Christian Zionism: The Heresy of Choice for Neocons

For each Jewish Zionist there are ten wacko Evangelical Christian Zionists.

Stephen Sizer Jan 5, 2018 | 6,120 291

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At least one in four American Christians surveyed recently by Christianity Today magazine said that they believe it is their biblical responsibility to support the nation of Israel. This view is known as Christian Zionism. The Pew Research Center put the figure at 63 per cent among white evangelicals. Christian Zionism is pervasive within mainline American evangelical, charismatic and independent denominations including the Assemblies of God, Pentecostals and Southern Baptists, as well as many of the independent mega-churches. It is less prevalent within the historic denominations, which show a greater respect for the work of the United Nations, support for human rights, the rule of international law and empathy with the Palestinians.

The origins of the movement can be traced to the early 19th century when a group of eccentric British Christian leaders began to lobby for Jewish restoration to Palestine as a necessary precondition for the return of Christ. The movement gained traction from the middle of the 19th century when Palestine became strategic to British, French and German colonial interests in the Middle East. Proto-Christian Zionism therefore preceded Jewish Zionism by more than 50 years. Some of Theodore Herzl’s strongest advocates were Christian clergy.

Christian Zionism as a modern theological and political movement embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism. It has become deeply detrimental to a just peace between Palestine and Israel. It propagates a worldview in which the Christian message is reduced to an ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism. In its extreme form, it places an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading to the end of history rather than living Christ’s love and justice today.

Followers of Christian Zionism are convinced that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 and the capture of Jerusalem in 1967 were the miraculous fulfillment of God’s promises made to Abraham that he would establish Israel as a Jewish nation forever in Palestine.Tim LaHaye’s infamous Left Behind novels, together with other End Times speculations written by authors such as Hal Lindsey, John Hagee and Pat Robertson, have sold well over 100 million copies. These are supplemented by children’s books, videos and even violent computer games.

Burgeoning Christian Zionist organizations such as the International Christian Embassy (ICEJ), Christian Friends of Israel (CFI) and Christians United for Israel (CUFI) wield considerable influence on Capitol Hill, claiming a support base in excess of 50 million true believers. This means there are now at least ten times as many Christian Zionists as Jewish Zionists.

And their European cousins are no less active in the Zionist Hasbarafia, lobbying for Israel, attacking its critics and thwarting the peace process. The United States and Israel are often portrayed as Siamese twins, joined at the heart, sharing common historic, religious and political values.

Pastor John Hagee is one of the leaders of the Christian Zionist movement. He is the Founder and Senior Pastor of Cornerstone Church, a 19,000-member evangelical church in San Antonio, Texas. His weekly programs are broadcast on 160 TV stations, 50 radio stations and eight networks into an estimated 99 million homes in 200 countries. In 2006 he founded Christians United for Israel admitting, “For 25 almost 26 years now, I have been pounding the evangelical community over television. The Bible is a very pro-Israel book. If a Christian admits ‘I believe the Bible,’ I can make him a pro-Israel supporter or they will have to denounce their faith. So I have the Christians over a barrel, you might say.”

In March 2007, Hagee spoke at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference. He began by saying: “The sleeping giant of Christian Zionism has awakened. There are 50 million Christians standing up and applauding the State of Israel…”As the Jerusalem Post pointed out, his speech did not lack clarity. He went on to warn: “It is 1938. Iran is Germany, and Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler. We must stop Iran’s nuclear threat and stand boldly with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East… Think of our potential future together: 50 million evangelicals joining in common cause with 5 million Jewish people in America on behalf of Israel is a match made in heaven.”

Christian Zionists have shown varying degrees of enthusiasm for implementing six basic political convictions that arise from their ultra-literal and fundamentalist theology:

1. The belief that the Jews remain God’s chosen people leads Christian Zionists to seek to bless Israel in material ways. However, this also invariably results in the uncritical endorsement of and justification of Israel’s racist and apartheid policies, in the media, among politicians and through solidarity tours to Israel.
2. As God’s chosen people, the final restoration of the Jews to Israel is therefore actively encouraged, funded and facilitated through partnerships with the Jewish Agency.
3. Eretz Israel, as delineated in scripture, from the Nile to the Euphrates, belongs exclusively to the Jewish people, therefore the land must be annexed, and Palestinians driven from their homes and the illegal Jewish settlements expanded and consolidated.
4. Jerusalem is regarded as the eternal and exclusive capital of the Jews, and cannot be shared with the Palestinians. Therefore, strategically, Christian Zionists have lobbied the US Administration to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem and thereby ensure that Jerusalem is recognized as the capital of Israel.
5. Christian Zionists offer varying degrees of support for organizations such as the Jewish Temple Mount Faithful who are committed to destroying the Dome of the Rock and rebuilding the Jewish Temple on the Haram Al-Sharif (Noble sanctuary of Al-Aqsa).
6. Christian Zionists invariably have a pessimistic view of the future, convinced that there will be an apocalyptic war of Armageddon in the imminent future. They are deeply skeptical of the possibility of a lasting peace between Jews and Arabs and therefore oppose the peace process. Indeed, to advocate an Israeli compromise of “land for peace” with the Palestinians is seen as a rejection of God’s promises to Israel and therefore to support her enemies.

