The data on theological trends not only shows what we’ve called a Bro Revival, whereby young men are more churched than young women, but another theological trend is that dispensational eschatology is broadly rejected by 7 out of 10 younger Christians. To make matters worse, that data was from 2021, and it is highly unlikely to have improved since.
Consequently, a number of tech-savvy dispensationalist pastors have gotten the call to clamp down on so-called “Replacement Theology,” their derisive label for the other side. Mark Driscoll, Eric Metaxas, and Frank Turek have all done their part. Enter Jack Hibbs, who on Tuesday dropped a short-form video addressing the plummeting Evangelical support for Modern Israel.
Hey, so the term is replacement theology. I just want you to think about that word for a moment. Replacement theology comes heavily out of those who hold some, not all, some who hold to oh Reform theology. And in their “Reformed theology,” they have in their practice, replacement theology, replacement. Think about the word replacement, replacement of a hip, replacement of a heart. What’s going on here?
It’s taking out that which was and putting in something that is new, take out Israel from the Bible and put the church in because that’s what we want to do, they say. Israel has no right to God any longer. They are the Christ killers. They blew it. And everything that God promised to Israel is now promised to the church, thus replacement theology.
Already, Jack Hibbs is dishonest in his framing of the debate. It is not a matter of the replacement. Rather, it is a matter of continuity in God’s people who are saved before, during, and after the time of Christ. Thus the church is not a replacement, but the elect always were the true Israel. I have never heard a dispensationalist accurately articulate the opposing view, and Jack Hibbs proves no exception.
I want to leave you with this thought. I believe that is one of the most, if not the most, egregious and arrogant belief systems today. It justifies first of all and spreads antisemitic thought. But did you know that God is not an antisemite?
It’s ironic to talk about arrogance when articulating a 200 year old theology that presupposes, at time, everyone before it got the Bible wrong. Moreover, Hibbs’s first argument in favor of dispensationalism is an appeal to the woke buzzword of antisemitism. He thinks that using booboo words is a good argument in 2025, while also appealing to God not being an antisemite, despite the Bible having many lines deemed antisemitic by social media algorithms.
It also violates the Bible. God says that his covenant with the nation of Israel and the children of Abraham, that is both by belief and by genetics and by government, God says, I will never, never abandon the covenant I’ve made with them. It is eternal as long as there’s stars and Sun and moon in the sky so long will my covenant be with Israel forever. So why replacement theology because it’s a bad doctrine it is evil from the get-go it violates the authority of scripture, and frankly, it understands nothing about Bible prophecy because wherever Israel appears They put the church in there and that corrupts the entire narrative of eschatology.And it’s certainly, it is certainly holding suspect soteriology, the doctrine of salvation.
Jack Hibbs alludes to Jeremiah 31, one of the most anti-dispensationalist texts in the Old Testament. The passage that forshadow’s Christ’s new covenant (verse 31) is followed up with a promise “Israel also will cease from being a nation before Me forever.” Obviously, Ancient Israel was destroyed as a nation: belief, government, and even genetics are dubious. Thus, the passage cannot be talking about them because it is talking about God’s people for which there is mutual affection.
To deny that Jeremiah 31 is talking about Christ is to engage in Dual Covenant Theology, as it would necessitate the presence of two new covenants.
Friends, get away from replacement theology and from those who hold to it. It is a last days manifestation promised by the Lord that there’d be those in the last days departing from the faith. There would be those in the last days that would turn their back on Israel. Just make sure you’re not one of them.
Jack Hibbs concludes by calling Reformed theology an endtimes false teaching, despite predating his own theology for hundreds of years. The Christian tradition had previously never supported a Zionist Israel. Thus, Jack Hibbs treats disagreement on eschatology as apostasy, and concludes with a threat against those who do not support 1948 Israel.
Jack Hibbs is attempting to argue his theology for a modern audience, but this is a major fail on his part. But, in his defense, the others have not fared much better. Hibbs does not attempt to accurately represent the other side, and instead appeals to 20th-century liberalism to scare Christians into acquiescence. It reveals that dispensationalism cannot withstand scrutiny, and relies heavily on access to other eschatologies being inexcessible. Thus, it’s no coincidence that in the age of the internet, dispensationalism is in massive decline.
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12 Responses
I watched Jack Hibbs give that talk live, and disagreed with him for some of the reasons you cite. He is indeed perhaps more enthusiastic about post-1948 Israel as a nation that it perhaps deserves. On the other hand, unlike most pastors, Jack says what he thinks, and means what he says, and his church is clearly growing, unlike most. God will sort us all out on this and all other issues soon enough.
Your Jew-hatred has blinded you and you should be embarrassed by your stupefying error. Jeremiah 31:35-36 states:
This is what the Lord says,
he who appoints the sun
to shine by day,
who decrees the moon and stars
to shine by night,
who stirs up the sea
so that its waves roar—
the Lord Almighty is his name:
“Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,”
declares the Lord,
“will Israel ever cease
being a nation before me.”
This is the exact opposite of what you wrote! Do you really not see this? Your quote:
The passage that forshadow’s Christ’s new covenant (verse 31) is followed up with a promise “Israel also will cease from being a nation before Me forever.”
You are in desperate need of both a content and copy editor! “forshadow’s”
Wow.
Ancient Israel ceased being a nation.
Christ exacted final judgement on Biblical Israel in AD70. The new Israel is the church.
