Many right-wing Israelis were disturbed by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate’s recent ruling banning Jews from participating in the evangelical Zionist Feast of Tabernacles parade in Jerusalem and the conference that followed.
The ruling was triggered by Richard Booker’s planned tour of an army base before Sukkot. Why the concern? Booker is an authority among evangelical Zionists on Israel and end-time prophecy. His book Blow the Trumpet in Zion predicts that up to ten million Jews will be killed (and eternally damned) in an end-time holocaust because two-thirds of the Jewish people living at that time will refuse to accept Jesus during a massive missionary effort targeting them for conversion.
Actually, this is a common concept among evangelicals.
Evangelical churches are adopting and financing Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. The lead evangelical church in this arrangement distributes Booker’s book as representing its end-time views on Israel. Also, David Pawson, one of the speakers at this year’s conference that followed the Sukkot parade, is quoted in Family Restoration magazine as urging the conversion of Jews to Jesus now.
Earlier this year, attendees at AIPAC’s annual conference gave Dr. John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) a thunderous ovation when he pledged his organization would never target Jews for conversion. Within a matter of days, Hagee reneged on that pledge. During a live broadcast he was ecstatic that his pet project, Daystar Christian Television Network, had, despite opposition by rabbis, obtained a million-dollar license to reach every home in Israel with the Gospel, day and night, 24/7.
Hagee enthused, “It’s just all I can do to keep from getting up and dancing. It’s a joy and it’s a dream come true. If we are able to preach the Gospel without reservation…it’s a major breakthrough.”
What an admission of Hagee’s conversion agenda!
After a year of regular daily missionary pitches, Hot Cable TV is trying to pull the plug on Daystar. Yet many Israeli leaders continue to defend the friendship of evangelical Zionists. Why? Because evangelical Zionists donate millions of dollars to various noble causes in Israel.
Some evangelicals call this “provoking Jews to jealously by acts of love to convert.” Rabbi Michael Skobac of Jews for Judaism calls it “making nice to lubricate the conversion process.”
I say to Jewish leaders: Accept the evangelicals’ money. Given Christianity’s history with the Jewish people, they owe Israel every penny of it. Thankfully, since the 1800’s there have been ardent Christian Zionists with no hidden agenda. But most evangelical Zionists believe Jews must accept Jesus as their savior before his return or be damned.
When evangelical Zionists march in the streets of Jerusalem shouting “We love Israel,” one is tempted to ask how many of them really mean they love a Christian Israel. Or how many of them believe, with Richard Booker, that a future holocaust awaits ten million Jews?
Meanwhile, evangelicals will continue to raise millions of dollars to fly Jews to Israel from every nook and corner of the earth. In their view, Israel must be preserved as a prophetic sign of Jesus’s imminent return. Good. As I wrote above, accept their money. But be sure to stand strong against any conversion agenda. And stop the charade of flattery. It is pushing some Jews into the evangelicals’ web of conversion. I have seen this happen.
Many Jewish leaders insist that evangelicals have no conversion agenda. Evangelicals themselves can easily put an end to any doubts by following the example of the Christian Scholars Group on Christian-Jewish Relations, composed of American Catholic and non-evangelical Protestant scholars, which in 2002 issued the following declaration:
“In view of our conviction that Jews are in an eternal covenant with God, we renounce missionary efforts directed at converting Jews.”
These are Christians who don’t necessarily believe that Israel has any biblical basis and who in some cases are even pro-Palestinian, yet they wanted to publicly “renounce missionary efforts directed at converting Jews.”
If pro-Palestinian Christians can make such a declaration, I urge all CUFI leaders and pastors to publicly state, without evasive language, that they too have no missionary agenda and that they publicly renounce all financing of missionary efforts by others directed at converting Jews.