Letter to the Roman Christians (36): Has Israel Forfeited Its Future? (Part One)

[Rebbe]

PAUL'S LETTER TO THE ROMAN CHRISTIANS (36)
Analytical Commentary on Romans

Has Israel Forfeited Its Future? (Part One)
Romans 9-11

The Audio MP3 of this lecture is available via this link: http://www.bripodcasts.com/Romans/Lecture36.MP3

Copyright © BRI 2017 All Rights Reserved Worldwide by Les Aron Gosling,
Messianic Lecturer (BRI/IMCF)
CAUTION: BRI Yeshiva notes are not available to the general public. They are not for distribution. They are not for reproduction. The notes may also bear little or no resemblance to the actual audio or video recorded BRI Yeshiva lecture.

"As a people, the Jews have long ceased to have any significance" (Signs of the Times, November 1939). The Signs article, based entirely on one of Ellen G. White's visions, continues: "Palestine will NEVER become their home!"

"I was pointed [in vision] to some who are in the great error of believing that it is their duty to go to Old Jerusalem; and think they have a work to do there before the Lord comes... I saw [in vision] that Satan had greatly deceived some in this thing... I also saw [in vision] THAT OLD JERUSALEM NEVER WOULD BE BUILT UP; and Satan was doing his utmost to lead the minds of the children of the Lord into these things now in the gathering time" -- Ellen G. White (Early Writings, 75).

"The people of genetic Israel will be part of the covenantal tree of life, but there is no longer any religious significance belonging to Palestine [or to the Jewish people per se]" -- David Chilton (Paradise Restored, 1985, 131).

INTRODUCTION
I wish to say right at the outset of the next few lectures on Paul's Letter to the Roman Christians that I was never a Seventh Day Adventist. I insist that this is the case as a number of SDA's I have known over the years -- especially some who have attended my previous osteopathic/naturopathic/botanic drug clinics as patients in Coffs Harbour on the north coast of NSW -- have thought (from what they had been directly told and from circulating rumours engendered because of my success and influence as an alternative practitioner) that I was once a member of that denomination and that I had left them as a consequence of following the radical teachings of Australian ex-Adventist agitator Robert Brinsmead. Although I had met Brinsmead once, and had read some of his writings, the charge that I had been an SDA could not be further from the truth! And true, my first wife and I for a few weeks attended the Wahroonga church -- the BIG one! -- in Sydney, but essentially out of curiosity, and certainly not as members. Yes, we had SDA ministers who were friendly to us, and we were hospitable in the mid 60s and early 70s even sharing dinners with some pastors and their wives in our home during that period. SDA's were familiar with me also through my many visitations to their Strathfield (Sydney) bookstore when we lived in that suburb -- about a block away -- and as a result my bookshelves include a number of Ellen White's volumes, viz., Testimonies, Spiritual Gifts, The Great Controversy, etc.

In recent years the Rebbetzin Glenys and I attended meetings of Good News Unlimited (GNU) which here in the Northern Rivers region of NSW has a good following of ex-SDA's. Unfortunately, they could not tolerate my views on an ultimate universal salvation, and Grace to them (as it is to most SDAs) is just mercy in real terms (although admittedly some do get it... to a point). GNU was founded as an Adventist "non-Adventist" breakaway though they protested that they were not in any way a sect of the SDA's. They were and remain sectarian. They espouse freedom yet cannot jettison Ellen White's influence no matter how hard they seem to try to protest her views. I told the GNU leaders quite plainly that they needed to exorcise EGW absolutely, and learn to eat steak and drink a case of rich red wine and watch early Jerry Lewis movies and learn to laugh about life instead of taking their "calling" so down-in-the-mouth seriously. Finally I suggested they get rid of the "uniform" and find themselves to be entirely free in Messiah -- not struggle to be free in consort with Ellen White.

