Israel Replacement Eschatology – it kinda sounds awkward and goofy, doesn’t it? We know about Replacement Theology and its manifestations. This is different.
In the former, prophecies about Israel get re-imagined and woven into the larger organism of the church. I’ve moaned before about the Reformers not reforming their eschatology. If we’re going to return to God’s Word on truths about salvation, shouldn’t we also do the same with what God says about Israel?
But even within premillennial groups who see distinctions between Israel and the church, some put the church in where Israel is the focus. That would be Replacement Eschatology in my book. For example, Robert Van Kampen wrote:
…it is my firm conviction that the Olivet Discourse is written for the church, and that its application is to believers and not to unsaved Israel which, by definition, has no interest whatsoever in the New Testament or its warnings concerning the unbelieving nation of Israel. (The Sign p 487, Revised Edition 1993)
Let me say first that I disagree with those who say Matthew was written for the Jews – therefore church application is never in focus. Elements of the Olivet Discourse exist in Mark and Luke. So we should look at context. However, Van Kampen (and others) went to the other extreme in order to shore up his new rapture theory.
I’ve covered this territory before in two articles: The Gathering of the Elect and The Gathering of Israel.
Van Kampen claimed the term for gather (episunago) in Matt 24:31 was “rapture language.” He argued that the grammatical break-up of the word means a gathering together in an upward direction, as in the rapture. In a more recent popular book, the expression episunago was presented as the first of four reasons why Matt 24:31 is the rapture.
Yet as far as I’m aware, nobody pushing the episunago line in Matt 24:31 ever notes its usage in Matt 23:37, Mark 1:33 and Luke 12:1. None of these apply to the rapture. The last two examples aren’t even eschatological.
Furthermore, these people neglect to mention Israel’s promise to be gathered into the land. The Israel connection in the OD begins at Matt 23. Jesus would have gathered scattered Israel into the land, but it rejected Him. So the promise will now be fulfilled at a future time after the Great Tribulation.
How can anyone ignore the Jewish connection to the locale and events of the Abomination of Desolation? There’s more. Commentators have noted the following parallels from the OT:
….so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn. Zech 12:10
Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, Mat 24:30
And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time; and at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued. Dan 12:1
For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. Mat 24:21
Compare Matt 23:37-39, 24:31 with Deut 30:1-5.
Ironically, Van Kampen’s multi-phase Second Advent allows for a posttrib event where Christ returns after the rapture to gather Israel into the land. Then He returns to heaven. If the disciples understood Matt 24:31 to be the rapture, one wonders why their prime question to Jesus was about the timing of the restoration of Israel’s kingdom (Acts 1:6).
Two more things…
There’s a chart floating around comparing parallels between Paul’s Thessalonians Epistles and the Olivet Discourse. Something like the following question is framed: If the OD isn’t church teaching, why did Paul link to it with so many church instructions from his epistles?
We’ve already seen that you can’t ignore Israel in the OD. We further observe that everything in God’s revelation is advantageous to be read, though not everything directly applies to the church. Christ and Paul referred to end time events which will impact the entire planet, including believers at the time. Yet Israel will be central to all this. Even the Book of Revelation has hundreds of OT end-time allusions. We should expect parallels between Paul and Jesus.
Note: For more on this I recommend John Feinberg’s chapter (Israel in the Land as an Eschatological Necessity?) in the lengthy titled book The People, The Land and The Future of Israel – Israel and the Jewish People in the Plan of God.
One issue with the chart’s motives is that it relies on debatable assumptions in 1Thess 5:1-4 and 2 Thess 1:1-12, 2:1-12. Readers aren’t informed that allegedly Paul’s comments about birth pangs are NOT the same as Christ’s OD. This is a prophetic biggie. And this parallel apparently fails.
Finally there’s the 70th Week of Daniel. Or should we call it the 70th Week of Daniel and the Church? The argument goes something like this: God has historically kept Israel in play (especially pre 70AD and post 1948). So there’s no reason why there can’t be an Israel-Church overlap in the 70th week.
There’s not enough space to fully explore this issue. But if seventy weeks are allotted to Israel and there’s a Church-Israel overlap, what makes the 70th week what it is? If God is now working with the Church but also with Israel then what defines the 70th week?
Some time ago I stumbled across a video in which a leading Bible-Prophecy teacher made an interesting comment. Notably, this man holds to a position where the church is removed after a shortened tribulation. Part of what he said was particularly interesting:
“…once the faithful church is removed God turns His prophetic purposes back to Israel and the Jews – the age of the church is over.”
What happened to the juggling act? Why remove the church at some arbitrary point and leave Israel on the earth?
So, according to this man, God does have a specific time where he chooses to work only with Israel. Also interesting was his admission that there would be posttribulational believers after the church is raptured. Perhaps dispensationalists are on the right track after all.
Daniel was told that 70 weeks were decreed for his people (Dan 9:24). This refers to Israel. Therefore it’s reasonable to propose that God’s focus on Israel begins at the start of the 70th Week. Not at some assumption-driven point after its beginning.
None of the above proves pretribulationism. But non-pretribbers make a mistake of avoiding Israel’s prominence in the Olivet Discourse. Moreover, I suspect that, the more one sees eschatological distinctions between Israel and the church, the more it speaks to pretribulationism.
The purpose for the tribulation isn’t all about the church. Its purpose is multi-fold, and Israel is at its center (Jacob’s Trouble).
Maranatha!
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