Exploring Replacement Theology & the Acts Model, with Preston Benjamin

*This transcript was generated by AI, and may contain transcription errors. Please refer to the video, or contact us with any questions or discrepancies.*

So that was kind of the big twist is that whenever they met in Acts 15, the early church and decided, Hey, Abraham was justified before taking on this sign of circumcision by faith, and it’s this faith connection that Gentiles are now coming into to where there is a place for them to be adopted without having to do all that same stuff.
They can be adopted into the family without adopting Jewish identity.
Exactly. And so that was really kind of this giant pressure that was pushing on the early church of what are we going to do? We’re all Jewish, we’re all part of the family of Abraham, we’re all Torah observant.
And these gentiles want to follow the God of Israel,
Right? They’re coming in and saying, Hey, this is the true, the one true God is the God of Israel.
Welcome back everybody to another episode of Covenant and Conflict, where we take ancient truths, modern issues, and we wrestle with them. And I’m so excited about our guest today, Preston Benjamin, if you look on our YouTube videos, you’re going to see some follow Twitter, Instagram, maybe read more. And one of the things we always put is our perspective papers, which are deep dives into these topics. Maybe watch a two minute video and you’re like, that’s interesting. I want to know more Perspective paper. Guess who wrote those perspective papers? Preston Benjamin. He is the theologian and the structure of our theology in many ways. So Preston, thank you for being here.
Yeah, it’s great to be here.
So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you found yourself in this Christian Jewish space. I know your family has kind of been involved in this Christian Jewish
Dialogue
For so long, so where did that kind of take place with you?
Yeah, I mean it really all started with my grandfather. Years ago he watched a Holocaust documentary and that really kind of unlocked something in his heart where he got a burden for the Jewish people. Began praying for Israel. Dove in, I think so my grandpa’s name is Olan Griffin. Yes, sir. So I think his story, we’ve talked about it some over years. The fact that we’re here is
Very much because of Pastor Olan and that burden that he got
Shady Grove over the years. So I grew up hearing about it all the time. We took trips, my whole family took trips to Israel When we turned 14, my grandparents would take us and tour us around the land. So yeah, I’ve always kind of been around it. But then really when I was 17, 16, I moved with my parents overseas to Israel and we served at a house of prayer there in Jerusalem called Sukkot Hillel, I believe it’s still around. And from there I really just, it opened up a new level of I’m living in the land, living in Jerusalem, praying every day. I’m doing the prayer watches where you’re doing worship and you’re overlooking the Temple Mount. You see the walls of Jerusalem right
There, the old city.
Yes. And I took off from my time there in Jerusalem. Were there for about a year. And I actually went to a discipleship school called Gateways Beyond in Cyprus, which is just over the pond there.
Israel, no affiliation with Gateway Church, although we love ’em.
Right. Gateways with an S, gateways beyond. And so they were founded by Messianic Jews and they have a rhythm of life where they do. We go through the feasts, we do Shabbat every week. We take a trip to Israel, a month long trip to Israel every year. So I was with that discipleship school for about six years and traveled all over Europe, middle East. It was a mission space as well. And throughout that time I had some pretty significant encounters. There was a conference in Berlin, Germany actually that I was at where I heard those words from Ruth about your people will be my people. And there was just something that kind of lit inside of me where it’s like, oh, this is a new level of a burden where I felt this call to just a deeper love kind of begin to unfold. And that led me to begin really wanting to study more, get kind of this now that I got this heart burden in me. This was about 18, somewhere around there, 18, 19 years old that led me to figure out, okay, what am I going to study?
And the only school at the time, maybe there was one other, I think maybe Talbot in California was the King’s University. And the wild thing is that it was connected to Gateway. And so I already had, this was my home, Dallas, DFW, but that was the only school that was doing a Messianic Jewish studies program. And I was like, that’s where I’m going to go. It was just a clear runway for me to come back and start studying. I actually did start at TKU in the Mess Youth studies program, did my bachelor’s. I’ve started doing it remote. I was still living in Cyprus at the time. And so I was doing the discipleship school in Cyprus and doing studies at night and logging on throughout the day at different times to do school. And throughout my whole time, studied with Dr. David Rudolph, incredible scholar.
