As I said before I happen to be a Zionist for Secular reasons but no longer hold the Bible Prophecy expectations associated with “Christian Zionism”, especially not its Futurist Premillennial Dispensationalist forms.
I'm not inherently hostile to the idea that Modern Israel could have a role to play in the Bible Prophecies I view as not already fulfilled yet. But I don’t expect a Third Temple or some revival where they all convert to Christianity prior to The Parousia. When it happens The Parousia will affect every nation, so if you are in Israel when it happens you will have a unique view of it.
Conservative Evangelicals have a tendency to side with the Revisionist Maximalists in terms of what the borders of Israel should be, but I’ve debunked that reasoning on my other blog.
What bugs me about the Eschatology of Christian Zionists is how they twist Ezekiel 37 in order to make it about 1948.
While contemporary Christian Zionism is viewed as mostly the domain of Pre-Trib Dispensationalism, it began among Puritans with a predominantly Historicist Eschatology. However the most consistently hostile to Zionism is Full Preterism. All forms of Christian Zionism exist in frameworks that are supposed to be built on stressing a literal physical bodily view of the General Resurrection of The Dead.
And yet they wind up taking one of the most graphically explicit Hebrew Bible visuals of that literal bodily Resurrection, and allegorizing it the same way many Full Preterists do. Full Preterists agree with the Dry Bones of Ezekiel 37 being a picture of a rebirth of the Nation of Israel, however as Supersessionists they view that rebirth as the birth of The Church.
The core fallacy here is a refusal to accept that a Prophecy can be multiple things at once.
Yes Ezekiel 37 it is putting a focus on how this will be a rebirth and reunification for Israel as a Nation. But it is a renewal happening because all these dead Israelites of past generations are alive again. Including David specifically singled out for reference, which Christian commentators keep saying simply represents Jesus here but I disagree, it is David himself Risen, Jesus in this chapter is YHWH, the one breathing the Breath of Life into them like back in Genesis 2.
Because Pre-Trib is the most well known form of Futurism currently, Full Preterists love to cling to how they technically interpret Ezekiel 37 the same way and point out the absurdity of separating that Resurrection Prophecy from all the others.
The Resurrection is not a metaphor for national revival, it is the cause of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment