The Three Mile Island Disaster Was The Result Of America Not Supporting Israel And Other Nonsense

I wrote a piece the other day about the Israeli-UN resolution-U.S. vote abstention kerfuffle, Keeping The Issues Clear When Talking About Contemporary Israel. and it contained a total of zero prophecy charts or references to Genesis 12:3.

Anyway I continue to see people commenting on social media about how outrageous it was for "Christian America" to "stab Israel in the back" and some of the links I have seen are just outrageous. For example: 10 Previous Times America Faced Major Disaster After Attempting To Divide Israel. This is their reasoning:

I am sure that there will be a tremendous amount of debate about to what extent the U.S. was involved in creating and drafting this resolution, but there is one thing that is exceedingly clear.

The ultimate decision as to whether or not this resolution would be adopted was in the hands of one man. Barack Obama knew very well that he had this power, and in the end he ultimately decided to betray Israel.

And now that our government has cursed Israel at the UN, our entire nation will be cursed as a result.

In the Scriptures we are repeatedly told that God will bless those that bless Israel and will curse those that curse Israel.

When Barack Obama blocked a similar resolution that France wanted to submit for a vote in September 2015, it resulted in America being blessed, and we definitely have been blessed over the past 16 months.

But now that Barack Obama has reversed course and has betrayed Israel, we will most assuredly be cursed. In the days ahead we will see how this plays out, and perhaps we can get some hints about what may happen by reviewing recent history.

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The UN Security Council resolution that was passed on Friday is the biggest betrayal of Israel in modern history. As I explained in my last article, I believe that America's reprieve is now over and all hell is about to break loose in this country.

When Barack Obama blocked the UN Security Council from dividing the land of Israel in September 2015, according to the Word of God we should have been blessed as a nation as a result, and we were blessed.

But now Barack Obama has cursed Israel by stabbing them in the back at the United Nations, and according to the Word of God we should be cursed as a nation as a result.

And as surely as I am writing this article, we will be cursed.

So in essence, God's mood as it relates to one nation populated mostly by unbelievers outside of any national covenant relationship with God is determined almost exclusively that nation's diplomatic actions at an international body toward another nation populated mostly by unbelievers outside of any national covenant relationship with God. That makes perfect sense, provided you read the Bible without the slightest awareness of the context of the Bible as a whole, the record of redemptive history or even the most rudimentary exegetical ability or effort. Here is one of the 10 iron clad examples:

#1 The last time the U.S. government refused to veto an anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council was in 1979. On March 22nd, 1979 the Carter administration chose not to veto UN Resolution 446.

Four days after that on March 26th, the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty was signed in Washington. As a result of that treaty, Israel gave up a tremendous amount of territory. Two days later, on March 28th, the worst nuclear power plant disaster in U.S. history made headlines all over the globe.

Ah, that explains the Three Mile Island accident. It wasn't mechanical failures as we were led to believe, no it was the hand of God subtly causing a relief valve to stick open. God is known for His subtlety when He judges a nation, like that whole Sodom and Gomorrah thing.  Lest you brush this off as some crackpot website (although it clearly is), their Facebook page has over a quarter million likes including 7 people I am friends with on Facebook. The Facebook link to the story itself generated more than 11,000 responses, almost 1000 comments and was shares over 8,800 times!

In contrast. Grace To You has about 50,000 fewer likes (but a lot more of my friends) and MacArthur is a dispensationalist! Crazy "prophetic" interpretation and hysterics over current events seems to be a lot more popular in some circles than sober Biblical exegesis. Honestly you get better Biblical scholarship at the Babylon Bee than at "Prophecy News Watch" but people for some reason just love to try to find sense in current events by clumsily cramming them into the Bible. 

Of course not all of the responses are this outrageously unscriptural but there is a general sense among a lot of the church that a) America is somehow a unique nation in the eyes of God with an unwritten covenant that other nations are not either bound by or blessed by and b) Christians, especially in America, are likewise obligated to support without question any action by the modern nation called Israel at the risk of incurring God's wrath if we don't. Neither of these is correct and neither has a shred of Biblical support if you move past single verse "exegesis".

Christians have got to get this right and quickly. We look foolish for all the wrong reasons and we risk, and often more than simply risk, making the wrong decision or at least making decisions while only looking at one side of an issue, one that is fraught with diplomatic, religious and military perils.

Keeping The Issues Clear When Talking About Contemporary Israel

In his ongoing effort to be as juvenile as possible before leaving office, the Obama administration abstained from a vote at the United Nations that essentially condemned Israel in a bunch of ways, allowing it to pass without the courage of an actual vote from the U.S. one way or the other. This has led to the expected angry backlash online from conservative media sources with articles like this from pro-Zionism Frontpage Mag: President Obama Throws Israel To The Wolves.