You have him on the podcast.
Come on. Learned so much from him. And really at the end of my time realized, okay, I need to keep going with this. It was really fulfilling for me to study and felt like God was calling me to do my master’s and eventually my PhD to begin teaching. Speak it.
Speak it.
Yeah. We’ll see, right now we’re going to pause, but eventually to teach and that’s why I wanted to go to a bigger school and that led me to go to Duke University in North Carolina. So my wife and I, my wife, Macy, we have two kids, Zoe and Theo, Zoe’s almost four, and Theo is a year and a half now. Beautiful. But at the time we didn’t have kids. It’s just me and her. So we moved to North Carolina. We were flexible. Yeah, super flexible. Now I don’t know about a move right
Now. No, you’re
Planted. So my time at Duke was awesome
North. And that was your master’s?
That was my master’s, yeah.
In
Master’s in Theological Studies. But my concentration was in, I did a dual and New Testament and Old Testament, so it’s more biblical studies route. And my thesis was on replacement theology. Basically the title is Supersessionism and post Supers Sessions theology.
Beautiful. It’s a mouthful.
So let’s talk about
That. Let’s talk about the thesis and let’s put it on PDF so everyone can read it on this episode.
Blast it out.
So Supersessionism is a more of a probably theological way, and maybe to put it bluntly, a nicer way of saying replacement theology. But they’re the same thing. And the basic belief is that the church has replaced or superseded Israel as God’s chosen, as God’s beloved, as the one he’s in covenant with. So let’s talk about that. How prevalent is that in the church?
It’s very prevalent. Maybe not as much. So in explicit terms, people being very direct about it,
Most pastors aren’t
Getting up on the weekends saying, you
Know what? We believe in this church. Say it with me. Super. Exactly. But it comes
Out. It comes out. And often in sneaky ways
You
Don’t realize it.
What are some of the sneaky ways? I think that’s really helpful for people to, a desire for our team and at Gateway Church is that the congregation here can hear something and say that’s replacement theology. But if you’re not trained to hear it, it’s so baked into our understanding of the Bible. I think most people don’t hear it. So what are some of those things that would come
Up? Yeah, I think maybe if I approach it in a slightly different way, just starting with trying to define it kind of helps to then see where things can sneak in. Its most in the basic form. If you’d say the church has replaced Israel, that’s the proposition. And it’s only two nouns and one verb that you got to think about. That’s it. The church, come on, two nouns, one verb. We’re doing a grammar lesson here, but it’s like Michael Scott,
Tell me like I’m five.
Yeah, the church and Israel. Okay, so who is the church? What is the church? That’s a good question. Goodness gracious. That’s a tough question. Who is Israel? What is Israel? Yeah, that’s also a very difficult question, which as Gentiles, right? Gentile believers in Jesus were probably not qualified to be able to make all the right to tell Jewish people who they are and to tell Israel who they are. But the Bible tells us pretty clearly and can help us when we begin to try to define these words, the church, Israel. But then there’s a verb, there’s an action between them. There’s a relationship between the nouns and that word is often when you start to try to think about what the verb is, what’s the relationship between the church and Israel, let alone trying to define those words themselves. That’s kind of when the sneaky part comes in is, okay, so normally we say replaced, but like you said earlier, you can say superseded, you can say fulfilled, you can say all kinds of verbs, basically just showing what’s the relationship between the church and
Israel.
But also the tense really matters, the tense of the verb. I said we’re doing grammar here,
Come on.
