Chapter 3 and 4 Excerpts From Christian Zionism, By Stephen Sizer
Christian Zionism: Its History,
Theology and Politics, by Stephen SIZER
AAARGH Internet Editions
2005
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livre...Rchriszion.pdf
Excerpts From Chapter Three and Chapter Four
"Darby began publishing his prophetic speculations in 1831.
Coincidentally both he and Edward Irving
began to postulate two stages to Christ's imminent return about the
same time. First, there would be an invisible
'appearing' when Christians would meet Christ in the air and be
removed from the earth, a process which came to
be known as 'the rapture of the saints'. With the restraining presence
of the Holy Spirit removed from the world,
the Antichrist would arise and the seven year tribulation would begin.
His rule would finally be crushed only by
the public 'appearing' of Jesus Christ."
"Several have attributed the notion of a
secret, pretribulational Rapture to Edward Irving. Dave MacPherson
argues convincingly that the doctrine
arose through a prophetic revelation given to Margaret MacDonald, one
of Irvings's disciples."
""As late as 1976 Walvoord was still anxious to distance the origin of
the doctrine of the Rapture from
Irving.
My note: "Walvoord" is John F. Walvoord (1910 - 2002),
president of Dallas Theological Seminary from 1952 to 1986.
Canfield notes that Walvoord's position contradicts several British
historians who were closer to the issue.
Neatby, writing in 1901, Howard Rowden in 1967, F. Roy Coad in 1968
and Iain Murray in 1971, all
find direct and reasonable links between the ideas of irving and the
role of J. N. Darby. The link is so evident
that a denial, using semantics on Walvoord's part, does not 'wash'."
"Darby" above is John Darby (1800-1882) of the Plymouth Brethren, and
known as the father of dispensationalism
"Not surprisingly perhaps, Charles Spurgeon observed in Darbyism, a
growing tendency to isolationism,
obscurantism and a party spirit.18 Spurgeon regarded their
hermeneutics as 'warped' and his colourful description
might easily apply to some contemporary Christian Zionists, 'Plymouth
Brethren delight to fish up some hitherto
undiscovered tadpole of interpretation, and cry it round the town as a
rare dainty."
"Darby's contribution then, to the development of Christian Zionism
and a rigid differentiation between the
church and Israel arose out of ecclesiastical expediency, his novel
dispensational speculations and an
independent and rigid literalist hermeneutic. These led him to
formulate two innovative doctrines concerning the
church and Israel. Both marked a significant departure from Christian
orthodoxy and evangelicalism in
particular."
"Darby taught that Israel would soon replace the church, rather
than the church having replaced, superseded or indeed become, Israel.
To accomplish this, Darby postulated his
second distinctive doctrine involving two stages to the return of
Christ instead of one, the first being to secretly
gather the church to heaven in a 'rapture' leaving a revived and
gathered nation of Israel to rule on earth for the
millennium."
"Darby's strong and repeated condemnation of the visible church as
apostate, clearly influenced his
innovative belief that the church era was now merely a 'parenthesis'
of the Last Days. 'Satan having beguiled
the Church, the church is in the position of earthliness and united in
system with the world."
"Because Darby insisted on there being irreversible and progressive
dispensations, in which the church
was merely one such dispensation, he deduced, a priori, that there
could be no future earthly hope for the church.
He argued that Scripture does not,
...present the restoration of a dispensation; it never justifies its
actual condition; though grace may...
effect revivals during the long suffering of God, the dispensation, as
such, is actually gone, that the glory of the
principle contained in it may shine forth in the hands of the Messiah.
The attempt to set this dispensation on
another footing, as to its continuance than those dispensations which
have failed already shows ignorance of the
principles of God's dealing for the calling of God was always by Grace.52.
Instead he speculated that the church would soon be replaced in God's
purposes on earth by a revived
national Israel."
"Darby, through his rigid literalist interpretation of Scripture,
regarded the covenantal relationship between
God and Abraham as binding for ever, and that the promises pertaining
to the nation of Israel, as yet unfulfilled,
would find their consummation in the reign of Jesus Christ on earth
during the millennium. He thereby
encouraged an essential dichotomy between those promises that applied
to Israel and those to the church. In an
article in the Christian Witness published in 1838, and attributed to
Darby, he went further arguing that,
There are two great subjects which occupy the sphere of millennial
prophecy and testimony -
"The Church
and its glory in Christ, and the Jews and their glory as a redeemed
nation in Christ - the heavenly people and the
earthly people. The habitation and scene of the one being the heavens;
of the other, the earth.""
