Election of Israel
True Israel, True Prophecy
by James Jacob Prasch
In the past we have spoken of
those who have the most radical positions against the prophetic purposes of God
for Israel and the Jews and for the election of Israel, the most extreme
radical or most radical Replacementists. You have people like John Piper in America, a
man who is misled and who misleads others on this point and on others. But, in more recent years, you have Hyper-Charismatics,
people caught up in Post-Millennialism, Dominion Theology, influenced by people
like George Eldon Ladd, the Theologian, and extrapolating things from what he
wrote. Many of these people began right
but then began going off. One of them
who began right and began going off was someone called Arthur Wallis. His earlier books were quite good; then he
went off. It is not always easy to see
where these people really began to go off.
They will always attribute things to people like Austin Sparks. Now Austin Sparks said many good things, but
whether Austin Sparks really believed all the things that these people, in
retrospect, attribute to him is debatable.
Clearly, however, George Eldon Ladd was misled and so John Piper is
misled and so are a number of these people.
It is not our purpose now, but some of you are new so I have to point
something out. We have a recording
called “The Twin Pillars of Madness” and we explain about Hyper-Charismatics
who get into Replacement Theology. Now,
I myself believe in all the gifts of the Spirit, understood and practiced biblically.
I don’t believe in the deceptions and counterfeits happening today. I don’t believe in Charismania, but I do
believe in charismata. Cessationism is an un-biblical doctrine. However, are we talking about charismata? No we are talking about Charismania. People like Rick Godwin promote this very
anti-Israel position in America and it is throughout the Restoration
Movement. Now, the term Restorationism itself is a big question. They always talk about restoring the
Kingdom. The one place the Bible speaks
about restoring the Kingdom is Acts Chapter 1.
“Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the Kingdom to … the
Church?” To Israel! The New Testament never teaches God is going
to restore the Kingdom to the Church because Jesus’ kingdom is not of this
world. Their whole premise is
false. The only way these people’s
belief system can hold together is based on a presupposition that is a faulty
foundation. Once you remove the
foundation, their belief system collapses.
I will come back to this in a moment.
Again, just a brief word about the Twin Pillars of Madness, I don’t want
to go into it, most of you, I assume, have heard it. Hyper-Charismatics are people who have no
doctrinal theology. Their doctrine was
always based on clichés, mysticism, and experience. A lot of people who get caught up into these
errors get their doctrine, if you want to call it doctrine, from mindlessly
singing choruses, not understanding the New Age origins of what they are doing. It is effectively a mantra. They just keep repeating the thing over and
over until it becomes spiritually ingrained into them, whether or not it is true
or false is irrelevant. And much of the pneumo-centric worship is certainly
false. All of the Dominion Theology
virtually, as they understand it, is false but they just keep saying it and saying
it and saying it and they get mesmerized with it, like a Hindu. This is a mantra. If you notice, it is like the Vineyard, they
just sing the same choruses over and over and it predisposes people to hypnotic
induction, for falling down and the rest of it.
Now again, this is in no way to question authentically biblical
manifestations of the Holy Spirit. It is
simply to separate what is scriptural from the counterfeit and what
predominates today, in those circles, is the counterfeit. So these people have no doctrine, no theology
and quite frankly, some of them and even their pastors would not be
knowledgeable enough to have theology.
I once asked a friend who is an
Anglican theologian, not a charismatic himself but a born again Christian and
himself a Replacementist, I asked him, “Steve, how is
it that so many Anglican clergy go into what they call “The Renewal of the Holy
Spirit,” the people who followed Michael Harper, who has since turned Greek
Orthodox, and they get into following crazy people from America, or so forth,
they get into the Kansas City Prophets, Paul Cain, the homosexual and alcoholic,
who becomes their prophet. And whatever
this drunken homosexual says to them, that was the Word of God to them. He would prophecy over them and this drunken
alcoholic would be the Word of God to them; that would be their source of
doctrine. He turned out to be exactly
that, a drunken homosexual, and always has been, but that was their
“Prophet.” Whatever he said was the Word
of God to these people. So I asked “How
do they get into this?” and he said “Because for generations Anglican
seminaries have not taught doctrine.
They have taught literary and historical criticism, an academic
knowledge of the scripture but not a doctrinal knowledge.” In other words, they taught people about the
Bible but they did not teach people what the Bible was about.
Now this is not to say--when you
do a degree in Theology, it is not a degree in doctrine … it is a degree in
History and Literature. That is what it is, it is a degree in History and Literature. You are simply studying the scriptures in the
original languages as History and Literature.
If you go to an Evangelical institution, like London Bible College, they
are teaching you how to refute liberal higher critics. If the liberals in the university can produce
scholarly people who don’t believe, we can produce scholarly people who do
believe, that was that. So what you have
is believers fighting liberals, but doctrine, which is what the Bible is
supposed to be about, takes second place.