If it’s past tense, if it’s future tense, if it’s present tense, you can really start to, as you play with the words the church has fulfilled Israel, the church will fulfill Israel. And there’s some dispensational thought that kind of comes in there. There’s different ways as soon as you start messing with those two nouns and that verb that you can start to see a lot of different interpretations of what replacement theology can mean.
So if we understand replacement theology as the church replaced Israel, what verb should be in that spot?
You mean what would a positive,
Yeah, what would your understanding be? How should we view church in Israel and should those even be the nouns? Because if we’re saying church in Israel, in that sentence, we’re making a very clear distinction that the church is not Israel. So is that the proper, are those the proper no nouns, and is that the proper verb?
Yeah, it’s great. So looking at the Old Testament, it all started with Abraham, right? When we look at the whole sweep of scripture, we’re really talking about the church as the people of God. It’s always been about the people of God. And there’s this great little book that just came out by a scholar that I’ve been following recently. His name’s Brad East. He teaches at Abilene Christian University, I believe so not too far from here. Yeah, great guy. But his little book on the church that just came out, he actually just uses church Israel. And he says, this is awkward, but I want it to intentionally be awkward because I want to get it in your mind that it’s not one or the other. And I kind of like that approach where I think the nouns are right. We don’t need to come up with something different that hasn’t been used for the last 2000 years. Of course we’re talking about English church,
Not German Kersha or Greek eia. There’s so much with language that we could go into there, but really we’re talking about the people of God. And so the people of God, were Abraham’s family and continue to be Abraham’s family. And we can’t get around that by saying, okay, now that the church has come, it’s about Jesus’s family. It’s no longer about Abraham because that’s not what the New Testament tells us. Paul tells us this is the seed of Abraham is Jesus. And he continues to say of David, of the seed of Abraham, he makes all those. So we don’t have a choice when we approach the New Testament to be like, oh, I guess it’s now just all about the family of Jesus or the people of Jesus, not about the people of God. As we see through Abraham, the family of Abraham.
So Genesis 17, God says, I’m making a covenant with you, an everlasting covenant, which in English would mean lasts for making an everlasting covenant with you and your descendants after you. So that covenant, like you’re saying, goes all the way to Jesus. Then you pick it up in Romans, and Paul kind of uses this analogy in Romans eight. He says, the Gentiles have been adopted into the family. So again, it’s not a separation and a creation of a new thing. It’s the same family. Gentiles are adopted into that family. Romans 11, he gives the same truth with the different analogy. The olive tree, this tree whose roots are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob blossomed into these natural branches. The Jewish people and then the Gentiles were these wild olive shoots on the ground, weren’t a part of the family of God, we’re not physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But because of the sacrifice of Jesus, death, burial, resurrection, we’re now grafted into that tree. Again, not a different tree. It’s not like God planted this other tree called the church. We are then grafted into that tree and that’s how we can say I’m a spiritual son of Abraham
Because I was adopted just like if I adopted children today, they would be a son of my grandfather and my great-grandfathers, figuratively speaking and legally speaking, I think the tricky part is that part in Romans 11, which says, and many of the Jewish people didn’t believe and were cut off from that tree. Now there’s this distinction made I think in the church’s eyes of, okay, so going back to what I think Paul says, not all Israel is Israel.
What
The heck do we do with that? And I understand how you could read that verse on an island and say, oh, so we are the new Israel, we’re if not all, Israel is Israel. And John the Baptist says, don’t think that because you’re sons of Abraham, you don’t need to be baptized and repent. God can make these stones, Abraham. You read things like that and you’re like, oh, so it’s not really important to be a physical son. It only is important to be a spiritual son, and Jews and Gentiles both need to become spiritual sons. Therefore, this new thing that we’re calling the church is only spiritual sons. Now,
It
Doesn’t matter, Galatians 3 28, there’s no longer Jew and Gentile. So again, it’s only spiritual sense. So help me parse that. What does that look like?
