Dr. Brown Debates Dr. Gary DeMar on Israel and the Church

Dr. Michael Brown vs. Gary DeMar

Debate Transcript

Topic: Replacement Theology and the Promises of God to Israel

Opening Remarks — Moderator

MODERATOR

It's a delight to be with you. The prayer before this debate was that God would use these two brothers to help get the truth out and to help bring clarity. The goal is not for one to win or for the other to win. The goal is for truth to triumph and for us to increase in our understanding. We'll do our best over the course of the night to highlight our differences as sharply as we can, but we'll do it as brothers and as colleagues together in the Lord.

Opening Statement — Dr. Michael Brown

DR. MICHAEL BROWN

When we speak about replacement theology, we're talking about the idea that in some way the church has replaced or displaced Israel in God's plan of salvation — that in some way promises that were given to the ethnic people of Israel no longer applied to them as a nation, that somehow the promises once made have been transferred or were always intended for another people. Under this view, the modern state of Israel today would not be a fulfillment of prophecy, and the idea that there will be a future national turning of the Jewish people to the Messiah — based on passages of Scripture — would not be held to.

As a Jewish follower of Jesus, this is something I was confronted with early on. One of the biggest obstacles to Jewish people coming to faith in Jesus is church history. Many Jews think of church history and all they know is Crusades, Inquisitions, Holocaust.

Now, I want to make very clear that there are people who hold to replacement theology or supersessionism — the idea that the church has superseded Israel, or so-called fulfillment theology, that all the promises to Israel are fulfilled in Jesus and therefore Jews in Jesus receive the promises and outsiders don't, whatever terms are put on it — there are folks today who hold to replacement theology in one form or another who love the Jewish people and who in no way are anti-Semites. I want to say that plainly. And you can be critical of modern Israel, and not believe that modern Israel is a fulfillment of prophecy, and not be an anti-Semite. I want to say that plainly.

However, in church history it is indisputable that the teaching of replacement theology opened wide the door to horrific anti-Semitism. It is the thing that Paul warned against in Romans 11 when he said to the Gentile believers, 'Don't be arrogant and don't boast over the branches.'

Now, when I came to faith at the age of 16, I was a heroin-shooting, LSD-using hippie rock drummer. I went to a church to pull my two best friends out, and that's how God got hold of me and saved me. I knew as a Jew that we didn't believe in Jesus, but I was not steeped in Judaism and Jewish tradition. Shortly after coming to faith, the local rabbi befriended me and gave me a book about anti-Semitism and church history. It was a shocker. You can draw a very direct line through the early teaching of replacement theology in the second, third, and fourth centuries right up to Martin Luther's anti-Semitism and straight from there to the Holocaust.

For me, I just kind of discarded church history — after all, we just went back to the Bible. But you have to wrestle with it. What was happening to the church through the centuries? This remains of critical importance, not just in terms of theoretical issues, but also in terms of how we look at Israel.

Dr. DeMar and I would emphatically say everyone needs Jesus to be saved, Jew or Gentile. But our understanding of prophecy, our understanding of God's purposes for the end times — that does affect how we live.

So let me focus on Israel and explain why it is essential that we recognize there are promises God made on a national level to Israel — speaking of identifiable people of a particular ethnic background or general descent. Why is it essential that we understand those promises remain?

Number one is the faithfulness of God. This has nothing to do with ethnic superiority or favoritism. It has to do with the faithfulness of God. God keeps his promises. If the promises given to Israel in a categorical way can be transferred to another group or broken, then we cannot trust God's promises to the church. If someone could come along later and say they no longer apply, then someone could add a third testament to our Bible and say that we are no longer the church, that the church is someone else.

Let's think back to Genesis 15. Covenants were made in the ancient world — animal sacrifices would be made, the animals divided in two, and the two parties making the covenant would walk through the pieces and say, 'May God do this to me and to our people if we violate the terms of this covenant.' That's what happens in Genesis 15, except it is striking: only God passes through the pieces. Only God passes through the animal sacrifices. Meaning this was a one-way promise on God's part.

You say, 'But the Sinai covenant changed that — there are conditions.' Remember what Paul wrote in Galatians 3: the law, which came 430 years after, cannot annul the promise. The unconditional promise came first, not based on Israel's performance but on the faithfulness of God. And what was that promise? That there would be physical land given to the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Listen to Psalm 105:8–11: 'He remembers his covenant forever, the word that he commanded for a thousand generations, the covenant that he made with Abraham, his sworn promise to Isaac, which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute to Israel as an everlasting covenant, saying, To you I will give the land of Canaan as your portion for an inheritance.'

