Dispensational Destruction and Deconstruction

Reconsidering Evangelical Eschatology In Light of World Events

One of my first red-pill moments in life came during a college history course when assigned to read the book Blood Brothers by Elias Chaicor, a Palestinian Bishop of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church who as a child was forced to flee his village when it was overtaken by Israeli forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. With my upbringing as the grandson of a Baptist minister solidly Dispensationalist, I had fully believed that the land God promised to Abraham’s seed thousands of years ago rightly belonged to his ethnic descendants, and that anyone living there prior to the reestablishment of Israel’s statehood was a Muslim usurper who should find residence elsewhere. Yet Chaicor’s story was a revelation to me that people professing the Christian faith still lived in Israel and had lived in Israel since the time of Christ, and it came with the concerning realization that support for a Jewish Israel by Christians like myself led to the displacement, destruction, and even death of our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s been nearly twenty years since I first read Blood Brothers, and during this time I’ve become a husband, father, soldier, and now civilian, all events that have caused me to question not only my views on Israel but on how I see my Christian faith itself. The recent outburst of violence is obviously unsettling, but as I look at many of the Christians around me endorsing and even demanding bloody retribution in Israel’s defense, I can’t help but wonder if we worship the same Christ. 

To fully explain this concern, I think it’s appropriate to step back for a moment to revisit the word “dispensationalist” that I used earlier, as some of you reading this may be unfamiliar. Within Christian historical context, dispensational theology is relatively new and uniquely Protestant, stemming from the mid-19th century Anglo-Irish Bible teacher John Nelson Darby and spreading through American evangelical churches in the years after. Dispensationalism teaches that God acts in different ways through different people groups at different times in history and that the Jewish people themselves remain part of God’s overall salvation plan for the world in a future stage of His plan. In order for the next age to materialize, however, Christians must be “raptured” off of the earth prior to a time of great tribulation, when the world’s Jews will be gathered together and re-established as a nation state prior to Christ’s final victory over Satan. It’s a complicated theology and there are intricacies involving the timing of some of these events, but most dispensationalists agree that Israel’s re-emergence as a political state in 1948 started the countdown to the end of the current age. 

One of the problems with this, however, is that if you tried to explain any of it to the Palestinian Christians like Chaicor who lost their homes to Israel over the past seventy years or to the tiny remnant of believers currently dodging Hamas’ rockets and Israeli missiles in Gaza, you’d be met with blank stares and skepticism. In fact, try to explain dispensational theology to the average Catholic or Orthodox Christian anywhere else in the world and they would probably be confused as well. 

To be fair, most modern American Evangelical Christians probably wouldn’t be able to provide a strict definition of dispensationalism or explain its brief history either, but it’s safe to say that its precepts are subconsciously baked within the Evangelical mindset. This has real world consequences for both those who were raised within this theological framework and everyone else in the world who has been affected by the actions taken by its adherents. 

I remember as a child being terrified that the end of the world could happen at any moment. Every political event that hit the news regarding the Middle East caused the hands of the dispensational doomsday clock to tick one second closer to midnight. And as glorious as Christ’s second coming will eventually be, thoughts of the Rapture happening before I wanted it to, before I could experience life, kind of selfishly bummed me out. Even worse was the fear of the rapture happening and not being a part of it! The terrors of being left behind with Kirk Cameron and the Antichrist were just too much. 

But those are First World Problems. Because the real problems, those of actual suffering and violence, take place elsewhere, driven by political agendas related to dispensational theology. While the idea of returning to a homeland in Palestine has always been an objective of the Jewish people, the so-called Zionist movement gained momentum in the 19th Century and Christian dispensationalists quickly became one of its main proponents. Great Britain’s inheritance of the region following the demise of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, coupled with rising anti-semitism in Europe and the tragic events of the Holocaust, accelerated Jewish migration. As previously mentioned, however, Palestine had Muslims, Christians, and some Jews living there already, and the influx of more of the latter caused considerable tension. In 1947, The United Nations attempted to partition the region peacefully, but the surrounding Arab states would not come to terms with the plan and war broke out, with Israel emerging victorious. Seven-hundred thousand Palestinians were displaced from their lands, an event termed “The Nakba”, which drives a narrative of resentment fueling the cycle of violence that continues today. 

Outside of Israel, dispensational theology has influenced foreign policy in other ways. Biblical “End Times” language was cited by President Bush in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a war that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians and decimated native Christian populations throughout the region. Furthermore, modern day diplomatic engagement with Iran and Russia is subconsciously layered with dispensational ideas, with both countries theoretically linked to nations named in eschatological prophecy. 

Reconsidering dispensational theology and questioning Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is not meant to justify any type of anti-Semitism toward Jewish people, nor is it meant to condemn the actions of the nation exclusively. It must be made clear that the recent atrocities committed by Hamas are true acts of evil and Israel has a right and obligation to protect its citizens from this type of violence. Sadly, there are many in the world right now protesting this fact and using Israel’s actions as justification for unspeakable acts of violence against innocent women and children.  

The same voices who decry Israel as colonizers and occupiers of stolen land do so in the same spirit that makes similar calls against Christians in the West. We must be careful when calling out Israeli injustice to not to ally ourselves with the forces who wish to destroy us next.

At the same time, Christians cannot isolate ourselves and ignore this conflict. We are called to spread the Gospel to the world and baptize the nations, which includes Jews and Muslims in the Middle-East and elsewhere. Peace will never be achieved with more war, but only through both groups recognizing Christ’s divinity and coming into communion with Him and each other through His Church.