Israel: Product of Prophesy or History?

Very Rev. Fr. Olof H. Scott, Pastor

St. George Orthodox Church

Charleston, West Virginia

How do you understand or perceive the political state of Israel established in 1948? The response to this question is at the root of the instability in the Middle East.

There are various answers, but they basically reduce to two: 1) The State of Israel is the fulfillment of Biblical prophesy which points to the End Time; 2) The State of Israel is a political creation, the result of a merger of secular Zionism with the Balfour Declaration.

The first answer originates with the birth of Dispensationalism in England in the nineteenth century. This theology of Christianity, which teaches that God deals with His Creation in specific ways at specific times called “dispensations,” was championed by John Nelson Darby.

Darby taught that God’s blessings toward the people of Israel were put on hold when they rejected Jesus Christ. The prophetic “clock” was stopped and God established the “Church.” Near the End Time, the Church will be “raptured” out of the world so that the “clock” can start again, and God will establish the millennial Kingdom through His people Israel. They will reoccupy their land and the temple will be rebuilt.

Dispensationalism gained a foothold in America through the Niagara Bible Conference (1883-‘97). The great founders of Fundamentalism taught there and eventually produced the “Niagara Creed.” The fourteenth and last point of this creed reads: “We believe that the world will not be converted during the present dispensation, but is fast ripening for judgment, while there will be a fearful apostasy in the professing Christian body; and hence that the Lord Jesus will come in person to introduce the millennial age, when Israel shall be restored to their own land, and the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord; and that this personal and premillennial advent is the blessed hope set before us in the Gospel for which we should be constantly looking.”

This Premillennialist theology was carried forward into the twentieth century by such individuals as Clarence Larkin (1850-1924), author of “Dispensational Truth,” and Hal Lindsey, author of “The Late Great Planet Earth” (1971). It has been further popularized most recently by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins in their “Left Behind” series of books.

Millions of Christians in the United States have now come to believe the time-line taught by Dispensationalism, including many Protestants and others who are not traditionally in Fundamentalist denominations. They see the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 as part of this time-line and a sign that the “rapture” of the Church and the End Time is near. Intertwined with this belief is the conviction that the promises of God to the Israel of the Old Testament are now directed to modern-day Israel.

Two specific promises underline these Christian’s understanding: 1) God will treat all peoples depending on how they treat Israel: “Now the Lord had said to Abram: ‘Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ ” (Genesis 12:1-3) and 2) Israel is entitled to this land because of the promises made to Abraham: “Then He said to him, ‘I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it ...On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying: ‘To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates...’ ”(Genesis 15:7, 18-21).

In summary, those who understand the modern state of Israel as a fulfillment of Biblical prophesy constantly align the daily news from the Middle East with the time-line of Dispensationalism supporting every action of Israel without question. To not do so would be to disbelieve God’s promises to Israel and to be in danger of “cursing” Israel, thereby endangering their own “blessing” of God and even their Christian salvation.

The second answer to the original question regarding the state of Israel is a result of historic fact. Theodor Herzl introduced the modern secular form of Zionism in 1896 when he wrote a small pamphlet with the title, “The Jewish State.” Herzl described a plan to bring the Jews, scattered throughout the world in the diaspora, back to their homeland in Palestine. He wrote, “We must not imagine the departure of the Jews (from the lands of diaspora) to be a sudden one. It will be gradual, continuous, and will cover many decades. The poorest will go first and cultivate the soil. They will construct roads, bridges, railways, and telegraph installations, regulate rivers, and provide themselves with homesteads, all according to predetermined plans. Their labor will create trade, trade will create markets, and markets will attract new settlers–for every man will go voluntarily, at his own expense and his own risk. The labor invested in the soil will enhance its value, and the Jews will soon perceive that a new and permanent sphere of operation is opening here for that spirit of enterprise which has heretofore met only with hatred and obloquy.”

Giving strength to secular Zionism was the Balfour Declaration. British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, in a letter dated November 2, 1917, wrote to Lord Rothschild (Walter Rothschild, 2^nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Jewish community, about a position agreed upon at a British Cabinet meeting on October 31, 1917: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

With the end of the First World War, the partitioning of the defeated Ottoman Empire resulted in British control of the mandate over Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq. Everything was in place to encourage and facilitate the combined goals of secular Zionism and Balfour. However, the complicated and ever-changing events over the next three decades of the 1920's, ‘30's and ‘40's, greatly influenced how the nations of the world would see the formation of the state of Israel in 1948.

Jewish immigration into the region of Palestine in the 1920's was initially small enough to receive no opposition from Palestinian Arabs. However, with the further rise of anti-Semitism in Europe the number of immigrants increased as did the tension between Jews and Arabs. The British attempted to control the situation by establishing immigration quotas which displeased both groups with their respective agendas.

A series of events throughout the ‘20's to the ‘40's continued to keep the region in turmoil. When the British seemed reluctant to confront Arab protests in 1920/21, the Jewish leadership formed Haganah (The Defense) to protect Jewish settlements and properties. This organization spawned the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) in 1931 which in turn gave birth to Lehi in the early ‘40's. Each succeeding group was more militant and violent than its predecessor in support of Jewish relocation to the area.

