Replacement Mythology

Tired of the arguments on this subject.

This is where I stand on Replacement Theology and the related arguments. You won't move me because the Word of God backs this up.

There are four main categories of objections and arguments I encounter whenever someone starts bashing Israel and Jews in general. I'm going to tackle all of these because all of them have been lost in propaganda over the years.

1. Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was a fraud. Let's just be upfront and honest about that. Philip Graves wrote in 1920 for the Times of London exposing it as a plagiarized novel written in France in criticism of Napoleon's government in 1864 as a compilation of fictional discussions between Montesquieu and Machiavelli. It was later taken by the Czarist government in Russia and used as a propaganda tool to divert anger from the government onto a convenient scapegoat; the Jews in Russia. The original article by Philip Graves is hard to locate, but the New York Times reprinted his thesis a few months later and that can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/insider/1920-21-exposing-the-protocols-as-a-fraud.html

You may have to blow the article up to read it, but there is no arguing that this fraud of a document, this insidious lie, has been the very foundation of hatred of Jews. Henry Ford published it in the US, but eventually denounced it. The Protocols came to the attention of Adolph Hitler from Henry Ford's magazine in which the Protocols had appeared and used it to horrific affect. Since that time the Islamic enemies of Israel have used it as a tool of propaganda, teaching their people that it is true despite all evidence to the contrary.

If you think for a second that the Protocols are true, despite all the evidence (The original book they were based on can still be found occasionally and you can see they were lifted from the failed French novel) then you really need to examine your own motivations and biases. When faced with evidence that disproves a theory, an intellectually honest person revisits their conclusions and adjusts accordingly.
2. A Rothschild Under Every Rock.

I hear it all the time. The Central Bankers are all owned by the Rothschild family and central banking has the agenda of tearing down nation-states to create a global fascist government. To that I agree. Yes, the Rothschild family is the richest family on the face of the planet and they've become so through dishonesty, graft, bribery and war profiteering. You won't hear me cheer Mayer Amschel Rothschild for his brilliant work in the area of cheating nations out of their wealth via the fractional reserve system. However, as much as that is true, it is also false to assign blame for the Rothschild dynasty's deeds onto the average Jew. That would be like saying that the average German is somehow a closet Hitler supporter, or more accurately Hitler himself. This would be absurd and no one would look at you the same if you said it out loud, but many people spout off such nonsense about Jews and Israel all the time.

It is horribly wrong to assign blame to people who have no control over the actions that you associate with them. The average Jewish person has nothing to do with the policies of the world's central banks and I daresay they are as much a victim of the banks as all the rest of us are, therefore, if you believe such nonsense, you can quit your lie about Jews being somehow bad because, “Look at Rothschild!” Let me know when the Rothschild family starts nationalizing the central banks under the control of Israel and then we'll have something to talk about. Yet even then you have to contend with the fact that what the Rothschild banking cartel has become since it's days in a french ghetto, is the antithesis of everything the Jewish culture, based on the Torah stands for. Usury is specifically banned in the Torah, but you won't find your average Rothschild hater being that nuanced on the matter. The Rothschild family has not acted in the favor of Jews very often at all, and this can be seen by the propaganda spewed against the Jews by the very institutions (media) that so many claim are under the total dominion of the Rothschild cartel. Seems to me that if they were that powerful and they were that pro-Israel, they'd be a little more effective at public relations. They certainly have done a bang-up job at the UN right?

It is arguable that the Rothschild financial empire controls most major nation's economies around the world, therefore, those in all governments who are beholden to it's practices and who actively work to shield it from public scrutiny or oversight are just as guilty as anyone else, and I know for a fact most of them are not Jewish. The push to blame Israel and the Jews because of financial philanthropy by the Rothschild family towards the Jewish state is to indict every other nation guilty of taking similar investments. This is the test of whether or not you have a bias: Do you hold everyone to the same standard or do you err on the side of blaming one party guilty of the same things others are? Everyone should look at their tendencies here and evaluate whether they have grown myopic in one particular group vs. others.

3. It's the Synagogue of Satan!
Revelation 2:9 is ALWAYS cited and always cited incorrectly in the argument that says that the Jews in Israel aren't actually Jews. The verse doesn't actually say what people say it does. The famous "Synagogue of Satan" verse does not refer to a general group, but rather a specific group and an attitude. The statement was made to the Church of Smyrna by Jesus in His Revelation to John the Apostle. Christ was talking about those in the Jewish religious leaders who were attacking the Christians in Smyrna, not the Jews as a whole. It could be said that there are those within the leadership of Judaism at the time and even today that harbor the same hatred of Christians, but this a small portion of the Jewish people and not indicative of the whole. There is absolutely no context to the verse and no extra-biblical proof that the Jews in Israel are not actually Jewish by heritage, or that God rejected the entire group that called themselves Jews at that point.

