Let's turn to page 420, 421. And we looked at the reconstitution of Israel, the prophetic restoration of Israel, and we started looking at the possession of the land of, you know, why do we believe Israel owns the land and whatnot. And we discussed the Abrahamic covenant and that it was a unilateral covenant by God. and God himself walked through the fire and so it's a covenant that God's going to make. Okay, so what I want to do is, just real quick, I want to go through, okay he made the promise to Abraham and so let's watch how he continues reiterating the promise to Isaac and then to Jacob and then to Israel and then we'll do some application on this. So if you go to page 423. So we did Abraham, now we're moving to his son Isaac. And again, who's not included in this? Who was Isaac's half-brother? Do you know who it is? Ishmael, right? Okay, that's what you have to keep in mind when you're reading Genesis 26, that somebody is being included and somebody is being excluded. Let me ask you this, the fact that one of the boys, obviously Ishmael's from Hagar, so the promise is not gonna go through him, the promise of the Abrahamic covenant's gonna go through Isaac. Does this bear anything in mind with their salvation? Is this a salvation passage? Okay, what kind of context are we dealing with? This is extremely important because Calvinists will run with this in chapter 9 of Romans and say, see, aha, this is dealing with salvation in Romans chapter 9. It is not. You must know the basis of this. What are we talking about here? What is the Abrahamic covenant? It's a national issue, right? That the promise of, all the promises I'm going to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is going to go through a particular nation, which will eventually produce the Messiah. And what I am talking about is service privilege. not salvation. You must keep that in mind because when you jump into Romans, Paul just expects that you know that. Because you know the Old Testament. That when the Abrahamic promise comes out, it has to do with who is the ones who are carrying the promise, the covenant. Okay? It's going to be the Jews, right? So when you get into Jacob I loved and Esau I hated, That is not talking about individuals. The individuals represent the nations, right? Okay, so you have to know this basis to understand Romans 9, to have a proper hermeneutic. Okay, so let's look at the basis of continuing it through this particular line and not Ishmael. And Yahweh appeared unto him and said, go not down into Egypt. There's always a constant thing to the patriarchs. Quit going down to Egypt. Don't go down there. And what did they do? that kept going down there. Dwell in the land which I tell you of. So there we go. This is the land. Sojourn in this land, the land of Canaan, right, Israel, and I will be with you and will bless you for unto you and unto your seed, biological seed, I will give you these lands. I will establish the oath which I swore unto Abraham, your father, and I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, talking about the Jewish people, and I will give unto your seed all these lands, and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. The blessing aspect of the Abrahamic promise is the Messiah, okay? It's not fully flushed out here, but that's where the blessing aspect comes from. Because that Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. Okay, so this promise to Yitzhak or Isaac is a promise to him and his seed which implies resurrection. For Isaac to experience having ownership of the land means he must be resurrected. So like I told you with Abraham, They early on knew that in order to see the full promise of this, they would have to be resurrected. So resurrection theology is already on their minds. And in just this promise here, Isaac assumes he's going to have to be resurrected. Okay, let's move down then to his son, Jacob, or Jacob, and not Esau, right? And so on the bottom of page 423, and behold, Yahweh stood above it, above what? Jacob's Ladder That's what the passages coming on the heels of is Jacob's Ladder Okay, where he saw this ladder or stair step to heaven and angels ascending and descending. So Yahweh's above the ladder, if you can picture that, in heaven, right? And that's what he's seen in this vision. And he says, I am Yahweh, the God of Abraham, your father, and the God of Isaac. So it's continuing on. And the land wherein you lie, because he's asleep, right? Sleeping on a rock, his head's on a rock. To you I will give it. So it continues. It's not Esau, it's to Jacob. And to your seed, there's the idea of the biological promise. And your seed shall be as the dust of the earth and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south and in you and your seed, Jews, shall all the families of the earth be blessed. That's the blessing aspect of the Abrahamic covenant. Again, referencing to the Messiah. And behold, I am with you, and I will keep you whithersoever you go, and will bring you again into this land. For I will not leave you until I have done that which I have spoken to you of." Again, implying resurrection. I'm going to bring you back into this land. So the idea is he's going to resurrect him. So Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must be resurrected in order to do this. Now let me do some segues a little bit. What was the argument that Messiah made with the Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection? You remember what he brought up to them? And plus, the Sadducees don't consider any of the other books other than the first five books of Moses. And what did he say to them? He's the God of the living, not of the dead. And he was making the argument that you guys don't believe in the resurrection, but yet your father Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did. And they are alive right now, which implies that they're going to eventually be resurrected. So even Messiah was taking the