Christ at the Checkpoint

Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace

Paul Alexander, Alexander

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781610972307
• eBook ISBN: 9781630879396
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

What does the evangelical church in Palestine think about the land, the end times, the Holocaust, peace in the Middle East, loving enemies, Christian Zionism, the State of Israel, and the possibilities of a Palestinian state? For the first time ever, Palestinian evangelicals along with evangelicals from the United States and Europe have converged to explore these and other crucial topics. Although Jews, Muslims, and Christians from a variety of traditions have participated in discussions and work regarding Israel and Palestine, this book presents theological, biblical, and political perspectives and arguments from Palestinian evangelicals who are praying, hoping, and working for a just peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.

1

Palestinian Christians in the Shadow of Christian Zionism

Alex Awad

The focus of my presentation is Palestinian Christians in the Shadow of Christian Zionism. I will reflect on my personal experiences to demonstrate the impact of Christian Zionism on Palestinian Christians and on the Church of the Holy Land. To highlight the significance of this theme, I want to give three illustrations.

First, John Hagee, a well-known Evangelical leader from the United States said recently, and I quote: “The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West . . . a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ.”

Second, one Sunday afternoon in July 2000, many members and pastors of local Evangelical congregations from the Palestinian territories and Arab East Jerusalem had gathered at the Bethlehem Hotel in Bethlehem in order to celebrate the formation of a new council. An American woman who was present at the meeting approached one of the pastors and asked permission to say a few words to the assembly. Desiring to show courtesy to the unknown guest, the pastor asked the emcee, who was also a Palestinian pastor, if the lady could speak. Though he had no idea what she might say, the moderator agreed. When the lady took the microphone, neither I nor the others present could believe the words that came out of her mouth! She declared to the Palestinian Evangelical Christians assembled that she had a “word from the Lord” for them: “God,” she said, wanted them all to “leave Israel and go to other Arab countries.” She added that they must leave to make room for God’s chosen people, the Jews. Moreover, she warned the pastors and the audience that if they did not listen to the instructions that God had given through her, God would pour out his wrath on them. As soon as the lady’s outrageous agenda became clear, one of the pastors came and whisked her away from the pulpit, but not before she had delivered to the whole assembly a dose of what many Palestinians regard as Christian Zionist propaganda.

This is what we wish to humbly and prayerfully discuss in this conference. Before I go any further, let me give a short definition of the term “Christian Zionism.” Christian Zionism is a movement within the church that supported and continues to shore up political, economic, and military assistance to the State of Israel through the influence of a theological school called dispensationalism. It has spread among western Christians via publications and religious media networks. A dispensationalist believes that God divided history into dispensations (periods of history) and that the Jewish people will be gathered into the Holy Land during the last dispensation. Dispensationalism has been and continues to be the basis of the belief that the current State of Israel is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Christian Zionists also tend to believe that by supporting the State of Israel, they curry favor with God and they speed up the second coming of Jesus Christ.

I wish to clarify that while one may find more Christian Zionists among Evangelicals, Christian Zionism has spread its influence through various media outlets to many Christians in the US and elsewhere in the world, even among denominations that do not classify themselves as Evangelicals. I also want to clarify that while many Christians hold to aspects of Christian Zionism, most Evangelical Christians would not wish to be labeled as Christian Zionists, and if one would ask them the question “Are you a Christian Zionist?” they would not know what one is talking about. Christian Zionism became the theological vehicle that leads many Christians into the bosom of Zionism. Therefore one cannot challenge Christian Zionism on political grounds without dealing with the theological bases of dispensationalism. We have with us, in this conference, capable theologians who will be addressing the teachings of dispensationalism (both pro and con) in greater detail. I will briefly discuss the impact of these teachings on me, my people, and my church.

