We are what we believe we are

"Everywhere, except in theology, there has been a vigorous growth of skepticism about skepticism itself."--C.S. Lewis

The majority of Christendom thinks God's through with Israel and has replaced them with Christianity and the theologians who push this belief are proud adherents of "replacement theology."

Every major Christian denomination believes they're Israel. That's Rome, the seven major Protestant denominations, the Orthodox branch--they all claim to be Israel, says Richard Jordan.

That's why Rome and the Orthodox have all those ceremonies and stuff. Where'd they get them? They got them out of Israel's rituals. That's why Protestantism has all these sacraments and ordinances. That's why the Bible-believing part of Protestantism hangs onto water baptism.

Here's an outtake from a Believer's written testimony online:

"Part of Satan’s strategy has been to infect the Church with what was historically called Supersessionism. This is the idea that God has replaced the Jews with the Church. It’s only in the 20th Century that this concept came to be known as Replacement Theology.

"I was subjected to the attitude of Replacement Theology in my church growing up through the teaching that all of the Old Testament had been nailed to the Cross and was therefore irrelevant to Christianity. We called ourselves 'A New Testament Church,' and when the minister told us to be sure and bring our Bibles to church, we knew he meant our New Testaments. Many of us did not even own a complete Bible.

"The beginning of my liberation from these viewpoints occurred when I was about 30 years old and started reading the Minor Prophets. I was captivated by them. Their messages seemed so relevant to modern-day problems.

"It was the book of Zechariah that proved to be my turning point. After reading it through from start to finish for the first time in my life, I was impacted by the fact that it is full of Messianic prophecies about the First Coming, and that every one of them meant what they said. It suddenly dawned on me that if the First Coming prophecies in this 'apocalyptic' book meant what they said, then the Second Coming prophecies must mean what they say.

"My study of Bible prophecy since that time has convinced me that the twisting of scriptures through spiritualization is a terrible abuse of God’s Word. It has led Christians to reject the Genesis account of creation as well as the promises of God for the future."

*****

When you ask somebody why they think they're "spiritual Israel," there's a passage in Galatians that most of the time they turn to, and like any other passage similar to it, you have to ignore the context, says Jordan. 

"A text without a context is a pretext." So, they pull it out hoping you won't see the rest of it.

Galatians 3:29: [29] And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

"See!", they say, "You're the seed of Abraham. You're spiritual Israel and an heir according to the promise God made to Abraham."

But look at the verses right before it: [26] For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

[27] For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
[28] There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

If in the Body of Christ there's no status of being a Jew or a Greek, how could you then be a spiritual Jew? There is no such status in the Body of Christ as being a spiritual Jew or a spiritual Israelite. Why? Because we're all one in Christ with no distinctions like that.

When Paul says, "And if ye be in Christ you're Abraham's seed and heirs," what's he talking about? You notice that's verse 29? There are 28 verses before that have educated you about some of this stuff, that if you had read them and got there, you wouldn't be confused.

When he says you're "heirs according to the promise," what promise are we talking about? Look at verses 13-14: [13] Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:

[14] That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

So, you've been made heirs of the promise of the Spirit through faith. What did the Spirit do for you? Verses 26 and 27 tell you He put you into the Body of Christ.

God justified Abraham in uncircumcision as an uncircumcised Gentile so that when the time came that He's going to justify Gentiles, you've got a pattern. Abraham is the pattern for being justified by faith without works.

Galatians 3:

[6] Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.
[7] Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.
[8] And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.
[9] So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.

God, knowing that you were coming, knowing that the dispensation of grace was coming, what did He do? He preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying "in thee shall all nations of the earth be blessed."

God justified Abraham in a very special way so that he would be "the father of all them that believe"; not just the circumcision, but the uncircumcision. Because God knew there was going to be a new program coming where everybody's considered uncircumcised.

If you don't understand some dispensational things in your Bible, and know how to study your Bible dispensationally, you're never going to understand anything.

