Who's Being Replaced?

Some 6 months ago over dinner, one of my friends casually introduced to me a book entitled "The Footsteps of the Messiah" written by Arnold Fruchtenbaum, an American Messianic Jew. Never would I imagine what the book would do to my own christian and methodist upbringing.

In short, the book was an exposition on the Book of Revelation or God's revelation about the end times. While the subject of the End Times could probably creep out in my future blogs, it is not the subject of this particular one.

Many of us Christians would have been taught the following basic theology - Jesus came to this world. The Jews of His time rejected Jesus because He did not fit their model of the Messiah and because Jesus offered to them a spiritual kingdom rather than a physical one. Because of the rejection, Jesus offer God's salvation plan to the Gentiles and the Jews have been cast off.

One of the many new insights that Arnold Fruchtenbaum has given me was the concept of dispensationalism. Jesus did offer the Jews of His time the Kingdom of Heaven. The Jewish leadership rejected it not because the offer wasn't about a physical kingdom but that Jesus did not conform to their brand of Pharisaic Judaism.

The proof is actually right at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles 1:6-7.

So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?"
He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority;

Can you imagine what Jesus' reaction would have been, that after teaching the disciples about the Spiritual Kingdom, their last question before He ascended into heaven was to ask about this physical kingdom to Israel?

It is important to note Jesus' actual reaction. He did not admonish the disciples' questioning but just answered matter-of-factly that only God knows when this physical kingdom will come to pass. Does this sound like Israel has been replaced?