D. James Kennedy and Biblical Significance of the Modern State of Israel
by James Jacob Prasch
Discredited Y2K & “˜Gospel In The Stars’ Hype Artist Enlists in Presbyterian War Against Israel And Israel’s Christian Friends
As The Presbyterian Church in its birthplace in Scotland has gone down the road of homosexual ordination, and higher critical liberal theology “˜holding the form of religion but denying its power’ dominates in most key Presbyterian and Reformed seminaries ““ the spiritually, theologically, morally and numerically declining Presbyterianism of the Western world has tried to reinvent itself as a social activist institution with a political agenda. The rallying point for Presbyterianism’s attempts to find relevance in a post Christian/neo pagan Western world has been to attack Israel and Evangelical Christians supportive of the eschatological importance of Israel.
This effort by the Calvinistic Presbyterian sect constitutes a further doctrinal departure from the traditional Presbyterian and Reformed heritage of both the Scottish Presbyterians such as Samuel Rutherford in the heyday of Calvinistic Presbyterian theological dynamism in the “˜Covenanter Era’ who strongly affirmed the prophetic purposes of God for Israel and The Jews, and The English Puritan Calvinists such as John Lightfoot, John Robinson, and Oliver Cromwell. Other major Calvinistic figures holding to a prophetic destiny for Israel and The Jews included Charles Spurgeon, Wilbur Wilberforce, and The Earl of Shaftsbury.
As the Saudi Arabians and Iran hang or decapitate people for becoming Christians, as the 12 year death toll of martyred Christians in Sudan reaches 2.3 million, and as even in moderate Arab countries like Jordan over 1,000 women are murdered ‚ annually by their own families in Islamic honor killings and Egypt where Christians face repeated persecution with the de facto complicity of The Egyptian government,
The Presbyterian Church of America has decided to take action. Only instead of acting on behalf of the Christian victims of human rights abuses in The Middle East often facing virtual genocide in Islamic countries, ‚ The Presbyterians have acted against Israel, the one country in The Middle East where the human and civil rights and religious freedom ‚ of Arab Christians are protected. In their quest to find a meaningful reason to continue to exist in an age of popular decline, it has been more convenient for The Presbyterians to turn a deaf ear to the cries of ‚ Christians suffering at the hands of Islamic aggression and bully a small democratic nation . that assures the security of Middle Eastern Christians, and stands up to Islamic aggression. The anti Israel action includes demands for boycotts and disinvestment.
While the Saudi Mutaweh arrest, flog, and execute people for the mere crime of becoming a Christian, no one would call for a boycott of Saudi oil. The leader of the nation’s largest Reformed Church of this ilk is “˜Positive Thinking’ Swami Robert Schuller, the mentor of Church Growth mogul Bill Hybels and his of sorts imitator, Rick Warren. Schuller, (who said “˜Jesus Christ went to the cross to magnify His ego”) ‚ sees his church success seminars attended by homosexual and lesbian clergy. Upon inviting the Islamic Grand Mufti of Damascus to his pulpit , Schuller stated that “it would not trouble him if his grandchildren became Moslems”, while Hybels invited Islamic clergy to his Willow Creek pulpit to explain Islam and his teaching elder recently issued a letter opposing Israel.
Now a supposedly Evangelical faction of Reformed Presbyterianism has entered the fray, led by D. James Kennedy, the sensationalist alarmist left discredited by the failures of his predicted Y2K cataclysmic scenario to materialize. Kennedy’s other antics have included ‚ a strange belief in the “˜Gospel In The Stars’ dismissed as biblically groundless by most conservative academics and denounced as hybrid of ‚ Christianity and pagan astrology by others. What can only be described as a lunatic fringe ‚ of hyper Calvinistic extremists such as Kennedy, reconstructionist Gary North, and R.C. Sproul ‚ (who shares Kennedy’s “˜gospel in the stars’ version of Christianity), misled many u8ndiscerning Evangelical Christians into an almost frantic panic, driven frenzy with forebodings of global catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions to be ignited by the failure of embedded micro chip at the onset of the new millennium they forecasted from their pulpits. While now, as a result, many thinking people reject Kennedy as a something of a religious kook void of serious credibility, he still commands something of a following among his Presbyterian Reformed devotees.
In his apparent attempts to recover face, Kennedy has sought other issues to sensationalize in the aftermath of his “˜gospel in the stars’ and “Y2K” shams.
Together with the Presbyterian Knox Seminary, Kennedy has joined the Presbyterian war against Zionism and its Christian supporters in a circulated ‚ statement, falsely attributing to Christian supporters of Israel things few of them believe and ignoring key New Testament passages supporting a prophetic future for Israel.
Jesus Himself twice stated explicitly that the Jews would need not only to be in their ancient land but in their ancient capital prior to His return (Luke 21:24, Matthew 23: 37-39). Jesus also implicitly confirmed a national restoration of the Kingdom To The Jews (Acts 1: 6-8), and speaking in the first Person the pre-incarnate Christ states the need for the Jews to be in Israel and Jerusalem upon His return to “look upon him whom they have pierced” ‚ recognizing the one rejected as their Messiah (Zechariah 12:1 &10). To sustain their views, Kennedy’s and the Reformed camp must ignore such direct statements by Jesus and reject engage in the pseudo exegetical Gnostic practice of “˜spiritualizing’ bible texts naming “˜Israel’ as meaning the church, and spiritualizing major portions of the Book of Revelation predicting future events in the land of Israel (such as Revelation Chapter 16). As with all Gnostics, a symbolic meaning void of exegetical justification is invented to ascribe another meaning to what a biblical text in context says in light of co-texts. The growth of Gnosticism in the church, often demonstrated in the infiltration of New Age ideas into modern Christian thought in hyper Charismatic circles, is again co-equally prominent among Kennedy’s Presbyterians as evidenced in their “˜gospel in the stars’ beliefs.
