EpisTheology

17/09/2025

"In the 16th century, the time of the Reformation, pervasive anti-Jewish attitudes pervaded in Europe.

Heiko Oberman writing in a book, The Roots of Anti-Semitism says, “Hatred of the Jews was not an invention of the sixteenth century, it was an inherited assumption.”

And sad to say, the Reformation didn’t change it.

1648, the Ukrainian Jews were butchered.

And it is a strange and sad thing to say that in the last sermon that Luther preached before he died, he called for all Jews to be driven out of Germany.

He was fighting on another front, never really got around to dealing with that issue which was so ingrained in the culture.

This led to this Amillennial / Replacement Theology, and it became so ingrained."

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 3

17/09/2025

17/09/2025

"So you’re asking the question, “How in the world did this idea [Replacement Theology] get such momentum?”

Well, as I said, it was Augustine, North African church father came up with this idea, established this idea that the church was the new Israel.

13th century, the church establishes Replacement Theology as canonical law; it becomes the official dogma of the church.

Let me give you a little bit of the history written by Robert Wistrich.
“Augustine even likened the Jewish people to Cain, the first criminal recorded in biblical history, who had murdered his own brother, unmerited death, but instead had been condemned to wander unhappily ever after.”

Augustine saw the Jewish people like Cain: alive, but dispossessed; a perpetual wanderer. “The Jews,” Augustine said, “might deserve to be eradicated for their crime, rejecting Christ.”

But Augustine preferred that they would be preserved as wandering witnesses until the end time, witnesses to what happens when you reject the truth.

Augustine did suggest, however, that they would turn to Christ at the last judgment.

The canonical legislation of the church in the 13th century fully institutionalized the reprobate status of the Jew and the doctrine which the church called Servitus Judaeorum, the perpetual servitude of the Jews.

The Jews then had to be subordinate to Christians, they could exercise no position of authority; and Christian society had to be originally protected from contamination through living, eating, or engaging in any sexual relationship with a Jew.

That was church law.

The Lateran Council, 13th century, the year 1215, codified this to segregate the Jews; and in the 13th century, the Lateran Council segregated the Jews by requiring them to wear distinguishing dress.

In Germanic lands they wore a conical hat and what they called a Jew badge – usually a yellow disc sewn into their clothing whose color symbolized Judas betraying Christ for gold coins.

That’s what was done to them in Latin countries.

The effects of the badge required to be worn and the conical hat were to make the Jews more visible and vulnerable to attack, which reduced their ability to travel.

And so they formed ghettos, 1200s.

The German Reformation, a few hundred years later under Luther’s guidance led in a very unfavorable direction for the Jews.

A seed of hatred was sewn deep; Luther did nothing to remove it.

It eventually found its full flower in the Third Reich with Hi**er, and the German Protestants showed themselves amazingly receptive to N**i anti-Semitism; it was so ingrained for so many centuries.

You can go back to the Council of Nicaea in 325, a council which was debating the nature of Christ, came up with the right understanding of the nature of Christ.

But in the documents of the Council of Nicaea, Jews are called “that odious people.”

This attitude stuck and it stuck throughout the Middle Ages.

They were mostly resented, hated, and often killed.

In the 14th century, Jewish books were burned.

At the end of the 13th century, they were expelled from England by Edward I and allowed to come back three hundred and fifty years later under Cromwell.

In 1144 in Norwich, England, the Jews were charged with killing their babies to drain the blood to use in the matzos – the unleavened bread of Passover."

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 3

15/09/2025

The words of a Dutch Calvinist, Herman Ridderbos in his book, Paul: An Outline of His Theology.

I quote him:

“The church then as the people of the new covenant has taken the place of Israel, and national Israel is nothing other than the empty shell from which the pearl has been removed and which has lost its function in the history of redemption.”

It’s over for them as a nation.

Now you have to ignore the clear words of Zechariah 12 to 14, Ezekiel 36 to 39, Romans 9 to 11, particularly.

And you also have to do damage to your own understanding of sovereign grace, because you are saying that Israel failed to believe, Israel failed to embrace Christ, and so Israel on its own failed to do what it was supposed to do.

By saying that, you would have to also say that Israel would have guaranteed its own place in the future purposes of God if on its own it had done what was right.

