This occasional weekend column called ‘Pondering:…’ is where people from within the 'Team of 40,000 Baptists' can share issues they are thinking about in a way that opens up a topic from a particular perspective. Feel free to comment on these pieces via our new Mailbox (‘Letters to the Editor’). These opinion pieces are the views of individuals and need to be considered within the context of the diversity of our union of Baptist churches in New Zealand. When commenting or contributing, please follow our Guidelines for articles, opinion pieces and online comments.
In this piece, regular contributor and Biblical Scholar Philip Church brings a response to last week’s opinion piece that shared a Christian Zionist perspective on the recent war in Gaza. Philip is a member of Royal Oak Baptist Church. He is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Theology at Laidlaw College in Auckland. He has a PhD in New Testament and taught Biblical Languages and Old and New Testament courses at Laidlaw for 15 years.
Recently Clark Hyland published an opinion piece with the title: Pondering: How should Christians respond to the recent conflict in the Middle East? Hyland’s article referred to the recent conflict in the Middle East, but of course, it is by no means a recent conflict. This conflict began in 1947 and is ongoing as Israel continues its lengthy campaign to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from their land. While there is a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, Israel has not ceased its oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank. Palestinian homes are still being demolished and Palestinians continue to be denied basic human rights. The latest attacks on the refugee camp in Jenin have seen more than 20,000 people displaced,[1] and Israel has taken more political prisoners in the West Bank in the last month than it has freed as part of the Gaza ceasefire agreement.[2] Alongside this, we have the obnoxious plan dreamt up by Netanyahu and Trump to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians and create the “Riviera of the Middle East” as though this is just another real estate deal. And the most many people can say is, “Israel has the right to defend itself.”
Hyland chronicled some of the horrific things Hamas did on 7 October 2023, and he claimed that Israel had responded justly, righteously and fairly, and in accordance with international law. I disagree that Israel’s response has been proportionate. I don’t intend to engage in “both-sides-ism,” except to say that there are wrongs on both sides and Israel is not all sweetness and light as Hyland seems to maintain. The actions of Hamas on that day need to be placed in the context of seventy-five years of oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel. I am of course no supporter of Hamas. Hamas has been classified as a terrorist organisation and rightly so. But I see Hyland’s opinion piece as a convenient rewriting of history. It is true that Israel dismantled their settlements in Gaza in 2004, “and granted Gaza self-governance as a non-sovereign territory of Israel” (whatever that is supposed to mean for the inhabitants of Gaza who are descended from people expelled from their homes in 1948 and 1967). What he overlooked is that for almost 20 years, Israel has blockaded Gaza. Israel controls everything that goes in and out of the Gaza Strip. That is everything. It has justly been called the largest open-air prison in the world. I now turn to some more fundamental things in Hyland’s piece.
A simplistic slogan
He speaks of two main theologies about Israel's role since Christ. One, which he labels “replacement theology,” is that “Israel and all the promises made to her ended upon the death and resurrection of Christ due to their failure to recognise Him as their Messiah.” This belief has a long history, but I do not know anybody who believes it today. Hyland seems unaware that, since the Holocaust, Jewish and Christian theologians and biblical scholars have discussed the relationship between Israel and the church very carefully. This so-called replacement theology might be a common understanding in some of our Baptist churches, but it makes no sense and is just a simplistic slogan.
Is Christ the Messiah of Israel or not?
Fundamentally, the question that needs to be answered is, is Christ the Messiah of Israel or not? And if Christ is the Messiah of Israel, then his coming represents not the replacement of Israel but the renewal of Israel. God's original promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 was that in Abraham, all the families of the earth would be blessed. The constant witness of the New Testament is that it is through Christ the blessings of Abraham have come to all the nations of the world.
Nobody has replaced anybody
Because Christ is the Messiah of Israel, everything changed when he died and rose again. All those sacrifices that were so important in the Old Testament were abolished, with the implication that since Christ has come, it is no longer appropriate for Israel to relate to God, as Israel had previously. But we need to be quite clear, nobody has replaced anybody. In Christ, the faithful Israelite is not deprived of anything. The Old Testament promises are not done away, they are expanded, exponentially. The land promised to Abraham now encompasses the entire world (Rom 4:13), and the descendants of Abraham now include everybody who has faith (Gal 3:29).
We gentile believers have not replaced Israel, but like the branches of a wild olive tree, we have been grafted in to share the rich root of the olive tree that is Israel. Yes, Israel remains dearly loved, and of course, the promises to Israel continue. God has not rejected his people whom he loves. But since the Messiah has come, the promises are not restricted to the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the land of the Bible is not restricted to a tiny piece of real estate at the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
Mistakenly equated
In my view, a major issue with Hyland’s opinion piece is that he appears to identify the socialist democratic state formed by UN Resolution in 1947, with the Israel of the Old Testament. Ever since David Ben Gurion, who became Israel’s first Prime Minister, proclaimed on 14 May 1948, that the state would be called “Israel,” both Jews and Christians have mistakenly equated that state with the theocracy of the Old Testament also called Israel. The two are not the same. The Bible never anticipates a democracy in the last days called “Israel.”
Neither is the state of Israel to be identified with the Jewish people. Jewish people are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, wherever they live in the world. They are dearly loved by God, and we believers in Jesus owe them a great debt of gratitude, for from them we have our Holy Scriptures and from them our Lord descended. But we owe none of this to the state of Israel.