When I was a child I was introduced to SDA teachings through the wonderful influence of my SDA aunt Flo (Elizabeth Florence, nee Lewis), the wife of Reuben Gosling. It was through her loving acceptance of me and my Jewish observance of the seventh day Sabbath that the Seventh Day Adventist Bible Correspondence Course "The Voice of Prophecy" (and fragmentary SDA literature) came into our home in the 1950s. While it was ignored by my Mother and Father and sisters, I read it all (again, as a child of about 10+ years old) with an enthusiastic curiosity. And through this particular spiritually devoted lady seeds were sown for my much later acceptance of Yeshua as the Jewish Messiah. At a Billy Graham "crusade" I gave my heart and soul to the Lord. That was the beginning of my conscious life pursuit to serve HaShem in whatever capacity HeShe gave me. As for my aunt, she confided to me one Friday evening after dinner that she herself carried Jewish blood and that her father's side of the family "had once been" Jewish until they converted to Christianity. I was a little confused. Years later, rabbis explained to me that the surname Lewis is a derivative of Levy, as also are the surnames Llewellen, Lewin (and variants), Lee, Leigh, Lever, Laver, Levine, etc. The mother of many children, she was always loving and kind toward me and an appreciation of her single-minded devotion to her understanding of the Gospel never left me.

Bob Brinsmead? I met him at a fast-food outlet (I think from memory in Sydney) and recognising him I introduced myself and thanked him for his (then-) teaching on justification by faith. I explained that it had deepened my appreciation of the Gospel (and it certainly had!). It was the only occasion I actually occasioned the man, although I sat in on an advertised meeting at Coffs Harbour many years later when he spoke about SDA issues and shared the floor with his Anglican partner of that period, Geoffrey Paxton (who later wrote The Shaking of Adventism in 1977). At the conclusion of the two hour talk people were wondering out aloud why they had bothered to attend and listen because they expected him to announce the launch of a breakaway sect that night, and they were more than ready to support him, but he did nothing of the sort. Many left disappointed and confused by the entire event. Just about everyone who attended that meeting were SDA's or ex-SDA's. Certainly, I was the only Jew! (At this stage I had already acknowledged an intellectual recognition of Yeshua as the Messiah, but had not as yet experienced my Damascus Road which came upon me suddenly in 1981.)

To field or insinuate the opinion (as some SDA pastors had done) that I was in any way a member or ex-member of the SDA denomination -- no matter their motive -- was, is, and will remain an atrocious, outright lie.

But back to Romans.

CAUTION CONCERNING SUPERSESSIONISM
In connection with SDAism I have frequently encouraged my students to access Desmond Ford's fine volume Right With God Right Now. I have highly recommended the book in the past, and I will continue to do so. But there is a word of caution that I need to bring to the attention to any of my students (and others) who happen to read his lovingly produced little volume. And that is in regard to Ford's interpretation of Paul's Letter to the Roman Christians chapters 9-11. For it is with these three chapters that I part company over his dogmatic stand on Replacement Theology. Des Ford, being an SDA, is saturated with supersessionism (sometimes spelt with a "c" as in "supercession") -- that is to say he believes (along with his past-SDA association) that Israel has been replaced by the church. We really need to re-look at the issue closely before we continue on into Romans 9,10,11.

One of the founders of the SDA denomination, Ellen White, carried this bankrupt idea of Replacement Theology over into Adventism from her Methodist church roots. It is based upon an erroneous reading of that which the Jewish Paul penned in his Letter to the Roman Christians, specifically in Romans 2.28,29. Paul wrote:

"For the real Jew is not merely Jewish outwardly; true circumcision is not only external and physical. On the contrary, the real Jew is one inwardly; and true circumcision is of the heart, spiritual not literal; so that his praise comes not from other people but from God" (Romans 2.28,29 Tentative BRI/IMCF Version. See also Stern's Jewish New Testament).  

If anyone has a problem with this translation, the Mounce Reverse-Interlinear New Testament reads, from the Greek: "For that person is not a Jew who is one outwardly; nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, and not by the written code. That person's praise comes not from man but from God."

Let me say at once. The Christian Constantinian Church in all its divisions is now 2000 years AWAY from the time and the events and the culture of the period in which Rav Shaul wrote his letters to the various ekklesias (unfortunately called "churches" today after the goddess of the circus, Circe). This very fact raises difficulties in our understanding today, when we explore the world in which it was penned.  

Indeed, we are now SO FAR removed from that environment, and have reinterpreted the "NT" through Reformation and post-Reformation eyes for so long, that when someone comes along to show how the original folk of the first century understood the things of God it seems not to "ring true." How conditioned we have now become.

We have all been deceived. Both Jews and Gentiles. But when a Jew who has been converted to the Messiah Yeshua reads the "NT" he has very little difficulty in comprehending the text. For, he realises that the Lord was Jewish and that he thought in Jewish thoughtform.  

