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Saul's Suicide

The Roman church just committed suicide by denying that Jesus Christ is the only name under heaven whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12). Pope Francis has proclaimed that Jews do not need Christ, because they are already under a covenant with God by virtue of their religion or their race. The official church policy now recognizes that the Jews are “chosen,” regardless of their spiritual condition. In fact, by this new standard, even secular or atheistic Jews are already saved and do not even need to practice Judaism in any form.

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So the conflict between Jesus and the temple priests in Jerusalem has officially ended with the Christian capitulation to Judaism. Judaism was right after all, says the Pope. The next step—give it twenty years or so—will be to admit that Christianity is simply a false form of Judaism. Then we will see the great reconciliation, as Christianity is once again brought back into Judaism. The Jews will concede publicly that Jesus was a “good man,” well-intentioned, but wrong. The church will then give up the notion that He was truly the Messiah.

Compromising Core Principles

I myself believe that we should be at peace with all men as much as possible. I have never advocated hating anyone else, mistreating them, or even being mean to others. I can even compromise things that are of lesser importance. In Paul’s day, he advocated giving up one’s freedom to eat meat sacrificed to idols in order to keep peace with those who were offended by it. There is no need to destroy our brethren by a piece of meat.

However, there are core principles that cannot be compromised without destroying the foundations of Christianity itself. One of these core principles is that all must go through Jesus in order to be saved (Acts 4:12), or to come into immortality. This is clearly taught in the New Testament. Jesus Himself taught it (John 14:6). Jesus is the only Mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5), and He mediated the New Covenant (Hebrews 12:24).

The New Covenant did not make any exceptions. It did not exclude Israel or Judah from its provisions or from its requirements. Hebrews 8:8 says,

⁸ For finding fault with them [Israel], He says, “Behold, days are coming,” says the Lord, “when I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.”

In the book of Romans, Paul tells us clearly that there is no distinction between ethnic groups in this matter of salvation. All have sinned, regardless of ethnicity (Romans 3:23), and so all must apply the blood of Jesus by faith to their own sinful condition. Romans 10:12, 13 says,

¹² For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call upon Him; ¹³ for “Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”

This is the core of Christian faith. One cannot compromise this without destroying the foundations of Christianity itself.

Limited Universalism

Dual Covenant Theology is a strange and contradictory doctrine of Limited Universalism. It is based on the idea that the Jews are under an unconditional covenant with God, meaning that they are saved by that covenant which bypasses Jesus and goes directly to the Father. No mediation is needed from Christ.

Even more astounding is that Dual Covenant Theology would not work at all unless it is recognized that the New Covenant is God’s vow to men and that God is doing it purely by grace. That understanding of the New Covenant is certainly true, but to apply it in a limited way—for Jews only—is where the perversion lies. This teaching of Limited Universalism believes that Jews are saved in spite of their rejection of Christ.

The truth is that God has vowed that all men—aliens included—will be His people (Deuteronomy 29:12, 13, 14, 15). God vowed to do this by His own power. This did not mean that all would be saved apart from Christ, but that God has taken the responsibility upon Himself to turn every man’s heart to Christ at some point in time. Most people, of course, will not do so in their life time, but certainly every knee will bow to Christ at the Great White Throne. Every tongue will then confess Him as Lord (Isaiah 45:23, 24). They will still have to go through the Age of Judgment in order to grow to spiritual maturity, but in the end all indeed will be saved.

But Dual Covenant Theology is a massive perversion of the truth. Not only does it limit the New Covenant principle to Jews, it also offers salvation to Jews apart from Christ. The blood of Jesus is no longer necessary to cover the sin of Jews, because supposedly, God has a separate covenant with them that forgives Jews apart from Christ.

The Judas Factor

To propose such doctrine is to deny and betray Christ Himself. Those who teach this have joined Judas in the second work of Christ. Dual Covenant Theology itself is the great apostasy at the end of this age. It first developed in non-Catholic circles among Christian Zionists such as Jerry Falwell and John Hagee. Now the Judas company has encompassed the Vatican itself.

The Vatican officially adopted the Judas Doctrine this past week. I admit that this took me by surprise. I was not surprised by John Hagee’s adoption of this, but I thought the Roman church had enough history to resist it. After all, how could 265 “infallible” popes be overruled by the 266^th pope? It seemed inconceivable to me.

The Church Dies by Suicide

And yet I have wondered (since 1993) how the Vatican would be overthrown. The year 1993 was the 40^th Jubilee of the Church. It was the end of the church wandering in the wilderness. The 40 years of Israel’s wandering correlates with the 40 Jubilees of Church history.

It is also the end of Saul’s 40-year reign (i.e., 40 Jubilees). Hence, in 1993 Saul “died” and we began to transition into the reign of David. I understood the 7½ year transition period as per 2 Samuel 5:5, which ended November 30, 2000. But still the Vatican lived on. I figured that at some point the Vatican must die—not the Catholic people, of course, but the religion itself with its government. But yet it continued to live on.

I saw the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005 as a prophetic foreshadowing of the death of the church. But he was replaced by Pope Benedict and now by Pope Francis. I wondered how the death of King Saul might play out in prophecy.

Now suddenly it is clear. Saul died by suicide, as he was losing a battle against the Philistines. “Saul took his sword and fell on it” (1 Samuel 31:4). The Roman church too has just committed suicide by making itself irrelevant and unnecessary insofar as salvation is concerned. One no longer needs to become a Catholic to be saved. Jews are saved already, so Catholics should not try to convert them. And, by extension, if a person converts to Judaism and becomes a Jew, he immediately comes under the Abrahamic covenant and is saved—with the added benefit that he can also be “chosen” to rule the world with or without Christ.

The Repudiation of Replacement Theology

In essence, the Vatican has given up its doctrine of Replacement Theology, which emerged about the year 200 A.D. in the teachings of Hippolytus and Origen. It is the idea that the Church replaced the Jews as the inheritors of the covenant. Inherent in Pope Francis’ new theology is the view that the Jews never lost that covenant. Therefore, the church was wrong for 1800 years and was never the inheritor of the Abrahamic covenant.

My view, of course, is that the church never replaced the Jews at all. It was not a replacement. The church is Judah, because they followed the King of Judah, the rightful Heir to the throne. Hence, Paul says that true Jews are not those with physical circumcision, but those with heart circumcision (Romans 2:28, 29). Those who rejected the King essentially left the tribe and no longer have the right to call themselves Jews.

Further, by the law of sacrifice (Leviticus 17:1-6), any Jew who fails to recognize Christ’s death on the cross as a sacrifice for sin is “cut off from among his people” (Leviticus 17:4). In other words, he is no longer a part of his tribe or nation. He is, at it were, stateless, regardless of his genealogy.

Those who followed King Jesus at the beginning were mostly from Judah, Benjamin, and Levi, with a few Greek believers (such as Luke). The little flock that placed their faith in King Jesus were the real tribe of Judah that God recognized. This small group never replaced Judah. The church was Judah from the beginning, and to this new nation were soon added believers of many other ethnic groups. It was not about race, but about nationality.

Hence, Replacement Theology was fatally flawed from the beginning. Yet there were certainly elements of Judaism that were indeed replaced. The New Covenant replaced the Old Covenant. The Melchizedek Order of priests replaced the Levitical Order. Christ’s sacrifice replaced animal sacrifice. The New Jerusalem replaced the Old Jerusalem. The book of Hebrews explains this more fully.

Hence, I weep no tears over the demise of Replacement Theology. This doctrine needs to be replaced with more accurate teaching anyway.