Category: Israel

When the first Messianic Jewish Congregations were beginning in North America (1970-1975), there was quite a bit of attack against the new Messianic Jewish movement.  We were told we were, “Confusing law and grace,” “Re-erecting the wall of partition” and “Going back under the Law.”  Some Reformed leaders also had a rejection on the basis of the wall of partition argument and the idea that ethnic Israel is no longer elect but affirmed the replacement theology idea that the true Israel of God is now the Church.  But that is a different argument that will be addressed in a later essay. Here we want to just note the Dispensational view. 

In classic Dispensationalism, there is still an election that pertains to the Jewish people, Israel.  Israel will be preserved and God’s promises to them will be fulfilled in the Millennial Age.  However, the Church is defined very much like some of the early Church fathers, as a third race and in spiritual and essential identity its members are not Jew or Gentile. This is clearly stated in the little C. I. Schofield classic, Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth.  “Neither Jew nor Gentile” in Gal. 3 is a proof text despite the text also saying, “Neither male nor female.”   One is part of one of only three mutually exclusive categories, Jew, Gentile, or Church.  

God’s purpose and plans require keeping the Jew and Gentile separate and as noted in an earlier essay, Israel will become God’s primary instrument on earth only after the Church is taken away before the tribulation.  Messianic Jews on this basis are wrongly confusing identities and callings. Living a Jewish life is not fitting for members of the Church.  A limited ethnic identity may be accepted like Italians, Poles, and Russians but no deeper real spiritual identity or Jewish election identity.  A Passover seder is unacceptable as is keeping the Sabbath. 

However, such definitions imply the rejection of other clear passages and in some cases explain them away.  First of all, this includes the clear definition verses on the identity of Jewish believers in Yeshua, Romans 9-11.  In Romans 11:5 when Paul speaks of a “remnant saved” at the present time, it implies that they are the remnant of Israel, not people who have left their identity as part of Israel for a new identity as a “third race.”  When Paul states that we are to follow him who magnifies his ministry so that we might see some of Israel saved, he connects this some as important in being connected to all of Israel being saved, for the acceptance of all of Israel would lead to life from the dead.  (Rom. 11:15)   As if this was not enough, Paul goes on to argue that those who follow Yeshua from the Jewish people are, “The first fruits” that sanctify the rest of the nation.  It is not possible to be a sanctifying first fruits of the nation if not a part of the nation.  The nation remains set apart and made holy by the sanctifying remnant.  

Paul’s practice is fully in line with this teaching.  He has no problem living a Jewish life and showing that he is still part of Israel.  He takes a Nazarite vow (Acts 18:18) and later brings a sacrifice completing this vow and professing that he lives as a Jew in Torah obedience (Acts 21).  Paul professes Jewish life loyalty through the rest of the book of Acts before rulers and lastly before his people in Rome. 

Jewish identity in Yeshua is not as neat as the three separate identities but is truer to the text.   The Messianic Jew is part of national ethnic Israel, its identity and destiny, and also a Jewish part of the One New Humanity of Jew and Gentile in Yeshua.  Things are much better today for Messianic Jews: there is much more support.  However, there is still pushback against Messianic Jews due to the conscious or unconscious bias of classical Dispensationalism.  We have to reject the wrong separation of Israel and the Church. Their destinies are intertwined. 

As a youngster of 12 -and-a-half years old, I first heard the teaching of the pre-tribulation rapture from Dr. Charles J. Woodbridge, of dear memory.  He was most impressed with an air of authority in his person.  He presented the familiar chart of the course of world history and the future from eternity past to the end, eternity future.  Between them were the seven dispensations. At the end of the present dispensation, the Church Age, the rapture of the Church would take place, and then the 7-year tribulation.  After this, the Millennium would come and finally eternity, the New Heavens and New Earth. Dr. Woodbridge was a graduate of Princeton and had been a faculty member of Fuller Theological Seminary.  How could a Princeton graduate embrace this theology?  I never found out.  I was completely convinced.  His presentation was so certain and his credentials so solid, that it was certainly not to be doubted.  I looked forward to being raptured and escaping the tribulation.  It was a joyful thought that was with me for the next 6 ½ years. 

