Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
Court evangelical makes ludicrous claim about his support for Jerusalem policy

Court evangelical makes ludicrous claim about his support for Jerusalem policy

Last updated on: December 18, 2017 at 5:52 pm by Fred Clark

Court evangelical makes ludicrous claim about his support for Jerusalem policy 2017-12-18T17:52:20-05:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Johnnie Moore, the former communications VP at Liberty University who now identifies himself as “an informal spokesperson for the evangelicals who advise the Trump administration,” wants you to know that white evangelical support for Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has nothing at all to do with Rapture folklore, premillennial dispensationalism, “Bible prophecy,” or any of the End Times theology taught at Liberty (home of the LaHaye Ice Center and the LaHaye Recreation and Fitness Center).

Certainly not. Such a thing never entered the mind of any red-blooded American follower of Christ and Trump. That’s just an unfair misperception being promoted by the crooked liberal media, Moore says.

The truth, Moore says, is that “Evangelicals support Trump’s Jerusalem decision because we care about the Palestinians“:

Evangelicals in the United States supported President Trump’s decision precisely because of their concern for the Palestinians in addition to their special relationship with Israel and the Jewish people.

Evangelicals are also tired of seeing innocent Palestinians abused and used by tyrants and terrorists. …

Evangelicals close to the administration did not support the president’s decision because we favor Jews over Arabs nor for any obscure (and highly contested, I might add) theological reasons like those speculated about, reported upon and sensationalized in recent days.

Evangelicals supported the decision because we believe it was the smart and right thing to do. Ours was a geopolitical opinion, and not a theological one.

Johnnie Moore exits the RNS offices after dropping off his latest column.

Johnnie Moore conducts a staff meeting at his Kairos PR firm.

I’m intimately familiar with this line of argument. It’s identical to what I used to hear from corporate executives back when I was working on the campaign for divestment from Apartheid South Africa. “Constructive engagement,” the executives all said. “We’re staying because we care for black South Africans and only want what’s best for them.”

They’d repeat these stale talking-points while smirking disingenuously. I appreciated that. Unlike Moore, they at least had the courtesy not to pretend that they expected anyone to find their self-serving cover story credible.

The weirdest thing about Moore’s column peddling this line is his apparent expectation that people reading what he writes for Religion News Service won’t be able just as easily to glance over at white evangelical media — at the websites, TV, radio, and print publications where his people are talking candidly amongst themselves.

Let’s click over to the Christian Broadcasting Network (“the Christian perspective”!) and see how “Trump’s Jerusalem decision” is being discussed there:

Hmm, nothing there about “we care about Palestinians” (Gordon Robertson’s commentary paints them as violent, sub-humans displaying an insufficient gratitude for the benefits of colonialism). But there’s a great deal about the “Biblical Significance” of America’s Jerusalem embassy and about whether it’s “an Opportunity to Build Third Temple.” None of what CBN’s writers have to say contradicts any of the reporting about theological views driving evangelical support — the reporting that Moore complains is sensationalistic. The articles we looked at earlier today describe the very same views described and advocated by the CBN writers.

In short — according to CBN, according to everyone who writes for CBN, and according to the millions of white evangelicals who read CBN — Johnnie Moore is full of it.

For a more honest representation of why white evangelicals “support Trump’s Jerusalem decision,” let’s turn to one of those CBN pieces: “‘Biblical Timing of Absolute Precision’: John Hagee Praises Trump’s Jerusalem Decision.” CBN is reporting on the reaction from John Hagee because he’s the “founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel,” and because he represents the views of their white evangelical readers much better than Johnnie Moore’s attempt to pose as a savvy political insider ever could.

Hagee is positively giddy. He sees Trump’s announcement as a tremendously exciting sign of the End Times. Granted, John Hagee thinks Wednesdays are a tremendously exciting sign of the End Times. This is a man, after all, who has spent 50 years telling us the Rapture was going to occur tomorrow — which is to say that he’s a man who has predicted 18,250 of the last zero Raptures.

Hagee’s response is partly the application of premillennial dispensationalist boilerplate, and partly just a word salad of disconnected phrases from PMD folklore. He explains that he urged President Trump to make his Jerusalem announcement this year because of numerology:

He also talked with the president about the significance of moving the embassy in this “Jubilee Year.”

“…I told him that God measures everything in modules of 50 years,” Hagee explained to CBN News. “And I said this is a principle that’s carried out in Leviticus, the 25th chapter.”

“I said, ‘If you look at 1917, it was a Jubilee Year, and the Balfour Amendment came, and then in 50 years, it was 1967, and Jerusalem was reconnected to Israel,'” he continued.

“‘And you add 50 to 1967, and you’re in 2017.’ I said, ‘This is the year to move the embassy and make that declaration because it is a biblical timing of absolute precision,'” Hagee said. “Thank God, he’s going to do exactly that.”

The year of Jubilee — described in great detail there in Leviticus 25 — involves debt cancellation, the release of prisoners, the emancipation of slaves, and the redistribution of the means of production. Hagee’s attempt to twist that passage into something about 50-year intervals of arbitrary “prophecy” milestones doesn’t even qualify as an “interpretation.” He’s just making stuff up.

I wondered what it was, exactly, that made Hagee decide to regard 1917, 1967, and 2017 as “Jubilee Years.” That curiosity sent me down a Google hole that I would not recommend you explore unless you have a great deal of free time, a fondness for mid-’90s Geocities web design, and a high tolerance for incoherent rambling. The saving grace of this experience was realizing that for every weird End Times website advocating Hagee’s “Jubilee” prophecies, there was also a weird End Times website angrily denouncing the scheme in favor of some competing grand theory of premillennial dispensationalist numerology. (I briefly considered offered to mediate between these warring factions as a disinterested third party, but I realized that any such talk of “peacemaking” would lead them all to conclude that I was a tool of the Antichrist.)

I suppose Hagee’s new emphasis on “modules of 50 years” is a bit less astrologically bonkers than his earlier obsession with “modules” of “Blood Moons” — his idea that calendar years involving two total lunar eclipses were the secret code for understanding God’s Plan for History. However goofy his ever-shifting theories may be, though, they fall under the category of “theology” and not, as Moore insists, of “geopolitics.”

The problem is that Hagee’s theology has very real — and very harmful — geopolitical implications:

“God found a man by the name of Abraham and He made a covenant with him,” Hagee continued. “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, recorded in the book of Genesis, that He was going to give them a strip of real estate in the Middle East, and that piece of real estate would be theirs forever.”

That “piece of real estate” — according to John Hagee’s theology, and to the theological view shared by most white evangelical Americans — doesn’t just include all of Israel’s 1967 borders, or even just that plus the occupied territories of the West Bank. What Hagee and his fellow “Bible prophecy” evangelicals have in mind is what they call “Greater Israel” — a “piece of real estate” that covers everything from Syria to the Sinai and from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates. This is, for Hagee et. al., the hoped for and prophesied “one-state solution” for the region.

It’s a weird and recklessly destabilizing idea, and one that seems dangerously comfortable with something very much like ethnic cleansing. But at least Hagee has the decency not to pretend that he supports this idea because of some feigned concern “for the Palestinians.”

Previous Post

December 18, 2017

Trump lets Rapture preachers reset their countdown clocks

Next Post

December 19, 2017 The True, Secret, Hidden Religious Meaning of 'The 12 Days of Christmas'

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Maranatha" mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Come, Lord Be joyful Praise Him It is finished