The Evangelical View Of Israel

With the apparent rise of antisemitism, both here and abroad, I want to touch upon who Israel is, but in order to do so, I must first affirm that I recognize that God’s covenantal grace began with the ancestors of modern Jews. Our redeemer, the Christ, Himself, and all of His disciples, were Jews, therefore, there is no antisemitism on my part.

After all, I, by the grace of God, was grafted into the tree that allows me to have a relationship with Him through the Christ, who called the Jews who rejected him, the Synagogue of Satan. There’s just no way of getting around the fact that God‘s grace, is extended to everyone and salvation, is found by everyone, through Christ alone. So whether you’re Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu or Buddhist, or atheist, all you have to do is believe in the Christ.

So let’s talk about where all this Evangelical belief comes from, but first, we must develop an understanding of God‘s relationship with Israel, post Jesus, and His new Covenant.

Everybody likes to quote Genesis in that God, will bless the people of Israel and that those who bless Israel, will be blessed. Those who curse Israel will be cursed, and a lot of people, particularly “evangelical Christians,” take that to mean that the modern nation state of Israel, is the same chosen people that God chose to make His covenant with in the Bible. Not exactly correct.

The New Testament says that there’s no longer any original Covenant Jew, in the sense of God‘s original covenant relationship with the nation of Israel. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 10 and 11, and I really recommend you go read this, that the old branch of Israel has been cut off from the tree, and that the Gentiles, or anyone who believes, have been grafted in.

Israel was cut off from the old covenant because of their refusal to accept the Christ. What this means is that the Christian Church is the new covenant with God through His Son and the Gentiles, who accept Christ, and by the way Jews, who accept Christ, are part of the new covenant. They are the Fulfillment of God‘s covenantal relationship with the Jews in the Old Testament and that they’re the fulfillment of a new covenant with God. You can read Galatians 3 and 4 to get a better understanding of this.

Evangelicals, to various degrees, believe we are in, or near, the End Times, that the modern state of Israel is the one prophesied in the Bible, and that the Rupture, as portrayed in the film “Left Behind,” will occur. To understand this view, we must go back to the 1830s and a new view of Christianity called “Dispensationalism” – the new belief that Biblical history is divided into multiple ages called dispensations.

The primary progenitor of this new Biblical view was a Bible teacher named, John Nelson Derby. If you’re an evangelical, or a modern day protestant, with those viewpoints, you are following the view introduced by dispensationalism, and this is a radical departure from the previous 1800 years of Christian belief. Let that sink in for a moment. Dispensationalism, is not something found in the original Bible, but rather, a view introduced into Christianity less than 200 years ago.

Dispensationalism’s view is not historic Christianity, and you need to understand that that’s not the predominant view of church history.  So how did this become so prevalent in our modern society, particularly, in America, and so widespread in modern Christianity? Great question!

Besides John Nelson Derby, you have the Scofield Study Bible, a widely circulated reference Bible, edited and annotated by the American Bible student, Cyrus I. Scofield. It popularized “dispensationalism” at the beginning of the 20th century, first appearing in 1909, and was revised by the author in 1917, focusing heavily on Revelations, prophetic vision, and apocalyptic views, as seen through and interpreted through, the lens of dispensationalism.

That Bible became the study Bible for two giant seminaries in the United States, the Dallas Theological Seminary and the Fuller Theological Seminary.  Most of today’s non-denominational protestant pastors, come through those two seminaries. All of them have learned the Bible through the prism of dispensationalism.

If you’re reading this right now and you’re not from a reformation background and instead, you are Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, you probably are going to ask yourself what’s the rapture? Why? Because there is no rapture. 1st Thessalonians, makes it very clear than when Christ returns, everyone will know it. There will be loud trumpet sounds announcing His return. The whole Earth will will know it and then the dead will rise again and everyone will be judged. There’s no one left behind.

On another note, the world is not getting progressively worse. If you just look around, Christianity continues to permeate and spread throughout the world. The world is progressively getting better under the common grace of God. Sure, there are dips caused by the fallibility of man. There are ups and downs, but if you look at the history of Christianity, Christianity continues to spread  throughout the world.

There are 3 billion people in the world today, who have never even heard the name of Jesus, let alone the Gospel of Jesus. Does that sound like the Gospel has spread to the four corners of the Earth? It’s a rhetorical question. Is the world ready for Christ’s return? Another rhetorical question. How can those 3 billion people be judged by the Christ if they don’t even know him? Does that seem fair to you? Of course not. The Gospel does continues to go forward. The world continues to transform and become better, as a result of God‘s common grace through traditional Biblical Christianity. Sure, doesn’t seem like it with all that going on in the world today.

As for Israel, they deserve to have a nation. Jews deserve to have a nation of their own, whether or not, you believe that. So do the people called Palestinians, and I understand that they are a fictional nation, that there is no such a thing as Palestinians. But Gaza is suffering under genocide, whether or not, you agree with it. And you must understand that, despite what the  dispensationalism Bible teaches Evangelicals, the modern nation state of Israel, as founded in 1947, IS NOT the new Israel prophesied in the Bible.

There are many Jews that know this. They are the ones opposed to what’s happening in Gaza and Lebanon today. Furthermore, the United States’ unconditional support for Israel is heavily influenced by dispensationalists who pushed Truman to recognize the modern state of Israel. All I ask of you, before you blindly support whatever Israel does, is to read the original Bible and consider what I just revealed to you.