*****

Here's an article I posted a couple of months back and will take another dive into the dispensational debate (arising from "Christian Zionism" claims) tomorrow: 

“When someone says to you that dispensational Bible study is new, you say, ‘No, it’s as old as Paul. It’s as old as Jesus. It’s as old as Moses.’

“The fact is it’s the divinely prescribed method of Bible study and it’s the only way to understand God’s Word. If nobody in history you ever know believed in it, it would still be God’s way to do it, says Jordan.

“A noun generally gets its meaning from its verb form, so the Bible word ‘dispensation’ means ‘to dispense, to give out.’ Another word for the same idea is ‘administration,’ used by Paul in I Corinthians 12: ‘There are many administrations but the same Lord.’

“A dispensation is not a time period; it’s what’s given for man’s obedience during a particular time. The issue is what He gave for man to know and to obey and to follow. Here’s this truth given to Paul and that issue of, ‘Have you heard it or not?’ is the key.

“People say what we teach started with John Nelson Darby and that kind of thing, but that’s nonsense. I like to quote a guy from the Protestant Reformation era who, when asked, ‘Where was your faith before Martin Luther?’ answered, ‘The same place your face is before you wash it; behind the dirt.’

“So, there’s just common-sense ways to understand things that don’t require . . . when people require you to be able to show them your history in history you know those are people who don’t really care about that Book sitting in front of you.

“Historic theology is where you study the development of history and the development of theology through history. The problem with this is it requires you to know everything there is to know about everything anybody’s ever thought, written or done in history for you to tell me everything that people knew in history. You understand how impossible that is, right? What about the stuff you didn’t find?

“People who calls themselves a historical theologian, a scholar, pretend to make you think they’ve already studied everything there is to study and know exactly when something started. When somebody tells you a particular thing began to be taught at such and such a point by this certain guy, just run up the flag because that assumes they know everything prior to that and they don’t.

*****

“When you study the history of dispensationalism what you’re studying is the history of Bible study. In the mid-1800s, the zenith point out of the Protestant Reformation for understanding and learning the Bible, there was what was called the Bible Prophecy Conference Movement in America. The Scofield Reference Bible was published then.

“If you know the department store in Chicago, Carson Pirie Scott, Mr. John Pirie was a Bible Believer who helped finance the publishing of the Scofield Bible. In fact, it was his idea. He took Scofield aside and said, ‘I will raise the money to finance you getting the thing done.’

“So these were great days in the late 1800s, early 1900s, of people who studied the Scripture. Our understanding of Mid-Acts dispensationalism, Paul’s distinctive ministry, comes out of that study.

“If you look at Ephesians 3 in a Scofield the last thing the note at the bottom of the page says is that ‘in Paul’s writings alone are found the walk, the doctrine, the duty and destiny of the church.’ They knew Paul was our apostle and that’s where our doctrine comes from.

“I can draw a diagram on the chalkboard and go through all the names where you go from Darby and others like William Newell, H.A. Ironside, Donald Barnhouse. You go into the late 1800s and there’s James Coates, Fritz Ridenour, Howard Grant. They were the predecessors teaching a great host of people. J.C. O’Hair, who is more or less our ancestor, worked with those people (O’Hair’s North Shore Church on the North Side of Chicago is the church I’m pastoring now in its current incarnation).

“The Independent Fundamental Churches of America, which was founded in 1930 and is still in existence, represented a bunch of fundamentalist groups fighting the Fundamentalist-Modernism controversy; the modernism of the World Council and the National Council of Churches. (according to a website, "These churches banded together to forcefully stand for the major doctrines of the Bible in opposition to the apostasy of that time.")

“It started at the Cicero Bible Church (founded 1892), Billy McCarrell’s ministry on Laramie Avenue in Cicero, Ill. The next year it met at North Shore Church. J.C. O’Hair was in the founding group. The next year it met at Grand Rapids at Dr. M.R. DeHaan’s church. O’Hair spoke at the dedication of their church.”