Usually I think of more creative titles than that. And sorry, it's going to be long, as usual, because this is an interesting topic.
How much faith do you have...and in what? More importantly, could you have the faith of the prophets without trying to be one?
It should be no shock to anyone that I'm a Zionist. If you believe certain stereotypes you'll assume that I a) don't believe in a "two-state" solution b) think all Muslims are evil and must die, and c) constantly drop to my knees and implore God to wipe out Jordan, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UN in a glorious fiery apocalypse.
It's none of that, and much more simple. I believe a) Israel's existence is not for political negotiation and, here's the crazy one;
b) Christians should be overflowing with joy at Israel's very existence.
I recently heard a presentation by New York Times bestselling fiction author Joel Rosenberg, who wrote several "political thrillers" (read; apocalyptic thrillers) which caused quite a stir in the US. For example, his novel of January 2001, The Last Jihad , had Islamic terrorists hijacking a passenger airline and flying it on a kamikhaze mission to Washington. Later in the novel a US president leads an unpopular war against Saddam Hussein. Well that's just spooky.
But then, his next novel The Last Days, had Yasser Arafat dying, the US putting pressure on Israel to leave the Gaza strip, and a US diplomatic peace convoy in Gaza being attacked by Islamists. Little over a year later, Arafat was dead, Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, under pressure from the Bush administration, was pulling all Jewish prescence from Gaza, and a US peace convoy was attacked in...you guessed it, Gaza.
It was the way he referred to the plethora of Old Testament prophecies stating, quite clearly, that Israel would be regathered to the land promised by God to Abraham, which got my attention. Previous manifestations of a "national" Israeli entity during OT times simply do not qualify as fulfilments of these numerous verses, for many reasons, among them Amos 9:15-
"I will plant them in their land, And no longer shall they be pulled up From the land I have given them"
Amen! There are lots of other verses like this, declaring a glorious regathering. Lots and lots. Some of them are quite detailed. Those verses had been haunting Jews and Christians for 2,000 years. Here's what Rosenberg said:
The only document on the face of the planet for 2000 years that said that Israel would be reborn as a country, that Jews would come back to the Holy Land after centuries of exile...would by God's grace make the deserts bloom, would rebuild the ancient ruins, would have an exceedinly great army...and would occupy the epicentre of world attention....is the Bible.
And for centuries, critics and sceptics didn't believe that and many Christians did not believe that either. That's where replacement theology developed, because after 500 years of no Israel, 1,000 years, 1500 years...they were thinking, maybe we got those verses wrong. Maybe "Israel" really meant "The Church". 1,800 years go by and even the strongest believers would have thought...maybe we're wrong..."
At the risk of sounding picky, I will qualify the statement in bold: "Replacement Theology"is the idea that all promises to Israel, outlined in the Torah and Tanakh (our Olde Testament) were transferred to the Christian Church. This idea developed very early in our spiritual ancestors' history, with Church fathers such as Justin Martyr and Ignatius. In fact, some would argue it began as early as 60 AD, where Paul wrote to counter it's emergence in Romans 11:1-2, among other places:
I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew.
The early "Church" was Jewish. But when Titus crushed the Jews in Jerusalem in 70 AD with a brutal assault in which the temple was destroyed (predicted by our Messiah in Matthew 24) it became dangerous to be Jewish. Then came emperor Hadrian's military decimation of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 AD. He banished Jews (including believers in Yeshua) from Jerusalem, renamed the city Aelia Capitolina, and named the land Assyria Palestina (from which the name "Palestine" was derived in what could effectively be called a historic typo). He did this to completely anul all Jewish affection for the land, a public attempt to banish them physically and spiritually. Of course he didn't count that to attempt this, was to attempt to do battle with the God of the universe.
So, replacement theology crept in, partly because it was expedient for safety reasons to appear as non-Jewish as possible, but also because the emerging Gentile influence amongst believers was becoming hostile toward all things Jewish. Post Constantine and Augustine, it was all over. Keeping the sabbath was mocked, Passover was replaced by the inherently pagan Easter. Being Jewish was no longer simply illegal to Rome, it was illegal to The Church.
But I digress (just for something new). Joel Rosenberg's point is that Replacement Theology was either a symptom or cause of a massive lack of faith amongst believers. It was sadly predictable that the notion of the "Christian" God still caring for the remnant of Jews, those Christ-killers, was ludicrous. And, as such, those mountainous Bible verses boldly predicting the regathering of Abraham's physical descendents into the physical land, could not possibly be as they seemed.
You should never, ever, try to out-think God.
The Dresden Synagogue, one of the first to be torched during the Nazi Krystallnacht pogroms of 1938.