The only positive identifier for the people referenced in Revelation 2:9 is that they were persecuting the Church and they were likely members of the Jewish leadership. A friend of mine has added to the original post that these Jews had actually joined with the Pagan worshipers of various Greek gods to persecute the Jews. Because of that we can see what Christ was talking about. These persecutors of the Church of Smyrna were aligning themselves with devils in order to stamp out the true faith of Abraham. That has nothing to do with Jews as a genetic group as a whole.

Besides that, in order to use that as a proof text for a theory about the Jews in general you need more than one verse. The Bible says that the Bible interprets itself. Doctrine is established by more than one verse. Taking verses out of context and assigning meaning to them without looking at the rest of the text for explanation and or reiteration of the point is not a way to establish doctrine. What people do with that verse is completely ignore the first half (the context of who they likely were) and assign it to the entire race, which is completely erroneous. That one verse has nothing to do with the Jews in Israel now, who are removed from the context of that verse by 2000 years.

The New Testament is Rather Jewish
Revelation 2:9 does not explain why they aren't Jews, apart from the obvious association with trials of the believers in the preceding part of the verse. Where is the proof to say that all Jews are categorically being disavowed in that verse? Weren't most of the believers at the time Revelation was written Jews? In fact they were.
All of the Apostles were Jews, most of the believers were Jews, because the Apostles went to the Jews first and then taught the Gentiles after they had presented Christ as the Messiah to the Jews in the Roman Empire. James was written to the Jews who were dispersed. Historians say that there were tens of thousands of Jews in Jerusalem who believed in Christ, after he appeared to the 500 and the Church was growing by leaps and bounds. If the Jews were rejected by God, then you have to also believe that these Christians were actually not redeemed, because why would God extend grace to them, being Jews if God had rejected them? Obviously He did not.

It is astonishing to me that one verse in Revelation is supposed to be the foundation for a complete rejection of the Jewish people that now reside in Israel, because it makes NO sense whatsoever. People 2000 years removed are somehow not actually Jews because Christ rebuked one group in one verse 2000 years ago and the context was about persecution of the Church by leaders of Judaism itself. Of course there are other verses that people point to, such as some verses in Romans 3, but then the same people will refuse to acknowledge the entire chapter 11 of Romans which completely disproves their argument.

The use of Revelation 2:9 is so inconsistent with the Bible itself and with logic, it should be repudiated at every opportunity as a baseless pile of garbage and a relic of replacement theology which is also a slap in the face to Christ himself. Either salvation is by faith alone in Christ, or there is a separate merit based system for the Jews and God is a liar. To believe that verse you have to eliminate the entire chapter 11 from Romans and you have to completely ignore the book of Ezekiel, not to mention dozens of other Old Testament prophecies concerning the restoration of Israel to the land. Its just BAD doctrine. Once again, this fallacy comes down to a lack of intellectual honesty.

Whose Land is it Anyway?
|The Mosaic Covenant was breached, therefore they are disqualified from the Promised Land. Question: When did the land become known as the promised land? Genesis 15. Question, who made the promise and what were the conditions of that promise? Answer: God and None. The Abrahamic Covenant is still in force. Go back and read Genesis 15 if you doubt this, God made the Covenant with himself to Abraham for the land for Abraham's descendants. Israel cannot be disqualified from that covenant because there were no conditions for it's fulfillment and no end to the promise. Therefore, the land's ownership is not debatable. The rest is a subject of the fulfillment of the Mosaic Law vs. The New Covenant in the blood of Christ, but neither of those have anything to say about the Abrahamic Covenant which preceded Moses by 400+ years. The covenant was entered into by God unconditionally. Abraham didn't pledge anything and God put him in a trance so he couldn't move or participate. God swore by himself that God would give the land. Abraham didn't break any requirements and neither did his descendants because there were none.

None of the texts which talk about the breach of the Mosaic Law are relevant to the ownership of the land, they merely speak of the conditions to be in the land as a nation. Yet many prophecies, including Ezekiel and Roman's 11 clearly teach of the restoration of the land to Israel. Clearly God says many times that Israel would be removed from the land for a period, then they would be restored. These things have come to pass, which disproves replacement theology, because they are there.

People who cling to replacement theology actually have a different standard of acceptance for the Jews than they do for themselves. That simply cannot be true, because God never changes and therefore, salvation and favor are only by unmerited grace. Nowhere is there a different standard for salvation for the Jews or the Gentiles, it was always faith in either case. Spiritual Israel is not the subject here. The subject is whether or not genetic Israel received a promise by God to give the land to them without condition, clause or end. Did that happen? Yes. Why? Because the Covenant/gift God was making was with himself; with his Son. Abraham was a witness to a promise from God the Father to God the Son. The land is His, David's throne will be Christ's throne. The Jews are the caretakers of the land and God promised it to no other people. Therefore, If God brings Israel back to his land, then you know the coronation is near. This has nothing to do with their obedience.

