Dr.Thomas Ice

    There are great living dispensational scholars today who understand that the Bible has various programs for different times in divine history. There is also a large company of such godly scholars in the past who made outstanding contributions to our grasp of the full message of the Word of God. What they have written is still with us today in terms of how we should interpret the Scriptures. Below are some thoughts that any interpreter of the Bible should be aware of.

A HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN ZIONISM

Dr. Thomas Ice

Executive Director: PreTrib Research Center

In the last couple of years the secular community and some in the religious community have woken up to the fact that much of the American Evangelical community is very supportive of the modern state of Israel. Guess what? They do not like it one bit! They see an ever increasing danger and even the possibility that Christian Zionism could bring about World War III.

Genesis 12:3 records God’s promises to bless those who bless Abraham and his descendants (i.e. Israel). The Abrahamic covenant is directed to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their descendants. It is repeated to them about twenty times in Genesis (12:1-3, 7-9; 13:14-18; 15:1-18; 17:1-27). Although there are multiple features to the Abrahamic Covenant, it always includes the land promises to Israel. Does this promise still stand or has it been changed? If these biblical promises are to be taken literally and still apply to Israel, and not the church, it should not be surprising to anyone that such a few leads one, such as myself, to Christian Zionism. … Christian Zionists are Christians who agree with this belief.

Over the last few years there have been a number of books and articles that chide those of us who believe that the nation and people of Israel have a positive future detailed in Bible prophecy. They think that evangelical support for Israel is a bad thing, because, the modern state of Israel is viewed by them as a bad thing, totally unrelated in any way to Bible prophecy. These naysayers often like to blame J. N. Darby and dispensationalism as the modern source of evangelical views. The truth of the matter is that love for Israel was well entrenched by Bible-believing Christians long before 1830.

For example, Irenaeus writing about A.D. 185 expressed this view in the following way:

Later, a key proponent for Israel’s future restoration (among hundreds of others) was Henry Finch (1558-1625) who wrote a seminal work on the subject in 1621, called The World’s Resurrection or the Calling of the Jews. … King James was offended by Finch’s statement that all nations would become subservient to national Israel at the time of her restoration. Finch and his publisher were quickly arrested when his book was released by the High Commissioner (a creation of King James), and examined. Finch was striped of his status and possessions and then died a few years later.

However, "The doctrine of the restoration of the Jews continued to be expounded in England, evolving according to the insight of each exponent, and finally playing a role in Christian Zionistic activities in the latter part of the nineteenth and in the first part of the twentieth centuries."

The 1800s marked a high point in British premillennialism and for Christian Zionism. The real advocates of Christian Zionism in Britain were primarily Anglican premillennialists. By the mid-nineteenth century, about half of all Anglican clergy were evangelical premillennialists.

In America, it should be considered strange that President John Quincy Adams expressed his desire that "the Jews again [be] in Judea, an independent Nation, … once [again] restored to an independent government and no longer persecuted. President Abraham Lincoln in a meeting with Canadian Christian Zionist, Henry W. Monk, in 1863 said, "Restoring the Jews to their homeland is a noble dream shared by many Americans. He (the Jewish chiropodist of the President) has so many times ‘put me on my feet’ that I would have no objection to giving his countrymen a ‘leg up’."

The impact of the Balfour Declaration (issued before the end of World War I) was a tremendous event within the Zionist movement. Since Britain was on the verge of controlling Palestine, it provided a great step on the road to the founding of the nation of Israel in 1948. This declaration was spearheaded, not just by British geo-political sympathies, as important as that was within their thinking, but by Christian sympathies that were formed by biblical beliefs. Lord Balfour does not appear to have been moved by his views of eschatology, although it may have been a factor, "but simply exiles who should be given back, in payment of Christianity’s immeasurable debt" their homeland.

It was Lloyd George’s decision that was primarily responsible for the British launching (in World War I) a large-scale offensive to conquer all of Palestine despite the risks. As a Christian Zionist he was determined to gain control of Palestine without the French to interfere. He also wanted his country to carry out what he regarded as God’s work in Palestine.

As shown in this essay, Christian Zionists have not always had it easy. Nevertheless, like those who have gone before us, we will stand on biblical conviction as we constantly watch for the further outworking of God’s historical plan, revolving around His people Israel and His any-moment return. Maranatha!

Adapted from The Gathering Storm, gen. ed. Mal Couch