Then we look at explicit promises like Jeremiah 31:35–37. These are categorical; God puts his own reputation on the line. '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.' God is saying, even if they sin, I am still going to keep my covenant.

Who is it that scattered the Jewish people around the world? Who is it that preserved his people in the midst of hellish circumstances? Who is it who kept us? Who is it who regathered us? The one who said he would do these very things. If the church can be sustained by grace, why cannot Israel be sustained by grace?

There are passages like Zechariah 12 and 14 which speak of a future Israel surrounded by the nations of the world — not by a representative sampling of people from different nations, but surrounded by the nations — and the people of Israel crying out and God coming in miraculous deliverance. In no way can those passages be applied rightly to the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70. They speak of a great deliverance. They speak of the manifest rule and reign of God on the earth and the final harvest of the Gentiles. They await fulfillment.

I have a very simple syllogism for you. When God blesses, no one can curse. When he curses, no one can bless. When God opens a door, no one can shut it. When he shuts a door, no one can open it. When he heals, no one can smite. When he smites, no one can heal. Well, if God scattered the Jewish people in his anger — and I think we would all agree that has happened, and happened with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 and then again in 135 — then who can regather them? We do not have the power to regather ourselves. The only way there is a modern restoration, with now 6 million Jews living in the land of Israel, is because God regathered.

This is all explicitly confirmed in the New Testament as well. In the words of Jesus — find me one place where he used the term 'Israel' and was referring to the church. Just one. What you'll find is 'Israel, Israel, Israel, Israel.' In Matthew 19 he tells his disciples that in the renewal of all things — which I take to mean the millennial kingdom — 'you'll be ruling over the 12 tribes of Israel.' That could have meant nothing to them other than the 12 tribes of Israel. Luke 21:24: 'Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.' In other words, there will be an end to the scattering. Matthew 23:37–39: Jerusalem will not see him again until it welcomes him back as Messiah.

This is confirmed in Acts 1. After the disciples have spent 40 days with Yeshua after his resurrection, they say, 'Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?' And he doesn't say, 'You fools — don't you understand the church has displaced Israel?' He basically says, 'Good question. It's not for you to know when. That's going to happen, but that's not your focus. Your focus is on the Great Commission.' John Calvin sadly said there are more errors in that question than there are words. Jesus didn't rebuke them.

Peter reaffirms this in Acts 3, where he says the Messiah must remain in heaven until the time of the restoration of all things, promised by the prophets. And this is very explicitly confirmed by Paul in Romans 9–11. You couldn't make it any more clear. He says: 'There theirs are the promises' — not were, are. He spends three whole chapters dealing with the question of what happened to the promises to Israel. He makes clear they are hardened in part, but not for all time. There remains a remnant that believes, and at the end there will be a national turning. 'All Israel will be saved.' As F.F. Bruce commented, it is impossible to entertain an exegesis that takes Israel in verse 26 in a different sense from Israel in verse 25.

The word 'Israel' is used close to 80 times in the New Testament. In no case is it explicitly referenced to the church. The term 'Jew' or 'Jews' is used over 185 times. Never once is it explicitly used for the church as a whole. Charles Spurgeon — who was not a dispensational premillennialist — said: 'I think we do not attach sufficient importance to the restoration of the Jews. But certainly if there is anything promised in the Bible, it is this.' And D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said: 'The only real explanation of the supernatural preservation of the Jewish people is that God has not finished with them.'

Friends, the devil understands this. That's why anti-Semitism in all of its ugly forms has existed through the centuries. The only rational explanation for the phenomenon of anti-Semitism through history is that the devil is behind it, wanting to destroy the Jewish people to make God into a liar — because God has said they will persevere until the end, and they must receive the Messiah back when he returns.

You could be premillennial, amillennial, or postmillennial — we can discuss the virtues in different positions. The key thing is we must recognize that the promises to Israel remain. And then we join hands arm in arm together to preach the gospel to everyone, to make Jesus known to Jew and Gentile alike. And then in Jesus we are exact equals — there is no caste system, no class system. We are one in the Messiah. And together as one new man, let us provoke Israel to jealousy. Thank you.

Opening Statement — Gary DeMar

GARY DeMAR

There's a lot I can agree with Dr. Brown on. I think, as you'll see in my presentation, part of the disagreement has to come on definitions of things and also when these particular things take place and in what way they take place.

