Quote (PowerTripped @ Jan 31 2018 11:35am)
Hate to tell you but all of those aren’t accurate. God said he would abandon forever the nation of Israel because of their refusal to acknowledge his son and make changes. He would then establish a spiritual Israel of those from all tribes and nations. That Israel would be in a state of unrest until the end of this system of things. Many still think Israel is God’s chosen nation and with that it distorts all events and prophecy connections they try to make.
You are wrong, here is why:
Many Christians in the United States believe that it is their biblical responsibility to support the contemporary Jewish State of Israel for specific theological reasons (as opposed to general political ones), a view known as Christian Zionism. The Pew Research Center put the figure at 63 percent for white evangelicals. This view holds that the regathering of Jewish people to Israel since 1948 is the miraculous fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham to establish Israel as a nation forever in Palestine. Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind novels, together with books written by Hal Lindsey, Pat Robertson, and many others, which propound this view, have sold well over 100 million copies. Burgeoning Christian Zionist organizations such as the International Christian Embassy and Christians United for Israel wield immense influence on Capitol Hill, making Christian Zionism the largest single‐issue political lobby to come from Western Christianity. A growing number of Christians, however, are left increasingly uneasy about the idea that God would bring the Jewish people back to Palestine while they are in unbelief, since that was why they were exiled from it in the first place. The methods Israel has used, moreover, to colonize the land and subjugate the Palestinians— many of whom are Christians—do not match the picture of a God‐fearing Israel that Christian Zionists find in their literal interpretation of the ancient prophecies. An alternate interpretation is that the promises of land, like the laws of Moses, were part of the Old Covenant, which was fulfilled in the New Covenant. These Old Covenant shadows were realized in and through the substance of Jesus Christ and the church. Christian Zionists’ unconditional support of the current State of Israel would therefore be a misguided effort to separate Jews and Gentiles again, whom God joined together in the church, the body of Christ.
“For the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews and gives the student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.”1 Billy Graham’s father‐in‐law, L. Nelson Bell, then editor of Christianity Today, expressed the sentiments of millions of American evangelicals when he described the Israeli capture of Jerusalem in 1967 as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. The roots of Christian interest in Israel can be traced to the Bible prophecy movement in Britain and the speculations of Edward Irving and John Nelson Darby in the early nineteenth century. The 1967 ”Six Day War,” however, marked a significant turning point for fundamentalists and evangelicals with such interest; it fueled among them a resurgence of enthusiasm for Eretz Israel (“Land of Israel”), that is, a resurgence of support for the State of Israel.2 Christians who support the contemporary Jewish nation for theological rather than political reasons are part of a movement, born out of the Bible prophecy movement, that is referred to as Christian Zionism.3
In 1976, a series of events brought contemporary Christian Zionists to the forefront of U.S. mainstream politics. Jimmy Carter was elected president as a ”born¬again” Christian, drawing the support of the evangelical right. The following year Menachem Begin and the right¬wing Likud Party came to power in Israel. A tripartite coalition slowly emerged in the United States among the political right, evangelicalChristians, and the Jewish lobby that increasingly used biblical language to describe the condition of modern Israel. Jimmy Carter later acknowledged how his own pro-Zionist beliefs had influenced his Middle East policy.4 He also described how his generation was witnessing “a return at last, to the biblical land from which the Jews were driven so many hundreds of years ago,” the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, stating that the establishment of the nation of Israel was the “very essence.”5 When Carter vacillated over the aggressive Likud settlement program and proposed the creation of a Palestinian homeland, however, he alienated the pro-Israeli coalition, who switched their support to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 elections.
