WHY CHRISTIANS SHOULD NOT SUPPORT “ISRAEL”
It has long been my contention that the greatest myth in American history is that Lincoln “freed the slaves.” The powerful effect of propaganda, especially in wartime, can be tremendous and, obviously, longlasting. Trying to explain what is clearly written in the Emancipation Proclamation to many Americans who have been programmed to believe otherwise can be immensely challenging, even if you tell them they can read it for themselves. It’s seconds away from a Google search, or they can run down to their county courthouse, where indubitably they will find it encased on a wall, enshrined as if it was a third tablet Moses brought down from the mountain.
But there is another myth that crept into American evangelicalism not long after Abe’s decree that is astounding for the pernicious methods used in bringing about its acceptance to such a large degree of professing Christians in the United States in the twentieth century. And that is the belief that Christians are obligated to “bless” (and that means “support,” financially and materially) the modern (incorporated in 1948), political, nation-state that adopts the name “Israel.”
Consider the evolution of this doctrine. An ethnic group who, by their own admission, rejects Christ as the Messiah and whose religious books denounce Christianity using straightforward and often graphically vulgar means, has convinced a large number of adherents to that very Christian faith that their spiritual actions, if not their very salvation, are contingent upon unreserved “support” of said ethnic group and their activities. Comb world history and ask yourself if this has ever before been accomplished.
We know this movement today as Christian Zionism. But the attempts to Judaize the Christian faith goes all the way back to the New Testament. In its latest form, its foundation is with the 19th-Century Plymouth Brethren sect and its first main proponent was Englishman John Nelson Darby. Their teachings forwarded the view that the Jews remain “God’s chosen people” and there is a clear distinction between the Church and the “Chosen.” This was thinking that flew in the face of roughly two thousand years of Church teaching, both Protestant and Catholic.
Darby’s beliefs were adopted around the turn of the 20th Century by Cyrus Scofield of Michigan, who went on to incorporate them in his publicized versions of a study Bible that gained enormous popularity and influence in dispensationalist circles throughout the States. The effect in America since the establishment of the Middle East state of “Israel” in 1948 has been nothing short of heretical beliefs about salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and has resulted in foreign policy poison. Well-meaning and intelligent Christians are bound to disagree. But there is a huge difference between drawing different interpretations of passages from studying Scripture and an ethnic group that denounces Jesus as Messiah twisting the Scripture in order to gain support for their earthly pursuits. Especially when those pursuits involve sending our children to fight and die in unnecessary wars.
Zionism has been advanced by such noteworthy American evangelicals as Jerry Falwell and John Hagee. Recently, we have heard the continued Darby/Scofield Zionist influence from the mouths of politicians Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee. When pressed on the basis for their beliefs, we see what happens when people espouse as Biblical not what they have actually read in Scripture, but what someone told them was in Scripture (much like those whose beliefs about what the Emancipation Proclamation contains did not come from actually reading the document).
I, too, grew up believing that we must “support Israel” because God said so. I believed it because I was told that by influential people in my life. But it's not in the Bible. The establishment of the Abrahamic covenant is found at the beginning of Genesis 12. In verse 3 God tells Abraham, “ I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. [emphasis added]”
Partisans of Zionism like to refer to the traditional Christian view of Jesus and His Church being the fulfillment of Old Testament Israel as “replacement theology,” arguing that its adherents are declaring that the Church has “replaced” Israel. However, in the same vein that Jesus said He came “not to abolish the Law or the Prophets” but “to fulfill them, (Matthew 5:17)” the New Testament Church is the fulfillment of Old Testament Israel and, therefore, what Paul refers to as the “Israel of God (Galatians 6:16).”
No, I don't think Abraham or Paul had in mind an anti-Christ, Middle East ethnostate in 2026 AD led by Bibi Netanyahu. God’s plans are never thwarted. As early as Exodus 12:38, we are told that a “mixed multitude” travelled with the Israelites. This likely included Egyptians, other foreigners, slaves…all united not by their ethnicity but by their professed belief and faith in Yahweh. The life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ was the major turning point in the history of mankind. His chosen people are united by faith in Him, as they always have been. This is true of the non-Hebrew believers of the Old Testament and those of every tribe and nation today.
Unbelieving Jews have attempted to rest their salvation on their ancestry since the days of Jesus’s earthly ministry. In John 8, He encountered such unbelievers, who claimed, “We are offspring of Abraham… (v.33).” Jesus set them straight. “I know you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill Me because My word finds no place in you (v.37)... If you were [spiritually] Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did…If God were your father, you would love Me… You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth…you are not of God (vv. 42-47).”
This needs to be understood: Being a child of God is not dependent on one’s physical lineage. In Luke 3, Jesus also interacted with what He called this “brood of vipers” who rested their assurance on “Abraham as our father.” “For I tell you,” He said, “God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham (vv. 7-9).”
The Apostles repeatedly warn against Judaizers throughout the New Testament. In Titus 1:10-16, Paul calls them “insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party…(who) devote themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn themselves away from the truth…They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.” In Titus 3:9-11, Paul tells us to “avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless…have nothing more to do with (them), knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.”