Let's take this idea of the church. Almost every time I read something, everybody talks about 'the church and Israel' as if the church is a new entity in the New Testament. The church is nothing new in the New Testament. The church didn't come into existence after supposedly the Jews rejected Jesus as Messiah and God then went with the church. That is part and parcel of dispensationalism — we now live in the church age; God dealt with Israel up to a particular point; the prophetic clock stopped; it will start back up again when Jesus returns to rapture his church; and then God will deal with Israel again. That's a dispensational view, but it's the way the word 'church' is used as some sort of new entity in the New Testament. It is not.

Let me give you my reasoning on this. In Matthew 16, Jesus says, 'Upon this rock I will build my ekklēsia.' Let's stop using the word 'church' for a moment and look at the word itself. William Tyndale, when he translated the New Testament into English, translated ekklēsia as 'congregation' or 'assembly.' In fact, it was such a thorn in the side of the Roman Catholic Church that they put him to death — that was one of the reasons — because he refused to translate ekklēsia as 'church.' The King James Bible's third requirement for the translators was that the ecclesiastical words, one of them being ekklēsia, had to be translated as 'church' rather than 'assembly' or 'congregation.'

Now think about it. 'The assembly replaces Israel.' I just took the sting out of that. It doesn't make any sense to say the assembly or the congregation replaced Israel. The disciples didn't see the ekklēsia as anything new at all — it was just an extension, a continuation of the ekklēsia in the Old Testament. The Hebrew word qahal had been translated ekklēsia 80 times in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament — what is called the Septuagint. That's extremely important. So who, in fact, were the first members of the New Testament ekklēsia? Israelites — almost exclusively Israelites.

Look at the Great Commission. Jesus says, 'All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations.' To whom is that command given? It's given to Israel — to Jewish believers in Jesus. They are the ones supposed to take the gospel — what was promised in the Old Testament to Abraham — not just to the Jews, not just to physical descendants of Abraham, but to the nations. And let's get back to the literal translation of ethnos — it's 'nations.' So you have the nation of Israel and you have the nations.

The nations now become incorporated into this almost exclusively Jewish-Israelite ekklēsia in the New Testament. So the first members of the ekklēsia were Jews. They were Israelites. Acts 2:5 — Jews living in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven. Now obviously that's hyperbole, but in essence, what happens in the New Testament — to whom is Peter speaking? Verse 14 of chapter 2: 'Men of Judea, Jerusalem.' Verse 22: 'Men of Israel.' Verse 36: 'Let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.' Verse 39: 'For the promise is for you and your children, and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord your God shall call to himself.' Verse 41: three thousand souls added.

Who were the ones being saved? They were Jews. It was Israel that was being saved. Acts 7:38 — Stephen refers to 'the ekklēsia in the wilderness' together with the angel at Mount Sinai. That's the Greek word ekklēsia. The King James Version translates that as 'church,' but that's dealing with Israel. Don't think 'church' — think 'congregation, assembly of the Lord.' That's what the word means.

There isn't this distinction between Israel and the church. There isn't this idea that the promises are now for the church. The nations were grafted into an already existing Jewish ekklēsia. And once they're in there, how do you divide them out and say, 'Okay, now these blessings are going to be for the Jews and these blessings are going to be for the nations'? You can't do that — because in Christ there is no longer Jew nor Gentile, bond or free, male or female. Doesn't mean there aren't any Jews anymore; it just means that in Christ we are all inheritors.

I believe the promises made to Israel have in fact been fulfilled, just like God said they would be. Does that mean Jews in the future won't be saved? Not at all. Mē genoito — may it never be. Throughout history — as Dr. Brown and I agree — you can't enjoy the blessings of Jesus Christ unless you are in Christ.

The modern system puts a gap between all those first-century promises and their fulfillment, saying they are all postponed. But I maintain that these things were being fulfilled within the New Testament era itself. Look at Acts 3:24-26: And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and his successors onward also announced these days. It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, In your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. For you first, God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.

Now, I'm going to add something a lot of people really don't know. What is the future for Israel according to this modern system? Well, God has waited 2,000 years to finally bless Israel again, bring them back into the land again. And what happens to them when they're in the land? Two-thirds of them are slaughtered — Zechariah 13:8.

Sid Roth, host of Messianic Vision, stated that two-thirds of the Jewish people living in Israel will be exterminated during the future Great Tribulation. Jack Van Impe wrote in Israel's Final Holocaust that when the prophecy clock starts ticking again after the rapture, 'it will be traumatic days for Israel. Just when peace seems to have come, it will be taken from her and she will be plunged into another bloody persecution.' Charles Ryrie wrote in The Best Is Yet to Come — an ironic title — that 'Israel is destined to have a particular time of suffering which will eclipse anything that it has known in the past. The people of Israel are placing themselves within the vortex of this future whirlwind which will destroy the majority of those living in the land of Palestine.'

