JD Hall on X
Joel Berry – like all Dispensational Zionists – has a problem; a BIG problem:
This isn’t conjecture. We actually have on record how the entire Christian world – Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox – all responded to. Their universal rejection was based primarily on one observation: It was new.
The controversy wasn’t that Darby taught God has future plans for the Jews. Most Christians have believed God has future plans. No big deal.
The controversy – the novel, new part – was Dispensationalist claim that Jews remain in God’s Covenant outside faith in Jesus, are STILL the Chosen people – and have access to God’s promises to Abraham without believing in Jesus.
THAT’s why Christendom rejected it wholesale until Zionists and Oxford created their heresy propaganda Bible and put Scofield’s name on it.
It comes down to ONE distinction: When God says, “I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee,” who are the heirs of this promise?
1) Two-thousand years of historic Christian orthodoxy – aka “Replacement Theology” would say, “Christians alone receive this promise.”
2) Dispensationalists say, “Jews receive this promise.”
NO historic Christian figure asserted that Jews remain in Covenant status without faith, are still “chosen” in disbelief, or retain promises outside faith.
But the Christian Zionists NEED you to believe Jews have a right to Abraham’s promises, because that’s how they manipulate Christians to support Israel.
What Joel Berry is attempting – a common tactic – is to argue the Church Fathers and other figures were SORTA KINDA pseudo-Dispensationalists because they believed God will one day save the Jews by faith.
That’s neither the controversial part, nor the disagreement.
Imagine if someone argue that the Church Fathers were crypto-Mormons because they believed in God, and so do Mormons, so bingo-bango, “LOOK! they were just like Mormons!” You’d explain that the disagreement is the Holy Underpants and polytheism, not the “believing in God” part.
Did you know that the Bible says God is not only NOT through with Palestine, but that He will give Palestine rule over Zion? True story.
Psalm 87:6 says God will bring Philistia (Palestine) into Zion and Zechariah 9:6-7 says a remnant of Palestine will RULE over Israel. Does this mean Christians may say support Hamas to take over Israel? No. That’s dumb.
It’s equally dumb to argue that because God will one day redeem Jews one day by faith, prior to conversion we need to support the establishment of a nation-state that rejects Jesus in their national charter, forbids Christians from Right of Return, and and persecutes Christians.
The Church Fathers, in particular, would have found it abhorrent.
Meanwhile, rest assured, the Dispensational Zionists are desperate. All heresies have a shelf-life. In my expansive work as Polemics Santa, I’ve studied almost every heresy under the sun. I know polemics like James White knows cycling, and I’m here to tell it most theological novelties have about a 200-year shelf-life and then fade away. Unbiblical doctrines only last so long. Fads fade.
The One True Church survives because in God’s gracious kindness, the sieve of time separates doctrinal wheat from heretical chaff and the novelty wears off, the true church eventually puts up a fight, and drowns it under Scripture. And Dispensationalism has been under water for more than a minute now.
EVERY DAY I hear from a half-dozen people just through my Substack of lifelong Dispensationalists abandoning it, young and old alike. Dispensationalism cannot withstand the light of God’s Word. God’s people are rejecting it for ye vile heresy it is. False doctrines can only survive for so long before the Holy Spirit, leading His people to the knowledge of truth, stamp it out.
And it’s getting stomped as we speak.