Many Westerners believe that Switzerland survived the two world wars because it hosted the first Zionist Congress, that if the United States abandons Israel, God will cancel its status, and that the reason for Hurricane Katrina was the withdrawal of the occupying state from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
These are perceptions and predictions fueled by a doctrine that many Christians today follow called “millennialism,” which is the primary lever for that great Western passion for Israel.
Neither political interests nor cultural commonalities alone can explain the absolute support that Israel enjoys in Western circles, which sometimes trample on the interests of their homelands and on laws and values in order to please Israel.
Millennialism
Some scholars of Christian history state that millenarianism or belief in the millennium appeared in the fifth century, but the Church opposed it and considered it a heresy that consecrated an excessively earthly, materialistic concept of Christian texts.
However, this doctrine was not obliterated and remained present to grow further among the evangelical sects in England during the 18th century, before being exported to the United States to become the dominant Christian doctrine there.
In a study published in 1998 under the title “How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend,” American church historian Dr. Timothy B. Weber believes that the millennial doctrine developed and took root within a complex theory for interpreting the so-called Bible known as dispensationalism, developed in the 19th century by the Englishman John Nelson Darby, according to which the Bible and human history are divided into periods or “dispensations.”
The theory of premillennialism is based on the claim that when the Jews rejected Jesus, God stopped the prophetic clock for a time, and therefore the entire history of the church falls into a prophetic vacuum that dispensationalists call the “great arc,” according to Weber.
But according to them, God will once again care for the Jews, so that Jesus will return to the church and the prophetic hour will begin again and Jesus will establish his rule to last a thousand years, and hence the concept of the millennium came.
According to this theory, the Jewish nation will convert to Christianity and this will be accompanied by what is called Levitical worship with its sacrifices in the temple that will be rebuilt.
Weber believes that millennial dispensationalism also encountered widespread opposition in the Christian community at the beginning, but through conferences and media support it spread, especially in less educated circles, and its predictions regarding the end of time became widespread.
Kidnapping of Jews
Another study, “Why do Evangelicals Support Israel?”—which involved professors from several universities and was published by Cambridge University in 2020—reveals other aspects of the millenarian doctrine that evangelicals follow, claiming that the second coming of Christ is imminent but will occur in several stages.
In the first stage, Christ will appear in heaven and will not descend to earth. In heaven, he will meet – according to their claim – the true believers, those who were “born again” through their belief in Christ as their savior, referring to the Jews.
This act is known in millennialist claims as the “rapture,” whereby these believers are miraculously drawn to Jesus from the earth, while true believers who died before Christ appeared will rise from the dead and join Jesus.
But the Cambridge study points out that millennialism is at odds with the beliefs of both the Catholic and Protestant churches.
Millenarians base their belief on the Jews being God’s chosen people, which is in opposition to the long-established “replacement theology” of Christian doctrine, which holds that the Jews lost their goodness after their rejection of Christ, and therefore God has finished with the Jewish people, and all his promises of goodness to Israel have been transferred to the church, according to what is called replacement theology.
The role of Protestant minorities
In a study published in 2013 under the title “Israel: State of Divine Law or Another Nation Among Nations?”, Swiss historian Jean-François Meyer believes that Protestant minorities, especially the Anglo-Saxon Millenarians, played a major role in the propaganda, preparation and implementation of the British decision known as the Balfour Declaration, which was announced in 1917 and related to the establishment of a “national home” for the Jews in Palestine.
These organizations also played a greater role in the adoption of this resolution by the United States of America and its subsequent absolute support for Israel.
In England, in the 18th and 19th centuries, memoirs and pamphlets were spread suggesting the settlement of Jews in Palestine, and these suggestions received great support due to the spread of the millenarian faith in the English sphere at that time.
Meyer believes that the rapid development of Zionism and the establishment of Israel itself cannot be understood except by taking into account the existence of this powerful, dominant current within Anglo-Saxon Christianity in particular.
Evangelical Church Efforts to Establish Israel
In 1839 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland sent memoranda to the kings of Europe regarding the return of the Jews to Palestine, stating, “We are certain of the truth of the divine promise that heavenly blessing will come upon those who come to the aid of God’s people.”
In the same year, the English press began a major campaign, supported by the Foreign Office, to encourage the idea of Jewish settlement in Palestine.
In 1840, the English priest Joseph Smith sent letters to the Jews of Europe and the Mediterranean basin, in which he wrote, “In our opinion, the time has come for the beginning of the return of the Jews to the Holy Land.” He also sent Orson Hyde as his emissary to Jerusalem on October 24, 1841, and from there he announced in his name, “Here the remnant of the scattered Judah will be gathered according to the prophecies of the saints.”
In August 1866, George Adams, the leader of an American millennialist sect called Mormonism, visited Palestine with more than 150 of his followers with the aim of establishing a settlement near Jaffa. This experiment received the attention of some Jewish circles.
Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, encouraged the establishment of Jewish colonies in Palestine to establish a Hebrew state. William Hechler, chaplain of the British embassy in Vienna, also played a pivotal role in the immigration of Jews to Palestine, as he provided great support to the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, and facilitated the convening of the founding conference of Zionism in Basel in 1897.
The annual Albury Park Conferences (1826-1830) were a meeting point for many British millenarians, and the aim of these conferences was to theorize and plan for the immigration of Jews to Palestine.
In America, an organization called the “Jerusalem Temple Foundation” was formed to collect donations to help the Jews build their alleged temple, and it has already collected millions of dollars for this purpose.