You see, this particular position, which postpones these promises, I believe puts Israel in jeopardy throughout our modern history, because there are so many people who actually believe tribulation is coming to Israel. I debated Paige Patterson a few years ago, and he told me, 'Israel has to be kicked out of the land again, because they have to be brought back believing.' The question I would have is: which position really puts the Jews in jeopardy?

Now, I suggest you get a book by Dwight Wilson called Armageddon Now, where he goes back and looks at writers who hold to this end-time perspective. During World War II, many Christians said what was happening to the Jews was part of a future holocaust that was supposed to be poured out on Israel while they're back in their land — and so they took a hands-off perspective. That is problematic and troublesome.

My whole philosophy in all this is: we have got to jettison this gap idea, this postponement idea. The church is not a new thing in the New Testament. It has always been there. Part of the problem is that we've created a word called 'the church' when we should have just followed Tyndale and said it is 'congregation.' Everything changes when you do that. This whole Israel-church distinction goes away.

Open Discussion

DR. MICHAEL BROWN

First, in my book Revolution in the Church, I cite that very same third rule of the translators of the King James Bible — to translate with ecclesiastical terminology and to erroneously translate ekklēsia as 'church.' So I'm all with you on that — translate with 'congregation.' And no question that saved Jews and saved people of the nations make up the ekklēsia and that we're one in the Messiah.

But what's not clear to me is how you address the specific promises to Israel — for example, that God would preserve not the ekklēsia but these descendants, these physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and promised them a land. How has that been fulfilled? And to fine-tune the question: when Peter says all the prophets spoke of these days, there are promises that either you believe were realized in AD 70 or I say are still to be realized in the future. The things having to do with the suffering, death, and atonement for sin — all that was fulfilled. But the idea that there would be no ongoing long-term fulfillment — that's nowhere countenanced.

I'm not a dispensationalist. I don't believe in the postponement issues as you know. So I feel a lot of what you presented was arguing against a position I don't hold, as you acknowledged. But to be clear: what happens to those physical promises to a specific people — not to the nations but to Israel? And do you see no nuance in the term 'fulfilled'? Is there no way that there can be a fulfillment that takes time, an ongoing fulfillment over history?

GARY DeMAR

It's interesting how many times prophecies made in the Old Testament, or symbols, are fulfilled in unexpected ways. I mentioned Elijah — the New Testament says John the Baptist is Elijah, but he's not Elijah; he's John the Baptist. Jesus says, 'Destroy this temple,' speaking about his body, 'and in three days I will raise it back up again.' They thought he was talking about the stone temple. But as Jesus makes clear, something greater than Solomon's temple is here. Living stones are what matter. Believers in Christ are called the temple of God. John 1:14 — 'The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.' Jesus is now the tabernacle.

What we find within the New Testament, I think, is a new categorization of those promises. Jesus fulfills all of those things. I think it's one of the reasons why Jesus was crucified — because he would not fit their scheme of things.

Now, on the land question — I would refer you to Hebrews 11: Abraham 'was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.' Verse 16: 'But as it is they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one.' And Hebrews 12 — 'You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.' What's being shaken in Hebrews 12 is all of those Old Testament rites and rituals and the animal sacrifices and the human priesthood — all those things that can be shaken are being removed so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Jesus is now the priest after the order of Melchizedek.

DR. MICHAEL BROWN

Uh, can I press one thing before we get to the specific land question? It was literally prophesied that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem — not in a spiritual Bethlehem but literally. It was prophesied that he would be born of a virgin. He literally was. It was prophesied that he would die and rise. He literally was. The exception to the rule is a metaphorical application. The constant is literal fulfillment. If he did not literally die, if he did not literally rise, if he was not literally born a certain way at a certain place at a certain time, the prophets would have been emptied of their meaning.

So I find it disingenuous not to look at the larger promises, because otherwise what you end up with is: God scatters Israel in his anger — literally — but he regathers them spiritually. The judgment, the bad stuff, literally happens, but all the good stuff only spiritually happens. That's pick and choose. And that's what the church has often done through history: the bad stuff goes to Israel — the curses — and the blessings are for us, the Christians. That to me is a big problem.

When you have within the same verse of the prophets, 'you will be scattered and you will be regathered,' you can't split that. You can't make the scattering literal and the regathering spiritual. When Jesus said, 'Destroy this temple and I'll rebuild it in three days,' he was talking about his physical body — both sides of the verse apply to the same referent.

