Facing Replacement Theology: Part 2 :: By Paul J. Scharf

What’s Going on Around the Globe?

Fazio sees a cyclical aspect to this type of philosophical swing and believes that a commitment to literal interpretation might also move to another point on the globe, such as African nations or other developing countries.

“Hopefully,” he said, “we can really invest in developing and training pastors in such areas and shaping the minds of the next generation. But I don’t think those minds are going to be coming from North America.”

Dr. Woodrow Kroll, who served for 23 years as the president and Bible teacher for the Back to the Bible radio ministry, has placed his biblical teaching into 14 languages for pastors in those places through the HELIOS Projects (an outreach of Woodrow Kroll Ministries); and he believes these men can become dispensational Bible teachers.

“They don’t have things to unlearn,” he said. “The best way is to get them into the Word. In the process, they’re going to learn that the church is different from Israel.”

“If we can get to the pastor, he can get to his people—and truth spreads through people,” he said. “If we can get to [pastors] and teach them dispensational truth, they’ll pass it on to their congregation and their family.”

Finding a Path Forward

Fazio sees Dispensationalism as resulting from “a hermeneutical method that leads to a literal understanding of past, present, and future.”

“I believe Dispensationalism has lost the majority, and it is not recovering it,” said Fazio. “That was a cultural phenomenon, and it was a fleeting phenomenon. To me, that is quite alright—seldom is the majority right. I don’t think we need to bemoan the fact that we’ve lost the popular consensus in the church.”

But what can we do if we notice these trends impacting our own local churches?

Rather than getting depressed about what’s happening, Dyer said believers need to “throw themselves into the Word of God to get to know it, and then communicate it and do so as effectively as they can.” He added, “That’s the only answer for the world right now. To the extent that [you] can have an impact—do what [you] can to try and encourage people to get into the Word of God.”

Fazio agreed. “It begins with biblical literacy—simply knowing the Bible.” He believes pastors need to evaluate whether they are “teaching the Scriptures or teaching your system” and said “expositional teaching” is absolutely the greatest means we have to turn this scenario around.

“‘The whole counsel of God’ [Acts 20:27] is given to us,” Fazio emphasized. “You have received it. It’s not your job to pick and choose what you think is relevant.”

Kroll concurred. “The more we are topical in our preaching, the less we are going to be preaching dispensational truth.”

“Frankly,” said Fazio, “I think Dispensationalism is the only really open-handed, clear way of dealing with all 66 books,” adding, “I believe if a pastor actually teaches from Genesis to Revelation, he is going to end up more dispensational than he started.”

Dyer stated likewise: “To the extent that we expound the Word of God—all the Word—the dispensational approach, understanding the future for Israel, is what helps the whole Bible make sense.”

“If we stick to Scripture, the argument is very strongly in our favor,” Fazio said. “It’s pretty clear—it’s very compelling.”

Dyer agreed: “If you take the Bible at face value, you end up with a future for Israel. That, to me, is the bottom line.”

DeYoung summed it all up: “Your eschatology determines your theology.”

“There is a future for Israel,” Dyer stated. “It’s grounded in the promises God made to the patriarchs. God doesn’t back out of the promises. He never replaces Israel with the church. There is still a future for Israel—connected with the Second Coming of Jesus.

“People want to know what the future holds,” he added. “We have the answer. People are interested. We don’t have to dumb down the message. We just need to make sure we’re clear in what we say.”

Reposted from the January/February 2023 issue of Israel My Glory.

Used by permission of The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry.

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Paul J. Scharf (M.A., M.Div., Faith Baptist Theological Seminary) is a church ministries representative for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, based in Columbus, WI, and serving in the Midwest. For more information on his ministry, visit sermonaudio.com/pscharf or foi.org/scharf, or email pscharf@foi.org.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version.

World’s Rage Toward Holocaust :: By Terry James

George Santayana’s aphorism: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” has never been more apropos or front and center than at this very moment. Developments are leaping to the forefront at this late hour of the age leading to the Second Advent of Jesus Christ –developments that are mind-boggling.