Within the Christian Zionist worldview, Palestinians are regarded as alien residents in Israel. Many Christian Zionists are reluctant even to acknowledge Palestinians exist as a distinct people, claiming that they emigrated to Israel from surrounding Arab nations for economic reasons after Israel had become prosperous. A fear and deep-seated hatred of Islam also pervades their dualistic Manichean theology. Christian Zionists have little or no interest in the existence of indigenous Arab Christians despite their continuity with the early church.

In 2006, I drafted what became known as the Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism signed by four of the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem: His Beatitude Patriarch Michel Sabbah, Latin Patriarch, Jerusalem; Archbishop Swerios Malki Mourad, Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate, Jerusalem; Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal, Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East; and Bishop Munib Younan, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land. In it they insisted: “We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as a false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation.

We further reject the contemporary alliance of Christian Zionist leaders and organizations with elements in the governments of Israel and the United States that are presently imposing their unilateral pre-emptive borders and domination over Palestine. This inevitably leads to unending cycles of violence that undermine the security of all peoples of the Middle East and the rest of world.We reject the teachings of Christian Zionism that facilitate and support these policies as they advance racial exclusivity and perpetual war rather than the gospel of universal love, redemption and reconciliation taught by Jesus Christ. Rather than condemn the world to the doom of Armageddon we call upon everyone to liberate themselves from ideologies of militarism and occupation. Instead, let them pursue the healing of the nations!

We call upon Christians in Churches on every continent to pray for the Palestinian and Israeli people, both of whom are suffering as victims of occupation and militarism. These discriminative actions are turning Palestine into impoverished ghettos surrounded by exclusive Israeli settlements. The establishment of the illegal settlements and the construction of the Separation Wall on confiscated Palestinian land undermines the viability of a Palestinian state and peace and security in the entire region.”

The patriarchs concluded, “God demands that justice be done. No enduring peace, security or reconciliation is possible without the foundation of justice. The demands of justice will not disappear. The struggle for justice must be pursued diligently and persistently but non-violently.” The prophet Micah asks, “What does the Lord require of you, to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8).

It is my contention after more than 10 years of postgraduate research that Christian Zionism is the largest, most controversial and most destructive lobby within Christianity. It bears primary responsibility for perpetuating tensions in the Middle East, justifying Israel’s apartheid colonialist agenda and for undermining the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

The closing chapter of the New Testament takes us back to the imagery of the Garden of Eden and the removal of the curse arising from the Fall: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb… On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” (Revelation 22:1-2) Surely this is what Jesus had in mind when he instructed his followers to act as Ambassadors of peace and reconciliation, to work and pray that God’s kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven.The Revd Dr Stephen Sizer is the Vicar of Christ Church in Virginia Water and the author of Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon? (InterVarsity Press, 2004); Zion’s Christian Soldiers?(2007) and In the Footsteps of Jesus and the Apostles (Eagle, 2004). For more information see www.stephensizer.com

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Source: Middle East Monitor

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Would Jesus Vote For Donald Trump?

Armageddon? Bring It On:

Posted by Charles E Carlson  December 15, 2017

The Evangelical Force Behind Trump’s Jerusalem Speech

Editor Charles Carlson observes: This cryptic account of how Donald Trump has used the so-called ‘religious right’ to carry out his own agenda, is from none other than Haaretz, perhaps Israel’s leading news publication.  The authors are laughing up their sleeve that we Americans can be led by the likes of Donald Trump and his critical “theological” support base of some 60 million who really do believe what Haaretz finds to be so strange.  We will not live in peace, nor will the rest of the world until these well-meaning zealots recognize themselves as victims of a crackpot religious hodgepodge that calls itself Christian Zionism. – Editor CEC

Haaretz writes: “The U.S. evangelical community is in raptures over Trump’s decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, believing it moves the world closer to Armageddon”

“Trump is showing love to Israel because evangelical voters form the crucial linchpin in his relatively small but solid support base. Evangelical voters threw their support behind Trump in 2016 at a higher rate than any previous presidential candidate – giving him 81 percent of their vote, even more than they gave to fellow evangelical George W. Bush.
It was these Christian evangelicals – and Pence, an evangelical himself and a prominent touchstone of their influence in the Trump administration – that were clearly the driving force behind the Jerusalem declaration.”

