Every time Israel got into another fight with Arabs, I found myself siding with Israel. I didn’t even pause to think why I did that so naturally until recently, when I discovered that my church upbringing had made me into a Christian Zionist.
I firmly believed in the Zionist creed that the Jews were destined by God to return to their homeland in Israel to speed up the return of the Messiah, who would set up his headquarters in Jerusalem and from there spread his kingdom around the world for the next one thousand years.
Israel, in my mind then, had a very special place in God’s plan, so it wasn’t surprising to see Israel keep winning its battles against the Arabs. Israel would always win, I thought, because along with many other evangelical Christians I believed the creation of Israel as a Jewish homeland in 1948 was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Israel would remain solidly as a nation no matter what was thrown at it, therefore, because it was Israel being a nation that would bring about Christ’s return.
If, then, I’d attended the Third International Zionist Congress in Jerusalem in February 1996, I imagine I would have been inwardly cheering as the following proclamations were read out: first of all, that “God the Father, Almighty, chose the ancient nation and people of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to reveal his plan of redemption for the world. They remain elect of God, and without the Jewish nation his redemptive purposes for the world will not be completed.”
As well as: “The modern ingathering of the Jewish People to Eretz Israel and the rebirth of the nation of Israel are in fulfilment of biblical prophecies, as written in both Old and New Testaments.”
And lastly: “Christian believers are instructed by Scripture to acknowledge the Hebraic roots of their faith and to actively assist and participate in the plan of God for the Ingathering of the Jewish People and the Restoration of the nation of Israel in our day.”
I would have gone along with all of that, firmly believing, therefore, that it was very much my Christian duty to support the nation of Israel.
But the global outcry of many Arabs of late that Palestine belongs to them, not Israel, got me stirred to write my next blog: “Palestine – whose land is it?”
Buck To Basics 