"Darby's rigid dichotomy between heaven and earth, the Jews and the
church even had implications for his
doctrine of the deity and humanity of Jesus Christ.
The Lord, having been rejected by the Jewish people, is become wholly
a heavenly person.
In his developing scheme, Darby therefore, laid the foundation for a
dispensationalism in which the
church was seen as a mere parenthesis to God's continuing covenantal
relationship with Israel. Darby was
emphatic, the Jews would remain his primary instrument of rule on
earth during the millennium."
"Perceptive Jews are not surprisingly cynical of Christian Zionist
support for the State of Israel when it is
realised that they largely share Darby's dispensational views on the
fate of the Jews, believing most will not
escape Armageddon in the 'rapture' but will be annihilated in the
tribulation to follow. Hal Lindsey, for example,
on the basis of passages like Revelation 16:13-14, predicts the 200
mile valley from the Sea of Galilee to Eilat
flowing with blood several feet deep. Similarly, based on the same
passage, Timothy Dailey describes Tel
Aviv destroyed by nuclear warheads fired from Syria."
"Clarence Bass summarises the novel nature of Darby's emerging
theological framework....
It is dispensationalism's rigid insistence on a distinct cleavage
between Israel and the
church, and its belief in a later unconditional fulfilment of the
Abrahamic covenant, that sets it off from the
historic faith of the church."
"Similarly, H. C. Leupold, professor of Old Testament exegesis at the
Evangelical Lutheran Seminary,
Columbus, Ohio, in his commentary on Genesis 12:3 and with reference
to the promise made to Abraham,
makes the following critique of Darby's dispensationalism,
Now surely, as commentators of all times have clearly pointed out,
especially already Luther and Calvin,
this promise to Israel is conditional, requiring faith... History is
the best commentary on how the promise is
meant. When the Jews definitely cast off Christ, they were definitely
as a nation expelled from the land. All who
fall back upon this promise as guaranteeing a restoration of Palestine
to the Jews... have laid into it a meaning
which the words simply do not carry."
"It was into this dispensational scheme that Darby and his
contemporary Edward Irving postulated two
stages to Christ's imminent return. First, there would be an invisible
'appearing' when Christians would meet
Christ in the air and be removed from the earth, a process which came
to be known as 'the rapture of the saints'.
With the restraining presence of the Holy Spirit removed from the
world, the Antichrist would arise. His rule
would finally be crushed by the public 'appearing' of Jesus Christ.
Darby argued that, regarding the rapture."
"In commenting on 1 Thessalonians 4:15, in his Synopsis of the Books
of the Bible, Darby asserts,
Observe, also, that this revelation gives another direction to the
hope of the Thessalonians, because it
distinguishes with much precision between our departure hence to join
the Lord in the air, and our return to the
earth with Him.68
These passages actually say nothing about any secret rapture in any
dispensational sense, still less that the
church will be removed and return later to earth with Christ at His
public appearing."
"Darby's interpretation of passages such as 1 Thessalonians 4 is a
clear example of the way later
Dispensationalists read back from their presuppositional view of the
church into the Scripture."
"Following his literalist hermeneutic, Darby insisted that the
tribulation would end seven years after the
rapture when Jesus Christ would return to Jerusalem to set up his
kingdom from which he would rule the world
for a thousand years."
"His attitude toward those who disagreed with his doctrine of the
secret rapture was scathing,"
My comment: "His" is Darby's response to those who disagreed with him.
"Darby's novel ideas were not left unchallenged even within Brethren
circles. B. W. Newton, his chief
assistant in Plymouth, confronted Darby arguing that these views were
heretical and a departure from Biblical
orthodoxy...Newton and others saw Darby's elevation of Israel above
the church as 'full-blown heresy'.79 They
understood the church in Scripture to be made up of both Jews and
Gentiles who have been made one in Christ.
Darby's scheme, followed logically, implied two distinct and separate
ways to salvation. For Newton,
...the church included all the faithful from Abraham down. he
considered Mr Darby's dispensational
teaching as the height of speculative nonsense.'