Now this is not to demean the importance of Apologetics in refuting
liberals, and it is not demeaning the importance of the Bible as history and
literature, it is that, but it is more than that. The Bible is like Jesus. Jesus is fully human and fully divine, so the
Bible is the Word of God in the word of man.
The epistle to the Romans is fully the word of Paul, but it is fully the
Word of God. It is not 50/50, it is one hundred/one hundred. Jesus is not 50/50,
he is one hundred percent God and one hundred percent man. The Bible is the Word of God and the word of
man. Now, as the word of man, we need to
understand it as history and literature.
But as the Word of God, we need to understand it as doctrine, Holy
Spirit inspired revelation. They miss
that. Evangelical institutions have
become reactionary. They are only trying
to produce people who know how to refute liberals. Basically, what most Bible colleges do today,
if they are good ones, is teach the future ministers and pastors how to answer
questions nobody is asking. The other
thing they teach you is secular marketing techniques and psychology as if that
is supposed to make the Church grow.
This is a sad state of affairs.
So you have Hyper-Charismatic and
Hyper-Pentecostal, (now this is a generalization, there are exceptions), but
you’ve got these Hyper-Charismatics.
Where do they get their doctrine?
Where do these people get their doctrine? Well, I always put it bluntly, “Where does a
kook get their doctrine? They get it
from another kook.” So, the Hyper-Charismatics
will go to the hyper-Calvinists, to the people into Reconstructionism, to the
people who believe the Church is Israel; that is where they get it. They have no wherewithal to arrive at
doctrine themselves. So, they just go
get it from a Calvinist. Now, in theory
these people should be mutually exclusive.
Well, think of it this way, if you looked at the ideology to which they
professed to ascribe, Hitler and Stalin were at opposite poles of the
ideological spectrum. But, if you were
to read “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” and if you were to read “The
Gulag Archipelago” you quickly discover that beyond all the pretenses of
conflicting ideology, Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler where six-of-one,
half-dozen of the other. They were the
same. There was no difference between
those two people. It did not matter what
they said ideologically, it is not important what people say, it is only
important what people do, and they did the same stuff. They were the same kind of people.
Well, although Hyper-Charismatics
and Hyper-Calvinists would claim to be different, it is not important what
people say, it is only important what they do.
What they say is only important if it’s matched by their actions, not by
what they profess. So, they get this
Replacement Theology from Hyper-Charismatics, who get it from Hyper-Calvinists. We are looking at election, the Greek word, eklektos. The only thing it means is chosen. That is the only thing it means, chosen, that
is all it means. In a Judeo-Christian
approach to scripture, the biblical interpretation to hermeneutics, you would
use things like typology. The early
Brethren understood this, so did many of the Puritans. You would use Midrash; the New Testament uses
Midrash in handling the Old Testament.
If you want to know why the Gospels handle the Old Testament the way
they do, in the formula citations, they are using Midrash. They are giving Pesher interpretations. However, in Biblical Judeo-Christian
hermeneutics, in the biblical way of interpreting the Bible, you never, ever,
ever base a doctrine on a type or an allegory.
That is something that comes from Gnosticism. It had its roots earlier in someone called
Philo, but it got into the Church, particularly in Alexandria, under the
influences of people like Origen and there was a big dispute in the early
Church. The Antiochians
looked to a more literal one but they tended to forget things like typology and
allegory. The Alexandrians looked at
everything allegorically and dismissed literal meaning. The New Testament is not like that. The New
Testament begins with the literal meaning that is called the peshat, from the Hebrew word, pashoot, simple straightforward
meaning. The further spiritual interpretation
of it is called the pesher. But, to arrive at the correct pesher, you have to understand the peshat. Now, again, some of you know this from our
teachings but we have people who don’t, so I’ve got to go through it quick.
Hosea 11:1: “Out of Egypt I called my
son.”
Quite simply, it is talking about
the Exodus of the Jews, that is the peshat, the simple, straightforward, literal meaning. However, Matthew gives the pesher interpretation. When Herod dies, Jesus comes out of
Egypt. What happened to Israel
prefigures the Messiah. The Dead Sea
Scrolls handle the Old Testament the same way as the New Testament does, essentially,
Midrash, peshat, pesher. Now,
there is much more to it than this. So,
the Antiochians were right in what they affirmed,
wrong in what they negated. They were
right in what they affirmed, wrong in what they negated; however, at least they
were safer, they were not going to go into any heresy. They just were not going to receive the full
depth of what the Bible meant, but they were not going to go into heresy. The Alexandrians were the opposite. They just went straight to the typology, or
straight to allegory. They were right in
what they affirmed, but because they were wrong in what they did not affirm,
they went into immediate error. You
cannot base a doctrine on a symbol. Yes,
the Passover Seder illustrates and demonstrates the Doctrine of Atonement. All you have to do is set up a Passover table
and you can illustrate how Jesus is the lamb and how he took our sin, and how
the matzah is striped and pierced because he was pierced for our transgressions
and by his stripes we are healed. You can
use the peshat
to illustrate the doctrine of atonement, but the doctrine of atonement is not
based on the ritual symbolism of the Passover.