Other means by which Kennedy’s Reformed camp deny a prophetic agenda for Israel is the use of a Preterist approach to eschatology, claiming The Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24& 25, Like 21 etc., and The Book of Revelation) have no future meaning on the false assertion that these events transpired in 70AD with the destruction of The Temple. The fact that Jesus did not return in 70AD , separate sheep from goats in 70AD giving people their rewards based on what they did with their talents is again simply deleted from their consideration, as is the fact that their own patriarch John Calvin rejected their misuse of biblical passages in Matthew chapters 10 & 16 to somehow content for their assertions.
The hollow basis of the Presbyterian attacks is a belief in Replacement Theology, which rejects the clear meaning of the 9th, 10th, and 11th chapters of St, Paul’s epistle to The Romans (which teaches non-Jewish Christians are spiritually in-grafted into the salvation promising covenants with Israel) , and refuses to address the fact that biblically, Jesus Christ never made a covenant with the Christian church, but that The New Covenant was made with Israel and The Jews (Jeremiah31:31). Biblically, if God is finished with His covenants with Israel, He is automatically finished with The Christian Church since the Christian Church has never had a covenant with God, but Born Again non Jews are spiritually incorporated into the New Covenant made with Israel, while Jews rejecting their Messiah become cut off from what St. Paul says is their own tree.
From Calvin’s theocratic police state in Geneva mimicked by John Knox and his Presbyterians in Scotland complete with burning theological opponents alive in the
Name of Jesus Christ, to the Puritan War on English culture and the inter-Calvinist wars when the Puritan Calvinists and Presbyterian Calvinists butchered each other in The Name of Jesus Christ, to the apartheid of the South African Dutch Reformed Church and Segregation and pro slavery positions of American Southern Calvinists, to the Reformed witch hunts in Salem, Massachusetts, Reformed Protestants have not always had a very good name. But the name is getting worse,
Archaeology, confirms the historical biblical record all substantiate that the Jews are the earliest post Canaanite indigenous people of The West Bank, and an indigenous people by definition cannot occupy their ancestral homeland; a Jew cannot occupy Judea & Samaria anymore than an Apache can occupy Arizona or than Maori can occupy New Zealand. Under international law, only UN Security Council Resolutions have legal weight. The applicable resolutions are 242 and 338 which never mention a “˜Palestinian State’ (because a Palestinian state has never legally or historically existed) or call for an Israeli withdrawal from The West Bank, ‚ but only for a withdrawal to undefined defensible borders. By the conventions of international law, The West Bank, ‚ (Jordanian before 1967, not “˜Palestinian’) is legally defined as “disputed territory” not “˜occupied territory”, since Jordan relinquished claim and no Palestinian state has ever existed. The misuse of the term “˜occupied’ is the invention of the Islamic world propagated by media bias.
The hypocrisy of Presbyterian support of the Islamic demands that Israel vacate its ancient homeland in acquiescence to Moslem claims based on the jihadist political ““religious dogma of radical Islam, to a land divinely promised to The Jews while Moslem states massacre the Christians that the Jewish state protects is obvious.
From the murder of Theo Van Gough in Holland for making a film about women’s rights in the Islamic countries to the death order on Salman Rushdie for writing a book in Britain, the story is always the same. The non Moslem, (called infidel), must bow the knee to Islam’s demands and never criticize Islam or the radical Moslem will use violence, terrorism, and murder until they get their demand. Israel’s only crime is saying no to this terror and intimidation cannot be ignored by The Presbyterians, but the genocidal extermination of Christians in Islamic countries can be.
Needless to say that Kennedy and his colleagues also ignore the contrary opinions of Arab Evangelicals who are pro Israel such as Yosef Fara, Wahlid Shoebat, and Assis Shorush, preferring to be aligned with the position of non Evangelicals in the theological liberal, ecumenical, and liberation theology axis of modern christendom.
As illogical and hypocritical as this may be however, what else should be expected from mainstream Presbyterianism? What else should be expected from a denomination that ordains homosexuals and lesbians? What else should be expected from a church that has departed so far from the convictions of its own founders yet hypocritically retain the same name? What is to be expected from pseudo scriptural religious fruitcakes who preach “˜the gospel in the stars’ or scare mongering Y2K theocrats who have consequently reduced themselves to the perceived status of hucksters, charlatans , and religious con men in the eyes of so many?
The path taken by popular Presbyterianism regarding Israel is consistent with the general spiritual, theological, and moral decline that characterizes most of contemporary Presbyterianism.
Well done D. James Kennedy ““ your Y2K fiasco, your Gospel In The Stars fantasy, and now your full blown religious hypocrisy. But exactly what kind of twisted lunacy do you plan to attempt for your next trick?
