On the Road to Armageddon

Continued from page 1

American dispensationalists liked the attention and were willing to organize their constituents to support Israel in a variety of ways. One of the first groups of this kind was the National Leadership Conference for Israel, founded by Pentecostal preacher David Lewis. It supports Israel by scheduling conferences, organizing letter-writing campaigns, placing advertisements in newspapers and putting on large public rallies. Another group is Christians for Israel, whose main purpose is to help Jews from the former Soviet Union immigrate to Israel. Its "exodus" program claims to assist 1,200 Jews per month.

Probably the largest pro-Israel organization of its kind is the National Unity Coalition for Israel, which was founded by a Jewish woman who learned how to get dispensationalist support. NUCI opposes "the establishment of a Palestinian state within the borders of Israel." The organization distributes an array of newsletters and "chutzpah action alerts" to keep its members informed and involved and claims that it can mount a "virtual March on the White House" at a moment's notice if necessary.

Bridges for Peace is an educational and charitable organization that is driven by its view of Bible prophecy. In addition to sponsoring a variety of tours and educational opportunities, the organization operates the largest food bank in Israel. Christian Friends of Israeli Communities pairs up individual evangelical congregations in America with Israeli settlements on the West Bank.

Dispensationalists are also strong supporters of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which was founded and is still run by an Orthodox Jewish rabbi named Yechiel Eckstein. The IFCJ sponsors a number of humanitarian projects to help Jews from the former Soviet Union to immigrate to Israel, provides support for Jews in Russia who are destitute and cannot leave, and aids the poor and needy in Jerusalem.

If dispensationalists have been Israel's best friends for the last 30 years, what has such friendship produced? One result has been the emergence of a strong and apparently unwavering supporter for Israel in the United States. The many pro-Israel organizations created by dispensationalists have undoubtedly made a difference. In a political world in which popular pressure counts, Israel is in a stronger position today because of the willingness of American premillennialists to throw their political clout around. The willingness of Christian conservatives to stand up for Israel has helped U.S./Israeli relations stay strong.

There is a downside to the dispensationalist/Israeli friendship. In their commitment to keep Israel strong and moving in directions prophesied by the Bible, dispensationalists are supporting some of the most dangerous elements in Israeli society. They do so because such political and religious elements seem to conform to dispensationalist beliefs about what is coming next for Israel. By lending their support-both financial and spiritual-to such groups, dispensationalists are helping the future they envision come to pass.

Throughout their history, dispensationalists have predicted that before the final events of the End Times can take place, the Temple must be rebuilt in Jerusalem. According to their scenario, half way through the Great Tribulation, Antichrist will enter the restored Temple and declare himself to be God. To outsiders, such predictions always seemed farfetched. But in the Six-Day War Israel gained control of the entire city of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount. Suddenly all things seemed possible, at least to some people.

Anticipating a Third Temple was nothing new for the dispensationalists. For over a century they had been predicting that once Jews re-gathered in the Holy Land they would eventually build a new Temple on the site of the previous two. Not all dispensationalists agreed on all the details, but in general they saw a rebuilt Temple as indispensable to the completion of God's prophetic program. Of course, there were many practical impediments to the realization of these hopes, not the least of which was the existence of the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque on the site of the future Temple. How could the Temple be built, when the Temple Mount was already "occupied" by Muslim sacred sites? The answer to this question varied.

Dispensationalists could not even agree on where the new Temple would be built. There were three theories about place, based on elaborate archeological study and speculation. According to Asher Kaufman, a professor of physics at Hebrew University, the original two Temples were located on Temple Mount to the north of the Dome of the Rock. He published his findings in the Biblical Archaeological Review in 1983; but his arguments convinced few other archeologists. Kaufman did attract the attention of some leading dispensationalists, however. David Lewis, Hal Lindsey, Chuck Smith, and Chuck Missler pondered the theory with some eagerness.

A Tel Aviv architect named Tuvia Sagiv championed another theory that located past and future Temples between the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque. According to his "southern theory," when Muslims conquered Jerusalem and asked Jewish inhabitants where the Temple of Solomon had stood, the Jews pointed them to the site of Hadrian's Temple of Jupiter. There the unsuspecting conquerors constructed the Dome of the Rock, thus leaving the actual site vacant. Sagiv hoped that his findings would deter radicals who believed that in order to rebuild the Temple they must destroy the Dome of the Rock, which he feared would lead to World War III.

The third theory placed the ancient and future Temple site directly under the Dome of the Rock. Most Israeli archeologists favored this view. The most advanced work in support of the theory for a "central location" was done by Leen Ritmeyer, a Dutch-born Christian archeologist who came to Israel shortly after the Six- Day War. Most dispensationalists agreed with Ritmeyer's location for the Temple.

