With bombs bursting over Nazareth, much attention has been paid to the high level of support for Israel from America’s conservative Protestants. For some secular observers, it is assumed that this is because each of these evangelicals and fundamentalists has a copy of The Jerusalem Post in one hand and Left Behind in the other.
This is far from the truth of the matter.
Yes, many American evangelicals are dispensationalist, and some even believe that the current strife in the Middle East is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, perhaps even the Road to Armageddon. But not every conservative Protestant supportive of Israel does so because he believes in a future restoration of the Israelite theocracy. Many of us can agree on Israel’s right to defend herself, even if we disagree about who, biblically speaking, the “Israel of God” really is.
Dispensationalists have served the church by pointing us to our responsibility to support the Jewish people through a century that has seen the most horrific anti-Semitic violence imaginable. We need not hold to a dispensationalist view of history to agree that such support is a necessary part of Christian eschatology.
Novelist Walker Percy pointed to the continuing existence of the Jewish people as a sign of God’s presence in the world. There are no Hittites walking about on the streets of New York, he remarked. Even Christians who hold strongly that God’s promises are focused on and fulfilled in Jesus Christ as the singular Seed of Abraham (as I do), see in the Scripture a promise of a future conversion of Jewish people to Christ (Rom 9-11).
We don’t love Israel more than we love Jesus. And we don’t love Israel too little to tell our Jewish friends the truth. That’s why we must emphasize evangelism, of Jew as well as Gentile. No one will inherit the Kingdom of God apart from Christ. The dual covenant heresies of some prominent charismatic television preachers should be denounced and abhorred by every faithful Christian. The current secular state of Israel is not the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham; Jesus is.
Nonetheless, the state of Israel is the guardian of post-Holocaust world Judaism. This does not necessitate that we support every political decision of the Israeli government. But it does mean that we stand with Israel against every form of anti-Semitic violence because, first of all, we know that these are the kinsmen according to the flesh of our Messiah.