It simply illustrates it, it illuminates it, it helps us understand it
on a deeper level, but that is not the basis of it. The basis of it is God became a man and took
our sin, and rose from the dead to give eternal life. That is what it is about. During the Middle
Ages, the Roman Catholic Church got into the Alexandrian stuff. In a reaction to this, the Reformers came
along and they wanted a more literal approach.
This came as a result of something called “Christian Humanism” and they
went back to the Antiochians. In other words, the Reformers were right in
what they affirmed, or right in what they did, wrong in what they failed to
do. They left infant baptism in place. They left the un-biblical marriage of church
and state, Erastiansm in place, they left Replacement
Theology in place, they left Patristic Authority in place, and they left Antiochian hermeneutics in place. They were right in what they did, wrong in
what they failed to do.
Now, others, like the Puritans
came along and realized that the Reformation did not go far enough and tried to
make it more right, but then they got caught up into Calvinism and it did not
work. There were ones who did understand
it, like John Bunyan, he really understood things, but he was in the era of the
Puritans and his ideas did not predominate above those of John Owen and Cromwell’s
men because they had the political power.
It goes on like this. However, in
both Judeo-Christian hermeneutics and in Western hermeneutics, and by Western,
the Church is Hellenized. Western Christendom
is Hellenized. It was rewritten as a
Platonic religion by Augustine following Plato, based on Plato’s philosophy,
and then it was rewritten again as an Aristotelian religion by Thomas
Aquinas. Now again, I apologize to those
who know this. It is just background to
what we are going to look at. But, in
both you have the text, context, co-text.
Whenever you take a text of the Bible out of context, and, in isolation
from its co-text, you have a pretext. Again,
a text out of context, in isolation from its co-text is a pretext. The script is already written; they come with
a presupposition. “The Church is
Israel.” That is a presupposition. It is a pretext. A pretext you can only arrive at by taking a
text, out of context, in alienation from its co-text. With these things in view, let us look at the
subject of election in Romans 9.
People have a problem. Election!
“Why should God elect the Jews! Is God a racist? Does he favor one nation and one people above
another?” Already they have made two
mistakes. Their first mistake is that
they don’t understand the nature of election.
We will look at that in a moment.
Their second mistake is they are asking the wrong question. People who have a problem with God’s election
of Israel really do not have a problem with God’s election of Israel, they have a problem with the doctrine of election. So, the response is, “Why are you worried
about why God elected Israel? Let me ask
you a more relevant question, why did God elect you? How come you got saved and the guy across the
street didn’t? How come you are born
again and your siblings are not? If
you’ve got a problem with election, why did he elect you? Don’t worry about Israel,
let’s talk about your election. You are
born again? You’re saved, you trust
Jesus for your salvation? You got a
problem with that?” The Bible makes it
clear our salvation is not of ourselves.
We didn’t do anything right. It
is grace; we couldn’t save ourselves.
Jesus had to come and save us.
Our salvation is not an action of ourselves. Even our response to it is God’s grace, not
to get Calvinistic about it but it is. When
they throw this election thing at you that is the response. “Wait a minute, before we talk about the
election of Israel, let’s talk about election.
I don’t know why you are so worried about why God elected Israel, let’s talk about why God elected you. How come you are saved? How come I am saved? What did we do?” Well, the answer is, we did nothing. If you can understand why God chose you, then
you will understand why God chose Israel.
Now 1st Corinthians, chapter 1 gives us some illumination as
to this mystery of the divine prerogative.
1 Corinthians 1:26-27 For consider your calling, brethren, that
there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many
noble; 27 but God has chosen
the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, [and powerful].
I’ve always pointed out that it
is easier for poor people to get saved than rich ones. If God wanted to choose a nation based on its
achievements and accomplishments, to be his lights to the nations, in the
ancient world, he certainly would have chosen the Greeks, wouldn’t he? Herodotus, Hypocrities,
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Pythagoris …
everybody was a Greek. If he wanted to
choose somebody great, he would have chosen a Greek, but then the Greeks would
have taken the glory. The Greeks had a
humanistic view of God. Their god was
anthropomorphic. The Greeks made God in
their image and likeness. They gave
their gods human attributes. You could
lie to them; you could cheat them and all of this kind of stuff. You could placate them. The Hebrews had a revelation of the true
God. The Hebrew God said that God is not
anthropomorphic but people are theopomorphic. We are made in His image and likeness. God does not have human attributes; we have
divine ones, not to be confused with the little gods
rubbish of Cerullo and these guys.