As a result we had the Christian Church in charge of Inquisitions, forced conversions, pogroms, the Czars of Russia massacres, and so much more. It culminated in a near universal Church silence as Jews in 1930's Europe began to disappear, after their synagogues were burned, while Hitler's intentions were so overtly clear. Oh, by the way, a historical tidbit to the above picture: As the synagogue lay a smoking ruin in November, 1938, a local street urchin walked past and yelled out to the dazed onlookers "This fire will return! It will do an about-face and come right back to us!"
7 years later, the Allies inflicted a horrific firebombing of Dresden, all but wiping out the old city in a 1,500 degree man-made firestorm, killing around 25,000 people. Were we talking about prophets?
Anyway, back to the church's sad theology leading to complicity in the holocaust: Perhaps I'm being unfair. We laud the heroic actions of Deitrich Boenhoffer and Corrie Ten Boom. Indeed we should. But there should have been 2,000 Boenhoffers. There should have been 10,000 Corrie Ten Booms.
I'm not trying to vilify the Church. I'm trying to point out what a lack of faith gets you. All this...and then in May, 1948, the nation of Israel was born within the very land God had ordained.
Let me tell you about a little-known man of great faith. His name is John Charles Ryle, former Bishop of Liverpool. He was interested in bringing as many people as possible into a faith in Jesus. His sense of urgency was driven by an appreciation of prophecy. He took God at His Word. He was particularly interested in the rebirth of modern Israel.
Who says I always hang it on Anglicans? A great man, was Bishop Ryle!
A collection of his sermons form a book called "Are you ready for the End Times?". Ignore for a moment that the title makes it sound like a shrill evangelical, Left-Behind style announcement of Jesus' imminent return, that Gog and Magog (also known in the internet age as Blog and Mablog) are arming and we must all sell our houses and get ready. It is actually a calm, pragmatic, humble and loving admonishment to take God's word seriously.
When Bishop Ryle didn't know what a prophecy meant, he said he didn't know:
"Much of the discredit which has fallen on prophetic study has arisen from the fact that many students, instead of expounding prophecy, have turned prophets themselves."
Indeed. But here's what he did know. First, on replacement theology:
We have gotten into a vicious habit of taking all the promises spiritually, and all the denunciations and threats literally. The denunciations against...the rebellious Jews, we have been content to take literally and hand over to our neighbours. The blessings and promises of glory to Zion, Jerusalem, Jacob and Israel, we have...comfortably applied them to ourselves and the Church of Christ.
This man of faith nails the very problems which replacement theology bred, this monstrous snowball born from lack of faith. He suggests that it's all well and good for us to insist of the Jew that they must accept Christ as their Messiah from various OT prophecies, BUT...
...suppose the Jew asks you if you take all the prophecies of the Old Testament in their simple literal meaning....Will you dare tell him that the glorious Kingdom and future blessedness of Zion...means nothing more than the gradual Christianising of the world by missionaries and gospel preaching? ...Do you not see that you are cutting the ground out from under your own feet, and supplying the Jew with a strong argument for not believing (in your messiah)?
Then he gets down to business, the literal regathering of Israel. He spoke of their condition prior to their regathering:
Though Israel has been scattered, they have never been destroyed...Romans, Danes, Saxons, Normans, Belgians, French and Germans have all in turn settled on English soil...have lost their national distinctiveness...But not so with the Jews. Dispersed as they are...there is a national vitality among them stronger than any nation on earth. Go where you will, this wonderful people is always the same.
He quotes from those rich passages that are so dear to us Zionists: Isaiah 11:11,12. Ezekiel 37:21. Hosea 1:11,3:4,5. Joel 3:20. Amos 9:14-15. Obadiah 1:17. Micah 4:6-7. Zephaniah 3:14-20. Zechariah 10:6-10. Jeremiah 30:3,11. Those passages, among others, which seem to have God saying to us "How many times must I tell you?", and yet are still dismissed as allegorical by so many claiming to be in His Body!
He then asks of the believer, is anything impossible for God?
I see no ground for refusing to believe that God may yet do wonderful things for the Jewish People. It would not be more marvellous to see them gathered once more into Palestine.
You see, Bishop Ryle was writing these sermons in the 1890's. And we, in this age, have been privileged enough to see exactly what Bishop Ryle longed for through faith.
He also made this powerful admonition;
(Do not)...for a moment suppose that the future gathering of Israel depends on anything that man can do...the promises of God concerning Israel will all be fulfilled in due season. Israel will be gathered; and all the alliances and combinations of statesmen, and all the persecution and unbelief of apostate churches, shall not be able to prevent it.
Amen, amen, and amen, Bishop Ryle! I can't wait to meet him in the Kingdom. We have so much to talk about.
This man warned against self-proclaimed prophets, yet sounded for all the world like a great prophet himself. But really, he was just a man of great faith. He paid attention. Are you?
