“This is what the Lord says, He who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar – the Lord Almighty is His name. ‘Only if these decrees vanish from My sight,’ declares the Lord, ‘will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before Me.’” Jeremiah 31:35-36
There’s a popular, man-made doctrine that has infiltrated the church over the years, but seems to be gaining more prominence lately. It is called ‘replacement theology’, ‘Kingdom now’, and a plethora of other names. Essentially it boils down to this: that when Israel rejected Jesus as their Messiah, God also rejected Israel. Now the church has replaced Israel in God’s covenant and receives the blessings God promised to them.
There are so many things wrong with this doctrine that it’s difficult to know where to start in refuting it. But this verse is a key one: it says that Israel will be a nation before God for as long as the day and night and tides endure. If those things were to stop, then we might be able to imagine that God has completely forsaken Israel.
Other issues with this doctrine are these:
- the covenant God made with Israel was unconditional; it doesn’t depend on anything they do
- Israel features prominently on the earth in the Tribulation, but the church does not
- the church seems only concerned about receiving the blessings of Israel, but they forget there were curses associated with the covenant too.
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