The land's is irrevocably given to the Jews. Read Genesis 15 and tell me what God required of Abraham or his descendants as a condition of that promise.

Here's the rub: Either the Abrahamic covenant was unconditional or it wasn't. The only way Replacement Theology could be right, is that those in Israel aren't actually genetically Jewish, and that is a complete lie that has been debunked by genetic testing

4. Pin the Tale on the Khazarian

Decades ago, a fanciful idea was introduced by one Arthur Koestler. For those unfamiliar, Koestler was a British author and Journalist, he was not an archeologist, a scientist by any means, and didn't have any expertise in the subject many anti-semites worship him for. Toward the end of his life, suffering from Parkinsons disease, Koestler published a book called The Thirteenth Tribe, from which comes the baseless and absurd postulation that the Ashkanazi Jews from west Europe aren't actually Jewish at all, but rather the remnants of a nation called Khazaria that once lived on the steps of Russia. From one single account of a noble family converting to Judaism nearly a thousand years ago, Arthur Koestler formulated a theory that the entire nation of Khazaria converted to Judaism and without any evidence whatsover asserted that the entire nation then migrated west to mingle with the Gothic tribes, thus becoming the Ashkenazi Jews over time.

The problem with the theory is, shall we say, expansive. To keep it simple, it is completely unsourced and unsupported BS. There is no archaeological evidence that the Khazars ever migrated at all, let alone migrated to Germany and intermingled with the Germanic tribes. There is only record of one family converting to Judaism, not the entire country and that was a thing the Jews themselves would have kept record of. In fact Koestler's only source for this wild fantasy is Jewish records kept from the time, which only account for one family's conversion and nothing more. This was the sort of thing the Jews keep record of, so the idea that they would not have documented the entire nation's conversion is completely inconsistent with their cultural tradition. 

Here's what is wrong with the theory: There is no language mingling, no traces of money, no pottery, no clothing, no traditions exchanged or merged from the Khazars into the Germanic tribes. None of the hallmarks of a migration have been found to back up this garbage theory of Arthur Koestler written in the 1970s. Again, Koestler was not an archaeologist, not a linguist, and not a scientist, he was merely a Journalist. There is no basis for his theory being considered as a scholarly thesis at all. 

The last 20 years have not been kind to Koestler's devotees. Due to genetic testing, the theory has lost what little credibility it ever had among academics. A multitude of genetic studies have been undertaken around he world to get a clear picture of the migration and spread of the Jews, to prove ancestry and to allow for immigration back to Israel. In that process, samples have been taken and compared which prove that the Ashkenazim Jews share the same unique genetic markers as all other Jews. Here is a video about the subject:

To recap the crap about fake Jews in Israel. Koestler's fantasy has no basis in reality. There was no mass migration from Khazaria to Germany ever. That is substantiated by the lack of anything which historians, archaeologists or linguists would expect to see from such a mixing of cultures. There is no genetic proof tying the Ashkenazi Jews to Khazaria either. In fact there is virtually nothing left of the Khazarian DNA strain by which to even compare. But what was the kicker for me was not only the lack of migratory evidence but the fact that genetic tests have been done on all the branches of the Cohen family, which are directly descended from the Levitcal line and Aaron. They tested the Cohens who stayed in Samaria after the explusion by the Romans in 70 AD, they compared the results tot he tests of the Sephardic Cohens, the Cohens from North Africa and the Cohens among the Ashkenazim. All fo them shared the same genetic markers signifying that they were related. All of them are Cohens, all of them are proven descendants of Aaron, Moses' brother. That pretty much destroys the myth of the Khazarian Jews once and for all. 

5. Israel stole the land.
This topic could be a book in and of itself. There are a lot of players and a lot of obfuscation of the truth. I'm going to use simple logic and point out one outside source, which has a ton of information on the history leading up tot he creation of Israel as an independent state as well as the reaction of the nations surrounding Israel.

First off. Israel didn't steal anything. They were given the land by the same authority that carved out the nations who claimed they were robbed of the land in the first place. They were promised the land at the same time the other nations were established. When England won WWI and dismantled the Ottoman Empire, they carved up the land and at the same time they created Jordan, and all the others in the region including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt, they carved out a plot for Israel as well. So logically, these nations surrounding Israel that claim that Israel does not have a right to exist are making the argument against their own right to exist as well, because they only exist at the authority of the same nation which gave Israel the right to govern themselves.

If you look back and read about the reasons it took so long for Israel to gain independence compared with Jordan for example, it was the fact that the surrounding nations were threatening to attack the Jews and because of this England kept control of the territory to ensure the peace.