Yeah, so I guess if you want to look at the historical context of Paul’s writings, the whole concept of a Gentile coming into the family of God, the assumption then was that that person had to be circumcised, had to be fully converted
In
Order to now be part of Abraham’s.
Yeah, take on Jewish identity.
And that sign of circumcision was more than just an act of the flesh. It was a sign that that person would now be submitting themselves to the Torah, to being Torah observant, taking on the ways of class,
Kosher, everything,
All of it. And so that was kind of the big twist is that whenever they met in Acts 15, the early church and decided, Hey, Abraham was justified before taking on this sign of circumcision by faith, and it’s this faith connection that Gentiles are now coming into to where there is a place for them to be adopted without having to do all that same stuff.
They can be adopted into the family without adopting Jewish identity.
Exactly. And so that was really kind of this giant pressure that was pushing on the early church of what are we going to do? We’re all Jewish, we’re all part of the family of Abraham. We’re all Torah
Observant, and these gentiles want to follow the God of Israel.
They’re coming in and saying, Hey, this is the one true. God is the God of Israel, and we’re here to serve the God of Israel. And so naturally, I mean, if I was in their place, I’d be like, okay, then get circumcised and come in way clear, right? Yeah. They were already, we know from acts, they were already attending synagogue regularly going to the temple every day. We know that the
Jewish followers or the Gentile
Followers, the Jewish followers, the disciples, it talks about Peter and John going to the temple every day making their prayers, participating in the Jewish liturgy of their day. They were already doing all of that.
They didn’t break away from Jewish identity tradition, poor observance.
No.
Which is a thought that I think most Gentiles have, which is like, oh, they’re Christian now. So the only reason they’re going to the synagogue is to
Convert evangelize
And evangelize Jewish people when that’s not what the text is showing us.
No, absolutely not. And even further into acts, we have Acts 18, Paul taking a vow, continuing acts. The reason why Paul was arrested at the end of Acts and spent all of his time where we get all of his letters from so many of them was because he was going into the temple doing his duty. And when you say doing his duty, it’s not like, oh, this is my obligation. Acts tells us He was so intent on getting back to Jerusalem, he was passionate about it so he could go to the temple. And that’s why they ended up arresting him is they were claiming that he brought a gentile in with him to the temple. And Paul was like, I didn’t do that. I didn’t bring, because Gentiles are allowed to come in to the outer. They had certain rules, but they were saying he was brought into a place where he couldn’t be in. And so just the fact that we continue to see this throughout axis, not even at the beginning, it’s throughout the entire
Book
That the earliest followers of Jesus continued to live this way. To me, I would be like, it just makes sense for the Gentiles then to anybody who wants to convert to come in, follow the God of Israel, to do the same thing and live the same way. But they came to the other conclusion based on scripture
And the Holy Spirit’s leading
The Holy Spirit in Acts 15, just very clearly, very spirit inspired this decision that Gentiles can be adopted into the family of Abraham, but they don’t have to do the same things. And so I think just reversing the assumption there, we just assume like, oh, we read not all Israel. As Israel, we assume that we start from the wrong place. I think try to start from the place that the earliest followers of Jesus were at and then take the steps from there rather than trying to do it the other way around. And you can kind of see that the burden is on bringing Gentiles into an arty Jewish family versus the other way around which we know now.
So what is the distinction between a Jewish follower of Jesus
And
A Jewish person that doesn’t follow Jesus? What is that distinction? Because I’ve talked to many pastors and theologians and they’re talking about the church, the church, the church. And I’ll say, well, messianic Jews or my Messianic Jewish friends, or this Messianic Jewish synagogue, and they’re like, they’re Christian. And you’re like, okay, again, we can talk about the definition of Christian. That’s its own conversation. I think many people would say, you’re making a distinction that’s not really there by saying Messianic Jew versus they’re just Christian now. Yeah, sure. They’re culturally Jewish is maybe what they would say. So what’s the difference between someone who’s culturally Jewish and follows Jesus and someone who’s culturally Jewish that doesn’t follow Jesus?
