The End Times are not a topic Robert Jeffress needs much prompting to talk about. But when war broke out between Israel and Hamas on Oct. 7, the senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas, and a national figure among American evangelicals, quickly prepared a sermon series on the Apocalypse, which would be accompanied by a forthcoming book on the subject
On Nov. 5, as the last notes of “Redemption Draweth Nigh,” a hymn about Jesus’ return, resonated in First Baptist’s 3,000-seat sanctuary, Jeffress asked his audience, “Are we actually living in what the Bible calls the End Times?”
The war in Gaza is not the only sign Jeffress submitted as evidence that the period presaging Jesus’ Second Coming, detailed in the Bible’s Book of Revelation and other Scriptures, is coming closer. He noted, too, rising crime rates, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and natural disasters before announcing, “We are on the verge of the beginning of the End Times.”
“Things are falling into place for this great world battle, fought by the super powers of the world, as the Bible said. They will be armed with nuclear weapons,” he said.
Other prominent evangelicals have taken up the theme in their sermons. The day following Hamas’ attack, in which Israeli cities were barraged and some 1,200 people were massacred, Greg Laurie, senior pastor at the Harvest Riverside Fellowship in California, framed the violence in terms of End Times prophecy.
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“The Bible tells us in the End Times that Israel will be scattered and regathered,” Laurie said. “The Bible predicted hundreds of thousands of years ago that a large force from the North of Israel will attack her after she (Israel) was regathered and one of the allies with modern Russia, or Magog, will be Iran or Persia.”
Before calling the church to pray for peace in Jerusalem, Laurie added, “If you get up in the morning and read this headline “Russia Attacks Israel,” fasten your seatbelt because you’re seeing Bible prophecy fulfilled in your lifetime.”
While apocalyptic theology is threaded throughout the Bible and came to America with the Puritans, End Time prophecy has gone through cycles of popular acceptance among Christians. It has different strands, but in its most widely known version, known as dispensationalism, Israel is a linchpin to the events of the last days, when, after the Rapture, a coterie of 144,000 Jews are to be converted to Christ before eternity begins.
Evangelical Christian pastors such as Jeffress have long prompted the United States to be an actor in these events. In his second sermon in the End Times series, on Nov. 12, Jeffress quoted the speech he gave at the ceremony dedicating the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem in 2018: “For America to be on the right side of Israel is the same as being on the right side of history, and the right side of God.”
The embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was the fulfillment of a promise Donald Trump made in 2016 as he ran for president for the first time, one applauded by pro-Israel evangelicals. In August 2020, as he ran for reelection, then-President Trump told a campaign rally in Wisconsin, “We moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. That’s for the evangelicals.”
Also present the day Jeffress spoke in Jerusalem was the televangelist John Hagee, who in 2006 founded Christians United for Israel, now the largest pro-Israel organization in the U.S. On Oct. 22, CUFI hosted a “Night to Honor Israel” rally at Hagee’s Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, with Israeli public figures on hand, as well as U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton.
Hagee was also a speaker at the giant pro-Israel rally held Tuesday in Washington where he reaffirmed his commitment to Israel. “There is only one nation whose flag will fly over the ancient walls of the sacred city of Jerusalem. That nation is Israel, now and forever,” he said, greeted by cheers.
Claiming some 10 million members, Hagee’s organization has become powerful politically, according to Daniel Hummel, author of “Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews and U.S.-Israeli Relations.” “It is quite a large group, but it’s even more significant that they are organized and have demonstrated over the years that they can actually focus their energy on a local level and a national level to advocate their position,” said Hummel.
The group’s gatherings have become an obligatory stop for GOP presidential hopefuls wishing to articulate their support for Israel in front of Christian Zionists. “Most of them don’t get into the prophecy stuff,” said Hummel. “They’ll talk more about the national interests that the U.S. has in supporting Israel and about the cultural values that Israel and the U.S. share.”
But Hagee often speaks about the prophecies that drive his support for Israel. A week after Hamas’ attacks, Hagee’s Sunday sermon detailed the unfolding of the End Times, while a timeline illustrating every step from Jesus’ resurrection to the renovation of Earth by fire was displayed in the background.
