What Is Replacement Theology?

What Are We to Make of Israel — Steve Gregg

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What Is Replacement Theology?

What Are We to Make of IsraelSteve Gregg

Replacement Theology, as explained by Steve Gregg, challenges the idea that Israel has been forsaken by God. Gregg engages with the work of David Hocking and examines biblical passages and notes that the early church leaders believed that Israel had been replaced by the church, which led to increased hostility towards the Jewish people. Gregg cautions against the dangerous implications of Replacement Theology and emphasizes the importance of studying the Bible to understand the role of Israel in future prophecy.

Transcript

I have some quotations, especially from David Hocking, but also from some others. One reason I have a number of quotes from David Hocking is because he wrote a little book called Replacement Theology. And Replacement Theology is the name that he would give to what I teach.

Now, I don't call it Replacement Theology. In fact, I don't know anyone who teaches this view who would call it Replacement Theology. Replacement Theology is a pejorative term.

It's not the official term for the viewpoint. It's always used in dispensational circles to speak of the non-dispensational position. They call it Replacement Theology because they say, if you hold to Replacement Theology, then that means that you think that Israel has been replaced by the church.

That the promises God made to Israel now belong to the church, and there's been a replacement. Let me just read some of these things from David Hocking, but there's some other authors I want to quote, too. But David Hocking is a good example of a dispensational teacher talking about this matter of Israel and talking about the people he disagrees with on it.

I chose so many quotes from him because his quotes are so standard of what you'll find in almost all dispensational works. He said, it's amazing how much confusion there is among evangelicals with regard to Israel and the Jewish people. Much of it stems from the lack of solid biblical teaching about the covenants of God.

It is alarming how many ancient errors are reemerging in churches today with respect to Israel. Some Bible teachers and their followers are seeking to create confusion on this important subject. Now I wonder how he knows this to be the case.

How does he know some people are trying to cause confusion on the subject? I would teach something different than what he teaches on the subject, but I'm not the least bit interested in causing confusion on the subject. I'm just a Bible educator. I just happen to disagree.

I see it differently, and I'd love to clarify, not bring confusion. As far as I'm concerned, when he says it's amazing how much confusion there is among evangelicals about Israel, I think that confusion has in fact mostly been caused by dispensational teaching. That's just my take.

When you hear something different than what you've heard, let's say you hear non-dispensational teaching tonight, and you've only known dispensational teaching before, this doesn't have to cause confusion. It certainly wakes you up to the fact that there might be more than one way to look at something. But you don't have to be confused about it.

You can say, oh, now I know there's two possibilities. I'm going to have to give this some thought. You can assume for a lengthy period of time a position of indecision.

I haven't decided which view is true. I thought there was only one view. Now I know of another, and they both sound reasonably good.

So I'm going to remain undecided until I can settle the question. I'm not going to be confused. This isn't confusion.

This is education. This is, as it says in the Proverbs, he that is first in his own cause seems right until his neighbor comes and examines him. Somebody came first in all of our lives.

Each of us had somebody who first got to us and fed us our initial theological system, whatever it was. For many, it was dispensationalism, as it was for me. But when a neighbor comes and examines that system or cross-examines it, sometimes the system doesn't look quite as solid anymore.

And that isn't necessarily to be construed as an attack, either on the system or on the people who teach it. It's just a matter of saying, hey, there's other ways to look at this. Let's keep thinking.

Let's keep learning. Let's see if we've got anything wrong that we can get more right by conforming more to what the Bible says. So that's my approach.

I'm not interested, as David Hawking says, he says some Bible teachers and their followers are seeking to create confusion on this important subject. I don't know if I've ever met a Bible teacher who's seeking to create confusion. Some teachers do create confusion, it may be, but they're not seeking to do that.

Most teachers really would like to just teach what they think is true and hope that people will see it clearly. Now, here's very common claims, such as you'll find in dispensational sermons and literature all the time. Quite a few of these come from David Hawking, but not all of them.

In his book Replacement Theology, David Hawking said, Keep your eyes on Israel. Israel is the key to Bible prophecy and to biblical understanding. It is the centerpiece of God's prophetic program.

And God has never forsaken Israel and will fulfill all his promises to her. It's a very strong dispensational stance because the non-dispensational view, that is the view that Christians have mostly held throughout history, is that God, it's not a matter of God forsaking Israel. It's a question of whether Israel has forsaken God.

God sent his son to redeem Israel, to save Israel, to present himself as the king of Israel. For the most part, most of the people of Israel were not interested. Now, the question is, as they have rejected their king.

Is that tantamount to leaving God? Or can they still be the people of God while rejecting the king that God sent to them? Apparently, some people think that Israel can be still God's people, even while they're rejecting the Messiah. But the church has generally throughout history taught, and the Bible seems to teach, that the rejection of Jesus is the rejection of God. And therefore, not only Israel, but all the Gentiles who reject Jesus, simply cannot lay claim to being God's people, so long as they're rejecting the Messiah.

