| Home | Weblog | Weblog Index |
(Don't miss the Islamic version, further down...)
Rethinking American Evangelicals’
“Love” for Israel
by Gary Alley, Middle East Correspondent
from: http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:zIy2PHY1Zd4C:teds.edu/articles/rethinkingevangel.htm+%22The+End+of+Days%22+%22Temple+Mount%22+Jerusalem+Darby&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
originally: http://teds.edu/articles/rethinkingevangel.htm
(404 not found)
An excerpt: (The entire article can be read below.)
The majority of evangelical Christians believe that every person, whether man or woman, rich or poor, Jew or Gentile, deserves to hear God’s plan of salvation through Jesus Christ. Dispensationalism on the other hand, has helped create many Christian ministries active within Israel who are not inclined to share the gospel with their Jewish neighbors. These Christian ministries are active in building up the state of Israel as a nation and defending her rights to the land. These ministries rarely criticize Israel as long as the Israeli government continues to lay claim to the sacred ground, which is so vital towards their interpretation of prophetic scripture. Without a physical country called “Israel,” many modern-day evangelicals’ rendering of dispensationalism would be null and void, negating the crux of these “Christian” agendas in Israel.
A large section of the estimated 98 million evangelicals living in America today are considered indispensable by the Israeli government because of their strong political and financial support for Israel. The annual $3 billion dollar allowance by the American government towards Israel’s upkeep is unprecedented on the global scale. One cannot ignore the influence of the largely evangelical conservative movement, the Religious Right, upon Israel’s favorable status in the American political scene.
Jerry Falwell is probably one of the closest evangelical allies that the Israeli government, and especially the Likud Party, has had over the last twenty-five years. When Menachem Begin of the conservative right-leaning Likud became Israeli Prime Minister in the late 70’s, he developed a close friendship with Falwell. In 1981 Falwell was awarded the prestigious Jabotinsky Award for his work in support of Israel. When Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear plant in 1981, Begin called Falwell asking him to “explain to the Christian public the reasons for the bombing.” Deja vu, in 1998 when Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu also of the Likud made a visit to the United States, he first met with Falwell and a large gathering of the Religious Right, before he met with President Clinton. While Clinton was pushing forward the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians, Falwell and his evangelical political union, chanting “not one inch,” were standing more in line with Netanyahu and the Likud’s obstinate grip on the Territories.
This line of evangelical reasoning continues in the American political arena of today. Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe recently said in a Senate speech, “God appeared to Abram and said, ‘I am giving you this land’ –the West Bank. This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true.” Gary Bauer a powerful evangelical lobbyist who has a readership of about 100,000 conservatives via his email publication, American Values, believes “the Bible is pretty clear that the land is what is called covenant land, that God made a covenant with the Jews that that would be their land.” God’s covenant with Abram (Genesis 15) may very well support modern day Israel’s existence. What seems contrary though to God’s redemptive character is the desire of some American evangelicals to promote a land or covenant theology over and against another people’s freedom.
Another aim of some pro-Israel Christian ministries is to fund and propagate Jewish immigration into Israel, especially in recent years, from Russia and its former states. Even though the burgeoning population of Israel and the Territories (over 9 million) is a growing concern for future water reserves and land space, each year Jewish groups, often times aided by Christians, are sent out around the world to encourage Jews to return to their ancient, yet infant, homeland. Dispensationalism has also had a hand in this, teaching that the Jews must return to their land before Christ will return.
One major group that has organized and funded many of these types of projects is the multi-million dollar International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) led by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein of Chicago. In 1983, Eckstein founded IFCJ in order to promote greater understanding and tolerance between Christians and Jews and to broaden support for Israel. Eckstein is a well-known speaker in the evangelical power circle, regularly appearing on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, on CBN, and in different evangelical churches around America. On IFCJ’s web site, Eckstein’s work is endorsed by many well-known evangelical personalities including Jack Hayford, Charles Colson, Jerry Falwell, W.A. Criswell, Bill Bright, Bailey Smith, Pat Boone, and the late Jamie Buckingham.