GARY DeMAR

I would say, using the word 'literal' is one of those slippery words. Take 1 Peter 2:4–5: 'Coming to him as to a living stone rejected by men, but choice and precious in the sight of God... you also as living stones are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.' That's literal. But it's not physical. There are just so many times in the New Testament where those things seem to be turned on their head by Jesus.

On John 11 — Caiaphas prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation only but 'that he might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.' This literally took place in the first century. It isn't something that has to take place in the distant future. And Acts 1:8 — 'You shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.' That is where the regathering is taking place.

DR. MICHAEL BROWN

So there are two sides to this. The one side is yes, there's a spiritual regathering in John 11 — speaking of not only Jewish people but people of the nations around the world. But you cannot have part one literal, part two spiritual without making God's word gibberish. When Jesus speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem 'until' the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled — that 'until' has to now be just as real.

I read Jeremiah 31:10 carefully, and I saw that there is a fulfillment over time — things were never brought to their fullness when the Jewish people were restored from Babylonian exile. In fact, it looks like a complete disappointment compared to what was supposed to happen. So we know it's not yet emptied of its meaning. There is yet more to happen.

Paul never should have written Romans 9–11 if there is no mystery. He should have said, 'Praise God, all the promises are fulfilled.' Instead, he's in agony knowing that the promises remain — he said, 'theirs are the promises' — not were. And then in Romans 11 he says, 'Has Israel stumbled so as to fall?' Not at all. 'All Israel will be saved.' 'As far as the gospel, they are enemies; but as far as election, they are loved because of the fathers.' These things will happen. They have not yet happened on that national level.

GARY DeMAR

God is a promise-keeping God, but it seems for 2,000 years he hasn't been keeping his promises if you follow that particular position — because every time the Jews do something, they're scattered. My point is that if you read the Gospel accounts, the book of Acts, and the New Testament, God was keeping his promises to Israel in exacting detail. He was bringing them together in Christ because Jesus is the focus of history, not Israel. Israel was the vehicle by which the promised Messiah was to come.

In Ephesians 2:13–22, Paul writes: 'But now in Christ Jesus, you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, broke down the barrier of the dividing wall... that in himself he might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace... built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord.' Jew and Gentile — there is no distinction in Christ.

DR. MICHAEL BROWN

Right — and so that underscores everything I've said: the spiritual promises are spiritually fulfilled and the physical promises must be physically fulfilled. In 2 Corinthians 1, in Jesus all the promises are yes and amen. In Acts 3, everything the prophets spoke of would happen. If we had two hours I couldn't read all of the passages that speak of a literal physical regathering, a literal glory of God in the land, literal things that would affect the entire world — Isaiah 62, for example: we are to pray for Jerusalem, a physical city.

And I still say: the God who scattered had to regather. If God scattered the Jewish people in his anger, and when God curses no one can bless, when he smites no one can heal, when he scatters no one can regather — how is it that we managed to regather ourselves and undo the divine scattering and now be 6 million strong in the midst of a world that wants to destroy us? The only explanation I have is that God in his grace and mercy, for his name's sake, has been regathering us back to the land to fulfill his promises.

And then there, in the land, he says, 'I'll sprinkle clean water on you.' The repentance doesn't have to happen first. Under the Sinai covenant we had to repent first. But under the eternal covenant, God is going to give the Porsche even though we spat on it — and when he does, he's going to grant us repentance. We see a growing number of Jewish believers in the land — from literally a handful in 1948 to perhaps 20,000 today. Something is happening. God is at work.

GARY DeMAR

My point in all of this is when you look at the New Testament, the emphasis is constantly on the person and work of Jesus Christ, which is transformational — transformational for me, transformational for you. I believe Israel being in the land isn't doing anything to them spiritually in the same way that the temple didn't do anything to them spiritually. People would say, 'The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.'

Now let me address the two-thirds question, because it keeps coming up. I believe the Zechariah 13 passage really refers to the events leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. And here's the difference: leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, Jesus warned Israel for a generation — 40 years. He even told them, 'When you see certain things take place, head to the hills.' That's not happening today. What we're seeing today is literally Jews moving to Israel as part of some end-time perspective, and yet according to what I've read, two-thirds of the Jews are going to be slaughtered. That needs to be dealt with.

DR. MICHAEL BROWN

I would say Zechariah 14 remains clearly future and does speak of half of the city of Jerusalem going into exile. But in my understanding of the end times, there's going to be a worldwide shaking at the end — great calamity and hardship in the midst of which the gospel is going forth like never before. It's almost like God bares his arm and Satan bares his arm with the final conflict and the triumph of the kingdom of God at the end.

