The war in Gaza, which started after the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, continues even though a pause in hostilities came into effect on November 24 and is expected to end today unless it is further extended.  The Hamas attack resulted in 1200 deaths and an estimated 240 people taken as hostages.  As of November 23, one source estimated that 14800 people had been killed in Gaza, including about 6000 children and 4000 women.  My intention in quoting these numbers is not to provide an accurate count, but to highlight the fact that too many people have already died on both sides of the conflict, and the dead count keeps rising.

International pressure and intense negotiations led to a pause to warfare for the purpose of releasing hostages and bringing in humanitarian aid.  The initial 4-day pause was extended (twice), and as of November 29, 85 hostages had been released in exchange for 180 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.  Negotiations are underway for another extension of the pause even though there are indications that fighting has restarted.

Given the tremendous amount of destruction and human suffering caused by the war, people from around the world have been calling for an immediate ceasefire.  Resistance to those calls comes from some voices in Israel, given the fear that a ceasefire gives Hamas an opportunity to regroup.  It is well-known that the Netanyahu government had vowed to pursue a complete annihilation of Hamas, which may be easier said than done and would probably lead to an annihilation of the whole Gaza enclave.  But Israel is also, apparently, conscious of the damage to its image that would result from a resumption of the atrocities.

In the United States, some prominent Christian nationalists have expressed their full support for Israel no matter what it takes.  Florida Governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, for example, is of the opinion that Hamas is a permanent danger to Israel that must be eradicated by all means necessary.  After the United Nations called for a ceasefire in Gaza, DeSantis said at a rally in New Hampshire that the UN should be defunded.

In my previous post, I mentioned that I disagree with evangelicals who unconditionally support Israel in the Gaza conflict.  In this post, I intend to specifically discuss the religious reasons behind their support of Israel, which are very much influenced by their teaching on the so-called rapture.

The idea of a rapture of born-again Christians was popularized by books such as Hal Lindsey’s best-selling novel The Great Late Planet Earth from the 1970’s and the Left Behind series of novels from the 1990’s by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.  Those novels and the movies made out of them offered the population a vision of end times according to which Jesus would come back at a time of great tribulation and save Christians by “rapturing” them to heaven.  After seven years of tribulation on earth, he would come a second time and establish his kingdom and reign for a thousand years.  The storyline is said to come from a literal reading of biblical prophecy, but it suggests that Jesus will come back twice even though, historically, Christians have believed that only one Second Coming is announced by the New Testament.  Nevertheless, the idea of a rapture has become widely accepted by many Christians, mostly on the conservative side, because the novels offered a vivid picture of end times that was appealing to many.

In 2005, New Testament scholar Barbara Rossing published her important book The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation.  As suggested by the title, the book exposes the falsehoods built into the rapture doctrine and the dangers associated with its political implications.  As we will see below, the unconditional support of Israel by evangelicals is an example of these dangers.

As explained by Rossing, in 1830, in Port Glasgow, Scotland, a fifteen-year-old girl attending a healing session said she had a vision of a two-stage return of Christ.  Her story was picked up by an evangelical preacher named John Nelson Darby who then used it to transform the existing belief in Christ’s Second Coming into a two-step event.  Rossing explains:

“But Darby’s new teaching was the claim that Christ would return twice. The first return would be in secret, to ‘Rapture’ his church out of the world and up to heaven. Christ would return a second time after seven years of global tribulation to establish a Jerusalem-based kingdom on earth (which they call the ‘Glorious Appearing,’ a phrase from Titus 2:13). For Darby and his sympathizers, the search was on for Bible verses to support this two-stage version of Christ’s return.”