IFCJ’s project, “On Wings of Eagles,” which assists Jews from the former Soviet Union to immigrate to Israel, has raised well over $30 million from over 200,000 evangelical supporters. Another example is evangelical preacher John Hagee of San Antonio, Texas, who has donated one million dollars from his Global Evangelism TV cable network towards returning former Soviet Jews to Israel. Eckstein’s evangelical following has also given millions more dollars to IFCJ’s work among impoverished Jews worldwide. Eckstein says since 1994 conservative Christians have donated more than $60 million to aid Israel. IFCJ’s charitable works have obviously succeeded in sweetening relations between Jews, especially in Israel, and evangelicals in America.
One issue, though, which Eckstein and the evangelical church don’t see eye to eye on, is the conversion of Jews to Christianity. Eckstein deftly walks the line between both Jewish and evangelical criticism by affirming evangelicals’ call to witness or testify, yet he reminds them that only the Holy Spirit can change a person’s heart. Eckstein’s last line of defense in thwarting evangelical desire to convert Jews is to appeal to their subconscious dispensationalist mindset. Eckstein explains, when a Jew accepts Jesus as Messiah he is no longer a Jew or a member of the Jewish community, and so Israel is being robbed of its Jewishness. If Israel were to be changed into a Christian nation through progressive proselytism, the dispensationalist end times framework would be destroyed. Without a physical land of Israel containing an unconverted Jewish people, Darbyism would lack a key component in instigating the return of Christ.
While many evangelicals would innocently support this idea, there is a sadistic logic that plays out in regards to repopulating Israel with Jews. Dispensationalism holds that before Christ returns there will be a Great Tribulation “such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be (Matt. 24:21).” According to dispensationalists, a fourth of the world’s population will die (Rev. 6:8); the great battle of Armageddon (a valley in the center of Israel) will flow with blood to the horse’s bridle, and birds will feast on the dead (Rev. 16:12-16; 14:17-20; 19:17-21); the Jewish people will be persecuted and killed by the Antichrist, though a remnant will ultimately be saved (Dan. 9:27; 11:33; 12:1; Matt. 24:15-22).
And what of the brave Church, heirs of the courageous martyrs, who have suffered throughout history for the name of Christ? Where are the Christians during the Great Tribulation? According to dispensationalism, the true believing Church will be raptured away to heaven out of harm’s way, leaving the unbelievers to fend for themselves against Satan and his forces of doom.
There is a hole in the floor of the nave of the church of the Holy Sepulchre
in the Old City of Jerusalem. In ancient times, it was believed that Jerusalem
was the center of the world and that this hole was the center of the center
- the very navel of the universe. Sometimes I have the impression
that the foreign correspondents who reside here, and the hundreds more
who visit every year, still believe that. Why else would they so often
focus the attention of millions of people upon this small city and this
small country?
- Teddy Kolleck, former mayor of Jerusalem
What is at the center of Jerusalem? Jer-USA-lem.
- An expression commonly heard in Israel
You can’t endorse me, but I endorse you.
- President Ronald Reagan addressing evangelical preachers in the 1980s.
The Lion and the Mouse
Today, more than ever, the eyes of the modern world are upon the ancient Holy Land in the midst of the renewed violence and strife between Israelis and Palestinians. During this most recent incursion (March-May, 2002) by the Israeli army into the West Bank to capture suspected terrorists and to destroy bomb-making factories, world opinion has swayed back and forth between Israeli and Palestinian causes. Historically, support for the state of Israel since its birth in 1948 has been little to non-existent among most world powers.
Two allies though, which Israel can always depend on in the United Nations are the lion and the mouse. Though the lion and the mouse may seem like odd bedfellows, nonetheless as creatures of the jungle they are closer akin than the initial contrast one might draw between the lion’s roar and the mouse’s squeak.
