The Church of Jesus Christ

In a recent email update from the Sid, the Rothster is selling a booking declaring that the ‘best is yet to come:’

What if what you’ve been told about the last days is wrong? The mark of the beast. Gog and Magog. 666. A confederation of ten nations. The antichrist’s ascendancy to power. The abomination of desolation. Christians have become almost obsessed with trying to unravel the Bible’s mysterious prophecies about such things.

Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Bernis brings fresh and extraordinary insight into Bible prophecy in his brand new book, A Rabbi Looks at the Last Days! Through this book you will gain clear insight into the way Bible prophecies are being fulfilled in our day! You will explore the answers to these questions …

• What is the surprising link between Israel, the Jewish people, and the return of the Messiah?
• What is meant by “the fullness of the Gentiles?”
• Why are “Replacement” & “Dual Covenant” theologies Satan’s tools to disrupt the return of Messiah?
• Why is Israel’s salvation the Key to WORLD Redemption?
• How can you fulfill your God-given Calling & Destiny in these “End Times?”
• And more!

Most end-time Bible teachers forecast a future of DOOM and GLOOM! But this book declares that God’s best is yet to come — a time of supernatural healing, deliverance, miracles and Signs and Wonders!

This is the same false doctrine that is spewing from from the sewer that is the Dominionist Camp. I will not waste my money buying the book, but I can only guess what ’support’ the Rabbi has for his bullet points. I will not cover it all here, but I believe I can put forth a little rebuttal.

First, let’s note that indeed, the End Times is a forecast of gloom and doom. This is important, because I believe that the False Prophet will be one which steps forward to restore peace and harmony, an age of peace, during the Tribulation. Let’s take a minute and look exactly what these times will be like for the true Church.

We know that there will be a great falling away, which contrary to LeHaye, is the Apostasy and not the ‘Rapture.’ Further, we know that the False Prophet will be preceded by miracles, signs and wonders – which is what Sid is proclaiming as a sign of the Church (2nd Thessalonians 2).  In Revelation 13, we find that the Beast and the False Prophet (which I understand to mean the government and the head of state) will arise during the last times. The state of the Church is deplorable, no doubt because the Spirit had been withdrawn. The False Prophet makes war with the Church and over comes them. The only that the Church as is that he who kills will be killed. Does this sound like a happy time? Remember, the only one succeeding during these final days, at least visibly, is the Beast and it’s False Prophet.

The phrase ‘fullness of the Gentiles’ comes from Romans 11.25, in which Paul is talking about the moment when the blindness is lifted as a whole from the Jewish nation. The Prophet Zechariah says it this way,

And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart, “The inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength in the LORD of hosts, their God.’ In that day I will make the governors of Judah like a firepan in the woodpile, and like a fiery torch in the sheaves; they shall devour all the surrounding peoples on the right hand and on the left, but Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place–Jerusalem. (Zechariah 12:5-6 NKJV)

Now, remember, this is God’s time, not ours, and we can do nothing to heal the blindness – only the spreading of the Gospel. It is my firm opinion that during that Day, Judah will be among those that war against the Church, but when the Church has her back against the wall, the eyes will be made to open, and Judah will save the Church. Together, as One, the Church will be settled. In no way does this exclude Jewish members today from joining the Church, only that as a whole, Israel (the people, not the geo-political entity) is blind to the Gospel. Further, it should be noticed that Judah here is used, a small portion of Israel.

Among the questions raised by Paul’s prediction that “all Israel will be saved” (11: 26), concerns who qualifies as Israel. Paul in his epistle to the Romans redefines, much to the dismay of Messianic Jews, the identity of Israel as those who had inherited God’s promises of salvation to the ancient Hebrew patriarchs. The same is said of Paul in Galatians 3 and 4. Paul writes several passages in which is required reading to understand just who ‘all Israel’ is.

• “Not all are children of Abraham because they are his descendants; but ‘through Isaac shall your descendants be named.’ (9:7-8)
• “Isaiah cries out concerning Israel [10:22-23]:
• ‘Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved; for the Lord will execute his sentence upon the earth with rigor and dispatch’” (9:27-28).

Although Paul’s reference to this prophecy of Isaiah suggests that most of the Jews, labeled the children of Israel, would never enjoy their intended status, some would be saved (and we understand in Ephesians, that both Jews and Gentiles are saved through the Church). The ‘all Israel’ is the final physical decedents of Abraham. Further, the connection between verse 25 and 26 can be read to imply that when the final Gentiles are added, it completes the ‘all Israel,’ thus the notion of a special place for Israel in world redemption cannot be found here as used by Christian Zionist and Messianic Jews alike. (Remember, it is only through Christ that the world can find redemption.)

Finally, there is no Dual Covenent (so here, at least on the surface, I would agree with Sid), but one New Covenant made to the Church (which is spiritually Israel). The Replacement Theology is best described as supercessionism, which is entirely biblical:

• Matthew 5:17-20: “‘Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’”
• John 4:22: “‘You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews.’”
• Romans 1:16-17: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’ [Habakkuk 2:4]“
• Romans 2:28-29: “For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.”
• Romans 3:29-31: “Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law.”
• Romans 9:6-8: “But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.”
• Romans 10:12-13: “For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile — the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ [Joel 2:32]“
• Romans 11:1-6: “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? ‘Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.’ But what is God’s reply to him? ‘I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’ So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace.”
• Romans 11:26: “So all Israel will be saved.”
• Galatians 2:14-16: “When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, ‘You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? We who are Jews by birth and not “Gentile sinners” know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.’”
• Galatians 3:29: “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”
• Ephesians 2:11-22, especially v. 14: “For He Himself [Jesus Christ] is our peace, who made both groups [Jews and non-Jews] into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall.”

Tags: all Israel, antichrist, bible, Christainity, end times, eschatology, false prophet, God, israel, jews, judaism, religion, replacement theology, supercessionism, the beast