Yeah. There’s a couple ways you could answer, I guess. First, we know from Romans 11, right? Paul talks about Jewish followers of Jesus being like he traces it even back to the time of Elijah with the remnant that God preserves. So in one sense, a way to distinguish between Jewish followers of Jesus and Jewish people who don’t believe Jesus of their Messiah is this idea of there is a remnant preserved in believing, a believing remnant in a greater people of Israel. But in another sense, what you’re asking is kind of an identity statement for someone to say, I’m a Messianic Jew, versus someone to say, I’m a Christian follower of Jesus. I’m a messianic Jewish follower of Jesus. They’re making a statement about being a Jewish witness to Jesus. And I love this because it’s really, you know how in historic church traditions we have the, what’s it called, the papal. It goes back all the way to when you have the one pope says he’s descendant from the next, and it goes all the way back to Peter succession, apostolic succession, that’s what it’s called, right? In the same sense, I think we need to have this Jewish witness that is a succession all the way back. It’s an apostolic succession back to the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus.
And when I hear somebody really claiming like, Hey, I’m a Jewish follower of Jesus, I hear that kind of apostolic succession where I’m saying, Hey, you are a witness to the earliest followers of Jesus, and that’s a really, really important
Thing. And we don’t make space for Gentile, so we want to break everything down into, well, you’re just a Christian, but that actually erases Gentile identity. And if you erase Gentile identity, the next step is, well, then you have to erase Jewish identity again, Galatians three, there’s no longer Jew Gentile, which we don’t want to talk about. It also says there’s no longer male and female. We’re not talking about erasing that identity in the church. So there’s clearly this continual distinction,
And that goes back to where we started this idea of it being Israel hyphen church. If we don’t allow our job as gentile followers of Jesus is really to remove any hindrance, any obstacle toward a Jewish person being able to be a witness to the Jewish Messiah as far as in the expression of their Jewish identity. Paul’s pretty clear about that when he’s saying like, Hey, you Gentiles, don’t boast. Don’t think, Hey, it does
Now
I’m the root. Now. It’s like he says, don’t do that. And so our job, he talks about in Romans 11 and provoking to jealousy and those kinds of things, but we really need to make sure we are not standing in the way of other Jewish people being able to freely express their Jewish identity. And I think that that is really a big takeaway for the church to be able to say humbly like, Hey, we’re making space for you to be led by the spirit. Not saying you have to express your Jewish identity. All it is is just making space to say, if you are led by the spirit in whatever way that is, be free to express how God’s leading you, which
Is the opposite of what the church has done in the generally. Historically, the church has tried to convince Jewish people that have put their faith in Yeshua, Jesus, that they need to now abandon Jewish identity and take on what they would call Christian identity and all that Jewish stuff was demonic, was wrong, was done away with, has been replaced, whatever terminology
They were used, even as early as Justin Martyr, we’re talking about early second, third century. You can see this polemic that comes in and it’s like, Hey, it’s kind of a weaker thing to lean on your Jewish identity, and now you have a new freedom to express of being a Christian, a follower of Jesus. So don’t go back to those old ways. And some of it’s just misreading of Paul is all it is.
Yeah. So let’s talk about the church today. You talked about we need to hold space for the identity of Jewish believers to express their Jewish identity
That
We make space, which would then kind of mean we also need to make space for our gentile identity. We have videos and teachings that we’ve done on what does gentile mean? I think some people think it means pagan and no one wants to be a pagan, so we can’t be gentiles anymore, which we would defend that Gentile is not a curse word, a bad word. It doesn’t mean pagan nations. So I think a lot of people in the church, regardless of what they believe on, about Israel, about the Jewish people, about Messianic Judaism, there is a hunger to go back to the book of Acts. It’s like a heart cry of the church. It’s like we just got to go back to the book of vax. Whether that means that we’re in a closer, tighter knit community, whether that means we’re seeing the miracles that they saw in the early church, whether that means that we’re more unified and don’t have all these divisions like we do in the modern church. You’ve talked about that desire of the church going back to acts. How do you see that desire and how should we go back or should we even
Desire to go back?
