Repost: Israel, Gaza and the Gospel

This is a topic that is at the top of the news once again and once again a subset of Christians who grossly misunderstand the Old Covenant and consistently misapply Old Testament passages along with random New Testament eschatalogical passages come out of the woodwork. This is greeted with the glee of a kid on Christmas morning by secular media outlets for the stream of foolish and Gospel harming quotes that these individuals provide. Case in point, a recent Slate article at a convocation of the ever mind-numbing John Hagee and his acolytes, Inside the Most Insanely Pro-Israel Meeting You Could Ever Attend. Now from Slate you should assume the worst when it comes to anything religious but some stuff is hard to deny, especially the last few paragraphs (emphasis mine):

“There is an entire generation being raised in southern Israel, barely any of whom do not suffer from PTSD due to the rocket fire,” said Anthony. “The entire Zionist experiment rests in no small part on what it is we do during this campaign.”

What the IDF needed was a total victory. “Rocket factories can be destroyed,” said Anthony. “Weapon factories can be destroyed. Terrorists can be eliminated. Tunnels can be dug out.” But it could only happen if America resisted the temptation to criticize Israel or to stop the operation.

“Hamas started this war,” said Anthony. “The soldiers of Israel must smash their skulls and break their spines.”

When he said that, a standing-room crowd of pastors and activists and politicians rose to its feet, waving the twin flags of the countries God loved.

What is really disturbing is that even though this is in Slate I have no trouble at all believing this happened.

As I write below you can make a decent argument from a secular, geo-political position that Israel as a sovereign state has a right and a duty to defend her citizens from attack. I have no doubt that Hamas loves to see dead Palestinian children as a PR tool in their war against Israel. People with an agenda, whether the leaders of Hamas or Benjamin Netanyahu, are always looking for the crass PR opportunity to score political points on the talk shows and via their proxies.

Where I have an issue is when this conflict is turned from a secular squabble that never gets any better and into a theological one where Christians in America are assumed to have a Kingdom obligation to support a secular people group in a war that appears to kill far more civilians than combatants against another secular people group. Let me say this as plainly as I can: A nation created by international proxy that is overwhelmingly populated by people who deny Christ is by definition not "God's people". One cannot simultaneously be in favor with God and denying His Son. That was true in the 1st century A.D. and it is still true today. That basic fact of Christian theology didn't change when a guilt driven world carved a new secular homeland for Jews out of Palestine. I seriously do a literal :facepalm: on a daily basis when I see some things fellow believers say about this conflict. We should be weeping and praying for peace and for the innocents killed on both sides, not taking sides against others based on a faulty and dangerous theology that has its roots in Left Behind and other crappy apocalyptic fiction. There is no small amount of manipulation for political gain and for the selling of books that goes on at events like these and still Christians flock to them. People need to put their end-times flow charts away and try reading the Bible for a change. 

Also of note, another post that mostly is a copy and paste from John Piper who pretty much nails in on this issue, One of the best summaries of the relationship between Christians and the modern state of Israel I have ever read.
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The conflict in the Middle East is rife with danger for Christians because many of us have been inundated with years of bubblegum pop eschatology that inextricably links the Israel of God with the current nation-state of Israel (see, this chart here shows that Hillary Clinton/Ted Kennedy/Barack Obama/insert liberal here is the anti-Christ!). That linkage causes many Christians to reflexively support Israel, no matter what. I happen to support Israel the nation in the current conflict; the same was that I support Taiwan against mainland Red China. I think people should support Israel, but I think we should support Israel for the right reasons.

To begin with I don’t think that the nation-state of Israel is the Israel of God because it bears the same name and is made up mostly of people of Jewish descent.

Is there a Gospel future for the Jews? I certainly think so, one that involves a massive (future?) conversion of Jews to Christ. Romans 11 bears this out. I do not think that this means that God is intending to fulfill the land promises of the Old Covenant. Why would He? So they can have a physical homeland when Christ has provided a spiritual home? So they can rebuild the temple and make sacrifices, putting the cross of Christ to shame? God has a plan for His people, Jews and gentiles, that is so much greater and more magnificent than a piece of property in the Middle East.

