{"id":10866,"date":"2017-12-28T05:26:56","date_gmt":"2017-12-28T05:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=10866"},"modified":"2017-12-29T05:34:13","modified_gmt":"2017-12-29T05:34:13","slug":"why-trumps-evangelical-supporters-welcome-his-move-on-jerusalem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/why-trumps-evangelical-supporters-welcome-his-move-on-jerusalem\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Trump’s evangelical supporters welcome his move on Jerusalem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Julie Ingersoll<\/a>, University of North Florida<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

President Trump\u2019s announcement on Wednesday, Dec. 6 that the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel received widespread criticism<\/a>. Observers quickly recognized the decision as related not so much to national security concerns as to domestic U.S. politics and promises candidate Trump made to his evangelical supporters, who welcomed the announcement.<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Historian Diana Butler Bass<\/a> posted on Twitter<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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\u201cOf all the possible theological dog-whistles to his evangelical base, this is the biggest. Trump is reminding them that he is carrying out God\u2019s will to these Last Days.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It is true that evangelicals have often noted that their support for Trump is based in their conviction that God can use the unlikeliest of men to enact his will<\/a>. But how did conservative American Christians become invested in such a fine point of Middle East policy as whether the U.S. Embassy is in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem?<\/p>\n

For many of President Trump\u2019s evangelical supporters this is a key step in the progression of events leading to the second coming of Jesus. There\u2019s an interesting story as to how that came to be.<\/p>\n

Ushering in the kingdom of God<\/h2>\n

The nation of Israel and the role of the city of Jerusalem are central in the \u201cend-times\u201d theology \u2013 a form of what is known as \u201cpre-millennialism\u201d<\/a> \u2013 embraced by many American conservative Protestants. \u200b<\/p>\n

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\n Evangelical Christians from various countries wave flags as they show their support for Israel in Jerusalem in a march held in October 2015.<\/span>
\n AP Photo\/Sebastian Scheiner, File)<\/span><\/span>
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While this theology is often thought of as a \u201cliteral\u201d reading of the Bible, it\u2019s actually a reasonably new interpretation that dates to the 19th century and relates to the work of Bible teacher John Nelson Darby.<\/p>\n

According to Darby, for this to happen the Jewish people must have control of Jerusalem and build a third Jewish temple on the site where the first and second temples \u2013 destroyed centuries ago by the Babylonians and Romans \u2013 once were. In Darby\u2019s view this was a necessary precursor to<\/a> the rapture, when believers would be \u201ctaken up\u201d by Christ to escape the worst of the seven-year-period of suffering and turmoil on Earth: the Great Tribulation. This is to be followed by the cosmic battle between good and evil called Armageddon<\/a> at which Satan will be defeated and Christ will establish his earthly kingdom. All of this became eminently more possible when the modern state of Israel was established in the 1940s.<\/p>\n

But to understand the power of this way of looking at the world, it is necessary to do more than point to theological tenets. It is their dissemination through culture that determines which thought systems take hold and which ones are lost to history.<\/p>\n

As author of \u201cBuilding God\u2019s Kingdom<\/a>,\u201d I focus on various aspects of conservative American Protestantism in American culture and politics. In my research I have seen how some thought systems get lost in history and others take hold. <\/p>\n

Here is what happened with the end-time narrative that made it a core undercurrent to how these Christians look at the world and history. <\/p>\n

The origins of this narrative<\/h2>\n

The end-times framework was popularized in the 1970s with an inexpensive and widely available paperback by evangelist and Christian writer Hal Lindsey called \u201cThe Late Great Planet Earth.\u201d Lindsey argued that the establishment of the state of Israel in the 1940s set up a chain of events that would lead to Jesus\u2019s return<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\n Waiting For The Word<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/span>
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He calculated a date for that return in the 1980s. Lindsey, like many end-times prognosticators before him, argued that he lived in the \u201cfirst time in history\u201d when the biblical prophecies could possibly be fulfilled. This, he thought, was due in large part to the reestablishment of Israel.<\/p>\n

Despite his claim to be reading the Bible literally, Lindsey\u2019s interpretation was far from literal. He said, for example, that the locusts predicted in the one of the plagues in the book of Revelation were \u201creally\u201d helicopters. <\/p>\n

As adults were reading Lindsey\u2019s book, a generation of young people watched an \u201cevangelistic\u201d film, \u201cA Thief in the Night,\u201d in church services and youth group meetings. <\/p>\n

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