Christian Zionism

Joseph Shulam Copyright 2024

Fundamentalist Christian groups have had a problem dealing with the Jewish Question. This problem started before the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel. It began in the second century CE when the Gentile Church cut itself off from the Root into which it was grafted, and the most significant rift in human history happened between Israel and the Church.

 This rift was not a result of the words of Jesus, nor did it come from the words of Jeremiah, the prophet. From the dawn of Biblical history, it is the rift that has been fed from the deep holes of hate between the world and God's people throughout all generations. It is the primordial hate of pagans against those who worshiped the ONE God. It is the hate that came alive in the form of Nazi Germany during World War II.

As long as the Jewish people had been in exile, homeless, and without a national address and identity, the Church, in general, did not have to deal with the theological implications of the survival of the Jews. The classical doctrine that the "true Israel" is the Church could be propagated, and a finger could be pointed at the suffering and wandering Jew. With few exceptions, the above statements are true.

However, when the Jewish State emerged from the ashes of World War II, a nation built out of the wilderness, then fought nations bigger than itself and won victory, it was no longer possible to ignore that the Jews were no longer a homeless nation being punished for its sin of rejecting the Messiah. Christian thinkers, although not many theologians, started to ask questions and examine the Scriptures.

The support of Israel in the Evangelical camp did not gather force until after the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel became an ally and friend of the United States and Europe, receiving media exposure and interest from the West. All these successes of the State of Israel made Christians theologically uncomfortable.

These points need to be dealt with from a Western Christian point of view.

1. Israel was a friend to the West in the Middle East when the Arab nations were friends of the Soviet bloc. Israel was a fresh and vibrant pioneering society, a frontier, a small underdog nation that made a success of it. Such stuff is made the American myth, and Americans support these kinds of things around the world. When these ingredients parallel their religious myths, it is that much more imperative for Americans and Westerners to support them.

2. Israel is a prophetic State. Establishing a Jewish State in the Land of Promise confirmed the validity of the eschatological doctrines of Dispensationalism.

3. The State of Israel is a sign of the "End Times." There is an eschatological clock that fundamentalistic Christians have preprogrammed, and a Jewish State has an essential role. Israel was willing to embrace these Christians with open arms when they were willing to promise, on the one hand, that they would not do "mission" work and produce public support for the State and its right-wing leaders. And why should Israel not accept these well-meaning Christians? They give free publicity, support, and a carte-blanche approval for nearly all of Israel's actions.

4. The Jewish people, who, according to the traditional Christian view, were being punished for their rejection of Christ until they became Christian, were suddenly building a State out of the wilderness, winning victories over great enemies, and prospering.

5. Particular Christian missions in Israel do not have a valid reason for being here as they do not engage in Jewish evangelism. They found that supporting the State of Israel gave them two things they very much needed: 1) A visa to stay in Israel. 2) Fundraising. Israel was a marketable product in politically conservative circles. These are the natural circles in which fundamentalist Christians feel most at home.

I state the above points as an introduction to my understanding of Christian Zionism as a phenomenon of the Western Church after 1967.

Christian Zionism between the 18th - 20th centuries.

In 1671, John Milton published Paradise Lost, and three years later, Paradise Regained. He pictures Jesus wrestling with Satan. Satan advises Jesus to conclude an alliance with the Parthians and by this political move to secure the throne of David, liberate the scattered Ten Tribes, and restore them to their inheritance. Jesus rejects Satan's advice. Jesus, in Milton's Paradise Regained, affirms that the redemption of the Tribes would come, though not immediately and not in the manner described by Satan. Here is a quote from Milton:

"Yet He at length, time to himself best known

Remembering Abraham, by some wondrous call

May bring them back repentant and sincere,

And at their passing cleave the Assyrian flood,

While to their native land with joy, they haste,

As the Red Sea and Jordan once He cleft.

When to the Promised Land their fathers passed:

To His due time and providence I leave them."