So, God chooses people who are
less likely, but let’s talk more about this election. Let’s look please, at Romans 9 very carefully.
Romans 9:1-5 I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not
lying, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great
sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart.
For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen
according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as
sons and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises, whose
are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is
over all, God blessed forever. Amen.
When you see
somebody wishing they were accursed for the sake of the people, this is the
character of Christ, put on them by the Holy Spirit. Remember, Moses said “If you are going to
blot these people out, blot me out.” This
is the character of Christ; he was willing to become accursed of the Father for
the salvation of the world. It is not a
thing a human is truly capable of, if they are telling the truth, except by the
Holy Spirit. It is not a burden that you
take on; it is a burden that God puts on you.
Now, we have explained this in our teaching on intercessory prayer. You can pray for somebody but you cannot
intercede for somebody unless the Holy Spirit puts the burden on you, the Greek
word intupsis,
Hebrew apgias, to intercede.
You have to be bruised on behalf of somebody. You cannot engage in intercessory prayer
arbitrarily. The Holy Spirit must put
the burden on you. You can pray for
somebody but you cannot intercede for somebody unless the Holy Spirit puts the
burden on you. Both the Hebrew and the
Greek make a distinction between prayer and intercessions.
Now, it says
here that Jesus is Jewish, doesn’t it; the Messiah according to the flesh? We have people today saying Jesus was a
Palestinian Christian and the Jews killed him. There are so-called Christians, so-called
Protestants saying that. Several years
ago, the Elim Cult published an article saying that Jesus Christ had no Jewish
blood, written by one of their elder statesman, George Jeffreys. Well, what was his blood? He was too ignorant to know that he was
bordering on an ancient heresy known as Docetism. He
was too ignorant to know it. But what do
you expect from them? You know the song,
“When they go to kp and
they’re too blind to see, that’s a moron.”
“When they talk like a jerk because Elim’s
their church, that’s a moron!” They
didn’t know, this is Docetism,
virtually, that he only appears to be human.
Well, the Bible says he was human and he was Jewish. The New Testament says directly that Jesus
was a Jew.
Romans 9:6-7 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not
all Israel who are descended from
Israel; neither are they all children because they are
Abraham's descendants, but: "through Isaac your descendants will be
named."
From an
anthropological perspective, this speaks of Abraham’s descendents who are not
traced through Isaac and Jacob, anthropologically. Spiritually, it means ultimately what you
read in Romans 11, that Jews who reject their own Messiah are cut off from
their own olive tree, they are cut off from the olive
tree. They are counted as a pagan and a
nonbeliever. They are not going to be
included in Israel in eternity. Jesus
said directly that those who reject him, “Many will come from the East and West
and recline with Abraham and the fathers but you will be put to outermost
darkness, where men will weep and gnash their teeth.” Unbelieving Israel will be cut off and will,
in eternity, not be part of Israel.
Those accepting Jesus, who have been grafted in, will be co-heirs with
the Jews under the promise of salvation.
Remember, Abraham was a Gentile God converted to Judaism. That is how he can be the father of all who
believe because he was a Jew and a Gentile.
The lineage of David, through which Jesus came, beginning in the book
of Ruth, which we see in Matthew 1, it
comes from a marriage of Jew and Gentile, doesn’t it? Boaz and Ruth, the Davidic line of salvation,
the regal line of Israel, would come through a Jew-Gentile
intermarriage, would begin a lineage, the pedigree of the Messiah. The Messiah would die for both Jew and
Gentile. That is why Abraham had to be
both a Jew and a Gentile. That is why
the lineage of Jesus had to come from a Jew-Gentile
intermarriage, but he, himself, was biblically a Jew.
Romans 9:10-24 And not only this, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac; for though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad,
in order that God's purpose according to His
choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him who calls, it
was said to her, "The older will serve the younger." Just as it is written, "Jacob I loved,
but Esau I hated." What shall we
say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses,
"I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on
whom I have compassion." So
then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has
mercy. For the Scripture says to
Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed
throughout the whole earth." So
then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens
whom He desires. You will say to me
then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His
will?" On the contrary, who
are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the
molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the
clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for
common use? What if God, although
willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much
patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He
did so in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon
vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among
Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.