I think it is vital that the Christian manage to look at Israel as two separate entities, the Israel of God on the one hand and the political entity of the nation-state of Israel on the other. Being Jewish does not save you. Romans 11:26 says that all Israel will be saved but it is clear through the Bible that faith in Christ is the only way of salvation and many, many Jews have rejected Christ. So if all Israel will be saved, but not all Jews are saved than it must mean that being the Israel of God is not of necessity a Jewish thing. In Acts 2: , Peter was speaking to a Jewish audience and when the asked “Brothers, what shall we do?”, Peter didn’t say “Nothing, you are Jews so you are all set!”, he told them to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. There are Jews and gentiles who are God’s elect and they are born-again and come to saving faith in Christ and are saved. There are likewise Jews and gentiles alike who are not elect, who do not come to faith and are lost. Romans 9: 6-8 tells us that “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel”, and Galatians 3:7 and 3: 29 tell us that those of faith are the heirs of Abraham’s promises. So I don’t buy into the corollary that tells us that Jewish automatically equates to Israel. Nor do I think it is logical to assume that a Christian is duty bound to support Israel in her attacks against Hamas simply because they are Christians and Israel is Israel.

From a geo-political standpoint, the nation-state of Israel absolutely has the right to defend herself. Try to imagine living in a nation that is surrounded on all sides by “neighbors” who to some extent are committed to your destruction or at least reject the idea that Israel has a right to exist at all as a legitimate and free nation. We have been at peace with Mexico and Canada for more than a century, Canada probably since the end of the War of 1812, so nearly 200 years. But imagine if you will terrorists in Windsor, Ontario launching rockets into Detroit (pretend for a second that Detroit is a city that would be noticeably damaged by rocket fire). I would hope that the U.S. would take drastic steps to stop the rockets. In fact I think the Israeli response has been pretty measured and restrained compared to what they could be doing. The Israelis have one of the most powerful militaries in the world, even given the fact that the nation itself is tiny. It is not unthinkable that they could simply level the Palestinian settlements in the Gaza strip with minimal effort. So while they have been responding with necessary military force, and that force has caused civilian casualties, the Israeli’s have taken great pains to try to avoid civilian casualties. A spokesman for the IDF stated that they have scrubbed 90% of their proposed targets to avoid civilian casualties.

Ultimately the Palestinians are pawns in this struggle between the nation of Israel and the Islamic radicals who deny her legitimacy and seek the utter destruction of Israel and every Jew. Hamas will never defeat Israel by launching a few crude rockets or using suicide bombers. That is ludicrous and is not the intent. The goal of those who fund and supply these terrorists, terror patrons who live outside of Palestinian territories, is to provoke a response from Israel and use the resulting calamity to turn world opinion against Israel and by association against America. I am certain that there are many who are gleeful when Palestinian civilians are killed, especially children, because the graphic nature of that violence better serves their sick cause. I don’t think the terror financiers in the Islamic world care one bit for the Palestinian people as anything more than a means to an end. If hundreds or thousands of Palestinians have to die, whether in suicide actions or at the hands of Israeli soldiers, so be it. They are mere foot soldiers, pawns, expendable assets in the greater struggle against Zionism. The sooner the Palestinian people realize that they are being used by people who don’t care anything about them, the sooner there can be peace in the Middle East.

Should Christians cautiously support Israel in her actions against terrorist in Gaza? I think they should. Should Christians support Israel because they are Christians and Israelis are Jews? No. There is not a theological basis to support the nation-state of Israel in this or any other endeavor.

Where we are going or what are we doing?

