The
recent decision by the President Trump to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of
the State of the Israel resulted in the usual liberal media frenzy that
accompanies almost any statement by the current President of the United States.
Interestingly, on this occasion, other western political leaders, including the
British Prime Minister Theresa May, criticized the President’s statement.
The political
situation in the Middle East is far too complicated to discuss here, but the
religious reasons behind President Trump’s decision are worth discussing considering
that most Protestants we encounter believe in some form of ‘Christian Zionism’.
 |
| British soldiers rescuing the wounded after a Zionist terrorist attack on the King David Hotel. |
Zionism
is the movement for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Zionists view the State of Israel as the Promised Land promised by God to Abraham
in the Old Testament. Zionism is not a modern movement, but it came to prominence
following World War Two due to the huge influx of Jews into Palestine, which
led to violence between the British forces running Palestine at the time, the
Jewish immigrants and the Palestinian inhabitants.
Many
Christians are unaware that Zionists perpetrated many terrorist atrocities in their
fight to establish a State of Israel. Palestinians were abducted and murdered; British
soldiers were murdered in car bombings, shootings, and lynchings in order to
ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population and to force the British to leave
Palestine. By the time the British withdrew, they had lost over three hundred
men killed.[1] As
well as Muslims, a significant number of native Palestinian Christians and Jews
were killed in these terrorist attacks carried out, to a large extent, by
recent immigrants to Palestine.
Despite
this, most American Evangelicals believe that God has blessed the State of
Israel. This belief that the State of Israel is synonymous with the Old Testament
Israel blessed by God is what is called ‘Christian Zionism’. In a recent
survey, 82% of white Evangelical Protestants stated that God gave Israel to the
Jews.[2] Many
Evangelicals not only support the State of Israel but also yearn after a return
to Jewish worship:
Though it may surprise
most Jews, evangelicals feel not only a strong sense of protectiveness toward
the state of Israel but a deep cultural affinity with the Jewish people. It is
not just that they are well versed in the Hebrew Scripture and its values. More
importantly, as convinced Protestants, evangelicals tend to bypass the period
of church history between the apostles and the Reformation—more than a thousand
years of Christian corruption and paganism, as they see it—and look for
inspiration not to Origen or Aquinas but to the heady days when all Christians
were, in fact, Jews. In returning to the roots of their faith, they often feel
closer to Jewish culture than to other branches of Christianity. Some go the
extra mile to don a kippah, observe Passover, or celebrate a bar mitzvah.[3]
Evangelicals
also believe that the prosperity and power of America is conditional on its
support for Israel. Some of this support for Israel probably stems from a
literal Protestant Fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, which associates
the Old Testament Israel with the State of Israel simply because of the use of
the word ‘Israel’. This interpretation is overly simplistic and not traditionally
Protestant. The Israel that God delivered from Pharaoh is not the same as the State
of Israel established in 1948.
In
the Orthodox Church we venerate the saints of the Old Testament because they
struggled out of love for God by obeying the ordinances of the Law, but this
law was merely a foreshadowing of grace. St. Paul teaches that ‘the law was our
schoolmaster to bring us unto
Christ, that we might be justified by faith’ (Gal. 3:24). Christ is the
fulfilment of the law (cf. Matt. 6:7) and its end. We hear this summarized in
the Dogmatic Theotokion of the Second Tone sung on Saturday evening:
The shadow of the law is
passed away with the coming of grace; for as the bush was not consumed when it
was burning, thus as a virgin didst thou give birth, and a virgin didst thou
remain. In the stead of a pillar of fire, there hath arisen the Sun of
Righteousness; in the stead of Moses, Christ, the Salvation of our souls.[4]
Most
American Evangelicals are Christian Zionists, but only a minority believe in
its most extreme forms. John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel
is one such example. He claims that Hitler was sent by ‘god’ in order to cause
Jews to move to Israel.[5]
It
is quite understandable that religious Jews believe the State of Israel is
their Promised Land although we would disagree. Although there are fanatical
religious Zionists, most Israelis are cultural Zionists and do not exhibit the
same levels of hatred for Palestinians as do extreme Christian Zionists:
In stark contrast to
cultural Zionists who deem ethnic cleansings as a defensible cruelty, Christian
Zionists defend ethnic cleansing as a divine command. From Darby in the past to
LaHaye in the present, they militantly forward the notion that God has covenanted
to give Eretz Israel – from the river of Egypt to the River Euphrates –
exclusively to the Jews. “The Lord will purify His land of all the wicked,’
wrote Darby, ‘from the Nile to the Euphrates.’ John Hagee is equally explicit.