The recent Hamas attacks draw us closer to the church’s Rapture, he claimed. “The Bible blessed the Jewish people directly and through the Jewish people blesses us, the gentile people,” he said, before adding, “Israel is God’s prophetic clock; when the Jewish people are in Israel, the clock is running. When the Jewish people are out of Israel, the clock stops,” he said.
This logic scandalizes some scholars as well as Jews, who see evangelical support for Israel as compromised by its cosmic hope for their conversion. “They (Christian Zionists) believe a tiny minority of living Jews will, in the End Times, convert to Christianity, and the rest will be damned to hell for their disbelief,” escribió Steven Gardiner, research director at the Political Research Associates, in a 2020 essay titled, “End Times Antisemitism.”
In a 2005 sermon, Hagee himself claimed God sent Adolf Hitler to perpetrate the Holocaust to push European Jews toward Israel. (He later made clear he didn’t view either Hitler or the Holocaust as positive.)
But End Times theology need not be raw to come across as insensitive to the violence suffered by both sides in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On Nov. 12, Jeffress began his sermon by asking the congregation if they knew what could explain the numerous attacks against Israel.
“Spiritual reasons,” he said.
Fiona André is a national reporter for Religion News Service based in New York City.
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19 Respuestas
A convenient fantasy based on a selective literalist interpretation. It is an irresponsible exposition feeding a false agenda; a contradiction of Jesus’ words in Matthew 13 and 24. He will return, but don’t be looking for signs, live in the sure knowledge of His return. Be ready for the day when you stand in His presence and all evil will finally be put away.
I can attest from experience that during my time in-country in the Seventies, I heard nothing other than what Jeffress and Hagee are spreading. There was NO other reading of Revelation. Secret Rapture was word-for-word from the lips of God Himself.
Problem is, when The World Ends Tomorrow and It’s All Gonna Burn, why bother? Why bother with anything other than clutching your Fire Insurance Policy and complementary Rapture Boarding Pass, waiting to get beamed up any minute now? Nobody’s going to plan for a future because there is no future. We signed it over to Satan and the Antichrist decades ago and sit quietly (or not so quietly) waiting to get beamed up, keeping our noses squeeky-clean to pass the Rapture Litmus Test.
Problem is, the future has this way of happening all on its own. And when it moves on without your input, you WILL find yourself Left Behind, just not in the way you thought.
Agreed we should focus on the coming of Christ and how we should live. But Jesus does take a question of signs seriously in Matt 24 so it is not wrong to teach about end times. I don’t endorse the above teachers but don’t throw mud because you don’t agree with the dispensationalism behind it. There are plenty of incorrect agendas and exposition from covenant or replacement supporters too.
I was under the impression the Bible says “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11) and that when Christ defeats Israel’s enemies and reveals himself, he will “pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn. 11 On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. 12 The land shall mourn, each family[a] by itself: the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves; 13 the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shimeites by itself, and their wives by themselves; 14 and all the families that are left, each by itself, and their wives by themselves.” (zech 12).
Point being only Covenant theologians believe that only a tiny minority of Jews will be saved, most Zionist Christians believe at some point the majority of Jews will believe in Christ and be saved.
Yes, it is primarily spiritual reasons that the nations surrounding Israel have had a vitriol towards them since Israel’s inception in 1948. They have fended off multiple, multi-national invasions. Hamas and Hezbollah, along with a basket of other radical Muslim groups hate Jews and Israel. The only logical explanation is something beyond merely the desire for the tiny speck of land.
I believe the Jewish people have a right to their own country and be free of terrorist attacks, especially after the Holocaust and Anti-Semitism throughout Europe. However, this Dispensationalist theory does much harm and is a miss-reading of Scripture. Jesus accomplished what the children of Israel could not do. He obeyed the Law perfectly and was without sin. Jesus stated, “It is finished”. Some of the reasons why people misinterpret Scripture is that they do not understand history, Apocalyptic language, similes, metaphors, figures of speech and types. You need to understand large portions of the O.T. especially Ezekiel, Daniel, and Isaiah. The churches John wrote to had a fuller knowledge of all these concepts.
Now, the true Jew (God’s People) is the one circumcised of the heart (St. Paul).
