Lukas Eidolon

The Founder and Chief Editor of Metanaissance.

[Editors Note: This article was originally published at The Warden Post on December 12, 2017.]

On December 6th 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and announced his attention to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, reversing decades of United States neutrality on the the issue.

The move was criticized by many nations and sparked a wave of protests across the Palestinian territories. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah denounced President Trump and called for a Third Intifada to waged against the Jewish State in the wake of the decision.

Now, I am under no impressions that anyone reading this considers themselves to be a friend of the State of Israel. Zionism and the establishment of the Jewish State has had (putting it mildly) drastic consequences for the Middle East and the Israel lobby in the United States has had overwhelming influence over how American policy is conducted in that region. Regardless, the decision should come as no surprise, as it certainly did not to this author. The relationship between America and Israel has had tragic consequences for, not just the United States, but for the entire Middle East and certainly for the Palestinian people. But such a relationship should not be considered surprising— moreover, it was a relationship more or less predestined to happen in a country for whose very foundation was fertile ground for Protestantism.

Christian support for a return of Jews to the Holy Land goes as far back as the Protestant Reformation, particularly within the Puritans who migrated to the New England colonies. U.S. President John Adam’s even remarked that, “I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation” believing once a future “Judean” state was established, they would become Unitarian Christians.1  However, for our purposes, the origins of Christian Zionism can be traced back to an Anglo-Irish Bible teacher by the name of John Nelson Darby. Darby is credited with being the father of Dispensationalism, a theological school of thought that would have a deep impact on American Protestantism. Dispensationalism is a pre-Tribulational school of Christian theology that states that the Seven Years Tribulation is to take place somewhere in the imminent future. This line of thought in particular stresses the importance of the Jewish people in relation to God’s plan for the End of Days. According to Dispensationalism, a future ‘kingdom’ of Israel will exist somewhere in the future, which will be beset on all sides by enemies of God. Dispensationalists point to Isaiah 66:8 and the 1948 founding of the State of Israel as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy:

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