And only those who receive Christ are God's people. And that's true whether Jew or Gentile. And in Christ, there's no Jew or Gentile.

Once people have come to Christ, it doesn't matter what ethnic background they came from. They are now one body in Christ and not Jew or Gentile anymore. So, this is actually, these are statements that all of you recognize as being found in the Bible.

And so, this is what the church taught for a long time. But dispensationalism has woken up, they feel, to the long obscured facts of the Bible that tell us that God still has a special plan for the nation of Israel and that that plan for Israel is central to God's purposes in history. Even though for 2,000 years, most of the people of Israel have been rejecting their king, that hasn't changed God's plans for them.

So, we read here that God has never forsaken Israel and will fulfill all his promises to her. But the question is, are all those promises unconditional? Or are some of them conditional? And if they are conditional, has Israel met the conditions for God to fulfill those promises? We need to look at those things. We need to ask the questions because they're relevant questions.

David Hockney also said this in the same little booklet. The covenant to Abraham was everlasting and irrevocable. Psalm 105, verses 8 through 11.

It was confirmed to Isaac, in Genesis 26, and to his son Jacob, in Genesis 28 and Genesis 35. And applied to the 12 sons of Jacob who were called the 12 tribes of Israel, Genesis 49. So, what he's pointing out is that God made a covenant with Abraham, confirmed it to his son Isaac, and to his son Jacob, and to his sons, the 12 tribes of Israel.

I agree. This is not a distinctly dispensational statement, but they think it is. Because when they think of a non-dispensational view, they're thinking of what they call replacement theology.

What they call replacement theology suggests that God has just decided that Israel was a bad idea, a bad investment of his time, he's just dumped them, and now he's gone for somebody else. Those who don't hold the dispensational system would prefer a more accurate descriptive term for their theology. Some of us would like to call it fulfillment theology.

And we say that Christ is the fulfillment of the promises that God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That God did not fail to fulfill his promises or postpone them. He did fulfill them in Christ.

He is the fulfillment. Or some like to call it the remnant theology, which is not a bad name either. Remnant theology works because the idea is that the promises God made to Israel, he made to the faithful remnant of Israel.

Not to every apostate Jew, certainly. Lots of Jews are apostate. You think that Judas Iscariot, who is Jewish, can claim the promises of God for himself, or Caiaphas, or Annas? No, these men are Jewish, but they aren't God's people.

They were the devil's people. Jesus was speaking to Jewish people in John 8, verse 44, where he said, You're of your father the devil. Jesus, in Revelation 2, 9, was speaking about Jewish people.

He says, I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews, but are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Or in Revelation 3, 9, where he said the same thing. I will make those who say they are Jews, but are not, but who are a synagogue of Satan, I'll make them come and bow down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you.

Jesus, in three places, John 8, verse 44, Revelation 2, 9, and Revelation 3, 9, refers to Jewish people who he calls either children of the devil or the synagogue of Satan. Now, just quoting Jesus in this, these days, is likely to get somebody accused of being anti-Semitic. But we're not really talking about race here, and this is a very important thing.

Because as we read the quotes that are before us tonight, there's going to be several that say replacement theology is anti-Semitic. And that's just a way of saying we can't refute it, so we'll malign it. We'll call these people anti-Semites.

What's an anti-Semite? What's a Semite? A Semite is someone descended from Shem. That's where the word Semite comes from. Shem, one of the sons of Noah.

Abraham was descended from Shem, so he was a Semite. By the way, Isaac was a Semite, but so was Ishmael. Technically, the Arabs are Semites, too, not just the Jews.

But the term anti-Semitism usually today is restricted to people who are anti-Jewish. That is, against the Jewish race. In other words, anti-Semitism is racism.

So when someone says replacement theology is anti-Semitic, they're saying it's racism. They're playing the race card. Now, let me just take a poll among you.

How many of you here feel that President Barack Obama has been the very best president that this nation has ever had? Not a lot of votes. Now, you're all a bunch of racists, of course, because the only reason you're saying that is because he's part black, right? You hate blacks. Obviously, you hate blacks.

You can't possibly be making an objective evaluation of the man and his policies and the effects of them. You must hate him because he's black. Now, that's ridiculous, of course.

Everyone knows that's ridiculous. Well, no, they don't. Liberals think that's true.

Liberals will always say that. You disagree with Mr. Obama's policies. You just are a racist.

But that's not true. Most of us don't care what color Obama is. To me, I don't care what color he is.

I didn't vote for him, but it had nothing to do with his color. There's a number of black men I would have voted for if they had run. It has nothing to do with color.

It has to do with policies. It has to do with claims made about them that are not verifiable to say he's been the best president we've ever had, or to say Hillary Clinton is the smartest woman in the world, as some people have said. I say, I don't think so.

Oh, you're against women, then? You must hate women because you said she's not the smartest woman. Well, wait a minute. I didn't say anything about women.

