Are Evangelicals Pulling The Plug on Supporting Israel?

Ever since I've been a follower of Jesus, life has been one long battle in standing for the truth. Over the years I've stopped trying to end the combative lifestyle I find myself in and have accepted the fact conflict comes with the territory of defending God's word against those who would try to corrupt it and deny its truths.

In my 20s  I enrolled in Dallas Baptist University as a religion major,  There I discovered my professors were all replacement theologians who believed the Church had replaced Israel and now all the promises made to Israel in the Jewish Scriptures are fulfilled in the Body of Christ.

I was confused, angry and felt as a Jewish person I had been duped into believing in a faith that caused me to mistrust God's word and those who interpreted it. How could God promise Abraham a geographical territory known as Israel, but later on reveal that His land promise was not to be taken seriously? Now the land of Israel, as I was taught, has been replaced with heaven, the true territorial goal of the Christian.

For the next few years I familiarized myself with books written by Covenant and Reformed theologians, amillennialists, post-millennialists and historic pre-millennialists (George Ladd).  During college and seminar I wrote papers disputing the replacement theological system and in the process became stronger in my belief that the New Testament makes a clear distinction between the Church and Israel, and that Israel is never replaced by the Church.

My break through came in an hermeneutics (science of biblical interpretation) class taught by Dr. Bell, a renegade graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary.  When Dr. Bell pronounced he was a "true Jew" and that Jewish people were no longer God's chosen people, I almost fell out of my chair.  I responded, "Dr. Bell, I perceive the weakness of your theology is that you totally disregard 1000s of passages in the Old Testament describing God's plan for Israel and it's those very passages that dismantle your theology.  It's as if you have a theological filter through which you interpret the Jewish scriptures that fit your theology but the passages that won't pass through your pre-conceived filter are ignored."

I made an "A" in Dr. Bell's class, God rest his theologically incorrect soul.

Today a  new element has been added to replacement theology. No longer is replacement theology or Reformed beliefs (it's all the same Israel denying theology) just a theological system but it has taken on a political dimension.

Replacement theology and their theologians such as Dr. Gary Burge, Wheaton College New Testament professor,  has now formed a clear merger with Palestinian Christians who are dead set on promoting an anti-Israel perspective in evangelical churches.

Already several Christian leaders have drunk the Palestinian Christian Kool-Aid such as Lynne Hybels, wife of mega church leader, Bill Hybels (Willow Creek Church), Jim Wallis of Sojourners, Tony Campolo and others who appear on the docket at the 2012 pro Palestinian Christians Christ at the Checkpoint Conference at Bethlehem Bible College in the West Bank.

These theologians and activists claim to be non-violent in their stance against Israel, yet they all share the common goal of distorting the history of the Middle East to make Israel the sole culprit of perpetrator of all of Palestinian ills. Sami Awad, in a lecture given at the Arvada, Colorado Vineyard, complains that the Palestinian Christian community has shrunk from 30% to 3%.  Yet he fails to go through the sequence of historical events in which the Palestinian Authority disrespectfully destroyed Christian churches and took over these holy sites as locations to engage the Israelis in battle.  Did Sami ever ponder the fact that Christians are leaving the disputed territories due to the mistreatment of his fellow Christians by Palestinians Muslims?  Oddly, the Christian population in Israel is increasing.

Bottom line: Evangelicals are being taken on a wild ride by these anti-Christian Zionists and Palestinian Christians who distort facts about Israel's involvement in the ME conflict, misuse biblical passages about God's promises to the Jewish people, claim to advocate non-violence while refusing to condemn the PLO or Hamas and focus only on Israeli soldiers and appeal to the evangelical concern for the underdog to persuade followers of Christ to play into the hands of these double tongued leaders who come "bearing words of peace."

What can be done?  If you are an evangelical -Jewish or Gentile - I appeal to you to share the blogs you find on Thinking Outside the Blog about the Palestinian Christian issue.  Read other blogs such as seismic-shock.com and ElderofZyon.blogspot and a messianic Jewish blog roshpinaproject.com. Share the articles you find on these blogs on your Facebook page.  Tweet the articles you find on my blog and others.

The underhanded work of Palestinian Christians in America's evangelical churches must be stopped. Do not be fooled by their words of reconciliation, "just cause" and non-violence.  Most of these groups such as Sami Awad's Holy Land Trust align themselves with Israel hating groups involved in divestment, boycott and sanctions against Israel and do all they can to foster an anti-Israel theology in the evangelical church.

I admonish my readers to start reading books on Middle East history so you can respond to the twisted lies perpetrated by these leaders who speak to unknowledgeable Christians regarding the recent history of Israel.  Go out and purchase Mitchell Bard's Idiot's Guide to the Middle East Conflict for starters.

Are Evangelicals Pulling The Plug on Supporting Israel?