‘God has given Jerusalem’, he says, ‘only to the Jews’. Supporting the
displacement of Arabs in order to make room for Jews is rationalised as
fulfilment of the purposes of God. [6]
Not
only is Christian Zionism completely un-Orthodox, it is not even traditionally Protestant.
The sixteenth century Protestant Reformer John Calvin strongly condemned the
theory of chialism (millennialism)
that is closely associated with Christian Zionism.
Different
forms of millennialism exist, but most American Evangelicals believe in the idea
that, at some point the future, Christ will return secretly and take Christians
into heaven (the Rapture) thereby ushering in a period of tribulation before
Christ comes again openly to institute a thousand year reign on earth. This
type of millennialism (pre-dispensational millennialism is part of a relatively
new belief system called dispensationalism invented in the 19th
century by John Nelson Darby (1800-1882). Darby divided the Bible into seven historical
periods or dispensations. We are now, apparently, living in the sixth
dispensation. This millennium (the seventh dispensation) will be Jewish in
origin, with the Temple, animal sacrifices and Old Testament priesthood being
re-established. Only after this millennium will the Last Judgment occur.
The
idea of re-establishing the Old Testament priesthood and animal sacrifices is
unique to dispensationalism; it is a modern heresy unknown to both the Early
Church and the Protestant Reformers.
Christian
Zionists and Evangelicals who believe in a reintroduction of Temple worship
cannot be called Christians because they deny the redeeming sacrifice of Christ
on the Cross. We are Christians because we have been redeemed by the ‘precious blood
of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect’ (1. Pet 1:19). If we reject this sacrifice and yearn after
the sacrifices of the Old Testament we are not Christians.
Christ
is our Passover Lamb who was sacrificed for ‘our sins: and not for ours only,
but also for the sins of the
whole world’ (1 John 2:2). Christ, by offering Himself as a sacrifice, redeemed
us from the curse of the law so that the blessing of Abraham might come upon us
and that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith (cf. Gal.
3:13-14). Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross abolished the sacrifices of
the Law as St. Paul makes clear:
Sacrifice and
offering and burnt offerings and offering
for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; Then said he, Lo, I come
to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the
second. By that will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of
Jesus Christ once for all (Heb.
10:8-10).
The
Scriptures and the writings of the Church Fathers clearly show that Christ is
not only the sacrifice offered, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the
world (cf. John 1:29), but also the High Priest who offers the sacrifice. We
hear this High Priestly prayer of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane on Great
Thursday evening (it is the first of the twelve Gospel readings (John 13:31-
18:1)).
In
other words, re-establishing the Old Testament priesthood would be rejecting
Christ the High Priest’s sacrifice for us. We would be going back to the time
when animal sacrifices were used to propitiate God, thereby rejecting the New Covenant
of Christ. Saint Paul explains this further:
Neither by the blood of
goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place,
having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of
goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies to the
purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, Who through
the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience
from dead works to serve the living God? And for this cause He is the mediator
of the new covenant, that by means of death, for the redemption of the
transgressions that were under the first covenant, they who are called might
receive the promise of eternal inheritance (Heb. 9 11-15).
By
Christ’s redeeming sacrifice we have become a chosen
generation, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation. (cf. 1 Peter 2:9). It is for
this reason that the Church is often referred to as the New Israel. St. Paul is
clear in his Epistle to the Romans that a remnant of the Old Israel, that is
the Jews, will be saved, but this salvation will come through grace and not
through the a re-institution of the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament.
Far
from believing that Christ’s sacrifice instituted a new, royal priesthood, dispensationalists
believe that the Christian faith is actually a result of a failure of Christ. According to this heretical theory,
Christ became incarnate to establish an earthly millennial kingdom, but He
failed to do this because the Jews rejected him as their leader. As a result,
the ‘church’ came into being and God now has two separate plans or
‘dispensations’: one for the church and one for Israel. Members of the church
look forward to eternal life in heaven and members of Israel look forward to an
earthly Kingdom – the re-establishment of the Old Testament Israel including
Temple worship and animal sacrifice.
It should apparent by now that dispensationalism
and Christian Zionism are not Orthodox in the slightest. We do not look for a kingdom
on earth, with human priests subject to death, because we have Christ as High
Priest as St. Paul teaches:
For such a High Priest
was fitting for us, Who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners,
and has become higher than the heavens; Who does not need daily, as those high
priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the
people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. For the
law appoints as high priests men who have weakness, but the word of the oath,
which came after the law, appoints the Son who has been perfected forever (Heb.
7: 26-28).
