That’s really interesting, thanks for the context. So given this, why do fundamentalist Christians seem bent on bringing about the apocalypse? If it’s a cautionary tale, why are they taking it literally and trying to fan the flames of war in Israel? I’m referring specifically to Evangelical Zionists in the US who support Israel for prophetic reasons.
It’s because they read these things from the perspective of a theology known as “dispensationalism” that was developed by a guy named Darby in the late 1800s and made super popular by the Scofeld Reference Bible. It takes all of the various apocalyptic writings that are found in the Old and New Testaments, treats them at face value, and attempts to create a coherent narrative out of them. And what they believe is that the antichrist and Armageddon are all precursors to a time when Jesus will come and rescue the true believers from Earth before it is destroyed. So, at best, Israel is a footnote to the story, a means to a particular end.
Dispensationalism comes in a variety of flavors. But they all basically hold to an idea called “the Rapture” where Christians are instantaneously whisked away into heaven, leaving the world to destroy itself. This completely misses the entire point of Revelation (which is that heaven comes to earth) as well as hilariously misconstruing a teaching of Jesus (where He uses the example of Noah and the flood to talk about the end-of-days; the Rapture folks interpret this as Jesus taking the “good guys” away and the wicked are “left behind.” However, Jesus explicitly says that it is the righteous who are left behind, while the wicked are swept away–as with what happened with Noah and the flood). The Rapture is largely the product of the 20th Century. No Christian believed in such a thing until then.
That’s really interesting, thanks for the context. So given this, why do fundamentalist Christians seem bent on bringing about the apocalypse? If it’s a cautionary tale, why are they taking it literally and trying to fan the flames of war in Israel? I’m referring specifically to Evangelical Zionists in the US who support Israel for prophetic reasons.
It’s because they read these things from the perspective of a theology known as “dispensationalism” that was developed by a guy named Darby in the late 1800s and made super popular by the Scofeld Reference Bible. It takes all of the various apocalyptic writings that are found in the Old and New Testaments, treats them at face value, and attempts to create a coherent narrative out of them. And what they believe is that the antichrist and Armageddon are all precursors to a time when Jesus will come and rescue the true believers from Earth before it is destroyed. So, at best, Israel is a footnote to the story, a means to a particular end.
Dispensationalism comes in a variety of flavors. But they all basically hold to an idea called “the Rapture” where Christians are instantaneously whisked away into heaven, leaving the world to destroy itself. This completely misses the entire point of Revelation (which is that heaven comes to earth) as well as hilariously misconstruing a teaching of Jesus (where He uses the example of Noah and the flood to talk about the end-of-days; the Rapture folks interpret this as Jesus taking the “good guys” away and the wicked are “left behind.” However, Jesus explicitly says that it is the righteous who are left behind, while the wicked are swept away–as with what happened with Noah and the flood). The Rapture is largely the product of the 20th Century. No Christian believed in such a thing until then.