A few of the Bible teachers speculated about how the problem of the Dome's presence might be solved., In 1982 Louis Goldberg of Moody Bible Institute stated that in some future Arab-Israeli war, a surface to surface missile fired from Jordan or Syria might go off course and destroy the Muslim site. Dispensationalist fiction writers also gave it a try: in Salem Kirban's novel "666," the Antichrist vaporized the mosque with his ruby laser ring; and in Charles Colson's "Kingdoms in Conflict," American prophecy believers financed a plot by Israeli radicals to blow up the Dome.

Still other dispensationalists wanted to avoid, if possible, the awful consequences of an Israeli attack on the Dome and the mosque. Of course, one could always wait on God to remove them. In "Late Great Planet Earth," Lindsey was willing to leave everything to divine initiative.

Of course, any talk about rebuilding the Temple was completely unacceptable to the Muslims who have opposed any Israeli archeological explorations in the area to prove the location of the Second Temple or any activity intended to show the placement of the future Third Temple. Over the years there have been a number of attempts to destroy the Dome and the mosque. Such activities were connected in one way or another to a small but growing movement on the far right of Israeli politics and religion-the Temple Movement. Though most Israelis do not believe in the necessity of a new Temple to secure Israel's future, a minority is convinced that Israel's current problems are due to its failure to occupy the Temple Mount and rebuild the Temple there. Some of these pro-Temple Israelis are committed to doing what they can to make it happen; and some dispensationalists are supporting their efforts.

One of the most interesting was the Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful, founded in the late1980s by Gershon Salomon, one of the Israeli soldiers who liberated the Temple Mount during the Six Day War. According to the Temple Mount Faithful's purpose statement, "he has dedicated himself to the vision of consecrating the Temple Mount to the Name of G_d, to removing the Muslim shrines placed there as a symbol of Muslim conquest, to the soon rebuilding of the Third Temple there, and the G_dly redemption of the people of the Land of Israel."

He quickly discovered a new clientele among American dispensationalists who were strongly attracted to his mission, which after all fit nicely with their own prophetic scenario of the Last Days. Dispensationalists saw Salomon as a pious Jew who taught with great conviction that God's plan for the Chosen People in the Last Days included three things: restoration of a new Jewish state, the re-gathering of Jews from around the world, and the reconstruction of the Temple on Temple Mount-all in anticipation of Messiah's coming.

In the 1990s Salomon became a favorite lecturer for evangelical tour groups to Israel. In 1999, he went to a Jerusalem hotel to lecture to an evangelical tour group led by Irvin Baxter, a Pentecostal evangelist who edited his own prophecy newsletter, Endtimes. Salomon and Baxter had become fast friends; and Baxter often let Salomon teach about the coming Temple on his own radio program. Salomon told the tourists exactly what they wanted to hear: "We are the blessed generation which got chosen to be the generation of redemption. . . . In our lifetime will be built the Third Temple." What about the Dome of the Rock? somebody asked. Not to worry, Salomon replied, it will be moved to Mecca. After Salomon had finished his talk, Baxter took a "love offering" for the work of the Temple Mount Faithful.

Some observers of Salomon's organization claim that he has a greater following in the United States among American premillennialists than he does in Israel among Jews. Without financial support from America, the work of the Temple Mount Faithful would not be possible.

A clear example of the Temple Mount Faithful's connection to American dispensationalists is illustrated in the work of Stanley Goldfoot, a South African immigrant to Israel in the 1930s who became a leading terrorist against the British and the U.N. during the fight for Israeli independence. Goldfoot played a major role in the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel and the 1948 murder of U.N. Middle East emissary Count Bernadotte. Unlike Salomon, Goldfoot was a secular Jew with little interest in Bible prophecy. But like many others on Israel's far-right, he believed that Israel needed to gain sovereignty over the Temple Mount.

Despite his past, Goldfoot became popular among a number of leading American dispensationalists who found his support of a third Temple compatible with their own views. In the early-1980s, he and a number of American dispensationalists, including Terry Reisenhoover, James DeLoach, Doug Kreiger, Charles Monroe, and Hilton Sutton, founded the Jerusalem Temple Foundation in Los Angeles, to provide financial support for the Temple Movement in Israel. Reisenhoover, who failed in numerous attempts to find oil in Israel (whose revenues he wanted to use to finance the Temple-building), served as the Foundation's board chair. He appointed Goldfoot as the Foundation's international secretary and sponsored him on numerous speaking tours of American evangelical churches, during which he raised millions of dollars for the cause.

Continued on page 3: »