Of course a UN resolution is as impotent as everything else the UN does. It has no real impact other than serving as a diplomatic black eye and with what appears to be an overwhelmingly pro-Israel administration about to take over in a few weeks, there is little doubt that this resolution will be yet another empty gesture of the sort that has generally marked the utterly useless body of yammering, self-important bureaucrats that bears the risible and inaccurate name "United Nations". In fact it might backfire spectacularly as many Republicans are using this as an excuse to push for defunding the UN, a move I would be all in favor of. For example former Trump Presidential rival Senator Ted Cruz said that he will push to withhold U.S. funding of the UN until the resolution if reversed. As I posted on Facebook, the U.S. pays billions of dollars in UN funding and foots the bill for 22% of the entire budget, a percentage more than double that of Japan with the next highest percentage at 9.68%. The total sum of over $3,000,000,000 is more than 185 other countries pay combined. When you add in the huge amounts we spend on our military the bill gets a lot higher. So much for "United Nations". A more appropriate name would be more like "Bags of Cash From American Tax-Payers To Be Spent By Other Nations In Foolish Ways" but the acronym BOCFATTBSBONIFW doesn't have quiet the same ring to it.

The response is understandable in many ways. Coming as it does at the very end of the Obama reign it smacks of the same sort of petulance that has marked his entire administration and doubly so the month since it was apparent that the American electorate rejected his legacy and replaced him with someone who, at least on the surface, couldn't be more different. But it also raises the same concern that I usually have when the topic of the contemporary nation of Israel is at the forefront of the news, namely the response of American evangelicals.

I want to be crystal clear on this. Whether or not you support the secular nation-state of Israel as a matter of geopolitical preference, a democratic ally of sorts of the United States in an otherwise largely hostile region and whether or not you think the resolution that was passed and the U.S. decision to abstain (itself a cowardly act of inaction, if we supported the resolution we should have voted for it and if we didn't we should have voted against it. Abstention was the cowardly response.) was wise or foolish is a matter of geopolitics and U.S. national security. It is not a theological question, at least insofar as it is not a theological question about specific loyalty from one secular nation toward another.

There are not many issues in American evangelicalism which are more confused and more potentially costly to our witness than the mass misunderstanding of the theological nature of ancient and now extinct Israel as opposed to the contemporary secular nation-state of Israel. When you combine the "America as God's chosen nation" misplaced patriotic fervor with the dispensational confusion over the nature of Israel, you end up with a toxic mix that is dangerous and misguided. The ancient Old Covenant nation of Israel was a covenant-breaking unfaithful people (Jeremiah 31:32). God replaced that Old Covenant, making it obsolete (Hebrews 8:13), with a New Covenant that is in every way better (Hebrews 8:6). People of ethnic Jewish ancestry who are born-again are part of the New Covenant. Those that are not born-again are cut off (Romans 11:13-24 esp. verse 20) and their fate is no different from any other unbelieving people. As such there is no special place for the contemporary nation of Israel as it exists in redemptive history and there is no obligation for Christians to show deference to the secular covenant breaking leaders of Israel over any other nation. We are often reluctant to make that case, even from non-dispensational church leaders, for fears of raising the specter of "anti-semitism" but it is dishonest to pretend that there is a sharp distinction between the historic Old Covenant nation of Israel and the secular reconstituted contemporary nation that bears the same name.

When we associate the church and the Gospel with a secular nation and favor that nation and that ethnicity over others we make a mockery of the Great Commission and tell other people groups that they are second-class citizens of the world even though the overwhelmingly unbelieving citizens of Israel have no special standing with God compared to the people of any other contemporary nation and indeed believers in places like Syria and China have a relationship with God unlike that which any Israelite ever had under the Old Covenant. We do the people of Israel no favors when we extend to them the promise of covenant blessings that they do not possess instead of preaching the Gospel of the New Covenant in Christ to them no differently than we do any other nation or ethnicity.

I think that the behavior of the President via his surrogates was cowardly and petulant toward Israel and pandering toward other nations that are no friend of the United States. I also believe that there are many troubling questions in general about the relationship between the U.S. and Israel that need sober reflection. The entire relationship between the United States, Israel, the rest of the Middle East, the "Palestinian" people and so many other variables is excruciatingly complex. That complexity and the peril of missteps is far too great for Christians to interject a clumsy hermeneutic into it that further muddies water already roiled by decades of antagonism. We should encourage our leaders in America to be even-handed toward all other nations, showing deference where warranted by friendship and mutual benefit but not based on erroneous theological assumptions. It is fine, proper and necessary to have our theological convictions inform our understanding and involvement in contemporary secular issues but let's make sure we have the proper theological framework to make those decisions.

