Replacement theology is the driving force behind most interpretations of the Bible, leading many into deception. In the 1500s a Catholic astronomer named Copernicus proposed that the earth revolved around the sun, which the church deemed to be foolish and philosophically absurd. In 1616 the Catholic Church officially warned another Catholic astronomer, Galileo, who affirmed Copernicus’s theory.
The Roman Inquisition conducted a heresy trial where Galileo was forced to recant his beliefs publicly. He was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. The church refused to accept this theory, citing a literal interpretation of Scripture that holds that Joshua made the sun stand still. It wasn’t until 1822 that the Catholic Church allowed Galileo’s 1632 book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems to be printed, and it was finally removed from their index of forbidden books in 1835. Not until 1992 did Pope John Paul II acknowledge that the church was wrong in persecuting him.
I say this because I believe that the view of the “church” being at the center of the theological universe is equally untrue. God declared His firstborn Son to be Israel: “And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn: and I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn” (Exod. 4:22–23).
Even though your firstborn may cause you all kinds of trouble, you can never replace them. Today non-Jews are the branches being grafted into believing Israel, and as it says in Romans 11, we are not to be boastful and high-minded about this. This warning in Romans 11 is referring to the fact that the adopted
children better not think they are any holier or better than the natural children.
An Identity Theft
Many people today have gone through the disaster of identity theft. There is nothing like having your identity stolen and having to prove that you are you. I have heard stories of terrible cases where people had to prove they were still alive and argue with a bank or agency about it.
The most significant identity robbery was of Yeshua’s. In art you will see a Caucasian Jesus, a Black Jesus, a Chinese Jesus, a Mexican Jesus, and even a Native American Jesus. Everyone wants to create God in their image rather than accept the fact that every race has been made in His image.
Today, with the advancement of AI, influencers want to manipulate public attitudes by reproducing AI clones of people saying things they have never said. The concept of fake news has been with us since the beginning of time, but it has grown only more sophisticated. This is why they say that the victor writes history. Look at the changes that have taken place throughout American history. Was Christopher Columbus a good guy or a bad guy?
We are conditioned to believe what we have been taught, and we lean heavily and emotionally in a particular direction. Do we want to erase history and eliminate anything we do not like, such as statues of Civil War generals? How about ISIS, which destroys ancient archaeological sites to create a history that is
more palatable to them?
More than 2,300 years ago, the first example of replacement theology occurred around 168 BC. The Samaritans claimed to be the true Jewish people. But when Antiochus IV Epiphanes came during the historical events of Hanukkah and was ready to destroy the Jews, suddenly, they were no longer faithful Jews. Even today, people claim that the Jews in Israel are not the real Jews.
So many people are having an identity crisis. Among the body of Messiah, some Gentiles want to identify as Jews, wearing Jewish clothing and claiming to be from one of the lost tribes. We need to find our identity in the Messiah.
Among both the extreme Left and Right are some who want to eliminate the Jewish people, and, in the middle, some want to pretend they are Jews. And some Jews do not want anyone to know they are Jewish. Masquerading has been going on for millennia.
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The Bible records how Jacob masqueraded as Esau, Tamar as a prostitute, Joseph as an Egyptian, Esther as a non-Jew, and so forth. To fool believers, the Antichrist will also try to deceive the church through charades. Why did Joseph’s brothers not recognize him when they came to Egypt? It was because Joseph was masquerading as an Egyptian. He looked Egyptian, spoke Egyptian, and followed Egyptian customs.
To this day, for the last 2,000 years, the church has been presenting an Egyptian Jesus to the Jewish people, expecting the Jews to recognize Him. How in the world could the Jewish people accept a Messiah with an English transliteration for a name and who did away with the Torah and their traditions, their calendar, their priesthood, their capital city, and their commandments?
Anyone who still believes the church has replaced the Jewish people will be easily deceived by the Antichrist. This is why this chapter is needed. Today many believe the church has replaced Israel in the plan of God rather than being grafted into God’s plan for Israel. We have to remember the wheat and tares were sown in the same field, and Satan has become the expert at sowing discord within the body of Messiah over the last several thousand years.