Reagan’s legal secretary, Herb Ellingwood, one of the most fervent believers in Eretz Israel and the imminent war of Armageddon, described how he and Reagan often discussed the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, according to author Grace Halsell. “White House seminars” became a regular feature of Reagan’s administration, bringing leading Christian Zionists into direct personal contact with national and congressional leaders. In 1982, for example, Reagan invited Jerry Falwell to brief the National Security Council on the possibility of a nuclear war with Russia.7 Two years later, Reagan shared his personal convictions in a conversation with Tom Dine, one of Israel’s chief lobbyists working for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee: “I turn back to the ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if…we’re the generation that is going to see that come about. I don’t know if you’ve noted any of these prophecies lately, but believe me, they certainly describe the times we’re going through.”8
Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton do not appear to have shared the same theological convictions concerning Israel as their predecessors, but George W. Bush proves to be more of an enigma. He has not explicitly affirmed Christian Zionist beliefs and he does advocate a two‐state solution, but his strong support of Israel and statements such as the following, made in 2001 before a Jewish audience, are consistent with Christian Zionist convictions: “Through centuries of struggle, Jews across the world have been witnesses not only against the crimes of men, but for faith in God, and God alone. Theirs is a story of defiance in oppression and patience in tribulation—reaching back to the exodus and their exile into the diaspora. That story continued in the founding of the State of Israel. The story continues in the defense of the State of Israel.”9
The Bible prophecy movement is typified as much by Tim LaHaye’s fictional Left Behind series of novels as by John Hagee’s political organization, Christians United for Israel. Hal Lindsey, however, is undoubtedly the most influential Bible prophecy proponent of the twentieth century. Time magazine described him as “the Jeremiah for this generation,”10 and his present publisher calls him “the father of the modern-day Bible prophecy movement”11 and the “best known prophecy teacher in the world.”12 The New York Times Book Review called Lindsey’s most famous book, The Late Great Planet Earth, the nonfiction bestseller of the 1970s.13 The book has spawned more than 20 sequels, and approximately 40 million copies of it have been published in 54 languages. The back cover of Lindsey’s Planet Earth 2000, for example, promises, ‘‘Hal will be your guide on a chilling tour of the world’s future battlefields as the Great Tribulation, foretold more than two thousand years ago by Old and New Testament prophets, begins to unfold. You’ll meet the world leaders who will bring man to the very edge of extinction and examine the causes of the current global situation—what it all means, what will shortly come to pass, and how it will all turn out.”14
Many evangelical Protestants see a connection between Israel and the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and/or believe that God gave Israel to the Jews in 1948. At least 60% of those with such beliefs support the state of Israel,15 and 32% cite their religious beliefs as the primary reason for such support.16 It is my conclusion, after 10 years of postgraduate research on the subject, that Christian Zionism is the largest, most controversial, and most influential single‐issue political lobby within Western Christianity today.17 As such, the foundations on which this widespread position rest are open to examination. I propose to examine those foundations by addressing two questions: first, does the regathering of the Jewish people to the contemporary State of Israel have any theological significance in terms of the fulfillment of biblical prophecy?; and second, does the evidence in the Bible suggest that it endorses or that it rejects the Zionist ideology? In answer to these questions, I first will explain the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. Then I will examine the meaning of the Abrahamic covenant, the ethical requirements of the covenant relationship, the concept of inheritance in the New Testament, and, finally, the meaning of terms such as the elect and chosen people when discussed from a Christian perspective.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS
Christian Zionists assume an ultraliteral hermeneutic when interpreting Old Testament promises concerning the people of God, the land of Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple, and believe that those promises are being fulfilled literally today. The International Christian Embassy affirms, for example, “The modern ingathering of the Jewish People to Eretz Israel and the rebirth of the nation of Israel are in fulfillment of biblical prophecies.”19 Christian Zionists assume that the Old and New Testaments run parallel into the future, the former speaking of Israel and the latter speaking of the church; however, this is not the way the New Testament interprets, fulfills, and completes the Old. For example, Jesus annulled the Levitical food laws when He said, “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body. (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)” (Mark 7:18–19).20
In Acts 10, God uses a vision of unclean food specifically to help the apostle Peter realize that in Christ there no longer is any distinction between Jew and Gentile—God accepts both equally into His kingdom. Only when Peter encounters Cornelius does he begin to realize the implications of the vision for the way he should now view Jews and Gentiles: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right” (Acts 10:34–35). If God does not show favoritism, neither should we. The Jews no longer enjoy a favored or exclusive status. The book of Hebrews explains the progressive movement of biblical revelation more fully. The Old Testament revelation from God often came in shadow, image, and prophecy. That revelation finds its consummation and fulfillment in the New Covenant (i.e., Testament) in Jesus Christ. The writer to the Hebrews, then, declares, “By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear” (Heb. 8:13). He insists later, “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship” (Heb. 10:1).