Yeah, I mean some scholars of acts specifically will talk about as blueprint approach to the book of Acts. And I think does
That mean using acts like a blueprint for how we should do church?
Yeah. It’s basically looking at all of just reading it very literally and saying that’s the way that we need to be doing it now. And I think it’s all good and sincere coming from sincere places. But like we said earlier about going to synagogue, going to temple, well, going to the temple is impossible now unless you begin to get metaphorical. But then that’s a totally different kind of interpretation. But if you want to get back to acts as a blueprint model, then there’s a very different way of life. The earliest followers of Jesus lived and steeped in Jewish tradition, steeped in the liturgy of the synagogue that might look shockingly different to some in evangelical streams. And so when I hear that like, oh, we just have to do it the exact way, the closer we can get to the way the earliest followers of Jesus worshiped and lived their life, then the better we’ll be. When I hear that, I’m like, I see what you mean. You
Quote Jesus, you’re like, I don’t know if you know what you’re asking.
Right? I see what you mean. But I think, well, maybe I say it a different way too. So oftentimes when I see people get this revelation of the Jewish Foundation of the faith, and they see the Jewish Jesus, there’s this pool that immediately starts to happen where they get pulled in and they say, oh, I understand now, and I want to be like that. Jesus. If
I want to be like Jesus, then I should do what he did.
Yes. And there’s almost kind like I’ve had a bag over my head for so long and now the blinders have been opened, and now I see this in a new light. And so they have a desire to get back to something that’s more of an authentic faith. And honestly, that’s partly where I started in my journey of wanting to study Messianic Judaism is this thought of there’s something more authentic here. When we get closer to this Jewish foundation, we get closer to the authenticity of our faith and all that’s good and valuable. And we’ve talked a lot about over the years at Center for Israel, about one law theology and the extremes that people can get pulled into when they go down that road and they say, okay, so that means if Jesus to observant, I need to be observant and all that. But what can happen as well, subtly, we might not realize it, is that we can begin to devalue the last 2000 years of church history and assume, okay, if acts as the blueprint model, then it’s all about getting back there and we can miss the fact that, wait a second, sovereign over the church, over the people of God over the centuries entries. If that’s the case, if Acts was really what it was all about then is God’s plan really to kind of have a 2000 year hiatus between authentic Christianity and now we’re the new authentic Christianity 2000 years later. To me that would be CS Lewis is, he talks about chronological snobbery where just because we’re forward in time, we are the more advanced ones,
Therefore we’re smarter.
Yeah, we’re so much smarter because we’re in the future, we’re looking back and we’re like, oh, 15 hundreds they started to get it right, maybe a little bit, but now we know what we’re talking about.
Yeah. One of the greatest fallacies is that ancient people were stupid.
Right.
It’s just baked into our understanding of
History. We just assume everybody’s barbaric, but humans are humans. We got the same brain always. But anyway, I think that’s part of the thing that can come in with people is that we start to devalue the church. And especially in evangelical circles, we have a very low ecclesiology, poor ecclesiology.
Does that mean studying of the church or understanding of the church history?
Yeah, it’s basically your theology of the church, what you believe the church is. What the church does.
Yeah. Evangelicals of the denominations seem to be the most unrooted.
Yeah.
There’s not a lot of tradition. There’s not a lot of, we’ve been doing this for thousands of years. I think there’s certain things clearly that are, we’re going back to the Book of Acts. We’re kind of skipping over church history to get, like you said, back to some roots, which there’s some good things about that.
Absolutely.
