Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.
- Deut. 7:9 -
Today's question box for Ask Anything Monday – an eight year long tradition on my Instagram profile – was FULL of questions about Israel, Iran, dispensationalism, covenantalism, and how to think about the conflicts we're watching unfold in the Middle East. On IG I stated that this topic takes more space and needs more than a quick IG story. I am not an expert and my goal is not to give you an easy answer to alleviate all your questions. But I do hope I can set some resources in front of you to begin a journey of theological understanding that will, in turn, explain the conflicting views you're seeing online.
My focus in this email is God's peace. Our news cycle thrives on anxiety – lack of peace. And in the name of being “a good citizen” many people are consuming far more news, far more frequently than is wise or called-for. I follow Richard Foster's wise advice: Only consume as much news as you can pray for. This is not privileged or irresponsible. Not one person reading this email is caring equally about the things that need to be cared about. You have things you pay special attention to – and you ignore others. There are issues you don't think about, study, read or speak to, and there are issues that you platform, share about, and defend. This is true for all of us.
The core issue across the dozens (hundreds?) of questions I received was whether Israel's actions (both with Palestine and and Iran) were a sign of the end times. If you grew up dispensational, you were taught to see the actions of the political state of Israel as directly linked to end times prophecy. However, there are millions of Christians (and even some Jews) who do not see the political state of Israel as prophetic, believing the spiritual reality of Israel's covenant is now fulfilled through the Church. In the latter view, anyone - including Messianic Jews – who believes in Jesus Christ is grafted into the eternal covenant that is Christ, Israel personified.
These two viewpoints lead to wildly different political conclusions. And some of the political commentators you're listening to today (including conservatives) don't have any Christian theological basis for their view. They could not tell you what dispensationalism or covenantalism are, much less how those theological frameworks shape one's view of Israel, war, and end times.
So here are two things to keep in mind as you navigate this topic:
Revelation tells us that God's people are marked with a seal that is GREATER and more ETERNAL than the mark of the beast.
Revelation 7 talks in depth about the mark of God. The mark of God is our hope, peace, and promise when thinking about the end of all things! Yet how many Christians spend far more time worried about the “mark of the beast” than concentrated on the mark of their Savior?
"In ancient cultures, slaves were often marked or sealed so they could be identified with their master. We see this later with the “mark of the Beast”. Here the seal is applied to the servants of God Himself, identifying them with Him. This is also a parallel to the Exodus, where the children of Israel marked their doors with blood….
The 144,000 can be viewed one of two ways: as a literal, face-value number, or as a symbol of a greater spiritual concept. We will look at both ideas.
In the more literal, largely premillennial view, the Israelite tribes will receive a physical land in Christ’s millennial reign. Each of those tribes will be represented by these 12,000 members. According to dispensationalist Henry Morris, each tribe will be headed by a New Testament apostle. He also suggests there are so many of them because they will take turns serving their nation and tribe.
In the spiritual interpretation - largely held by amillennial theologians - the number 144,000 represents the whole of God’s people: twelve for the tribes of Israel, twelve for the apostles (leaders of the church), and 1,000 for completeness. These groupings represent the completed people of God…
Whichever interpretation held, the concept here is God’s protection of His own. Persecution is promised - but the seal is also promise, an assurance, that God will see His people through. God promises to watch over His own even when they face trial and persecution."
Justo Gonzalez says this:“Do you belong to God, and do you act as one who belongs to God? Or are you rather your own owner, doing what you find most pleasurable and convenient, and serving God only when it suits you? Does your church belong to God? Or are there some members who believe that because they give more or because they attend more frequently or because they have been members for a long time, the church belongs to them? What would it mean to be a church sealed with the name of God?”
Many Christians are concentrating on the wrong things. They focus on persecution and beasts and marks of disloyalty rather than on protection and the Lamb and the mark of those allegiant to Christ. When you fix your eyes on the latter, your outlook changes from fear to hope. The Church is protected. God's people are guarded by God Himself. We are sealed with the name of God.
2. Not even God defended all Israel's actions when their actions were wrong. But God also keeps His covenant, and Israel was the vessel of His Messiah to the world.
Things I heard today:
It's unfair for God to choose one nation when that nation commits murder (all nations have committed murder and violence; he didn't choose Israel because they were better: Deut 7:7)
We must stand with modern Israel or we are going against God Himself (God Himself held Israel accountable for her sins and exiled her to pagan nations, a consequence exactly equal to what Israel had done, by God's command, to the Canaanites hundreds of years earlier).
Israel's sins are greater than that of Palestine/Iran (the sins of Hamas should not be downplayed or made to seem small, nor the direct threat of uranium enrichment by Iran overlooked in a quest to find a greater “sinner” in the political equation. Noelle Fitchett on IG did a good job of speaking to this while in Israel a few weeks ago; her Middle East highlight discusses it)
As Christians, our allegiance is to Christ first and always. And Christians are going to arrive at different conclusions about the role of the physical nation of Israel in faith, theology, and politics. It's important to remember the WHOLE story of Scripture, the covenantal vision – Jesus was the plan all along. He is for the whole world, Jew and Gentile alike. We should be deeply concerned at the rising antisemitism around us and we should be fully honest when the political nation of Israel makes poor decisions. It is possible to hold that tension and speak to both (as we are called and able).
For your own further study, I've linked several books further down this email that will help you understand the theology behind the different perspectives on this and why the Church is sometimes divided on how to approach it. In the meantime, be gracious – and pray for all people to know God's peace through Jesus Christ our Savior.
“The LORD gives strength to his people; the LORD blesses his people with peace.”
Psalm 29:11
My Favorite Books on Dispensational vs. Covenant Theology
Much of the debate you're seeing online regarding the political nation of Israel has to do with theological differences as expressed in politics. Certain Christian denominations lean toward dispensational or covenant theology based on their roots: the seminaries pastors attended over the last few centuries, the scholars they read, and the theological slant of the work consumed.
An “unbiased” theological source in not possible when humans are commenting on biblical topics. Our goal is not to be “unbiased” but to be aware of the biases and why they exist. We should be curious about how people arrive at their conclusions BEFORE we are threatened by a difference of opinion. Once we have all the information (accurately described by people who are adherents of the opposing view) we can check these interpretations against Scripture in context and come to a conclusion.
