Yup. Fair point. Definitely should have looked into that one further.
I'm not sure that he has a healthy ethos either.
It's so weird to me that a chunk of the American right protect Israel with such ferver, but if you slide a little further down the spectrum on the right, they want all the jews killed.
Weird that.
Because it's not antisemitism that is viewed as the problem. It's criticism of Israel that is the problem.
While Dispensationalism didn't get very far outside of the Plymouth Brethren in Britain and Ireland, it gained massive popularity across the Atlantic. One of the early American converts to Dispensationalism was Dwight L. Moody, an itinerant preacher who went on to found a Bible college to train up ministers, Moody Bible Institute, and it became one of the earliest centers of American Dispensationalism. Through Moody's influence, the lawyer-turned-minister Cyrus Scofield adopted the new theological system, and went on to publish the Scofield Reference Bible, its commentary and notes explicitly Dispensationalist--published in 1909. The Scofield Reference Bible was immensely popular, and was one of the chief instruments which led many in North America to adopting the strange new theology. In the 1920's Dallas Theological Seminary opened its doors, founded by Lewis Sperry Chafer (an associate of Cyrus Scofield) and his brother. It, along with Moody Bible Institute, along with the Scofield Reference Bible, resulted in entire generations of Dispensationalist ministers and theologians.
For those unaware, Dispensationalism is a theological system as well as a system of biblical hermeneutics that emerged in the 1800's within the Plymouth Brethren, a very conservative religious sect that began in Ireland as a break-off from Anglicanism (or, more specifically, the Church of Ireland, the Irish branch of Anglicanism), under the leadership of ex-Anglican priest John Nelson Darby. While Darby, like anyone, didn't exist in a vacuum, the unique ideas and biblical interpretations which are called Dispensationalism are a product of Darby's mind. Here is a brief outline of Dispensationalism:
Dispensationalism maintains that the history of God's dealings with the world, and humanity specifically, can be divided into a series of dispensations; each dispensation indicates different ways in which God interacted and dealt with people. In traditional Dispensationalist thought by understanding these dispensations one can understand the Bible better, different parts of the Bible were written under--and for--different dispensations. Under this schema, the promises made to Abraham involved the Jews receiving the land, and the covenant and promises concerning the nation of Israel. In Classic Dispensationalism, the coming of the Messiah was supposed to inaugurate a messianic age and bring about a full restoration to the nation of Israel. However there was wrench thrown into the system, Jesus as the Messiah was not heralded as the new messianic king, and instead Jesus was rejected by the religious leaders and the majority of the people, and instead Jesus was handed over to Pilate to be crucified. This, in essence, created what we might call God's Plan B. The rejection of Jesus would result in God taking Jesus' death, and then Jesus' resurrection to help inaugurate a new dispensation, a "Dispensation of Grace" which woulc see God temporarily turn away from His project with Israel since the time of Abraham and more fully since Moses, and instead turn His attention toward non-Jewish or Gentile people.
And under this new Dispensation of Grace God created a new distinct group of people, called the Church, a very different thing than Israel. So God had one group of people He was working with, Israel; and now He has a second, the Church. But the point of the Church was to be a "time of the Gentiles", a literal parenthesis in God's plans. The Dispensation of Grace is temporary, a literal parenthis that would exist until the time God begins again working with Israel as His chief project again.
In order for God to return back to dealing with Israel, several things need to happen. Most importantly, the Church has to go, that's what "The Rapture" is. All those books, movies, preachers, etc all talking about "The Rapture" where Christians vanish from the earth because Jesus took them up into heaven; the whole reason for that is because the Church has to be out of the picture. Because once the Church is gone, God can get back on track with Israel. When in 1948 the UN created the modern state of Israel, Dispensationalists viewed this as fulfilling biblical prophecy, a massive beacon that the time was on a countdown until "The Rapture" and God could once again get back onto Project Israel.