During this time one of the major events was the Great Uprising (1936-‘39). Begun as a general strike called by Arab leadership in protest of Jewish immigration, it resulted in the death of 320 Jews and, in retaliation by the Irgun, 250 Arabs. Complicating this decade was Irgun’s campaign to facilitate the immigration of European Jews who were facing discrimination, murder and pogroms. With the rest of the world refusing the help them, the first vessel of refugees arrived in Palestine on April 13, 1937. By the time of the last vessel’s arrival on February 13, 1940, around 18,000 Jews had migrated from Europe.

Although a relative truce between the British and these groups existed through the world war years of 1940-‘43, 1944 saw renewed violence with the ascension of Menachem Begin as head of the Irgun. In the following years, this group along with Lehi and Haganah opposed British attempts at limiting immigration on all fronts. Attacks on prominent symbols of British administration, military, police, civil headquarters at the King David Hotel, and the British prison in Acre, were all directed to drain the British resolve in order to accelerate their withdrawal from Palestine.

After a failed United Nations attempt to solve the problem by partitioning the region into adjoining Jewish and Arab states, further violence erupted with the British leaving the mandate on May 14, 1948. The modern state of Israel was born on that date in the bloodshed of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.

Faced with this historical record, Christians who accept Dispensationalism would agree with both of the above answers to the opening question. They understand the modern state of Israel to be 1) a fulfillment of Biblical prophesy, and 2) one that was worked out by the hand of God through the historical record. But, what of those Christians who do not adhere to Dispensationalism, a teaching which is relatively new in the two thousand year record of Christian doctrine and understanding?

Dispensationalists interpret the words, phrases and sentences of the Bible in a very literalistic manner. Thus they reject or fail to see the importance of an ancient and almost universal principle of Biblical interpretation known as typology. Typology is the method of Biblical understanding which seeks the spiritual meaning of the historical events described in the Old Testament, and which has been universally accepted by the majority of Christians and the Church for two thousand years.

“Fundamental to the typological method of Biblical interpretation as practiced by the early and later Fathers (of the Church) is the belief that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment and completion of the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament. For example, the near sacrifice of Isaac points towards the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. The ark that saved Noah and his family from the Flood is a type of the Church which saves the faithful from sin and death. The burning bush is seen as a type of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who bore God in the flesh, yet was not consumed by the presence of the divinity within her womb.

“The typological method is not just the invention of the Fathers, but is based firmly on the New Testament. Jesus Christ used the example of Jonah as a type of the three days that he would spend in the tomb (Matt 12:40). He also compared the lifting up of the serpent by Moses to his own ascent of the cross (John 3:14). Saint Paul considered the passing through the Red Sea as a type for baptism (1 Cor. 10:1-2). Saint Peter even uses the term ‘antitype’ to compare the ark with baptism (1 Peter 3:20-21). Thus the typological method of interpretation is firmly grounded in the Holy Scriptures.

“According to the typological method, God’s promises to Abraham and his descendants were fulfilled through Christ and his Church. One Orthodox (Christian) scholar has written: ‘In Christ, then, the covenant with Israel was fulfilled, transformed, and transcended. After the coming of the Messiah–the Incarnation of God the Son–only those who are “built into Christ” are counted among the people of God. In Christ, the old Israel is superseded by the Christian Church, the new Israel, the body of Christ; the old covenant is completed in the new covenant in and through Jesus Christ.’ (George Cronk, The Message of the Bible, St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1982, pg. 80)” (Fr. John Morris, Again Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 4, pg. 26)

For the vast majority of Christians in the world, then, the answer to our original question is strictly the second one–the modern day nation of Israel is a political creation. Since it is not the fulfillment of Biblical prophesy, Israel has no special blessing or protection by God. Israel takes its place alongside the nations of the world and is to be evaluated and judged just as any other nation, lauded and honored for those things that demand laudation and criticized and condemned for those things that demand condemnation by the best of human standards.

Furthermore, just as not all Christians believe in Dispensationalism, it must be said that not all Jews accept the tenets of secular Zionism. Over the last several decades thousands of Israeli Jews, as well as some of their leaders such as Shimon Peres and Yitshak Rabin of the Labor Party, have attempted a settlement with the Palestinian Arabs by trading land for peace and secure borders. Such bold attempts to pacify the Middle East should be supported unequivocally by all nations of the world. And yet, very little if anything has changed since 1948.

Because of the influence of Dispensationalism and secular Zionism in the world, especially in the United States of America, the Middle East has remained in turmoil for almost a century. Rather than having a foreign policy that seeks to uplift and honor the people of all nationalities and religions in that region, our nation has developed a one-sided policy that favors only Israel. Today, after the Cold War and with the United States now being the only super-power in the world, why does our nation still justify this one-sided policy by the unwarranted biases of Dispensationalism and secular Zionism?

For the sake of peace and stability in the Middle East it is imperative that the United States government free itself from these unfortunate influences of the past and develop a new foreign policy that is balanced and even-handed to all of the nations of that region. Such a move is long overdue and is essential to peace throughout the world, especially in light of the influence of Middle East history on the current War on Terrorism.

Finally, if the End Times are truly imminent as our Dispensationalist friends think, it is much better if our nation were judged according to him who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.” (Matt. 5:9)