Sadducees on task of saying, look, early doctrine of resurrection was already with the patriarchs. What are you guys thinking about? There's not a resurrection because they denied it, right? So there's that one aspect. And now I want to do some more application into church history and to bring some current events into it. Grab your handout real quick. So here's what I want you to say. You say, everyone in this room says, OK, I see what you're saying. I agree. But here's the deal. 75% of Christendom does not believe what we just said. They don't believe that. They do not believe the Jews have the right to the land. Because we have supersessionism and we have replacement theology in most of the churches, in fact the majority of the churches, at a large degree. So a guy like we talked about, like Andy Stanley, will not discuss Israel. He's discussing seeker-friendly types of things, having your best day and whatnot. And I can put the stat across Kern County as well. I don't have to go too far where I will find churches that simply will not talk about this. And okay, what is the big deal? Because you're like, okay, you're already convinced. What I want to show you is what happened in church history a little bit, not a lot, not exhaustive, but enough to show you that holy smokes, something's up. So on page one, Gentile fathers who were anti-semitic. Okay, the first one, 100 AD. When did John write Revelation? 90, 95. So we're talking about within five years. The Epistle of Barnabas, not a canonical book, comes out. It was a contender for inclusion, had definitely Greek methods of interpretation, but the writer of this argued that only the Christian could make sense of the Bible. The carnal Jews, with their earthly mindset, had failed to recognize the hidden message of their own scriptures, and as a result had eternally forfeited their entitlement to the covenant promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So now that we have studied the Abrahamic covenant made through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Israel, and that God said in Leviticus 26, he's not going to turn his back on Israel, he's not going to reject them, he's not going to destroy them, he's not going to break his covenant with them, then we must apply this. Because what's happened in church history has been a rejection of Israel, replacement theology has risen, anti-Semitism has risen, and we need to understand what happened. And what I want to do right now is I want to give you a section of an article written by Dr. David Reagan called The Evil of Replacement Theology, A Shocking Discovery. What I want to do is go through the church fathers and go through all of church history and just enumerate some of them and show you how anti-Semitic the church was, how anti-Semitic the church fathers, how they brought supersessionism in or replacement theology, and how it bears itself out to today. So we're gonna take a snippet of his article. If you wanna see the article online, go to lambandlion.com. Ministries and type in the evil replacement theology and you'll see the whole entire article But I just want to enumerate some of the guys he enumerated for us tonight So, how can he say something like that? We have just read Back in Genesis 15 about the covenant made with Abraham, which was a unilateral covenant We saw the covenant extended past him to Isaac in Genesis 26 and then we see the covenant continued through Jacob in Genesis 28. And we just read Leviticus 26 that God specifically says, and yet for all of that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, neither will I abhor them to destroy them utterly or to break my covenant with them, for I am Yahweh their God, but I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors. So I don't understand these church fathers who just simply ignored this, but it continues on. Here's another guy, Ignatius of Antioch. He lived about 50 to 117 AD. I mean, this is in the time of the apostles. He said this, those who partake of the Passover are partakers of those who killed Jesus. Again, you'll see this theme keep coming up about killing Jesus. And just at the outset, because they're all say this, Who really killed Jesus? Jesus said in himself, no one takes my life. I'm the one who gives it up. So Messiah is in control of his life and he gives it up as a sacrifice. And so, you know, and specifically it was the Romans who crucified him, but really theologically, it's all of us who put him on the cross because he had to go to the cross to die for our sins. But Jesus says, no one takes my life. Yet these church fathers continue to target the Jews because it's an anti-Semitic statement. Let's go to Justin Martyr. He lived about 100 to 165 AD. He claimed that God's covenant with Israel was no longer valid and that the Gentiles had replaced the Jews. So there is right there replacement theology or supersessionism. Additionally, he was the first to identify the church as the true spiritual Israel. There we go again. That's all replacement theology. It says that nowhere in scripture. Spiritual Israel are saved Jews, not the church. And you'll see that in Galatians. And he declared the plight of the Jews, their exile and persecution had happened in fairness and justice because they had slain the just one. There it is, that they committed deicide, right? Then you have Melito of Sardis. He died in about 180 AD. He also focused on this concept of deicide, that they killed God. He said, the king of Israel slain with Israel's right hand, alas, for the new wickedness of the new murder. Again, blaming the Jews for it. Then you go to Irenaeus, lived about 130 to 202 AD. He was a student of Polycarp, who in turn was a disciple of the apostle John. So you can see the line there, but yet, To him, that line didn't really mean anything, I guess. I guess he didn't learn anything from John because he started saying the house of Jacob and the people of Israel are disinherited from the grace