Furthermore, he realises also that the writers of the "NT" were also Jewish and thought in Jewish thoughtform. They not only thought in Jewish thoughtform, they wrote in it as well. The Gospels and the Epistles and the Scroll of Revelation are all evidence of this fact. But then this confuses the converted Jew because he then reads what his Gentile brethren (and some Gentile scholars) tell him the "NT" says and this knowledge is diametrically opposed to his own (the converted Jew's) thinking on these matters. The gap is as wide as it is in its length.  

As a result, many Jewish converts have shrugged their shoulders and thrown the Bible in the rubbish can of frustration. A prime example is Hugh Schonfield (now called a heretic and deceived, by the priests of the modern church; he gave us the ground-breaking work of translation The Original New Testament and then, sadly, The Passover Plot and a heap of other largely neglected volumes). He could never successfully reconcile the Jewish thoughtforms of the "NT" with the thinking of the Gentile followers of the Lord. One of these differences revolves around the idea that Christian Gentiles are now to be considered "spiritual Jews."

Please show me in your Bible WHERE the term "spiritual Jew" appears. You won't be able to do this because of the fact that it nowhere appears in any text of the NT. It's just not there! The term is a complete fabrication (no matter how often the expression is used by others, it's not in the Bible).

REVIEW ROMANS 2
Let us all review Romans 2. For, a proper review of that which Paul wrote is pivotal to an understanding of what he meant when he referred to being a "Jew inwardly."

Note that Paul is here primarily, and in context, addressing Jews. The Roman Christians constituted a combination of both collectively-worshiping Jews and Gentiles. He is not saying that a Gentile can become a "spiritual Jew" as so many Christians now believe due to a perverse emphasis in this narrative. Indeed, Paul is not even addressing the nonsense of a "spiritual Jew." He speaks only of a Jew who is one inwardly. Inwardly... not spiritually. God delights in a Jew who lives up to his name, for "Jew" comes from the name "Judah" -- a Jew's ancestor from whom he claims descent -- and the name "Judah" is derived from the Hebrew root ydh "to praise."

And Paul did not say that Gentile Christians were now "spiritual Jews"! Indeed, the phrase is not found anywhere in the Bible. No biblical identity ever uttered such a notion. So, to reiterate, in no place in the "NT" do we find a scant mention of the term "spiritual Jew." Romans 2.28,29 is especially chosen (entirely out of context) to make Paul say something that never (in my opinion) entered his mind. But, instead of arguing a point-score, I would like to simply quote the much wider context of this text and let my students -- and others -- make up their own mind after reading it as to what the learned rabbi [Rav Shaul] was talking about and who he was actually addressing.

I realise that to some, this explanation of Romans 2.28,29 may be considered a little controversial. However, controversial though it may well be, my example is my Lord Yeshua who was a radical controversialist himself. In fact, Yeshua cut across current opinion on many vital occasions. So did Rav Shaul. Consider now what he wrote (in its context).

Romans 2.9: "Yes, he [God] will pay back misery and anguish to every human being who does evil, to the Jew first, then to the Gentile;

Romans 2.10: "but glory and honour and shalom to everyone who keeps doing what is good, to the Jew first, then to the Gentile.

Romans 2.11: "For God does not show favoritism.

Romans 2.12: "All who have sinned outside the framework of Torah will die outside the framework of Torah; and all who have sinned within the framework of Torah will be judged by Torah.

Romans 2.13: "For it is not merely the hearers of Torah whom God considers righteous; rather, it is the doers of what Torah says who will be made righteous in God's sight.
 
Romans 2.14: "For whenever Gentiles, who have no Torah, do naturally what the Torah requires, then these, even though they don't have Torah, for themselves are Torah!

Romans 2.15: "For their lives show that the conduct the Torah dictates is written in their hearts. Their consciences also bear witness to this, for their conflicting thoughts sometimes accuse them and sometimes defend them

Romans 2.16: "on a day when God passes judgment on people's inmost secrets. (According to the Good News as I proclaim it, he does this through the Messiah Yeshua.)

Romans 2.17: "But if you call yourself a Jew and rest on Torah and boast about God

Romans 2.18: "and know his will and give your approval to what is right, because you have been instructed from the Torah,

Romans 2.19: "and if you have persuaded yourself that you are a guide to the blind, a light in the darkness,

Romans 2.20: "an instructor for the spiritually unaware and a teacher of children, since in the Torah you have the embodiment of knowledge and truth;

Romans 2.21: "then, you who teach others, don't you teach yourself? Preaching, 'Thou shalt not steal,' do you steal?