At 19 years old, I gave up this doctrine. I could not find it in the texts of the New Testament when read in context. I explained this in an earlier essay.  I actually felt betrayed, though amazingly, I was confirmed under a Reformed pastor who did not believe this.  For all these years, in dispensational Bible Clubs, Word of Life Camp (which had a great and wonderful impact on my life), and dispensational churches, I was not only taught the pre-tribulation rapture but was taught that when one loses this belief, he or she is on the road to liberalism and backsliding.  It was considered a bullwork belief.  Why?  Because only this doctrine made sense of any moment possible return of Jesus.  How this fit with the signs of the times conferences is for another essay.  There is an explanation for them teaching these signs of His coming.  However, one reason for such passion for this doctrine was that any moment pre-trib rapture would keep us on our toes.  We would thus be ready so that the Lord would not come when we were involved in sin.  If we were sinning, how would we then feel?  How embarrassed would we be?   So, fear that He would come when we were not ready was a great motivator.  Yet there was a paradox. Since Dispensationalism taught that when someone accepted Yeshua, he or she could never lose salvation.  They would go up in the rapture even if backslidden.  Yet how many young people thought that they would miss the rapture due to sin.  For me, the issue was the joy of going up and not having to face the great tribulation.  We sang, “I’m going up, going up, going up to meet with Jesus, up to be with Jesus, up to be with Him, going up going up going up to be with Jesus in the sweet by and by.”

Then I found that this belief had no foundation.  I made an appointment with a beloved professor at The King’s College, Dr. Thomas McComiskey, who became a renowned Old Testament Professor.  He said that teaching at the time of the rapture was a tertiary matter.  Wow, I responded. I was taught this as a cardinal and foundational doctrine, equal to the resurrection.  This is why it was held so deeply and written in the doctrinal statements of denominations and churches. Acceptance of this doctrine was a condition of membership.  How did this happen?  It was because of the timing when the conservatives were pushing back against the liberals over 110 years ago and scholars wrote the Fundamentals, from which we got the term Fundamentalism.  It was at this time that Dispensationalism swept the American Evangelical world.  In this context, it became fundamental, but it is not.  I now see that this imbalanced teaching produced a conformity requirement, not in accord with Scripture.  In my view, it is not only tertiary but wrong and divisive. 

Dispensationalism embraced a fundamentally wrong view of the Torah of Moses.  Exodus-Deuteronomy was looked at as a dispensation of law that offered salvation based on keeping the Law or works righteousness.  There were grace notes in the Torah that one could embrace, but the thrust of the Torah was a works righteous covenant that would lead to failure. This would then lead those who saw the failure to the grace covenant, the New Covenant.  Thus, statements in the New Covenant such as our being no longer under the Law were misinterpreted to mean that we were not to study the Law so as to keep it in a way that was applicable in the New Covenant.  Dispensationalism was correct that the Law does reveal our need for grace and atonement, but the grace of forgiveness and blood sacrifice was deeply part of the Mosaic Covenant material.  So many sermons have been preached about not being under the Law in this wrong interpretation that it has produced a popular anti-nomian Evangelicalism.  Dispensational interpretation failed in two primary ways.  First, it failed to appreciate the much more adequate understanding of the use of the Law in the best of classical Christian writers, both Calvinist and Arminian (Methodist) and Anglican.  Secondly, it did not pass the test as fitting our more recent and better understanding of the Mosaic Covenant material based on archeological studies which prove that their approach was wrong. 

Classical Protestantism as named above saw three uses of the Law. The first was true to show how far short we fall and to awaken us to the need met by the Gospel. The Law is thus part of preaching the Gospel.   This does track somewhat with classical Dispensationalism.  However, there is then the second use of the Law, which provides civil governments with standards of righteousness and justice for ordering societies.  The loss of the place of the Law made classic Dispensationalists very weak in social justice influence.   The third use of the Law was as a guide to discipleship, a discipleship tool of the Spirit, and especially as applied in the teaching of Yeshua.  Classical Protestantism saw that parts of the Torah were not applicable in the New Covenant, in contemporary societies, but fit Israel in its ancient context.  They generally did a good job in sorting and applying.  They did miss the continued validity of patterns of life that were part of Jewish calling and identity and could be maintained without a Temple. 