of God. And he argued this because they had rejected the son of God and they slew him. So again, did they not read the scriptures? What happened here? Clement of Alexandria, 150 to 215 AD claimed that Israel denied the Lord and thus forfeited the place of true Israel. Again, replacement theology, supersessionism, which is not found in scripture, by the way. Hippolytus of Rome, 170 to 235, he considered by many the most important theologian of the third century. Anyway, he was a student of Irenaeus. He declared that Jews had been darkened in the eyes of their souls with a darkness utter and everlasting. He further stated that they were destined to be the slaves to the nations, not for 400 years as in Egypt, nor 70 as in Babylon, but always. It's crazy. Then you had Tertullian of Carthage, 155 AD to 230. He blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus and argued that they had been rejected of God. Continuing Replacement Theology, Cyprian of Carthage. This is a student of Tertullian and he wrote, I have endeavored to show that the Jews departed from God and lost God's favor while the Christians succeeded in their place, deserving well of the Lord by faith and coming out of all the nations and from the whole world." Again, keeping the same theme going. He also added this, that we as Christians pray and say, our father, because he has begun to be ours and has ceased to be the father of the Jews who have forsaken him. And he couldn't be further from the truth. I guess he hasn't read Romans 11. I guess he hadn't read Leviticus 26 or Genesis 15, Genesis 26 and Genesis 28. It's an everlasting covenant. What did they not understand about that? Then you have origin of Alexandria. Origin caused a lot of problems, but one of them was this replacement theology that he continued to perpetrate. He was responsible for a lot of anti-Semitism, by the way. And all of it was based on his assertion that the Jews were responsible for killing Jesus. In one of his treaties, he wrote, we say with confidence that they, the Jews, will never be restored to their former condition, for they committed a crime of the most unhollowed kind in conspiring against the savior of the human race. It accordingly behooved that city where Jesus underwent these sufferings to perish utterly and the Jewish nation to be overthrown. And the invitation of happiness offered them by God to pass to others, the Christians. It's just almost unbelievable that these guys read the same Bible. I just don't, I don't understand this. Then you had the council of Elvira, 305 AD. This was an ecclesiastical Senate of Spanish clerics that was held in the city of Granada in Southern Spain. And the council voted to prohibit Christians from sharing a meal with a Jew marrying a Jew, blessing a Jew, or observing the Sabbath. So they started making official statements like that. Well, then you have some turning points in Christianity that went really bad. And here's what started happening. Constantine converts to Christianity in 306. He adopted Christianity, obviously, as you know, as the official religion of the Roman empire in 321 AD. Well, you know, beginning with the fourth century, replacement theology and antisemitism had become entrenched in Christian thought. And now Christianity is given approval by the empire overnight. And all these sentiments towards the Jews became official concepts, and so a lot of Jewish persecution and against Judaism started happening. For instance, the Edict of Milan came in 313 AD. In favor, obviously, was granted to Christianity, why synagogues were outlawed in the Roman Empire. And then another edict was issued in 315 AD, and it authorized the burning of Jews if they were convicted of breaking the laws. I mean, just unbelievable some of the stuff that went on when you read history. So the church becomes increasingly dominant in this time, and further laws are passed that severely curtail rabbinic jurisdiction, prohibited conversions to Judaism, excluded Jews from holding high office or serving in the military. And basically as Clarence Wagner summed it up, instead of the church taking this opportunity to spread the gospel and the message of love, it became the church triumphant, ready to vanquish its foes, and the foes for it during that time were the Jews. It's unbelievable. Then you had the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. This was the first ecumenical council of the church, and it was held in Turkey, and it was presided over by Emperor Constantine, And so regarding the Jews, this council changed the celebration of the resurrection from the Jewish feast of first fruits to Easter in an attempt to disassociate it from the Jewish feasts. And the council basically said, for it is unbecoming beyond measure that on this whole list of festivals, we should follow the custom of the Jews. Henceforth, let us have nothing in common with this odious people. In addition to calling them odious, the council referred to the Jews as polluted wretches, the most horrible rabble, and parasites. And you think about this, today we celebrate the resurrection, but it should be during the week of first fruits. It came on the hills of Passover, and the church divorced itself from that. And so you think, Wow, that's when it started happening that early that anti-Semitism starts sparking up in official church doctrine. Other church leaders like Eusebius of Caesarea taught that the promises of scripture were meant for the Gentiles and the curses were for the Jews. He asserted that the church was the true Israel. And again, what Bible were these guys reading? Hilarious, a Pontier 300 to 368. He's a French Bishop, and he said that the Jews are a perverse people, a curse by God forever. John Christendom, 349, 407 AD, Archbishop of Constantinople. Obviously, he presented eight sermons against the Jews. And here's some of what he had to say. He said, the synagogue is not only a brothel and a theater, it is also a den of robbers and a lodging place for wild beasts. Jews are inveterate murderers possessed by the devil. Their debauchery and drunkenness gives them the manners of a pig. This is why I hate the Jews," he said. He proceeded to deny that the Jews could receive forgiveness. He claimed it was the Christian duty to hate Jews, believe it or not. And he claimed that Jews worshiped Satan. I mean, it's just unbelievable stuff when you listen to these people. And this guy's obviously canonized as a saint. Then you had Jerome. 