Romans 2.22: "Saying, 'Thou shalt not commit adultery,' do you commit adultery? Detesting idols, do you commit idolatrous acts?

Romans 2.23: "You who take such pride in Torah, do you, by disobeying the Torah, dishonor God?

Romans 2.24: "- as it says in the Tanack, 'For it is because of you that God's name is blasphemed by the Goyim.'

Romans 2.25: "For circumcision is indeed of value if you do what Torah says. But if you are a transgressor of Torah, your circumcision has become uncircumcision!

Romans 2.26: "Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the Torah, won't his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision?

Romans 2.27: "Indeed, the man who is physically uncircumcised but obeys the Torah will stand as a judgment on you who have had a b'rit-milah and have Torah written out but violate it!

Romans 2.28: "For the real Jew is not merely Jewish outwardly; true circumcision is not only external and physical.

Romans 2.29: "On the contrary, the real Jew is one inwardly; and true circumcision is of the heart, spiritual not literal; so that his praise comes not from other people but from God.

Romans 3.1: "Then what advantage has the Jew? What is the value of being circumcised?

Romans 3.2: "Much in every way! In the first place, the Jews were entrusted with the very words of God.

Romans 3.3: "If some of them were unfaithful, so what? Does their faithlessness cancel God's faithfulness?

Romans 3.4: "Heaven forbid! God would be true even if everyone were a liar!" (Jewish New Testament, 1989).

WHAT THE REVIEW OF ROMANS 2 REVEALS
The entire context reveals that the JEWS in Rome, who are affiliated and associated with Gentle believers in Yeshua, are under the spotlight pertaining to being a Jew "in the heart" -- Paul is NOT speaking of the converted Gentiles in this section of his Letter to the Roman Christians. He's speaking of the converted Jews. Gentiles are counted by God as Gentiles, physically and spiritually.

It's those who call Gentiles "spiritual Jews" who are being derogatory to Gentiles, not me. Over the past 40+ years I have been scouring my material where I may have inadvertently allowed such an error to creep in, to ensure that my message allows of no hint of such a perverse view of the Gentiles.

Listen! I insist the name "Jew" is derived from the Hebrew Yehudi which is related to another Hebrew word, hodayah -- meaning "praise." Etymologically, a Jew MUST be a God-praiser. Paul is using a wordplay throughout this section of his letter.  

The converted Gentiles have certainly become Abraham's seed but notice too that Paul in his letters never calls them "Judah's seed." They are Abraham's seed. Abraham was not a Jew, he was a Gentile, you see. And, true, if they have been converted they have joined (become intimately associated with) the "national life of Israel" as Paul adds in Ephesians. But they have joined as Gentiles, not "Jews," "pretend Jews," or "Jewish Gentiles." They are and remain Gentiles, not even "spiritual Jews" -- just as Uriah the Hittite remained Uriah the Hittite after becoming a proselyte to the Jewish Faith in David's time. Look up any concordance of the Bible for "Uriah the Hittite" and see for yourselves that he is never called "Uriah the Jewish Hittite," or "Uriah the Hittite Jew" or anything else for that matter. He was only ever seen to be a Hittite!  

Let's not stay stuck with Uriah. The same truth of God applies to virtuous Ruth. She was a Moabitess until the day she died. She is not called a Jewish Moabitess, or a Moabite Jewess. You see, God LOVES all humankind. God creates what He loves. God appreciates all the different racial groupings. God loves variety. God is not a racist like the German Nazis or certain sections of a modern Jewish elite.

Joining the spiritual ekklesia (the Messianic Community) which was established by Yeshua, the converted Gentiles become ONE with Mashiach in co-bodied union with Jewish believers (and they, both united, are called the "One New Man" -- not the "new Jew," or a mongrelised "Jewish-Gentile composite," but an altogether NEW Human Being based entirely on the IMAGE of the Cosmic Christ).

