A gigantic effort is underway today to convince the evangelical citizenry of the United States of America that the political state of Israel rightfully owns in perpetuity the so-called "Holy Land" (1) at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea by virtue of God's bequeathing it to Abraham and his descendants in the Old Testament.
(1) I say "so-called" because the phrase "holy land" occurs only twice in Scripture (Psalm 78:54; Zechariah 2:12) and in both instances the word "land" must be supplied. Apart from the holy God's manifested presence in it, there is nothing holy about the "Holy Land." But wherever God manifests his presence that place is holy, as God taught Moses at the burning bush in Sinai (Exodus 3:1-6). ___________________________________________________________
"Hagee has thrown down the Dispensational gauntlet; and it is high time that covenant theologians picked it up and responded to him Biblically." __________________________________________________________
This effort is being made not so much today by the secular leadership of the state of Israel as by self-acclaimed Christian scholars and televangelists who claim to speak for over seventy million evangelical Christians. These men, including Assemblies of God preacher and televangelist John Hagee, founder and pastor of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas;(2) Kenneth Copeland, televangelist; Paul and Matt Crouch of the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN); Jack Hayford, founder and pastor of the Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California, and president of the Foursquare Gospel Church; Benny Hinn, pastor of the yet-to-be-built World Healing Center in Dallas, Texas; Rod Parsley, pastor of the World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio; Pat Robertson, founder and chief executive officer of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and the Bible teacher on the 700 Club;(3) and Jerry Falwell, founder and pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church and founder of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, are all purveyors of that system of hermeneutics known as Dispensationalism.
Apparently convinced by this propaganda effort, President Clinton, after citing the words of his desperately ill Baptist pastor to him: "If you abandon Israel, God will never forgive you," declared before the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem on October 27, 1994: "…it is God's will that Israel, the Biblical home of the people of Israel, continue forever and ever," (4) a statement that enters deeply into Biblical hermeneutics concerning the nature of the church and the kingdom of God, not to mention Biblical eschatology (note his "forever and ever"). President Clinton concluded his speech by saying: "Your journey is our journey, and America will stand with you now and always," a statement that illustrates this nation's deep involvement in both Middle East politics in general and its specific political commitment to Israel in the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict in particular in a way that cannot but affect the course of world politics for the foreseeable future.
In my opinion, President Clinton's statement is bad politics based on equally bad theology. I say this because, as I shall argue in this paper, all of God's land promises to Israel in the Old Testament are to be viewed in terms of shadow, type, and prophecy,in contrast to the reality, substance, and fulfillment of which the New Testament speaks. Consequently, contrary to John Hagee who insists that "Israel has a Bible mandate to the land, a divine covenant for the land of Israel, forever…[and] Christians have a Bible mandate to be supportive of Israel," (5) I will argue that it is we Christians, as members of Christ's Messianic kingdom, who are the real heirs to the land promises of Holy Scripture, but only in their fulfilled paradisical character.
Hagee terms this view "replacement theology" because, he says, it "replaces" in the economy of God the Jewish people who are, he says, "God's centerpiece" and "the apple of his eye" (Zechariah 2:8) with the church of Jesus Christ. Of course, Hagee's perception of ethnic Israel is in error, because ethnic Israel per se was never the centerpiece of God's covenant program since, according to Paul, God's promises always applied only to the true spiritual Israel (that is, elect Israel) within ethnic Israel (Romans 9:6-13); and the land promises of the Old Testament, as we will show, were always to be viewed typologically. Nevertheless, Hagee has thrown down the Dispensational gauntlet; and it is high time that covenant theologians picked it up and responded to him Biblically. This is what I propose to do now. But I offer a word of caution, and it is this: Reflect carefully upon what I say before you accept or reject it. With that caveat I will now begin with a discussion of Eden and the Abrahamic Covenant...
Funny, I don't see anyone saying that Europe is under a "perpetual" wrath of God for all generations for a one-time act of ONE generations' sin. The implications are you believe that God punishes infinite generations of unrelated people for past events, striking similar to what God DENOUNCED with the "sour grapes" saying in Ezekiel.
Covenant theology and dispensationalism are both so inherently flawed it is sickening. One calls Israel the Church in the past, while calling the Church the Israel of the present, which is retarded to say the least, and the other makes it seems like they are completely two separate unrelated entities that are both in two different ways somehow finding favor and communion with God, which is ridiculously Babylonish.
Horrible, horrible, theology. And the fact that someone has "Doctor" near their name means nothing if they can't even exegete properly.
The article is off is so many ways I can't even begin to write how horribly inaccurate and lacking it is.
I am neither Dispensational nor Covenant Theology-leaning, but this issue is always taught wrongly by both sides.
How can people clearly MISINTERPRET simple things to be forms of replacement theology when they aren't at all meant in those ways? Standard Roman Catholic and Greek Church father mentality of demonizing all Jews for all time because they with the Roman Europeans crucified Messiah.
Having recently read the OT, I can not possibly see how anyone could come to the conclusion that God is done with Israel.
I really like verses Jer 31:35-37 which basically says that God could no more forget Israel as he could forget the sun, the moon, the stars, and the sea and the laws that govern them and that Israel will always be a nation before him.
Then there is Luke 13:35 (Behold, your house is left unto you desolate: and verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.) The the church replaced Israel, then Jesus should have come back again since we have no problem saying blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.
