Christian Zionism is America's state religion?

[renard_ruse]

Most Americans don't even know about it, but in recent decades a very different form of Christianity has developed among some Protestant "evangelical" churches in the US (and to a lesser extent elsewhere).

This is what is called "Dispensationalism" (opponents often refer to it as Chrisitian Zionism) which replaces the idea that salvation comes through faith in Christ alone as the redeemer for sins (I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father but through Me" in John 14:6 and of course, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, and whomsoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life" from John 3:16).

From times of the earliest Church fathers belief in Christ as the Son of God and membership in the universal Church was interpreted as the only means of salvation for anyone whether gentile or Jew. Today, however, little known to the average American, many church leaders in America have turned this basic and simple idea backwards. To these influencial Protestant leaders, the Jews will be saved regardless of whether they accept Christ simply because they are Jews. And, what's more, God commands true gentile Christians to support Jewish sovereignty over Palestine and perhaps even over much of the rest of the Middle East regardless of whether the Jews accept Christ or curse His name. They don't even have to convert like the rest of mankind.

Further, these influencial leaders include most of the major leaders of the evangelical movement today including Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, Franklin Graham, John Hagee (the most extreme nutcase of the lot), and countless others. Of course, President Bush himself is a Dispensationalist as well. Dispensational Christianity (Christinsanity???) has been guiding US foreign policy since the Reagan years. In fact, its probably more responsible for the Iraq fiasco and the rest of the Middle East mess than the Jewish Israel Lobby. Yet few Americans, and even many Christians have no idea it exists. You need to learn and study it. Its running our country and changing the future of the world (in the view of many, including this writer, for the worse).

From Wikipedia article on Christian Zionism:
The Church is the Israel of God Today: Criticism of Dispensationalism
The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.(December 2007)
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

“We want you to recognize that Iran is a clear and present danger to the United States of America and Israel. And… that it’s time for our country to consider a military pre-emptive strike against Iran if they will not yield to diplomacy.” – John Hagee, Christians United for Israel, July 17, 2007, Washington, D.C. (from Bill Moyers Journal, October 5, 2007).

According to a 2006 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, American Protestants strongly support Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is because 53 percent believe Jews when they say, “This land is mine, God gave this land to me (theme from 1960 movie “Exodus,” written by Pat Boone). And 47 percent believe that “the state of Israel is a fulfillment of the biblical prophecy about the second coming of Jesus.”[citation needed]

These evangelicals believe in a relatively new and controversial theological view of the last things called Dispensationalism. This is a view popularized by the visions of a Scottish girl in 1830. John Darby of the Plymouth Brethren adopted and adapted her visions to form a kind of premillennialism known as pre-tribulationism. This type of eschatology has been popularized by the Scofield Reference Bible, Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series.

The view that was widely taught was this: the Second Coming is a single event when all history is consummated: Christ appears, all the dead (believers and unbelievers) are resurrected and judged, and eternity in the new heaven and new earth begins. This is what is known as amillennialism, which regards the thousand years of Revelation 20:1-6 as symbolic of a very long, but complete, period of time – the “last days” or “last hour” between the two comings of Christ (Acts 2:16-17; 1 Cor. 10:11; Heb. 1:2; 9:26; 1 Pet. 1:20; 1 John 2:18).

Premillennialism stems from a more literal understanding of Biblical prophecy, believing that unfulfilled prophesies given to Israel in the Old Testament (such as the earthly, Davidic reign of Christ) await literal fulfillment in a future millennium, with most adherents believing the millennium to be 1000 years.

One point of dispute between eschatologies is the Christian “parenthesis” seen by Dispensationalists. According to this view, when Christ came, Christ originally offered his kingdom to the Jews, but the Jews instead rejected and killed him. The Christian "parenthesis" (coming between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel) involves a break in God's historical dealing with the Jewish people, during which time He focuses on the Church, which will then evangelize the Jews.

Another point of dispute is the eternal distinction between Israel and the church. According to some some branches of Dispensationalism, there was never – and there will never be – a time when Israel was part of the universal church. The church is God’s heavenly people, while national Israel is God’s earthly people.

Who are God’s Chosen People Today?

“The biblical mandates for supporting Israel began with Genesis 12:3: ‘I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you.’ Secondly, David said in Psalms 122:6, ‘Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. They shall prosper that love you.’” – Hagee, July 17, 2007.

“The land of Israel was given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their seed in an eternal covenant… And that land belongs to the Jewish people today, tomorrow and forever because it is their covenant by the word of God.” – Hagee, September 18, 2005.

For sure, if we were Jews in the Old Testament times, we would understand these texts as referring only to national Israel. This is dispensationalism’s incomplete understanding of the Old Testament – as if the New Testament does not exist. But when Christ came, the apostles, who were all descendants of Abraham, understood the Old Testament not literalistically, but as types and shadows of Christ and his atoning sacrifice (Col. 2:16-17; Heb. 8:5; 9:23-24; 10:1). Why did they interpret the Old Testament as such? Because Jesus showed them so! “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself,“ and “everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:27, 44).

Using Jesus’ own principle of interpretation, how then did the New Testament writers read the Old Testament prophecies regarding Israel?

First, Christ is the true Israel of God.

In explaining God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 22:17-18, the apostle Paul says that “in [Abraham’s] offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” And who is Abraham’s “offspring”? Paul says in Galatians 3:16 that since the text uses the singular, “offspring,” it is referring to Christ. Christ is the Israel of God, Abraham’s Offspring.