Recent studies of the Mosaic Covenant material have shown that Deuteronomy especially (bamidbar) and the Decalogue are in the form of Hittite Suzerain/Vassal treaties which teach that Israel’s salvation as a nation was by God’s grace and not works.  Obedience maintains the position of grace.  This is emphasized again and again.  The late Samuel Schultz, my renowned Professor at Wheaton College wrote two books emphasizing this, Deuteronomy, The Gospel of Love and The Gospel of Moses.  The late Professor Meredith Kline also so argued in Treaty of the Great King. Kline argues that Mosaic Covenant of Grace, not Mosaic Law is the broader and more correct name for the material.  These views are promoted to this day by Professor Dr. Walter Kaiser and Professor Dr. Kenneth Kitchen in England and many others.  This deeply changes negative attitudes to the Law (Torah) and now scholars interpret the New Covenant Scriptures with a more comprehensive view of all the texts that are relevant.  As such being no longer under the Law means not approaching the Law as a works-righteousness system which was never its intent or seeing that though we are not under the New Covenant, the Mosaic Law is applicable in important ways.  Classical Protestants were right.  J. N. Darby broke from the Anglicans’ teaching, but the Anglicans were correct!  Messianic Judaism is more aligned with the Classical Protestant position but adds the continued applicability of the pattern of life that preserves a distinct people of Israel, the Jewish people.   Hence, Messianic Judaism. 

John Nelson Darby invented a hyper-grace theology (to be addressed in another essay). In this theology, the earthly salvation of Israel was based on the Law and the Gospel of the Kingdom whereas the Church was based on the Gospel of the grace of God (two different gospels)  The promises to Israel are for earthly salvation, that is a particular destiny on this earth, a Kingdom order of the Millennial Age.   The Church has a heavenly destiny and is a heavenly people.  The Gospel of the Kingdom is the announcement of the Kingdom coming on the earth, that it is near, and Israel can embrace it leading to the Millennial Age.  However, Israel rejected this offer, and the Kingdom was postponed.  This postponement leads to an unforeseen dispensation, the Church Age, where the Gospel of the Grace of God is preached, not the Gospel of the Kingdom.  This is the Gospel of salvation where heaven is offered to all who believe in Jesus as Savior.  Jew and Gentile who are thus saved are part of the Church, a heavenly people, with a heavenly destiny and salvation.  They are a third race. The Law has to do with Israel and its earthly promise and salvation. One can read about some of these distinctions in the little classic, Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth by C. I. Schofield. However, the more comprehensive presentation is in Louis Sperry Chafer’s Systematic Theology.   I remember reading this in High School and just believed it because I believed my teachers at Word of Life Camps and Conferences in New York.  It was not until my college years that this great edifice showed itself to be a house of cards.  I did not realize how bizarre these binary categories were in the light of understanding the Bible in context, and also in understanding church historical interpretations.  No one in Church History before Darby thought in such terms. 

Once Darby had separated Israel and the Church in purpose and destiny, he taught that Israel and the Church had to be kept separate.  Jews who come to faith are part of the Church and its destiny, part of the third race.  They are not a part of the earthly Jewish people and their earthly salvation and promise.  To make sure that that separation was complete, Darby taught that Israel was now placed on a preservation shelf awaiting that time when God would again take them off the shelf and make them his primary instrument for his working in the world.  Then the remnant of Israel (Rev. 7) would again proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom.  This separation is crucial so as to not confuse law and grace and God’s distinct purposes for both;   to not confuse the dispensation of the Church Age with the dispensations having to do with Israel; the Mosaic dispensation prevailing until Pentecost, the tribulation period and finally the Millennial Age where the Church rules as a heavenly Bride and Israel as an earthly people. 

The Pre-tribulation rapture seemed the perfect solution to keep a strong separation between Israel and the Church.  If the Church is taken off the earth, raptured, taken to heaven before the Tribulation, then after this, Israel can be God’s instrument on earth.  The distinctions are maintained.  The messiness of a joined purpose with Israel and the Church working together is overcome.  The seven-year tribulation period is all about Israel and the nations, not about the Church.  The Church is gone.  She celebrates the Marriage Supper of the Lamb while God’s judgments are poured out on the earth and Israel experiences the Great Tribulation. Wherever Darby got this idea, the Irvingite prophetess, his own creative mind, or a demonic spirit, it was an amazing and novel answer to a non-problem which Darby thought up.  