Lovers and haters
Swiss historian Meyer believes that there is a continuing ambiguity in the relations between Israel and its Christian supporters. The eschatological scenario believed by millennialists includes a comprehensive conversion of the Israelites to Christianity, while the Jews see their salvation in continuing their Judaism.
According to the researchers, the distinctive links between millennial evangelicals and Israel seem contradictory, as the former show unconditional support for it even though they consider the Jews to be “deficient in faith,” because they have not accepted Christ and will face destruction if they do not convert to Christianity.
For their part, the Jews accept the support of Christians and even flatter their leaders – especially the Americans – but they do their utmost to fight Christianity and limit missionary activities in Israel.
false prophecies
According to Weber, the millenarian dispensationalists interpreted all recent events in favor of their predictions. Even Hitler and the Nazis were for them a “dispensation” from God to increase the Jewish aspiration for a homeland of their own in Palestine, while the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 was a “sign of signs.”
The Six-Day War of 1967 and the expansion of the Israeli occupation came, and the claims of the dispensationalists that their predictions were about to come true became more entrenched, and writings supporting this spread.
In his 1970 bestseller The Old Doom of Our Planet, which sold more than 10 million copies, American evangelical preacher Hal Lindsey claimed that the second coming of Jesus Christ would occur within 40 years of the founding of the State of Israel. He was certain that it was a false prophecy, just as the Alevists before him had predicted that the Crusades of the 11th century were a prelude to the fulfillment of their prophecies.
Lindsay published another book in the early 1980s, entitled “Countdown to Armageddon,” in which he presented a right-wing vision linking the leadership role of the United States with assistance to Israel.
The best-selling series of 16 religious novels, “Left Behind,” was a covert propaganda for Israel and its connection to the fulfillment of Christian prophecies.
According to the Cambridge study, these works promoted a pivotal role for Jews and the entity in the events of the end of the world, contributed to strengthening evangelical support for Israel, and produced a new generation of believers in the so-called millennial doctrine.
Israel’s Blessings and God’s Wrath
Scholars agree that evangelical politicians consider their support for Israel to be an implementation of God’s command, and they have texts through which they claim that “God said to Israel, ‘I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you,’” so they support its occupation and massacres out of fear of God’s wrath and in search of its blessings.
Western elites play a major role in establishing these beliefs, despite their superstitious nature. The evangelical writer Clark wrote a book entitled “Allies for Armageddon” in which he considered that: “If America abandons Israel, God will cancel America’s status as a divinely favored nation.”
An American journalist named Koenig also conducted an investigation in which he claimed that there is a link between American pressure on Israel to make territorial concessions and natural disasters in the United States. He claimed that within every 24 hours of any American president pressuring Israel, a natural disaster occurs, whether floods, hurricanes, forest fires, earthquakes or a terrorist attack in the United States.
The Cambridge study reports that this thinking has led some evangelicals to say that Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and the evacuation of the Gush Katif settlement brought Hurricane Katrina to America and the resulting devastation.
The evangelicals’ claims do not stop there. Some of them believe that Switzerland survived the two world wars because it hosted the first Zionist Congress, which was the nucleus for the formation of Israel.
The fascinating “Israel puzzle”
In the same context, the Swiss historian Meyer talks about what he calls the exciting and unsolvable puzzle of Israel. Whoever stands against Israel stands against God, as the Reverend Jerry Falwell, one of the leaders of Christian fundamentalists in America, stated to the Times newspaper in 1985.
In contrast, the rabbi, spokesman for the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews, told the Tribune Le Matin in 1975 that “even if the Arabs eventually accept the existence of the State of Israel, we will remain opposed to this heretical state.”
There are Jewish movements, some of which have turned into parties, such as Agudat Israel and Neturei Karta, which still oppose the establishment of the State of Israel and consider it a blasphemy against Jewish beliefs. They believe that Zionism wears the trappings of Judaism but is not that, rather it is a false Christianity that represents a rebellion against God.
Thus, Meyer believes that the existence of Christians who are more Zionist than the Israelis themselves and the existence of Jews who are more anti-Zionist than the Palestinians is enough to confuse the issue, but it reveals the complexity of the problem imposed by the existence of Israel, and the strong intertwining between politics and religion in this issue, and places us once again before the perplexing and insoluble “Israel’s puzzle.”
Millennials behind US support
Due to their predominantly English origins, the American people were influenced by the millenarian faith that the English invented or revived in the 18th century and brought to their colony America.
During his recent visit to the United States, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed the deep alliance between Israel and the evangelical Christian community.
“We have no better friends than you, and I say this from the heart knowing how deeply committed and strong you are to defending Israel,” he said during a meeting with prominent evangelical leaders, including the Rev. John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, in Washington.
The depth of this relationship is evident in the fact that the speech Netanyahu delivered during his visit to Congress amidst an aura of continuous applause was his fourth of its kind, a precedent in the history of Congress that reflects the strength of religious beliefs that support absolute American support for Israel, which sometimes takes priority over the interests of the United States itself, and does not pay attention to considerations of international law or the rights of millions of Palestinians.
Predictions of the contradiction of justice
Weber believes that evangelicals’ reading of everything related to the complex situation in the Middle East through the prophecies of millenarianism has made them lose the ability to analyze events objectively and morally, and therefore they are reluctant to condemn Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.
He concludes that these evangelicals need to reconsider their positions, asking: “Does their belief in these prophecies allow them to leave aside issues of good and evil and forget the idea of justice?”