“Furthermore, the fact the evangelical community’s desire to see Jerusalem being irrevocably in Israeli hands is based on religious beliefs rather than practical political concerns means that a fear of the anticipated violent reaction from Palestinians and the Arab world was easily dismissed as irrelevant by Trump and the decision-makers around him.”

Full Story here:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.827591

 

“Christian-Zionism” Is Trouble for Israel and the USA

By Frank Schaeffer

[MysteryWorshiper’s note: I’ve posted this article by Schaeffer because it discusses the cult of Christian Zionism. In addition, the moderator of Anti-Zionist Canada has made an excellent critical review of Schaeffer, presented below:

While I’m in agreement with most of the obvious statements by Schaeffer there’s still some things that irk me in his assessment.

First off I don’t believe it was/is “Evangelical theological/biblical ‘reasons'” that have deformed US foreign policy. It was Talmudic, Zionist Jew policies that were surreptitiously slipped into the State Department and the White House over the past century or so that have done the dirty work of subverting those erring, ignorant Christians who, for whatever reasons, succumbed to this notion that by giving their unstinting support to this blatant, rogue, apartheid, racist, supremacist state duplicitously designating itself the center and epitome of the Biblical Israel, they would somehow be fulfilling Biblical prophecy.

I believe that Saint John the Divine, in his letters to the seven churches of Asia (Revelation, 2:9), gave the world fair warning of these times when he quotes Jesus Christ’s clear warning to future generations:

“…I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.”

Any Christian or any unbiased person who has studied the question of these Ashkenazi interlopers knows that the Israel of Biblical times refers to all the twelve tribes that then composed it, not, as the Zionists would have people believe, only those of the tribe of Judah, the one tribe, that incidentally, was booted out because it was too warlike and cruel to get along with all the others in the region.

Again, it’s taken the past three hundred years and more of this incessant poisoning of the Christian churches by these rabbinical Talmudic tyrants to reach the final stages that we’re now at. The only direct fault I see for Christians (and non-Christians are no exception to this either) is that due to their trust and belief in their religious leaders, they fell prey to this false notion of the false Jews.

We overlook the big bucks that these phony Jews have poured into anti-Christs like John Hagee and by doing so again reveal the fact that other warnings by the Christed One directly related to this issue of false prophets also have been disregarded by those who profess to be “Christian” Zionists.

I particularly take exception to this comment by Shaeffer: “The state of Israel has every much as a right to exist as countries like the United States, New Zealand and Australia where the land was also (relatively recently) forcibly taken from the previous occupants. And yes, Israel suffers from slander from many hypocrites in the world (Arab and otherwise).” Both he and the Huffington Post are too Jew influenced, to the point where they don’t see, or don’t want to see, the actual reason why Rothschild invented and then established this so-called “state” called Israel in the midst of the Arab world. Schaeffer sounds like the typical shabez goi Israeli apologist who, slyly appears to be questioning this cancerous growth upon the body politic yet constantly qualifies himself by pretense.

Israel is a parasite as Eustice Mullens clearly shows and one that, left to exist, will drain the lifeblood from not only the people of Palestine and the surrounding Arab regions but from the global family of man itself. It must be dismantled somehow and its illegally gotten license to potentially use its nuclear arsenal against the world removed from the Middle East.

You cannot argue or debate or reason with a cancerous growth or with a parasite. It’s the nature of these entities to “do their own thing” regardless of the ill effect upon the host that they live off. It therefore becomes incumbent upon the host to do something to dislodge that which is slowly sucking its life away. To try and twist this basic fact of nature into some type of Talmudic hypothesis that admits otherwise is a sign of mental derangement.

That said, we have to keep hammering home the fact that these false prophets of death and deception who hide behind their mask called “Israel” are NOT the original Hebrew inhabitants of a small portion of the former Biblical area known as Palestine but are in truth hucksters and terrorists and liars and cheats who will do anything and everything that a human parasite is capable of conceiving in order to justify their existence within the context that they now operate. In this sense Frank Shaeffer and the Huffington Post are only adding additional subterfuge and falsehood in this article.]