Understanding these principles, this then brings me to questions regarding individual racial identity. While laboriously pouring over genealogies can be a dreadful waste of precious time (as Paul noted), there can be advantages indeed. Knowing our "roots" is vitally important to a proper self-image, even psychologically. Any psychiatrist can tell you that much! Indeed, there are many people living all over the world who are Jewish and are not even aware of that fact. But something deep within them causes them to search into Jewish matters as if there is an enormous yearning that MUST eventually be satisfied. God is opening hearts and eyes to His calling and to His election in Grace, in relation to His people.

Believers need to be made aware of this fact too: Jews being the Chosen People does not in any way imply that the Gentiles are "especially Unchosen." This is not what God intended to be the case. But, some Christians view it this way.

Clearly, the Word of God must be "rightly partitioned" as Paul articulated. Really, there is no such thing as a "spiritual Jew." But a true, authentic Jew is one who is inwardly a fervent, praising believer in God and His Grace and love toward himself and all humankind.

Joining the spiritual ekklesia which was established by Yeshua, the converted Gentiles become ONE with Mashiach in co-bodied union with Jewish believers (and they, both united, are called the "One New Man").

Remember, always, as we have seen in this account of Romans 2.28,29 that a text taken out of context is nothing more than a pretext. Would to God, that Dr Des Ford would have the courage to jettison Mrs Egg White's fables once and for all from his otherwise astonishingly accurate and encouraging theology! He needs to realise that on Judgment Day when Mrs White stands naked in front of the Great White Throne and says "My churches! Where are all my churches?!?" That the answer may very well be, "Yes, you finally got that right Ellen. They were not my churches Ellen. They were your churches."

The world -- not just an SDA denomination -- is awaiting Ford's decision.

WHEN DID THE CHURCH STOP GROWING? 1967!!!
The phrase "spiritual Jew" is one of the prime phrases that are used by certain Christians to illustrate why the Jewish people have been removed from HaShem's "election in Grace" as the Chosen People of God. In connection with this statement made by those who are largely ignorant of the teachings of the biblical revelation, Paul added, "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance" (Rom 11.29). Or, put another way, "The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable." In plain English, God doesn't have second thoughts about His decisions in election. The Jews were determined by God to be His Chosen People -- and they remain His chosen people.

God's rejection of the Jews was (as Paul grasped) a temporary measure. It occurred in God's plan, in order for the Gospel to go to the Gentiles -- its entirely God's Game Plan and does NOT depend on some Jewish "Free Will" -- but at the end of the age the Scripture states explicitly that the Jews will return to God's favour, and once more occupy their rightful place as His chosen instrument to yet fulfill their destiny.

Indeed, in 1967 -- the very year the Jews retook their own city of Jerusalem -- the Gentile Constantinian Church STOPPED GROWING. That's a fact. (Do not confuse church growth with interdenominational transfer growth! That's quite another thing entirely.) If anyone has doubts about God's promises to Israel, please read Romans 9,10,11. And STOP reinterpreting these texts concerning Israel to refer, as did Augustine, to the church. And I might just add, read what the prophets of ancient Israel and Judah had to say on this very same subject.

In Romans 2.29 we have seen in its context that Paul wrote to the Jewish believers in Yeshua in Rome, that "He is a Jew who is one inwardly. And circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code; whose praise is not of men, but of God."

The entire context reveals that the JEWS are under the spotlight pertaining to being a Jew "in the heart" -- inwardly, authentically. Paul is NOT speaking of the converted Gentiles. He's speaking of the Jews. In this section of his letter he is addressing Jews!

Remember, Paul is a Jew, and he is using Jewish thoughtform in this section of Scripture. Rav Shaul is using a literary lever, a play on words in relation to the term "Jew." Again, as I have stated repeatedly, Jew is short for Judah or Y'hudah or Yehudi, which is related to another Hebrew word, hodayah meaning "praise" or "to praise (God)." Paul is saying that to be a true Jew one must maintain an attitude of praise toward HaShem. Etymologically, a Jew MUST be a God-praiser. Paul's attitude was this (as mine is): If a person claims to be a Jew and he or she cannot praise God from the heart, they are NOT authentically "Jewish." No, not racially, ethnically, culturally, nor in any other possible form.

In the text we ought to recognise that the term "spiritual Jew" does not appear. In fact, it nowhere appears in the entire Bible. Rather, Paul speaks of "a Jew who is one inwardly," meaning a Jew is one who is actively engaged inwardly with praise toward God. This is a heartfelt praise toward the Father, a genuine praise, a non-affected praise.