This is the
election chapter upon which Calvinism in its extreme form stands. Remember, you’ve got the Replacement Theology
and you have this idea of election, that God created people to go to hell, that
if you are destined for heaven, you are going to heaven and if you are
predestined for hell, you are going to hell, end of story. That is what they believe. And you have no choice in it because the sovereignty
of God has so decreed who will go to heaven and who will go to hell. Grace becomes irresistible. Man lost his free will in the Garden of Eden
with the fall of Adam, that is true. Unsaved people do not have a totally free
will. He who commits sin is slave to
sin, there is a bondage of the human will, Luther was
right about that. Calvin, of course,
took that further. However, free will
was restored at the cross. The slave
died. Once a slave dies, he is no longer
a slave. Unsaved people are slaves to
sin. Because of the Holy Spirit,
Christians don’t have to live in sin, the Son sets you free, you
shall be free indeed. At the new birth,
the freedom that we lost through the fall is restored in Christ. We have a free will. This is the meaning of quickening. Unsaved people are spiritually dead. When a corpse is dead, it doesn’t get cold,
it doesn’t get hot, because it does not metabolize. You can talk to it all you want, but it is
not going to answer you. It has an
inability to communicate. So is fallen
man. They are spiritually dead. Unsaved people are dead. When someone is convicted by the Holy Spirit,
something takes place called an eklentic, meaning a conviction. When this eklentic, when the theological
term from the Greek takes place, a measure of life is put into somebody, we
usually translate it quickening. A
measure of life is put back into the corpse, as it were, making it possible for
the corpse to communicate. God puts
enough light back into an unsaved person so his Spirit can convict him of their
sin and give them a desire to respond to his grace. At that point, the unsaved person, having
been given a measure of life, must either accept it or reject it. There is nothing this unsaved person can do
to quicken themselves because they are dead.
However, once the Holy Spirit quickens them and the Father draws them,
then the onus is upon them. There are
two extremes: One is an extreme form of Arminianism called Finneyism that
was propounded by someone called Charles Finney. Charles Finney essentially was a hair’s
breath of being a heretic called a Pelagian.
He virtually denied original sin.
Because of original sin people are dead.
He denied this. That is one extreme. That says “You can choose Christ.” Most of the cheap grace preaching—“Just put
your hand up, close you eyes, every head bowed” that comes from Finney. You cannot choose Christ. The Holy Spirit must quicken you, convict you
of sin. The Father must draw you, and
then you can choose Christ. Unsaved
people cannot choose Christ. Christ has
to choose them. Now, why is it that some
people get quickened and respond, some won’t respond to the gospel? Many are called, few are chosen. The ones who respond are
chosen. The other extreme are the
Calvinists, they deny all of this.
“That’s it, it is irresistible.”
That is their first perversion of election. Their other perversion of election is, of
course, Replacement Theology, “We are now the elect, Israel
is not.” Now, bear in mind there are
moderate Calvinists who do not believe this.
And, in fact, the Puritans, who were very Calvinistic, did not deny God
had some kind of future agenda for Israel.
And it was that first Puritan scholars in the Western world,
particularly John Lightfoot, who said “Look, the New Testament writers used
Midrash.” We are never going to
understand the Gospels and the New Testament in their totality until we begin
reading them from the point of view of Midrash as a Jewish book. I am not saying all Calvinists were bad and I
am not saying all are bad. What I am
saying is that extreme Calvinism is demonic.
Hell was not made for people; it was made for Satan and his angels. Nobody should have to go there if God became
a man and took our place on the cross so we would not have to go there. Nobody should have to go to hell. Hell was not made for human beings. It was made for demons and Satan. It was not made for people. Now, there is a verse that says “God created
all things for a purpose, even the wicked for the day of Judgment,” but that is
not people. Jesus said plainly that it
is a place prepared for Satan and his angels.
So understand now this wrong view of election. “The Church replaces Israel, we are now the
elect, particularly the Reformed Church and people are elect or they are not
elect.” Romans 9, 10 and 11: The text, in its context, in light of its co-text. Is it speaking about individuals or is it
speaking about a nation? If you read the
first eight chapters of Romans, it is talking about how Jesus fulfils the Torah,
how he fulfils the law, how the prophets and the law were to point to him. There are different purposes of the law, but
the main purpose was to demonstrate through Israel and the Jews the fallen
nature of man. The inability of the Jews,
of Israel, to keep the law shows or demonstrates man’s inability to meet God’s
standard of righteousness. God
demonstrates the human condition through Israel. But, he also demonstrates his grace to Israel
because of his election. Israel is a way
that God had to be a light to the nations.
Through this nation, I am going to show people their fallen state, but I
am also going to show them my grace and I will use them as my messengers to the
nations, because through them will come the Messiah, according to the flesh. I will give my Word through them and I will
send salvation through them. Having
shown man’s fallen state through them, and my grace through them, I will then
use them to be lights to the rest of the world.
Through them, all the peoples of the earth shall be blessed, as I
promised Abraham.” That is
election. That is the election of
Israel.
Now, suppose God said to you,
“Hey, Jack, come up here, bring your wife Jill with you. This is Jack and Jill,” and he begins reading
out a list of their sins, so everyone can see how no good they were. Would you like to be Jack or Jill? Then he says, “However, I want to show you
how forgiving I am; I am going to forgive Jack and Jill.” That is what election is about. Israel was elect. We are elect.