If the church were removed and a Jewish remnant were the fruit of
God's redemptive work apart from
Christ then it must be the result of 'another' gospel condemned by the
Apostle Paul in Galatians. "
"C. H. Spurgeon
was one of Darby's most vociferous critics. Of Darby's Translation of
the Holy Scripture, Spurgeon wrote,
We don't even mention the other renderings in his new Bible, just as
serious and erroneous as the above;
much less notice the transposition of tenses and prepositions, or the
awkward English diction throughout. Suffice
it to say, that some renderings are good, and some of the notes are
good; but taken as a whole, with a great
display of learning, the ignorance of the results of modern criticism
is almost incredible. And the fatal upsetting
of vital doctrines condemns the work as more calculated to promote
scepticism than true religion-the most sacred
subjects being handled with irreverent familiarity."
"Darby's insistence on two dispensations, one for the church and
another for Israel is the basis on which
much non-evangelistic but triumphalist Christian Zionism views Israel.
It is, as shall be shown later, the stance
taken by the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem, the Messianic
Testimony, and in large measure,
Christian Friends of Israel who see their role primarily in terms of
supporting and defending Israel. Coad
summarises the split between Darby and Newton.
Newton, to Darby, was depriving the Church of its glories in Christ."
"From 1862 onwards, as his influence over Brethrenism in Britain
waned, Darby focused his ministry
more and more on North America, making seven journeys in the next
twenty years. Sandeen has estimated that
Darby spent 40% of his time in the United States.100 During that time
he had a considerable and increasing
influence on such evangelical leaders as James H. Brookes, Dwight L.
Moody, William Blackstone and C. I.
Scofield, as well as the emerging evangelical Bible Schools and
Prophecy Conferences which,
'...set the tone for the evangelical and fundamentalist movements in
North America between 1875 and
1920.'"
"Krauss claims that by 1901, following a good deal of controversy at
these prophetic conferences,
...the dispensationalists had won the day so completely that for the
next fifty years friend and foe alike
largely identified dispensationalism with premillennialism."
"It is not inaccurate therefore to conclude, Darby's dispensational
views, like those of Edward Irving,
would probably have remained the exotic preserve of the dwindling and
divided Brethren sects were it not for
the energetic efforts of significant individuals like William
Blackstone, D. L. Moody and above all, C. I. Scofield
who introduced them to a wider audience in America and the English
speaking world through his Scofield Reference
Bible."
Theology and Politics, by Stephen SIZER
AAARGH Internet Editions
2005
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livre...Rchriszion.pdf
Excerpts From Chapter Three and Chapter Four
"Darby began publishing his prophetic speculations in 1831.
Coincidentally both he and Edward Irving
began to postulate two stages to Christ's imminent return about the
same time. First, there would be an invisible
'appearing' when Christians would meet Christ in the air and be
removed from the earth, a process which came to
be known as 'the rapture of the saints'. With the restraining presence
of the Holy Spirit removed from the world,
the Antichrist would arise and the seven year tribulation would begin.
His rule would finally be crushed only by
the public 'appearing' of Jesus Christ."
"Several have attributed the notion of a
secret, pretribulational Rapture to Edward Irving. Dave MacPherson
argues convincingly that the doctrine
arose through a prophetic revelation given to Margaret MacDonald, one
of Irvings's disciples."
""As late as 1976 Walvoord was still anxious to distance the origin of
the doctrine of the Rapture from
Irving.
My note: "Walvoord" is John F. Walvoord (1910 - 2002),
president of Dallas Theological Seminary from 1952 to 1986.
Canfield notes that Walvoord's position contradicts several British
historians who were closer to the issue.
Neatby, writing in 1901, Howard Rowden in 1967, F. Roy Coad in 1968
and Iain Murray in 1971, all
find direct and reasonable links between the ideas of irving and the
role of J. N. Darby. The link is so evident
that a denial, using semantics on Walvoord's part, does not 'wash'."
"Darby" above is John Darby (1800-1882) of the Plymouth Brethren, and
known as the father of dispensationalism
"Not surprisingly perhaps, Charles Spurgeon observed in Darbyism, a
growing tendency to isolationism,
obscurantism and a party spirit.18 Spurgeon regarded their
hermeneutics as 'warped' and his colourful description
might easily apply to some contemporary Christian Zionists, 'Plymouth
Brethren delight to fish up some hitherto
undiscovered tadpole of interpretation, and cry it round the town as a
rare dainty."