Most believers do not realize how prophetic the Book of Ruth is for today. Orpah and Ruth, the two Moabite women, represent the church that is grafted into Israel. In Hebrew the name Ruth means friend; Orpah means the back of the neck or to turn your back on. Orpah ends up giving Naomi a token kiss, turns her back on her, and returns to her pagan gods. Ruth, though, befriends Naomi and works the harvest in Israel from Passover to Pentecost. Through her marriage to Boaz, Ruth descended from King David.
You may not be aware, but rabbinic tradition tells us that just as Ruth descended from David, Orpah descended from Goliath. I believe Ruth represents the faithful church and Orpah the counterfeit church. The final battle in these last days will be between the Goliath/woke church and the David/awakened church over who will stand with the God of Israel.
The major problems from the very beginning were arrogance and anti-Semitism. Did you know the apostle John was once kicked out of the church? Not only that, but all the Jews were also kicked out of the church, along with any Gentile who wanted the Jews to stay. It’s in every Bible, and it is too often overlooked. (See 3 John.)
Luke 22:24–25 describes strife among the disciples over who would be the greatest. Yeshua told them not to be like the Gentiles who always want prominence in order to exercise lordship over others and to exert their authority. The disciples, though, were to exercise servant leadership (v. 26).
If I told you my name was Igor, Paco, or Mohammed, you would probably think you know where I was from. In 3 John 9, the apostle writes that a Gentile named Diotrephes has taken over the synagogue and will not even allow the apostle John to come in! He recognizes no authority but his own. On top of that, Diotrephes won’t even allow John’s brethren (the Jews) to come into the synagogue either. Then we find that he doesn’t allow in other Gentiles who do want the Jews to be allowed in, and he even kicks out of the church all the Gentiles who desire Jews to enter. This assembly was in Asia Minor and most likely near Ephesus.
So now, Gentiles who knew only Greek philosophy as a moral base were teaching the Scriptures, and they didn’t even know Hebrew. Nor were they familiar with the Torah except through a Greek translation, which they were using to try to understand Hebraic concepts.
They also did not understand the Jewish culture or their idioms, and most didn’t even care to. A perfect example is when Peter denied the Messiah three times and the rooster crowed (Luke 22:60–62). Did you know that there was a prohibition against raising chickens or roosters in Jerusalem at that time? Chickens were not acceptable as a sacrifice.
The truth is, just as the words general, captain, or president are titles, the Hebrew word gever, meaning a man or a rooster,1 is also related to Gevini, a title given to the temple crier who would call out three times every morning to tell the people it was time to get ready for the morning service. Many people are familiar with the Muslim call to prayer made over a loudspeaker. In ancient times, the temple crier had the title of the rooster! We still use the idiom today when we talk about a man who acts like the rooster in a hen house. So yes, the rooster crowed, but it wasn’t a rooster. This is not a theological problem but an authenticity problem.
So many things are missed in translations from Greek to English without a Hebrew understanding of the culture. Another example is found in Acts 3:1, where “Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour.” Wrong translation! It was at the hour of the prayer. The ninth hour is 3:00 p.m., the time of the evening sacrifice. The prayer at this time was known as the amidah, or the standing prayer, because amidah means to stand. Even back then, it was an ancient prayer written several hundred years earlier. This prayer was prayed three times a day. This means Yeshua prayed this prayer three times a day for His entire life.
I believe 100 percent in the inspiration of the Bible in its original language, which is why you must “study to shew thyself approved” (2 Tim. 2:15). We must fight with everything we have for authenticity. The Bible plainly declares that not one jot or tittle will pass away from the Torah (Matt. 5:18), which refers to the Torah in the Hebrew language. I believe that even in the New Testament, several of the books were originally in Hebrew. It is obvious by the writing style, and when you translate them back into Hebrew, you see poetry that is not seen in any other language.
Pastor Mark Biltz is the founder of El Shaddai Ministries and livestreams his messages every weekend to over 200 cities in twenty nations. He has spoken in over 20 nations and authored several best-selling books such as “Decoding the Antichrist” and “Decoding Jeremiah.” His new book, The Final Tyrant, is available on Amazon.com.
