Crusader War College

Ted Belman's article on how leftists conflate Judadism with Leftism, dismissing conservative Jews as fellow travellers with the Radical Christian Right("uncle Jakes"), is a good read. For this post, I want to focus on the following cite from Ted's article:

For example, Rosenberg writes that "He [Prager] conveniently ignores the fact that Christian Right support for Israel is largely based on a religious belief that Christ will only return after Jews are all in Israel accepting the divinity of Jesus Christ." That is the lie about Christians that the left spreads to prevent Jews from knowing the truth about Christian support for Israel: that it is rooted overwhelmingly in the beliefs that God promised the return of the Jews to Israel, that Christians are grafted onto the tree of Israel, that God blesses those who bless the Jews, that Israel is a humane democracy and its enemies are bloodthirsty and backward regimes.

As excellent, if brief, summary of my personal beliefs as well. I'd like to add a few extra points as further illumination, based on what I know about the beliefs of Zionist Charismatics and Pentecostals (I hoped to be brief, but alas, this post got away from me in my enthusiasm and concern):

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• Because of their high regard for the Old and New Testaments (The Christian Bible), God's promises are held in highest esteem in Charismatic and Pentecostal circles, with Conservative Evangelicals and Baptists somewhat less so (proof available upon request via comment). Liberal christian denominations have fairly much abandoned the Bible as an authoritative guide, using bible quotations as whitewash to appease the conservative members still in the church, mainly because they're still the backbone of the financial support structure.
• The promise God Gave to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 is thus held to be unbreakable by virtue of God's integrity. This is what Ted refers to when he says that "God blesses those who bless the Jews".
• One attempt to break Genesis 12 is Replacement Theology which cited Paul's discussion of the Jews' disobedience in Romans 9 and 10. However, the plain statements of chapter 11, from which Ted's reference to Christians being grafted onto the tree of Judaism (verses 16 to 24) refute this overly easy interpretaton: The pattern of Paul in Romans is to give the bad news before the good news, so missing the tail end of a long discussion in that book is a sure way to go astray. (To be charitable, the chapter and verse coordinate system placed on top of the Bible is a human invention, and the chapter splits in Romans are positively awful.)
• Walter Russell Mead, in his analysis of Neoconservatism, has noted that the Christian Right, for the most part, have satisfied themselves that God will save the Jews in his own way: The belief that Jews must believe Jesus Christ to be saved is a logical outcome of Replacement Theology, which most of the Christian Right has now rejected. This comes from Romans 11:24, which states that all Israel will be saved by a direct intervention of Israel's deliverer, the Messiah. It does not say that all Israel will believe. It may not happen in the way outlined in the last book of the "Left Behind" series, but the current interpretation is that, because of the immutability of God's Word the system in the Old Testament by which Jews worshipped God and God saved them, is still in force. Such a system, which includes the restoration of the Temple and the sacrficial offerings, is another main reason for interest in those areas by Christian Zionists: If you are concerned about your neighbor while you both are building bomb shelters, you either invite him to use yours, or lend a hand to help him build his. Restorationists are those who reject the second alternative as a viable option. (Besides, several millenia of Jewish "sales resistance" to alternative religions after the Babylonian Captivity should lead to a bit (no, a LOT) of humility on the part of Christian "missionaries to the Jews". They got their religion from the Mouth of God, and they won't change unless the directive comes from the Same Source.)
• Like typical leftists, their distain for religion in general does not lead them to get the facts straight for specific religions in particular. This ignorance leads them to unfairly villify Evangelical Chrstianity while dangerously white-washing Islam for strictly political, not theological, reasons. Evangelical interpretations of the New Testament book of Revelation uniformly insists on the Rapture preceeding the building of the Jewish temple which, in turn, happens only after the signing of a peace treaty with the Antichrist who rises AFTER the rapture of the Church. (Helping the Jews PREPARE to rebuild the Jewish temple is NOT the same as participating in the rebuilding itself: God forbade David to build the temple, but that didn't prevent David from drawing up the plans and gathering together his contribution. The observation that Solomon took 14 years to build his Palace, while taking only 7 to build the Temple does not mean that Solomon was selfish or twice as preoccupied with his own house than God's: David's pre-planning and pre-staging sliced YEARS off the building of the Temple, as any church having a nice fat building fund before they build a new church should know. In addition, one can justly suppose that tax rates in the early Solomonic Kingdom were low, encouraging a supply-side boom in that ancient economy as it does in our modern one. Having (properly) blown through the cache David left for him in building the Temple, it probably WOULD have taken Solomon 14 years to pull together the resources to build his own Palace. I believe the Wise man said something about building your barn and getting your fields planted before building your own house. The onerous tax burden came later, when Solomon's wives led him away from his worship of Israel's God who, in accordance to His plain warnings (which are promises in themselves), raised the external threat level to a point that Solomon had to increase his military outlays.

That's it for Ted's statement. Now some personal thoughts...

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