347 to 420. The renowned translator of the Bible into Latin, that's what he's known for, right? He described the Jews as serpents wearing the images of Judas. Their Psalms, he said, and their prayers are the brain of donkeys. They are incapable of understanding scripture. Wow. Then you have Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. He was the one who converted Augustine. So regarding the Jews, he wrote, the Jews are the most worthless of all men. They are lecherous, greedy, rapacious. They are perfidious murderers of Christ. They worship the devil. Their religion is a sickness. The Jews are an odious assassins of Christ. And for killing God, there is no expiation possible, no indulgence or pardon. Christians may never cease vengeance and the Jews must live in servitude forever. God always hated the Jews, he said. It is essential that all Christians hate them. What is he talking about? Where in the passages in the Bible does it say to hate the Jews? It says to love one another. I don't understand what Bible these guys were reading. It just seems that They were perverted in their thoughts towards the Jews. If they were demonically inspired, there's no other way to put this. How did they get this so wrong? And then here comes Augustine. And I'm not a big fan of Augustine. He's the guy who continued to make replacement theology the norm. He's the guy that brought in Calvinism. Calvin and Luther were not the first Calvinists. It was Augustine, who was a former Manichaean, Gnostic, who brought Calvinism in basically fatalistic determination by God, he brought that into the church, he brought replacement theology, and he brought the allegorical method as dogma into the church, and he pretty much buried all the prophecy in his amillennialism. Well, anyway, this guy was an anti-Semite, and he said, why has God allowed the Jews to exist? His answer was, although the Jews deserve death, they are destined to wander the earth to witness the victory of the church over the synagogue. So, I mean, you say weird stuff like that, demonic stuff like that, but once his views got entrenched, that was the official views of the church, and lasted for a very long time, and lasts until today, basically. So the Middle Ages come, And not much has changed. Replacement theology is still the norm. Amillennialism is entrenched. The Jews are still demonized, condemned, ostracized by the church. And the church has basically become a Gentile organization, off limits to the very people who founded it. I mean, it's just ridiculous. These views obviously are enforced, reinforced by Thomas Aquinas, who lived from 1225 to 1274. He was a Catholic theologian and he said that the Jews were destined to perpetual slavery. He said the Jews should be compelled to work rather than live in idleness and grow rich in usury. Jews should be forced to wear a distinctive badge in order to distinguish them from Christians. I wonder where Hitler got these ideas. Jews and heretics could be legitimately killed after a second warning. So it just, you could outright kill them. Isn't that, that's just insane to think like this. And these guys are supposed to be Christians. And so I want you to think about this to illustrate how, how severe the rejection of the Jews have become in the middle ages. You had to consider the oath that the church in Constantinople required a Jew to take in order to become a Christian. And it says this in the oath, I renounce all customs, rights, legalisms, unleavened breads, and sacrifice of lambs of the Hebrews, and all other feasts of the Hebrews, sacrifices, prayers, aspirations, aspersions, purifications, sanctifications, propitiations, and fasts, and new moons, and Sabbaths, and superstitions, hymns, and chants, observances, and synagogues, and the food and drink of the Hebrews. So basically, in a word, he had to renounce everything Jewish, every law, right, or custom that comes out of the Old Testament, right? And if afterwards, it said, I shall wish to deny return to Jewish superstition, or shall be found eating with Jews, then let the trembling of Cain and the leprosy of Gehazi cleave to me, and may I be anathema in the world to come, and may my soul be set down with Satan and the devils. I mean, that's the oath they had to, state. I mean, it's so ridiculous. Then you had a guy like, by the name of Bernard Clairvaux, lived about 1090 to 1153. He was saying that the Jews are bestial, evil, an evil seed, a race who have not God for their father, but are of the devil. And then you had Peter the Venerable saying this about the Jews, I doubt whether a Jew can really be human. I mean, he dehumanized them. No wonder the Nazis got these ideas from the church fathers. He further referred to them as monstrous animals and brute beasts. And then you have Pope Innocent III who argued that the Jews should not be killed because they should be left to wander the earth until their countenance is filled with shame. I mean, it's just, it's amazing. So here's the deal. Yet two erroneous concepts that came out about the Jews from the Middle Ages, that the Jews were Christ killers, deicide, had committed deicide, and should be mistreated accordingly, and that the church had replaced Israel and God has no future plans for the Jews. That's what basically came out. So these concepts of that were then reinforced in the Middle Ages by the Crusades, who committed heinous atrocities against the Jews, For example, the Crusaders captured