Imperishable Inheritance

I feel it is impor­tant to explain why so many con­ser­v­a­tive, evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians are fur­ther­ing the sup­port of the national state of Israel. Since 1949, the U.S. has pro­vided $84,854,827,200 of sup­port to national Israel. Why is the move­ment to sup­port the national state of Israel so vehe­mently sup­ported by evangelicals?

“The close tie between evan­gel­i­cals and Israel is impor­tant: It has shaped pop­u­lar opin­ion in Amer­ica and, to some extent, U.S. for­eign pol­icy. To under­stand how it devel­oped, one must know some­thing about how many evan­gel­i­cals inter­pret Bible prophecy…” {Source}

Since the 1800’s, there has been a ris­ing the­ol­ogy called Dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ism. John Nel­son Darby, a mem­ber of the Ply­mouth Brethren, started to read his Bible in a unique man­ner. He decided that his hermeneu­tic (science/mode of inter­pre­ta­tion) would be as lit­eral as pos­si­ble. This led to some rather aber­rant the­o­log­i­cal teachings.

John started the thought that God’s plan for the Israel of the Old Tes­ta­ment (that is peo­ple who were “saved” by God) was dif­fer­ent than that of the New Tes­ta­ment “Church” (believ­ers in Christ). He was led to the con­clu­sion that God had yet to ful­fill His promise to Abra­ham to give Israel land (Gen­e­sis 15:7), and this must there­fore mean that it is yet to come.

The Jews of Jesus’ time rejected Him, because their under­stand­ing of the Mes­siah was that He would be a con­queror and would restore Israel to its state of world-wide pre­em­i­nence (as was dur­ing the rule of David). When Jesus came as a suf­fer­ing ser­vant (Isa­iah 53), they didn’t under­stand that God’s plan was for atone­ment (wash­ing of sin) through the Mes­siah and not just for Jews. Paul in the New Tes­ta­ment called the time we’re in now a “mys­tery” (Eph­esians 1:9; Colos­sians 1:27). It was per­plex­ing to the Jews of that time that God wanted Gen­tiles (those not of Jew­ish descent) to be in covenant with God.

John Nel­son Darby, and his fol­low­ers, to this day espouse a mis­un­der­stand­ing of how and why the term “Israel” is used in the Bible. John and his fol­low­ers pro­claim, to this day, that the Old Tes­ta­ment Saints will receive the land promises dur­ing the mil­len­nial reign of Christ. In Rev­e­la­tion 20, which is escha­to­log­i­cal (end times) in nature, a thou­sand year reign is talked about (Rev­e­la­tion 20:2–8); and this is where Dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ists say that the Jews will receive the land promise given to Abra­ham. They pro­claim that Jesus will lit­er­ally rule on the throne of David in lit­eral, geo­graph­i­cal Jerusalem for 1,000 years. Due to the ris­ing influ­ence of Dis­pen­sa­tion­lism in evan­gel­i­cal the­ol­ogy, many Chris­tians today push the sup­port of national Israel by the U.S.

“While only 36 per­cent of all Amer­i­cans believe that the Bible is God’s Word and should be taken lit­er­ally, 59 per­cent say they believe that events pre­dicted in the Book of Rev­e­la­tion will come to pass […] Even more sig­nif­i­cant for this study, over one-third of those Amer­i­cans who sup­port Israel report that they do so because they believe the Bible teaches that the Jews must pos­sess their own coun­try in the Holy Land before Jesus can return.” {Source}

What is really bad about this whole sit­u­a­tion is that it is in the­o­log­i­cal error. Paul dealt with this ques­tion, and he was per­suaded to believe that: “not all Israel who are descended from Israel” (Romans 9:6). Early in that very book, he pro­claims that a true Jew: “is a Jew who is one inwardly; and cir­cum­ci­sion is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the let­ter; and his praise is not from men, but from God” (Romans 2:29). In other words, the total mean­ing of “Israel” and to be a “Jew” (in covenant with God) had a spir­i­tual and not phys­i­cal meaning.

I could go on in length about the polit­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of this the­o­log­i­cal sys­tem, but I wanted to give an over­sight as to how and why so many evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians push the sup­port of national Israel. They, in effect, believe they are ush­er­ing in the end; but what is really inter­est­ing is that Jesus said when the end would come. No, it’s not when Mary is burnt into the side of a piece of toast or Jesus’ face shows up in a cloud; but Jesus Him­self said: “This gospel of the king­dom shall be preached in the whole world as a tes­ti­mony to all the nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). In other words, only when the news of Christ reaches all the eth­nic groups, then the end will come. It’s about time most of these evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians get their pri­or­i­ties back in line.

For more insight, I sug­gest the arti­cle “On the Road to Armaged­don: How Evan­gel­i­cals Became Israel’s Best Friend” by Tim­o­thy Weber.