tl;dr - I do NOT like Christian Zionists, give me the resouces to understand and address their bullshit
The Christians followers of this have been talking about the “end times” with very little explanation. I tried looking into their most recent ranting and raving about the red heifer theory, but I was shocked to find that the most popular results were from people who genuinely believe that shit.
I want an explanation for this insane theory. There’s something deeply antisemitic about it and I want to get to the bottom of it.
I don’t want to criticize this belief by brushing it off as a bunch of loonies, dismissively pointing to the beliefs as not worth my time. I want to know exactly what it is so I can properly address it, at least mentally.
The Christian endgame (if you give Revelations credence as a predictive text bestowed by God) hinges on conditions being “right” for the return of Jesus, the final battle with the forces of evil, and the birth of a new Jerusalem in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jews being in charge of “The Holy Land” is part of this thinking that the Apocalypse can be created under the right circumstances, or at the very least everything will be set and ready to go when Jesus decides to roll up again. The trying to breed a red heifer is another example of trying to manufacture one of these “signs”.
If it doesn’t make sense, it’s because it doesn’t. So much of it relies on taking Revelations seriously, either literally or as some kind of Dan Brown-esque treasure hunt of symbols and portents.
Source: I was a church kid in the 2000s when the “Left Behind” series and other apocalyptic media were popular and hated every last bit if it.
Left Behind is such a great trash watch though.
Kirk Cameron has that special something that makes you keep coming back.
IMO, It’s less about antisemitism and more about Christianity’s roots as an apocalyptic cult. The Bible says that the end times will be heralded by conflict in Israel, which the Israelis will win after accepting Jesus as their Messiah. Then the Second Coming happens and the world ends, where the souls of all the righteous Christians will be joined to the perfect bodies waiting for them in the afterlife.
I guess I was too brash adding in that antisemitic comment, maybe too much of a generalization. But I did see Jewish people discussing the mythologization of Jews as inherently harmful and a lot of the political realm behind these ideas is influenced by people espousing, knowingly or not, antisemitic conspiracy theories (New World Order, Great Reset, a globalist cabal, global banking, et cetera).
You’re definitely on to something both in that
is a convenient place for antisemites to send all the Jews and also that Jewish zionists themselves seem to have this weird thing they do where they try to actively play into antisemitic tropes, like just look at 
zionists themselves seem to have this weird thing they do where they try to actively play into antisemitic tropes
Could you elaborate on this point a bit because I’ve been picking up on this a lot recently too. It’s like the Zionists are almost doing it on purpose.
It seems like they want to encourage antisemitism so they can use it to further their own agenda. Fascists are the most cynical people possible.
The movement owes a lot to the Darbyites, an obscure movement from the 19th century that gained an astonishing amount of influence over Protestant views of eschatology, a fancy way of saying “theology of how the world ends.” Dispensationalists systematized their interpretation of how God works in history and came up with an inflexible literal view of prophetic literature, obsessing over making each part of Revelations correlate to a real world person, country, or organization. The Left Behind books, as someone else mentioned, are a great window into this ideology.
The book of Revelations says some stuff about things happening to “Israel” and a specific symbolically loaded number of Israelites being saved from judgement. Christian Zionists interpret these texts literally, meaning they see Israel the modern nation as the subject of this book, and 144,000 Jewish people will thus be saved from a literal apocalyptic war.
This article goes into the theological movement and has helpful links to relevant people and related topics. It’s a good place to start I think.
Yeah, this dispensationalism is pretty much exactly what I hear of the average Christian around me. I’m probably going to move, just to get away from hearing this for a while. It’s too much for me, I’d rather be grounded in organizing efforts or discussing ML theory.
To be fair I’ve had moderate success with the Dispensationalists in my life pointing out that it comes almost entirely from this one group 150 years ago. A lot of them don’t know that and assume this is just the normal way everyone thought about it forever. It can give people pause and make them reconsider why they think this obscure thing is the only way to see it.
Ymmv though.
First thing to get is that they actually think the apocalypse is a good thing. They believe that the apocalypse will mean them and the Christians they agree with will be carried bodily up to heaven, leaving the rest of us to suffer all the beasts and plagues and shit from Revelations. Ever seen one of those “WARNING: in case of rapture this car will be unmanned” bumper stickers? They literally believe that.
The second part is that they believe they can both predict and hasten this apocalypse they desire. They see basically anything that makes them mad and basically any global conflict as a portent of the end times. Gay or trans people existing in public is d*generacy which is a sign of the end times to them, and Bush II literally tried to convince then-president of France Chirac to join his war in Iraq by claiming it was a Christian end times battle.
So this is where Israel comes into it. These Christian Zionists believe that a necessary precondition for the apocalypse they’re trying to hasten is for Jews to “reclaim the holy land.” And by “reclaim the holy land” they mean exterminate all Palestinians and steal all Palestinian land. But they’re also still really antisemitic, so they also believe that any of those holy-land-reconquering Jews who don’t convert to Christianity will either die or be left with the rest of us heathens for the aforementioned beasts and plagues and shit.
If these Christians are trying to expedite the apocalypse anyway, why are they so angry at people they think are causing it
Well, obviously, because their ideology is incoherent and deranged. But also, because they also think that the people they think are causing the apocalypse are going to corrupt their kids on the way to the apocalypse, and think that their kids are their property. And they need to feel like they’re being persecuted because being persecuted is a sign of righteousness in Christianity but American Christians are culturally hegemonic so they have to make up persecution.
Exactly. The kind of people you’re talking about claim that persecution towards Christians was predicted in the Bible while still complaining about their perceived but nonexistent persecution.
The same reason why heaven is considered good but you can’t commit suicide to get there quicker. Because someone said so
readwatch a video of somebody explaining the left behind books?i don’t know how many true believers there are but it really is that fucked up take the book of revelations rapture literally shit. these people want or think jesus will come back during their lifetime and god will zap all the faithful to heaven.
I found some videos on this, thanks for the recommendation.
And, for that last point, I am exposed to a variety of people on a regular basis who do, in fact, believe this in entirety. It is a very serious matter to them, something these people have been into for many decades, if not their entire lives.
Sorry to inform you that so many are out there.
Check out this pastors commentary on the whole thing, I think it’s an interesting read:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/11/05/left-behind-index-the-whole-thing/
So you know how in YuGiOh the villain is a CEO who invented a game and all the rules for that game, then gets very smug when he manages to beat his enemies, and also gets mad when someone subverts him?
Basically God created the universe as well as his enemies, and he’s going to fight a giant epic holy war, which, like The Rock, he contractually cannot lose or else the whole universe collapses. This means the war is the equivalent of those medieval roleplaying events where the prince hunts his servants and the only people who suffer are the people he rules.
But before this can happen, a bunch of things, that no one is allowed to know about definitively, must occur. Then Jesus comes down, kills all the sinners and nonbelievers, saves the Christians, and they fight Satan and his army. Israel will be the main base camp.
It’s basically a divine, celestial table top role playing game between God and his crew and Satan
I know all the Revelation stuff, but my pet theory is simply that “Israel” are the “good guys” in the Bible.
they just rly like ten commandments and ben hur
Why do you care about fringe ideologies? They are an insignificant part of the US’s support for Israel, and you may as well argue how many Angles can fit on the head of a pin. It’s not going to be consistent, there is no point where even if you find a Christian Nationalist Zionist, that you will be able to convince them that their interpretation of their religion is wrong.