This is just not true of dispensationalism. Many dispensationalist theologians study the Bible from a historical-literary-grammatical interpretation. And the verse about a true Jew doesn’t exclude a future Jewish people coming to have the true circumcision. Same book, Romans, in chapter 11, gives a stern warning to those who think the church replaced Israel.
Like Hamas, many evangelical pretrib millennial dispensationalists would more than love to see an expansive war breakout in the Middle East. Hamas’ desire is to radicalise pro-Arab governments to act against Israel, knowing that provoking Israel to act as it has may cause such radicalisation. For evangelicals, stirring the pot in support of Israel, wish also for a conflagration which will involve the great powers, thereby ushering in the Tribulation and the supposed Rapture of the Church.
How hellishly evil both these two movements are. Surely the evangelicals of that persuasion are fulfilling scripture, but only as the type of church of which we read in Revelations; the one worthy only to be spat out on to the ground.
Do you actually have comments from dispensationalists demonstrating your assertion on what their motives are? In my experience, this assertion is false. That sort of thinking or application of those views in dispensational thought are not there.
Despite a misread of scripture, evangelicals continue to motivate endeavours by directly financing, alongside the machinations of the Israeli government, the settlement of Jews at the cost of Palestinians, Christian and Muslim alike, especially on the West Bank. In the minds of these evangelicals there is a direct link between the need for the modern day settlement of Jews within the borders of ancient Israel, Armageddon and hence the return of Jesus.
“But End Times theology need not be raw to come across as insensitive to the violence suffered by both sides in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” [Fiona André].
My own sense leans into the understanding that imperialism and colonialism have been centrally involved in this “conflict” since it’s beginning. Where the touchstone of both imperialism and colonialism, is: that the existence and interests of some constituencies of human beings, is so effectively ignored by those who have the initial power so to ignore; that tensions in a resultant circumstance then invariably give rise to conflict.
That imperialism and colonialism was once embodied in the empires of the likes of France and Great Britain; their power now more enjoyed by the USA. Where here we have the secular aspects of both expressed.
We then also have both expressed in theology and spirituality, where again the touchstone of this expression is the effective ignoring of the existence and interests of some constituency of persons. Christians and Jews are considered in End Times theology and spirituality; but all other constituencies of human beings appear effectively ignored.
Arguably the Palestinians are the most ignored constituency in the Israel-Palestine situation. Arguably they are the constituency ignored by those and that currently powerful enough to do that ignoring on secular and military and humanitarian and theological and spiritual planes.
Colin, although I think you are partially correct on who has been the winners of history (what you negatively call imperialism or colonialism), is it coincidence that you ignore the Arab nations who were imperial over the Palestinians at several times in history (Ottoman and Jordan)? They too were occupiers and did not give the Palestinians their own state when they had the chance. Israel has tried several times to concede extra land to make the two state solution possible. That sounds like the opposite of ignoring.
My biographically shaped mindset sees me predisposed to foreground those who are negatively subject to the circumstantial power of “the winners of history”. This mindset much focused during adolescence as I consumed material on the Holocaust/Shoah; striving to understand the human beings implicated and involved in that dark event. So the subjectivity and social psychology of perpetrators and victims. Where it seems to me, and generically so, that something crucial and central to what I see as humanity, has to be absent to be such a perpetrator or imperialist or colonialist. A generic absence that is had on all levels and planes of human intersubjectivity. A generic absence that is had across the outworkings of all ideologies and faiths (including, of course, Ottoman and Jordanian instances).
My argument is that this absence (manifesting as an effective disregard for the existence and interests of Palestinians) has leavened the parts played by all involved in the creation of the current State of Israel, is leavening the parts being played by all those supporting that State as it currently exists, is leavening the social psychology of many Jewish citizens of Israel.
I have no sense of the good-will aspect of Israel you refer to regards the two-State possibility. I’m the same age as current Israel, and the historical events known to me contradict this good-will claim. Any facts there being overshadowed by conflicting ideological perception.
Joe, I think your response to Colin’s attempt at a postcolonial critical gloss is mostly on target, but the Ottomans were Turks, not Arabs.
