We went over this. Stop putting words in my mouth. I'll tell you this. If you insult me one more time I am going to accuse you of antisemitism, which is the birthplace of Amillennalism.
Keep your childish threats to yourself. They do not intimidate me or move me. There was no insults intended in my last post. There was no misrepresenting of your position. Because you could not deal with what I said you resort to threats of spreading lies about Amil. Really? Is this Christ-like? Does this advance your cause?
Your objection to my interpretation of Revelation 20 is typical of those who refuse to see a place for Israel, having not forgiven the Jews for killing the Messiah. You are not offering us anything new, just more hatred of Israel.
You are wrong about that. You are reading your view that "God rejected Israel" into the scriptures. If you see it there you brought it with you. What you fail to see, being blinded by your self-righteousness, is the fact that the focus of God was ALWAYS spiritual Israel. Since you don't see that it's no wonder you ate the bate hook, line and sinker.
Refer to Romans 11:1-6, in that passage Paul argues that God has not rejected his people and in that context he repeats what God said to the prophet, "I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” From this we know the road to salvation has never changed and that the criteria never changed. Your bogus narrative is proven wrong also by Paul's next argument, where he answers the question, "but Paul, we understand that God has not rejected Jewish believers, but what about the nation of Israel? Has God rejected that nation?" He writes, "I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be!"
There was no turning away from natural Israel, as you suppose. Rather, as Paul writes, "For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?" By this we understand that the Apostle anticipated God's acceptance of natural Israel, and the initial marker of that effort will be Israel's "rise from the dead."
With the first advent of Christ, God introduced a new religious arrangement that changed the format of God’s engagement with man, and also enlarged the geographical range of His grace. Israel lost its exclusive privileged place under the new economy. The theocratic system was dismantled. The old covenant ceremonial system was replaced with a better, stronger, broader, more glorious and longer-lasting covenant. Under the new covenant there was absolutely no difference placed between Jews and Gentiles. Both enjoy equal status through faith in Christ. The New Testament expanded the Gospel thrust to embrace all nations. The new covenant knew no ethnic, political or religious boundaries. It was a global trans-national scheme that targeted a fallen world.
A lot of Christians today overlook this reality because they have a bias and faulty perspective of natural Israel. They make the mistake of viewing physical Israel today through Old Testament glasses. They fail to see that the Old Testament dispensation has gone forever and the New Testament era has fully and wholly superseded it. The old system has been totally dismantled and abolished because it was only ever intended to be a temporary covenant with an expiration date. Its conclusion occurred when Christ died on the cross. We see that with the ripping of the curtain in the temple at the very moment Jesus breathed His last breath (Matthew 27:50-51, Mark 15:37-38 and Luke 23:45-46). It therefore has no further purpose for time and eternity.
Ignorance of New Testament truth leads many to a distorted and erroneous understanding of Old Testament truth. Ironically, and paradoxically, especially allowing for how they describe themselves, many Futurists choose to live in the past. They understand ethnic Israel today in an old covenant sense, rather than a new covenant context. It is as if the old covenant is still active and valid and the new covenant has yet to arrive. Futurists seem unable (or unwilling) to recognize the seismic shift that occurred through the introduction of the new covenant. When pressed, they continually run back to the Old Testament for some type of support for a favored place for national Israel, a return of the Jews to their ancient land boundaries, the reintroduction of the old covenant apparatus, including a rebuilt physical temple, animal blood sacrifices, and a restored Old Testament priesthood. They have to pitch their tent in the Hebrew Scriptures because they have absolutely no endorsement in the New Testament for their theological model.
Sensible and enlightened Bible scholars place greater emphasis on the New Testament because it is the fuller revelation and it is where we now reside. God’s truth has been a gradual progressive unfolding and unveiling of truth to mankind from the beginning. The change and advancement that came with the New Testament era did not jettison the old Hebrew promises but rather fulfilled them. The doctrinal light became a lot clearer with Christ’s appearance and vivid illumination of the whole dynamic between the Old and the New Testament and the first and second advents. Our Lord removed the existing vail, dispelled the religious mist and has shed much-needed light on God’s redemptive plan.
Jerusalem and Zion are physical places. Only Amillennial teaching and cultists change the meaning of words to suit. The passage in Galatians does not support your idea of two Jerusalems. Rather, Paul is speaking of one Jerusalem at two different points in history. He is comparing a Jerusalem that now is . . . with a Jerusalem which is above. The locus of the comparison is "time"; Paul is comparing the current Jerusalem with the future Jerusalem. Currently Jerusalem is in bondage, but in the future, Jerusalem will be free. Both of the Jerusalems are physical.
You are so entangled in Zionism that you fight with Christ, Paul and the NT writers that show true Israel to be that believing remnant that expanded out to the nations. We have been grafted into believing Israel.
Read the inspired NT text and see how the Holy Spirit deems modern-day Christ-rejecting Jerusalem, that you are mistakenly besotted with:
Galatians 4:22-31 says, “Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.”
Revelation 11:8 explicitly states, “the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.”
These are not commendations but condemnations. They expose modern-day Premil Zionism. This was theology birthed by the heretical founders of modern-day Premil - Cerenthius, Marcion and Apollinarius. Such was rejected by ancient Chiliasm and ancient Amil.
It was always God’s heart to expand His old covenant congregation (the ekklesia) out beyond the borders of national Israel, to reach the Gentile people. The Church itself was not a mystery (or secret) prior to Paul, neither was God’s great eternal plan of redemption, neither was the ingathering of the Gentiles. Passage after passage in the Old Testament predicted these events. What was a mystery was the Gentiles being “fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel.” Dispensationalists make the existence of the ekklesia the “mystery” in order to support their theology, even though it has been around as long as there have been believers.
Mirroring the process that a caterpillar undergoes developing into the maturity and beauty of a colorful butterfly, the Old Testament Church underwent a significant metamorphic change in the New Testament, progressing into the current Spirit-filled international New Testament Church. The ekklesia essentially took on wings! That is not to say that we can separate the elect of God in either dispensation or view them as two different entities. Rather, we must view both as the same organic entity.
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