But you can feel untethered
And
You can walk into a church service and be like, where’s this in scripture? We get here,
And I think you said, you mentioned this idea of really getting back to the Book of Acts. It’s surfaced many times throughout history, so there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a good impulse,
It’s great
Desire. Always getting back to it’s scripture,
Right?
It’s a good impulse. Not saying it’s
Like pruning.
Yeah.
You want the fruit to come, so theres going to be some things you cut off. I dunno where we got that from. Cut that off. But it can’t be to burn down the tree every
Couple hundred years. Yes, definitely not. But it’s a right impulse. And the one we’re currently the inheritors of is really this mix of the Puritans who came from, you had the Church of England that was started after the Reformation, and the Puritans in England believed that the Church of England didn’t go far enough with their reformations. And so there was this impulse of like, Hey, let’s get back to the book of Acts. And we really are the inheritors in North America with the free church with non-denominational that sprung up. We really are the inheritors of a lot of that mix of the Puritanism, the Pietism from, if you know John Wesley in Methodism Evangelicals especially, we’ve inherited so much from Wesley in the first great awakening, but that came from John Wesley’s encounter with the pietism of the Moravian missionaries. And so we’re just this mix here in North America. And so it makes sense to me that we constantly have this impulse, let’s go back the book of Acts.
It’s like in our roots is this desire to go back to the pure form.
And so it is great. I am a hundred percent there. I just think that we shouldn’t devalue so much of who the church is over the centuries because God really is sovereign over his
People.
And there’s a greater manifold wisdom that God wants to reveal to us if we’re willing to see it and not just look at this Israel piece over here and not just look at the church piece, but really in a whole, not a popular word, but ecumenical a whole ecumenical vision. But bringing in Israel in the church, we can see and honor all of the last 2000 years
Ecumenical meaning like the unity.
Yeah. Ecumenical meaning the various branches. So if you’re Baptist, some people will have a strong opinion about whether Orthodox, Christians, Catholics, everybody has opinions about that kind of stuff. But it’s just seeing, so like Calvin said, John Calvin said, wherever the word is preached, the word of Christ and the sacraments are so like baptism, communion, those types of
Things.
There is the church, Christ is present in the church, and that’s a very Protestant view because Orthodox, they would say they wouldn’t necessarily agree that us as Protestants are Christians, they say you have to be a part of the Orthodox church to be Christian. But my point really is viewing the church in this broad sense of wherever Christ is being
Preached,
Wherever the word is, the word of God, the sacraments there is the church.
And
So why can’t we have this broader vision of the church and really bring this Israel piece in to it, which is so vital. It’s not like one is more important than the other. We hold them both together and don’t try to devalue one or throw the baby out with the bathwater so that we’re only holding on to the Jewish roots and getting lost in that stuff only without valuing all of church history as well. So yeah, when we talk about the whole blueprint of Acts thing, all these thoughts start to come to my mind of like, but I don’t want you to miss the fact I love what happened with Francis of Assisi and I love all throughout history, all the incredible things that God has done. And when we just hold to the Jewish root of the early church, we might throw everything else out and assume with chronological snobbery that right now we know the best. It’s the best
It’s ever been. Yeah. You, you’re really speaking to being able to straddle and wrestle and hold tension and nuance. These things that we desire to be black and white. There’s a desire even for me to be like, just tell me which one. The right one is, what’s the right branch? It’s like that’s what we desire. And it’s more complicated than that. And I talked to so many evangelical Christians, and you mentioned the Catholic church, you might as well be just talking about something evil. And it’s like we talk about replacement theology, we talk about the church’s mistreat mistreating Israel and the Jewish people, and sometimes their response is, that was the Catholic church. And you’re like, that was the only church there for a hot minute. But we want to make that distinction. No, that was the wrong And where the right, and it’s harder. It’s always harder to hold tension.