"Darby's contribution then, to the development of Christian Zionism
and a rigid differentiation between the
church and Israel arose out of ecclesiastical expediency, his novel
dispensational speculations and an
independent and rigid literalist hermeneutic. These led him to
formulate two innovative doctrines concerning the
church and Israel. Both marked a significant departure from Christian
orthodoxy and evangelicalism in
particular."
"Darby taught that Israel would soon replace the church, rather
than the church having replaced, superseded or indeed become, Israel.
To accomplish this, Darby postulated his
second distinctive doctrine involving two stages to the return of
Christ instead of one, the first being to secretly
gather the church to heaven in a 'rapture' leaving a revived and
gathered nation of Israel to rule on earth for the
millennium."
"Darby's strong and repeated condemnation of the visible church as
apostate, clearly influenced his
innovative belief that the church era was now merely a 'parenthesis'
of the Last Days. 'Satan having beguiled
the Church, the church is in the position of earthliness and united in
system with the world."
"Because Darby insisted on there being irreversible and progressive
dispensations, in which the church
was merely one such dispensation, he deduced, a priori, that there
could be no future earthly hope for the church.
He argued that Scripture does not,
...present the restoration of a dispensation; it never justifies its
actual condition; though grace may...
effect revivals during the long suffering of God, the dispensation, as
such, is actually gone, that the glory of the
principle contained in it may shine forth in the hands of the Messiah.
The attempt to set this dispensation on
another footing, as to its continuance than those dispensations which
have failed already shows ignorance of the
principles of God's dealing for the calling of God was always by Grace.52.
Instead he speculated that the church would soon be replaced in God's
purposes on earth by a revived
national Israel."
"Darby, through his rigid literalist interpretation of Scripture,
regarded the covenantal relationship between
God and Abraham as binding for ever, and that the promises pertaining
to the nation of Israel, as yet unfulfilled,
would find their consummation in the reign of Jesus Christ on earth
during the millennium. He thereby
encouraged an essential dichotomy between those promises that applied
to Israel and those to the church. In an
article in the Christian Witness published in 1838, and attributed to
Darby, he went further arguing that,
There are two great subjects which occupy the sphere of millennial
prophecy and testimony -
"The Church
and its glory in Christ, and the Jews and their glory as a redeemed
nation in Christ - the heavenly people and the
earthly people. The habitation and scene of the one being the heavens;
of the other, the earth.""
"Darby's rigid dichotomy between heaven and earth, the Jews and the
church even had implications for his
doctrine of the deity and humanity of Jesus Christ.
The Lord, having been rejected by the Jewish people, is become wholly
a heavenly person.
In his developing scheme, Darby therefore, laid the foundation for a
dispensationalism in which the
church was seen as a mere parenthesis to God's continuing covenantal
relationship with Israel. Darby was
emphatic, the Jews would remain his primary instrument of rule on
earth during the millennium."
"Perceptive Jews are not surprisingly cynical of Christian Zionist
support for the State of Israel when it is
realised that they largely share Darby's dispensational views on the
fate of the Jews, believing most will not
escape Armageddon in the 'rapture' but will be annihilated in the
tribulation to follow. Hal Lindsey, for example,
on the basis of passages like Revelation 16:13-14, predicts the 200
mile valley from the Sea of Galilee to Eilat
flowing with blood several feet deep. Similarly, based on the same
passage, Timothy Dailey describes Tel
Aviv destroyed by nuclear warheads fired from Syria."
"Clarence Bass summarises the novel nature of Darby's emerging
theological framework....
It is dispensationalism's rigid insistence on a distinct cleavage
between Israel and the
church, and its belief in a later unconditional fulfilment of the
Abrahamic covenant, that sets it off from the
historic faith of the church."
"Similarly, H. C. Leupold, professor of Old Testament exegesis at the
Evangelical Lutheran Seminary,
Columbus, Ohio, in his commentary on Genesis 12:3 and with reference
to the promise made to Abraham,
makes the following critique of Darby's dispensationalism,
Now surely, as commentators of all times have clearly pointed out,
especially already Luther and Calvin,
this promise to Israel is conditional, requiring faith... History is
the best commentary on how the promise is
meant. When the Jews definitely cast off Christ, they were definitely
as a nation expelled from the land. All who
fall back upon this promise as guaranteeing a restoration of Palestine
to the Jews... have laid into it a meaning
which the words simply do not carry."