The word “rapture” is not found in the Bible.  But in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17, the apostle Paul provides encouragement to believers who are concerned about the fate of their loved ones who have passed away.  In that passage, Paul says:

“For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.  After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)

These verses are one of the descriptions of the Second Coming of Christ found in the Bible.  The Second Coming is a return to earth so that the biblical hope of God dwelling permanently with his people on earth is finally fulfilled.  Before Darby’s revision, the expression “will be caught up together” had been understood by Christians in the context of the world of biblical writers: When a king came to a town as a conqueror, town officials came to meet him outside of the town and would then reenter the town with him.  In the same manner, Christ, coming from heaven, would be met in the air by believers who would then escort him to earth.  Darby introduced his two-stage Second Coming by interpreting “will be caught up together” as a rapture.  Christ would make a U-turn and take the believers with him to heaven so that they would escape the Great Tribulation.

Darby also believed that God had divided human history into seven ages or dispensations, and used different rules in each of them to deal with people.  Darby’s own time was in the sixth dispensation, the age of the church.  For his timetable of events, he relied heavily on three verses from the book of Daniel:

“Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.  After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.” (Daniel 9:25-27)

Assuming that each “seven” is a period of seven years, these verses provide a timetable of the history of Israel for a period of 490 years beginning with the Persian king’s decree that allowed the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem.  It is generally agreed that this period ends when the Jews are under Greek domination following the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great.  The “ruler who will come” is Antiochus Epiphanes who tried to abolish the Jewish sacrificial system and desecrated the temple by placing a statue of the Greek god Zeus in it in 168 BC.  This interpretation is made credible by details given in Daniel 11 and implies that Daniel was describing events that were occurring during that period of Jewish history.

However, according to Darby, the first 483 years were consistent with the history of Israel, all the way to the killing of the Messiah, but then something happened: God was forced to suspend the prophetic stopwatch for two thousand years because the Jews rejected the Messiah.  Therefore, the remaining seven years have still not occurred and the current church dispensation is a parenthesis in time.  For the yet-to-come seven-year period, dispensationalists latch on to Daniel 9:27 which says “He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’” To them, these are the seven years of tribulation and the only question is when they are to begin.

Darby, who was the founder of the Plymouth Brethren, visited the United States several times and was able to win over many Christians to his views.  Most importantly, his ideas were given “legitimacy” after the Scofield Reference Bible was published (1909) and became a best-seller.  This was a version of the King James Bible that contained, in its margins, headings and notes that reflected Darby’s interpretations of prophecy and dispensationalist assumptions.

Novels such as Left Behind focus on the seven years of tribulation after the rapture.  During that time, the Antichrist rises to power and rebels must battle against his forces using the most advanced military weapons technology has to offer.  This, of course, makes violence the most prominent feature of the novels.  It is also assumed that those years are the focus of chapters 6 through 19 in the book of Revelation, and many events in the novels are inspired by the cataclysmic occurrences described in those chapters.  Those events climax in the Battle of Armageddon, when Jesus returns, defeats the forces of evil and initiates his millennial reign.  Even though the real climax of Revelation, the great hope of a heavenly Jerusalem coming down to earth and of God dwelling with his people, is revealed at the end of the book in chapter 22, proponents of the rapture would rather focus of the violence of the middle chapters.

Proponents of the rapture also believe that Israel plays a critical role during the tribulation years, which is consistent with their belief that Jesus’ millennial kingdom will be established in Jerusalem.  Therefore, they saw the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 as a key event in their end times timeline.  Hal Lindsey wrote in his novel that the fig tree in Jesus’ parable of Matthew 24:32-33 represents Israel “putting forth its leaves” and becoming a sovereign state:

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” (Matthew 24:32–33)

From this, Lindsey predicted that the rapture would occur within 40 years of the founding of Israel, a prediction he had to retract when, in 1948, there was no sign of a rapture.  However, proponents of the rapture often feel comfortable making adjustments to their predictions when they do not materialize.  As explained by Barbara Rossing,

“Beyond their original references to the founding of Israel as the key event on the prophetic calendar, many dispensationalists have been aggressively moving the bar to the point of insisting that the restoration of Israel to ‘its original borders’ is also necessary for prophetic fulfillment. They do not mean modest original borders of 1948 Israel, a territory smaller than its pre–1967 borders, but the borders of Israel at its height in biblical times.”