The bottom line is that if Israel doesn't have the right to exist, then none of the nations formed out of the territory of the Ottoman Empire have a right to exist either.

Here is the website that covers the history surrounding that controversy: http://www.hirhome.com/israel/guide-israel.htm

Conclusion:
I flatly reject all aspects of replacement theology. The Jews were NOT replaced by the Church. Jesus has never sat on the Throne of David and He was promised that would be the throne of His Kingdom. How do you have a throne of David, if the Jews (genetic not spiritual) never reestablish a kingdom? A Christian Jewish nation would not have any incentive or reason to rebuild the Temple of Solomon.

Is it all just symbolic? My position is that Revelation is not allegory, The only chapter of Revelation that are Historical is the first chapter. Chapters 2-4 were written to the Gentile Churches. The rest was written to Israel, predicting the last days and depicting them as a nation in the land again.

The key to it is this: If the Jews in Israel are actually Jewish genetically, then all arguments to say they don't belong there are are null and void. In fact they are worthless. Why? Because if God had replaced Israel with the Church and Israel was permanently kicked out of the land because they rejected Christ, then the people there should not be Jews, but they are. Because they are, all arguments that say they were rejected by God are demonstrably false, by virtue of the fact that they are there at all.

They were removed from the land based on prophecy, and the same prophecies predicted their return, but replacement theologians conveniently ignore those verses to prove their doctrine, which makes their doctrine FALSE.

Those same prophecies that predicted the diaspora predicted their return to the land BEFORE Christ returns. Not a remnant but all of them. Otherwise there could be no third Temple, there could be no throne of David. It has to be a secular nation, otherwise they would never build a third Temple. You have to realize these Jews are still expecting their Messiah and that fits with Revelation's predictions of a man of sin that will enter the Temple and desecrate it claiming he himself is God (the Anti-Christ who will say he is Messiah). That has never happened. Antiochus Epiphanes was not the fulfillment of that, no matter how the preterists want to twist the circumstances to say that he was. He did not claim to be God, he merely desecrated the second temple with pig's blood by sacrificing a pig on the alter. These differences matter because the standard of a prophet is 100 percent accuracy, so either we reject John as an Apostle or we reject the standard Catholic view that all that happened in the past.

But the other reason for rejection of replacement theology is the simple fact that the Jews returning to the land isn't just a happenstance; it is not a happy accident. They are there Against ALL ODDS. People can make light of that fact, but anyone who objectively looks at the circumstances surrounding the return of the Jews to Israel has to conclude that it was by the hand of God Himself that 1. It happened at all. 2. They survived the war of 1948. 3. They've thrived and prospered despite numerous wars since. 4. That prospering LITERALLY fulfilled prophecies to make the desert bloom.

After 2 millennia they have re-established the nation in the same ancient homeland despite all of the nations around them objecting and attacking them repeatedly with overwhelming military odds. Israel's existence as a nation today is nothing short of miraculous, and it proves that they are the descendants of Abraham, because God said that He would move to bring them back. Not only does it fulfill generic prophecies that they would be returned to the land, it fulfills them specifically, because the time of the diaspora could be predicted based on the number of years that the land did not get their jubilee year of rest. They were scheduled to come back when they did. The Churches that reject this truth are the ones who are heretical.

You have to ask yourself. if God rejected the Jews, how were they stronger than the hand of God and were able to resettle the land in spite of Him?
That is the only thing you can conclude and it is an absurd thing to claim. God is God, there is none that can withstand Him. They would not be able to defy God's rebuke. But even if they had, think about what that implies: Islam, the people who reject the Bible completely, the people who preach hatred and murder towards those who believe the Bible. The people who follow a murderous pedophile prophet who had visions during epileptic fits in a cave of a false angel of light, a man who married a 9 year old girl and also stole his servant's wife (Hadiths outlines his habits and perverted attitude). THOSE people are acting as the righteous hand of God to route them out? Those people, who practice the most heinous evils on the face of the planet are the ones God is choosing to oppose the Jews from going back to their ancient home? How do you reconcile that? Oh, but it gets worse. Those people have been wholly ineffectual in doing that job.

Yes, the Lord has used the enemies of Israel to punish them and remove them from the land, but one thing is certain: When God gave a decree that they should go, there was no delay in that. When God said Assyria would come, they did. When God said Egypt would come, they did. When God said Babylon would come, they did. When God decreed the judgment on Israel and on Judah, it was fulfilled. Why, if the Jews now don't deserve the land they are in, is God impotent to remove them? Because that is what you have to believe is going on. The Rothschild family is supposedly more powerful than God himself, I guess.

Or could it be that the Lord brought them back into the land, using the wealth and power of those who hate Him, unwittingly, to fulfill his purpose and to use Israel to judge the entire world as Revelation says He will?