Thus, Matthew interprets all of the life of Jesus, from birth to death, as the ultimate fulfilment of the history of Israel as a nation:

Old Testament Matthew
Pharaoh sought to kill the baby who was to become mediator of the old covenant. Herod sought to kill the baby who was to become mediator of the new covenant.
Israel crossed the sea, called a “baptism” by Paul in 1 Cor. 10:1-2. Jesus went into the river to be baptized (3:13).
The cloud, the Spirit of God, hovered over the Israelites in their journey (Exod. 40:38). The Spirit hovered over Jesus at his baptism (3:16).
Israel was tempted in the wilderness for 40 years (Num. 32:13). Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days (4:1).
Moses read the old covenant to Israel at Mount Sinai (Exod. 19:2-3). Jesus explained life in the new covenant on a mountain (5:1).
Isaiah ascribes God’s chosen “Servant” in whom he delights to Israel (42:1, 44:1). Matthew ascribes Isaiah’s “Servant” to Jesus (12:18; cf. 3:17).
Isaiah’s ”Servant” “has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isa. 53:4). Jesus “took our illnesses and bore our diseases” (8:17).

Second, the Church is the true Israel of God.

Paul shows in his epistles that from the beginning, God already intended to include in his covenant not only Abraham’s blood descendants, but also Abraham’s faith descendants. Those who are in Christ, namely believers from “all the nations,” are the true children of Abraham (Gal. 3:7-9, 29; Rom. 9:6-8). It is not only those who have the external, physical sign of circumcision, but those who have the inward circumcision of the heart by the Spirit of Christ who belong to Israel (Rom. 2:28-29; Phil. 3:3).

Therefore, since Jesus is the true Israel of God, all those who are united to him by faith are also counted as the true Israel of God (Gal. 6:16).

If God’s blessings are given only to Abraham and all people like him who have faith in Christ, what then of those who do not have this same faith? One of the ways in which Jesus pictures Judgment Day is the Son of Man meting out blessings and curses to everyone based on their treatment of God’s people. On that last day, he will say to the sheep, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom… [because] as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” But to the goats, he will say, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire… [because] as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me” (Matt. 25:31-46). Why is this a basis for judgment? Because love for the brethren is one of the marks of a true believer (1 John 3:14).

The fruit of faith in a true believer is not lobbying the White House to support Israel and bomb Iran, but loving the brethren – the Israel of God – whether they are Jews or Gentiles. Thus, blessings and curses are pronounced by God on people based on how they treated believers, not on how they handled national Israel.

Third, Canaan, the Promised Land, was only a type of the New Heaven and New Earth.

God not only promised innumerable children and many nations to Abraham; he also promised land to him and his descendants (Gen. 17:8). And all that God promised to the Israelites in terms of real estate were given to them, as Joshua 21:43-45 says,

“Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers… Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.”

Hebrews chapter 11 points out that Abraham knew that Canaan was not the final Promised Land where he would settle. Why? Because “he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (vv. 9-10). Abraham knew that God’s promised land extended far beyond what he could see. Our Old Testament heroes of the faith “all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (v. 13). No earthly promise of blessing to Israel remains unfulfilled.

How then could dispensationalists say that the land of Canaan belongs to Israel forever, when even Abraham, the first Israelite, did not acknowledge the land as his permanent dwelling place? All the heroes of our faith ”did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us” (vv. 13-16, 39-40). Could that “something better” be the land of Canaan in the millennium? Absolutely not! ”They desire[d] a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (v. 16). In the same way, all of us in Christ throughout the ages are not to get excited about a millennial, earthly Jerusalem, but are to wait for an eternal “new heavens and a new earth” (2 Pet. 3:13).

Fourth, the temporal, earthly kingdom of David was only a type of the eternal, heavenly kingdom of Christ.

At his trial, Jesus was asked by Pilate if he was the King of the Jews. Jesus replied, as always, in spiritual terms not understood by unbelievers, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Why then, do dispensationalists insist on teaching that Jesus will reign from an earthly throne in Jerusalem – a view that Jesus himself denied?

The apostles also interpreted the temporal kingdom of David as such – a type of Christ’s heavenly kingdom. In his Pentecost sermon, Peter saw God’s promise to David “that he would set one of his descendants on his throne,” and that this Son would sit at God’s right hand in his heavenly reign, as fulfilled by Christ himself (2 Sam. 7:16; Acts 2:30, 34). During the Jerusalem council, James interpreted Amos’ prophecy of the restoration of David’s kingdom as being fulfilled by “all the Gentiles who are called by my name” (Amos 9:11-12; Acts 15:15-18). David’s eternal throne is not the millennial kingdom of Israel, but the heavenly, universal Kingdom of Christ made up of Jews and Gentiles.

Were Peter and James “spiritualizing” Amos’ prophecy by not interpreting it “literalistically”? Not at all. They were looking at Old Testament prophecies as types and shadows of Christ’s person and work in the New Testament. They were interpreting Scripture with Scripture, not Scripture with newspapers, TV, and prophecy conferences

 

[phrodeau]

If so, the state religion gets changed every few years.

 

[KravMaga]

What?......I can't hear you.......Speak up!..........................

 

[RobDownSouth]

"Christian Zionism" is to "Christian Fascism" as "Intelligent Design" is to "Creationism".

 

[bronzeage]

Drink your koolaid and shut up.

 

[SeaDaddy1]

America's a state now?

 

[renard_ruse]

America's a state now?

Yes, in the sense of a government. Common use of the term. Words have more than one meaning.

 

[TurdFergeson]

I am god's chosen one.