For more on this topic see a couple of prior posts,  Israel, Gaza and the Gospel and One of the best summaries of the relationship between Christians and the modern state of Israel I have ever read.

The Rotten Fruit Of Zionism

You can always count on the John Hagee's of the world to say cringe-worthy stuff on a regular basis. His latest pronouncement? God will destroy America because the President of the United States is not meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his visit to the U.S. in March. Keep in mind that this is a completely secular political squabble. The invitation comes from the Congress as a poke in the eye of the President over the differences in opinion with how to deal with Iran. Still this is a prime opportunity for false prophecy. Behold...


So let me get this straight. A purely political situation where one unbeliever is not being invited to meet with another unbeliever on a specific date will cause God to intervene and re-institute a thousands of years old covenant promise that has been obsolete for almost two millennium. That seems reasonable.

The exegetical gymnastics required to take this passage...

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." (Genesis 12:3)

...and from that apply a specific promise to a nation that no longer exists under a covenant that is obsolete to a nation that does not have any sort of covenant promise are breathtaking. They are also dangerous and blasphemous. I do not say that what he said is blasphemous lightly but there is not really another way to describe a statement that attributes to God something God Himself has not said. This is perhaps a very extreme example but it is still somewhat representative of the error of the Zionist/Dispensationalist school of theology. Of course there are plenty of teachings in this school that are erroneous but few quite as troubling as this one. While the Rapture is a largely harmless and silly doctrine, the Dispensational notion of dual covenants sets the entire New Testament on its head.

I absolutely believe that the Old Covenant, God-directed nation of Israel held a special and unique place in the plan of redemption. I also believe that the Jews by and large violated their end of the covenant agreement and rejected the Messiah. They no longer have a special claim under the Old Covenant which is made obsolete in the cross and they have the same access as a gentile to the New Covenant. Nor should we want to revive the Old Covenant when we have a New Covenant, a covenant that is infinitely better, giving believers a true King and an eternal Kingdom rather than fallible kings and a dusty land.

I am quite confident that this land where God has placed me is under no special threat based on who does or doesn't have tea in the White House, just as I am sure that John Hagee is speaking presumptuously and treading on some very dangerous ground. We don't stone false prophets anymore but we do and should call them out for what they are, false teachers and wolves among the sheep. I have never found Dispensationalism or Zionism or any other iteration to be compelling. They all fail the sniff test and violate the clear teaching of the New Testament (and yes, there are some teachings that are plain and clear and they can be and should be universally recognized). When someone like John Hagee has a huge audience for his particular brand of error it is incumbent on the church to point it out.

Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn't need the Church to defend him against the big, bad President. What Benjamin Netanyahu needs is the same thing Barack Obama needs which coincidentally is the same thing that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the leaders of ISIS, and every other person who is not born-again need: they need saving faith in Jesus Christ. They need to be born-again, regenerated, dying to self and rising again to newness of life. The Kingdom doesn't need its subjects to take sides in a geo-political squabble or a thumb in the eye of the President inflicted by the Congress. Don't get sidetracked by the world and its petty concerns. We have a much bigger mission that leaves us no time for silliness and no room for false prophets.

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.

Politics, Ron Paul, Israel and Division In the Church

Politics is said to make strange bedfellows. It also causes division like nothing else save perhaps religion (and sports depending on where you live). That is especially true in this day and age as we approach the Iowa caucuses and it is bleeding over into the church to a far greater extent that normal. Nowhere is this more apparent than in how Christians, especially Christians we would call conservative, evangelical Christians, react to one candidate in particular: Ron Paul.

It is no secret that I am supporting Dr. Paul but that is not why I am writing this. If you are interested in the reasons for my support for Ron Paul, check out The Arsenal of Liberty where I blog about politics and do so intentionally apart from my main blog. My concern here and why I am writing is my concern over how the candidacy of Dr. Paul is dividing the church, a division that is not caused by him but by the hyper-political nature of American evangelicalism coupled with the strong current of dispensationalism that exists in much of the church in America.

There is a segment of the church that sees support for Ron Paul, who is fairly unique among Republicans in his lukewarm support for the nation of Israel at least compared to any other nation, as somehow being anti-Semitic and therefore anti-God's covenant people. These brothers and sisters see a vote for Paul as an act of rebellion against God. There are also a lot of Christians who are, putting it mildly, rabid supporters of Ron Paul who get angry at any suggestion that someone else might be a better nominee. Over the last week or so I have seen an incredible amount of angry rhetoric on both sides, and I am afraid I have engaged in some of it, between people who are supposed to be on the same side (see for example this post from the Gospel Coalition Evangelicals, Race, and Politics that generated over 100 fairly strident comments on both sides of the RP Divide). Brothers this must not be so.