Obviously, the lion is the United States. If you want evidence for America’s support, follow the money trail. During the last 54 years, the American government has poured billions of dollars into bolstering and strengthening the Israeli nation, particularly their armed forces. Even though America is full of liberal-minded, peace-loving individuals, who have their own contrary opinions, the American government has been stereotyped in the world forum as narrow-mindedly pro-Israel, to the point of ignoring injustices against the Palestinians.
Israel’s other ally, the mouse, not so obviously, is Micronesia, a tiny insignificant island-chain nation in the North Pacific. While Micronesia’s coconut and fishing economy of 130,000 people cannot support Israel in the bank, it loyally supports Israel on a diplomatic level. In 1997 after the UN General Assembly had voted 134-3 to condemn Israel’s expansion of Jerusalem into disputed Palestinian area with the building of the neighborhood Har Homa, Yasser Arafat took a swipe at Israel remarking that all the world was on his side except for three countries: the United States, Micronesia and Greater Micronesia (a.k.a. Israel).
One great commonality that unites the lion and the mouse rests in the similarities of the evangelical Christian movements within their nations. The eschatological understanding of America’s and Micronesia’s evangelical movements emphasizes modern-day Israel as fulfilling biblical prophecy and playing a lead role in the apocalyptic last days. An extreme interpretation of this end times doctrine, allows that the government of Israel can do no wrong because it has been divinely appointed. In this polemical context, one is either for Israel and against her enemies or against Israel and for her enemies (i.e. the Palestinians).
The Once and Future Boulder
In the 1870’s, John Nelson Darby of the Brethern Movement in Plymouth, England, made a number of trips to the United States in order to teach his views on dispensationalism. Darbyism, or dispensationalism, is a doctrine that divides up the Bible and world history into seven eras or “dispensations” in relation to how God deals with humanity. More specifically, it teaches that that God deals differently with his “earthly” people (Israel) representing the “kingdom of heaven,” versus his “heavenly” people (the church) or the “kingdom of God.” Both Israel, a Jewish country with land and physical borders, along with the global Church, would play a part in the biblical end times as envisioned by Darbyism.
Though dispensationalism was not accepted by the greater American church at the end of the 19th century, it became a cornerstone among the fundamentalist-pentecostal movements sweeping the land at the beginning of the 20th century. The popular Scofield Reference Bible published in 1909 by C.I. Scofield, a devoted student of Darby, explained the biblical text from a dispensationalist viewpoint and quickly gained a wider audience for the teachings of Darbyism. Yet, it was the amazing population shift involving Palestine and the Jewish people in the 20th century that would cause the small theological pebble of dispensationalism to snowball into a daunting political boulder to be dealt with on an international diplomatic scale.
In the 1880’s and 90’s while the dispensationalists were looking for God’s returning of the Jews, a few Jewish agricultural communities were planted in Palestine. In 1891, William E. Blackstone, a lay evangelist in the Chicago business community and close friend of D. L. Moody, drew up a petition supporting the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Blackstone’s “memorial,” signed by 413 American political and business leaders, such as John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan, was five years before Theodore Herzl would publish his historic The Jewish State in 1896, also calling for the founding of a Jewish nation. Thus, Christian Zionism was very much a contemporary of Herzl’s Zionist movement, advocating a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine.
World War I (1914-1918) offered an even closer look at the realization of a land for the Jewish people, when Lord Arthur Balfour, the British foreign secretary, wrote his famous declaration to Zionist leader, Lord James Rothschild, expressing the British government’s desire to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Not incidentally, Balfour along with the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, were both raised in dispensationalist churches. The Balfour Declaration, crowned with Britain’s defeat of Turkey and its acquisition of Palestine, further encouraged the growing dispensationalist movement.