In Galatians 4:22-31, Paul draws a sharp distinction between Isaac (the son of promise) and Ishmael (the son of the flesh). The same is applied to “the Jerusalem above” as contrasted with “present [earthly] Jerusalem.” This coincides with the “New Jerusalem” John describes in Revelation, consisting of “that great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’ (Rev 7:9-10)” Folks – that is NOT the town in the Middle East today.
“Oh, foolish Galatians!” Paul begins Galatians 3, addressing his Gentile audience. “Who has bewitched you?” In verse 6 he recounts the fact that it was Abraham's belief in God that was counted to him as righteousness. It was his faith. Verses 7-9 reemphasize the fact that, even for Gentiles, it is this faith that matters. “[I]t is those of faith who are the children of Abraham.” Oh, foolish American evangelicals! Who is it that continues to bewitch you today?
Do we really think that the Abrahamic covenant was meant to apply to Netanyahu, a war criminal and secular Jew who doesn't appear to be pious about Judaism or any other religion? Do we believe that the “chosen people” of the triune God are the largely agnostic/atheist people enclosed within the man-made 1948 geographical boundaries of the political state of “Israel?”
What are we to make of all these New Testament passages? What are we to make of Paul writing about the distinction between physical circumcision and a circumcision of the heart in Romans 2? What are we to make of John writing in Revelation 2 of “those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan”? Or when John writes in Revelation 3 about “those of the synagogue of Satan who say they are Jews and are not, but lie…?”
God's chosen people are those who confess Him with their mouth and believe in Him with their heart (Romans 10:9)” - whatever their physical heritage and geographic location may be. Pointing this out is bound to open one up to the tired charges of “anti-Semitism.” So be it. We should not let name-calling cause us to disregard the truth. Some of the greatest people to ever live have been called vile names, persecuted, lied about, and denigrated.
Some people will say I'm “hard on the Jews.” I hasten to clarify that, yes, I am hard on unbelieving Jews, because they have been one the greatest enemies of Christianity since they delivered Christ to be crucified. However, what I have said and written about unbelieving Jews pales in comparison to what Paul, John the Revelator, and even Jesus Christ Himself said about them.
We have all seen the effect that vines can cause. Left untended, these vines grow wild and attach themselves to trees and buildings and begin encircling, wrapping, and tightening themselves to the structure. The invasive species grows at an astonishing speed and will blanket the structure if someone doesn't stop it. They block nutrient flow on trees and prohibit sunlight. Trying to pull them down can cause critical parts of the structure to come down with it. The axe must be laid to the root.
What a web of lies and deception have been woven in the Christian West. The Zionist Judaizers are still at work. Their vines have such a hold on the United States government and Christian evangelism that they are choking the life from us.
A truly superb piece, Mr. Doggrell.
Amen, amen amen!
Superb piece. Did not Jesus say that he brought a NEW Covenant?
Exactly. Christians are now the “chosen people”.
Aside from that, Zionism is a heresy within Judaism itself. Traditional Jewish teaching was that Zionists are in rebellion against God, or so I’ve heard.
One may hope that as when the triple-shot COVAIDS-911 scam awakened at least some people to avoid injected poisons, the Zionists have also overplayed their dispensationalist hand recently with Gaza and now Iran. Based on student riots on campuses, it is clear the kids coming up are not influenced by the lobotomology of pop-evangelicals and fundamentalists. Sadly however, based on other recent student led riots, it is safe to say this is from their being unchurched and ahistorical. While in the case of Gaza they rightly see Zionist terrorism and recognize it they easily move between protesting support of Israel to ripping down statues of General Lee. I sense some limited hope in penetrating evangelicalism (if not fundamentalism) with correct eschatology. The historian N.T. Wright for example has made some inroads and surely swayed many away from the heresy. I even recall a ‘Wittenburg Door’ magazine issue back in the 1980’s that spoofed this absurdity with an eschatological timeline depicting among other things the rapture of Hal Lindsey’s Porsche and seven seals each with a ball on its nose.
My old friend, Rabbi Jacob Neusner–a celebrated scholar on the history of Judaism and a firm supporter of Israel–used to say two things. First, that the Holocaust not Judaism was the real religion of most American Jews. He also said that Israel was not the Jew’s promise land but the United States.
I bring this up to indicate some of the complexity of the issue. Jack Neusner was a loyal Jew, defended his people and their traditions, supported Israel on pragmatic grounds, but was aware that Jews had adopted a mythology to justify their every action and every fault. (In this they are hardly different from the rest of the human race.) When the neocons were attacking me, he was one of the few prominent “conservatives” (Robert Nisbet was another) to stand up. He told the NT Times that he knew me well, and as a Rabbi and Jewish scholar, he would certainly have known if I were an anti-Semite. He did later take issue with criticisms of Israel made by Sam Francis and myself and quit writing for the magazine–but, he insisted that it was a question of principle and his delicate condition as a conservative Jewish scholar. We remained on friendly terms.