Look at the entire context. Romans was penned by Rav Shaul and the letter is addressed to "All that be in Rome, beloved of God, called saints" (Rom 1.7). In other words he is writing to the Christians, both Jews and Gentiles who believe in Yeshua as the Messiah. These are people who are not called "to be" saints as that phrase also does not appear in the Greek text. Some versions have to be in italics showing that these words are additional to the original text, placed there by the translators to make the sense easier to comprehend. Translators often confuse the meaning of the original text. Paul simply writes that the Christians in Rome ARE saints. The word "saint" means holy, or sanctified, set apart by God for God.

Paul in his letter addresses all sorts of people and judges them all as unqualified for salvation in any sense of the word. There is nothing anyone can do, in other words, to merit God's Grace. He addresses pagans, idolaters, and religious people. And he in one fell swoop condemns everyone. We all stand in need of God the Father's salvation. In Rom 2.17 Paul turns his attention to the Jews in the Roman ekklesia as I have already pointed out.  

Is Paul here addressing Gentiles? No, he begins in this section of his letter by speaking to Jewish believers. Why do Christians consistently fail to note the address on the envelope? If I find a letter in our mail box addressed to our neighbours, should I open it and read its contents and then apply them to myself?  

Of course not! But when it comes to the Bible we do, don't we? We blissfully ignore the address on the envelope, and claim the contents of certain letters to ourselves.
 
The Letter of James the brother of Our Lord is a case in point (look carefully at the address mentioned in Jam 1.1).

And, yes, there are always those believers who quote Yeshua liberally (when it suits them) as to: "Man must live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

But, I would remind such spiritual Zealots that not everything in the Bible applies to us in a direct way. Noah was told to build an Ark, but that doesn't apply to us. Strangely, some good Christian folk have busied themselves replicating an ark for when a great flood comes -- even though the scroll of Genesis mentions that there will never be another worldwide deluge.

Again, the Sinai Covenant was good while it lasted (and if you were a Jew... and that Covenant was "holy, just and good" -- as the apostle himself acknowledged -- but I mean God help you if you were a Canaanite) but it has been replaced wholly with a New Covenant. My view is that we should all be thanking HaShem for that New Covenant and also for the GRACE THAT HAS SUPERSEDED IT as far as our eternal security is concerned and in which we all stand: both Jews and Gentiles. According to the flesh we honour the terms and the conditions of the New Covenant. But in terms of our spiritual salvation and our spiritual life we recognise and honour and exalt in God's GRACE.

Paul wrote to his student Timothy, "Study with your every effort in intense concentration to show yourself approved in the eyes of God, a skilled labourer who will by so doing not be ultimately ashamed, rightly partitioning the word of truth to your best advantage" (2 Tim 2.15 Tentative BRI/IMCF Version based on original Greek).

But certain people, who have never "rightly partitioned" the biblical revelation, have been guilty of fostering on to others the necessity to see in the New Covenant teachings the imperative demand to jettison from Covenant relationship the Chosen People of God: the Jews. Big mistake! Ellen White with her visions created dissension and huge rifts amongst sincere sabbatarians in the nineteenth century and as such was most certainly one of those!

I have mentioned David Chilton at the very start of this lecture. He was largely a brain-child of Replacement Theologians and supersessionists. But by comparison with the proven plagiarist Ellen White who claimed to get the truth of God about the rejection of the Jews and Jerusalem through her visions, Chilton was decidedly more straightforward about he ascertained his belief in Israel's forfeited future. Among other things, he noted...

"Believe me, this is not brainy David Chilton coming up with a bunch of new ideas. You know what I did? I went back to the [later] Church Fathers and I read St Athenasius. I read Saint AUGUSTINE and saw what he had to say... He says some very profound things. I saw what the [later] Church Fathers said about this stuff, AND THE KIND OF EXEGESIS THEY DID" (David Chilton speaking at Reformation Covenant Church, August 8, 1987, Tape #4).

By his own admission, the Darling of Replacement Theology did NOT go to the biblical revelation itself, and did NOT go to the Apostolic Fathers who were the immediate successors of the apostles of the Messianic Assemblies and who were strict literalists! These men took the prophetic word of God as He intended it -- at face value. They believed in the doctrine of the Second Coming of Mashiach in the clouds of heaven to rule this earth for a thousand years with a rod of iron. They believed to a man in the doctrine of the restoration of the nation Israel under the Messiah as all the prophets foretold. Israel was Israel and the ekklesia was the ekklesia. There was no hint of allegorical misuse of Scripture in the early writings of the Apostolic Fathers. I know this to be fact because I have read them. All of them. No, instead, this vain man pursued the allegorical teachings and methods of the later Church Fathers beginning with Origen -- NOT WITH THE WORD OF GOD.