How has this happened?
To understand the importance of the distinction between Old Testament Israel and the recently formed state of Israel, we need to consider three phenomena: restorationism, Zionism and Christian Zionism. Donald Lewis describes restorationism,
"Historically, the term restorationism was used to designate the belief that the Jews would one day be physically restored to their homeland in the Middle East. It was generally understood that this physical restoration would occur after the mass conversion of the Jewish people to the Christian faith."[3]
Restorationism was front and centre for British evangelicals in 19th century Britain, where the Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews was formed in 1809 (now called the Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People). At that time, British evangelicals were committed to the evangelisation of the Jewish people and anticipated a mass conversion of Jews in the last days and that these believing Jews, having turned to Christ would then return to the land in the goodness of God. While I (partially) agree with their belief in a mass conversion of Jews in the last days (the Scriptures are not totally clear on this and there are other ways to read Romans 11), I question that this will be accompanied by their restoration to their land. I do not find anywhere in the Scriptures the idea that Jews who believe in Jesus will then return to the promised land.
A political movement…
Restorationism must be distinguished from Zionism. Zionism is a political movement that began in the late nineteenth century when secular Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl proposed that the Jewish people needed a homeland to escape Anti-Semitic persecution in Europe. Zionism was (and still is) a reasonable and important idea. But Zionism has developed since then. The Jewish Virtual Library now defines Zionism as “The national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel” (italics added). What began as a political move seeking a homeland for Jewish people developed into a movement for Jewish sovereignty over the land now called Israel. The definition continues, “Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism has come to include the movement for the development of the State of Israel and the protection of the Jewish nation in Israel through support for the Israel Defense Forces.”[4] This is what I detect in Hyland’s piece: Not support for Jewish people but support for the state of Israel and the IDF, who are seeking to hold up Israel's claims to sovereignty over that land.
A Christian movement…
The third phenomenon is Christian Zionism. I quote Donald Lewis again,
"I define Christian Zionism … as a Christian movement which holds to the belief that the Jewish people have a biblically mandated claim to their ancient homeland in the Middle East. Today the term Christian Zionism is widely used of Christians who hold that the state of Israel’s right to exist is based on biblical teachings."[5]
Some call Christian Zionism a heresy, although in an article I published several years ago,[6] I declined to call it that. I did conclude that it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Scriptures. In a similar vein, evangelical theologian John Stott is reported to have said. “Political Zionism and Christian Zionism are biblically anathema to the Christian faith.”[7]
Christian Zionism also began in the late nineteenth century but flourished after the 1967 six-day war when Israel took control of Jerusalem. At that time, Billy Graham’s father-in-law, L. Nelson Bell wrote, “That for the first time in more than 2000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews gives a student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.”[8] And then it flourished with the publication by Hal Lindsey of The Late Great Planet Earth, which evangelicals (including me) devoured in the 1970s.
Christians with Christian Zionist beliefs read the Old Testament as though the New Testament had never been written, and as though nothing changed with the coming of Christ. This fundamental misunderstanding is dangerous, particularly with Christian Zionist believers surrounding and influencing the current United States of America President (and former presidents, including Ronald Reagan).[9] These include former Southern Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee, who denies that there is an occupation of the West Bank, who calls the West Bank “Judea and Samaria,” and who advocates that Israel annex the entire West Bank.[10]
This spurious theology has developed from restorationism that believed that Jewish people becoming followers of Jesus would be restored to the promised land, to what has now become unconditional support for the state of Israel and the IDF, along with the unfounded belief that Israel must be in the promised land for Jesus to return, and he will rule the world from an earthly Jerusalem in the Millennium. How we read the Bible has consequences, and sometimes dangerous consequences on the world stage.
See more writing from Philip Church on Baptist NZ here…
For other 'Pondering:...' opinion pieces from people in New Zealand churches, click here.
Photo Credit: Supplied by Philip Church. The image is a mural on the wall of the Lajee Centre in the Aida Refugee Camp just outside Bethlehem. The Lajee Centre was set up to provide refugee youth and women with cultural, educational, social and developmental opportunities. The key on one panel of the wall has 194 painted on it. The inhabitants of the refugee camp are descendants of those expelled from their homes in 1947 and 1948, still holding the keys to those homes. The 194 refers to UN resolution 194 which says that they have the right to return to their homes, something that has never been implemented. To the left of the key is a plaque that says “Jerusalem 7.4 km. The Lajee centre is just 7.4 kilometres from Jerusalem, and while I can travel across the world and visit Jerusalem these refugees cannot, even though some of them were born there.
Endnotes
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn6p8-6snTE
[3] Donald M. Lewis, A Short History of Christian Zionism: From the Reformation to the Twenty-First Century. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021), 2.
[4] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/a-definition-of-zionism
[5] Lewis, Short History, 3 (italics original).
[6] Philip Church, “Dispensational Christian Zionism: A Strange but Acceptable Aberration or a Deviant Heresy?” WTJ 71 (2009): 375–98.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism
[8] https://www.equip.org/articles/modern-israel-in-bible-prophecy-promised-return-or-impending-exile/
[9] Stephen, Sizer, Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon? (Leicester: IVP, 2004), 214–15.
[10] For an example of this influence see https://allisrael.com/videos/ambassador-mike-huckabee-discusses-evangelical-support-for-israel-and-his-meeting-with-netanyahu.