I agree with Josh Doggrell’s completely valid argument against Christian zionism, but I also think that it is possible to give a qualified and pragmatic support to an ally, admittedly not a trustworthy one, in our own feeble attempt to resist Jihad. I say “possible” and not “necessary.” They were also, at one time, a linch-pin in our anti-Soviet strategy in the Middle East. Of course the blather about our gallant democrat ally in the Middle East is propaganda but it does not require too much stretch of the imagination to consider how precarious their condition is, surrounded by very hostile enemies. Netanyahu’s criminal behavior does not make it easy for a rational and lukewarm defender of Israel’s continued existence and the hysterical and irrational behavior of American Zionists–both Jewish and Christian–makes a pragmatic defense almost impossible.
On my one visit to Israel, I met with a number of prominent political advisors of different types, and I was impressed by the intelligence and reasonableness of everyone including the Pipes’s point man, Martin Kramer, but the one offensive person I met was an American Jewish Zionist who popped off when I used the phrase “occupied territories.” “You mean Samaria and Galilee,” he shouted accusingly across the dinner table. Fortunately there were two elderly working journalists, both of whom had fought in the IDF, and they told him that they had spent their lives taking risks for Israel and they did not need trouble-makers from California stirring up more violence. When he claimed to be spending six months of the year in Israel, they responded, “Where’s your wife and children? Back in the States, safe.” These two were patriotic Jewish Israelis but they wanted–as do many “liberal Israelis–an end to war and the development of normal interstate relations in the Middle East.
The glee of reading of Hal Lindsay’s Porsche rapture will keep my step bouncing all day!
I don’t know how many people have read my longish essay, “From Abraham to Napoleon” first published in our book “Peace in the PPromised Land,” but it was an attempt to debunk both Islamic and Zionist claims to divine justification. The essay, slightly revised, is published on this site. Here is a link to part one: https://fleming.foundation/2021/05/from-abraham-to-napoleon-4000-years-of-ethnic-conflict-part-i/
The Orthodox view on Israel is that the Church is Israel and all Jews continue to be a part of Israel in as much as they accept Christ, which a great many, although hardly a majority, did in the time that He walked among us and, indeed founded the Church. Some Jews continue to accept Christ, as a do many Mulsims, especially Iranians in recent years. In this the West always cuts its own throat. It has continually revitalized Islam whenever it has fallen into a moribund state, ready to topple almost on its own by openly and violently attacking it, thus waking it from its torpor. It is so regular that one might be tempted to think that they do it on purpose, sort of the way they propped up Bolshevism and Maoism over the course of the past century. I am not talking about resistance movements among captured Christian nations, although the West has often made cynical use of these peoples to serve their own greed and power. I’m very much afraid that the recent attacks on Iran, including the murder of their head holy man has once again repeated this pattern. Mitigating this outcome may be their great feeling of gratitude toward the Russians for sticking by them. At least we can be thankful that they won’t be looking to the “Christian” Zionists for salvation.
Mr. Doggrell indicates that he intended to emphasize something in his quote of Genesis 12:3. I believe he meant to emphasize “you” to make it clear that the context shows that when God spoke to Abraham He was speaking specifically only to Abraham, not to a Zionist state contrived in 1948. So Genesis 12:3 would read, “I will bless those who bless YOU [Abraham], and him who dishonors YOU [Abraham] I will curse, and in YOU [Abraham] all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Palestine was not “a land without a people waiting for a people without a land.” In 1948, according to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, about 800,00 native Palestinians had been forcibly removed from their homes and 531 Palestinian villages were destroyed.
In the Discourses, Book I, Chapter XXVI, Niccolo Machiavelli commented on the viciousness of forced population removal. Speaking about Philip of Macedon, Machiavelli says, “he transferred the inhabitants from one province to another, as shepherds move their flocks from place to place. Doubtless these means are cruel and destructive of all civilized life, and neither Christian nor even human, and should be avoided by everyone. In fact, the life of a private citizen would be preferable to that of a king at the expense of the ruin of so many human beings.”
It’s my understanding that what we call the Palestinian people came into existence when the various peoples of the region, which was already called Palestina, who had already come to speak a common language when Aramaic replaced their own languages and dialects, who were already ethnically and culturally similar and who already had been under centuries of Hellenistic and Roman influence, then adopted Christianity and thus came to have a common religion. This would have included Jewish converts to Christianity. Once all these factors were established, intermarriage took place and then this led to an ethnogenesis. If it’s true, then the Palestinians are native and indigenous, especially since the previous peoples who were ancestral to them were native there anyway. It might not be too much of a stretch to say that Christianity created the Palestinian people. The later Arab identity is a veneer over the surface caused by conquest and subjugation, but the Palestinians were already there for several centuries before the Arab conquest.
At least that’s my understanding.
I have never understood why being against war on the Palestinians is antisemitic. Aren’t they Semitic, possible more so than the present Israelis?
That relentlessly and indiscriminately used cudgel against anyone opposing the Greater Israel Project needs to be ignored and shattered.