PART SIX
If you have your Bibles will you turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 5.
Tonight we’re going to finish up our study on the Replacement Theology and I want to start off once more just sharing with you why it is so important for us to know something about this. We don’t believe it here, we believe it’s of the Devil. But you’ll find it in the majority of churches in America today. It’s spread around the world. It is heresy, it goes against what the Bible teaches, and tragically it steals away from truly born again people. It steals away blessings from them and it creates a false impression as to what God wants in people’s lives.
Perhaps two of the more notable groups that believe this, now these are kind of outlaw groups, as a matter of fact one of them recently the Supreme Court ruled against them, confiscated their property, but they number in the tens of thousands in this country, they’re called Aryan Nations. The Arian Nations groups believe in the Replacement Theology, or Dominion Now Theology, or Kingdom Now Theology, whatever you want to call it. They have adopted this and they’ve held onto it for many years, but Aryan Nations and another group called The Christian Identity Movement both of those groups are strongly linked to the Neo-Nazis in this country.
It’s a tragedy that they are even identified as church groups or even as Christian groups. I was just reading a letter that was given out by the Aryan Nations head just this week, on Monday, and one of the things he asked for was an allegiance between the Aryan Nations and Al Qaeda. Now Arian Nations is a Racial Supremacy group, they always put down everybody else, but it shows how strongly they really want to topple anything that is good and right, and they don’t care who they link up with in order to do it, and so now they want to tie in with Al Qaeda. They said the bond that pulls both of them together is their hatred of the Jews. Al Qaeda hates the Jews. Aryan Nations hates the Jews. Christian Identity hates the Jews. And as I said the majority of churches in America today hold this false doctrine and they teach it and as a result many of their people become very frustrated and very discouraged because this doctrine simply isn’t Biblical. The Holy Spirit won’t bear witness to it. God won’t bless it and so they get very frustrated in these churches.
In 1 Peter Chapter 5, we see first of all that the Devil is always an adversary of those who love God. And I’m not saying that the Jewish people as a whole love God right now. As a matter of fact, percentage wise, you’ll probably find more atheists among the Jewish people than you’ll find in any other group. So they don’t necessarily, believe in God. However, God loves them, and He called them, and they are a special people to Him. As a people they are getting closer and closer and closer to the point where God wants them, and there will come that time when they will—because of pressure, because of difficulties—they will seek God.
1 Peter Chapter 5, in Verse 8 says:
| Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: |
Now, the adversary will attack to devour God’s people and as a part of that devouring, it has a two fold result. Number one, it is Anti-Semitic. It puts down the Jewish people, but also, …now just take into consideration what God told Abraham … “I will bless them that bless you and curse them that curse you.” What happens when Christians are taught to curse the Jewish people ? There’s a curse placed upon them isn’t there ? He didn’t say “Unless you’re a Christian.” This applies whether you’re a Christian or not.
You’re going to have problems if you curse or you put a condemnation upon the Jewish people. And this is exactly what Replacement Theology does because in it’s essence Replacement Theology says this— “The Jewish people are over. They are through. God is finished with them. They blew it. They are miserable unbelievers. God wants nothing to do with them. God is angry with them. So push them out of the whole purpose of God altogether and put them down. They are less than human.”
And this is how it evolves. So when you see a doctrine like that, (and it is a very subtle thing when you come across a doctrine like that), realize that in essence it is putting a curse on the Jewish people, and if you put a curse on the Jewish people, according to God, what happens to you ? You are cursed. So what is happening spiritually to these churches that have adopted the Replacement Theology ? What is happening to the Spirit of God in those churches ?
He is withdrawing Himself, and you’re going to find in most of those churches where this is being taught, the Holy Spirit is simply not working. Yes, they have larger numbers, and better attendance usually. But, I am talking about the working of the Holy Spirit, not the mere presence of numbers. They have to orchestrate things to make it seem as if God is there with them. They have to orchestrate moods, they have to get people charged up and excited by emotionalism, and there are different ways that they can do this. I mean anybody who has ever been to a rock concert knows that there is a system by which a promoter will gradually build up the excitement, little by little, and there are different techniques that they will use, and churches now are implementing the exact same system.