World War II (1939-1945) ushered in the Holocaust, Hitler’s initiation to wipe out the Jewish people from the face of the earth. Dispensationalism viewed this global catastrophe as a satanically inspired plot to derail God’s future plans for the Jewish people. Yet according to dispensationalist understanding, the Holocaust was a necessary evil in order to cause the Jews to turn to Christ, and more importantly to return to their land.
The declaration of Israel’s statehood on May 14, 1948, was the first prophetic pinnacle for the dispensationalist movement. A new age had been ushered in where the wandering Jews of the world had returned home to their fathers’ land of the Bible. The prophetic encore to Israel’s statehood was the Six-Day War of June 1967, when Israel took full control of Jerusalem and the historic Temple Mount. Now, the “times of the Gentiles” were over; Jerusalem was completely under the authority of the Jews and the dispensationalist vision of the last days could truly begin.
Thirty-five years later, Israelis celebrate the anniversary of Jerusalem’s redemption, while Palestinians bemoan their occupation and evangelical Christians count the days until Armageddon and the return of Christ. Living in the CNN-age of today, a dispensationalist can only amplify what he reads in the Bible with the daily tragedies that shake the illusive peace and questionable future of Jerusalem. This black-and-white, dogmatic dispensationalist understanding has only solidified the evangelical church’s support for Israel and decapitated any hand of help towards the Palestinians. The evangelical movement of the 21st century is not only theologically impaired by the narrow-sighted 19th century doctrine of dispensationalism, it has particularly contributed towards the stunting and obstruction of evangelical work in the land of Israel today.
The Eagle has landed?
The majority of evangelical Christians believe that every person, whether man or woman, rich or poor, Jew or Gentile, deserves to hear God’s plan of salvation through Jesus Christ. Dispensationalism on the other hand, has helped create many Christian ministries active within Israel who are not inclined to share the gospel with their Jewish neighbors. These Christian ministries are active in building up the state of Israel as a nation and defending her rights to the land. These ministries rarely criticize Israel as long as the Israeli government continues to lay claim to the sacred ground, which is so vital towards their interpretation of prophetic scripture. Without a physical country called “Israel,” many modern-day evangelicals’ rendering of dispensationalism would be null and void, negating the crux of these “Christian” agendas in Israel.
A large section of the estimated 98 million evangelicals living in America today are considered indispensable by the Israeli government because of their strong political and financial support for Israel. The annual $3 billion dollar allowance by the American government towards Israel’s upkeep is unprecedented on the global scale. One cannot ignore the influence of the largely evangelical conservative movement, the Religious Right, upon Israel’s favorable status in the American political scene.
Jerry Falwell is probably one of the closest evangelical allies that the Israeli government, and especially the Likud Party, has had over the last twenty-five years. When Menachem Begin of the conservative right-leaning Likud became Israeli Prime Minister in the late 70’s, he developed a close friendship with Falwell. In 1981 Falwell was awarded the prestigious Jabotinsky Award for his work in support of Israel. When Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear plant in 1981, Begin called Falwell asking him to “explain to the Christian public the reasons for the bombing.” Deja vu, in1998 when Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu also of the Likud made a visit to the United States, he first met with Falwell and a large gathering of the Religious Right, before he met with President Clinton. While Clinton was pushing forward the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians, Falwell and his evangelical political union, chanting “not one inch,” were standing more in line with Netanyahu and the Likud’s obstinate grip on the Territories.
This line of evangelical reasoning continues in the American political arena of today. Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe recently said in a Senate speech, “God appeared to Abram and said, ‘I am giving you this land’ –the West Bank. This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true.” Gary Bauer a powerful evangelical lobbyist who has a readership of about 100,000 conservatives via his email publication, American Values, believes “the Bible is pretty clear that the land is what is called covenant land, that God made a covenant with the Jews that that would be their land.” God’s covenant with Abram (Genesis 15) may very well support modern day Israel’s existence. What seems contrary though to God’s redemptive character is the desire of some American evangelicals to promote a land or covenant theology over and against another people’s freedom.