I said something about her and her policies and her intelligence, okay? So, when I say, if someone says, I don't think the Jews are the most important people in the world today. I don't think Israel, in the last days, is God's chosen favorite people. Somebody says, oh, you're anti-Semitic, then? I didn't say anything racist except to say that they're like everybody else.

To me, racism should be defined as thinking that someone is better because of what their race is. That's what racism usually is. I evaluate somebody strictly by their race.

Oh, I don't like that color of skin, so I don't like you because you have that color of skin. I like people with my color of skin, so you're cool because you have my color of skin. To evaluate people by race is racism.

But isn't it dispensationalism that's evaluating the Jews by race? Not me. I'm not a racist. As far as I'm concerned, Israel, that is to say Jewish people, are just like Gentile people.

There's no distinction. If they love Jesus, they're my brothers. If they don't love Jesus, they're not on good terms with God.

It's just that easy. It doesn't matter what race they are. But you see, when people can't refute your points biblically, they have to use abuse.

You're anti-Semite. This is very commonly said by dispensations. And you'll find in the notes that we have here before us tonight that a number of dispensations make the point that this is anti-Semitic.

Mark Hitchcock, in a video dialogue with Pastor Jack Hibbs about replacement theology, made this statement. In Genesis 15, God gives the borders of the land. They have never possessed that land.

That is, the Jews, he says, have never possessed that land. And so if they don't ever possess that land, then what God said is not true. I'd like to challenge that on two points.

And we'll challenge it more carefully and more detailed as we go through this lecture. He said they've never possessed the land God described. But the Bible actually says they did.

I'm not sure why someone feels they can say they didn't when the Bible repeatedly says they possessed all the land that God promised them. I'll show you those passages as we go through. But dispensations regularly say the Jews have never possessed all the land God gave them.

So if God doesn't give them the land now in the last days, he never keeps his promise. He's a covenant-breaking God. He's a liar.

You can't make God a liar, so you have to believe that Israel still in the future must possess all the land. Well, it's not true to say they didn't possess it all, and that will be demonstrated scripturally as we go along. The other thing I'd like to say is when he says if they don't ever possess that land, then what God said is not true.

Well, did God say something unconditionally? If God said you can have this land on these conditions and the conditions were not met, and therefore they don't have the land, was God not telling the truth? Yeah, let God be true, and every man a liar. It's not God who lies. It's people who lie.

It's not God who's unfaithful. It's people who are unfaithful. And it is entirely possible.

We have not yet come to a place where I've demonstrated one way or the other about this. We're going to look at scriptures. I'm just evaluating the logic of the statement.

It's not logical to say, well, if they've never possessed the land, then what God said isn't true. Well, I depend. Did God say they would unconditionally have the land? Then maybe so.

But did he say that? We'll see. We shall see. Now, let me give you some of the great scriptures.

And this is just a small sampling from a much larger number of scriptures. The dispensations can use and do use to support their ideas that Israel is the center of God's prophetic plans in the world. And by the way, I agree with these scriptures.

I just don't agree with necessarily the conclusions that are sometimes drawn from them. Genesis 15 was mentioned by Mark Hitchcock. Here it is.

Genesis 15, 18 through 21. To your descendants, God says to Abraham, I have given this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates. The Canaanites, the Canaanites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephiam, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgazites, and the Jebusites.

These nations inhabited what was called the land of Canaan in the days of Abraham. And God says, I'm giving you all this land. And he mentioned the borders from the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates.

Now, the river Euphrates is way out there by Babylon, pretty far from what we call Israel today. And that's why dispensations say the Jews have never possessed all that land. They've never, Israel has never had its borders reach all the way to the Euphrates.

Psalm 105 is a very important scripture to them. Psalm 105, verses 8 through 11. It says that God remembers his covenant forever, the words which he commanded for a thousand generations, the covenant which he made with Abraham and his oath to Isaac and confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, to Israel for an everlasting covenant, saying to you, I will give the land of Canaan as the allotment of your inheritance.

So you can see the promise God made to Abraham about the land being given to him is an eternal promise. In Jeremiah 31, verses 26 through 27, and also chapter 33, verses 25 through 26, Jeremiah, or God says, If the sun, moon, and stars depart from before me, says the Lord, then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before me forever. If heaven above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done.

If my covenant is not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth, then I will cast away the descendants of Jacob and David, my servant, so that I will not take any of his descendants to be rulers of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For I will cause their captives to return, and I will have mercy on them. Okay, so in other words, God will never allow a situation that Israel is not a nation, that all of Israel has been cast off, that none of David's seed is ruling over them.

He said, that's going to happen like the universe is going to disappear. You know, if the sun, moon, and stars disappear, well, then you can count on me not taking any of Israel to be a nation anymore, not taking one of David's sons to be king anymore. In other words, I'm not going to do that.

These are, therefore, promises that seem to have an eternal duration. In Romans 11, verses 1 and 2, Paul says, I say then, has God cast away his people? Certainly not, for I am also an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away his people whom he foreknew.