Jerusalem on July 15th, 1099, and as the Jews were herded into their synagogues by them in the ex-ex block, the synagogues were surrounded by soldiers who sang Fairest Lord Jesus while they burned the buildings to the ground with them in it. Then you had artistic expressions that reinforced this. And again, because of illiteracy, 25% of the modes of communication, were in the form of art during that period of time. And so, one of the pictures of the Jews was called the Jewish sow, and it appeared throughout Europe in the Middle Ages in many, many different forms. And it depicted the Jews as nursing on pigs and eating their excrement. It was on church walls, on stained glass, and portrayed in many sanctuaries in the Middle Ages. Basically, a more sophisticated replacement theology was found in an image called Ecclesia Versus Synagoga, or Church Versus the Synagogue, and it personified the church and the synagogue as rival queens. And in this art depiction, the Jewish queen was shown blindfolded, bareheaded and downcast, and one of her hands are broken staff, and in the other one, she clutches the tablets of the law, which are about to slip out of her hand. The church queen is depicted as triumphant, wearing a crown with a cross in one hand and a chalice in the other. So these statues were portrayed in cathedrals during that time. And they're still there today in Europe. And it clearly communed the idea that the Jews have been cast aside to make way for a new people of God. And they did a lot of dramas and they did miracle plays and passion plays during the Middle Ages. And basically in these plays, Jews were depicted as demons, bloodthirsty, cursing demons with, you know, they're portrayed with hooked noses, horns and tails, and they were made to seem as evil as possible. It was just unbelievable that this happened. Then you had the blood libels through the Middle Ages. And so basically professing Christians spread myths that helped heighten the popular hatred and fear of the Jewish people. So, you know, it became popular to think of the Jews as kind of agents of Satan. And one of the most popular anti-Jewish myths that gained a lot of acceptance was the notion that Jews murdered Christians each time around Passover in order to get blood needed to perform their satanic rites. And this became known as the charge of the blood libel, the ritual murder blood libel. It's all made up. But another myth that circulated during these years was that the Jews would steal the wafers used in communion and stab them with knives, thus killing Christ once again. I mean, just unbelievable stuff. But really, the most notorious blood libel of the Middle Ages occurred in 1493, when a two-year-old boy named Simon disappeared in Trento, Italy. His father blamed the Jewish community, and 15 Jews were charged with ritual murder and burned at the stake. And this emotional story quickly spread through Europe, inspired many in Europe to come against the Jews, basically. Then you have what's called the Black Plague myths. And in the middle of the 14th century, it killed approximately, you know, obviously one third of the population of Europe because of the Black Plague. But at that time, they didn't know what spread the illness, but stories and rumors circulated that the Jews had poisoned the wells. And of course, this was totally unfounded, but many people believe that, and Christians believe this myth. And one of the reasons it was easy to believe it is because the Jews were not impacted by the plague as much as the Gentiles were. But this was due to the sanitary laws of the Bible, which the Jews obviously followed. So this accusation led to a severe consequence for the Jews. More than 60 Jewish communities were burned to the ground. with all their occupants killed, and in some places, Jews were tortured and burned in bonfires. And then, another thing they did in the Middle Ages, put distinguishing marks on the Jews. The Fourth Lateran Council, headed by Pope Innocent III, and this is another guy we talked about that was anti-Semitic, ruled in 1215 that Jews must wear a distinguishable dress and a colored badge of identification. And this became a very common practice in Europe. And you think, okay, then this thing that Hitler did was nothing new. The church was doing this and the Popes were doing this. And then you had the regulations to ghettos. And so by the 11th century, large cities throughout Europe began to herd Jews into designated areas within the cities that they called ghettos. And this action was motivated, of course, by the hatred of Jews, considering them to be vermin. And it was decided that they should be cut off from the rest of the population. Well, that's exactly what Nazi Germany did. Then you had the pogroms. So these were basically massive, violent attacks against Jewish communities that broke out in the 11th and 12th centuries in France, Germany, and England. And obviously the Black Plague in the 14th century provoked additional pogroms through Europe. But during these pogroms, Jews were murdered, synagogues were destroyed, and Torah scrolls were burned. at the same time. And then right on the heels of this came the Inquisition. And about the 12th century it started and persisted into like the 14th century. Again, it was originally launched to counter heresy within the Catholic Church, but in 1242 it veered off, of course, in condemning the Talmud, resulting in the burning of thousands of Jewish books. And in 1288, the Inquisition produced the first mass burning of Jews at the stake. I mean, it was insane. As the church moved on and we got to the Reformation, unfortunately, the Reformation produced no changes in attitudes towards the Jews. Replacement theology was contained throughout the reference notes in the Geneva Bible, published in 1557. And some of the chapters, headings in the King James Bible, published in 1611, reflected this. For example, like in Isaiah 43, God addressed his promises