longer God’s Chosen People

In our last lesson we explored one theory that said that all the promises God made to Israel including the end time prophetic ones are now transferred to England and the United States. In this message we will take a look at the belief that Israel was replaced by Christianity and that is the reason they are no longer part of any prophecies. Unlike the British Israelism promoted in modern times, this theory goes all the way back to the very first years of the New Testament and the seeds of those teachings reverberate all the way until today. As we will see, it didn’t take long to see all Jews as unworthy of being called the Chosen people as seen in the Old Testament and later on in this series we’ll see that such logic is alive and well in the teachings of prominent Christian leaders, some you and I respect greatly for their overall views. Sadly, the antisemitism rampant right now in Evangelical circles finds its roots in what we will explore now. While I will take a very deep dive into these teachers, here is one quote that may surprise you:

I think it is problematic to relate prophecy to current events unfolding in the nation-state of Israel. There may be some relationship, of course. Only God knows. But the secular state of Israel created in 1948 is not, in my understanding, identical with the Jewish people as God’s chosen and called-out covenant people.

I strongly support Israel because it is a haven for persecuted Jews — not because I think it fulfills biblical prophecy. I also support a Palestinian state both from historical and prudential considerations. Given the state of affairs in the Middle East, a Palestinian state is the only practicable solution for peace.

Who said this? None other than Chuck Colson. As an ardent fan of Colson, this really disappointed me. However, the people who started these teachings go back much farther in church history. I’ll detail the more modern folk in another lesson, but for now let’s see how early church leaders started this movement.

The Church Is The Kingdom Of God

This rather interesting statement is found in those who are what we call Amillennialists. In other words, they don’t believe in a traditional Millennial kingdom. For them, we are in the Millennium and I for one don’t see God ruling all around me. For one person, who I will quote extensively here, Dr David Reagan, his experience with this theological position was bred into him growing up. He says this in an article on Replacement theology:

I was raised in a militantly Amillennial church. By that I mean that you could be disfellowshipped from the church for having any other prophetic viewpoint.

We seldom ever heard any preaching about end time Bible prophecy. The classic sermon within our denomination was one that boldly stated, “There is not one verse in the Bible that even implies that Jesus will ever put His feet on this earth again!”

Reagan devotedly adhered to this belief even after started preaching in his early ‘20s. His Replacement theology leaders wouldn’t even allow people to pray the Lord’s Prayer because of one simple phrase, “His Kingdom come” because that part of the prayer had already been answered. They also went as far as to not even bring anything other than a New Testament to services and that was taught to be the only scriptures they studied as they believed that all the Old Testament was nailed to cross with Jesus. There a lot of verses in the New Testament that teach otherwise, but when you start to go down the road of Replacement theology it affects all your doctrines. Such Biblical blindness is rooted in a rejecting of the Jewish people because they crucified Jesus and this rejection is very old. Extremely old.

Could It Be Satan?

When one wants to lay blame on an egregious lie, it is always good to go to the source of all lies and that’s Satan himself. I believe that the devil hates everything God loves so for the father of all lies to make Christians of all generations to turn their back on His chosen people makes perfect sense. And Replacement theology is a term that’s only recently become part of the lexicon of theologians in modern times. The term used before now is Supersessionism. It’s a long word that means that God has replaced the Jews with the Church. Reagan in the previously cited article explains why the accuser of the brethren hates the Jews:

I’d like to get into the topic of Replacement Theology by going to the root of it. And that is Satan’s hatred of the Jewish people. Satan hates the Jews with a passion for several reasons:

  1. God chose them to be His witness to the world.
  2. Through them God gave the world the Bible.
  3. Through them God gave the world the Messiah.
  4. God has promised that He will save a great remnant of them.
  5. God has promised that through that remnant He will bless all the nations of the world during the Millennial reign of Jesus.

Satan is determined to destroy every Jew on planet earth so that God cannot keep His promises to them.

And he’s right over the proverbial target on this.

A Little Church History

In an article from the Jewish Voice we get some details of when the idea of Jews not being part of God’s plans for Christianity:

The source of Replacement Theology came about in the first century. The Messianic/Christian debt to Hebrew Scripture, Jewish exegesis, and divine revelation were evident to all followers of The Way. In fact, Jewish-Christian relations, in spite of second and third century Christian elitist assaults upon all things Jewish, continued with good rhythm and solid relationship until the mid-fourth century with the advent of the First Council of Nicaea. At the Council of Nicaea, under Constantine’s oversight, the Church formally disconnected from the Jewish roots of Christian theology and practice by separating the celebration of Easter from the Celebration of Passover.

The author connects this disconnection to an earlier time as well:

But the sentiments of the Bishops at Nicaea have their foundations in debates that began in the second century. Justin Martyr crafted his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew on the heels of the Bar Kochba uprising in the Land of Israel, then under Roman rule, and first called “Palestine,”, in 135 C.E. The Dialogue was finally published in 150 C.E. some 15 years before Justin’s martyrdom. Here Justin made his strong case for a “New Israel,” a “True Israel,” in replacement of biblical Israel―hence, the term “Replacement Theology” or “Supersessionism” (that the Church Supersedes Israel).

Stay with me as this can get a tad dry, but it is necessary to see just how long this teaching has been around. We need to at least get an overview of why this split of love for Jews from Christians began and why it needs to be refuted at every turn today. Not only does God still have a plan for Israel, His desire is to bring Jews back to Himself. And in Bible prophecy, they are still the super sign of the end times.