And in the same chapter, verses 25 and 26, Paul says, for I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel will be saved. This last line, especially, so all Israel will be saved, is thought to be a confirmation of many Old Testament passages about God bringing Israel back to their land in the last days, reestablishing them as a nation, and never departing from them. All Israel will be saved, Paul said.

Now, I would just caution you, they could get saved without having anything to do with the destiny for a nation of Israel. That has to be considered as a separate topic. And it will be.

Now we want to talk about supersessionism, which is the proper name for replacement theology. The dispensationalists call it replacement theology, and they hate it. And because they hate it, you will never hear the expression replacement theology except with disdain.

It's a pejorative. No one I've ever met who holds that view calls it that. The proper name throughout the centuries for this view is called supersessionism.

Because it comes to the word to supersede. And that is that the new covenant has superseded the old covenant. Now it's mighty hard to dispute that scripturally, since the Bible itself says very clearly in Hebrews 8, 13, that where there's a new covenant, it has made the first one obsolete.

Or where Jesus said to Israel, the kingdom of God is taken from you and given to a nation that will bring forth the fruits of it. Sounds like something has superseded Israel's role there, too. Now exactly how that works and how it fits with all the predictions about Israel and so forth, we will be interested in finding out.

But the term is more properly supersessionism, not replacement theology. The idea that the new covenant has superseded the old covenant. That's why we have two parts of our Bible, an Old Testament and a New Testament.

And they are addressed really to different people. The Old Testament is addressed primarily to the ethnic Israelite. The New Testament is to the Christians.

Supersessionism then does argue that there is a sense in which some of the things that pertain to Israel in the Old Testament have been superseded by new developments in the new covenant. What those things are, again, will have to be discovered case by case from actually looking at the scriptures. Justin Martyr was a very early Christian writer in the second century.

One of the earliest of the church fathers. Justin Martyr said, for the true spiritual Israel are we who have been led to God through this crucified Christ. In other words, we Christians.

The true spiritual Israel is us Christians. Now, it's an amazing thing that this statement of Justin Martyr would be controversial. Since Paul himself said to Gentile believers in Philippi, in Philippians 3, 3, we are the circumcision.

We Christians are the true circumcision. Or Paul says in Romans 2, verse 28, he is not a Jew who's one outwardly. Neither is that circumcision, which is outward of the flesh.

But he is a Jew who's one inwardly and that circumcision, which is of the heart. So we're talking about spiritual circumcision, spiritual Jew deism. And Paul even refers to the church in Galatians 6, 16 as the Israel of God.

In Galatians 3, 29, Paul says, if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. So not necessarily Jewish Christians, Jews and Gentile Christians. But the churches, he said, those two were more more Gentile than Jew.

But he said to the Christians, you are Abraham's seed. You're the heirs of the promise. You are the true circumcision.

You're the true Jew, the inward Jew. Why then would Justin Martyr's statement, which says for the true spiritual Israel, are we who have been led to God through this crucified Christ? Why should anyone think that controversial? And yet dispensations think that's quite wrong. Not only quite wrong, but quite heretical.

They mince no words in denouncing this viewpoint. Dr. Roger de Proz wrote a book called Israel and the Church, the origin and effects of replacement theology. He's not favorable toward replacement theology.

He writes it to debunk it. He said during the formative period of the Christian tradition, the common view was that what was promised to Israel found its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus, the Israelite par excellence. It follows that the church completely and permanently replaced ethnic Israel in the working out of God's plan as the recipient of Old Testament promises originally addressed to Israel.

This view is variously known as super sessionism or replacement theology. Now, this is, of course, just a statement, not a critique, although his book does present a critique. And he does not think super sessionism or replacement theology is the best view biblically.

But it's interesting. He mentions that it was during the formative period of the Christian tradition. He means during the age immediately after the death of the apostles, the early church fathers.

It says the common view was that what was promised Israel has its fulfillment in Jesus and in the church. That's true. That was the view of all the church fathers.

That was the formative period of theology. And this is acknowledged by dispensation. What's ironic is before we finish reading these dispensation quotes, we're going to read some saying this super session or this replacement theology is part of a satanic end times deception.

So this is a new satanic end times deception. And yet they admit that it was the view of the early church. In fact, it was not just the view of the early church.

They mentioned it was the view of the early church. They don't say how long it remained the view of the church from the early church until 1830. It was the view of the church.

And David Hawking in his book Replacement Theology says early church leaders became convinced that the church had replaced Israel. And the hatred for the Jewish people intensified. Now, let me stop right there.

There we begin to have the link between replacement theology and anti-Semitism hatred for Jewish people. I hardly think that people who had the spirit of Christ would hate the Jewish people or hate anyone else. Christians don't hate people.

Now, I will say this. And dispensationists like to quote them. People like John Chrysostom and Martin Luther in some of their sermons and writings said some very harsh things about Jews, very unkind things.

