Mainline Christians Slowly Realize Modern Israel's Relevance

From Crosswalk.com

So says Moshe Auman, at the end of a 35-year career with Israel's foreign ministry. Well, who better than a career diplomat to know, or at least be able to figure out, current trends in how the nations (Hebrew goyim; Greek ethnoi, Latin gentes, or in the most common expression, "Gentiles") view the Jews? Here he concentrates on the so-called mainline denominations of Christendom, or more particularly of Protestantism--Presbyterianism, Methodism, the Anglican-Episcopal Church, and the Lutheran Church (with which the Reformation began). These he contrasts with the evangelical denominations and non-denominational groups--and I would have to include my own Baptist denomination in that evangelical group.

Mr. Auman nails the central flaw in Protestant thinking ever since the Reformation began: while they broke away from Catholic doctrines of trans-substantiation, purgatory, and so on, they did not abandon the worst of the Catholic Church's flawed positions: replacement theology. Replacementism essentially says that all the blessings originally granted to national Israel (by which I mean ethnic Jews, not necessarily a nation-state now called The Republic of Israel) now belong to the church--that is, to all Christians. James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, held the same attitude. His Annals of the World end with the Sack of Jerusalem in AD 70, and he says quite plainly that the era of the Jews was over at that time.

Well, you could understand Protestants and Catholics alike taking that attitude--though we Baptists never did. We always knew that the Jews would come back to the land of their ancestors someday; we just never knew how.

And then, in the century just past, they did. And Mr. Auman has now discovered that the mainline Protestants are beginning to realize what we Baptists have always known--that God is not through with national Israel at all. The very forming of the nation-state called the Republic of Israel was a miracle in itself--and contrary to constant Arab carping, Israel got no substantial help from the USA or the USSR back then. Their hanging on in the face of overwhelming odds is a continuing miracle. And the Bible predicts more such miracles to come.

If, at last, a larger number of Christians are beginning to understand that, that's very refreshing indeed.