Posted by
ValiantForTruth on Monday, January 01, 2007 10:46:52 PM
Students of the Scofield bible notes argue that the church age is a parenthesis in the original plan of God to finish His redemptive work with the Jewish state and bring to past the promises made to Old Testament Israel.
Daniel 9 is referenced as obvious proof of this argument. These articles are to demonstrate from the Scriptures the gross errors in this system of interpretation. Daniel 9 and the 70 weeks is one of the greatest OT passages that magnify the work of Messiah. It identifies the time frame of His coming and outlines His great work of redemption. The distortion that Scofield brings to this passage is considered by many as a modern Christian heresy. We agree when the adherents deny the absolute authority of Jesus Christ to do as He will in heaven and earth.
First let’s review the New Testament argument that the 'church is the body of Christ, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.' [Ephesians 1:23]
The apostle labors in the book of Ephesians to reveal the mystery of the eternal purpose of God: that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body. [Ephesians 3]
Paul says plainly that in the gospel God has torn down the wall of partition that separated Jew and Gentile. ‘He has made the two into one new man.’ There is now ‘one body’ joined together by faith in the church.
In Romans 2:28-29 Paul defines the New Covenant Jew. ‘He is not a Jew who is one outwardly…But he is a Jew who is one inwardly…’ Likewise, circumcision is not ‘outward in the flesh’, but ‘that which is of the heart, by the Spirit.’
And again in Galatians 3:28-29, Paul gives us the precious truth that the covenant made to Abraham is fulfilled in people of faith, men from every nation, a multitude that no man can number like the stars of heaven or the sands of the sea…
‘There is neither Jew nor Greek…if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.’
A case for separate peoples of God cannot be made in the New Testament. The gospel of the kingdom is that the seed of Abraham has come and in Him all nations, both Jew and Gentile are blessed.
So Mr. Scofield must make his case in the Old Testament. In so doing he denies the preeminence of Jesus Christ as God in the flesh and the final revelation of God [Hebrews 1:1-3] and the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. The Old Testament means what Jesus Christ and His apostles say it means. Mr. Scofield and his disciples deny this.
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