Effects of the War of 1967 and Its Challenges

My first significant encounter with dispensationalism and with Christian Zionism took place immediately after the 1967 Arab–Israeli War when I was a student at my own denomination’s Bible College in Switzerland. The denomination and the college embraced and taught the dispensational point of view and both believed that Israel must take over all the land of Palestine, and much more, before the second coming of Jesus. At first, these theological concepts did not worry me much as long as they were just theories for theological speculations. After the war, I began to take these theories seriously. What concerned me and infuriated another Arab Christian student from Syria, who also attended the same College, is that our professors and our colleagues were excited at the end of the war because Israel defeated three Arab nations and seized the West Bank from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Their exhilaration was due to their belief that God miraculously stood with Israel and helped Israel in order to fulfill Biblical prophecies and to speed up the return of Jesus. The victory of Israel over three Arab nations was also a confirmation for them that the theories we were studying in class were true. While my friend and I were grieving the death and the destruction that the bloody war brought to many innocent people, our friends were celebrating what they thought was a fulfillment of biblical prophecies. They seemed totally indifferent and insensitive to the ravages of war and its toll on human life. That experience caused me to wake up and start to ask myself hard questions:

1. Did God really give my country to the Jewish people?

2. Were the wars of 1948 and 1967 acts of God? Did God actually intervene on behalf of the Zionists? Is God also excited over the devastation inflicted on Palestinians and Arabs (both Muslims and Christians)?

3. Are modern secular Jews and Zionists who created the state of Israel God’s chosen people?

4. Are my friend, and I, and our people on the wrong side of prophecy?

5. Are we wrong to be indignant while our friends were so jubilant?

6. Is the Bible—the book that I love so much and the book that revealed God’s love to me through Jesus Christ and the book that I came to study at this Bible College—behind the suffering and the humiliation of my people?

All of these conflicting thoughts caused me quite a spiritual crisis. But that crisis drove me to study the Bible diligently. Now I was motivated to find out for myself if the current State of Israel is an extension of biblical Israel. I wanted to find out for myself if prophecies uttered by prophets in the Old Testament over 2,500 years ago address what is happening in the Middle East today. The more I studied the Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments, the more I realized that these concepts and assumptions advocated so strongly by hard-line dispensationalists and Christian Zionists are just theories of interpretation that belong to an older covenant and cannot withstand genuine biblical exegesis. My studies caused me to doubt dispensationalism and yet have greater faith in and love for the Bible and the God of the Bible.

At Lee University

Because of the occupation of Bethlehem in 1967 by Israeli forces, I was not allowed to return to Palestine after I finished my studies in Europe. However, by an act of divine providence, I received a scholarship to attend Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. In the United States I was overwhelmed at the spread of Christian Zionism. At an occasion during Christmas 1968, I was asked along with other international students to present a program for the student chapel where each international student would speak about how Christmas is celebrated in his or her country. When it was my turn to share, and the student body realized that I was coming from Bethlehem, there was a hush in the auditorium. Everyone wanted to hear what I had to say about Christmas in Bethlehem. I began with the positive and spoke about how the heads of the churches and other VIPs and dignitaries travel in a great procession with pomp and circumstance to Bethlehem’s Manger Square on Christmas Eve. I then shared about the midnight mass at the Church of the Nativity. I also spoke about how Palestinian Christian families celebrate Christmas Day by visiting each other, exchanging gifts, etc. Finally I came to speak about the challenges faced by the Christian community in Bethlehem as they celebrated the birth of Christ under military occupation and asked the student body to pray for peace and to pray for an end to the oppression of the Christians in Bethlehem. To my surprise, at that moment, there was a stirring among the thousand students in the auditorium and a ‘boo’ that filled the auditorium told me that the students did not like my comments on the Israeli occupation of Bethlehem. I would probably have had a similar reaction had I shared in most evangelical Bible Colleges or Seminaries in the USA at that time.

