Loveland Protestant Reformed Church
709 East
57th Street; Loveland, CO 80538
Services: 9:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. June
through August)
Vol. 6, No. 9 Pastor: Rev. Garry Eriks Phone: (970)
667-9481
Homepage on Internet: http://www.prca.org
Content:
The Unity of the Church in All Ages
Sabbath
Observance
Does Amillennialism have Roman
Catholic Roots?
There is one aspect of the Church's unity of which we have not spoken. That is the unity of the church in the Old and New Testaments.
This aspect of the Church's unity means that Israel is the Church of the Old Testament and the Church of the New Testament is the true Israel of God. Few seem to see this, yet the Bible is clear on the matter.
That Israel is the Church and the Church Israel is also an important truth. It lies at the root of a defense of infant baptism (one Church, one covenant, one sign of the covenant). Likewise, it is essential in avoiding the errors of dispensationalism (the teaching that Israel and the Church are two different entities and have two different futures).
Acts 7:38 shows us clearly that Israel and the Church are one. There Israel is called "the church in the wilderness" (and the usual NT word for the church is used).
This is also clear from Philippians 3:3, where Paul, speaking to a Gentile church, says: "For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh" (cf. also Rom. 3:28-29, Gal. 3:29). All who worship God in spirit and love our Lord Jesus are the Jews.
As far as the Bible is concerned, being a real Jew has nothing to do with physical descent from Abraham, i.e., with one's genealogy and natural birth. As far as that goes, the Bible says, "God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham" (Jn. 3:9). A real Jew, according to Scripture is one who is born by the power of the promise (Rom. 9:8), who has the same justifying faith as Abraham (Gal. 3:8-9), who, like Abraham, belongs to Christ (Gal. 3:29), and who is circumcised in heart (Rom. 3:29). The rest are not counted as Jews (Rom. 3:28) and have nothing to do with the promises (Acts 2:39).
The unity of Israel and the Church is also clear from Hosea 1:10-11 and its quotation in Romans 9:24-26 and from Amos 9:11-15 and its quotation in Acts 15:13-17. In the Hosea passage the Word of God makes reference to the Ten Tribes and to their future restoration. Romans 9:24-26 shows us that this prophecy is fulfilled in the gathering of the New Testament church from both Jews and Gentiles.
In Amos 9:11-15 we read again of the restoration of the nation of Israel to its own land and to the rebuilding of the temple. Acts 15, however, makes clear that this is fulfilled in the gathering of the Gentiles into the New Testament church. The building again of the tabernacle of David, which was fallen down and ruined (vs. 16) refers, according to James, to God's visiting the Gentiles "to take out of them a people for his name" (vs. 14).
It is only when we see this truth that we will begin to realize that the OT as well as the New is for us as NT Christians. Its promises, even its threats, are not for some foreign people with whom we have nothing to do, but are for us and for our children. What a difference that makes in the reading of the OT! Then we do not read with a veil over our eyes but with understanding and profit. Ronald Hanko
Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days. Col. 2:16
Before we enter our discussion of the passage quoted above, I ought to insert a remark or two for our readers who may be disappointed that the questions they have submitted have not be treated in our bulletin. The reason is that, while we are deeply appreciative of the many questions which have been sent in, we cannot possibly treat them all because we would have to publish the Newsletter every week for over a year to succeed. I have nearly 50 questions in front of me which need answering. The result is that I try to choose those questions which will have the widest possible interest and which are, as much as possible, matters which concern our readers as a whole. I hope our readers will be understanding and patient. But this does not mean that you should quit sending in questions. Please do and we will get at them when it is possible.
The following question was sent in for discussion in connection with the verse quoted above: "In the light of the fourth commandment and the fact that many Christians also do sport, etc. on [the Lord's Day], is it right to quote Rom. 14:5 and Col. 2:16 in defense of such a stance? It seems to me that Col. 2:16 refers to Jewish sabbaths."
Sabbath observance is in decline in our day. It is a dreadful departure from the law of God which will not go unpunished. The evidences of it are legion. Towns and villages in which all places of business used to be closed on the Lord's Day now are open for business and are as busy (if not busier) on the Lord's Day than on a week day.
Churches once full are now nearly empty, especially if a second service is held, and people no longer go to church. People engage in every kind of activity which is a normal part of their life on weekdays and think nothing of watching sports on TV, going to parks and beaches, shopping in the open stores, eating in restaurants, doing work around the house such as mowing the lawn, and desecrating the Sabbath as if it is their day and not the day of the Lord.