If Israel’s territorial boundaries must be restored to their status in biblical times, then not only there is no room for Palestinians, but Israel is obviously justified in using violence to enforce God’s will regarding the land.

Other items in the timeline after the rapture are as follows: The Antichrist will make a seven-year treaty with Israel, but will break it after three and a half years.  The temple in Jerusalem will be rebuilt and animal sacrifices will be resumed, but the Antichrist will desecrate it after he breaks the treaty.

The logic that makes the rebuilding of the temple a necessary item in the rapture timeline is interesting and relies on Daniel 9:27 which was discussed above.  The Jerusalem temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, and there is no indication in the Bible that it will be rebuilt.  In fact, there are indications that Jesus saw himself as the replacement for the temple and proclaimed that true worship in the future would be in the Spirit rather than focused on the temple (John 2:19-21, 4:21-24).  However, according to proponents of the rapture, Daniel 9:27 makes clear that the temple must be rebuilt so that animal sacrifices can be resumed and so that the Antichrist can desecrate it.  And they will not let anything get in the way of the timeline.  It does not even matter that Jesus himself discouraged his disciples from trying to predict the coming of end times, urging them instead to always be ready (Matthew 24:36-44).

Given their hope for the future, proponents of the rapture tend to have an escapist attitude regarding life on earth.  Since they imagine themselves in the safety of heaven while the tribulation is underway, they do not necessarily care about the earth and what’s in it.  In fact, they see signs of end times, including warfare in Palestine, as good news.  Since Israel has a role to play in God’s plan, Israel must have great latitude in pursuing its interests.  From that perspective, calls for a ceasefire are actually counterproductive because a ceasefire can only slow down the process.  But does this all mean that they really care deeply about the Jews? Not necessarily!  In the end, the only Jews who will matter are those who convert to their brand of Christianity.  And there will be exactly 144,000 of them.

On November 17, Religious News Service reported on evangelicals’ reactions to the war between Israel and Hamas in an article with the title American Evangelicals Interpret Israel-Hamas War as a Prelude to End Times.  The author of the article, Fiona André, presented Robert Jeffress, Senior Pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas, who prepared a series of sermons about end times for the occasion, as a prominent example of such reactions.  She wrote:

“On Nov. 5, as the last notes of ‘Redemption Draweth Nigh,’ a hymn about Jesus’ return, resonated in First Baptist’s 3,000-seat sanctuary, Jeffress asked his audience, ‘Are we actually living in what the Bible calls the End Times?’

The war in Gaza is not the only sign Jeffress submitted as evidence that the period presaging Jesus’ Second Coming, detailed in the Bible’s Book of Revelation and other Scriptures, is coming closer. He noted, too, rising crime rates, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and natural disasters before announcing, ‘We are on the verge of the beginning of the End Times.’”

If “Redemption Draweth Nigh” is an appropriate hymn for the occasion, then the war is clearly good news.  According to André, Jeffress added:

“’Things are falling into place for this great world battle, fought by the super powers of the world, as the Bible said. They will be armed with nuclear weapons,’ he said.”

Jeffress, who apparently has an upcoming book on the Apocalypse, is obviously knowledgeable on the details of the timeline discussed above.  He knows his Bible and can most likely point to references to nuclear weapons in it.  I suppose such weapons will make the coming events quite exciting.

André also quoted Greg Laurie, senior pastor at the Harvest Riverside Fellowship in California:

“’The Bible tells us in the End Times that Israel will be scattered and regathered,’ Laurie said. ‘The Bible predicted hundreds of thousands of years ago that a large force from the North of Israel will attack her after she (Israel) was regathered and one of the allies with modern Russia, or Magog, will be Iran or Persia.’

