Israel and the Jewish People in End Time Prophecy

One of Satan’s Greatest Lies:How

Replacement Theology

hasRejected and Perverted the LORD’sProphetic Purpose for Israel

by Jeremy James

...thou bearest not the root,but the root thee.

Romans 11:18

Christ described Satan as both a liar and a murderer from the start. This would suggestthat he is supremely skilful at exercising both of these diabolical functions. ThePuritans were keenly aware of his powers of deception and their writings are full of warnings in this regard. But preachers in our modern era have, in the main, neglectedor seriously underestimated his ongoing involvement in human affairs.Today large segments of the church are in a truly wretched condition, largely becauseso many Christians are unable to see through the countless layers of deception thatSatan is using to confuse and beguile his victims.

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When I was saved I was struck by the remarkable series of promises that the LORDhad made to the children of Israel, as recorded in his Holy Word. However, whendiscussing these doctrinal issues for the first time with born-again Christians, I wasstunned to find that many of them did not believe that these promises still applied toIsrael. Instead, they said, the promises had been removed en bloc from Israel andgiven to the church. And yet, when I pressed for a scriptural justification for thisopinion, their replies made very little sense.As a newly saved person, I had read the Bible as a literal text. I assumed that God hadsaid in a fairly straightforward manner what he intended we should understand, andthat His words were to be taken very much at face value. Though I did not realise it atthe time, I was following Cooper’s Golden Rule of Biblical Interpretation:"When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense;therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaningunless the facts of the immediate context, studied in the light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicate clearly otherwise."So what had my new Christian friends done that I had not done? They had adopted theview, perhaps without giving the matter much thought, that parts of the Bible wereliteral and parts were allegorical. In the former case, they took the Bible to mean whatit plainly said but that, in the latter, they believed it meant something other than whatit plainly said and that the literal meaning should be disregarded.There were huge problems with this in my view. Firstly, how did they know which parts of the Bible were allegorical and which were not? And who decides what the‘real’ meaning is? Secondly, I was struck by the fact that most of the parts which theyhad decided were allegorical were those which pertained to God’s ongoing relation-ship with the children of Israel. Why would the LORD address the future of hischosen people in a vague and poetic manner when he had always addressed the other phases of their history in very literal and specific terms?Moreover,

it

struck

me

as

bizarre

that

so

many

sincere Christians could accept as literalonly those Biblical prophecies which had already been fulfilled but would treat asallegorical those which had yet to be fulfilled.Something was seriously wrong. Vast portions of Scripture were being pushed into anallegorical dead-end and denied any ongoing validity, except to the extent that theymight possibly be applicable to the church. What is more, countless passages inIsaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah and many other places could not beapplied to the church without being subjected to obvious distortion, while others wererendered so vague and non-specific that they seemed to add nothing to the Word of God. This was especially evident in those passages where the LORD was using robustlanguage and powerful images to convey what was clearly a very specific message.

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The Five-word Proposition

All of this confusion could be traced to just one proposition, namely that

the churchhas replaced Israel

. Incredibly, on the basis of this highly contentious proposition,millions of professing Christians were fully prepared to disregard or dismiss the plainmeaning of God’s Holy Word in countless passages of Scripture.If it is without foundation, then this five-word proposition must surely qualify as oneof Satan’s greatest and most successful lies. Through it he has succeeded in1.Separating

the

Jewish

people

forever from the unconditional promises that Godhad made to them.2.Allegorising extensive passages of scripture – possibly ten percent or more of the Bible – and giving them a meaning that, in the majority of instances, isinconsistent or even in conflict with the rest of scripture.3.Raising the possibility that God can make promises which he cannot keep.4.Raising the possibility that God’s sovereign will can be thwarted by somethingthat man might or might not do.5.Raising the possibility that other parts of scripture are also allegorical andthereby turning the Word of God into something that only theologians caninterpret.6.Completely destroying the prophetic relevance of the Book of Revelation.When one considers that two of Satan’s principal objectives are the annihilation of theJewish people and the destruction of God’s Holy Word, then the five-word lie is trulya demonic masterpiece. It even gets believers to question whether God will ultimatelyhonour his promises to those who are saved. After all, if he can make numerouscovenants with His chosen people, covenants of the most glorious kind, and thenutterly cut them off without recourse, then the extent to which His promises can betaken literally is called seriously into question.What could be more pleasing to Satan?While I am not suggesting for one moment that someone who subscribes toReplacement Theology is in any sense lacking in integrity – since many wonderfulChristians believe in this deception – I am definitely questioning the logic of their position and urging them to re-examine it very closely (and prayerfully). This paper isdesigned to motivate fellow believers in this regard and to provide them with aconcise and objective account of the disturbing nature and corrosive implications of Replacement Theology.

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