Election has to do with elected for service as sons and daughters. In other words, Israel was elect and there
are two aspects to the election:
Salvation is both eternal and temporal.
Yes, we are elect to go to heaven.
We are elect to be God’s children and co-reign with Christ forever; but
we are also elected to do something in this life and in this world, to be his
light to others. Just like in Matthew
25; whether or not we do this and how faithfully we do this, is going to
determine our reward when we do this. That is election.
Now, a text, out of context, in
isolation from its co-text is a pretext.
What these people say is this: Ronnie
showed you on the map how Israel is the most fought over place in history
because it is where three continents come together. It was from there the gospel could spread
north, south, east, and west. It spread
in all directions. But we have heard
people say “We’re elect: and on the day of this election some unspeakable
things happened: The war crimes of the
Puritans against the Irish. If you want
to throw rocks at the Roman Catholic Church, throw one for me. Better yet, throw a hand grenade. But don’t throw rocks at Catholic
people. Then the Puritans decided that
they were the true elect; the other Calvinists, the Presbyterians were not, so
they had a war. They massacred each
other in the name of Jesus Christ. It
was all politics. The Southern Baptists
in America, “We can own Black slaves, we’re the elect.” The Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa,
“We can have apartheid; we are the elect.”
This is a wrong view of election.
We are elected to service, to be lights to the nations, not to lord it
over them. The first problem: “God elected some to go to heaven, some to go
to hell, that’s it.” That is what they
say. A text, out of context, is a
pretext. A text, out of context, in
isolation from its co-text is a pretext.
Up to chapter eight, he is talking about the fulfillment of the
Torah. This automatically raises the
question to the readers, “Well then, what about Israel, what about the
Jews? They’ve been around for 2000
years, what about them?” So he has to
explain the relationship of the church to Israel, that’s chapters 9, 10 and 11,
it emerges from the flow of the letter.
We treat it as parenthetical but actually it is the natural question
that would have arose from what he wrote in the first 8 chapters. Now, let’s go further.
Election; a text, out of context,
in isolation from its co-text is a pretext.
“God created people to go to hell; look what he did to Pharaoh, look at
the two sons, the two twins, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated.” Let’s look at the text in the context. It is talking about a nation, not a person. But let’s go to the co-text.
Jeremiah 18:1-11 The word which came to Jeremiah from the
LORD saying, "Arise
and go down to the potter's house, and there I shall announce My words to
you." Then I went down to the
potter's house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. ut
the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so
he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make. Then the word of the LORD came to me saying, “Can
I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?" declares the LORD. "Behold, like the clay in the
potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of
Israel. "At one moment I might
speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or
to destroy it; if that nation against
which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity
I planned to bring on it. "Or at
another moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom … (barchut goy etmor basilia in the Septuagint, not an individual). “To uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; if that nation against which I have
spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to
bring on it. "Or at another moment
I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to build up or to
plant it.
Jeremiah 18:9-11 "Or at another moment I might speak
concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to build up or to plant it;
if it does evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will think
better of the good with which I had promised to bless it. "So now then, speak to the men of Judah
and against the inhabitants of Jerusalem saying, 'Thus
says the LORD…,’
He talks
about the judgment that is going to come with the Babylonian captivity. This is exactly Romans 9, 10 and 11. What does Paul say in Chapter 11? If God
didn’t spare the natural branches, he won’t spare you either. If this, the Jews,
were unfaithful, God went and he got the Gentiles. If the Gentiles are unfaithful, which they
are, he will go back to the Jews. He
exercises his sovereignty according to the fidelity or infidelity of the nation
and people. The text, in its context, in
light of its co-text says:
1. It is
about nations, not about people.
2. When God
exercises his sovereign power, it is always in response to their actions. He doesn’t create anybody for destruction for
the sake of doing it.
To arrive at
Replacement Theology, to arrive at the Calvinism that begets it, you must take
a text, out of context, in isolation from its co-text. “I witnessed to him but he didn’t get
saved. Maybe he is not of the
elect. If he was of the elect he would
have got saved.” It just does not work
that way. He wants none to perish but
all should reach repentance. He is the Savior
of all men, especially those who believe in Him. Their god is not the God of the Bible. They give him a very different
character. The God of the Bible does not
want anybody to go to hell, except those for whom it was created. It is a nation. It is not a person. And, what God does with it will depend on
what they do with him. Now, notice what
it says. If the clay vessel does not
turn out so good, what does he do? He
reforms it. He doesn’t throw it away and
take a new lump of clay. He does not say
“This one’s no good, chuck it, bring me some more
clay.” He takes the same vessel, breaks
it up and remolds it. He doesn’t get rid
of Israel because of their sin and rejection!
