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The Kingdom of Israel

John Shepard

April 8, 2002

Who Believed What

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End Time Prophecy Leads to Rome | The Kingdom of Israel

The purpose of this article is to show which early church fathers believed in which end-time viewpoint.

Who was Premillennial

Who was not Premillennial

The Church is Israel

Who Believed What

Who was Premillennial

Papias, Justin Martyr, Aviricius Marcellus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Cyprian, Nepos, Commodianus, Lactantius.

But note: ALL of these had one or more of the following problems with their thinking:

• Their view was inconsistent with modern premillennialism. So how can they really be used to support modern premillennialism?
• They referred to 6,000 years of human history which is wrong. Some of these writers based their entire end-time scheme on this idea -- if the foundation is bad the conclusions are also bad. This idea originated with the Jews and was borrowed by some early church fathers.
• They believed that the world would end at a certain time and it didn't. Usually this error was in conjunction with the previous one.

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Who was not Premillennial

Mathetes, Hermas, Clement of Rome, Didache, Barnabas, Irenaeus, Hegesippus, Origen, Victorinus of Pettau, Coracion, Methodius, Eusebius, Augustine.

The Church is Israel

The formula "the church = Israel" is central to amillennialism. Dispensational premillennialists cannot accept this formula, and historical premillennialists must apply many of the end-time prophetic passages to Israel and not to the church (as amillennialists do).

If an early church father believed that "the church = Israel" then it would cast serious doubts on whether they were really premillennial in the modern understanding.

Dallas Seminary Dispensationalist Alan Patrick Boyd writes, "The Majority of the writers/writings in this period (70-165 A.D.) completely identify Israel with the church. He specifically cites Papias, I Clement, 2 Clement, Barnabus, Hermas, the Didache, and Justin Martyr. "

Boyd notes that in the case of Barnabus, . . . he has totally disassociated Israel from the precepts of the Old Testament. In fact he specifically designates the Church to be the heir of the covenantal promises made to Israel

Elsewhere he writes that Papias applied much of Old Testament to the Church.

Of Hermas he notes the "employment of the phraseology of late Judaism to make the Church the True Israel."

Of Justin Martyr he claims that the Church is the true Israelitic race, thereby blurring the distinction between Israel and the Church:

Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho the Jew "even so we, who have been quarried out from the bowels of Christ are the true Israelitic race."

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© Copyright 2007 by John Shepard