The Pre-tribulation rapture thus became a lynchpin of classic Dispensational thought. 

Those who have written about John Nelson Darby and his new and novel Dispensational Theology System, have presented us with an amazing and fascinating account.  

Darby was an Anglican Priest in Ireland who was disillusioned with the Anglican Church.  He had a special problem when those he won to Jesus, while a young priest, were required to pledge loyalty to the English King as a condition of their acceptance into the Church.  Darby wanted to see a zealous church of true believers, hence his quest.  He left the Anglican Church and founded the Plymouth Brethren.  He eventually led his followers into the views that became the Closed Brethren as opposed to the Open Brethren.  The distinctions are not important to this essay. 

As Darby reevaluated his theology and the 39 Articles of the Anglican Church (a great statement in my view), he came to disagreements on key issues, both in biblical theology and ecclesiology.  The central theme was to distinguish between law and grace in a new way.  Darby attributed the deadness of the Anglican churches to confusing law and grace.  In Darby’s view, this confusion led to many being part of the churches as a point of legal righteousness to be accepted before God.  Darby developed a view of radical grace.  In this view, the only requirement for salvation is embracing the grace of God in the sacrifice and resurrection of Yeshua for salvation.  One believes and receives salvation by grace and is saved.  No repentance is required since that would be a good work.  Salvation is by grace and not works defined in a new and unusual way. This led to a new bifurcation between salvation and dedication.  Salvation was so radical a free gift that no change and no dedication were required.  One could continue to live in sin and still be saved, otherwise, salvation would not be by grace.  I was brought up with this separation. After salvation at our camp, in the last 3 days of the week, we were exhorted to dedicate our lives.  We were told that gratitude should lead us to this. We would live a better and fuller life. Many of us did so dedicate our lives.  This was a break from the Reformation view that God’s grace led to transformation, that grace and dedication came together. How would this produce a new zealous Church?  Once people understood that being in church was not required, the Church would be constituted of the volunteer dedicated and the others would leave.  It did not work out that way, for carnal Christians populate Dispensational Churches as much as any others. 

This separation led Darby to search out and find new distinctions.  Since law and grace were so opposed, Darby saw the Mosaic Covenant material as a works righteousness covenant whereby the people of Israel were bound to fail.  The Law pertained to Israel, not to the Church.  The life of Yeshua/Jesus Himself was a perfect life lived under the Law. The Sermon on the Mount itself was not incumbent on believers.  It was the Law raised to its highest and impossible level.  It was itself part of the Dispensation of Law.  Now under grace, the dedicated believer was to follow the teaching of the Epistles since only after Pentecost was the teaching fitting to the New Covenant of Grace presented.   However, we could not expect such a high level of attainment since the two nature battle described in Romans 7 would always be our condition. Luther had his ambivalence to the Law but classical Lutheranism was somewhat more balanced and did not go as far as Darby.  The negativity to the Law and to law is striking in Darbyite theologians. 

Since Israel had to do with the Law and the Church had to do with Grace, the two were to be kept separate.  All human beings were part of one of three categories, Jews, Gentiles or Christians, a third race.  Israel is an earthly people with the Law and earthly salvation to be attained in the Millennium.  The Church was a heavenly people with heavenly salvation. 

This also led Darby to claim that the Gospel of the Kingdom was not the same as the Gospel of Grace.  The Gospel of the Kingdom was the message of Jesus for Israel.  It was the offer of the literal Millennial Kingdom to Israel.  When Israel rejected Jesus, the Kingdom was postponed.  Now the Church preaches the Gospel of the Grace of God which is a different Gospel. (This is not the view of non-Darbyites which see only one Gospel)

Darby then sees distinct periods or dispensations, pre-fall, the post-fall to the flood and the pre-Abrahamic, the Mosaic Dispensation of Law, the New Covenant Dispensation of Grace, the tribulation period, and the Millennium.  All are very exactly defined. The Millennium is a Law dispensation. 

