Louis Lapides's Blog, page 4
March 20, 2014
Not All Israel is Israel Part 2
The church is filled with a lot of confusing theology about the plan of God for the nation of Israel after they rejected Jesus as Messiah. Do God's promises to Israel still ring true for those Jewish people who don't accept Jesus? Have those- Jews and gentiles - who accepted Jesus replaced Israel as the "new Israel" or the Church?
March 11, 2014
Christ at the Checkpoint Position Paper by Israeli Messianic Jews
Christ at the Checkpoint is a partisan political movement, willingly acting as public relations spokesmen for the Palestinian Authority to the Evangelical world. The CatC 2012 keynote speech by then Prime Minister of the PA, Saleem Fayad, demonstrated the one-sided and political nature of this conference.
March 26, 2013
Not All Israel Is Israel Part 1
I find that the majority of Christians are very confused when it comes to God's plan for Israel and many followers of Jesus have been exposed to replacement theology unknowingly.
September 24, 2012
The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife: Was Jesus Married?
So what should Christians make of this most recent discovery of a papyrus fragment from the fourth century that claims Jesus was married? Was Jesus married? If so, and this fact was deliberately or inadvertently left out of the New Testament records of the life of Jesus, does this then cast doubt on the accuracy of the four gospels and their writers?
June 27, 2012
Why Israel Exists ‘for the Palestinians’—and the Rest of the World | Christianity Today
On the 60th anniversary of the birth of the modern state of Israel (May 7, 2008), I celebrated the astonishing apologetical power of the sheer existence of Israel. I drew attention to Anne Rice, the vampire novelist who some years ago turned from 30 years of atheism because of Israel. Even her more recent misgivings about institutional Christianity don't nullify the validity of her discovery. She said, "I stumbled upon a mystery without a solution, a mystery so immense that I gave up trying to find an explanation because the whole mystery defied belief. The mystery was the survival of the Jews. … It was this mystery that drew me back to God."
June 22, 2012
God Doesn’t Keep Jews in a Pickle Jar | Christianity Today
The birth of the modern state of Israel did not occur in a vacuum but sprang from the ashes of the Holocaust, where one third of the Jewish people were systematically annihilated simply because they were Jews. Evangelicals need to think more deeply about the implications of the Holocaust and its connection to Israel today. I believe Israel is in possession of the Land today by divine mercy, a mercy flowing out of the horrors of the Holocaust and to the ultimate defeat of all other efforts at Jewish genocide past and present. This can only be the hand of God in history despite Israel's current unbelief. Present day anti-Semitism is proof that Israel remains at the nexus of the cosmic conflict between God, who keeps his promises, and Satan, who wants to make God a liar. We shouldn't allow history to interpret the Bible, but we must allow the Bible to speak to recent and current history, not just ancient history and the future.
How to Treat a Rebellious Israel | Christianity Today
Today, Israel as a nation is a covenant-breaking people—they are rejecting their Messiah, Jesus. In this condition of unbelief and disobedience, she has no "divine right" to the Land of Promise. This does not mean that other nations have the right to molest her. She still has human rights among nations. Nations that gloated over Israel's divine discipline were punished by God (Isa. 10:5–13).
Do Jews Have a Divine Right to Israel’s Land? | Christianity Today
Jews for Jesus Director David Brickner has an online conversation with John Piper, author and pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis and speaker at Christ at the Checkpoint Conference. This online conversation centers on the Jewish people's divine right to the land of Israel. ScriptureSolutions highly recommends to its readers to check out these articles and read the Christian ZIonism side represented by Brickner and the anti-Christian Zionist side purported by John Piper.
The True Seed of Abraham: Jesus or Israel?
From Galatians 3:16-17 we are to conclude, according to replacement theologians, that the Abrahamic promises were not spoken to the nation of Israel, but God's commitment to Israel find their fulfillment in the one true seed of Abraham - the Messiah Jesus - rather than the nation. Since believers belong to Jesus, then Christians are the true seed of Abraham through the one true seed-Jesus of Nazareth. If one reads this passage without asking questions or checking out the surrounding context of Galatians 3, I can understand this conclusion. However, upon deeper investigation, the student of the Bible discovers Paul's intention was not to teach that the Church has replaced Israel or that Jesus is the true Israel.
June 20, 2012
Just Published! Jesus or Yeshua: Exploring the Jewish Roots of Christianity
I did not fit. Church did not feel Jewish. The terminology caused me to cringe, asking, “What have I gotten myself into?” When the pastor referred to me as a Baptist kid, I knew it was time to delve deeper into this Christian faith that was launched 2000 years ago by courageous Jewish followers of Jesus. I needed to know what happened to a messianic movement started in Israel that now feels more like it was birthed in Nashville, Tennessee (and I happen to love Nashville and its music).
