Terror in Gaza and Israel
The End Times Theology Fuelling Genocide
This isn’t the opening article topic I envisioned myself writing on here.
I had intended to stick to dissecting and deconstructing the serious issues within Western Christianity in general and American evangelicalism in particular. Especially for this first piece.
I figured I would eventually get around to discussing the Middle East within the context of evangelical End Times theology at some point in the future. Distantly.
I didn’t really want to jump in the deep end right off the bat, but here we are.
Palestinians and Israelis are suffering immensely right now. More than 1,000 people were slaughtered by Hamas in Israel last weekend. In response, Palestinians in Gaza are facing possible genocide at the hands of the Israeli government. Many Palestinians have been murdered in the West Bank this past week as well.
All of this violence is unjustifiable. Israeli citizens are not the IDF. They should never have been targets. Palestinians are not Hamas. They should not be targets now. And yet we are witnessing war crimes playing out in real time alongside the silent complicity or even the explicit backing of several Western governments.
A large part of the blame stoking these flames of violence, war, and genocide in Israel-Palestine must be laid at the feet of American evangelicalism. Most of the unconditional support in the US for the Israeli government has come from American evangelicals rather than from American Jews. Why? Because of End Times theology.
It’s way too complicated to go through every point right now, so I’ll try to summarize with the Spark Notes version. Basically, a huge percentage of evangelicals think that a bunch of biblical prophecies have to be fulfilled to bring about the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ. Evangelical churches and organizations put pressure on their political party of choice - mainly the GOP as well as a handful of the more conservative Democrats - and their elected officials in order to influence American foreign policy in the Middle East. These policies are not created and implemented with the goal of improving the lives of Israelis and Palestinians. They’re not designed to promote peace in the region or develop infrastructure or expand human rights or any other similarly noble aims. No, they are explicitly designed to make the geopolitical situation and life in general worse with the goal of forcing Jesus back to Earth by jump-starting the End Times. In other words, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy about half a century in the making.
I didn’t realize until I began deconstructing my religious beliefs over 20 years ago that the entire End Times theology so rampant within American evangelicalism has zero basis in historical Christianity. It has only been around since the 1830s and was largely based on a teenage girl’s visions in Scotland. It exploded in popularity in the US following the Civil War and the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909. Most non-anglophone Christians have never heard of it, and most non-evangelical and non-Protestant Christians have never taught or believed any of it.
Almost two millennia of Christian theology, history, practice, and belief had passed without a whiff of this stuff until the mid-1800s. Now it has completely taken over one of the major branches of the dominant religion in the most powerful country on Earth. And these beliefs aren’t even limited to Very Practicing Evangelicals. End Times theology has filtered down into Christian books, media, and subculture to the point that most Americans, Christian or not, think it is a standard point of belief within historical Christianity. It isn’t. In reality, it is an entirely made up fan fiction that a lot of evangelicals are hoping, praying, or even actively making sure comes true.
Growing up in church, listening to this kind of toxic theology and conspiracy theory-laden conjecturing about the Rapture, the Great Tribulation, the Antichrist, and Armageddon, all news and current events from the Middle East were read through the lens of dispensationalism (a fancy term for End Times theology). Mercy, compassion, and solidarity with the poor and oppressed were never shown to Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank. Hardly any was even shown to Jewish Israelis either. In a lot of the discussions and sermons I witnessed as a teenager in evangelical settings, Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Muslims, were all viewed as mere pawns in this great, detailed plan cobbled together from a few cherry-picked Bible verses and 150-year-old visions.
Much of the tacit acceptance and even bloodlust for genocide that you can see right now on social media and from news anchors, political leaders, and on-the-street interview clips can be traced directly back to American evangelicalism’s paranoid obsession with the End Times. It has been actively engaged in the current destruction and annihilation of the Palestinian people for decades in the hopes that it can one day see the destruction and annihilation of the Jewish people. Evangelical beliefs around the End Times generally teach that all but 144,000 Jews will be destroyed during the Great Tribulation, Armageddon, and Second Coming. It varies some by specific schools of thought, but that’s the gist.
Charming, right? Who has time for the Prince of Peace when you get to see all of your enemies from different ethnic groups and religions annihilated?
The murderous rampage carried out by Hamas on 07 October 2023 against the inhabitants of Israel as well as the current genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza is a victory in the minds of many evangelicals who truly believe they will see these fabricated End Times prophecies fulfilled. That their very specific religious beliefs will be proven right to the detriment of the rest of the world. There is nothing peaceful or Christlike about this theology. There is nothing kind or good or gentle or peaceful here. It is all focused on coercion, power, control, violence, superiority, hatred, and revenge.
Half a century of this toxic theology has fuelled the suffering of people - real human beings - in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel. This is the fruit it has borne, so to speak. Its results give its foundations away. End Times theology is inherently anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and a force for violence, destruction, and colonization. It is literally anti-Christ. And American evangelicalism is infected with it.
VIDEO LINKS
Vox: How a Bible prophecy shapes Trump’s foreign policy
VICE News: Why Evangelical Christians Love Israel
AJ+: How Evangelicals Betray Christians in the Holy Land
