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Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Offsite Post: ‘Bad Theology Leads to Bad Foreign Policy’

 

Once upon a time, back when he was one of the House managers of the Clinton impeachment trial, we thought highly of Lindsey Graham.  But over the years he has taken some positions that have changed our attitude – famously following John McCain’s footsteps in ‘walking across the aisle’ to try to pass amnesty legislation for illegal aliens with Senate Democrats (earning him one of Rush Limbaugh’s best epithets – Lindsey Grahamnesty).  And more recently being the promoter of the US’s ‘forever wars’ overseas.

The new disaster unfolding in the Holy Land brings new reasons to distrust him.  On Oct. 13th, he met with Christian leaders in South Carolina where the following statements were made:


COLUMBIA, SC (WOLO) — A group of mostly Baptist and Presbyterian ministers from around the state came together at the Columbia Chamber of Commerce to declare their support for Israel and have an open discussion with Senator Lindsey Graham about the conflict.

 

“I have a simple message. I have chosen sides. Israel has nothing to apologize for. Israel did not cause this,” says Graham.

 

At a press conference after the roundtable, Senator Graham outlined how he believes the U.S.  should move forward regarding the Israel-Hamas war, also calling for a statewide day of prayer this Sunday, October 15th.

 

“Hamas has declared today, Friday, the ‘Day of Rage.’ I am seeking South Carolinians declare this coming Sunday a day of prayer. To all houses of worship in the state of South Carolina, please pray for Israel this Sunday. They want rage, I want prayer. They seek destruction, we seek peace. They seek a one state solution — Hamas — the destruction of Israel. I see a world where Palestinians can live in dignity and in peace with Israel,” says Graham.

 

 . . .

 

Should the war continue to escalate, Graham believes America should go after Iran, who he says continues to fund Hamas and provide them with weapons.

 

“The desire to not engage evil seldom works out well. Iran is evil. I don’t want a war with Iran, but I am tired of Iran financing terrorism all over the globe. We have 24 dead Americans, families destroyed and others held captive because of Iran’s support for Hamas. So to the American people, it is long past time we dealt with the Ayatollah and his henchmen,” says Graham.

A pastor present at the meeting gave the religious underpinning for the sentiments of Sen. Graham:


Tony Beam, Interim Pastor at Five Forks Baptist Church in Simpsonville, attended the roundtable.

 

“I definitely will be encouraging the church where I’m Interim Pastor, to enter in to that day of prayer and to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, which is what the Bible calls us to do, and to pray that God will protect his people of Israel, and that the evil of Hamas will be destroyed, and that innocent life will be protected as much as humanly possible,” says Beam.

 

Beam also says, “For me, as a Christian, war means making sure that we’re on the side of those who are right, not the aggressors, and making sure that innocent life is protected as much as humanly possible.”

What is at the back of all these statements and actions and promised actions is the doctrine of Dispensationalism taught by John Nelson Darby and Cyrus Scofield, that, despite the founding of the Christian Church by Jesus Christ, the Jews remain a chosen people by God, to whom He will always show special favor.

There are problems with this teaching.  Historically, it is an outlier.  It was never accepted by the Church; only in the last several decades has it become fashionable in certain circles, mainly in what are called the ‘evangelical’ Protestant churches (which makes it particularly problematic for the South, which is where most of those kinds of churches are located).  Most others – Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and other Protestant churches – do not accept its tenets.  The Orthodox priest Fr. John Whiteford, a good ol’ Texas fellow, goes into further detail:


St. Paul's teaching in Romans 11 is clear that those Jews who rejected Christ are like branches cut off from the olive tree, which represents the people of God -- and that gentile converts are like wild olive branches that have been grafted on to that same tree. The Church is the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16), the Israelites formed the Church of the Old Testament, but the New Testament Church is in continuity with the old. However, Romans 11 is equally clear that there is still a future in God's providence for those who are the physical descendants of the Old Testament Israel, who rejected Christ and so have been cut off from the Church, but who will one day be saved. And so we do speak of the Church as the new Israel, but this does not mean there is no sense in which we can still speak of the Israel according to the flesh.

 

We do not accept the notion of some Protestants that teach that there is still a separate covenant for the Jews, and that they may be saved by the Old Covenant, while Christians are saved by the New. Nor do we believe that the descendants of those who rejected Christ have some special claim on the Holy Land that entitles them to steal land from Arab speaking Christians, many of whom are no doubt descended from those Jews that embraced Christ. Christians are children of Abraham in the truest sense, and as such are the true heirs of God's promise to him:

 

"Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham" (Galatians 3:7-9).

 

Because we do not equate the modern state of Israel with the Israel of the Old Testament, some Protestants attempt to argue that this constitutes antisemitism, but we reject this claim. Furthermore, I would argue that this abuse of the label of antisemitism in an attempt to defend even the most indefensible actions of the state of Israel only cheapens the term, and has the effect of providing greater credibility for real antisemitic voices.

The intensity of the Dispensationalist voices over the attack on Israel is striking.  Not one of these folks, to our knowledge, have voiced even the smallest syllable of protest over the unremitting, violent persecution of the Orthodox Christians in the Ukraine by the Zelensky regime.  But they have gone histrionic over the Hamas attack on Israel, likening it to the 9-11 attacks on the US ‘times seven or eight,’ as we heard repeated a number of times on American Family Radio recently.

We do not condone at all what Hamas has done, but why do the Dispensationalists have far, far greater sympathy for the Jewish people of Israel than they do for their fellow Christians?  The distortions caused by their belief system lead to this sort of thing, which if we are not careful will drag us into another horrible war in the Middle East.

All the 9-11 references at this point become rather ominous.  As credible investigators have shown from a number of different angles, the official narrative, that the jet impacts and their resulting fires brought down the World Trade towers, and then WTC Building 7, is not believable.  It appears that the attack was a deliberate standdown by the US deep state in order to allow it to initiate the plans it had drawn up by a think tank called the Project for a New American Century.  The Guardian reported in 2003,

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2023/10/garlington-bad-theology-leads-to-bad-foreign-policy/.

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To send aid to the Christians of Gaza, visit this page:

https://orthochristian.com/156722.html

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

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