those fundamentalists who are users of the Scofield Reference Bible, and who have read Hal Lindsey's 1971 best seller, The Late, Great Planet Earth, which
has sold between 28 million and 35 million copies.
There are three basic views of the final judgment.
- amillennialism, it forecasts no literal millennium preceding the final judgment.
- Postmillennialism, there will be a worldwide era of Christian dominance prior to Christ's second coming. Presbyterians associated with Princeton Theological Seminary
- premillennialism, most widely held Christ will return to earth in order to establish a worldwide kingdom. final judgment will be one thousand literal years after Christ's bodily return
Modern fundamentalism has adopted a variant of premillennialism, taught in 1830. It is called
dispensationalism. Christ will return invisibly to "rapture" every Christian into heaven. Christ will return to set up a worldwide kingdom that will last a thousand years.
dispensationalists are divided into three camps
- pre-tribulational: dominant group. He will return after seven years, three and a half of which will involve horrendous tribulation. This tribulation will be applied to the State of Israel. the removal of Christians from the world before the Great Tribulation that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 24
- post-tribulationists: small group, Christians will go through this tribulation. It will not be limited to Israelis. Those Christians who survive will then be translated to heaven by Christ, who will stay behind to set up his earthly kingdom
- mid-tribulationists: tiny group, Christians removed from the world three and a half years before Christ returns to set up His kingdom.
GETTING OUT OF LIFE ALIVE
The pre-tribulational believe that they may not have to die. this is the position of Scofield, Lindsey, and Rev. Tim LaHaye, whose multi- volume novel, Left Behind, has sold tens of millions of copies, and has resulted in two Left Behind movies so far.
It all depends on timing. those Christians who are alive exactly 42 months before Israel's Great Tribulation begins will escape death. Non-Christians will be left behind. They will not avoid death
Should anything happen to remove Israel from the Middle East during the lifetimes of these people, then the expected Great Tribulation will have to be postponed, probably for centuries, until another State of Israel is established. The appearance of the State of Israel in 1948 would then turn out to have been an eschatologically irrelevant political event.
these people will have to face a physical death. This belief in death-free living is the rarely stated psychological motivation behind American fundamentalism's unwavering support of the State of Israel.
the Church Age will end with the Rapture of living saints into heaven. The millennial age marked by Christ's bodily presence, will not be a church age, but will be a restored Davidic kingdom. It will include the restoration of the Temple sacrifices — as memorials - looking back to the cross
Ever since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, fundamentalists have rejoiced in the presumably fast-approaching fulfillment of Bible prophecy Because, if a Christian can make it to the day, exactly three and a half years before this fulfillment takes place, he will not suffer death.
This is why fundamentalists send money to Jewish organizations that bring Russian Jews to the State of Israel. They want to speed up the process. "On Wings of Eagles," sponsored by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein's International Fellowship of Christians and Jews
In 2002, he joined with Ralph Reed, the former political technician for Pat Robertson's grass-roots political training organization, Christian Coalition, to create Stand for Israel. Reed today is Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party.
"BETTER THEM THAN US!"
What is rarely discussed publicly by Jews or fundamentalists is the fundamentalists' view of the looming cost to Israelis for their return to Palestine. Fundamentalists believe that the Great Tribulation will wipe out two-thirds of the Jews in Israel. Hence, to encourage their return to the State of Israel is to encourage their destruction.
John Walvoord, who died in 2002, served for three decades as the president of Dallas Theological Seminary, the largest and best-known dispensational seminary (founded, 1924). He taught Hal Lindsey, who attended Dallas Seminary. Here is his assessment of the future of Israelis.
The purge of Israel in their time of trouble is described by
Zechariah in these words: "And it shall come to pass, that in all the
land, saith Jehovah, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but
the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part into
the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them
as gold is tried" (Zechariah 13:8, 9). According to Zechariah's
prophecy, two thirds of the children of Israel in the land will perish,
but the one third that are left will be refined and be awaiting the
deliverance of God at the second coming of Christ which is described in
the next chapter of Zechariah. (John F. Walvoord, Israel in Prophecy
[Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, [1962] 1988], p. 108.
Nothing will be done by Christians to save Israel's Jews from this disaster, for all of the Christians will have been removed from this world three and a half years prior to the beginning of this 42-month period of tribulation. The only Christians present at that time will be recent converts to the faith, who had been left behind as non-believers at the time of the Rapture.
Therefore, in order for most of today's Christians to escape physical death, two-thirds of the Jews in Israel must perish, soon. This is the grim prophetic trade-off that fundamentalists rarely discuss publicly, but which is the central motivation in the movement's political support for the State of Israel.
It should be clear why they believe that Israel must be defended at all costs by the West. If Israel were removed militarily from history prior to the Rapture, then the strongest case for Christians' imminent escape from death would have to be abandoned. This would mean the indefinite delay of the Rapture. The fundamentalist movement thrives on the doctrine of the imminent Rapture, not the indefinitely postponed Rapture.
Every time you hear the phrase, "Jesus is coming back soon," you should mentally add, "and two-thirds of the Jews of Israel will be dead in
`soon plus 84 months.'" Fundamentalists really do believe that they probably will not die physically, but to secure this faith prophetically, they must accept the doctrine of an inevitable future holocaust.
"We can avoid death, but only because two-thirds of the Jews of Israel will inevitably die in a future holocaust. America must therefore support the nation of Israel in order to keep the Israelis alive until after the Rapture." Fundamentalist ministers expect their congregations to put two and two together on their own. It would be politically incorrect to add up these figures in public.
this is the bottom line: the prophetic scapegoating of Israel.
CONCLUSION
The survival of the State of Israel is mandatory for its role as national sacrifice for Christianity, as fundamentalists perceive Christianity. Millions of Jews must die in horror in order that Christians may avoid death.
To imagine that fundamentalists will ever abandon their support of the State of Israel is to imagine that these people will also symbolically sign their own death certificates. That would be the meaning for such a reversal in outlook regarding American foreign policy.
It is always possible that they will abandon their faith in pre-tribulational dispensationalism, but the odds are against it. As the late David Chilton, a postmillennialist and author of three books on eschatology, once said, "The day that I became a postmillennialist, I realized that I was going to die." This was a high psychological price to abandon pre-tribulational dispensationalism. Not many fundamentalists are likely to pay it.
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