A Dangerous and Delusional Mix

Summary:

The combination of hawkish neo-Conservative foreign policy has combined with Christian apocalyptic “end-times” and Jewish messianic speculation to form a dangerous and delusional mix. Much of the religious thinking that goes into this mix is based on biblical prophecy, with modern “seers” and “prophets” witnessing these visions being fulfilled in our day. But this completely misreads the nature of biblical prophecy and misuses those biblical prophetic visions. The biblical prophets were not fortune tellers. They were responding to crucial developments that were unfolding in their own day and guiding their contemporary community through these crucial developments. The true problem arises when these would-be modern prophets, who are all too anxious to bring on the end-times, are able to influence policy that could lead us into an apocalyptic cataclysm from which no one would emerge unscathed.

Full text:

In a recent Op-Ed piece in the weekly newspaper The Forward—a piece that appeared before the recent Israeli elections—Religion Dispatches associate editor Jay Michaelson correctly identified the unsettling and even dangerous shift to the right that the elections seemed to presage. Yet, Michaelson left out one important aspect of these developments—an aspect that he has written about in earlier posts on Religion Dispatches. These elections and the coalition bargaining that are now under way may actually represent a watershed—indeed a tipping point—as powerful and maniacal forces converge that have the potential of bringing the world to the brink of nuclear cataclysm. These forces include a witch’s brew of Religious Zionism, Christian evangelical apocalyptic, Neo-Conservatism and Biblical Prophecy.

There have been a numerous articles written, including some by Michaelson, exploring the dangerous and delusional nexus of apocalyptic end-times mania, hawkish neo-conservative foreign policy, and the political and ideological battles surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict. The truth is, however, that this concoction should come as no surprise. The cosmic dualism of apocalyptic—the struggle between pure evil and pure good—is an ancient tradition, one which has fed the American worldview perhaps since our Puritan forbearers sought a “City on the Hill” as an escape from the horrors of Europe’s 17^th century religious wars. Americans have repeatedly imagined a satanic enemy blocking our manifest destiny of bringing order to a chaotic world. From the “Indian savages” of the Declaration of Independence to Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire,” or George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” our enemies have never been simply military and political foes. They are the embodiment of disorder, chaos and evil. Add to this the Christian evangelical preoccupation with the end days and the portending prophetic fulfillment that Israel embodies for these religious zealots and you have a volatile mix of hawkish perpetual war syndrome combined with the delusion of impending cataclysmic cosmic battle.

This phenomenon within the American body politic has its parallels in Israel. The current Prime Minister is the perfect analogue of the neo-conservative hawk cum apocalyptic visionary. Netanyahu has his own “evangelical” allies by way of his quasi-messianic West Bank settler sidekicks. Like their American counterparts, these modern zealots see Israel’s victory in the Six Day War of 1967 as a divine mandate for a “Greater Israel” and a harbinger of the coming messianic age. Naturally, the Holocaust provides these false prophets with the perfect analogue of cosmic evil, one which can be readily applied to Israel’s other enemies, thus closing the loop in their neo-conservative/apocalyptic circle. Indeed, only a few weeks ago, Yuval Diskin, the former head of Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, described Netanyahu’s worldview as “messianic.”

As noted, much of this apocalyptic calculating, both in Christian evangelical and religious Zionist circles, relies on a reading of biblical prophecy. So, for instance, we have characters like Pastors Pat Robinson and John Hagee dipping into the biblical prophets of old to inform us of God’s plan for our contemporary world, particularly as it relates to the advent and survival of the State of Israel. In a 2004 speech that appears on his website, evangelical Christian leader Pat Robinson quotes British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who, when asked by Queen Victoria for a proof of God’s existence, replied “The Jew, Your Majesty.” Noting the many national tragedies faced by the Jewish people—war, defeat, exile, persecution—Robertson attributes Jewish survival to the ongoing efficacy of the divine promise to Abraham and his descendants. For Robertson, the preeminent emblem of this ongoing promise is the State of Israel and its ability to prevail and even prosper in the face of persistent and violent opposition from its Arab neighbors. “The remarkable victories of Jewish armies against overwhelming odds in successive battles in 1948, and 1967, and 1973 are clearly miracles of God,” the preacher proclaims, and this modern miracle of the State of Israel is “clearly foretold” by the prophet Ezekiel.