The problem is, nobody can believe except by the sovereign grace of God.

Israel has failed, but that has not altered God’s plan, because the generation that is elect has not yet come.

To believe that the church, somehow, has earned the promises given to Israel BECAUSE we pulled it off on our own and Israel didn’t, that kind of thinking is foreign to our doctrine of sovereign grace.

Do we fail to grasp that we as a church exist only by divine sovereign grace, and that we are no more able to believe than the Jews were able on their own to believe?

Do we think that somehow we’ve inherited the promise because we were able to do what they were not able to do?

The truth of the matter is, we were enabled to do what they were not enabled to do, BECAUSE that generation has not yet come.

And if Romans 9 through 11 teaches anything, it teaches that salvation is by sovereign grace and election ALONE for the church now, and many Jews that are brought into the church, and for Israel in the future.

To make a human contingency or a human achievement the factor in prophetic fulfillment is not true to the doctrine of sovereign grace.

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 3

15/09/2025

Some contemporary anti-Judaism Replacement Theology Anglicans are so derogatory as to be anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian.

In fact, some of them, according to Barry Horner, would be delighted if the Arabs pushed Israel right into the Mediterranean Sea.

And this comes very clear in the book Future Israel, which Horner writes is, “dedicated to the elucidation of the pre-mil perspective, especially as it focuses on national Israel that has been ignored, belittled, and distorted in Calvinistic Reformed and sovereign grace circles.”

Pretty direct, but true.

Horner goes on to say,

“The wrong perception of Israel and the Jews by so-called Christians has produced consequences of horrific proportions during the history of the Christian church.

Such a shameful legacy perpetrated during the illustrious Reformation and onwards remains undiminished, largely unconfessed, and still prevalent in substantial degrees, up to the present, within a Calvinistic Reformed and sovereign grace environment.”

What he is saying is that while we’re being told we ought to apologize as a nation for the early attitude in America manifest in slavery toward African American people,

we ought to start apologizing to the Jews for the way the American church has treated them with its Replacement Theology.

Based on chapter 12 of Genesis, if a Christian’s eschatology produces indifference toward the children of Abraham, or detachment from the children of Abraham, or antagonism toward the children of Abraham, YOU'RE IN TROUBLE.

Because the Abrahamic covenant says, you bless them, and God will bless you; you curse them, and God will curse you.

The issue then is, does Israel have a future as a nation?

Scripture says it does.

Many in the Reformed tradition deny that.

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 3

13/09/2025

"And this is the judgment,
that the Light has come into the world,
and men loved the darkness rather than the Light,
for their deeds were evil."

«« John 3:19 »»

09/09/2025

I believe that it is not possible to enter God’s mind regarding the destiny of man without taking as our key or our guide His mind regarding that ancient nation, that nation whose history so far from being ended or nearly ended is only about to begin.

He only to whom the future belongs can reveal it.

He only can announce the principles on which that future is to be developed.

And if He set Israel as the great nation of the future and Jerusalem as the great metropolis of earth, who are we that without philosophy of science we should set aside the divine arrangements and substitute for them a theory of man?

Human guesses concerning the future are the most uncertain of all uncertainties and human hopes built upon these guesses are sure to turn out the most disappointing if not the most disastrous of all failures.

I believe that the sons of Abraham are to re-inherit Palestine and that the forfeited fertility will yet return to that land, that the wilderness and the solitary places shall be glad for them, and the desert will rejoice and blossom as the rose.

— Horatious Bonar (1808-1889)
Prophetical Landmarks, 1847

09/09/2025

...Another writer, Willem VanGemeren, writing in the Westminster Theological Journal, 1983, said, “Israel is the hermeneutical crux in the interpretation of prophecy.”

I love it when it comes out of Westminster Theological Seminary, which, of course, is a seed bed of amillennial thinking; but there are men, and there always have been, who take the Word at its face value.

The key to eschatology then is Judeo-centrism – if you want to coin a phrase.

The key to eschatology is Judeo-centrism, which alone provides the cohesive base to integrate the various features of biblical prophecy.

Still, for centuries, right up until now, there is a strong, let’s use Barry Horner’s term: anti-Judaism.

There is a strong anti-Judaism, not Semitism, not antisemitism as though it were a racial thing, but anti-Judaism as though it is a religious thing.