Another aim of some pro-Israel Christian ministries is to fund and propagate Jewish immigration into Israel, especially in recent years, from Russia and its former states. Even though the burgeoning population of Israel and the Territories (over 9 million) is a growing concern for future water reserves and land space, each year Jewish groups, often times aided by Christians, are sent out around the world to encourage Jews to return to their ancient, yet infant, homeland. Dispensationalism has also had a hand in this, teaching that the Jews must return to their land before Christ will return.
One major group that has organized and funded many of these types of projects is the multi-million dollar International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) led by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein of Chicago. In 1983, Eckstein founded IFCJ in order to promote greater understanding and tolerance between Christians and Jews and to broaden support for Israel. Eckstein is a well-known speaker in the evangelical power circle, regularly appearing on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, on CBN, and in different evangelical churches around America. On IFCJ’s web site, Eckstein’s work is endorsed by many well-known evangelical personalities including Jack Hayford, Charles Colson, Jerry Falwell, W.A. Criswell, Bill Bright, Bailey Smith, Pat Boone, and the late Jamie Buckingham.
IFCJ’s project, “On Wings of Eagles,” which assists Jews from the former Soviet Union to immigrate to Israel, has raised well over $30 million from over 200,000 evangelical supporters. Another example is evangelical preacher John Hagee of San Antonio, Texas, who has donated one million dollars from his Global Evangelism TV cable network towards returning former Soviet Jews to Israel. Eckstein’s evangelical following has also given millions more dollars to IFCJ’s work among impoverished Jews worldwide. Eckstein says since 1994 conservative Christians have donated more than $60 million to aid Israel. IFCJ’s charitable works have obviously succeeded in sweetening relations between Jews, especially in Israel, and evangelicals in America.
One issue, though, which Eckstein and the evangelical church don’t see eye to eye on, is the conversion of Jews to Christianity. Eckstein deftly walks the line between both Jewish and evangelical criticism by affirming evangelicals’ call to witness or testify, yet he reminds them that only the Holy Spirit can change a person’s heart. Eckstein’s last line of defense in thwarting evangelical desire to convert Jews is to appeal to their subconscious dispensationalist mindset. Eckstein explains, when a Jew accepts Jesus as Messiah he is no longer a Jew or a member of the Jewish community, and so Israel is being robbed of its Jewishness. If Israel were to be changed into a Christian nation through progressive proselytism, the dispensationalist end times framework would be destroyed. Without a physical land of Israel containing an unconverted Jewish people, Darbyism would lack a key component in instigating the return of Christ.
While many evangelicals would innocently support this idea, there is a sadistic logic that plays out in regards to repopulating Israel with Jews. Dispensationalism holds that before Christ returns there will be a Great Tribulation “such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be (Matt. 24:21).” According to dispensationalists, a fourth of the world’s population will die (Rev. 6:8); the great battle of Armageddon (a valley in the center of Israel) will flow with blood to the horse’s bridle, and birds will feast on the dead (Rev. 16:12-16; 14:17-20; 19:17-21); the Jewish people will be persecuted and killed by the Antichrist, though a remnant will ultimately be saved (Dan. 9:27; 11:33; 12:1; Matt. 24:15-22).
And what of the brave Church, heirs of the courageous martyrs, who have suffered throughout history for the name of Christ? Where are the Christians during the Great Tribulation? According to dispensationalism, the true believing Church will be raptured away to heaven out of harm’s way, leaving the unbelievers to fend for themselves against Satan and his forces of doom.
Chasing the Winds of Dispensationalism
Dispensationalism cannot be pigeonholed as the sole reason for American evangelical support for Israel today. Leaving aside political agendas concerning oil and Middle East security, American evangelicals may simply be awakening to the great prophetic words of Isaiah and other biblical books: “Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your descendants from the east, and gather you from the west; I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ And to the south, ‘Do not keep them back!’ Bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth.”