Before calling the church to pray for peace in Jerusalem, Laurie added, ‘If you get up in the morning and read this headline “Russia Attacks Israel,” fasten your seatbelt because you’re seeing Bible prophecy fulfilled in your lifetime.’”

I will assume that Laurie knows the Bible did not exist hundreds of thousands of years ago and will not comment on that.  However, as I read those words, I ask myself how difficult it must be for a Christian pastor to strike a balance between the need to call for peace and the excitement regarding the violence to come in fulfillment of Bible prophecy.”

But pro-Israel preachers do not limit themselves to preaching from the pulpit.  They have political clout.  During his campaign for reelection, former president Trump admitted that he moved the US embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem to please evangelicals.  One of the leading figures in the pro-Israel movement is John Hagee, who has also written about end times and who, in 2006, founded Christians United for Israel (CUFI), now the largest pro-Israel organization in the U.S.  Regarding Hagee and CUFI, André wrote:

“On Oct. 22, CUFI hosted a ‘Night to Honor Israel’ rally at Hagee’s Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, with Israeli public figures on hand, as well as U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton.

Hagee was also a speaker at the giant pro-Israel rally held Tuesday (Nov. 14) in Washington where he reaffirmed his commitment to Israel. ‘There is only one nation whose flag will fly over the ancient walls of the sacred city of Jerusalem. That nation is Israel, now and forever,’ he said, greeted by cheers.”

The fervent support by Christians of Israel as a political entity is part of the movement referred to a Christian Zionism, and CUFI plays a leading role in giving a voice to the movement.  As reported by André, CUFI has a strong impact on Republican politicians:

“The group’s gatherings have become an obligatory stop for GOP presidential hopefuls wishing to articulate their support for Israel in front of Christian Zionists. ‘Most of them don’t get into the prophecy stuff,’ said Hummel. ‘They’ll talk more about the national interests that the U.S. has in supporting Israel and about the cultural values that Israel and the U.S. share.’”

But politicians do not need to discuss the “prophecy stuff.” They can leave that to Hagee who knows everything about it:

“But Hagee often speaks about the prophecies that drive his support for Israel. A week after Hamas’ attacks, Hagee’s Sunday sermon detailed the unfolding of the End Times, while a timeline illustrating every step from Jesus’ resurrection to the renovation of Earth by fire was displayed in the background.

The recent Hamas attacks draw us closer to the church’s Rapture, he claimed. ‘The Bible blessed the Jewish people directly and through the Jewish people blesses us, the gentile people,’ he said, before adding, ‘Israel is God’s prophetic clock; when the Jewish people are in Israel, the clock is running. When the Jewish people are out of Israel, the clock stops,’ he said.”

However, not all Jews are comfortable with the tremendous support Israel seems to be receiving from Christian Zionists:

“This logic scandalizes some scholars as well as Jews, who see evangelical support for Israel as compromised by its cosmic hope for their conversion. ‘They (Christian Zionists) believe a tiny minority of living Jews will, in the End Times, convert to Christianity, and the rest will be damned to hell for their disbelief,’ wrote Steven Gardiner, research director at the Political Research Associates, in a 2020 essay titled, ‘End Times Antisemitism.’”

In her book, Rossing points out that the rapture doctrine not only is a misrepresentation of biblical teaching and the book of revelation in particular, but also leads to undesirable results since its storyline is more important to his proponents than matters of peace and justice.  She highlights a fact that is completely obscured by the rapture narrative: the hero of Revelation is Jesus represented as a wounded Lamb who, after offering himself as sacrifice for all, has risen to the position of king of the universe.  Interestingly, despite all the violent imagery in Revelation, the saints are never involved in violence.

To those who wait for the Lamb’s Second Coming, he has provided a model to live by, a model that is based on love of God and neighbor, forgiveness and the nonviolent pursuit of justice for all (including Palestinians).  He will come again and dwell with his people in a kingdom where suffering will be a thing of the past.