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ANALYSIS: SOME CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS BELIEVE FULFILLMENT OF BIBLICAL PROPHECY IS BEING THREATENED BY ROAD MAP TO PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Morning Edition: June 12, 2003
End Times
BOB EDWARDS, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Bob Edwards.
Violence in the Middle East is raising obstacles to President Bush's attempt to broker peace between Palestinians and Israelis. For many conservative Christians in the United States, the Middle East peace plan, known as the road map, is contrary to God's plan for Israel. That's because it would require Israel to give up some territory. NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty reports their views are based on a very specific interpretation of the Bible.
BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY reporting:
Ed McAteer has long been a student of Israel. One of the founders of the Moral Majority and now the head of the Religious Roundtable, McAteer sees events in the Middle East as pointing beyond politics to the end times.
Mr. ED McATEER (Religious Roundtable): Prophesy is rapidly being fulfilled before my very eyes. We are living--listen to me--in some very, very exciting prophetic days.
HAGERTY: McAteer is worried about President Bush's road map, which would require handing over land to the Palestinians. He says in the Book of Genesis, God promises the Jews a homeland, a large swath of land from the, quote, "River of Egypt to the great river of Euphrates." And God reiterated the promise throughout Scripture. McAteer says the road map to peace is really a roadblock to prophecy.
Mr. McATEER: We are going diametrically opposed to the Word of God and no individual, no family, no nation, no civilization has ever successfully done that.
HAGERTY: McAteer's group is joining with several others, including Gary Bauer's American Values, to put up billboards, mainly in the Bible Belt so far. The billboards urge people to call the White House and tell the president to honor God's covenant with Israel. And he may have some response. Darrell Bock at Dallas Theological Seminary estimates that 10 million or more Christians in the United States subscribe to this kind of interpretation of the Bible and Bible prophecy when it comes to Israel's role in God's eternal drama. But he says there is a split among conservative Christians.
Mr. DARRELL BOCK (Dallas Theological Seminary): For some people, the view would be that any giving over of land, including the disputed settlements and that kind of thing, represents a departure from what God has given her. For others, there would be the sense that this land has been given to her by God, and so if she wants to work out an agreement of land for peace, that's Israel's business.
HAGERTY: To understand where some Christian fundamentalists are coming from, you need to turn to the Book of Daniel. These Christians say that Daniel predicts the coming of the Messiah, his death and his return. Timothy Weber, president of Memphis Theological Seminary, says with a little tweaking, fundamentalists calculate the Messiah lived when Jesus lived and died the very week that Jesus was crucified.
Mr. TIMOTHY WEBER (President, Memphis Theological Seminary): Well, what happens then is that God unplugs the prophetic clock. It's as though history goes into a kind of prophetic time warp where God turns his attention away from the Jews to the founding and spread of a new body, a new holy people, the church.
HAGERTY: Then, in 1948, something dramatic happened.
SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC
Unidentified Man: After 2,000 years, a Jewish nation once again exists.
HAGERTY: The state of Israel was created. Darrell Bock, at Dallas Theological Seminary, says for many Christian believers, it was a prophecy realized.
Mr. BOCK: When Israel came into the land, became established as a nation, all of a sudden this scenario which, in the minds of many people had been theoretical and not really possible, all of a sudden became possible. And then the question became, `Well, maybe the Bible does know what it's talking about.'
HAGERTY: Bock says according to this theology, Israel had to be restored before the prophetic clock could begin to tick again. Jimmy DeYoung, a Bible scholar and host of a radio program called "Prophecy Today," agrees. He says the prophets Ezekiel, Isaiah and others predicted the Jews would be scattered to the four corners of the Earth and then regathered in their homeland in order for the Messiah to come.
Mr. JIMMY DeYOUNG ("Prophecy Today"): The Jews had to be in the land and in the land in unbelief before Jesus Christ would come back to Earth. And they see this all unfolding over the last 100 years and continuing to take place and its ultimate fulfillment to happen, of course, during that period of judgment leading up to the return of Jesus Christ.