But I do agree with you that to say 'come on, we've got to get all the Jews back to the land to bless them' — why? So they can be in one place to be destroyed? That's problematic. It's definitely problematic and many people haven't thought that through.

Let me challenge the idea that the restoration to the land has no spiritual significance. Again, the land itself is secondary, aside from the fact that the Jewish people do need a homeland — as we saw after the horrors of the Holocaust and the ongoing growth of anti-Semitism worldwide. But the bigger thing to me is: God made promises and he keeps them. That's why there's still dispute over Jerusalem. That's why there's hatred of the Jews — because God's promises, his integrity, are at stake.

When Jerusalem came back into Jewish hands in the Six-Day War in 1967, that's also the beginning of what we call the Jesus People movement. A disproportionate number of Jews got saved. Almost everyone I know in Jewish ministry today got saved in that short period of time. We see the continued exponential increase of the Great Commission. I've been in country after country and met Christians in the most obscure places — jungles of India — who since being saved have had God lay it on their heart to pray for the Jewish people. Something is happening. The clean water is being sprinkled on their hearts.

The Question of Millennial Positions

GARY DeMAR

Could you just explain what postmillennialism is, just to make sure everybody knows? There are basically three millennial positions: premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism. And there are variations within those. This is based upon Revelation 20 and the thousand years.

A premillennialist would say Jesus is going to return before the thousand years and then set up a physical kingdom on earth while he reigns from Jerusalem. Some forms of premillennialism — like dispensationalism — would say the temple has to be rebuilt and even animal sacrifices reinstituted for atonement. Historic classical premillennialism is a little different. All you have to know is that premillennialists believe Jesus is going to come before the thousand years.

An amillennialist takes the thousand years of Revelation 20 figuratively. 'God owns the cattle on a thousand hills' means God owns the cattle on all the hills. The number thousand simply means a long period of time. The amillennialist doesn't believe in a millennium that is a golden age in the future.

A postmillennialist believes Jesus returns after the thousand years. Like the amillennialist, the postmillennialist believes the thousand years represents a very long period of time. The postmillennialist believes that sometime — we don't know when — people will finally come to their senses through the power of the Holy Spirit, recognize Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and you'll see a great advance of Christianity throughout the world where a preponderance of the population comes to Christ. As a postmillennialist, I believe the Jews are obviously included in this — but so are the Muslims and the Buddhists and the Hindus and everybody else.

This is also one of the reasons I got involved in eschatology — because as I went out and spoke on governmental issues, economic issues, and worldview issues, invariably there would be people in the church who would say, 'But we're living in the last days. Why are we bothering with this? Jesus is coming back soon to rapture his church.' And so I got involved in eschatology to try to answer some of these issues.

And by the way — there are people around the world who are already going through a period of tribulation, getting their heads kicked in. There's no rapture taking them out of this. What do we do in between? This is where I believe the church has fallen down. How is it that 2.5% of the population — if it's even that — of homosexuals can advance as fast and as broadly as they have when the church makes up possibly 30% of the population? Why are they in the courts and in the educational establishment and the media? Where have the Christians been? One of the reasons Christians haven't been involved is because they have adopted a sacred-secular dichotomy. Well, now the secular world is going to take your sacred place away from you.

DR. MICHAEL BROWN

I would say that we may get our heads kicked in quite a bit. But I'm completely with you in terms of we must be a relevant voice in the culture. I've said for many, many years that those who said 'we're out of here any moment' opted out, while those who said 'we're here long term' rewrote the laws. And I pointed out that gay activists have been much more effective than Christians because they don't go to a gay meeting once a week — that's who they are. We go to a Christian meeting once a week, think we're going to change the world. That's not how you start a revolution — not by going to church but by being the church, the ekklēsia.

The Scattering, Regathering, and Romans 9–11

MODERATOR

Dr. Brown, you mentioned the scattering. It's two-pronged, Gary, for you to help clarify. Number one: do you believe what he said about the scattering — is it literally historically true that the Jews were scattered? And the second part: why isn't it then legitimate to say there would be a corresponding historical and biblical regathering?

GARY DeMAR

God is a promise-keeping God, but it seems for 2,000 years he hasn't been keeping his promises if you follow that particular position — because every time the Jews do something, they're scattered. My point is: if you read the Gospel accounts and the book of Acts and the New Testament, God was keeping his promises to Israel in exacting detail. He was bringing them together in Christ because Jesus is the focus of history, not Israel. Israel was the vehicle by which the promised Messiah was to come. The gathering was taking place in their day — they were being gathered as one new man in Christ, as Ephesians 2 says.

