Prophecy .. Israel Will Be Protected by America Once Again

JERUSALEM (RNS) — When American and Israeli officials inaugurated the first-ever U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem Monday (May fourteen) in a festive red, white and blueish ceremony, more than than 100 evangelical Christians, including erstwhile U.S. congresswoman Michele Bachmann, were on hand.

So were scores of American Jews, including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, many of them Orthodox.

President Trump'south December 2017 decision to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has spurred criticism from those who believe the conclusion will impede a broader peace settlement in the Middle East by denying Palestinian claims to the urban center. It has also brought fears of increased violence. (As of this writing, at least 58 Palestinian deaths have been reported along State of israel'due south border with Gaza in protests confronting the embassy's relocation.)

Palestinian medics and protesters evacuate a wounded youth during a protestation at the Gaza Strip's border with Israel, due east of Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, on May 14, 2018. Thousands of Palestinians are protesting well-nigh Gaza's border with Israel, as Israel prepared for the festive inauguration of a new U.S. Embassy in contested Jerusalem. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

But for some evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews, the embassy'southward relocation is not only a smart political move but a fulfillment of divine prophecy.

"We see the diplomatic mission equally crucial to God's timing to bring about the revelation of the messiah," the Rev. David Swaggerty, the leader of CharismaLife Ministries in Columbus, Ohio, said following a articulation Christian-Jewish Bible study session hosted at the Israeli parliament the twenty-four hours before the embassy ceremony.

"For evangelical Christians the embassy move is function of eschatology," the expectation of what volition transpire at the end of times," explained Rabbi David Rosen, director of the American Jewish Committee's Department of Interreligious Affairs."The render of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland and the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem is seen equally a phase ultimately leading to the total messianic era."

For religious Jews, too, moving the embassy from Tel Aviv represents a step toward redemption and the coming of the messianic era. "Certainly, when the world's most powerful nation establishes its diplomatic mission in our eternal uppercase, we see the further realization of the ancient prophecy of how we have come home to rejoice in this ancient city," said Rabbi David Stav, founder of the Tzohar rabbinical organization in Israel.

More than 150 Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians studied the Hebrew Bible together in the Israeli parliament on May 13, 2018, a day before the opening of the U.Due south. Embassy in Jerusalem. RNS photo by Michele Chabin

A major difference between evangelical Christian hopes and Jewish views is timing. Some Christian believers think the last appearance is just effectually the corner, Rosen pointed out, while Jews "recognize that it can take a long time before fruition."

The time frame has not been an obstruction to shared joy over the diplomatic mission move, which has become the latest cause for celebration in a warming trend between the ii faith groups over the past few decades.

In 1948, when the Un voted to create both a Jewish country and an Arab state, it envisioned Jerusalem equally an international city with no particular sovereignty.But after Arab armies attacked the fledgling Jewish land, Israel took control of W Jerusalem and Jordan took control over Due east Jerusalem.

Israel captured E Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East war and annexed the disputed territory in 1980, just until December no nation had recognized Israeli sovereignty over any part of the urban center, which is holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Tommy Waller, an evangelical Christian from Missouri, said his community began to reassess its relationship with the Jewish people afterward Israel was founded.

Tommy Waller, an evangelical Christian from Missouri, flew to State of israel this week to take part in the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. RNS photo past Michele Chabin

"Until then nosotros were still into replacement theology. We felt that God was punishing the Jews" for not accepting Jesus, he said in an interview at the Knesset, the Israel parliament. "And and so Israel was established, exactly where God said it would be established. I meet the hand of God in this and the relocation of the embassy."

Waller is so convinced that Jews have the right to rule Jerusalem and to live in what was once the biblical land of State of israel, that he founded Hayovel, an arrangement that trains Christians to become "positive ambassadors" for Jewish settlements in "Judea and Samaria," biblical terms for the West Banking concern.

Swaggerty, the leader of CharismaLife Ministries, said his ministry helps fund the immigration of diaspora Jews to Israel — the ingathering of the Jews to Zion is also an integral part of biblical prophesy — without attempting to convert them to Christianity.

"Proselytizing is non in our vocabulary," the pastor said emphatically, lest anyone get the idea that his motivation is to catechumen Jews to Christianity.

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, an organization that seeks to deepen the bonds between evangelical Christians and the Jewish people, said that many Orthodox Jews and evangelical supporters of Israel share a "common spiritual base."

Once Christians find the Jewish roots of their Christian faith, Eckstein said, they become eager to reach out to Jews and, often, seek forgiveness for Christian-led persecution.

"For 2,000 years Christians were our enemies. Today we realize that Christians are our best friends. We are all happy virtually the embassy's move to Jerusalem," Eckstein said.

Which is not to say that all religious leaders are rejoicing at the embassy move. The vast majority of Holy Land Christians identify equally Palestinians, according to the Pew Enquiry Heart, and, similar their Muslim counterparts, desire Eastward Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian land.

In a Dec. 6 letter to President Trump, leaders of local Holy State churches, from Catholic and Orthodox to evangelical, pleaded with the president not to relocate the diplomatic mission.

"We are sure that such steps volition yield increased hatred, conflict, violence and suffering in Jerusalem and the Holy Country, moving us farther from the goal of unity and deeper toward destructive division," the leaders said.

The ties between Christians and Jews at the end of the Bible lesson at the Knesset, however, could not take been stronger. Bachmann, the old congresswoman, asked for "forgiveness from the Jewish people for the horrible and arrogant way Christians — myself included — treated and regarded the Jewish people. … I repent profoundly and ask forgiveness from the Almighty God that these statements brought pain."

"It has shown me how ignorant I am. I didn't come here with the answers," Bachmann told RNS.

Concluding the Knesset event, Rabbi Tuly Weisz, noted how much Christian-Jewish dialog and common respect has grown since Israel's founding.

"Nosotros are walking on a tight bridge and trying to change it into an viii-lane highway. We are in the golden age of Jewish-Christian relations," Weisz said.

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Source: https://religionnews.com/2018/05/14/some-christians-and-jews-hail-embassy-move-to-jerusalem-as-key-to-a-biblical-plan/

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