I wrote yesterday about the danger of overemphasizing or perhaps more correctly overly concentrating on justification to the detriment of sanctification. Probably a close second in the greater church is a overemphasis on eschatology, how things are going to wrap up in the end. It brings to mind a great Scripture, Acts 1: 6-11:

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1: 6-11)

I think we are lot like that: standing around looking up, wondering when Jesus is coming back. The last words of our Lord had nothing to do with when He was returning, it was His reminder to the disciples that they (and we) are to be His witnesses “to the end of the earth”.

We do a lot of looking backward, a lot of looking forward and not too much time in the right now. We have been saved by Divine mercy and I think we do an injustice to our calling if we spend all of our time talking among ourselves about how we got saved and when Christ is coming back. There is a whole world out there full of people dead in their sins and condemned. Not a one of them is going to hear the Gospel because you went to a theology conference or based on your millennial position. Is eschatology unimportant? Of course not. Is justification unimportant? Emphatically no! All I am saying is that we should be spending at least as much time in how we are to live as Christians apart from and as witnesses to the fallen world around us.

The End of Times

(In Toledo!)

Just got back from the first sessions of the Toledo Reformed Theological Conference (and by just got back, I mean after a brief detour to BW-3 for some wings!) The topics were great, the speakers not so much. Dr. Gaffin is a incredibly gifted scholar, speaking for amillenialism, but his speaking skills like those of many highly academic people are somewhat lacking. Dr. Thomas Ice, defending premillenial dispensationalism, was not much better from a speaking standpoint but was way off base on his entire argument (I will post more later, but the only way his arguments hold any water is if you assume that the whole New Testament never was written or at least is irrelevant when exegeting the Old Testament). Dr. Kenneth Gentry, the final speaker and the postmillenial guy, was a breath of fresh air. Very convincing arguments, and very well presented. If I was picking a stance based on the quality of the talks, postmillenial would win hands down! But of course the real basis is the Bible, and what the Word says about eschagtology. I plan to blog more specifically on each speaker, and I am a bit bummed that I missed Steve Camp and Don Kistler speaking earlier today, but finding a job trumps hearing a sermon on this occasion.

Something is rotten in Denmark

In a couple of weeks we are headed to Toledo for the Toledo Reformed Theological Conference, and I have high hopes. Eschatology is something that I really don't have a good handle on, at least compared to other areas of doctrine where I am still an amateur but have an established position that I can articulate and defend. I sorely need this conference to help me with my position, which sets it apart from other conferences where I am the choir getting preached to on topics we all agree on. This is how it breaks down for me now, holding very gingerly to a fuzzy Amillennialism...

On the one hand, lots of people I respect theologically in Reformed circles hold to an Amillennial view (Al Mohler, John MacArthur and a few others being notable exceptions). Read through the eschatology section on Monergism and it is obvious where most Reformed people come down on the topic, i.e. squarely in the Amillennial camp. It is almost like being Amillennial is part of the membership requirements for being Reformed, along with using the ESV Bible and wearing Monergism T-shirts! Monergism is featuring a great series of lectures by Kim Riddlebarger titled: "Amillennialism 101." Don't hold your breath for a similar series called "Dispensationalism 101".

On the other hand, lots of people I view with a ton of suspicion hold to the dispensational premillennial view. People like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, etc. are kind of kooks and make me cringe and I hold that much of what they espouse is bordering on heretical so I naturally assume that where there is one aberrant teaching, there likely is another. In other words, I can't put my finger on specifics but something is rotten in Denmark and it makes me nervous. If those guys are fer premillennialism, I'm agin' it!

Now I get that basing a theological position on something other than the Scriptural evidence is bad news, and basing my position on what people I like think is even worse. But I haven't had the time or background to really work out my position, so this conference with three people who are experts presenting the three main positions for two solid days should go a long way towards cementing where I stand. I doubt I will come back from Toledo a pretrib, premil dispensationalist but hopefully I will be able to better declare and defend a millennial position based on something other than being opposed to guys wearing bad suits with bad haircuts.