We cannot draw dividing lines in the church over secular American politics. 

Who wins the U.S. Presidential election in 2012 is not going to make or break the Kingdom of God. If you are my brother or sister in Christ, that trumps your political allegiance and mine. A political liberal who votes for Barack Obama and is a Christian is my brother. A staunch conservative who supports Ron Paul or Sarah Palin or heaven forbid Newt Gingrich but is not a Christian is not my brother and is instead someone I need to tell about Jesus.When Paul warned us about not being unequally yoked he wasn't talking about staying clear of lib'rals! We must be more concerned with our witness to the unbelieving world than we are about electoral victory and right now we are not comporting ourselves very well.

That does not of course mean that we must avoid civic involvement entirely. Just that we need to keep in mind that who we support politically has absolutely zero impact on who we will spend eternity with.

The Danger of American Exceptionalism

Walter Russell Mean published a scorching essay regarding President Obama’s new Middle East peace framework and the fiery speech of Benjamin Netanyahu in front of the U.S. Congress: The Dreamer Goes Down For The Count. I heard portions of Netayahu’s speech and it was quite stirring and a marked contrast to Obama’s “nuanced” lecture on a subject he seems to know very little about. I am less interested in those speeches and what Mead had to say about them than I am about something he ended his essay with.

Near the end of his cutting essay on Netanyahu’s dismantling of President Obama’s ill-conceived comments on Mideast “peace” came these three paragraphs:

As the stunning and overwhelming response to Prime Minister Netanyahu in Congress showed, Israel matters in American politics like almost no other country on earth. Well beyond the American Jewish and the Protestant fundamentalist communities, the people and the story of Israel stir some of the deepest and most mysterious reaches of the American soul. The idea of Jewish and Israeli exceptionalism is profoundly tied to the idea of American exceptionalism. The belief that God favors and protects Israel is connected to the idea that God favors and protects America.

It means more. The existence of Israel means that the God of the Bible is still watching out for the well-being of the human race. For many American Christians who are nothing like fundamentalists, the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land and their creation of a successful, democratic state after two thousand years of oppression and exile is a clear sign that the religion of the Bible can be trusted.

Being pro-Israel matters in American mass politics because the public mind believes at a deep level that to be pro-Israel is to be pro-America and pro-faith. Substantial numbers of voters believe that politicians who don’t ‘get’ Israel also don’t ‘get’ America and don’t ‘get’ God. Obama’s political isolation on this issue, and the haste with which liberal Democrats like Nancy Pelosi left the embattled President to take the heat alone, testify to the pervasive sense in American politics that Israel is an American value. Said the Minority Leader to the Prime Minister: “I think it’s clear that both sides of the Capitol believe you advance the cause of peace.”

I find that language all very troubling. I don’t believe that God “favors” or protects America nor do I think that His favor extends in a particular fashion to the modern Jewish nation of Israel over other nations. The idea that God has taken sides and picked America to shower His blessings on has zero, I mean zero, Biblical support. I likewise find that the creation of the modern Jewish homeland in the Middle East had far more to do with post-World War II political pragmatism than it did with some sort of divine restorative program. God has not promised His blessings under the New Covenant on any particular nation and in many ways I find the cultural religion of America to be more of an impediment to disciple making than a blessing.

American exceptionalism is a poison to the church in America in large part because it colors our understanding of missions. Subtly and perhaps unconsciously Christians in America see our mission to the world as two-fold: proclaim the Gospel and replicate the American religious culture. It is tinged with a not so subtle arrogance, assuming that America is has most favored nation status with God. So we go about planting American style churches with American style worship and American style clergy. This walks hand in hand with spreading American values to the world. We assume that if we can make unbelievers in exotic lands look and act more like Americans, they will naturally be easier to convert. Our call is not to make Asian unbelievers in American Christians, it is to see Asian unbelievers become Asian Christians. We are not called to enact cultural transformation, we are called to “be all things to all people”, taking the Gospel to them whatever their context or culture might be.

Don't get me wrong, I recognize the freedoms we have in America. I love the diverse landscapes and natural beauty of this land, the regional variety that gives us more flavor than any other land. I also recognize that we can worship all sorts of ways without fear of persecution. I also notice that God did not establish His church in America where it would be welcome, He established His church in the Middle East under and during the terror of the Roman empire. I think there are some valuable lessons to learn if we ponder what that means.