So what happens once the Church is gone? Well that's when this really nasty guy, the Antichrist (perhaps you've heard of him?) ends up getting all the power in the world. But the Antichrist's target isn't Christians, they're all gone now. Instead the Antichrist's target is the Jews. You see, somehow, some way, with Christians all gone suddenly Jewish people will suddenly all have an epiphany: Jesus actually was the Messiah all along. They aren't going to become Christians though, because that ship has already sailed, the Dispensation of Grace is over. But the Jewish people will get to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, that has to happen for a couple reasons (according to Dispensationalism):
1) The Antichrist has to enter the Temple and proclaim himself divine. Because that's what starts up the Great Tribulation, the really bad second half of the already not good Tribulation. And man, people are gonna die. Not only because the Antichrist is doing a lot of head chopping (literally), but because God is going to unleash the full fury of His wrath upon the whole world.
2) After Jesus comes back (for reasl this time, not just the sorta-kinda return when He zapped Christians into heaven) He's going to wage a literal war against the Antichrist, and it's going to be real bloody. This is why Dispensationalists often like to ignore the Jesus of the Gospels, and His imagery as the Suffering Lamb and prefer a singular reference in the book of the Revelation where Jesus is on a horse with a sword coming out of His mouth, in which there is a total slaughter. But that slaughter is necessary, because Antichrist and his coalition of world leaders need to be wiped out, in order that Jesus can finally establish the Messianic Age. Jesus will literally enter Jerusalem and be crowned as king and rule over the whole world for a thousand years, and during this time there has to be a Temple, because the old priesthood and system of sacrifices, and all that Old Testament stuff will be in full effect.
So there needs to be a Temple in Jerusalem. And people are going to really hate Jews, because Jews will all start to believe in Jesus. So in the book of the Revelation all that talk of saints dying is actually referring to the Jewish people, not Christians--because, remember, Christians got raptured away so they never had to experience anything bad.
So anyway, when Jesus comes back to establish a literal thousand year kingdom on earth, that's the Messianic Age that was supposed to happen two thousand years ago but didn't. Now that thousand years, as you might guess by the name, isn't forever, it's just for a thousand years. There's still more to happen, because Dispensationalism takes on an incredibly literal reading of the book of the Revelation. So during that thousand years, during which the devil's been hogtied down in a bottomless pit, well he gets out, and he's mad. The devil is so mad that he tries to make a last ditch effort to take on God by literally making an army from all the different nations of the world and leading that army to Jerusalem to attack Jesus. But then, suddenly, fire will erupt from the sky and destroy the entire army. Then this whole judgment scene plays out, all the bad people will be brought back to life so that they can be thrown into a lake of fire to suffer in agony for literally ever and ever; but the righteous will be brought back to life (not the Christians, the Christians already got this at the rapture and they will live forever in a place called Heaven), and the righteous people will inherit a brand new earth after God destroys this one and makes a new one.
To everyone paying attention, take notice on why modern day Israel is important.
And for all those wondering why I'm bringing up a weird theological system in the context of conservative politics in America. I think the answer is already obvious to anyone familiar with late 20th century American political history and the interplay between the Religious Right and American politics that occurred starting in the 60s and 70's. If you're not, do the homework.
Israel is important, in large part, because "Christian Zionism" exists as an emergent property out of Dispensationalism; as a consequence, one doesn't need to be a Dispensationalist--because the political architecture is already established. It's often much more useful instead to rely on things like Islamophobia(this is especially useful in a post 9/11 world). Islamophobia does not need to merely be targeting practicing Muslims, it's generally good enough to simply target people from the broadly-speaking "Muslim world". Which is why Arab Christians, for example, are guilty by association--and so Palestine is bad because Muslims bad and Palestinian Christians are guilty by association, for being filthy Palestinians. Racism does a lot of heavy lifting here.
But that's how we can see antisemitism as a buzzword to attack anyone who is critical of Israel, while simultaneously not actually caring about the problem of real antisemitism itself. Because it's not that antisemitism is the problem, because then it would be "Woke" and that's a politically correct mind virus, and thats bad; the real problem is criticism of Israel, because from a "religious" perspective Israel is a necessary theological tool; and from a political perspective Israel is helpful in being against all the icky brown people--and framing this as Israel is just a tiny little nation in a sea of Arab hostility, a David vs Goliath situation--means that it's totally okay for brown people to die and for saying what is usually the quiet part out loud.
-CryptoLutheran
www.ksdk.com
www.texasobserver.org