One more crucial teaching was foundational to the system.  It was the pre-tribulation rapture of the saints. Darby saw this as a key. If the Church is taken off the earth before the tribulation, then the Gospel of the Kingdom can then be offered to Israel by the Jewish tribulation believers.  The pre-tribulation rapture keeps Israel and the Church distinct.  It was a key answer for separation.  Israel is on the shelf so to speak until the tribulation.  Yes, she in part returns to the Land of Israel and fulfills prophecy but this is preparation.  Israel as a real instrument of God takes place during the tribulation.  This is why Messianic Jews were not seen as significant in Israel’s ultimate destiny. 

How did Darby ever come up with the pre-tribulation rapture?  Some say it was from an Irvingite prophetess from 1830.  There is some evidence, but it is not strong.  Did he see it in vague statements from Church Fathers?  Or was it a eureka moment of insight?  Despite the effort of Dispensationalists, this was a new doctrine and not something we can find established anywhere in Church history for 1800 years before Darby.  Almost no scholars not indoctrinated in Dispensational Schools can find it. No text in context teachers it.  The texts are stretched so as to find this doctrine. Yet, this doctrine swept North America in the early 20^th century.  Why?  

Dispensationalism produced one amazing writer, C. I. Schofield, whose annotated Bible was amazingly well presented and persuasive.  In the 19^th Century, another view of the last days swept the American Church, Post Millennial optimism.  This was also a break from the consensus of Church history.  It taught that the Church would conquer and civilize the world without the return of Jesus until after the Millennium.   Jonathan Blanchard, the founder of Wheaton, and the great revivalist Charles Finney saw the progress of Christianity whereby it would take over the world.  They saw progress everywhere.  World War I killed the optimism and Dispensationalism perfectly fit the pessimism of the time.  Only a faithful few would remain for the rapture.  Trying to reform society was bogus.  We need to get people into the lifeboat, so the social gospel and the social implications of the Gospel were rejected.  The unity of the Church was affirmed by the early Church Fathers, passionately defended by Augustine and then the hope of the Reformation for one true Reformed Church.  John 17:21 unity was the ideal.  The Reformers tried for unity and failed.  But for Dispensationalism, unity could be dangerous and lead to the apostate anti-Christ church. Already they saw the mainline denominations embracing Darwin and the higher criticism of the Bible.  Opting out of culture formation was the orientation since dealing with the larger culture was waste of time and energy. 

It would be 30 years after World War I, after World War II, that a push back against this system in Evangelicalism would begin.  Calvinist Evangelicals (Reformed, Presbyterian) never bought into any of it, but they were much smaller than the Dispensational Fundamentalists and Dispensationalists.   We will expand on this in future essays. 

In January 1842 an amazing event occurred, the arrival of a Jewish Anglican who was appointed the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem.  He established Christ Church near the Jaffa gate.  The Church was to receive Jews who, it was believed, would soon return to the Land and accept Jesus, leading to the eventual conversion of the Jewish nation to faith in Yeshua/Jesus and His return. Christ Church, Jaffa Gate, still exists today. 

Wikipedia summarizes:

In 1841 the British and Prussian Governments as well as the Church of England and the Evangelical Church in Prussia entered into a unique agreement – the establishment of a Protestant Bishopric in Jerusalem. Alexander was proposed as the first Protestant bishop. He was appointed bishop of the United Church of England and Ireland in Jerusalem, and was ordained a bishop on 7 December 1841 at Lambeth Palace. He arrived in Jerusalem in January 1842.

How did this happen?  What was the theology behind this event?  Why would Lutherans and Anglicans come together for this?  Scandinavians were also involved.  

The theology behind his event was the product of a long history.  It was a growing consensus at the time of Michael Solomon Alexander’s appointment.  This was a pre-Darbyite Dispensational theology.  The theological history goes back to some of the Puritans and then was fostered by Lutheran Pietists in Germany and Scandinavia and then the Moravian Movement under Ludwig Von Zinzendorf.  The theology looked for the completion of four tasks before the return of Yeshua.  These were the pursuit of the unity of the Church (John 17:21), the revival of true Christianity, the completion of the command to preach the Gospel through world missions (Matt. 24:14, 15) and finally making Israel Jealous (Romans 11:11,12).  This would lead to the second coming of Jesus. 