I would even say probably anti-Semitic, except they probably weren't thinking in racial terms so much as in religious terms. Because the religious Jews in the early years of the church actually were the most adamant persecutors of the church. Before Rome ever persecuted the church, the Jews were doing so.

It was the Sanhedrin that blackmailed the Roman governor Pilate to crucify Jesus. They said if you don't crucify, Pilate wanted to let him go. In fact, Peter says in the book of Acts, Pilate was determined to let him go.

But the Jews blackmailed him and said if you let him go, we're going to tell Caesar and you're going to be, you know, your head will be on a platter for that. So Pilate caved in because he was a dour and didn't have any principles. So he crucified Christ, truly.

But in the New Testament, it's always the Jews who are said to have done so. Even though the Jews didn't technically crucify people. It's the Romans that did that.

But because the Jews pressured and blackmailed Pilate and got him to do it, Peter in his sermon in Acts chapter 2, Paul in 1 Thessalonians 2, verses 14 and 15 I think it is, he said the Jews crucified Jesus. It's neither here nor there to me whether the Jews did it or not. I'm not anti-Semitic.

But the point is the people of the Jewish religion did persecute the church. The first martyr was Stephen. How did he die? The Sanhedrin, the Jewish court, stoned him to death just because he believed in Jesus.

The first apostle died was James the Apostle. He died at the hands of Herod, a Roman official, but at the encouragement of the Jews. And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he arrested Peter, planning to kill him too.

But Peter escaped because an angel let him out of prison. But the Jews then sent out their chief point man against the church, a guy named Saul of Tarsus, to go out and arrest Christians and bring them back bound and to beat them and to harass them. The problem is he got converted.

And then they sent out other people to follow him around and try to kill him. And they stoned him and beat him up and did all those things to him. You see, the real persecutor of the church in the earliest years were the Jewish establishment.

But this is not a racist statement because many people of the Jewish race became believers. Many of them were the Christians. This is not a racial issue.

This is a matter of the Jewish religious people who had the opportunity to embrace Christ as Messiah or not and chose not. And therefore, we can't really say anything about the Jews and mean it racially because there's nothing wrong with being a Jew racially. It's being a Jew by identity against Christianity.

The Jewish religion is an anti-Christian religion. And I'm not saying that to be inflammatory. In fact, I want to make sure I'm not saying anything inflammatory.

It's just a fact. Modern Orthodox Judaism is Talmudism. They don't follow the Old Testament.

Well, they follow some things in the Old Testament. They can't follow the main things in the Old Testament because there's no temple. The main things about Jewish religion in the Old Testament is a sacrifice system with Levites and animals being slaughtered at a temple.

None of those things have happened since 70 A.D. And I don't think they're going to happen again, though some people think they will. In any case, if they do happen again, it will be in defiance of Christianity because the reason the temple was destroyed, Christians believe, is because it was needed no more. Jesus offered himself as the final sacrifice.

There never has been a need for another sacrifice since, though the Jews continued to offer them for 40 years until the Romans came and destroyed the temple. The point is that even when the Romans destroyed the temple, the Jews didn't get the message. You think, oh, God's trying to tell us something.

And some of them probably did get that message and came over to Christ because there's always been many Jewish people who have come to Christ. But many of them said, we will do anything but that. And so we're going to keep a Jewish religion that doesn't have a temple, doesn't have a sacrifice, doesn't have a priesthood.

In other words, doesn't have most of Leviticus at all. Doesn't have most of the essentials of what made the Jewish worship what it was. We're going to instead follow the traditions of the rabbis in the Talmud.

And now modern Orthodox Judaism is Talmudism. And you want to read about Jesus in the Talmud, they talk about him. They say he's the illegitimate son of Mary and a Roman soldier.

They say he was a sorcerer. Some of the most blasphemous things about Jesus in all of literature are found in the Talmud. If anyone says, Jews, they're kind of like Christians, aren't they? Well, in what way? You know, they're monotheists.

So are we. But that's pretty much where it ends. Well, I don't know.

They accept Moses and the prophets as true people of God. We do, too. But when it comes down to Jesus, that's what defines Christians.

We recognize he's the Lord, the King of Kings, the Messiah. And the Jews say he was an imposter. He was a sorcerer.

He was an illegitimate bastard. That's what the Jewish Talmud says about Jesus. So Judaism is technically an anti-Christian religion.

Now, that doesn't mean they're any worse than Buddhism or Hinduism or any other anti-Christian religion or Islam. I'm not singling out the Jews to say bad things about them. I'm just trying to put things in perspective.

When we talk about Jews who are not Christians, we're not talking about people who are almost like Christians. We're talking about people who hold an anti-Christian religion just like Muslims do. In fact, when Christians today, always dispensationalists, say, We really need to send some money over to the Jews to help them, encourage them to build the temple.

You ever known a church that did that? I do. I know some churches that did that. But they're sending lots of Jesus' money over to build a shrine for an anti-Christian religion.