"It was into this dispensational scheme that Darby and his
contemporary Edward Irving postulated two
stages to Christ's imminent return. First, there would be an invisible
'appearing' when Christians would meet
Christ in the air and be removed from the earth, a process which came
to be known as 'the rapture of the saints'.
With the restraining presence of the Holy Spirit removed from the
world, the Antichrist would arise. His rule
would finally be crushed by the public 'appearing' of Jesus Christ.
Darby argued that, regarding the rapture."
"In commenting on 1 Thessalonians 4:15, in his Synopsis of the Books
of the Bible, Darby asserts,
Observe, also, that this revelation gives another direction to the
hope of the Thessalonians, because it
distinguishes with much precision between our departure hence to join
the Lord in the air, and our return to the
earth with Him.68
These passages actually say nothing about any secret rapture in any
dispensational sense, still less that the
church will be removed and return later to earth with Christ at His
public appearing."
"Darby's interpretation of passages such as 1 Thessalonians 4 is a
clear example of the way later
Dispensationalists read back from their presuppositional view of the
church into the Scripture."
"Following his literalist hermeneutic, Darby insisted that the
tribulation would end seven years after the
rapture when Jesus Christ would return to Jerusalem to set up his
kingdom from which he would rule the world
for a thousand years."
"His attitude toward those who disagreed with his doctrine of the
secret rapture was scathing,"
My comment: "His" is Darby's response to those who disagreed with him.
"Darby's novel ideas were not left unchallenged even within Brethren
circles. B. W. Newton, his chief
assistant in Plymouth, confronted Darby arguing that these views were
heretical and a departure from Biblical
orthodoxy...Newton and others saw Darby's elevation of Israel above
the church as 'full-blown heresy'.79 They
understood the church in Scripture to be made up of both Jews and
Gentiles who have been made one in Christ.
Darby's scheme, followed logically, implied two distinct and separate
ways to salvation. For Newton,
...the church included all the faithful from Abraham down. he
considered Mr Darby's dispensational
teaching as the height of speculative nonsense.'
If the church were removed and a Jewish remnant were the fruit of
God's redemptive work apart from
Christ then it must be the result of 'another' gospel condemned by the
Apostle Paul in Galatians. "
"C. H. Spurgeon
was one of Darby's most vociferous critics. Of Darby's Translation of
the Holy Scripture, Spurgeon wrote,
We don't even mention the other renderings in his new Bible, just as
serious and erroneous as the above;
much less notice the transposition of tenses and prepositions, or the
awkward English diction throughout. Suffice
it to say, that some renderings are good, and some of the notes are
good; but taken as a whole, with a great
display of learning, the ignorance of the results of modern criticism
is almost incredible. And the fatal upsetting
of vital doctrines condemns the work as more calculated to promote
scepticism than true religion-the most sacred
subjects being handled with irreverent familiarity."
"Darby's insistence on two dispensations, one for the church and
another for Israel is the basis on which
much non-evangelistic but triumphalist Christian Zionism views Israel.
It is, as shall be shown later, the stance
taken by the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem, the Messianic
Testimony, and in large measure,
Christian Friends of Israel who see their role primarily in terms of
supporting and defending Israel. Coad
summarises the split between Darby and Newton.
Newton, to Darby, was depriving the Church of its glories in Christ."
"From 1862 onwards, as his influence over Brethrenism in Britain
waned, Darby focused his ministry
more and more on North America, making seven journeys in the next
twenty years. Sandeen has estimated that
Darby spent 40% of his time in the United States.100 During that time
he had a considerable and increasing
influence on such evangelical leaders as James H. Brookes, Dwight L.
Moody, William Blackstone and C. I.
Scofield, as well as the emerging evangelical Bible Schools and
Prophecy Conferences which,
'...set the tone for the evangelical and fundamentalist movements in
North America between 1875 and
1920.'"
"Krauss claims that by 1901, following a good deal of controversy at
these prophetic conferences,
...the dispensationalists had won the day so completely that for the
next fifty years friend and foe alike
largely identified dispensationalism with premillennialism."
"It is not inaccurate therefore to conclude, Darby's dispensational
views, like those of Edward Irving,
would probably have remained the exotic preserve of the dwindling and
divided Brethren sects were it not for
the energetic efforts of significant individuals like William
Blackstone, D. L. Moody and above all, C. I. Scofield
who introduced them to a wider audience in America and the English
speaking world through his Scofield Reference
Bible."