DR. MICHAEL BROWN

Let me push on this. If God scattered the Jewish people in his anger — and you know I began the scattering historically in 721 BC with the Assyrian exile, continued in the Babylonian exile in 586 BC, then expanded with the exile in AD 70 and AD 135, because Jesus said in Luke 19 that these things would come upon Israel because they didn't recognize the time of their visitation — if God scattered us in judgment, and when God curses no one can bless, when he smites no one can heal, when he scatters no one can regather — how is it that we managed to regather ourselves? That would be like saying God can sentence someone to hell and they can say, 'No, I decide to go to heaven.'

The only explanation is that God in his grace and mercy, for his name's sake because his name was being blasphemed, has been regathering us back to the land to fulfill his promises. And there in the land he says, 'I'll sprinkle clean water on you.' Under the Sinai covenant we had to repent first. But under the eternal covenant God is going to give the Porsche even though we spat on it — and when he does, he's going to grant us repentance. We see a growing number of Jewish believers in the land from literally a handful in 1948 to perhaps 20,000 today. Something is happening.

GARY DeMAR

I don't think there is a single place in the New Testament which talks about a prophetic necessity for Israel to be back in the land. My point is: God did the regathering of his people — he gathered his people into one new people. That's what Ephesians 2 is all about. It has nothing to do with the physical scattering. Nor does John 11.

To take your analogy and push it: I promise to give you a Dodge Dart — and then I turn around and give you a Porsche. That's the difference in position. God promises Abraham the land and gives him the world. That's the difference.

DR. MICHAEL BROWN

But if the only vehicle you have access to is a Dart and you don't have it anymore because somebody else is driving the Porsche, you got the same bad result. And I would say this as well — the world does not exclude the nation of Israel. You get the world, you get Israel, you get the whole shooting match.

To answer your question: the scattering began in the Assyrian exile in 721 BC, continued in the Babylonian exile in 586 BC, and then expanded with the exile in AD 70 and AD 135. Jesus said in Luke 19 these things would come upon Israel because they didn't recognize the time of their visitation. The scattering reached its focal point with Jews banned from Jerusalem in 135, and the vast vast majority — 99% — were scattered around the world.

Then beginning at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, a gradual regathering has been done — just like Ezekiel 36 said — not because of our works. Look, Tel Aviv is the world's most gay-friendly city. Israel exists only by God's grace, not because of works. But regardless of all the spiritual regathering interpretation you put on it — I've asked this for years and not gotten an answer: if we were scattered under divine judgment, and the physical scattering was a part of it, then we can't regather ourselves — that would be undoing the scattering.

Can the Jewish People Cease to Exist?

DR. MICHAEL BROWN

Let me fine-tune a question. Putting the land aside for a moment: could the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — those we would identify as Jews today — cease to exist as a people and the Bible still be true and your postmillennial view hold together? That to me is the crux.

GARY DeMAR

I would say it would be absolutely impossible to eradicate Jews from the world. It's an impossibility. God knows who they are. As a postmillennialist, I would say since the Jews are part of God's promised plan, it can't happen — it's impossible for it to happen.

DR. MICHAEL BROWN

So we agree on that. That's big. That's very important. So there are promises that remain to that distinct people — that though God scatters them around the world, he will never totally destroy them, he will preserve them as a people, as an ethnos. He knows who they are. Is God actively keeping us? Because he didn't make that promise to Mexico. He didn't make that promise to America.

This has always been part of my theological heritage long before dispensationalism came around. As John Owen — the theologian among the Puritan theologians in the 1600s — said: 'The Jews shall be gathered from all parts of the earth where they are scattered and brought home into their homeland.' And: 'There is not any promise anywhere of raising up a kingdom unto the Lord Jesus Christ in this world, but it is either expressed or clearly intimated that the beginning of it must be with the Jews.' Robert Leighton, Owen's contemporary, said: 'Undoubtedly, that people of the Jews shall once more be commanded to arise and shine, and their return shall be the riches of the Gentiles — Romans 11:12 — and that shall be a more glorious time than ever the church of God did yet behold.'

And then Robert Murray McCheyne in the 1800s — called 'Holy McCheyne' because of his godly living — believed that bringing the gospel to the Jews first was a sacred calling, that Romans 1:16 'to the Jew first' meant a priority, and that a key to revival around the whole world was the salvation of Israel.

If you and I differ on the land, that would be very secondary to me compared to differing over the fact that God's promises remain to a distinct people, that he's preserved them, that the church does have a mission to bring the gospel to the Jewish people and to provoke Israel to jealousy, and that somehow Jewish people turning to the Lord is of end-time significance. If we can agree on that and differ on the land, then the land part would be very secondary.