On a surface level, most American evangelicals might be supporting Israel’s claim to the Land because of these biblical prophecies, which are being fulfilled before their eyes, without any obvious dispensationalist bias. American evangelicals’ “love” for Israel, though, becomes tainted the moment it forgets the truth of Jesus’ most revolutionary commands: to love our enemies, to bless those who curse us, to pray for those who persecute us, and to be peacemakers. Living out and demonstrating Jesus’ words is one of the greatest gifts that evangelicals can bestow upon Israel and her Palestinian neighbors. There are instances, though, where the government of Israel purposely represses such evangelical presence in the Land.
One example of the Israeli government’s bias against evangelical work in the Land is the Israel-based ministry Shevet Achim, formerly Light to the Nations. Shevet Achim, directed by Jonathan Miles, an American evangelical, helps bring critically ill Palestinian children from the Gaza Strip to Israeli hospitals for life-saving surgery. Until recently, Jonathan, along with his wife Michelle and their six children, lived in a refugee camp in Gaza for nearly six years. There Miles liaised between Palestinian families and Israeli doctors, mediated between Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials, and slowly raised limited funds for the life-saving operations from evangelical Christians abroad. Jonathan and his family, now living in Jerusalem, have recently been told by the Israeli Ministry of the Interior to leave the country immediately. This senseless bureaucratic decision should be quickly recognized as a poor move for Israeli public relations. Shevet Achim is one of few Christian ministries in Israel which wholeheartedly supports and blesses the nation of Israel while at the same time upholds the rest of the gospel by helping the most needy, in this case her Palestinian neighbors.
Another example of Israeli religious discrimination concerns three Ethiopian sisters (who will remain anonymous because of fear of persecution). They arrived in Israel in 1991 during “Operation Solomon,” when 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel. The three Christian girls were adopted years earlier by an Ethiopian Jew who had helped the Israeli Secret Service, the Mossad, coordinate “Operation Moses,” another airlift of Ethiopian Jews ten years earlier. Their adoptive father died two years after they arrived in Israel. A few years ago a videotape was made of an Ethiopian choir singing at a Messianic Jewish event in Israel. This same Israeli Ministry of the Interior began a background check on every person in the video. Purposely looking for, and discovering, a small mistake on their citizenship applications, the Ministry of the Interior sent a letter to the three girls stripping them of their citizenship and demanding that they leave Israel immediately.
Ethiopia will not let these three orphaned sisters return, so they are now under the threat of being left homeless too. It would seem that Israel which is greatly indebted to worldwide evangelical support would be eager to look after the welfare of these three sisters, especially considering their dire circumstances, orphaned and homeless. The deafening American evangelical voice, which can obligate an Israeli Prime Minister to speak at its religious conventions and gatherings, goes quiet with little more than an objection to this overt injustice against evangelicals living in theLand.
The
Israeli Ministry of the Interior is known to be antagonistic at best towards
evangelical Christians and Messianic Jews who seek to live and legally
function within the Land. American evangelical dollars directly and
indirectly fund the Israeli economy and government, which permit the Ministry
of the Interior’s discriminatory practices. At the least, American
evangelicals should be wisely investing in ministries that are practicing
and sharing Jesus’ teachings with all the peoples living in the Land and
not indiscriminately throwing money at every pro-Israel organization.
In reading the Bible, God’s love for Israel is undeniable. Replacement theology, which removes Israel and puts the Church in her place, cannot be legitimately recognized by the evangelical world today. The nation of Israel is a living, supernatural reality that has an important role to play in God’s redemptive plans. As evangelicals, we must support Israel even during moments of her questionable conduct, but at the same time we should never call her evil good, or her good evil. American evangelicals can truly love Israel by holding her accountable to God’s Word like Jesus did.
