Part of this study, must include promises made to Israel, the seed of Abraham, that many premillennialists
thinks are unfulfilled, and are
yet to be fulfilled.
When I first came to the Lord, like
@3 Resurrections (I know, for I know whence he came from and the school of thought that reign where we lived) we were told we
must have a Scofield Reference Bible, a must important tool for young Christians, so I went through two of them in my first two to three years, seeking to serve God and seeking to learn his truths. I quickly understood I had blindly accepted doctrines concerning Israel, that I could not defend with the word of God, so I abandoned the Scofield bible and all of its dispensationalism teaching, and sought the truth from a bible without footnotes, trusting God to give me His truth, not man's~and I believe with all of my heart he has, so let me share some of those teaching with you.
I begin my journey back in the early seventies right on "
the buckle" of the bible belt, in Greenville S.C., where you have Bob Jones University, Tabernacle Baptist Church with Dr. Harold B. Sightler, and the gospel hour with Dr. Oliver B. Greene, all die hard Premillennialist, and a lover of national Israel ~ not to mention just about every church in the upstate of S.C. were in agreement with them in teaching the same doctrines concerning Israel. Let me say this: which we know all saints are indebted to their nation for many reasons,
not in the same manner that they teach and still do for the most part.
Question: A Dispensational Dilemma: Did God Give Abraham and Israel the Land He Promised Them?
Scofield: “It is important to see that the nation has never possessed the whole land.”
The Palestinian Covenant gives the conditions under which Israel entered the land of promise. It is important to see that the nation has never as yet taken the land under the unconditional Abrahamic covenant, nor has it ever possessed the whole land. (Scofield Reference Bible, page 250; New Scofield Reference Bible, page 251)
Houston, we have a problem! With these bold words Mr. Scofield tries to lay the foundation for his false teaching on the tribulation period and his Millennial scheme of a future national restoration of physical Jews to Palestine. He reasons as follows:
1. God never gave the whole land to Israel, so there must be a time in the future when He will give them the whole land.
2. God never gave the land to Israel under his so-called unconditional Abrahamic covenant, so there must be a time in the future when He will give it to them unconditionally.
3. Since the present age is the “parenthesis” of the Church, this future restoration must occur after the Rapture – with a seven year period of tribulation FOR ISRAEL and then during a 1000-year reign of Christ in Jerusalem.
THUS SAITH THE LORD
I) God promised the land to Abraham personally (
Genesis 13:15-18
17;
17:8). Consider:
Abraham fully understood what God was telling him here, and it should not be hard to see knowing such scriptures as Hebrews 11, that Abraham fully understood that as far as his eyes could see, and wherever he set his foot upon that was to be all his in God promises, yet the fulfillment was to be understood
IN THE WORLD TO COME! (Hebrews 2:5) not in the middle east which is a pitiful replacement for the
New earth and New heaven that is to be the fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham and all of the
SPIRITUAL seed of Jesus Christ whom Abraham was a part of!
2) God promised the land to Abraham’s seed, which we know
to be CHRIST~Galatians 3 (
Genesis 12:7;
13:15;
15:18-21;
17:8;
26:1-5;
28:13-14).
3) Abraham
never received even one foot of ground in Canaan as a gift from God (
Acts 7:5); he even had to buy a burial place for Sarah (
Genesis 23:1-20). He was a stranger in Canaan, and he lived the life of a nomad in tents (
Hebrews 11:9).
4)
Abraham knew God intended heaven by the promise of the land (Hebrews 11:13). He saw the promise of heaven afar off; he was persuaded of it; he embraced
this superior fulfillment; and he acknowledged that he was a stranger and pilgrim
in Canaan. He set his affection on things above
rather than on things on the earth (
Colossians 3:1-4); He saw the day of Jesus Christ and desired it (
John 8:56).
I'll finish later.