Why do the leaders in those churches feel they have to do this ? Because the Holy Spirit isn’t there to charge them up. The Holy Spirit isn’t working in their lives. He has withdrawn from their churches. This is the curse. The Holy Spirit is withdrawing from those churches. So this is a very dangerous thing, but we must ask, who’s behind it ? The Adversary, the Devil.
Is that to say that there are no truly born again people in churches that teach this ? No, not at all. As a matter of fact that’s why the Devil is against them, because there ARE some born again people in those churches. But God gave a promise, “I’ll curse them that curse you, bless them that bless you.” And they’re putting a curse on the Jewish people, so therefore the Devil says “If I can just get them to do that, and keep on doing it, and keep on doing it, then God Himself is going to place a curse on them.” So the Devil gets what he wants, not only against the Jewish people, but also against the churches.
1 Timothy Chapter 5. Now, here (at SRBC) I think we all know that the Devil is the Adversary, and one of the ways in which the Devil accomplishes what he wants is to speak evil of true born again people. And here is a warning against that, but I want you to notice one of the phrases in here because it kind of indicates that the Devil does speak reproachfully, the Devil does speak against people and he looks for any excuse he can get so that people will look bad, particularly Christians.
1 Timothy Chapter 5, in verse 14, it says:
| I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully. For some are already turned aside after Satan. |
“Give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.” So there are two aspects in which Satan comes against the Church. Number one, he tries to get the Church in trouble by cursing Israel, and that would bring down the curse of upon the Church. And secondly, He tries to ruin the testimony of the Church because they’re without the power of the Holy Spirit now. He tries to get the testimony of the Church to be bad so that people are doing things without the power of the Holy Spirit, they’re messing up things in their lives and so the Devil says “Ah ha, see, I can point the finger and tell everybody what you’re doing. I can point out your sins and everybody’s going to know it.” And this is the Devil, the Enemy speaking reproachfully. Their attitude toward one another. Their false claims of healing. Their materialistic desires, their adultery, their lack of self-discipline, their failures within their marriages, their failures to bring up their children correctly—all these things are issues which the devil gleefully spreads before the community so that all may see. If he is successful, there will be a rising tide of hostility against anything called “Christian,” even when it isn’t truly Christian.
Over in 1 Chronicles Chapter 21. Now, the Devil has a history of hating Israel and trying to get Israel to be destroyed and receive the punishment from God. Now you realize that without permission, the Devil cannot bring down any condemnation upon the people of God. The Devil has to get permission first, and God has not allowed the Devil to bring condemnation against Israel. So what the Devil does is this, he says I’m going to tempt Israel and when I tempt Israel, God Himself will have to punish them, and I still get what I want.” Remember the situation with Job ? Was the Devil able to do anything against Job without permission ? No. But what he tried to do was to get Job to sin so that God Himself would bring the condemnation upon him. And that’s exactly what he tries to do with us, it’s what he tries to do with Israel.
So when you look at 1 Chronicles Chapter 21, he’s trying to get David to sin so that God will bring condemnation upon Israel. Verse 1:
| And Satan stood up against Israel, |
It wasn’t against David as many are falsely led to believe, but he stood up against Israel…
| and provoked David to number Israel. |
Now God had already said “Don’t go out and take a census. Don’t go out and find out how many men you have, how many are of soldiers age, how many are equipped for battle. I want you to depend on Me.” And so God forbade the Jewish kings from going out and taking that kind of a census. Well, now David comes along, and he hadn’t done it for years, well, in any part of his life he had never done it. And now, the Devil comes along and he says “David, you really need to know how many men you have, it just makes good sense. I mean that’s the way business is. It’s just a good business decision to go out there and count the number of soldiers you’ve got.” God already said “Don’t do it,” but you see Satan was provoking David to sin, and who did the Devil want to get at ? Israel. So the Devil has a history of hating Israel.