Maybe Jesus is coming back next year, maybe in twenty years, but the American evangelical church better hope he doesn’t come back tomorrow, for with the end of days comes judgement and will it not begin with the house of God? (I Peter 4:17) While we, as evangelicals, have been chasing the winds of dispensationalism, the Israelis and Palestinians have been crying out for mercy, justice, and truth. We have been seeking to build up and bury an eschatological kingdom of land instead of investing in the spiritual restoration of both peoples. Throwing money at all the leprous sores here in the Holy Land has not put new flesh on these dry bones. We, as evangelicals, are Israel’s own worst enemies when we do not offer her a heart of flesh for her heart of stone.
copied October 30, 2002. Reason: 404 not found at original location.
Consider his controversial visit to a contested Jerusalem holy site from a Muslim end-times perspective.
By Gershom Gorenberg
Fa'iq Da'ud was expecting trouble at Jerusalem's Temple Mount in 2000--or as he'd say, at al-Haram al-Sharif.
In fact, the violence that exploded at the world's most contested holy site this fall, and which ignited ongoing battles between Israelis and Palestinians, is only a pale glimmer next to Da'ud's apocalyptic visions--visions that shed light on a dangerous, often-ignored side of the Mount's place in the religious imagination of three faiths.
For Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, the 36-acre hilltop plaza is not only at the center of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, it is also center stage for the Last Days.
Da'ud's book, "The Great Events Preceding the Appearance of the Mahdi," was on sale at Islamic bookstores around the West Bank last year. The cover of the Arabic tract shows an aerial photo of the Haram--Dome of the Rock mosque at the center, Al-Aqsa mosque to one side.
Next to it is a picture of a model of the Jewish Temple, superimposed on the same site, replacing both mosques. Inside, Da'ud portrays a vast conspiracy of Jews and Christians that, he says, intends to build the Third Temple to prepare the way for the arrival of their shared messiah, who he says is the Antichrist. Yet he finds hope in the threat to Islam's shrines: It heralds history's final battles and the coming of the Mahdi, the true redeemer.
It's a dark fantasy but hardly unique. Moreover, Da'ud is just one of the writers who, in recent years, have produced a new, popular genre of Islamic works on impending apocalypse.
The books look forward to Islam's victory over the West. Ironically, though, they draw directly on the end-times literature of conservative Christians--including dispensationalists' expectation that the Third Temple will soon be built on its ancient site, ushering in the Last Days and Jesus' return to earth.
Underlying this strange symbiosis is a shared view of history: As a grand drama, scripted in advance by the Divine Playwright, and due to reach its denouement any day--in beleaguered Jerusalem.
This view of the future has a long past. The monotheistic religions' idea of the End of Days dates back to the prophets of ancient Israel, for whom Jerusalem was the center not only of their world but of God's. When the Romans razed the Second Temple in 70 C.E., Judaism assigned rebuilding it to the unknown time of the messiah, thereby making the Temple a symbol of the End of Days.
Meanwhile, Christianity wove its vision of the end out of Jewish materials and the New Testament's promise that Jesus would return to the city of his crucifixion.
Most strikingly, Islam reworked the traditions of its older sisters to also promise that Jerusalem would be the capital of the messianic age.
The idea of the End need not--and, I'd argue, should not--be read with blind literalism. It is better seen as providing an image of the perfected world to which we must aspire without expecting to get there. But the temptation to treat end-time prophecies literally is particularly seductive when a great drama is played out on the stage of the Holy Land.
For a century, the return of Jews to their homeland and the Arab-Israeli conflict has presented just such a drama. And so, one segment of Orthodox Jewry regards the Jewish state as the "first flowering" of redemption. For those Jews, Israel's stunning victory in the 1967 Six-Day War--symbolized by a colonel's battlefield announcement that "the Temple Mount is in our hands"--turned expectations into ecstasy. At the extreme edge of this camp are the impatient activists who want to build the Temple.