It is essential that Christians interpret the Old Testament in the light of the New Testament, not the other way around. Paul insists, for example, “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ” (Col. 2:16–17). The question, therefore, is not whether the promises of the Old Testament should be understood allegorically or literally. It is instead a question of whether they should be understood in terms of shadow or substance.
THE CONCEPT OF INHERITANCE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Christian Zionists’ preoccupation with a literal fulfillment of biblical prophecy in Israel today is most apparent regarding the status of Jerusalem. In Galatians 4, Paul criticized the “Jerusalem-dependency”23 of the legalists who were infecting the church in Galatia. In verse 27 he cites Isaiah 54:1, which refers to the earthly Jerusalem, and applies it to the home of all who believe in Jesus Christ. Access to heaven no longer has anything to do with an earthly Jerusalem. Jesus made this clear to the woman of Samaria: “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks” (John 4:21–23).
Jesus explained at His trial why this is so: “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place” (John 18:36). He thus repudiated the idea that His kingdom involves the establishment of an earthly Jewish kingdom, a mere shadow. Before the resurrection encounters and Pentecost, the disciples seemed to share the same understanding of the land promises as the other first-century Jews: they looked forward to God’s decisive intervention in history that would restore political sovereignty to the Jews within the Promised Land. This is reflected in the words of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, who confessed, “We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21). It also must have been the idea in the minds of the disciples when, before the ascension, they asked, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). John Calvin comments, “There are as many mistakes in this question as there are words.”24 Jesus redefined and expanded their understanding of the nature of the kingdom of God and thereby the meaning of chosenness. The expansion of the kingdom of God throughout the world requires the permanent exile of the apostles from the land. They are sent out into the world with one‐way tickets, and are not told to return.
After Pentecost, the apostles begin to use Old Covenant language concerning the land in new ways. Peter, for example, speaks of an inheritance that, unlike the land, “can never perish, spoil or fade” (1 Pet. 1:4). Paul, likewise, asserts, “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32). The New Testament authors insist that through faith in Christ we already inhabit the heavenly Jerusalem and look forward to its appearing (Heb. 12:22–23). Paul, similarly, insists, “But the Jerusalem that is above is free” (Gal. 4:26). The limitations of the literal land, which was but a shadow of the coming substance, and which provided a temporary home for God’s emerging people and a geographical context for the incarnation, have been transcended. The direction now is outward from Jerusalem, stretching through the Great Commission to the uttermost ends of the earth.25
Paul used the Old Testament story of Sarah and Hagar to inoculate the Galatian believers against the infiltration of the legalistic Judaizers (Gal 4:21–31). He compares Jerusalem, which had rejected Jesus, to Hagar and her slave children (v. 25). He then likens the Galatian believers to Isaac and describes them as “children of promise” (v. 28). Paul’s critical analogy could perhaps apply to some forms of Messianic Judaism today that require Torah obedience, as well as to the political system in Israel which, because of proportional representation, is metaphorically “held captive” to minority religious political parties that are tied to orthodox Judaism (which itself is historically rooted in, and continuous with, New Testament Pharisaism). After Pentecost, the apostles in no sense believed that the Jewish people still had a divine right to a kingdom centered in Jerusalem, or that this would be an important, let alone central, aspect of God’s future purposes for the world. In Paul’s christological thinking, God has superseded the land, like the law, in His redemptive purposes.