You see, if the Jews ever build their temple again, they're building it in defiance of Jesus Christ. They got rid of Jesus and God got rid of their temple. And they've never had the opportunity to rebuild their temple since.

But some of them would like to. And if they do, it's like shaking their fist at God, saying, You took our temple away, but we're going to build it again anyway. And we're not going to adjust ourselves to what the destruction of the temple in 70 AD was telling us.

We're not going to recognize Jesus. So, if for Christians to send money to build a temple in Jerusalem, Well, why don't we send money to build a mosque at Ground Zero in New York? Why not? An anti-Christian shrine? The temple's an anti-Christian shrine if they build it? Christians are not thinking straight. Why? Because dispensationalism has told them that Israel and Jewish are pretty much what God's all about.

Where the Bible actually teaches that Jesus is what God's all about. And what we're supposed to be all about. And the fact that someone like David Hawkins would say, Keep your eyes on Israel.

I mean, this statement we read. Israel is the key to Bible prophecy and to biblical understanding. I always thought Jesus was the key to Bible prophecy and biblical understanding.

It's kind of the impression I got reading Paul and Peter and Jesus. Who's replacing something here? Sounds to me like dispensationalism is the true replacement theology. The church always put Jesus in the place of prominence.

Dispensationalism now has said, No, let's put Israel in that place. And that's what they do. I go to some churches to visit and I see an Israeli flag.

What's that doing there? We really need to see what the Bible says. I keep saying that, but I want to give you all these dispensational quotes first. Because some of them will sound familiar to you.

Some of them you've probably heard from someone who's dispensational. And if you haven't, you need to know that this is the view that most evangelicals in America are hearing and reading and repeating. So David Hawking and Roger DeProse both mentioned that the early church fathers taught this supersessionist doctrine.

But they believe it's a very, very bad thing. Now, David Hawking says in his book, Many Christians who believe that the church has replaced Israel in God's prophetic program certainly do not hate Israel or the Jewish people. I'm so glad to hear it.

Some of us don't hate Israel or the Jewish people. I know I don't. But I thought I was told I was an anti-Semite.

I thought I was told that this is evil. In fact, some of the quotes that we have, and this quote actually is from David Hawking, the same book. All of these supersessionist interpretations arise from a wrong understanding of God's covenant with the nation of Israel and his unconditional and everlasting promises to them.

He says the preterist, that is the supersessionist position in interpreting Bible prophecy, is not based on biblical facts or on the events of history. He says facts are twisted and viewpoints strained to come up with these fabrications. These views are anti-Semitic, anti-biblical, and anti-God.

Now, to say that the church is the new Israel, to say that the new covenant has superseded the old covenant, these views are anti-Semitic, anti-biblical, and anti-God. And yet, some of these people who hold these views are not bad people. They're just anti-Semitic, anti-biblical, and anti-God people and call themselves Christians.

In fact, all the people who called themselves Christians for the first 1800 years held these anti-Semitic, anti-biblical, and anti-God positions. If that's true, it's no wonder that dispensationalists are waging war against it. Paul Wilkinson, in that video dialogue with Pastor Jack Hibbs about replacement theology, said, It is absolute heresy.

He means replacement theology is. It is absolute heresy. I would go so far as to say it is blasphemous.

You are misrepresenting the very heart of God. Basically saying that God rejected a people that he chose. I wonder if they would believe that God rejected Judas.

Judas was chosen. Didn't Jesus say, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? Judas was one that was chosen. Did God reject Judas after he left, or is he in heaven now? I think most dispensationalists would agree that Judas has been rejected.

But he was one that God chose. So is it blasphemous to say that God has rejected someone that he chose, if in fact the persons in question have rejected God and betrayed God and turned against God? I don't really see the strength in this particular argument. To say it is absolute heresy and blasphemous is simply to say the whole church for 1800 years was blasphemous and heretical.

You have to wonder who is the one deciding what is heresy and what is not. In the old days it used to be church councils that decided those things. They would call bishops from all over the churches of the world and they would hammer out, they would search the scriptures, they would pray together I assume, and they would argue things and they would finally decide, okay this is what we think the Bible teaches, so whatever else is heresy? That is how they did it.

But who is the one who gathered a council to say that 1800 years of Christianity is all heresy? Dispensational individuals who don't like the doctrine and just say, well what can we say? We will call it heresy, that will keep people away from it. Unfortunately for them, not all people are willing to just accept those labels without looking into it. An increasing number of people are rejecting dispensationalism, at least that has been my experience.

A man named Jimmy DeYoung in a website about dispensationalism called Rapture in the Air Now, he was talking about replacement theology, he said, Israel as a nation today disproves the anti-Semitic replacement theology that is part of some church doctrine and in our world today is actually setting the stage for Bible prophecy to be fulfilled. Replacement theology is an anti-Semitic dangerous theology which is actually setting the stage for Bible prophecy to be fulfilled. So, to believe anything other than dispensationalism is to be anti-Semitic, of course, that is not a new charge, we are getting very accustomed to that charge.