to O Jacob, O Israel, but the King James chapter heading reads, God comforts the church with his promises. And you're like, what? I can't believe they did that in the headings. Anyway, the Reformation seemed to get off to a good start with its attitude towards the Jews, but Martin Luther kind of took a firm stand against the church's mistreatment of the Jewish people, so we'll give him credit for that. Luther claimed initially that, he said, we should deal gently with them and instruct them from the scripture. Then some of them may come along, he said. Instead of this, we are trying to only drive them by force, he said, and slandering them. So long as we thus treat them like dogs, how can we expect to work any good among them? That was shockingly surprising, but he did say these things. And he said, again, when we forbid them to labor and do business and have any human fellowship with us, thereby forcing them into usury, how is it that's supposed to do them any good? If we really want to help them, we must be guided in our dealings with them, not by papal law, but by the law of Christian love. If some of them should prove stiff-necked, what of it? After all, we ourselves are not all good Christians either. Now, that's great, and we're glad he said that, but for some reason, his attitude towards the Jews didn't last long. Luther became very disillusioned and irritated with the Jews later on, and when they continued to resist his reformed gospel, it made him upset. So by 1526, he complained of the Jews' stubbornness, and by 1530, He was endorsing the common medieval stereotypes of the Jews, referring to them as iron-hearted and stubborn as the devil. So by the end of his life, Luther had turned against the Jews with vengeance. By 1543, he wrote a pamphlet entitled Concerning the Jews and Their Lies. The document was an anti-Semitic diatribe that served to summarize the Jewish hatred that had been accumulating for the past thousand years. In it, he referred to Jews as miserable and accursed people, stupid fools, miserable, blind and senseless thieves and robbers, the great vermin of humanity, lazy rogues, blind and venomous. And then having dehumanized and demonized him, Luther then proceeded to make some startling proposals for dealing with them. He said their synagogues and schools be burned, their houses should be destroyed, their Talmudic writing should be confiscated, their rabbis should be forbidden to teach, their money should be taken from them, they should be compelled into forced labor. So now you can see the impact of the church on Nazism. Obviously Hitler used a lot of Luther's writings towards the Jews to substantiate what he did to the Jews in Nazi Germany. And Hitler was right, he said, I'm only saying the same things as your hero Luther said. And so a lot of what Hitler did came out of what the church was already doing for thousands of years. So this is very concerning, but here's the question. We have just read the scriptures that says God is not going to destroy them. He's not gonna break his covenant. What has happened? You know, so you have this replacement theology, it's satanic. There's no doubt about it, that Satan went after this and tried to dislodge the church from helping the Jews, from being attached to its Jewish origins, for understanding scripture properly, and the church became thoroughly Gentile. And it messed up a lot of translations as far as understanding Jewish idioms. For instance, Jesus talked to Nicodemus about being born of water and of the spirit. Well, that's why a lot of Gentiles went crazy on that and said, well, the water must be baptism. It had nothing to do with baptism. If you knew the Jewish idiom, it had to do with being physically born. For a woman's water to break is the idea. It was a Jewish idiom. But if you detach from the Jewish roots of understanding scripture, of course you're going to make mistakes like that. And it created... entire false doctrine of baptismal regeneration and created denominations that believe this lie of baptismal regeneration like the Church of Christ. So it had consequences and far more reaching than just that. You know, you had a burying of eschatology because eschatology, the study of prophecy, is about Israel coming back to faith in and being regenerated. The whole book of Revelation is about Jacob's trouble. And so that's completely ignored. And this has an impact in the church today. Why is it that the majority of churches don't teach prophecy? Why is it that the majority of churches teach replacement theology? Now, they're not as evil and antisemitic as some of these church leaders, but the simple idea that they ignore the Jewish state as being prophetically significant. They don't understand the church's place. They don't understand the place of Israel. They don't understand the prophetic scenario that's building right in front of them, and they're blind to it because of this stupid doctrine of replacement theology that came early on, and it was satanic. So the question then becomes, why would Satan do this? why would satan turn the church anti-semitic and against israel and start replacement theology and bury prophecy because satan knows that the second coming is predicated on the acceptance of messiah by israel he does not want israel to accept messiah so his idea is to wipe out every jew on the planet that's what he'll try to do through the tribulation with the antichrist and he will not be successful but the idea is that if he can wipe out every jew there's no one to call on jesus for salvation in the tribulation and therefore he can thwart the second coming because again the second coming is predicated on the jews Number one. Number two, Satan is trying to get off on a technicality, per se. And what I mean by that is he's going to be condemned to the lake of fire for what he has done in his rebellion. But he's trying to prove God to be a liar. And the way he's trying to prove God to be a liar is he knows