When discussing the the relationship between Israel and the Church, it isn't long before Galatians 6:16 comes up. I have briefly covered this text on this blog. However, I did not deal with the same old argument of how many times Israel is used in the Bible. Rather than dealing with this matter myself, I will allow two heavyweights speak on this issue. Dr. John MacArthur from the "leaky" Dispensational side and Dr. Sam Waldron from the Amillennial side.
Dr. MacArthur threw down the gauntlet and the first blow when he said, during the 2007 Shepherds Conference, in his message titled "Why Every Self-Respecting Calvinist Should Be A Premillennialist:" The Bible calls God, 'The God of Israel' over 200 times- the God of Israel. There are over 2000 times references to Israel in Scripture. Not one of them means anything but Israel. Not one of them, including Romans 9:6 and Galatians 6:16, which are the only two passages that Amillennialists go to, to try to convince us that these passages cancel out the other 2000. There is no difficulty in interpreting those as simply meaning Jews who were believers, 'the Israel of God.' Israel always means Israel; it never means anything but Israel. Seventy-three New Testament uses of Israel always mean Israel."
To this Dr. Waldron carefully dismantles, in my opinion, that old assertion. In his book "MacArthurs Millennial Manifesto: A Friendly Response" he writes: "This is one of those outrageous statements which could be used to make MacArthur look and sound silly. I really want to avoid doing that. I want to give MacArthur credit for knowing that we actually go to about a 'zillion' passages to prove the Church is the Israel of God-not just two. I don't want to take seriously the Arminian-sounding illogic MacArthur seems to use here. 'All always means all and never means anything but all.' To which the proper answer is, of course, 'but what does all mean?' MacArthur does sound like that doesn't he? 'Israel always means Israel and never means anything but Israel.' To which the proper answer is, 'But what does Israel mean?'...First, MacArthur appears to adopt a kind of majority- rule hermeneutic in his understanding of the term 'Israel.' In other words, he implies if the vast majority of biblical usages of a word carry a certain meaning, then we must assume that they all must carry this meaning. Now, in all charity, let me say that I assume MacArthur knows better than this and normally does better than this in his exegesis of Scripture. Nevertheless, his listeners are supposed to find the idea that two of the seventy-three New Testament occurrences of 'Israel' might have a different meaning from the other seventy-one exceedingly doubtful or even impossible. But let us test this implication. Take the biblical word for heaven. It usually refers to the physical heavens where the birds fly and where the stars reside. But, in a minority of occurrences, heaven clearly refers to the heaven of God. Similarly, take the word sheol as another example. It usually refers to the grave or what is physically below. But, in a minority of occurrences it clearly refers to what we call hell...Finally, take the Hebrew word Elohim, which occurs well over 2200 times in the Old Testament. Elohim almost always refers to either the true God or to false gods. Yet, there are a few famous cases in which it does not and cannot mean god. Rather, in those instances, it must mean a human ruler (Psalm 82:6) or mighty angel (Psalm 8:5). In light of this reality, there should be nothing particularly surprising (given the way the Bible uses words) if we were to discover that two of the 73 uses of Israel in the New Testament might actually refer to the Church."
Dr. MacArthur may have struck the first blow, but to use Paul's illustration, he was "boxing as one beating the air" (1Cor. 9:26). In other words, Dr. MacArthur was, metaphorically speaking, swinging at his opponents (everyone that is not a Dispensationalist) and missing. I am thankful to Dr. Waldron and many others that responded to the wild allegations launched at everyone that does not take MacArthur's eschatological view. Soli Deo Gloria!
For His Glory,
Fernando
No comments:
Post a Comment