They Killed Jesus

Reagan asserts that this hatred for the Jews grew out of their rejection of Jesus which led to Him being crucified:

It is this viewpoint that early on caused the Church to be infected with a virulent form of anti-Semitism. You see, for almost 2,000 years the Church at large, both Catholic and Protestant, has maintained that due to the fact that the Jews rejected Jesus as their Messiah, God poured out His wrath on them in 70 AD, destroying their nation and their Temple, and in the process, He washed His hands of them, leaving them with no purpose whatsoever as a nation.

In short, because of their continuing disobedience and their rejection of Jesus, God has replaced Israel with the Church, transferring the blessings promised to Israel to the Church.

And after the way the Jewish leaders treated the disciples in the book of Acts it is easy to not be fond of Jews. However, lost in all of this is that all the Apostles and Jesus were Jewish. And the Apostle Paul who wrote almost 2/3 of the New Testament was a devout Jew as well. This turning backs on Israel makes these Replacement theology adherents ignore obvious signs of God doing just the opposite as seen in another quote from the same article of Reagan:

Today this is called Replacement Theology, and those who still believe in it — the majority of professing Christians — consider modern day Israel to be an accident of history, with no spiritual significance whatsoever. Accordingly, they would deny that God has any special plans for the Jewish people in the end times. Again, to them, the regathering of the Jews and the re-establishment of Israel are simply accidents of history, with no spiritual significance.

Losing Their Jewish Roots

Along with their disdain for how they were treated by Jewish leaders, the early Christians began to develop their new religion and became less and less Jewish in their habits and customs. When the Jewish Temple was destroyed, the Jewish traditions became a part of their past even more. The apostles started reaching out to the Gentile world more and more since they were more receptive to message of the gospel until the Jews were left out of the process. Reagan also details how this happened:

Now, as the Church began to spread beyond its Judean origin, and as it embraced more and more Gentiles, it quickly lost touch with its Jewish roots. This process was accelerated by the destruction of the mother church in Jerusalem during the Second Jewish Revolt against the Romans that ended in 136 AD.

He mentions another change which came from Church leaders actually changing their views of the Old Testament to support their dismissal of Jews:

Another key to the Gentilizing of the Church was the development of an allegorical hermeneutical approach to the Scriptures that enabled the Church to appropriate Israel’s promises for itself. Thus Tertullian, writing in the 3rd Century, was able to argue that the promise of Genesis 25:21-25 that “the older will serve the younger” (speaking, of course of Esau and Jacob), was really a prophecy that Israel would become subservient to the Church!

More Examples Of Turning Against Jews

Not only were Jews “Christ Killers” they were seen more and more as worse than Christians. According to Reagan, in The Epistle of Barnabus, a book that didn’t make it into the Bible, it stated that “only the Christian could make sense of the Bible.” The “carnal Jews,” with their “earthly mind-set,” had failed to recognize the hidden message of their own Scriptures, and as a result, had eternally forfeited their entitlement to the covenant promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Reagan went to cite examples of other early church fathers who had no love for the Jews:

Ignatius of Antioch (c. 50-117) — He said that “those who partake of the Passover are partakers with those who killed Jesus.”

Justin Martyr (100-165) — He claimed God’s covenant with Israel was no longer valid and that the Gentiles had replaced the Jews. Additionally, he was the first to identify the Church as “the true spiritual Israel.” And he declared that the plight of the Jews — their exile and persecution — had happened “in fairness and justice” because they had “slain the Just One.”

Hippolytus of Rome (170-235) — He is considered by many to be the most important theologian of the 3rd Century. He was a student of Irenaeus. He declared that the Jews had been darkened in the eyes of their souls “with a darkness utter and everlasting.” He further stated that they were destined to be “slaves to the nations, not for four hundred years as in Egypt, nor seventy as in Babylon, but… always.”

Origen of Alexandria (185-254) … In one of his treatises he wrote: We say with confidence that they [the Jews] will never be restored to their former condition. For they committed a crime of the most unhallowed kind, in conspiring against the Savior of the human race… It accordingly behoved that city where Jesus underwent these sufferings to perish utterly, and the Jewish nation to be overthrown, and the invitation of happiness offered them by God to pass to others — the Christians…

Famous Christians Also Turned Against the Jews

Martin Luther, who originally spoke against how Jews were being treated, changed when they wouldn’t convert to his pleas to become Christians. He actually wrote this about them:

Therefore I did not call that book Against the Jews, but rather On the Jews and Their Lies, so that we Germans might know from history what a Jew is, and thus warn our Christians about them, as one would warn about the devil himself, and also to strengthen and honor our faith. I do not write to convert the Jews, for that is about as possible as converting the Devil…In sum they are Devil’s children damned to hell. If there is anything human left in them, for that one this treatise might be useful. One can hope for the whole bunch but I have no hope.

It was quotes like these that inspired Adolph Hitler to justify his killing of the Jews. Here is what he said about Luther from the same article by Reagan:

Martin Luther has been the greatest encouragement of my life. Luther was a great man. He was a giant. With one blow he heralded the coming of the new dawn and the new age. He saw clearly that the Jews need to be destroyed, and we’re only beginning to see that we need to carry this work on.

And this hatred for Jews continues on to this day.