The Bible and the Middle East

Does Bible study matter - I mean, in the real world? Who cares what anyone thinks of Adam or Abraham, whether you're pre-, a-, or post-mil, when missiles are flying from Israel to Iran and back?

Yes, Bible study matters, especially in the midst of today's war in the Middle East.

Israel exists as a modern state partly because English and American leaders have been gripped by a vision of the future of the Jewish people.

Lord Balfour's 1917 letter lending British support to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" was the fruit of several centuries of British Christian Zionism.

What became known as the Balfour Declaration was, in the opinion of one historian, "a triumph as much for Christian Zionism as for Jewish Zionism."

In his cleverly-titled Arc of the Covenant , Walter Russell Mead says the same was true in the U.S.: “Long before the modern Zionist movement appeared among Jews, non-Jewish Americans for both religious and secular reasons found themselves looking toward the establishment of a Jewish state in the Middle East as an important signpost on the road to a better world.”

It's hard to imagine the U.S. would give such ardent and uncritical support to Israel if we didn't believe Israel's very existence fulfills biblical prophecy.

But that's a misreading of Scripture. Prophecies of Israel's restoration to the land are about the return from Babylonian exile, and ultimately about Israel fulfilled in Jesus and His body.

Friends and enemies of Israel operate with what Mead calls a "Jewcentric" view of the Middle East. That's not good for Jews, for their neighbors, or for America.

If we get the theology right, American Christians might be able to formulate a less knee-jerk, a more just stance toward the Middle East.

Does Bible study matter? Right now , it couldn't matter more.