Kaiser (Emperor) Frederick William IV was influenced by Lutheran Pietism. He asked his spiritual advisor if there was anything they could do to hasten the day of the return of Jesus.  He was told about the four tasks, unity, revival, world missions, and making Israel jealous.  Frederick thus embraced a program to accomplish this.  He sent emissaries to England with a plan for unity and for the Jewish people to come to faith in Israel in growing numbers leading to the fulfillment of Roman 11:15, the life from that dead that Israel’s full acceptance would bring about.  This also was based on Matthew 23:39 where we read that the Jewish leadership in Israel/Jerusalem would call upon Yeshua with the words, “Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord.”  

To pursue the unity of the prayer of Jesus in John 17:21, Frederick’s emissaries presented a plan whereby the Lutherans would take a secondary position to the Anglicans.  This humility would be a key to the unity of the effort. Unity and the salvation of Israel would be pursued together.  The plan was approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Queen, and the Parliament.  

This theology was known as restorationism, believing in the restoration of Israel but also a restoration for the Church to unity and revival.  This was a climax of a 250 year of theological development. 

What happened?  A new theology grew up, Dispensationalism, that saw the pursuit of the unity of the Church as a danger.  It also taught that God’s primary working with and through Israel would only take place after the Church was raptured or taken off the earth.  Then there would be a seven-year tribulation at the end of which Israel would call upon Jesus and He would return.  Dispensational Jewish missions were established to see Jews saved, but those Jews would be part of the Church and would not be part of the corporate salvation of Israel.   There were two peoples of God, two salvations, a heavenly destiny for the one people, the Church and an earthly one for the Jews.  The destinies were different and not intertwined. So the Church would not be on earth to affect the salvation of Israel.  Indeed, Jews who came to Jesus were said to be part of the 3^rd race and no longer part of Israel’s destiny nor would they affect Israel’s corporate salvation.  As part of the Church, they would be taken out as well, so no Jewish believers movement before the rapture would be a key to Israel’s salvation either.  New Jewish missions that followed this theology sought to see Jews saved and part of the Church but it would be wrong for them to live and identify as Jews (or to go back under the Law).  Jewish missions were for the sake of saving Jews just as missions to any nation were for the purpose of seeing individuals saved from that nation. 

The Church’s Mission to the Jews, CMJ, in England, represented the theology that led to the appointment of Bishop Alexander.  This theology had become an amazing consensus of British theology including many in several denominations.   It taught that Israel would return to the Land, the Church would affect her salvation and Jesus would return.   What an amazing time this was.   However, the new Dispensational theology gained more and more adherents.  The old view of Bishop Alexander and his supporters was supported side by side with more and more supporting the Dispensational view.  Jewish missions more and more embraced the dispensational view in the 20^th century.  However, it was not until after World War I, that Dispensationalism swept churches and Bible schools in America.  From there it came to dominate world missions. Why that happened, including the keys in the psychology and social psychology of the time is an amazing story for another time.  Dallas Seminary was established as its theological center (1924).  American Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism became mostly Dispensational.  The Pentecostal denominations mostly embraced it. The older view largely died out with some exceptions.  Yet, in my view the older view was true.  The points where the new Dispensationalism replaced it, it was largely in error and even deception.  We were very close to great breakthroughs in 1842, but the classical restoration view was derailed.  Then in the mid 20^th century, the older view was believed again in growing numbers.  This return to the older view has grown and grown until it now vies with Dispensationalism. I for one am in this battle and hope we win this battle. I believe we ae winning.  The derailment was a ploy of Satan to divert the Church from its destiny.  Sadly, the wrong view is very rooted in Israel today but not in most of the Messianic Jewish world outside of Israel.  

In summary, classical Jewish missions envisioned seeing more and more Jewish people saved leading to Israel’s confession of Yeshua, leading to the second coming.  Dispensational Jewish missions were seeking to see individual Jews saved, so they could be part the church, go to heaven if they died, or be raptured out before the tribulation.   Jewish missions were disconnected from corporate Israel turning to Yeshua and his second coming.  This was a huge change and a sad derailment.