He reforms Israel on the wheel, and ultimately this will happen. All Israel shall be saved. Those who survive the Great Tribulation “Will
look upon him who they have pierced and mourn as one mourns for an only
son.” He will remake the vessel; he has
never thrown it away. To arrive at this
nonsense, you must the text out of context, and in isolation from its co-text--bad
exegesis.
Now, it is
strange that Calvinists pride themselves on their exegesis. While these people would very much shun
things like allegorical interpretation, they themselves, as I have pointed out
in the past, have no qualms about engaging in open Gnosticism. They assign some spiritualized meaning to
what the Bible plainly says.
Israel? “Oh, that’s the Church.” Millennium? “Oh, that’s a symbol.” Well, do you believe the 3-1/2 years are
literal? “I guess so.” Then why not the thousand? This becomes pick and choose. There is no consistency in their hermeneutic;
that is why their history is so ugly.
That is why they have done at least as much harm as they’ve done good, if not more and they are doing harm today. The danger that exists now is something Dave
Hunt was very aware of. Because of the
money preachers from America and South Africa, because of the hype artists,
because of the Charismaniacs, because of the Toronto’s
and the Pensacola’s and Alpha and all that stuff, a lot of people and most of
us have probably met them, who saw this stuff were alienated by it, were burned
off by it. What do they go to? They go into Cessationist,
Replacementist Churches. They go to something they think is the
opposite of what they came out of. Charismania—Cessationism, they go to the other side. You don’t correct error with error, you
correct error with truth. What they are
doing goes all the way back to Antioch and Alexandria. They correct error with error. Once the Devil gets you correcting error with
error, he’s just got you in another error.
But let’s go further. They will
then say “What about Pharaoh? God says
he raised up Pharaoh just for this purpose. “Yes, he
did. “God hardened his heart.” Yes, he did, but looking at the text in its
context, in light of its co-text, did God arbitrarily harden Pharaoh’s heart,
as they suggest? Let’s look at the
hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, the text, out of context, in light of its co-text.
Exodus 7:14 Then the LORD said to Moses,
"Pharaoh's heart is stubborn; he refuses to let the people go.”
In Hebrew it
actually says “His heart is hard and heavy.”
His heart was already hardened before God hardened it.
Exodus 7:22 But the magicians of Egypt
did the same with their secret arts; and Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he
did not listen to them, as the LORD had said.
Exodus 8:19 Then the magicians said to
Pharaoh, "This is the finger of God." But Pharaoh's heart was
hardened, and he did not listen to them, as the LORD had said.
Exodus 8:32 But Pharaoh hardened his
heart this time also, and he did not let the people go.
Notice it says
“Pharaoh hardened his heart” and he did it this time also. In other words, all the previous times, he
was hardening his own heart. He hardened
it, he hardened it. He indeed hardened
his heart.
Exodus 11:10 And Moses and Aaron
performed all these wonders before Pharaoh; yet the LORD hardened Pharaoh's
heart, and he did not let the sons of Israel go out of his land.
Not until you
get to chapter 11 does God harden Pharaoh’s heart. Why?
Because Pharaoh hardens it in chapters 7, 8, 9, 10, then God says “Now,
I am going to harden your heart. Now you
can’t repent. Now you can’t
believe. I am going to harden your
heart. You will not let my people
go. I will deliver them by my own
hand.” God didn’t just harden his
heart. He hardened his own, chronically
and repeatedly, to the point there was no repentance. No matter what happened, one sign, one judgment
after another, one warning after another!
He rejected it. And even when he
began to relent, he would always revoke his words. To arrive at this nonsense you have to take
the text, out of context, in isolation from its co-text and create a pretext. That is all Replacement Theology is; a
pretext. That is all the Calvinism that
has engendered it with an evangelical Protestantism is; a pretext. It is all a pretext invented by men. Now let’s understand this just a bit
more.
This
hardening that happened to pharaoh is exactly what has happened to Israel. God has hardened the heart of Israel. I have witnessed to Orthodox Jews until I was
blue in the face; I have witnessed to Rabbis.
I’ve showed them arguments they could not really refute biblically. They would just go to the Talmud, so I would
go to the Talmud and I would show them from the Talmud, “Look, even Talmudically we can justify our
interpretation that Jesus is the Messiah of the Jews.” It just became a choice. Now, I have not only seen this with
Jews. I have seen it with Roman Catholics
in Ireland, particularly, I have seen it with Jehovah’s Witnesses, I’ve seen it
with Mormons, and I’ve seen it with Moslems.
Again, the Jews are a microcosm of the human condition. In other words, Jews are like everybody else,
only more so. What it comes to is this;
you see it with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, you’ve seen it with the Mormons, you
see it with the Roman Catholic Clergy, it comes to this. “My mind is made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts.” This is something very serious. This is what we see in John’s Gospel, Chapter
9 and 10: “I came that those who see
will become blind and those who are blind will see.” Once people are no longer simply blind; we
are all blind until we see the light.