GARY DeMAR

That is a position that I and the church have held for decades. I mean, it's been a position of the church long before dispensationalism.

Gary DeMar's Book and the Zechariah Question

GARY DeMAR

I have one question about your book, Our Hands Are Stained with Blood — why didn't you deal with the dispensational view on Zechariah 13:8–9 in that book?

DR. MICHAEL BROWN

It wasn't my focus in writing it, honestly. Number one, to bring to the church the pain of the Jewish people and the suffering through history and God's eternal promises. That was the burden out of which I wrote, going back to World War II. Also, at that time my strong focus was not to divide over these issues. I've preached for dispensationalists for years and probably still do. But it is something I've addressed, and when I preached in Israel after this book came out at a major conference, I raised those very points within the year.

Sir John Owen said 'The Jews shall be gathered from all parts of the earth where they are scattered and brought home into their homeland.' A lot of Puritans did believe that. So if you and I differed on the land, that would be secondary to me versus differing over whether God's promises remain to a distinct people, which is the only reason we're still here — he preserved us. And that the church does have a mission to bring the gospel to the Jewish people and to provoke Israel to jealousy, and that somehow Jewish people turning to the Lord is of end-time significance.

The Question About John Hagee

MODERATOR

One final question. John Hagee has advanced the notion that Christians should not minister the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Jewish people. True or false?

DR. MICHAEL BROWN

He told me face to face that he does not espouse dual covenant theology — that if there were rabbis and others in a Sunday service, he would preach Jesus to them like anyone else. And his right-hand man, a Jewish man, David Brog, told me over the phone that John Hagee frequently tells him he needs Jesus. Those are statements made directly to me.

He also told me that he's very careful because of his ties with Jewish people to make it clear that he's not there to evangelize — that the purpose of Christians United for Israel is not to evangelize, because there's a lot of Jewish sensitivity about that. Jews were forced to have debates with Christians. Catholic leaders would come into a synagogue and force them to hear a conversionary message. All of their religious literature was burned. Their Talmuds were burned after these forced debates. So there's sensitivity there, and you have to demonstrate that you are simply there as a friend.

I understand the balance, and I do believe you can be a friend of Israel by saying, 'Hey, we want you to believe in Jesus. We're Christians and we believe you need to, but we're your friend anyway.' You could argue that other statements he has made give way to the dual covenant idea. I can only say: when I asked him face to face in the presence of other witnesses, he said he does not believe in dual covenant. Jews need Jesus to be saved.

GARY DeMAR

I just disagree with him on the whole blood moon thing. That's the only thing I've really studied about John Hagee.

Closing Remarks

DR. MICHAEL BROWN

So if we could recognize that the promises remain to a distinct people — God knows who they are — we should be praying for that people, bringing the gospel to them, and believing that their salvation will be life from the dead. And I posit as well — and this is the part Dr. DeMar would not agree with me on — that the physical restoration and return to the land is part of the outward physical demonstration of God's covenant keeping, which urges us to pray all the more. Examine your eschatology, your views based on that, and take it to the Lord for further insight.

GARY DeMAR

My deal is I don't think we give enough validity to what in fact took place in the first century. I would like to get rid of this idea of the church-Israel distinction — I think that needs to be wiped off the table. There was no church-Israel distinction in the New Testament. The first church was in fact made up of Jews and Gentiles — or the nations — were grafted into an existing Jewish assembly of believers. And I do believe that Christians today, Jews today, Israelites today who are embracing Jesus as the promised Messiah — that really is the only hope of the world, for Israel and for Palestinians and for Muslims. I'm not real sure the church really believes that. That's an issue.

One last point: if you criticize something Israel does, the retort often is, 'If you bless Israel, God will bless you; if you curse Israel, God will curse you.' So you can't even be morally or ethically critical of what takes place in Israel. As soon as you say something, you're accused of replacement theology. But that's hardly defensible, since God sent both kingdoms off into exile as a result of their sins.

And I think that's what we find in Revelation 2–3, written to seven churches — essentially saying: you better understand the example of what happened to Israel with this coming judgment, because the same thing can happen to you. Your candlestick can be removed. That's a message to the church today just like it was a message to Israel back then. We've got a lot of work to do. And we are not getting out of here in a rapture — we have got to make very important and critical hard decisions as to what we're going to do in the midst of this rise of evil in this world.

MODERATOR

Ladies and gentlemen, this has been a very edifying, very profitable time together from two dear brothers who have demonstrated a real Christian virtue of graciousness and kindness to each other on a subject that can be controversial and potentially bring conflict. Would you join me in telling them how much you appreciate them being on the platform together?