Dispensationalism has penetrated so deeply into American
Protestantism that most Protestants would fail to recognize the word
dispensationalism – for these people, believing in a thousand year earthly
kingdom, the rapture and the re-establishment of Jewish Temple worship is part
of being ‘Protestant’; this is despite Calvin’s condemnation of millennialism! There
is little doubt that President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the
capital of the State of Israel was influenced by the powerful American Christian
Zionist movement.
Christian Zionists believe that because Jerusalem is
the place where the end of the world will occur, the State of Israel needs to
be supported; the formation of the State of Israel, according to them, is the
first stage of the second coming of Christ and is part of biblical prophecy.
Extreme
Christian Zionists have even tried to hasten the second coming of Christ by
various means. According to the dispensationalist interpretation of Numbers
19:2, even today everyone that has come into contact into contact with a human
corpse, bone, or grave is unclean until cleansed with water containing the
ashes of a red heifer. This heifer must be completely red with no hairs of any
other colour. The ashes of the last pure red heifer ran out in about 70 A.D.
leaving, by now, all Jews impure and incapable of building a new Temple.
In
the 1990’s Clyde Lott, a born again Christian and cattle breeder, decided to
take matters into his own hands and take care of what God had obviously not
provided by breeding fifty thousand Red Angus cattle and shipping them to
Israel in the hope that one cow might give birth to a pure, red heifer.
 |
| Melody |
In
1996, a red heifer named Melody was born on a farm near Haifa and was visited
by a hundred Protestant pastors from Texas and even featured on the front cover
of the Endtime magazine.[7] At
eighteenth months of age Melody, probably much to her relief, sprouted white
hairs which saved her from imminent death and cremation. Although Melody was not
the result of Lott’s breeding programme, other American cattle breeders are
still trying to raise an unblemished red heifer. The following story was
reported in January 2014:
In January a red heifer,
or ‘Parah Adumah’, was born to a cow herding family in an undisclosed location
in the US, who wish to see the animal used for the purity service during the
preparations for the rebuilding of the Third Temple. The family has reportedly
not marred or maimed the animal in any way, nor will they be using the animal
for work or feeding it any growth hormones. All this to comply with Jewish law
of keeping the animal as nature created it. Update: Unfortunately, several
months later, the cow was found to have more than one colored hair that is not
red. [8]
The
site of the proposed new Jewish Temple is Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This site
is currently occupied by the Muslim Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque. Melody’s
appearance sent some Christian Zionists into such fervour that Israeli security
forces even considered the possibility that these ‘christians’ might try to blow
up these Muslim holy sites in order to clear the ground for the new Temple.[9]
Many
American Evangelical Protestants are not concerned about damaging the
Middle-East peace process by their interference because, in their opinion, the
bloodshed that would result would be a price worth paying for the rebuilding of
the Jewish Temple. Let’s not forget that
these people believe that they will be spared from the tribulation of the
end-times by being taken into heaven (the Rapture) at their imagined secret coming
of Christ.
The Rapture is unknown to the Early Church and to
traditional Protestantism. It is something forced on to one particular biblical
text in order to make Scripture fit the teachings of dispensationalism. Christ
Himself explains that His Second Coming will not be secret, but clearly evident
to all:
Wherefore
if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold,
he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. For as the
lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also
the coming of the Son of man be. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then
shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man
coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send
his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his
elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other (Matt. 24: 26, 27, 29, 30).
The
Second Coming of Christ will also be demonstrated by the resurrection of the
dead, and the dead in Christ will be raised first as Saint Paul teaches:
For this we say unto
you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not precede them
which are asleep. 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. (1 Thess. 4:15,16)
Although
many British Evangelicals believe in the Rapture, their beliefs concerning the State
of Israel are more moderate than their American co-religionists. Perhaps this
is because, until recently, the Middle-East conflict has not featured very much
in UK political campaigns. Unfortunately, the infiltration of the Labour
Party by both hard-left and Islamic agitators has led to an alarming rise in
anti-Semitism in the U.K. Often, this is disguised under the banner of ‘anti-Zionism’
– in fact, in many cases, it is plain anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism
has also plagued Orthodox countries for centuries. The Russian pogroms of the
nineteenth century in which Jewish villages were burned to the ground are one
shameful example. Although the Orthodox Church condemned these acts in the
strongest possible terms, widespread suspicion of the Jews in general persisted.
This suspicion is manifested today in the form of conspiracy theories detailing
Jewish plots to control financial markets and international politics.
Orthodox
Christians should leave conspiracy theories well alone. We are not called to
reform the world’s banking system, we are called to repent and follow the teachings
of the Gospel. Saint Seraphim of Sarov teaches: ‘acquire the spirit of peace
and thousands around you will be saved’. We cannot change the whole world, but
we can change our lives by repentance and, as a result, change that part of the world in
which we live by showing love for God and our neighbour.