The now dead Chilton was only one of these false ministers of the Gospel who repudiate the Jewish people and ignore THE SCORES OF PROPHECIES RELATING TO THE NATION ISRAEL, reinterpreting them all to a fulfillment in the church.

Listen! In the nineteenth century, many biblical expositors predicted that before "Jesus" could return to Earth to establish the Kingdom of God, the Jews had to have returned to the Holy Land, resettled it, and achieved a statehood. From these very people, with hearts gripped in UNbelief, said these expositors, would emerge a remnant who would be converted by the power of the holy Spirit and only THEN would "Jesus" return to Earth to rule it with a rod of iron. And, although they wrote a century before 1948, they were right on the money! Peter articulated the same thing (Acts 3.19-21 Greek).

How were these men treated by the Dominionists (a form of Replacement Theology) of that time period? Why, with disdain. Such was never going to happen. Such could not happen. But it did happen. How did they "get around" the uncomfortable historical Jewish facts of life? No problem! They simply sidestepped it all and said the return of the Jews to Israel was nothing more than a COINCIDENCE. An astonishing coincidence, but coincidence nevertheless. Unbelievable!

One must be decidedly cautious when reading the literature of the Replacement Theologians. They delight in twisting truth and history.

I am using Chilton as a prime example of this rebellious "ignorance." Paul talked about such folk in Romans 1.18 saying of them that "they withheld, suppressed, hid, and bridled the truth" (Greek). Notice now what Chilton declares about Christian doctrine concerning the coming reign of Yeshua.

"The notion that the reign of Christ is something wholly future, to be brought in by some great social cataclysm, is not a Christian doctrine. It is an unorthodox teaching, generally espoused by heretical sects on the fringes of the Christian church" (David Chilton, Days of Vengeance, 1987, 494).

If this man was correct in his evaluation, it means that every one of the Apostolic Fathers and early Church Fathers from the first century to the middle of the third century -- basically to the time of Origen -- "were all heretics on the fringes of the authentic ekklesia [called-out community] of God."

Where do YOU stand on the issue of Replacement Theology? With Chilton and his ilk from hell, or with God and His truth shared by Him from the Depths of Divine Love? Will we be able to stand before the Throne of God -- yes, even the Throne of Grace -- and proclaim to Deity our whining self-justification for dogmatically believing in and accepting heresy such as this doctrine of demons, of anti-Semitism? Yes, anti-Semitism -- a disease bequeathed to the world by Jacob's twin brother Esau (Edom). Are you going to say to Our Lord Yeshua that it was your right to believe the direct opposite of what he himself proclaimed? David Chilton is already standing before God and I'm sure his shoes are filling with crap. Remember, if we believe God is a liar and that His Word is untrustworthy -- as the Dominionists and others of their persuasion believe -- we are living in a heightened sense of SPIRITUAL self-delusion: a mortal danger. Again, I remind you all that the Roman Catholic doctrine that the church has the right to usurp the promises and covenants made to Abraham is false, faithless, and fallacious.

Saying it all revolves around Jewish "free-will" is one of the greatest evil doctrines ever spewed out of the mouth of Satan's evangelists (anagram of Satan's evangelist is "Satan's evil agents"!). The very idea of absolute Jewish forfeiture of their calling by God appears NOWHERE in the Bible -- and especially NOT in the writings of the apostle Paul. None of us ought to look to Papal or priestly license to believe in the authority of Scripture -- but to God Himself.

What will it take for some people to STOP and HEAR and BELIEVE the Word of the Living God?

The allegorical method of interpretation, set adrift from the moorings of literalism as the gravity and foundation for all other forms of biblical interpretation, plunged the European world into the Dark Ages for centuries.

Replacement Theology has largely been built on wrested words, taken also out of context, that Paul penned in his Letter to the Roman Christians.

In our next lecture we shall see what Paul actually predicted concerning the return of the Jewish people to their God and Messiah at the conclusion of the age.

THIS CONCLUDES LECTURE 36

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