Christless and Christ-Plus

 

Christless conservatism is not the only thing that brought down the US right in the elections yesterday.

Christ + Israel was another significant factor.

The idea that believing in Jesus means you must support the modern state of Israel is a mandatory belief in Trump's Republican party. He went out of his way to crush any Republican that did not hold this belief.

This is one of the greatest stumbling blocks to the gospel in our age, especially for the young. It is the modern equivalent of Christ + circumcision. When you tell people this belief is mandatory, this is a very literal example of Judaizing. Which is the first false teaching the Bible ever anathematizes in the book of Galatians. In that context false teachers were telling Christians they needed to trust in Jesus and be circumcised. Paul challenges that, saying it contradicts the gospel. In our day many Christians say supporting the modern state of Israel is mandatory.

Many evangelicals have done with Israel, exactly what we accuse Catholics of having done with Mary. And this became orthodoxy in the heavily evangelical influenced Republican party.

And America has rejected it. The young Americans especially.

Not every evangelical believes in Jesus plus Israel as a mandatory belief. Many know that Jesus is Israel and that the Jerusalem above, in heaven, is the true Holy city (Gal. 4:21-31, Heb. 12:22-24). But enough evangelicals believe this that I predict we are going to see a massive acceleration of Christians out of evangelicalism into Christian traditions that have not been subsumed into this error. They have had enough of the disastrous practical outworkings of this policy.

Of course, they don’t need to do this. There are plenty of evangelical churches that don't support this error. But the problem is the loudest evangelical voices either support it or wont challenge it. And many who support it will seek to shun those who don't. Hence the evangelical church will decline further because of this error, among others. Unless it repents.