Zech 14:1-22 speaks about a time in the Millennium dealing with Israel and all the other nations will have to honor God once a year at the Festival of Booths or they get the flesh eating disease. This obviously has not yet happened.
Jer 33:23-26 and Ezek 13:20-22 are also very good. Tried to post the actual verses but I was limited on the length.
There is an excellent statement issued on this very subject called the 'Wittenberg Door.' It is signed by dozens of the most conservative Pastors and seminary professors of our Day. This issue is of great concern because how this heresy has led some Pastors(like those commented in the RPC paper) away from the truth.
The Babylonian Talmud is the holiest book of Judaism, not the Old Testament of the Holy Sciptures. The Talmud contradicts, nullifies, and creates loopholes in the word of God. The Talmud is the word of men. The Talmud says that an individual must pray in association (ten men) with a "mininjan" (Berachot 6a). MATTHEW 6:6, Jesus Christ said, 'But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. (7) But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do; for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. (8) Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.
Exodus 19:5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine.
Psalm 50:12 “If I were hungry, I would not tell you; For the world is Mine, and all its fullness.
Leviticus 25:23 ‘The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me.
Haggai 2:8 ‘The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine,’ says the LORD of hosts.
Ezekiel 18:4 “ Behold, all souls are Mine; The soul of the father As well as the soul of the son is Mine; The soul who sins shall die.
Psalm 50:10 For every beast of the forest is Mine, And the cattle on a thousand hills.
All things belong to God, those who think they own what they seem to have do not. The land shall not always be sold to another, God will reclaim what is His and those who are His! Hallelujah!
The Satanist Banker Conspiracy [URL=http://www.henrymakow.com]]]www.henrymakow.com[/URL]
We Are Under Occult Attack
Humanity has been colonized by a satanic cult called the Illuminati. This cult represents Masonic and Jewish bankers who finagled a monopoly over government credit which allows them to charge interest on funds they create out of nothing.
Naturally they want to protect this prize by translating it into a political and cultural monopoly. This takes the form of a totalitarian world government dedicated to Lucifer, who represents their defiance of God.
We are being re-engineered to serve the Illuminati. They undermine institutions like marriage and religion, and promote depravity, dysfunction, corruption and division. They have orchestrated two world wars and are planning a third.
Rev 17:3 . . . and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
Rev 17:4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:
Dear Sirs/Madams, grace, mercy peace and love unto thee in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ our true and living God. May I please recommend the book Judaism Discovered by Mr. Michael Hoffman which represents painstaking research based on rigorous examination of all available exegetical sources. Deconstrucing the rabbinic texts line by line, Michael Hoffman has discovered a 'terra incognita': Orthodox Judaism as the ideological survival of the most ossified traditions of Babylonian paganism. (www.revisionisthistory.org) also, I seriously recommend The French Connection http://www.iamthewitness.com by Mr. Daryl Bradford Smith and listen to the audio files, archives of articles and books downloaded for free. We are living in serious times because the professing christian Church has chosen 'ignorance' and 'error' as its main policy for the doctrine of self. The holy scriptures, which our ONLY authority and guide have been seriously neglected because of apathy and laziness amongst the local church fellowships.
Yours sincerely, Phillip A. Jones. Northolt, Middlesex, England. UK.
Dual Israel-American citizens hold US government positions that could compromise American security !
Consider the following:
"Michael Mukasey Recently appointed as US Attorney General. Mukasey also was the judge in the litigation between developer Larry Silverstein and several insurance companies arising from the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001.
Michael Chertoff Former Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, at the Justice Department; now head of Homeland Security.
Richard Perle One of Bush's foreign policy advisors, he is the chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. A very likely Israeli government agent, Perle was expelled from Senator Henry Jackson's office in the 1970's after the National Security Agency (NSA) caught him passing Highly-Classified (National Security) documents to the Israeli Embassy. He later worked for the Israeli weapons firm, Soltam. Perle came from one the above mentioned pro-Israel thinktanks, the AEI. Perle is one of the leading pro-Israeli fanatics leading this Iraq war mongering within the administration and now in the media...." - Dual Citizenship -- Loyal to Whom?
America's seemingly unconditional love affair with secular Israel, based on the false system of dispensationalism, is the road to ruin in more ways than one for a once mighty nation. I for one am glad to see a reputable and respected American theologian (as opposed to the false prophets named in the preamble to this essay) speaking out on the biblical position, and I hope there will be many in the US with ears to hear.
Excellent essay! With over 3000 views of this blog, I am surprised why more have not commented. I pray that it is not because more agree with Hagee than Dr. Reymond.
Zionism is here challenged and refuted. The main point of this article needs to be published widely!
Let us speak plainly. Zionism is a heresy and the church has been infiltrated by false prophets, herein named, which are being used to accomplish geo-political purposes of which the Zionist agenda can be seen in American foreign policy. Dare we say that it is plainly seen, most nakedly, by the neoconservatives, mostly Jewish, and Zionist propaganda fronts (like Hagee's Christians United For Israel) and their blueprint for a "new middle east" for which a "war on terrorism" has been declared for justification (launched based upon their unproven official story of 9/11). Both theological and political craft are being employed (evidence of conspiracy), largely to fuel support by the naive and apostate "evangelical" churches, for this geo-political agenda.
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