The Ottoman Empire ruled much of West Asia from Istanbul for several centuries before the British and French took the region from them about a century ago and drew many of the current borders of today’s Arab states, including Transjordan/Jordan. Relatively quickly, the Westerners handed over power (and after a ruinous world war, independence) to several previously nomadic Arab tribal leaders who’d rebelled against Turkish rule, and who in turn established or laid the groundwork for today’s much more stationary assortment of absolute monarchies, nationalist dictatorships, and eschatological death cults. These are all the current Arab regimes for whom (to the accurate part of Colin’s point) Palestine is nothing more than a contemporary geopolitical baseball, hatred of Jews an ancient pastime, and the Palestinian Arabs a troublesome constituency to be held at arm’s length.
Sadly most end times gurus don’t apologize when their predictions don’t come to pass. They simply make the same mistakes again by making more predictions. How many times will they ‘cry wolf’ before they realize their errors?
This article lists some of the failed predictions of the Parousia or Rapture or something. They didn’t mention 1666. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_and_claims_for_the_Second_Coming https://www.britannica.com/list/10-failed-doomsday-predictions#:~:text=Because%20the%20Bible%20calls%20666,churches%20and%20about%2013%2C000%20houses.
thank you, Daniel. like other commentors, when people believe it’s the end, I agree why bother. I am so disgusted with evangelicals and prophecy fraud because of my own foolishness. By early eighties I was all in on end times. And you can imagine all those GODLY MEN telling us God is speaking to them. I wish we could practice OT rules. Deut 18:20-22. So much so, I decided no reason to save or get married and here is the best part. I joined a national guard unit by my work. It was an NBC unit. I felt that if the world is to end the best place to be is with that kind of unit in case “per evangelicals I listed to” I may not be ACTUALLY SAVED. Ya knows some Godly person reminds you that THEIR understanding of scripture is all that matters. I cannot say enough bad things about all the frauds and again Greg Lauire is on HIS band wagon. How many Garys are planning on NOT having a life based on these frauds. And they never seem to refund the money for books once it doesn’t happen. Nor do he never admit they were wrong. Some do. most don’t. I also give you Y2K and endless frauds err I mean Amercian evangelicals making money while telling us the “end is nigh”. FYI: NBC= Nuclear Biological and Chemical warfare.
To those building a straw-man: that pretrib dispensationalism automatically reduces to a life application of “why bother”; that is an errant conclusion. I’ve never heard such application and I doubt you can find Greg Laurie or any other pretrib stating such. And if they are, then they (not the whole movement) are not teaching the whole counsel of God and shouldn’t be followed. But just because someone preaches a little on the current events and how they might fit into prophecy does not make them a member of the class you are describing. Paul dealt with the same accusations of easy-believism in Rom 6 and that was an accusation against grace not one’s perspective in future events. Also, boiling your argument down to using a movie (Left Behind) is a further mischaracterization.
I hope what we can all agree on is that this issue is not clear cut and we all need to not be so dogmatic. If someone is confident about their position, understand the issue isn’t clear cut and at least listen and don’t take their advice esp if it tells you to be inactive as Christ followers. Lots of sermons have biblically true principles but it doesn’t mean you reject those true principles if the advice they give is not correctly derived or errant to other scripture. I suspect many of you disagree with Christian nationalism. But did you know that the underpinnings of such application is based on a post-mil perspective?
I quote from “Alternative”, Vol. IV, #1: “Dispensationalism involves much more than just a chronology of end events. It involves, as Clarence Bass says, “some basic principles of interpretation that depart radically from the historic Christian faith” (Backgrounds of Dispensationalism, p. 17). It also carries with it serious ecclesiological and soteriological implications.” Add to that the sensationalism and continued manipulation of people who desperately feel the need to be insiders with insider information their prophecy teachers give them. One prominent fellow recently claimed to know who the anti-Christ is. Tying current events to a questionable interpretative framework is nothing more than speculation. Not only that, but many Dispensationalists view those of us who are not Dispensational as being lesser, 2nd class Christians or not Christian at all.
Leave it to RNS to imply that politically distracted celebrity preachers like Robert Jeffress and old-school televangelist hustlers like John Hagee speak for a broad swath of American evangelicals, or maybe even all of us. No wonder so many of us are running away from the label; it’s not just that it’s embarrassing to be associated with figures like these. The term has been misused and stretched so much by non-adherent politicians and journalists for so long, it’s become functionally meaningless.