the promises were made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the nation of Israel. If he can wipe Israel out, then he can claim to God that God is a liar and has not kept his promises, therefore God has no right to judge him. If you're going to call Satan a liar, his idea is that, well, then you're a liar if you don't keep your promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And so those two are the main issues you have to understand. of why Satan is bent on the destruction of the Jewish people. And this is why he turned the church on the Jewish people and tried to get the church to wipe them out, basically. And we know, you know, eventually he's going to try through the Antichrist, but that's the basis of all this. Well, even to go further than Israel, let's delve into soteriology or salvation, in other words. How does replacement theology or supersessionism affect soteriology? Well, what you notice from the Church Fathers, whether it's the Catholic Church Fathers or even some of the Reformed Church Fathers, a lot of their soteriology was based on works proving that you were saved. and that you did certain acts, rituals, like in the Catholic church to prove that you were saved. If you did the acts, then you would be guaranteed salvation. And we all know about Catholic doctrine and the seven sacraments. But then the reformers come along, they take Augustine's interpretation of soteriology as well. And of course they said justification by faith alone, but then they developed from Augustine this idea of perseverance of the saints, which is one of the distinctives of Calvinism. And with perseverance of the saints, they said, well, all the saints will persevere to the end. Well, what came out of that is this idea that works prove that you are saved. And that if you're a believer and you wanna know if you're saved or not, your works will prove if you're saved or not. The Bible doesn't teach that. Calvinism teaches that. The Bible teaches that your works prove your discipleship, not your salvation. You're saved by faith alone. So what Perseverance of the Saints has taken almost a Catholic doctrine and imposed that on soteriology in the form of what we call Perseverance of the Saints. It's a wrong theology, but here's how it works. And it works in cooperation with understanding Israel. And this is why Israel is the key to understanding this. Okay, so you have to go to Romans 9 and understand Romans 9, 10, and 11 and what's happening here. So we have an objector that's questioning the apostle Paul in Romans. Now, whether it's a fictitious objector or there's someone in the church that's objecting to him, Paul's answering this objector's questions. Well, he has just outlined that our salvation is secure, all these promises are secure, and nothing will separate us from God in Romans 8. And so our adoption's secure, everything is secure in Christ because we believe, and he has taught the doctrine in Romans of faith alone, okay? So we all understand that. Then he gets to Romans 9, and the objector questions the apostle Paul, saying, yeah, but what about Israel? God made all these promises to Israel, and right now we see Israel that they did not come to faith. And so he responds to that objector and saying, but is it not that the word of God has taken no effect? For they are not all of Israel who are of Israel. So he responds by saying, wait a second. It's not that God's word failed or that God's promises failed, that he failed to live up to his promises. It's that there's two types of Israel in Israel. There's a saved remnant and there's a non-saved remnant. And he impacts that the rest of the time in trying to explain what happened to Israel. But that God eventually is going to save all of Israel. All of Israel will one day be saved. And if you follow his arguments, he's saying God's not through with Israel. And don't say that he's done with Israel. And you can read that all through Romans 11. and that when the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, then eventually he starts his program with Israel, and they will all be saved. Okay, so how does this affect soteriology? Okay, Paul is using Israel as an example for our own promises individually in salvation. So Paul has made this argument that God has made a promise to us, that he's gonna adopt us, glorify us, resurrect us, and ultimately glorify us in salvation. Okay, he's gonna make good on this. That same promise-keeping God is the same God who made all these promises to Israel. And so Paul, if you can see his argumentation, he's saying, look, Israel has not been set aside because of their disobedience and they're permanently set aside. They've been set aside temporarily. God's not permanently done with them because he has made promise to them. And if he has made promises to them and he's going to keep them, then you can trust in your promises made to you as an individual. And so the whole idea of our promises are predicated on Israel's promises. that that's the example corporately for us individually. That's his point. Okay, so if I take the opposite argument of the objector and I play the role of the objector, follow me on this. The objector is saying, look, the promises are null and void to Israel because Israel disobeyed. If I take that same mentality and then I apply it to individual salvation, then your disobedience, my disobedience would then thus lose salvation. And hence, this is why in categories of Christianity, you have people that believe you can lose salvation because of their disobedience, because they didn't persevere or whatnot. Or in Calvinism, they'll say, because you didn't persevere or you didn't overcome sin or whatever in your life, then you probably were never saved to begin with. So they won't say you lose salvation. They'll just say you never were saved. But at the core of this, if I'm playing the role of the objector, the role of the objector is still saying the same thing to us