July 08, 2010 “Huffington Post” – -Some of the nuttiest American religious leaders today (and in the past) have latched on to one form or another of Christian Zionism. These days Reverend John Hagee (pastor of a mega church with thousands of members in Houston) is a leading Far Right Evangelical and ardent fan of Israeli expansion into the disputed West Bank.

And the bestselling books of the Left Behind series of novels have fed the Evangelicals’ fixation on End Times prophecy and the “imminent” return of Christ. To put it mildly, the Evangelical theological/biblical “reasons” have deformed US policy and made America act against its self interest. This has also harmed the state of Israel.

Here’s a story in the New York Times that handily illustrates the price both America and Israel pay for allowing Evangelical mythology to inform, or should I say deform, US foreign policy.

According to the New York Times, “Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank” (July 6, 2010), evangelical fans of the Apocalypse are hock deep in aiding and abetting illegal settlements while our government looks the other way!

HAR BRACHA, West Bank — Twice a year, American evangelicals show up at a winery in this Jewish settlement in the hills of ancient Samaria to play a direct role in biblical prophecy, picking grapes and pruning vines.
Believing that Christian help for Jewish winemakers here in the occupied West Bank foretells Christ’s second coming, they are recruited by a Tennessee-based charity called HaYovel that invites volunteers “to labor side by side with the people of Israel” and “to share with them a passion for the soon coming jubilee in Yeshua, messiah.”

…

“Israel exists because of a covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob 3,500 years ago — and that covenant still stands,” Mr. Hagee thundered. “World leaders do not have the authority to tell Israel and the Jewish people what they can and cannot do in the city of Jerusalem.”

Conflict, Armageddon and the “End Times” is the Christian-Zionist agenda, not helping a child in Tel Aviv or Gaza live happily, have a normal life and walk to school safely. The Evangelicals who “love” the state of Israel would rather see an innocent Jewish or Palestinian child blown up in a rocket attack as long as the “Promised Land” is “fully reclaimed” to fulfill their harebrained ideas of biblical prophecy. With “friends” like the Christian Zionists Israel needs no enemies. With “citizens” like the Evangelicals rooting for Armageddon, America needs no traitors.

Hold the emails! The state of Israel has every much as a right to exist as countries like the United States, New Zealand and Australia where the land was also (relatively recently) forcibly taken from the previous occupants. And yes, Israel suffers from slander from many hypocrites in the world (Arab and otherwise).

That said, American Evangelicals have an unhealthy affinity with the idea of religion-based states. A bedrock article of faith among American Evangelicals is that America had “Christian origins,” and that today America must be “restored” to our “Christian heritage.” The “Puritan heritage” of America is constantly cited as evidence for our need to “return” to our biblical roots. (In order to “fulfill Biblical prophecy,” so-called “Dispensationalists” have been working to ensure that the world’s Jews return to Israel and occupy all of Palestine. Dispensationalists have been leading “pilgrims” to Israel ever since since Pastor Jerry Falwell’s first visit in order to win financial and political support for the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.)

As I discuss in my book Crazy For God Puritans believed that they were carrying “authentic Christianity” to America, especially as written in the Old Testament. They said that they were on a divine mission, even called themselves; “the New Israel” and a “city set upon a hill.” John Winthrop (governor of Massachusetts Bay) transferred the idea of “nationhood” in biblical Israel to the Massachusetts Bay Company. Puritans even said the Bible confirmed their status as the New Israel!

It is no coincidence that the self-consciously religious states of the Middle East are in perpetual conflict with other equally religion-based countries, for instance Islamic states like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (that postures as the keeper of Islam) and Iran are in perpetual conflict with Israel the Jewish homeland. And it’s no coincidence that America has paid dearly in blood and treasure in one Middle Eastern-incited and/or actual military entanglement after another because of our theology-based relationship with the state of Israel as well as our meddling in the affairs of the Islamic states like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.

What would you expect but conflict when modernity tangles with Bronze Age tribalism that’s been given a biblical Evangelical “End Times” twist?!

As the Times story illustrates, Evangelical hardliners have a “prophetic” agenda when pushing Israel to keep all the West Bank and to be “tough on the Palestinians” that has nothing to do with what might bring peace (let alone justice) to the actual Jews and actual Arabs who are fated to be neighbors. Gleeful — shamefully tax-deductible — war mongering in the name of Jesus and/or “protecting Israel” — from a safe distance, say from Houston! — has everything to do with Evangelicals’ ideas about what will hasten the “return of Christ” and nothing to do with what is actually good for the Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs, let alone the rest of us who long for peace.

Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back