Mission, not Crusade

Submitted by Peter J. Herz (United States), Jun 21, 2006 at 09:16

As an Evangelical Christian myself, I welcome Mr. Shoebat to the fold.

My suspicion is that Mr. Shoebat probably can produce a b/c or similar document from the Jordanian-administered West Bank. I am frankly glad for him that he had an American mother to pass citizenship to him, and hence an exit. For other Muslim-background Falastin Arab Evangelicals, though, this is not an option, and they must keep a low profile (things are tough enough for members of the old Christian communions of the West Bank and Gaza, too). As for his having been a terrorist, I wonder who gives the ID's. Perhaps he can produce a transcript of a grilling from the FBI or something.

I note as well that Mr. Shoebat apparently follows the Dispensationalist school of thought, which sees ethnic Israel at the center of all the divine purposes, and the Christian church as as kind of parenthesis or second thought that occurred when the leaders of 1st century Judaea rejected the Messiah. Hence, Dispensationalists are uniformly pro-Israel when they talk about the modern Mideast. They see the re-establishment of a Jewish polity there as a sign that the end is approaching.

I myself, however, hold to a covenantal theology, which finds the "chosen people" centered on the Messiah. My own support for modern Israel stems from the observation that nationalism (including a post-Christian nationalism, for Mr. Katz's benefit) in Europe and the Middle East made it impossible for the Jews to live anywhere but in North America and some state where those not eligible by US and Canadian immigration law could go.

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