Christian Zionism - New Life Tabernacle of Chattanooga

Church.’ 689 The premise that the Bible is unintelligible without the
dispensational distinction between Israel and the Church can only be
sustained if one excludes a priori, all other methods of interpretation.
Patrick Goodenough of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem
(ICEJ) explains the consequence of this literalist approach: ‘We simply
believe the Bible. And that Bible, which we understand has not been revoked,
makes it quite clear that God has given this land as an eternal inheritance to
the Jewish people.’ 690 Anne Dexter also challenges those who reject this
hermeneutic: ‘Some Arab believers and expatriate Christians in Israel feel so
strongly about these matters that they will not read the parts of the Bible that
seem to promise the land to the Jews or in any way uphold their election ...
Large parts of the scriptures are effectively invalidated by this approach.’ 691
In the 1980s the Churches Ministry Among Jewish People (CMJ) 692
went further, locating the origin of what they term a ‘spiritualised’ reading of
the Bible in the heresy of Marcion who proposed the abandonment of the Old
Testament: ‘But that was unacceptable to the Church and a better way to de-
Judaise the Hebrew scriptures was to “Christianise” the Hebrew scriptures so
as to spiritualise the text and read New Testament concepts into the text.
That view is still prevalent today.’ 693 Hal Lindsey has also attributed the
development of erroneous views concerning Israel to an allegorical, nonliteral
hermeneutic allegedly advocated by Origen. 694
Others, however, have argued that it was the consistent approach of
the Post-Apostolic Fathers, including Origen, to interpret the Hebrew
689
690
691
692
693
694
Dwight Pentecost, Things to Come, (Findlay, Ohio, Dunham, 1958), p529.
Kathy Kern, ‘Blessing Israel? Christian Embassy Responds’ Christian Peacemakers
Team, menno.org.cpt.news@MennoLink.org (2 November 1997).
Anne Dexter, View the Land, (South Plainfield, New Jersey, Bridge Publishing, 1986),
pp214-215.
In response to changing social and political attitudes toward Jews, the London Jews’
Society has modified its name several times, first to ‘Church Missions to Jews’ in the
early 20th Century; to ‘The Church’s Mission to the Jews’; then, ‘The Church’s Ministry
Among the Jews’; and finally in 1995 to ‘Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People’.
CMJ ‘Replacement Theology: Is the Church the “Israel of God”?’ (St Albans, Herts,
CMJ, n.d.).
Lindsey, Road, pp7-8.
151