Jesus makes a difference. God
makes a difference between being blind and being willfully blind. When people are willfully blind, they are in
big trouble because they have hardened their heart chronically and
repeatedly. Then God says, “Now I will harden your heart.” And he
hardened the heart of Israel and the Jewish people. Now if God has hardened the heart of his own
people, his own covenant people, are we surprised at the state of this nation
or America? You show them the evidence
from the Bible, “This is wrong, ordaining homosexuals is not scriptural, God
hates divorce, you cant do….” God is hardening the heart of the
Church. Now, let us look at Romans 11
again:
Romans 11:25 “That
a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles
has come in.”
This
hardening of Israel’s heart is partial and temporary. The author of salvation has always been
available to Jews individually and you’ve always, throughout the darkest times
of history, found individual Jews who believed.
“A partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fulness of the
Gentiles has come in.”
Well, now
there is a partial hardening of the Church.
The Church will no longer listen to the truth anymore than the Jews did
who rejected Jesus. A remnant of Jews
accepted him, a remnant. If you are a
Christian who is discerning, who sees through these things, who understands the
nature of what we have talked about in the past, about Alpha promoting
homosexuality in America, about the Emergent Church, “The Bible is not absolute
truth, never was,” about Rick Warren and his yoga lessons on the same
program. If you see through that stuff,
you are very much for this time in history what Peter, James, John, and Mary
were for the first century. The same as
they were the faithful remnant of Israel ready for the first coming of Jesus,
by the grace of God, you people will be the faithful remnant of the Church
ready for his second coming. But to the
others, their hearts are being hardened.
This is frightening! This is
terrible! Look what happened to Israel,
look what happened to the Jews! Look
what happened—chosen for what? Think of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof—“Why didn’t you choose
somebody else?” This is a terrible
thing. Do you know what is most terrible
about this? It should not happen! If he didn’t spare the natural branches, he
won’t spare you either. Learn from
Israel’s mistakes! Why did God deal with
them for so long?
Romans 15:4 For
whatever was written in earlier times [the Old Testament, the Tanakh] was
written for our instruction, that through perseverance and the encouragement of
the Scriptures we might have hope.
That is the
upside. Let us look at the downside, the
co-text:
1 Corinthians 10:6-8 Now these things happened
as examples for us, that we should not crave evil things, as they also
craved. And do not be idolaters, as some
of them were; as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink, and
stood up to play." Nor let us act
immorally, as some of them did.
Israel is
God’s teaching tool to the rest of us.
It teaches about the human condition.
Why did God spend 2000 years getting Israel ready for the Church to
come? Remember, from the time of
Israel’s history until the coming of Christ is the same as the age of the
Church. Peter, James and John would have
talked about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the way we talk about Peter, James and
John. That is how long it was. It would have been a long time, but it was approximately
the same, give or take 100 years or whatever, approximately the same. These things were written down so that it
would not happen to us. You look at
Kings and Chronicles, revival, backslide, revival, backslide, revival,
backslide. Look at your life and my life
as a Christian, what is it? Walking with
Jesus Monday, Tuesday I’m down, Wednesday….
That was written so we would not be like that, but we are like
that. Hopeless!
It is
hopeless except for one thing—election … being
chosen. The Grace of God, otherwise it
would be hopeless. A partial hardening
has happened to Israel. The same as God
hardened Pharaoh, he has hardened Israel.
Now, slowly but surely, that hardening is going away. When I lived in Israel there were a few
hundred believers in the country. We
don’t know how many there are now; an educated guess might be somewhere between
eight and eleven thousand, in 20 years! The United States?
Tens of thousands! I have been to
Russia--Thousands! Their hardening is
beginning to change. The same as God
hardened the heart of the Jews and turned his grace to the Gentiles, now he is
hardening the heart of the Gentile Church and turning his grace to the
Jews. We have a teaching explaining this: The Time of the Jews and the Time of the
Gentiles. The point is this: The Lord is in the business of softening
hearts, but he is also in the business of hardening them. We have to keep ours soft. Those who harden their hearts, God will
harden. It is not something He wants to
do. It is not something He wanted to do
to Israel and it is not something He wants to do to the Church. God does not want this. The question is, why
did Israel want it? Why does the Church
want it? Anybody who wants this stuff
must be out of their mind. Election. Election. Don’t ask
me why God elected me, why He chose me.
As many times as I drop my cross and do wrong things, things I should
not do, He forgives me. Why? I don’t know!
The only thing I know is that it is nothing to do with me, as such. That’s the only thing I know. Why has God elected Israel? I don’t have to worry about why God has
elected Israel because I can’t even figure out why He elected me.