Israel and the Church: Dispensationalism and Replacement
Early Church, Reformation and Modern Conflicts
Is the Church the "New Israel”? Has Israel been sidelined in God’s redemptive plan? Or does God’s covenant with the Jewish people still stand, unchanged and unfulfilled? Maybe you heard about the interview between Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson. Pretty heated debate about this very topic. And current conflicts such as the Israel-Iran war and Gaza in particular regularly raise the question of what biblical role Israel actually still plays today, or whether it does at all.
Dispensationalism
At the core of Dispensationalist theology is the unshakeable belief that God has two distinct covenant peoples: ethnic Israel and the Church. The ministry of Jesus was the inauguration of an earthly, Davidic kingdom centered in Jerusalem, fulfilling Old Testament prophecy. However, because the Jewish people rejected him, Jesus' mission "failed" - at least in its original intention. The Church was introduced as a kind of parenthesis - a temporary detour in God's overarching plan for Israel. The Church is a "Plan B" in classical dispensationalism. This theological construction, first systematically developed by John Nelson Darby in the 19th century, who was an Anglican priest who later became a leader in the Plymouth Brethren movement. But Darby's theological innovations spread beyond the Plymouth Brethren. It is clear that they were adapted and renamed by others. Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, drew heavily on Darby's concept. Elements of dispensationalism are present in both Seventh-day Adventism and Mormonism. The Scofield Reference Bible was the publication that most effectively popularized dispensationalism to a wide audience within evangelical Christianity. Later, popular authors such as Hal Lindsey and the creators of the Left Behind series popularized these themes in the cultural mainstream.