There is a strong anti-Judaism in Reformed theology saying Israel had lost its election, lost the right to all its covenants and promises.

For example, George Murray writing in Millennial Studies says, “To be sure the nation was sovereignly chosen by God, but God no longer deals with them as a chosen nation.”

I don’t want to put words in their mouths, so there are their own words. They were chosen, they aren’t chosen anymore. They were elect, they’re not elect anymore.

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 3

07/09/2025

Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says Lord Yahweh, “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations, to which you have come.

I will prove the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst.

Then the nations will know that I am Yahweh,” declares Lord Yahweh, “when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight.

And I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land.

Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your idols.

Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to do My judgments.

And you will inhabit the land that I gave to your fathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God.

Moreover, I will save you from all your uncleanness; and I will call for the grain and multiply it, and I will not bring a famine on you.

I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the produce of the field so that you will not receive again the reproach of famine among the nations.

Then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves to your own faces for your iniquities and your abominations.

I am not doing this for your sake,” declares Lord Yahweh, “let it be known to you. Be ashamed and feel dishonor for your ways, O house of Israel!”

‘Thus says Lord Yahweh, “On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places will be rebuilt.

The desolate land will be cultivated instead of being a desolation in the sight of everyone who passes by.

And they will say, ‘This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate, and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.’

Then the nations that remain all around you will know that I, Yahweh, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted that which was desolate;

I, Yahweh, have spoken and will do it.”

‘Thus says Lord Yahweh, “This also I will let the house of Israel inquire of Me to do for them: I will increase their men like a flock.

Like the flock for holy offerings, like the flock at Jerusalem during her appointed times, so will the waste cities be filled with flocks of men. Then they will know that I am Yahweh.”

«« Ezekiel 36:22-38 »»

06/09/2025

I am one of those who believe in Israel’s restoration and conversion, who receive it as a future certainty, that all Israel shall be gathered, and that all Israel shall be saved.

As I believe in Israel’s present degradation, so do I believe in Israel’s coming glory and preeminence.

I believe that God’s purpose regarding our world can only be understood by understanding God’s purpose as to Israel.

I believe that all human calculations as to the earth’s future, whether political or scientific, or philosophical, or religious, must be failures if not taking for their data or basis God’s great purpose regarding the latter day standing of Israel.

— Horatious Bonar (1808-1889)
Prophetical Landmarks, 1847

06/09/2025

Throughout history there have been some in Reformed circles of great note who didn’t buy this [Replacement Theology / Amillennialism].

I am particularly, as you’ve probably known, drawn more to Scottish Reformed theology than I am to Dutch Reformed theology.

And one of my favorite Scots in the area of theology is Horatius Bonar.

He’s a 19th century preacher, Scottish preacher and theological writer.

In 1847 he wrote Prophetic Landmarks and he took a position very different from his Reformed friends, very different.

He was always a strong advocate of the doctrines of sovereign grace.
He was always a strong advocate of the doctrine of election.

He affirmed as well that election was forever, and therefore affirmed the primacy of the destiny of the Jews in the scheme of eschatology.

So he was going against the grain of his day and his compatriots.

This is what Bonar wrote in 1847:

“The prophecies concerning Israel are the key to all the rest. True principles of interpretation in regard to them will aid us in disentangling and illustrating all prophecy. False principles as to them” – that is Israel – “will most thoroughly perplex and overcloud the whole Word of God.”

And that’s right back to what I said; and when I said it, I hadn’t yet found Bonar’s comment.

He says you can’t get eschatology right if you don’t get Israel right.

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 3

05/09/2025

[In Replacement Theology,]
..you cannot interpret Scripture in the normal meaning, the normal sense in which it is written, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, because clearly in both testaments promises are made to Israel.

Therefore,

Israel DOES NOT mean Israel.
A thousand years DOES NOT mean a thousand years.
Reigning in Jerusalem DOES NOT mean reigning in Jerusalem.

It means something else.

Something not apparent in any normal interpretation of the language.

So you can see there are some extremes here in trying to make this work theologically when you have to reinvent the doctrine of election, which is so sacred to us, and when you have to change the normal meaning of the language.

— John MacArthur
Why Every Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist, Part 3