Besides Milton, many others wrote about the Jews and their restoration to the Land and God's Grace. Not all were Christians, but all wrote in the milieu of established Christendom.

1. Pierre Jurieu, The Jews Jubilee, 1686

2. Samuel Lee, The Restoration of Israel, 1687

In 1696, on the eve of the Peace Conference at Ryswick, the Danish visionary Holger Paulli gave King William III a detailed plan for conquering Palestine and reestablishing the Jewish State.

In his Commentaries on St. Paul's Epistles, John Locke expressed his belief in the restoration of the Jews as follows: " God is able to collect them into one Body. and set them in flourishing conditions in their own Land."

Sir Isaac Newton and Sir William Whiston, professors in Mathematics at Cambridge, wrote and held by the restoration of the Jews to their land.

Philipp Doddridge (1750) and Bishop Richard Hurd, both great evangelists in the Methodist movement in England, wrote and preached that it was God's will to restore the Jews.

In 1746, Samuel Collet wrote his Treatise on the Future Restoration of the Jews and Israelites to their own Land. Collet writes: 

"The Full and Final Restoration of the Jews and Israelites, evidently set forth to be nigh at hand: with their happy settlement in their own Land, when the Messiah will establish his glorious Kingdom upon Earth and begin the Millennium; with some hints that the late Act for the Naturalization of the Jews, may contribute towards their more easy and speedy departure Addressed to all Christians as well as Jews."

In 1790, Richard Beere, rector of Sandbroke, appealed to William Pitt, the Prime Minister, to assist in bringing about the impending "final restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land" by keeping the Fleet on the alert "until a universal peace can be established."

On March 18, 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte was victorious at Akko in Israel. He marched his army to Mt. Tabor, and standing on its summit, he proclaimed the Jews to be the rightful heir of Palestine. Bonaparte's proclamation closed with an appeal to the Jews to use "the moment, which may not return for thousands of years, to claim their political existence as a nation among the nations." In May of the same year, Bonaparte had to retreat to Egypt because of the plague and the Muslim fighters who did not give up.

 In 1855, Robert Browning wrote his poem, The Holy Cross Day. It pictures a crowd of Jews driven into a Church to attend a special sermon on Holy Cross Day. In the Church, the Jews hear the song of Rabbi Ben-Ezra, uplifting their hearts:

"He will have mercy on Jacob yet, 

And again in His border see Israel yet

When Judah beholds Jerusalem, 

The stranger shall be joined to them;

To Jacob's House shall the Gentiles cleave, 

So the Prophet saith and the sons believe.

By the torture, prolonged from age to age,

By the infamy, Israel's heritage,

By the Gheto's plague, by the garb's disgrace,

By the badge of shame, by the felon's place, 

By the branding tool, the bloody whip,

And the summons to Christian fellowship - 

We boast our proof that at least the Jew

Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew."

In 1876, George Eliot wrote her novel Daniel Deronda. As a girl, Mary Ann Evans, the future George Eliot, witnessed the rise of evangelicalism, and she, like her family, became an evangelical. Mary Ann Evans was a great student of the Bible. From an early age, she became interested in the works of Spinoza, D.F. Strauss, and others who looked into the Bible from a more rational point of view, which spurred her interest in the Jewish background of the New Testament—in turn, made her intensely interested in the Jewish people. George Eliot wrote Daniel Deronda, a novel about the Restoration of the Jews.

Ephraim Gotthold Lessing, a great German writer and philosopher, wrote Nathan the Wise, dealing with the very same issues that George Eliot wrote about in Daniel Deronda. He wrote his book with a particular agenda to awaken Christians to the rich heritage and relationship that they have with Jews and with Jewish heritage and history. He wrote this novel to influence Christians to give Jews equal rights and privileges that would eventually lead to the fulfillment of the Prophetic vision of Israel's restoration with the help of true Christians. (Kobler, Franz., The Vision Was There, Popular Jewish Library, London 1956.)