Genuine
Orthodox Christians demonstrate true Christianity by showing love for their
neighbours regardless of their religion. We can see this in the following two
examples from World War Two. We ourselves have heard similar accounts from our parishioners,
and no doubt there are many, many more.
In
September 1943, The Chief Rabbi was ordered by the Nazis to provide the names
and addresses of the Jews living in Athens. The Rabbi contacted Archbishop
Damaskinos who suggested that the Jews flee rather than identifying themselves
to the Nazis. At the same time, the Archbishop, together with the chief of
police, began an operation to save as many Jewish lives as possible. He
publicly condemned Hitler’s plans and the priests in his diocese condemned the
deportation of Jews in their sermons.
As a
consequence over six hundred Orthodox priests were arrested and deported to
concentration camps. Orthodox clergy issued false baptismal certificates to
Jewish families in order to save them from deportation. Over two hundred and
fifty Jewish children were saved by being hidden in the homes of Orthodox
clergy, and many thousands more were hidden by monasteries and laypeople.
Archbishop
Damaskinos, in a final attempt to prevent the deportation, signed a letter
appealing to the German commander for clemency. The letter concludes: ‘Our holy
religion does not recognize superior or inferior qualities based on race or
religion, as it is stated: “There is neither Jew nor Greek” and thus condemns
any attempt to discriminate or create racial or religious differences.’
Outraged, the German commander threatened the Archbishop with being taken
outside and shot. The Archbishop’s reply was simple and courageous: ‘Greek
religious leaders are not shot they are hanged. I request that you respect this
custom.’
The
reply so astounded the German that the Archbishop’s life was spared. It is
interesting to note how a Jewish Foundation views the contents of this letter:
‘The appeal of the Archbishop and his fellow Greeks is unique; there is no
similar document of protest of the Nazis during World War II that has come to
light in any other European country.’[10]
In
1944, the Germans invaded the Greek island of Zakynthos and ordered the mayor
to hand over a list of the Jewish inhabitants. By this stage in the war it was
evident that Jews handed over to the Germans would be murdered. The mayor
enlisted the help of Metropolitan Chrysostomos who presented the mayor’s list
to the Germans. The list contained only two names: Metropolitan Chrysostomos
and Louka Karrer, the mayor. The Metropolitan bravely told the German
commander: ‘Here are your Jews. If you choose to deport the Jews of Zakynthos,
you must also take me, and I will share their fate.’ Whilst the Metropolitan
was stalling the Germans, the Orthodox Christian inhabitants of Zakynthos hid
their Jewish neighbours.
It
is also thought likely that Metropolitan Chrysostomos wrote to Hitler
interceding for the Jews living within his diocese. Unfortunately, due to the
loss of the island’s archives in the devastating 1953 earthquake, copies of
this letter no longer exist. We do know that all Zaknythos’ two hundred and
seventy-five Jews survived, and no further attempt was made by the Germans to
deport them. Indeed, the first boat to arrive with aid to the victims of the
1953 earthquake was from Israel, adorned with a banner that read: ‘The Jews of
Zakynthos have never forgotten their mayor or their beloved bishop and what
they did for us.’[11]
It is clear that Christian Zionism is incompatible with Orthodoxy and not even vaguely Christian. However, in rejecting these heretical ideas, we
must not allow ourselves to be numbered with the anti-Semites whose stock-in-trade
is hatred and division and who are recognized by their fruits (cf. Matt. 7:20).
Let us instead follow the example of those Orthodox Christians who were willing
to lay down their lives during the Holocaust and recall the words of Christ: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his
life for his friends’ (John 15:13).
[1] http://www.nam.ac.uk/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/palestine
[2]
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/10/03/more-white-evangelicals-than-american-jews-say-god-gave-israel-to-the-jewish-people/
[3] http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2013/10/evangelicals-and-israel/
[4] Holy Transfiguration Monastery (trans.) The Pentecostarion (Brookline: Holy
Transfiguration Monastery, 1990) p.108
[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ec-kZGKnQ8
[6] H. Hanegraaff, The Apocalypse Code (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007) p.167
[7] S. Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The story of Christian Zionism (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2009) p.204
[8]
https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/17303/holy-cow-red-heifer-born-us/
[9] Evangelicals
and Israel: The story of Christian Zionism p.205
[10]
http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/es/generales/archbishop-damaskinos/
[11] http://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-features/special-focus/holocaust-in-greece/zakynthos
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