Yet vast numbers of people, particularly in America, seem oblivious to the absolute madness of the building rage of hatred toward the Jewish race. The insane rants of college students are mind-boggling to my generation, but regarding much of the rest of the nation, the call for genocide –and that’s what it is, make no mistake—isn’t registering. At least, major nationwide disgust over the atrocities perpetrated isn’t being reported by mainstream media.

And mainstream media is at the sin-darkened heart of the dementia. That is, mainstream media –news and entertainment as well as left-wing blogosphere forums have so hidden the truth about the Israel/Hamas conflict as to cerebrally and spiritually incapacitate much of the American populace. Particularly, the college-age population has largely been either inculcated to view Jews as evil, or else dumped down through such media truth-blocking. i.e., they falsely are reporting that the Hamas attack on October 7 was not a genocidal hatred being carried out by insanely evil terrorists but is an understandably passionate and legitimate movement designed to fight against Jewish occupiers of Palestinian land “from the river to the sea.”

Thus, we have the cerebral and spiritual dementia –the forgetfulness of which George Santayana wrote—apparently infecting the entire country –and much of the rest of the world as well. We, therefore, can now understand the Truth of God’s Word and the words of His Prophet Zechariah, who said Jerusalem and Israel will become a burdensome stone and cup of trembling to the whole world.

While listening to a program early morning recently, I heard the words of a British soldier in a documentary of several decades ago. He was speaking to the interviewer, telling of his being part of the D-Day invasion to destroy Hitler’s Nazi regime and end war in Europe.

He said he had, during many battles during World War II, seen many, many horrendous scenes. Literally blood and bodies torn asunder. Before that, he worked in hospital settings in England. He had seen terrible human carnage of every description. So he wasn’t squeamish but battle-hardened. But when his British Army group reached the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, he and every battle-hardened veteran became physically sick. They all became totally silent as they observed the walking skeletons –skin barely draped over walking corpse-like victims of the Nazi holocaust. It was, he said, something he wished every person of every generation could see so that they would believe it happened and would, therefore, stop such inhumanity to their fellow man whenever it again raised its ugly head.

Well, it is raising its ugly, satanic head again. And the youngsters haven’t seen the black and white films of the walking dead described by this old, war-hardened British soldier, as he expressed he wished would happen.

The college students –and others that have forgotten, or have not been taught, prefer the lies—prefer, rather, to keep their noses in their smartphones and instead attend exciting “protests” against the much-hated Jews. We are witnessing the rising of another holocaust. It is the holocaust Jesus and the Prophet Jeremiah spoke about in forewarning what is coming on this Judgment-bound world of anti-God rebels.

“For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matt 24:21).

Jeremiah the prophet said:

“Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness. Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it” (Jer. 30:6-7). 

This is a generation that is about to experience the ramifications of forgetting the past, as Santayana warned. Treatment of God’s chosen people is at the heart of bringing God’s Righteous Judgment and Wrath down on a world whose inhabitants have rejected His Son Jesus Christ, Who He sent as the Sacrificial Lamb slain from the foundation of the world for the Redemption of sin-fallen mankind.

Satan, the devil, was at the nucleus of the Nazi-engendered holocaust of the 1930s. He is at the heart of the genocide being called for by many of America’s college students and much of the world’s populace today. Because of the treatment of His chosen nation and people, God will, according to the Prophet Joel, bring all to Armageddon:

“For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land” (Joel 3:1-2).

Make sure you recognize the present rage against Israel (which isn’t a perfect nation by any stretch, but whose people God loves) is satanically inspired and driven. Christians should have this understanding, but sadly, not all do have that discernment because they choose to not engage in Bible Truth that forewarns of such things.

Unbelievers have an excuse, perhaps, for not understanding, but it is an excuse that nonetheless won’t assuage the Judgment and Wrath that is coming.

Here is how to avoid that Judgment and Wrath, which God in His Righteousness will bring against all who reject His Son for personal Salvation of their souls:

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10: 9-10).