The above are just a few examples of many Christian leaders, thinkers, writers, and philosophers who believed and acted for the sake of Israel's Restoration as a people and as a State. The motivating factor in most of these people seems to be that they believed in the Bible and took it literally and seriously. They believed that with the restoration of the Jewish people to their inheritance, the Church would also be made more perfect, or in Millenarian terms, the Millennium would become a reality.

It should be clear from this that Christian Zionism has old and honorable roots. However, some forms it has taken in the last twenty years have not been entirely rational and biblical but emotional, political, or even mercenary. I do not mean to say that there is no biblical or logical basis for supporting the Jewish people and State; instead, there are forms of Zionism that are being called Christian, which is not so. Zionism, which supports the State of Israel and the Jewish people but shies away from supporting the Jewish believers and Jewish evangelism, does not deserve to call itself Christian.

The Biblical Basis for proper support of Israel. by the Christian Church, away from supporting the Jewish believers and Jewish evangelism, does not deserve to call itself Christian.

The Biblical basis for genuine support of Israel by the Christian Church.

The Gentiles in the Church have obligations to the Jews.

Romans 11:11, 14,

"So I ask, have they stumbled so as to fall? By no means! But through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make Israel jealous.. in order to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them."?

It seems clear in these passages that refer back to Deuteronomy 32 that God is going to use the Gentiles to provoke Israel into jealousy. Paul sees the inclusion of the Gentiles for this particular reason. The Gentiles are called to encourage Israel to return to God and accept the Messiah.

Romans 15:27,

"for if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings." 

Israel is the only venue through which God revealed Himself and brought salvation through Yeshua.

Romans 3:1-3,

"Then what advantage has the Jew?? ... Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews are entrusted with the oracles of God.."

Most Christians would say, without shame, that the Jews have no advantage and that the Church owes nothing to the Jews, not even the Gospel.

"Salvation is of the Jews" - These words of Jesus can not be changed, erased, or considered void, even after 2000 years.

Israel will be saved - Romans 11:26, and that salvation will come through the love and concern that biblical Christians will have for the seed of Abraham according to the flesh. Christians will realize that the salvation of the Church is ultimately dependent on the salvation of the Jewish people. According to Romans 11:11-15, the salvation of the Jews means the resurrecting of the dead. In plain words - Israel's redemption in the Messiah has more than a little to do with the final redemption of God's people everywhere.  

I do not know precisely how this will work out. I often think that the different Christian doctrines of the End Times have a certain amount of built-in ambiguity and inconsistency, which God apparently put there to confound the wise.

At the end of times, all Saints will join with 144,000 people from the 12 Tribes of Israel. This great crowd will not sing "A Mighty Fortress is our God" but the song of Moses and the Lamb.

The implications of these biblical principles for the Church today.

If the Church desires to be faithful to the instruction of the New Testament, it must actively wish for Israel's salvation. If the Gentiles were included in order to provoke Israel into jealousy, the Gentile Church must seek ways to perform this task. At any rate, this task is holistic in character. It includes good works and charitable projects while not excluding the support of and engagement in evangelism.

The Church needs to see Israel as a part of itself and itself as a part of Israel. If the Gentiles in Christ were grafted into the natural olive tree, they must not cut themselves off after 2000 years. They must lift their branches, praise the Root, and bless the Root that gave them life.

The Church must pray for Israel, especially that they might know the Messiah, an essential part of the awareness of the Church, which has a long history of salvation that God has wrought.

Conclusion

The Church has been wandering between paganism and truly biblical faith in God during the long history of its less-than-Christian attitudes and behavior toward Israel and the Jewish people. Christian Zionism, in some of its modern expressions, is not, in my opinion, a positive movement, because it seems to re-enforce negative aspects of Jewish national life and fails to speak honestly, openly, and candidly about the need of the Jews to know God and His Son. There is, however, a place for us to rekindle the fire of biblical Zionism based on solid biblical grounds without ulterior motives and hidden agendas.