One of the best summaries of the relationship between Christians and the modern state of Israel I have ever read

John Piper has a great, simply outstanding bullet pointed list of how we should view the modern secular state of Israel. He wrote it in response to a conversation he had with an Arab Christian who points out, rightly so, that many Christians seem more concerned with the defense of secular Israel than they do with the persecution of our Arab and Palestinian brothers and sisters. I am just straight up going to copy and paste the whole list from his post Israel, Arabs and the Family of God , with a few especially hard hitting points in bold (emphasis mine):

1. True Christians are citizens of the kingdom of Jesus Christ first, and only secondarily citizens of any earthly nation or state.

2. True Christians are united more closely to each other as brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ than we are to any earthly bonds of family or nation.

3. American Christians are more closely united to Palestinian Christians and Arab Christians and Jewish Christians throughout the world than we are to the state of non-Christian Israel.

4. Israel was chosen by God from all the peoples of the world to be the focus of special blessing in the history of redemption which climaxed in Jesus Christ, the Messiah. “The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:6).

5. God promised to Israel the presently disputed land from the time of Abraham onward. God said to Moses, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, ‘I will give it to your offspring’” (Deuteronomy 34:4).

6. Israel, like every other nation on the earth, including all Arab states, does not affirm Jesus Christ as God, Messiah, and Savior, and is, therefore, not a covenant-keeping people in relation to God. Rejecting the Son of God is rebellion against the God of the covenant.

7. A non-covenant-keeping people—Jewish or Arab—does not have a divine right to hold the land of promise while they are living in rebellion against the God who promised it to an obedient people. “If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples” (Exodus 19:5).

8. This does not mean that other nations have the right to molest Israel, nor Israel to molest her neighbors. Israel and the surrounding nations still have human rights among nations, though they have no divine right to claim the land while rejecting the Messiah.

9. God has saving purposes for ethnic Israel (Romans 11:25-26), as he does for the Arab nations (Isaiah 19:19-25; Psalm 22:27; Matthew 28:19-20; Romans 3:29-30).

10. The Christian plea in the Middle East to Palestinians and Jews is: “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). This is the path to peace. “Jesus himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility (Ephesians 2:14).

11. Until that great day, when both Jewish and Gentile followers of King Jesus inherit the earth (including the promised land), without lifting sword or gun, the rights of nations should be decided by the principles of compassionate and public justice, not claims to national divine right or status.

12. Therefore, all Christians, especially Christian pastors, should speak openly and joyfully of our unity with Arab and Jewish Christians, and should not rank political support for Israel or any Arab nation above our family support for fellow believers.

That is one of the best summaries I have ever read. Please share this with others because I think this is an area where there is a lot of confusion in the Church and a lot of people take dogmatic stands that are way out of whack.

Or maybe you think Piper is wrong. Tell me why.

Israel, Gaza and the Gospel

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.

Kim Riddlebarger and Tim LaHaye

What do they have in common?

This is just an off the cuff post, so I haven't really taken the time to work through all of the arguments. These are just thoughts floating randomly in my head. But it seems a common thread between both Kim Riddlebarger, arch-Reformed guy, defender of amillenialism and paedobaptist and the far kookier Tim Lahaye, he of the Dispensational, free-will theology mindset, is the way they misrepresent the covenant promises to Israel.

Riddlebarger and other paedobaptists err by assuming that the mode and recipient of the sign of the Old Covenant model in ethnic Israel must continue on into the New Covenant administration. It seems to me that there is an odd discontinuity that is forced into relationship between the rejecting of the Dispensational hermeneutic but the continued embrace of the paedobaptist hermeneutic for church membership. Riddlebarger gets Israel right on eschatology, but misses badly on the Old vs. New Covenant administration.

LaHaye and other Dispensationalists err by assuming that all of the Old Covenant promises to ethnic, national Israel will be fulfilled without modification by the New Covenant. Clearly not all Jews are of Israel (Romans 9:4-8), and those who are of faith are the heirs of Abraham (Galatians 3:29). But when Dispensationalism morphs into a two track salvation, restoration of temple sacrifice in a rebuilt physical temples, inheritance of the land, etc. it loses it way. There is a dangerous overemphasis on ethnic Israel to the detriment of the Scriptural record and Jewish evangelism.

It is my contention that only an amillenial (or perhaps post or historical pre) Baptistic view is consistent in hermeneutic and jives with the Biblical record with a continued but different and improved covenant promise. I know this is an oversimplification, but hey it's my blog.

Just something I was musing about this evening.