Jack Hibbs is spot on. The author of this article demonstrates the very problem Jack is addressing: a refusal to take God’s Word at face value. If the Bible says Israel, it means Israel. If it says church, it means church. That isn’t arrogance—it’s basic hermeneutics.
God’s covenant promises to Israel are eternal and irrevocable. Jeremiah 31:35–36 explicitly says that Israel will never cease to be a nation before Him, as long as the sun, moon, and stars endure. To twist this into a metaphor for the church is to do violence to the text itself. Paul drives the point home in Romans 11:1—“Has God rejected His people? By no means!” The grafting in of Gentiles does not mean the uprooting of Israel.
Replacement theology is not “continuity.” It is substitution. It strips Israel of God’s promises and hands them to the church—a theology foreign to the apostles and prophets. And yes, it inevitably lends itself to antisemitic thinking by declaring God Himself has abandoned His chosen people. To call out that danger is not “woke,” it is faithful.
The church has not replaced Israel. The church has been grafted in beside Israel. To deny this is to undermine God’s covenant faithfulness and distort eschatology itself. Hibbs is right to warn against this teaching. It is bad doctrine, born not of Scripture but of systems imposed on Scripture.
God is not finished with Israel—the people or the land. To say otherwise is to call God a liar.
I’m not Reformed but Arminian and believe in Replacement Theology, and actually get perterbed when the Reformed say “Its not replacement but continuation.” No, its replacement. The church replaces Israel. Does it in some sense continue it? Only in the sense that it replaces it. Its not the same thing, so its not continuing without replacement. Its continuing by replacement.
If it were continuing without replacement then Gentiles would not be the majority of the church, and we’d still be doing lots of Old Testament practices. Its replacement.
Its definately replacement because the church is not literally a middle eastern nation. Strict continuation without replacement would be the church running the state of Israel. But rather Israel is made completely irrelevant and replaced by the church.
So I affirm literal Replacement Theology.
@Scott, “The church has not replaced Israel. The church has been grafted in beside Israel.”
Watch some youtube videos on grafting. You cut the whole trunk down and replace it with a scion or twig that will become the new trunk. And any “sucker shoots” or new shoots coming from the original root stock must be cut off or they will starved the new scion wood of water and it will die off the tree. The Gentiles were grated into the root that is Abraham, but the trunk of Israel that grew from Abraham was cut off so the Gentiles could replace that trunk and be the new trunk.
@Scott, “Replacement theology is not ‘continuity.’ It is substitution. It strips Israel of God’s promises and hands them to the church”
IF you means the LAND promises, as the only literal Replacement Theologian here, let me say this clearly: THE LAND PROMISES WERE FULFILLED BEFORE CHRIST.
They don’t need to be transferred as they are finished.
The promises in the prophets that they will get the land back is about THE RETURN FROM BABYLON.
They returned from Babylon BEFORE Christ. Centuries before.
If you think the Genesis 15 promise is to the Jews, you are wrong. That one about the land from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates actually PROMISED THE LAND TO THE ARABS.
Genesis 15:18-21 NKJV
“18 On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying:
To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates— 19 the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”
Some translations add “the land of” at the beginning of verse 19, but that phrase is not there.
This is promising the land TO the Kenites, Kenezzites, etc. These tribes are ARAB tribes that descend from Abraham.
So as long as ANY tribe descended from Abraham inhabits these lands, the land promises were fulfilled. It doesn’t have to be “the Jews” in particular.
So the promise that Abraham’s descendants will possess the land from the Nile to the Euphrates is fulfilled already because a bunch of Arab tribes descended from his wives Hagar and Keturah inhabit these lands.
So the Dispie belief that Jews have to wipe out all the Arabs and posses these lands is FALSE.
I’m watching Keith Foskey’s response to this, and it highlights what the Reformed just don’t get, namely that the Jews are disinherited from being descendants of Abraham and only those who believe in Christ are considered descendants of Abraham. That means, the Gentiles replace the Jews. That means the church replaces Israel. Its not just an “expansion” as if the Jews remain descendants of Abraham and Gentiles are just added. NO WAY! The axe was laid to the root of the trees, as John the Baptist said, and the trunk that was Israel got cut down to the root of Abraham, and the Gentiles were grafted in their place. God raised up children to Abraham from the stones because he disinherited the physical descendants of Abraham completely, with only the first century remnant of Israelites who accepted Christ being allowed in to the church. Foskey even says “We are grafted into Israel.” False. We are grafted into Abraham in place of Israel.
Replacement Theology rests on the errant understanding of Covenant Theology. Replacement Theology needs Covenant Theology to stand. Both are errant. God made promises to the Jews that a remnant will yet turn to Christ. The tragic hostility comes mainly from the RT/CT guys who are determined to declare that the church is in the OT. It is not. It begins at Pentecost. I fully embrace the DOG and the Solas, but RT/CT is indeed the means to strip away God’s promises to Abraham, the Land, David, and a future repentance of the true Jewish remnant with Christ ruling in a literal 1000-year kingdom on earth before the eternal state begins.
Great review. Thanks for doing it. Glad to hear that Kirk Cameron listened to Gary DeMar and understands who true Israel is. It definitely is not a bunch of Ashkenazi converts to Talmudic Judaism pretending to be God’s chosen people.
Jack Hibbs is unfortunately one of many fools posing as a spiritual leaders leading the sheep astray and pushing the heresy of Dispensational eschatology.