But it is also a last days deception of the devil and that is what Paul Wilkinson also said in that video, a dialogue with Jack Hibbs, he said, when we are talking about replacement theology, we are not condemning these guys, you know, many of them are brothers in Christ, we are saying this is dangerous, this is an end time agenda that Satan is playing out in the church. So, these people who hold it, we are not condemning them, they are brothers, it is just that they are absolute tools of Satan bringing in the anti-Christ, you know. But, I mean, no condemnation, bro, there is no condemnation in Christ, even if you are maybe also an anti-Christ at the same time.

You are bringing in the satanic end times agenda by, what, believing what the church always taught? The dispensationalists believe that in the end times the devil brings a great deception through anti-Christ. Maybe they are it, they are the last days view, that is their view that arose in the last days, you know, they were not around until less than 200 years ago. Of course, I am not saying that necessarily, I am not going to make those charges.

But, if we are going to argue that aberrant doctrines arising in the end times are a satanic strategy, there is no doctrine that qualifies more for that label than dispensationalism, which is an aberrant doctrine that rose up in the end times, if these are the end times. In any case, they rose up in late times in history. Now, I want to make this very clear, I have been saying dispensationalism started in 1830, it did with John Nelson Darby, but there is a lot of times dispensationalists say, would you stop saying that? You know, it does not really matter when it came up.

What is true is true biblically, it does not matter when it arose. And they are right, it does not matter when it arose. If dispensationalism is biblical, then it is true.

And it does not matter how long it took the church to know it or discover it. I will grant that. The problem here is that many dispensationalists do not know that there ever was another view.

So, when they hear about what the church always taught, they think, alas, day's heresy. So, my references to dispensationalism coming up late is not in order to say, it is therefore untrue because it came up late. It is just to give some perspective.

We are so provincial. We are living in a little bubble of whatever evangelical culture we were raised in, and most people were raised in a dispensational one. And, you know, if you go to a church where they have an Israeli flag on the stage, I can guarantee you, you are in a dispensational church.

And that being so, you have heard things which, to hear anything different, will sound heretical. And your teachers will tell you, they are heretical. This is heretical, this is blasphemous.

But, just to give perspective, it wasn't considered heretical or blasphemous for the first 1800 years since Jesus was here. And now, of course, we need to examine, is it? Because it is possible, vanishingly possible, I suppose, that the dispensationalists have discovered something that the church missed for 1800 years. In fact, John Nelson Darby made that claim.

He called dispensational theology, when he invented it, he called it rediscovered truth. That's the term he used for it. He said the true gospel and the true teaching about the Bible was lost.

As soon as the apostles died, the church forgot everything the apostles taught, and it was lost. The apostles taught what Darby taught, but when they died, everyone forgot about it, and the church taught something the opposite until he came along. And he admitted very freely that his doctrines were not agreeable with the commentators of all the previous generations.

But the worst for them, he has the rediscovered truth, same as Joseph Smith, the same year. He rediscovered the gospel, too. They had been lost after the apostles.

So two guys rediscovered the gospel the same year, one in England, one in America. One started the Mormon church, one started the dispensational movement. Now, that is, of course, unfair.

That is guilt by association. That is not a fair comparison. I don't want you to think that I think the dispensationalists are exactly like the Mormons.

What they do have in common, though, is they're both founded by someone who thought the gospel's message had been lost for 1800 years, and that they were the guy, Joe and John. They were the guys that rediscovered, but they didn't rediscover the same one. Joe got the Mormon gospel.

John got the dispensational gospel. Maybe. But, you know, when I look at the Mormon doctrines and compare them to Scripture, I'm not convinced that Joseph Smith really rediscovered doctrines that were taught in the Bible but forgotten by the church.

When I look at John Nelson Darby's doctrines, I likewise don't see doctrines that are taught in the Bible and forgotten by the church. In fact, I find doctrines that seem to be contradicted in the Bible, and yet so widely held among evangelicals, even in the churches that boast that they teach the Bible. Bible-teaching churches are more likely, probably, to be dispensational.

But you might say, well, how can a church and a pastor who knows the Bible so well possibly get it so wrong? Well, same way anyone else can. You've got to realize most pastors were trained. They didn't just grow up and be pastors.

They went to seminary or training of some kind. They were already probably in a denomination, one or another, and got schooling that was agreeable with that denomination. And when they went to seminary and Bible college, their professors taught them to see it a certain way, and they did.

And I'm not saying these men are dishonest or deceivers. I don't think most of them are. I think they are just human beings who were taught to look at things through a certain grid, like I was.

Because my teacher was one of the ones I just described. And I'm one of the people that I just described, too, because I was taught by my teacher to see it through that grid. It's just that one thing I did differently, I didn't go to school.

I didn't go to seminary. So I just read the Bible without the guidance of the dispensationalist professors that would have guided me to see it through a certain way. And I'm not saying going to school is a bad thing.