Theologians are partly to blame for this. It is current thinking among many pastors and teachers in the church that no difference from any other day of the week can be ascribed to the Lord's Day. This position is rather piously described in this way: "Every day of the week is Sabbath in the New Dispensation." This rather pious expression is, in fact, a mere ploy by means of which people are told, not so much that every day is Sabbath, but that the Sabbath is like every other day.
God has set the first day of the week apart as the New Testament day of rest. We are, on this day, to obey the fourth commandment. We are to lay aside the work that occupies us on the other days of the week and spend the day in spiritual activities, chief of which is that we spend as much time as possible in church to worship with the saints, call upon the name of our God, and be fed with the everlasting gospel of our salvation.
There is good reason why the New Testament Sabbath is kept on the first day of the week instead of on the seventh -- as in the Old Dispensation. We cannot go into that in this article, but our readers are urged to order from the Protestant Reformed Churches a pamphlet with the title: "Proper Sabbath Observance." (Write to the address on the heading of this bulletin.)
Many keep asking the question: "May we do this on the Sabbath?" or, "May we do that?" This is the wrong question. We must ask ourselves: "What good can I do on the Sabbath?" If we ask that question, we will indeed find that there are so many things to do that we are busier on the Sabbath than during the week. We can (and must) go to church. We can visit the sick and shut-ins. We can go to the homes for the aged and ease their loneliness with good words from the gospel. We can read books that have to do with heavenly and spiritual things. We can spend time in prayer and meditation. There is no lack of things to do.
The texts quoted (Col. 2:16, Rom. 14:5) indeed refer to the keeping of prescribed feasts in the Old Dispensation which was the time of types and shadows. These feasts are no longer required of us, and those who insist on keeping them would bring us back to the bondage of the law.
But the fourth commandment remains in force -- as do all the commandments. Although the day was changed from Saturday to Sunday, from the last day of the week to the first day of the week, the keeping of the day is still our joy and privilege. Prof. H. Hanko
Does Amillennialism have Roman Catholic Roots?
A friend writes: "It has been claimed from a booklet published in 1996 that Amillenialism is rooted in Roman Catholicism. In defense of his view, the author quotes from the Reformers, Calvin, Augustine, Grier, Berkhof, Hoeksema, Boettner, and many others, trying to prove that their teaching is only a popish heresy."
The booklet referred to is by Paul A. Bailey and is titled The Supreme Irony: An exposure of the Roman Catholic Roots of A-millennial Calvinism, published by Penfold Book and Bible House. That the booklet is not only an attack on amillennialism, but also on Calvinism (which gets the first slap) is evident from the title.
In so far as the booklet deals with milleniallism it is an attempt to answer the long-standing charge that a futurist (the author is a dispensationalist) view of prophecy, particularly the idea of pre-tribulation rapture, has roots in Roman Catholicism and Jesuitism through the efforts of Ribera and Lacunza. Along the way the author takes a few swipes at Calvinism and paedobaptism as well.
Most of the book is simply an ad hominum attack which attacks the persons involved without addressing the issues. For example, amillennialism must be wrong because Calvin taught it and Calvinism comes from Augustine who "started what is now called Roman Catholicism" (p. 4). Calvin himself must be wrong because he taught "that all children of believers are regenerate in the womb and are to be sprinkled as a sure sign of the regeneration that has already taken place" (p. 22).
Calvin, according to him, also taught "that Christ is present in the emblems of the bread and wine at the Lord's Supper, and that spiritual life is communicated through partaking of these" (p. 22). Anyone who knows anything of Calvin's teaching will see that the author of the booklet does not even have his facts right.
One of the most laughable things in the booklet is the fact that author argues that amillennialism(along with Calvinism) must be wrong because Augustine taught it (this, by the way, is all the "proof" he has for its Romish origins), while arguing at the same time that "the whole system of futurist interpretation," to which he holds, was taught by early church fathers (pp. 8, 17).
In the same way, he admits on page 8 that futurism was "promulgated" by the Jesuits "in an attempt to lift the symbols of Babylon and the anti-Christ out of contemporary history" (the charge that futurism has Jesuit roots also suggests that the Romans Catholics took it up to disprove the charges of the Reformers that the Pope was Antichrist - i.e., if Antichrist is wholly future the Pope cannot be he). Having made this admission and himself denied that the Pope is Antichrist, Bailey proceeds to prove that amillennialism is popish by tracing it back to Augustine.
The booklet is mass of misrepresentations, outright lies, misunderstandings, and unproved assertions and not worth the paper it is written on. Be warned against the company that publishes this sort of stuff! Rev. R. Hanko