Yeah. And it’s funny that you mentioned that that was a Catholic church. There is this view, so talking back about ecclesiology of understanding the church, kind of Mary, kind of like a mother. And we all have been burst in a sense through into the church, but also through the church because what we know now, we received from somebody, everybody’s received the message from somebody, the gospel, from somebody, and you can trace it back down. And so to say, oh, the church of the 15th century, the church of the 12th century, that didn’t matter. It’s like, yes, it did matter. We’re all we’re products, we’re all in connection. We’re all the products
Of something like you just tracing us back to the Puritans.
It’s
Like what? No. Evangelicalism was just like the Holy Spirit just did it randomly on its own over here in the
Corner. If only it happened that way, you could trace every movement back to roots. And the great thing is that it all comes back to the Jewish Foundation.
So is there any last thoughts that you have for us as we wrap up? Our listeners may be now starting to wrestle with how do I view the other denominations of the church and my own understanding of what denomination I’m a part of and how I can bring in the understanding of this messianic remnant or the Gentile identity within my denomination? I think that’s important, is what we’re not trying to do is what you’re saying is create non-denominational evangelical Christians wherever Christians are like, let’s take this Protestant church that should be a non-denominational, this Catholic church that should be a non-denominational church. Pentecostal. Let’s do yet I think most denominations feel that if I’m a part of the right
One,
These are things that we need to wrestle with and really think deeply about before making these
Judgements.
So given everything we’ve talked about, what would be any final thoughts or things that you would urge our listeners to pray into? Where do we go from here?
Yeah, definitely. If you find yourself in a church tradition, say you’re a part of a Baptist church or a Pentecostal church, definitely seek out whatever tradition you belong to. Seek out what that tradition’s history is with the Jewish people. Because turns out, most churches, most traditions have had to deal with it at some point in history, especially the older ones where they’ve made some statements. And when you can kind of seek that out, learn a bit more, study a bit more, yes, I know it’s not fun to have to do your own research sometimes, but really get into it to figure out, hey, how has this church that I’m a part of now historically related to this issue? And I mean, my advice is always just to steep yourself in the book of Romans 9, 3 11. Don’t stop studying and reading those
Things
Because the more of the word of God you get in you, I think the clearer it becomes over time. And so I don’t ever want to push people away from if they’re involved in a church and it’s not like, Hey, your church doesn’t have a right. It’s
Not a cult.
And if it’s not a cult, right, if it is cult, please call us. We’ll help. But yeah, always get into what scripture’s saying and try to seek for unity wherever you’re at. If your first impulse is leave or do something that is the opposite of unity. Yeah.
Cancel culture.
Yeah. I think you might need to pause and rethink because God’s heart is always for the bond of peace and unity. Right. That’s always what we’re after.
Yeah. That’s so good. It reminds me, there’s a man named Dr. Tom Blake who has a YouTube channel called Grafted. Check him out. And they, maybe we’ll have Tom here sometime explain it. I want to steal his thunder, but he talks about the menorah being this icon that the church, early church used to describe the church, which I mean talk about offending both Jews and Christians saying the church is like a menorah, you’re like already offensive. And yet he says the different arms, or as you would say, branches like the olive tree and the menorah are the different denominations. And there should be an understanding of Jew and Gentile in every
Denomination.
Like you said, wherever is, I can’t remember who you said. Wherever the church,
Right? Yeah. Where the word of God, the
Word of God is
Preached.
Any place where that’s happening, there should be this understanding of J and Gentile. That’s the unity that we’re seeking for. Not that we all just burn whatever we have to the ground, figuratively, and start fresh with this right denomination. But what if God’s heart and all of this was to bring this understanding of June Gentile into all of these denominations because there’s good in all of ’em. And of course there’s things that probably need to be pruned in all of them. Absolutely. So I a hundred
Percent agree. Yes. I’m right there with you.
Thank you for coming and being apart. This is not going to be your last time on the podcast. That’s great. We got things we need to dive into. But thank you for being a part. Yeah, man. Thanks. Bye. And we’ll see you next time.