CHANNEL4NEWS – May 18, 2018: Israel called the Trump pull-out of the Iran deal a “historic move” even as the decision ramped up tensions across the Middle East.
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World War III, Syria, Palestine, Trump, Treason & What We Must Do
KENOKEEFE – May 18, 2018: I feel compelled to say as we sit on the verge of World War III. (BattleForWorld: Christians pushing for Armageddon to hasten the second coming of Christ.)
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‘End times fatigue’: Evangelicals find biblical case for Israel less compelling
THEGUARDIAN – May 19, 2018: The highlight of the article suggests that for many on the Christian right, the state of Israel has been seen as a key to fulfilling prophesy, but the new generation has other ideas.
The Trump administration completed its move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. At the opening ceremony, two of the American speakers were evangelical superstars: Pastor Robert Jeffress, the author of several doomsday books about Israel, and John Hagee, who interpreted recent lunar eclipses as evidence that the end times were nigh. The Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro, meanwhile, declared that Trump had “fulfilled biblical prophecy”.
The ceremony coincided with massive protests, in which 60 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces.
Thousands of miles away, in her home outside Colorado Springs, Kimberly Troup sat in a cluttered basement office. She is an evangelical Christian who takes to heart the Bible verse in which God speaks of the Jewish nation: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse.”
Accordingly, she has devoted 22 years to Israel. She is now the US director of Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, an advocacy group with a Zionist ideology. Two other CFIC employees work with her.
Ever since she was a child, in Kentucky, Troup has been immersed in Israel. Her father saw the creation of the state in 1948 and the six-day war of 1967 as evidence of biblical prophecy surrounding the end of the world. Troup believes in such prophecies, though she does not pretend to know when they will occur. She sees it as her Christian duty to care for Israel, to defend it against “Arabs” who are “not interested in peace”.
“We’ve been through all this before,” said Bruce McCluggage, a former evangelical who now identifies as a “follower of Christ”. Throughout his youth, in the 1970s and 80s, McCluggage was part of the Christian movement that interpreted the signs of Israel as evidence of the last days. But for McCluggage, after a slow-burn of things not coming to pass, that conviction slowly faded.
“It was a classic tool used to witness to people,” he recalled. “We’d ask: ‘If Jesus returned today, would you go to Heaven?’ It was kind of a threat … and we thought, with Israel coming together, we could hasten the return of Jesus.”
“There is definitely a kind of end times fatigue with this generation.”
It’s not only post-evangelicals who are dubious about the end times scenario. Kimberly Troup believes Israel will be the center of Armageddon, but she doesn’t think it’s all happening now. The author of her father’s favourite book released follow-ups that predicted ever-later dates for the Earth’s demise. She is dubious about anyone who claims to know when the world will end.
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