Zechariah Chapter 3. Now here we have on of the priests in Heaven who is interceding for Israel. Zechariah Chapter 3, in verse 1, and you’ll notice what the Devil is trying to do. In verse one it says:
| And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him. |
He’s trying to hinder the priest from doing what a priest is supposed to do. Why ? Because he wanted to get at Israel. Now in modern times, well, recent history anyway, Hitler had what he called the “Final Solution,” prior to that was the Inquisition. By the way, for those of you who only did a shallow study of history you will find that in the Inquisition it was not only the Christians who were targeted, but it was also Jews. Jews were also a very important target. They had to become converted to Catholicism according to the Pope and so they had the Inquisition to try to achieve this. If they refused to go along with this they would be killed.
One of the things that took place in the rise of Hitler, is a lot of propaganda went out and I don’t know how a person could put a handle on it other than to say that when you have a society that moves away from God, you can’t trust anything that’s in print. That certainly is evident today, you can’t believe anything that’s in print. I don’t care if CNN puts it out, if Fox News puts it out or whatever, because they may get their information from somebody who is seemingly sincere, seemingly honest, but they could be as devilish as it is possible to be. So you really don’t know what the whole truth is. As Hitler was rising to power there were a great many publications that were coming out that were against the Jewish people. I want to mention just one, this is from Der Stuermer, issued 14 April, 1937.
I’m just going to read little blips so you can just get an idea of what they were saying. It says that Jews at the ritual celebration of their Passover slaughtered Christians: “The numerous confessions made by the Jews show that the execution of ritual murders is a law to the Talmud Jew. The former Chief Rabbi, and later Monk, Teofite, declared that the ritual murders take place especially on the Jewish Purim in memory of the Persian murders, and Passover in memory of the murder of Christ.
The instructions are as follows: (And this is supposedly a quote from the Talmud, but it’s not in the Talmud, this is something they made up. It says:
| QUOTE:
“The blood of the victims is to be tapped by force. On Passover it is to be used in wine and matzos. Thus, a small part of the blood is to be poured into the dough of the matzos and into the wine. The mixing is done by the Jewish head of the family.” |
And then it goes on to explain how they pray and it says:
| QUOTE:
“ The head of the family then says, ‘Thus we ask God to send ten plagues to all enemies of the Jewish faith.’ Then they eat, and at the end the head of the family exclaims, ‘May all Gentiles perish, as the child whose blood is contained in the bread and wine.’” (2697-PS) |
And so you see the propaganda that comes out. They say “We have witnesses, there are people who have given witness to this.” They, like this convert to Catholicism who said “Oh, this all happened. I was in it before, I know what it was.” It’s nonsense. Now this one really got me, this was another quotation from that book. It says
| QUOTE:
“The Holy Scripture is a horrible criminal romance abounding with murder, incest, fraud and indecency.” “The Talmud is the great Jewish book of crimes that the Jew practices in his daily life.” (2698-PS) |
And this is widely published during Nazi Germany, at the very beginning of it, and I mean this is all people were getting. This was their source for information, and so they believed what the read. Just like people today do, they believe what the read.
God still intends to defend the remnant of Israel. Lets turn over to Revelation Chapter 12, in Verse 3.
| And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon… |
It’s pretty obvious who that is…
| …having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days. |
Now a thousand two hundred and threescore days, which, by the way is three and a half years, and the last half of the Tribulation. At the middle of the Tribulation you have the Jewish priest who assassinates the Antichrist, then you have this attack against the Jews in retaliation by the False Prophet, and God protects them. It says they had
| . . . a place prepared of God, . . . |
“A place prepared of God.” And you’ll notice that God is involved in protecting Israel. He didn’t abandon Israel like the Replacement Theology says. He’s protecting Israel. So we see that a lot of the doctrines, a lot of the ideas that they have are simply designed to create a hatred, to be an instrument of the Devil against the Jewish people.