I'm just saying that's one thing that was different. I decided to read the Bible itself, to study in depth, to let it decide. And because I never pastored a church, I never had anything to lose by following the truth wherever the evidence led.

You see, I have a friend who is a Calvary Chapel pastor. Calvary Chapel is a dispensationalist denomination. In the town I used to live in, I had a series on Israel I taught Benny many years ago in the 80s.

And I lent the series to him, and he listened to them. And I called him a couple weeks later and said, have you heard the series on Israel yet? He said, oh yeah, I'm listening to it for the second time through. And I said, well, what do you think of it? He says, it's pretty convincing, but I know there's something wrong with it.

I just haven't been able to figure out what's wrong with the argument yet, but I'm going to find it. That's what he said. And another guy, an Assembly of God pastor, also dispensationalist denomination, listened to my whole set on eschatology.

A friend of mine gave him the set and later asked him, what do you think about it? And the guy says, you know, it sounds like all the biblical arguments in that series are true. But he said, I'm an Assembly of God pastor. I cannot be an Assembly of God pastor if I agree with that viewpoint.

And he said no more, but it was in a way of saying, I'll lose my job. I'll have to find another line of work or another denomination. I'll have to start all over.

I'll have to rethink things from scratch. This is too big a problem. Let's not worry about this.

I don't want to think this through because it could be too costly. I was fortunate. I never had any economic pressure about what I believe.

No one ever hired me. I've never been paid. I've never been paid by any organization or denomination to teach anything.

I've just been a freelance guy who studies the Bible and teaches wherever I can find an audience. Small audiences usually, but an audience nonetheless. And that's what I've been doing for 45 years.

And in that time, there's been no constraints outside of me to make me toe the line as I was taught. And so I was able to read the Bible. And if I saw something that didn't seem to fit, I was free to think, well, maybe that doesn't fit.

Whereas if I had to get paid to toe the line of the party, I couldn't even think that way. I couldn't even let myself. And this could explain why so many pastors who are otherwise brilliant men and godly men might not change their views.

They were taught certain views. But when they read the Bible, they've been taught to read it through this grid. And I think that that I think that's human nature.

And it's the more so if there's an economic consequence attached to changing your views. And for most professional teachers and professors and pastors, there is such a consequence. All right.

Well, David Hawking said several times, the problem with people who don't understand Israel correctly is they don't understand the nature of the covenants that God made with Israel. That's true. I agree.

And this is where dispensationalism and non dispensationalism part company on the understanding of the covenants. The dispensational view, which understands Israel differently than historic Christianity has, actually has a different approach to the whole Bible. And if we're going to use the Bible, we need to find out which approach really is consistent with what it's trying to tell us.

In the successive lectures, I want to talk about the present status of Israel, because that's what's on a lot of people's minds. Well, are the Jews God's chosen people in some sense now and the future of Israel? Because the sexiest thing about dispensationalism is its eschatology. Lots of dispensational points are not very intriguing.

They are different. They're different than historic Christianity, but they're not that exciting. But when you get to dispensational eschatology, that's where you begin to see everything in the newspapers is a fulfillment of some dispensational expectation and prophecy.

And that's, of course, due to something we call newspaper exegesis. Exegesis is when you're reading and trying to understand the Bible, getting the meaning of it. Newspaper exegesis is when you use what's going on in current events to interpret the Bible.

It's not a very responsible way to understand the Bible. But we do want to look at what at least some people think the Bible says about the future of Israel in the end times. The tribulation, Antichrist, the building of the temple and things like that.

Does the Bible predict these things in the end times? Dispensationalists assure us that it does. But when we actually look at the scriptures they use and look at the context, you'll be surprised. There's actually nothing in there about those things.

Now, that might sound like a crazy thing for anyone to say. What all these Bible teachers of these huge churches, they say that's in the Bible and you're saying there's not a word in there. How could there not be a word in there? And then not realize that.

How could you, a nobody, be right and them, mega church pastors, be wrong? Well, anyone can be right if they agree with the Bible. And anyone can be wrong if they disagree with the Bible. So what's really involved here is how do we interpret what the Bible says.

I believe when we do so, we will interpret in this particular doctrine very much the way the church did for the first 1800 years. Because the first 1800 years, the theology of the church about Israel was Jesus is the fulfillment of the promises made to Israel. And only dispensationalism came along and said, no, he wasn't.

There's an end times scenario that's the fulfillment of the promises to Israel. So the question is who's replacing something. Where the church has taught certain things about Jesus for 1800 years and a new theology comes in and says, that's not Jesus, that's Israel, is the middle of everything.

Israel is the big thing that God's all about. The whole Bible is about Israel. I thought it was about Jesus.

Jesus said in the volume of the book, it's written about me. Not the dispensationalists. No, in the volume of the book, it's written about Israel.

And that's why they say, keep your eyes on Israel. All prophecy, all God's plans, they all center around Israel. That is a replacement of the son of God with Israel, an apostate people who don't even know God and who reject his Messiah.