ELECTION AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD
Based on their literal reading of the Old Testament, Christian Zionists believe that the Jews remain God’s “chosen people” who enjoy a unique relationship, status, and eternal purpose within their own land, separate from any promises made to the church. Christian Friends of Israel, for example, insists, “The Bible teaches that Israel (people, land, nation) has a Divinely ordained and glorious future, and that God has neither rejected nor replaced His Jewish people.”26 Jews for Jesus likewise perpetuates the distinction between God’s purposes for Israel and His purposes for the church—the latter being merely a “parenthesis”27 in God’s plan for the Jews: “We believe that Israel exists as a covenant people through whom God continues to accomplish His purposes and that the Church is an elect people in accordance with the New Covenant, comprising both Jews and Gentiles who acknowledge Jesus as Messiah and Redeemer.”28
This contradicts John the Baptist’s statement: “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:8–9). Jesus similarly insisted, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Jesus then used the analogy of the vine and branches to explain the relationship between God and His people (John 15:1–6); clearly, Jesus, not Israel, is the vine; His followers, not national Israel, are the branches of the vine. Remaining part of the vine and bearing fruit depends on a personal relationship with Jesus, not on heredity. This is the reason Peter warned his hearers soon after the day of Pentecost that if they refused to recognize Jesus as their Messiah, they would cease to be the “people of God” (Gk. laos): “Anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from among his people” (Acts 3:23). Paul elaborates on the analogy of the vine in Romans 11:17–21 to explain the relationship between the natural branches (Israel) and the wild branches (Gentiles). It is significant that in the New Testament the term chosen is never used exclusively of the Jewish people. It is used only to refer to Jesus or the church, the body of Christ (e.g., Col. 3:12).
Peter also draws terms from the Old Testament that describe Israel and applies them to the church: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Pet. 2:9–10). It is, therefore, no longer appropriate to describe the Jews as God’s “chosen people.” This term has been redefined theologically to describe all those who trust in Jesus Christ, irrespective of race. This view sometimes is caricatured as supersessionism or replacement theology, that is, the belief that the church has superseded or replaced Israel. The New Testament does not teach that the Gentiles have uperseded the Jews; but neither does it teach a racial exclusivity that gives Jewish people preferential or levated status. According to Paul, God’s intention has always been to break down the “wall of partition” and create for Himself one new people, drawn from every race (Eph. 2:11–16).
ZIONISM THROUGH DISPENSATIONALISM
The Bible prophecy movement, born within British evangelicalism in the nineteenth century, reached mainstream American evangelicalism in the twentieth century. It became institutionalized through a view known as dispensationalism, which sees in history a succession of biblical eras, or dispensations, that are distinguished by God’s different methods of dealing with His people. In this view, the era of the church is different from the coming era of a literal kingdom in which the returning Christ reigns over Israel in the Promised Land for a thousand years. Kenneth Cragg satirically summarizes the implications of this ethnic exclusivity and simplistic dualism:
It is so; God chose the Jews; the land is theirs by divine gift. These dicta cannot be questioned or resisted. They are final. Such verdicts come infallibly from Christian biblicists for whom Israel can do no wrong—thus fortified. But can such positivism, this unquestioning finality, be compatible with the integrity of the Prophets themselves? It certainly cannot square with the open peoplehood under God which is the crux of New Testament faith. Nor can it well be reconciled with the ethical demands central to law and election alike. Christian Zionism thrives on a literal and futurist hermeneutic in which Old Testament promises made to the ancient Jewish people are transferred to the contemporary State of Israel in anticipation of a final future fulfillment. It ignores, marginalizes, or bypasses New Testament passages that reinterpret, annul, or describe the fulfillment of these promises in and through Jesus Christ.
The process of redemptive history has yielded a dramatic movement, from shadow to substance. The land that God once constrained to the specific place of His redemptive purpose He then expanded to the entire breadth of the created cosmos, through the New Covenant. The exalted Christ rules sovereign over the entire world, from the heavenly Jerusalem. The substance cannot give way again to shadow, for in the will and purposes of God the shadows no longer exist. The light has come in Jesus Christ: “By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear” (Heb. 8:13). The choice, therefore, is between two theologies: one based on the shadows of the Old Covenant and one based on the substance of the New Covenant. Christian Zionism offers an exclusive theology that focuses on the Jews in the land rather than an inclusive theology that centers on the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. It is time to stop fighting over the birthright, like Isaac’s sons Jacob and Esau, and start sharing the blessings.
This post was edited by CPK001 on Jan 31 2018 06:27am
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