Yeah, I don’t think he realizes why that is:
Well before he was asked to offer a prayer at Monday’s ceremony marking the U.S. Embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, earning the enmity of Mitt Romney, Pastor Robert Jeffress offered tangential insight into why he and many evangelicals think the move was so important.
“Jerusalem has been the object of the affection of both Jews and Christians down through history and the touchstone of prophecy,” Jeffress told CNN last year. “But, most importantly, God gave Jerusalem — and the rest of the Holy Land — to the Jewish people.”
The latter half of that quote hints at the deep religious meaning of the existence of Israel for Jeffress and other Christians. As University of North Texas professor Elizabeth Oldmixon told Vox last year, the issue of recognizing Jerusalem is inextricable from that belief.
“The tenet of Christian Zionism is that God’s promise of the Holy Land to the Jews is eternal. It’s not just something in antiquity,” Oldmixon said. “When we talk about the Holy Land, God’s promise of the Holy Land, we’re talking about real estate on both sides of the Jordan River. So the sense of a greater Israel and expansionism is really important to this community. Jerusalem is just central to that. It’s viewed as a historical and biblical capital.”
Polling bolsters Oldmixon’s explanation. In December, LifeWay Research conducted a poll evaluating the views of evangelical Americans on issues related to Israel and the politics of the Middle East. (The definition used to identify evangelicals, we’ll note, was more specific than most polls necessitate.) Among the questions was one about the biblical promise of the Holy Land to Abraham and his descendants. Two-thirds of respondents strongly agreed that the promise was an eternal one from God.
But it’s also worth picking out another part of what Jeffress said to CNN. Jerusalem, he said, is “the touchstone of prophecy.” That prophecy is the biblical prophecy of the return of Jesus Christ and the beginning of the Rapture — the end times.
“What kick-starts the end times into motion is Israel’s political boundaries being reestablished to what God promised the Israelites according to the Bible,” Pastor Nate Pyle told Newsweek in January.
This is not an uncommon view.
The LifeWay poll found that 80 percent of evangelicals believed that the creation of Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy that would bring about Christ’s return.
They don’t call it nuclear Armageddon for nothing.
Do you think he doesn’t know, doesn’t care, or both? I’m going to guess it’s door number 3.