Christians of the dispensationalist school have likewise seen Israel's establishment and the 1967 victory as fulfilling biblical promises--but look forward to a very different denouement:
The Antichrist helps the Jews build the Temple, then desecrates it. Catastrophes shake the world; Jews either accept Christianity or die; Jesus returns. In books, videos, and internet pages, dispensationalists often magnify the importance of Jewish Temple activists a thousandfold--as "proof" that the next act of the prophetic pageant is about to begin.
Out of fear rather than hope, Muslims have also overestimated Jewish interest in the Temple. Israel's conquest of Jerusalem's Old City (where the Mount is located) turned up the anxiety--even though the Jewish state left the Islamic shrines untouched and under Muslim administration. Events such as the 1984 arrest of a Jewish underground that had plotted to blow up the Dome of the Rock fueled the fears.
Thus, the Haram has become an icon of Palestinian nationalism, and the trauma of the conflict with Israel has helped produce a new Islamic apocalyptic vision, first portrayed in Egyptian writer Sa'id Ayyub's 1987 book, "Al-Masih Al-Dajjal--The Antichrist."
Ayyub, says David Cook, who has researched this literature deeply, uses "the Christian messianic fantasy...that Israel's existence is a sign of the End" for his own purposes. Ayyub portrays a Jewish Antichrist at the center of a conspiracy seeking world domination. And as the apocalyptic scenario unfolds, he says, "The dwelling place of the Jewish prophet"--the Antichrist--will be in the Temple in Jerusalem."
Ayyub's book, says Cook, was a "runaway hit," and other writers followed his lead, producing hundreds of tracts. One of those disciples is Fa'iq Da'ud, whose puts Christians and Jews together in the plot against Al-Aqsa.
Estimating the impact of Muslim apocalyptic writers isn’t easy, since their followers haven’t established separate movements. But the popularity of Ayyub’s original work, followed by the other tracts in the same genre, suggests a degree of grass-roots influence. One book, “The End of Israel 2022” by Sheikh Bassam Jirrar, has sold 30,000 copies in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and among Israeli Arabs--equivalent to 2 million copies in the U.S.
That hardly means there’s a copy on every Muslim’s shelf. Jamil Hamami, an east Jerusalem graduate of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, foremost center of religious study for Sunni Muslims, has never heard of Ayyub and rejects Jirrar’s theories. Yet he doesn’t deny that apocalypse is in the air. Interest among Palestinians in signs of the Hour can’t be measured, he says, but “people are talking about it, in universities, in schools.”
To make sense of all this, picture apocalyptic believers seated in a triangular theater around the stage of Jerusalem. All agree that history's last act is being played out, but they hold different programs. Jewish Temple activists--bit players in real life--have starring roles in the Christian play; Jews and Christians alike unknowingly play in the Muslim script. Hope and fear are the sound system, wildly amplifying every word, every footstep. Small actions at the Temple Mount take on significance that nonbelievers--such as secular politicians and analysts--neither expect nor understand.
Now consider how Israeli hardliner Ariel Sharon's late-September visit to the Mount would have looked to anyone who'd read Ayyub or Da'ud. Consider as well how it might appear now that polls show Sharon way ahead of Ehud Barak in the race to become Israel's prime minister.
What's more, the ideas of those expecting the End have impact beyond their own ranks. Last year, Sheikh Ekrima Sa'id Sabri, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, appointed by Yasser Arafat, told me he rejected setting a date for the Hour, as Muslims call the End.
But he said Da'ud's book had value because "it makes clear the dangers to Al-Aqsa mosque."
Viewing Jerusalem as the stage of the End warps perception of political events, creates expectations of absolute victories, makes battles glorious instead of tragic. But it is certainly not the only religious view of Jerusalem's sorrows.
Those who regard life as more sacred than soil, who believe that God commands us "to seek peace and pursue it," must reject the apocalyptic vision and insist that the faiths can live together in the Holy City.
Jerusalem-based Gershom Gorenberg is the author of 'The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount,' published by The Free Press.