When I was a child in a Baptist church, I was fascinated by the theology of the end times. It wasn’t until later in life that I realized how ahistorical and unacademic most of that theology was.
I read the Left Behind series and watched movies like Revelation and Tribulation which featured Jack Van Impe and John Hagee. In my church, they once brought in a man who told us that he was pretty convinced that the rapture would happen that year, which was around 1998. At that time, Bill Clinton was the enemy who was going to persecute Christians.
Will McCorkle
Later, movies became somewhat entertaining for my youth group friend and me. We even make our own movie parodies.
It would be easy to dismiss this. as poor but relatively harmless theology from people who have not studied in depth the genre of post-apocalyptic writing into which Revelation falls. I don’t believe my church or its leaders had nefarious motives in teaching this; It was all they knew.
However, as war and war crimes continue in Gaza, this type of theology that places Israel at the center of God’s plan for the end times has begun to directly affect our foreign policy and aided the brutal regime of Benjamin Netanyahu.
The most prominent example of this was when House Speaker Mike Johnson made all the necessary commitments to obtain military aid for Israel. As he stated: “We have to make sure the entire world understands that Israel is not alone and that God is going to bless the nation that blesses Israel. …We understand that that is our role. It is also our biblical admonition. This is something that is an article of faith for us. It also happens to be great foreign policy.”
Of course, this theology It is a highly simplified and distorted view of Jesus’ kingdom of God, but it is reinforced by pastors like John Hagee, who met with Johnson shortly before Johnson helped secure the military aid package for Israel. The Constitution and human rights come second to a distorted biblical view of Israel’s role.
The bad end-times theological rise of the 1990s and early 2000s is now having a devastating influence on our foreign policy and allowing Netanyahu to continue what the world community is beginning to label as genocide.
A distorted theology has allowed Christians in America to greatly oppose the message of Jesus. It must be surprising to the rest of the world community, which cannot understand how those who claim to follow the Prince of Peace can turn a blind eye to (or worse, directly support) Netanyahu’s war crimes.
It’s time for us to repent and start following Jesus instead of a dangerous theology that has nothing to do with him.
Will McCorkle He serves as a professor of education in Charleston, South Carolina, and is a member of the board of directors of Practice Mercy Border Ministries. He writes about issues of immigration, peace and faith.
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Now comes the darkness. Maybe there’s new hope beyond | Analysis by Erich Bridges
‘ This article may contain information published by third parties, some details of this article were extracted from the following source: baptistnews.com ‘
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