HAGERTY: As these Christians saw Jews migrating to Israel from the former Soviet Union, from Ethiopia and France, their anticipation quickened. And then in 1967, in an historic event described by Walter Cronkite, the end times seemed almost upon them as Israeli troops captured Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights and the West Bank of Jordan.
SOUNDBITE OF 1967 BROADCAST
Mr. WALTER CRONKITE: The Old City of Jerusalem was encircled and captured on the third day. And after 2,000 years, Jews were at the Wailing Wall of the ancient temple.
HAGERTY: The Six Day War redrew the map of the region in Israeli eyes. It was less land than God promised in Genesis, but about the same territory that Israel possessed at the time of Jesus. Timothy Weber of Memphis Seminary says the people who watch these things, also called dispensationalists, were heartened.
Mr. WEBER: Once again, the historic lands of Judea and Samaria were back in Jewish hands but, most importantly, Jerusalem. The dispensationalists believe that before Jesus can come back and before Antichrist can even be revealed, there must be a new Jewish temple on Temple Mount.
HAGERTY: Which is one reason, he says, that some conservative Christians don't want one inch of land given to the Palestinians. Indeed, the Temple Mount, which is currently under the administrative control of Muslims, is at the center of one of the more unusual prophesies, the red heifer. According to one interpretation of the Book of Numbers, before the temple in Jerusalem can be rebuilt, and before the Messiah can come, a red heifer must be sacrificed and its ashes used to purify the priests and the temple. Now this is no ordinary heifer. It must be, as the Bible puts it, without spot or blemish; in practical terms, with no more than two hairs of a color other than red. Timothy Weber says a few years ago, some Mississippi cattlemen decided to help the process along.
Mr. WEBER: So they started a cattle company in Israel for the purpose of genetically engineering a perfect red heifer. And they finally got one.
HAGERTY: He says believers were elated.
Mr. WEBER: Well, just a few months later, some white hairs sprouted on the end of the tail of the red heifer and that was the end of that hope.
HAGERTY: But now, according to prophecy-oriented Web sites and believers, another red heifer was born last year. And, he says, people are watching the development of its coat.
Even without the red heifer, Ed McAteer at the Religious Roundtable says the decline in morals points to the end of the world soon.
Mr. McATEER: And the Scriptures tell us, especially in the latter days, that children will be disobedient to the parents. The Bible tells us that cultures will begin to cave in, that there will be wars and that there will be rumors of wars and the value of life will be diminished. We're seeing all of those things take place.
HAGERTY: One could argue that these things have been happening as long as human beings have walked the Earth, but McAteer and the others say the creation of Israel changed everything.
Gershom Gorenberg, who lives in Israel and is author of "The End of Days," says this ilk of Christian theology may get Israel supporters in the short term, but only in the short term.
Mr. GERSHOM GORENBERG (Author, "The End of Days"): The scenario states that before the Second Coming, the Jews will all either die or convert to Christianity. This is not a very Jew-friendly scenario in the long run, so there's a tremendous irony built in here that this support for hard-line Israeli positions is actually based on a theology which negates Judaism.
HAGERTY: Many other conservative Christians, like Darrell Bock at Dallas Seminary, say it's all a mystery. Even Jesus said so.
Mr. BOCK: Jesus said two things. `I could come at any time, but you don't know the exact time when I'm coming.' And really the thrust of Scripture is is that until Jesus comes, what Christians are called to do is to be faithful to the calling. They're supposed to keep their eyes open. They're supposed to hold that as a hope, but they aren't supposed to spend a lot of time trying to figure it all out.
HAGERTY: But for now, many Christians are keeping a keen eye on Israel and will do all they can to preserve its biblical proportions, down to the last square inch. Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR News, Washington.
EDWARDS: It's 11 minutes before the hour.
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