In numerous speeches and television appearance, Pastor John Hagee enthralls his audience with a precise analysis of the signs pointing to what he calls “The End Times,” the Parousia, the second coming of Christ. In all of these pronouncements, Hagee elucidates several signs of the end times relevant to this discussion. Of the ten signs of the coming apocalypse cited by Hagee, three of them involve Jews and Israel.  Citing Isaiah 66:8, which expresses the prophet’s astonishment at the rapid restoration of Zion, and Matthew 24:32-24, the parable of the fig tree, Hagee proclaims that the founding of the State of Israel in May 1948 represents the fulfillment of these prophecies. The return of the “house of Israel from the north country” (Jeremiah 23:7-8) is fulfilled in the arrival of Russian Jews to Israel in the 1970s and 80s. The capture of east Jerusalem by the Israeli army in the 1967 war is a sign that “the times of the gentiles is fulfilled” (Luke 21:24). When Matthew declares that “this generation” will not pass until these signs are fulfilled, Matthew was indicating, according to Hagee, the 40 years (a biblical generation) between 1967 and 2007.

National Public Radio and the The Forward have reported on the presence of evangelical Christians performing volunteer work harvesting fruits and vegetables on Jewish settlements in the West Bank. They fully support Israel’s presence on the West Bank, which, following their settler friends, they refer to as Judea and Samaria, this time citing Jeremiah 31:5: “You shall yet plant vines on the mountains of Samaria…”

“We take the Bible and we look at those things and we see that one of the exciting things for us is that prophecy of scripture is being fulfilled,” proclaims Tommy Waller from Franklin, Tennessee. His friend Mike Clayton quotes Isaiah 61:5: “The son of the foreigner will come and tend your vines.” Clayton goes on to insist that he and his son, pruners in hand, demonstrate the truth of this biblical prophecy.

No doubt the Christian Zionists supporting the settler movement did not have to create their own research on biblical prophecy as it affects their understanding of Zionism. They did not create the ideology of biblical prophecy and its implications for Israeli policy on the West Bank. They had ample ideological backing from a long history of religious Zionism that viewed the advent of the State of Israel through the lens of biblical prophecy.

One might say the spiritual center of the religious Zionist settler movement is the Yeshivat Mecaz Harav Kook, otherwise known as the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva. Founded by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Palestine during the British Mandate, Kook understood that Zionism, even secular Zionism, was a precursor to the messianic age. The website of the Yeshiva includes an address delivered by Abraham Isaac Kook’s son, Zvi Yehudah Kook, on Israel Independence Day 1967, weeks before the outbreak of the Six Day War. In it, he declares the State of Israel to be “the state that the prophets envisioned.”

The only problem with all of this is that, like the millennialism that Michaelson has described, it is utterly delusional. It is based on the mistaken notion that the biblical prophets were not prophets at all, but soothsayers, diviners, prognosticators with crystal balls and Tarot cards informing us of what is transpiring in our own day. But that is not at all the nature of biblical prophecy.

I know it’s really difficult for religious people to hear this, but the prophets weren’t speaking to us. The biblical prophets were preachers who spoke to a contemporary audience of kings and priests, as well as the ordinary people in the streets of the towns and villages they visited.  It is the power of all true prophets to see deeply into their own contemporary circumstances, to understand them, to articulate with crystal clarity the role their people play in the unfolding of those circumstances and to envision the contemporary end game. It is the vision of the prophet to place those contemporary events into a cosmic framework; to see the hand of God in the drama of human history. While prophets, like all writers, teachers and preachers, seek a legacy, they do not speak to future generations, but to their own.

Ezekiel was a prophet of exile. He ministered to a community of exiled Judeans living in Babylonia in the 6^th century BCE who had witnessed the destruction of their capital city—Jerusalem—and their Temple. In his insightful analysis of the merger of history and theology at this critical juncture in his people’s national life, Ezekiel could not envision these events as “the end of history,” God’s abandonment of the covenant promise. Along with other theologians whose writings have been preserved in the Bible, Ezekiel interpreted exile as God’s punishment of the people—a punishment that would purge them of their wrong doings, purify them and prepare them to return to their homeland.

And they did return, not in 1948, but in 536 BCE, when the Persian King Cyrus, having defeated Babylon, allowed exiled peoples to return to their homes. That is the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy, and it included a hope not only for a restored Judean community, but for a reunification of the two Hebrew kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel, which had been conquered in 722 BCE by the Assyrians, and the Kingdom of Judah. The return of the people from the north country mentioned in Jeremiah 23:7-8 is not a reference to Russian Jews, but to those Israelites exiled by the Assyrians in 722. The north country is Assyria, northern Mesopotamia, not Russia.

If you think it’s Russia and if you think 536 BCE is really 1948, you are simply living a delusion. Living a delusion may be dangerous for the person living it. But when people have power and influence and attempt to formulate national policy based on their delusions, it becomes dangerous for all of us. And let’s not forget that Mahmud Ahmajinadad, the president of Iran, has his own messianic delusions as he awaits the imminent arrival of the Mahdi, a cosmic event that he associates with the demise of the state of Israel. So when John Hagee declares, “There will be a nuclear exchange in the Middle East very soon,” not only should religious Zionists be struck with fear and trembling, but we all should. I would suggest that this statement is more prescriptive than predictive.