individually. You base your salvation on the evidence of your works. And Paul is saying, no, you do not. You're saved by faith alone. Your lack of discipline, your lack of discipleship is evidence of a lack of sanctification, not a lack of justification. So you start seeing that this has bigger impacts than you may imagine. Believe it or not, in Reformed theology, many of the Puritans didn't know on their deathbed whether they were saved or not. They didn't know if they persevered enough. They lacked assurance of salvation. So believe it or not, replacement theology, if you string it out and you put it on the individually, if Israel can lose their place, then individuals can lose their place by not staying obedient. It's the same concept. And this is why in reformed theology, they doubt their salvation many times. And I'll give you a couple of examples of this. For example, a guy like John Piper, a reformed theologian who has replacement theology, right? In September 2017, he said this, for final salvation, we must slay sin and pursue holiness. Now, what does he mean? I thought we're saved by faith alone. Why is he adding, for final salvation, we must slay sin and pursue holiness? What does that mean? That's a condition put on salvation, which is perseverance. You've got to do these things in order to make sure you're saved or not. That's where he's coming from. John Piper is also quoted in What Love Is This by Dave Hunt on page 379. He says this, no Christian can be sure that he is a true believer. Really? And he goes, hence, there is an ongoing need to be dedicated to the Lord and to deny ourselves so that we might make it. So there we are again, a second quote with a doubt of salvation and a condition of salvation that you have to be dedicated, deny yourself in order to make it into heaven. So what you see from reformed people like John Piper is they're actually adding works to salvation under the guise of perseverance of the saints and saying, you must persevere to the end. Well, that's the same thing the objector would say about Israel because Israel didn't persevere. They lost all their promises. And that's virtually what John Piper is saying about salvation. Let's talk about another reformer, R.C. Sproul, who obviously, replacement theology, he was a preterist, he's now went home to be with the Lord. He commented at a Ligonier conference of 5,000 people, he got word that James Montgomery Boyce was dying. He goes in front of 5,000 people and he says, let's pray that James Montgomery Boyce dies in the faith. Now, what kind of comment is that? Because he was not sure if James Montgomery Boyce is saved or not. What kind of person says that? Again, someone who believes in perseverance of the saints and in reformed theology that bases salvation on if you persevere to the end, that proves that you're saved or not. Here's another author and pastor, John MacArthur, who's a leaky dispensationalist, but he said he was influenced by reformed thought. He says this in Perseverance of the Saints. If a person fails to love and obey the Lord through the trials of life, then there is no evidence that he possesses saving faith. How many people do you know who came to church for a while, had a little trouble in their lives and left? Although they may have made a profession of faith in Christ, they cannot be identified as those who love him because their lives are not characterized by enduring obedience. And that's in the book, Saved Without a Doubt, page 177. And you look at that and you say, whoa, wait a second. What is salvation? He's saying you have to go through your trouble in your life and do enduring obedience. There's plenty of people. who went through a lot of hard times in their life, who didn't do enduring obedience, as they called it. So I guess all those people are not saved. Again, that's the same idea as Israel losing their spot on God's program because of disobedience, when he made a unilateral covenant. Let me add this to us. We have a new covenant, which is a unilateral covenant, signed, sealed, and delivered by the Messiah's blood. that once you come to faith, you are eternally secure. Your lack of obedience, my lack of obedience, my lack of persevering has nothing to do with my salvation. It has everything to do with my lack of sanctification, my lack of discipleship. But again, the reformers who believe many times in replacement theology bring the same principles into soteriology. Listen to AW Pink in Practical Christianity, page 16. He said, readers, if there is a reserve in your obedience, you are on your way to hell. Again, another Reformed individual saying that, look, if you lack obedience, you are not saved, you're going to hell. What kind of theology is that? That is more akin, Reformed theology is more akin to Roman Catholicism than it is from the Bible. And so it doesn't surprise any one of us that Reformed theology, which is birthed out of Roman Catholicism, that had replacement theology and says, look, if disobedience breaks Israel's covenant with the Lord, breaks the Abrahamic covenant, then I guess disobedience by an individual Christian breaks the new covenant as well. So the two go hand in hand, and I don't think that's a coincidence. I think that's just the natural outworking of believing that disobedience can nullify the covenants and promises of God. So Replacement Theology has its impact not only in Israelogy, Eschatology, but also Soteriology. That's why we believe that Replacement Theology is of the devil, it's satanic, and it has corrupted so much of Gentile theology, church theology, whatever you want to call it, that had its origins coming from the Catholic Church and these church fathers that we showed you that were thoroughly anti-Semitic. There's something satanic about all of this. And I think it's wise to understand there's something evil lurking in a lot of these theologies. These theologies. These theologies. These theologies. These theologies. These theologies.