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.
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 17th 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.
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 6th 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.
Hi Rick,
ReplyDeleteTruly scary stuff - it was even more scary when Bush's band of lunatics were running things here. Lucky they valued money more than biblical prophetic fulfillment.
Marty Wolman
Marty,
DeleteThanks so much for your comment. I apologize that it didn't get posted sooner. I changed my e-mail address and wasn't getting notices of comments posted, so I assumed I wasn't getting any. Please feel free to comment some more and let other interested people know.
Interesting piece, Dad! I think though that we should attempt to distinguish in the Israel-Palestine case between zealotry and political economy. I don´t doubt that the Israeli Prime Minister and many of those in his party have deep ties to religious elites and their followers, but I think your comments perhaps priviledge their rhetorical appeals over the material interests that occupation has embedded. Issues of water rights, transportation infrastructure, and access to various speculative real estate projects are inflected with the language of biblical destiny. Imagine for a moment, in a country of a few million how the expansion of hundreds of settlements have impacted local real estate developer interests... I think we might for a moment also jettison the notion of the Iranian president as simply "crazy" for one that takes seriously Iranian aspirations in the region. I don´t doubt that the Iranian regime is a religious one but Israeli nuclear hegemony in the middle-east is a serious impediment to the economic and geo-political power and influence that the Iranian state seeks to project. Anyway, I think we should strive to think about material and mental constructs in relation to one another... Dialectically if you will ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jacob. You are certainly correct that religious fundamentalism may often mask material interests, but I suspect that those material interests are less prone to take us over the nuclear precipice. After all, nuclear holocaust is bad for business. It's only when you figure that the nuclear holocaust is going to bring the Messiah, the Mahdi, the second coming of Christ that nuclear war becomes a viable option.
DeleteI completely agree with everything you write, but it saddens me, a bit, to find that Abraham Isaac Kook contributed to this delusion, if I'm reading you correctly. I've loved reading the little that I have of Kook's writings.
ReplyDelete