At Seminary in Missouri

After college, I went to a Baptist Seminary in Missouri. One day the students were invited to see a film on the Holy Land at a nearby church. The name of the film was Apples of Gold. The film celebrated fulfillment of biblical prophecies and cited Israel’s victory over the Arabs in 1948 as a miracle and as a sign of the end times. I had heard this before in evangelical circles and by now I was used to it, even though I was never comfortable with it. But what disturbed me most about the film is that in the introduction it showed a Bedouin caravan on camels traveling through the desert and the film narrator expressed regret that these nomads, who had roamed the wilderness for so many years, had to leave their lands for the victorious Israelis who were returning to their homeland and are turning the desert into a Garden of Eden. When I heard this, I immediately moved out of my seat and found my way through the dark of the church’s aisles to the front where the pastor was sitting. I told him that I was from Jerusalem and I wished to make a comment when the film was over. The pastor was kind enough to agree. I told the people that I am a Palestinian Christian born in Jerusalem and that I felt insulted by the film that depicted the Palestinian peoples as wondering nomads on camels. I explained that Palestinians have cities and a culture in Bible Lands that go back at least 6,000 years. I told them that I was one of the 800,000 Palestinians who lost their land and became refugees in 1948 and that my family was living in a house in West Jerusalem and not in a Bedouin tent. Regretfully, I thought, after I left the church, how many thousands of times this film would be shown in churches across the United States with no one to stand up to challenge its false and damaging propaganda.

Revival Meetings at a Church in Kansas City

A few weeks after that, I was invited to a church for a special revival meeting. The speaker took verses from the book of Isaiah and other Bible passages to prove that Gamal Abdul Nasser, then president of Egypt, was the “beast” of the book of Revelation. At the end of the service, when I spoke with the evangelist and expressed my disagreement with his interpretation, he profusely apologized to me. Not because I convinced him his interpretations were wrong, but rather because his sermon offended me. That kind of preaching must have offended an untold number of Arab Christians and Muslims who visited churches or heard sermons via radio or TV in the USA.

On TV in Kansas City

In Kansas City I was invited to appear on a TV program hosted by Campus Crusade for Christ for a live debate with an Israeli representative. After the debate the lines were open for people to ask questions or make comments. What astonished me at that point was that when I expressed my opinions in rebuttal, many who watched the program called the station and commented that since I held such views, I could not be a Bible believing Christian and certainly I should not be a pastor in an evangelical church. Such experiences are not only mine; most Arab Christians who attend evangelical churches around the world, will sooner or later confront similar experiences.

Global Influence of Zionism on the Church

Brazil

I once was invited along with a Messianic Jewish believer to speak at a Christian conference in Brazil while at the same time making preparations for a visit of the Bethlehem Bible College choir to travel on tour a year later. At the conference near Sao Paulo, I was shocked upon entering the conference hall to see that there were no Christian symbols at all—not even one cross. But there were huge round posters with the Star of David printed on them. They were placed on the walls all around the auditorium and there was a huge Menorah (candle sticks) right on the stage. At the outset of the service they had a procession. Men who dressed up as Old Testament Jewish priests carried a replica of the Ark of the Covenant and paraded towards the stage. Along with them were women who also dressed in long white robes and marched as they sang hosannas and waved palm branches. Seeing all of this, I was totally disturbed. I went to the leader who invited us and I told him I am ready to go home. He innocently asked, “What is wrong?” I said, “I thought I was coming to a Christian meeting. But everything around me here tells me that I am at a Jewish festival.” He apologized with much humility and said, “Alex, you are here to teach us. Tell us what you want us to do.” I responded, “Next time I come to the auditorium, I do not wish to see the Star of David all over the place and please remove the Menorah from the stage and stop the Ark of the Covenant procession and see if you can place a cross somewhere.” He did! And I stayed.

Canada

About five years ago, World Vision Jerusalem invited me to speak at a workshop for an evangelical conference in Canada called Mission Fest. The head of the International Ch...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Series Preface
• Preface
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Palestinian Christians in the Shadow of Christian Zionism
• Chapter 2: The Holocaust and the Evangelical Movement
• Chapter 3: A Palestinian Christian Evangelical Response to the Holocaust
• Chapter 4: Theology of the Land
• Chapter 5: What Can Pentecostals and Charismatics Do for Peace with Justice in Israel and Palestine?1
• Chapter 6: Strange Freedom
• Chapter 7: The New Testament and the Land
• Chapter 8: The Land in Light of the Reconciliation in Christ
• Chapter 9: The Ethical Responsibility of the American Church towards Palestinian Christians
• Chapter 10: Evangelicals, Islam, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Chapter 11: Peaceful or Violent Eschatology
• Chapter 12: Contextual Palestinian Theology as it Deals with Realities on the Ground
• Chapter 13: Where Do We Go From Here?