Why I Am Not a Christian Zionist

February 18, 2021

By David Crump

My upbringing predestined me to become a Christian Zionist.

After returning from the Korean war, my father drove off with his new bride to the sunny land of southern California so that he could attend the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (known as BIOLA, now BIOLA University). There he was schooled in the details of American fundamentalism, dispensational theology, and the primacy of the King James Version of the Bible. He learned that world history revolved around the newly created state of Israel. Israel’s miraculous appearance as a new nation in 1947 was a crucial sign that we were now living in the “end times,” for Israel was key to God’s fulfilment of Biblical prophecy and the second coming of JesusChrist.

My mother was born and raised in an independent Bible church (a member of the IFCA, Independent Fundamental Churches of America) where I faithfully attended youth group, Sunday School, Wednesday night and Sunday morning worship services. I vividly recall the Sunday school classroom decorated with a long black and white chart stretching across one wall. It offered a visual panorama of God’s seven dispensations; seven-headed monsters, beasts, and the devilish anti-christ; all followed by the pre-tribulation rapture (dramatically portrayed with believers ascending to meet Christ in the air); then came seven years of global suffering (the Tribulation) so that God could finish his ancient plans for Israel. After Christ’s thousand-year, millennial reign on earth, ruling from his throne in Jerusalem, world history climaxed at the Battle of Armageddon, where the armies of the world joined forces to overthrow Christ and destroy Israel. But the Lord will secure Israel’s victory by overcoming the anti-christ and his armies.

As an attentive teenager, it was only natural that I read the newspaper with an eye out for apocalyptic developments leading us closer to the Rapture. My father kept well-worn books like Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth on our book shelves. As a high school student, I sought out my youth pastor to ask for guidance on finding the best study Bible for my devotional reading. He pointed me to the Scofield Reference Bible with its extensive system of marginal notes and cross-references. With Scofield’s guidance, any Bible reader could learn how to fit scripture’s puzzle pieces together and assemble the correct understanding of both dispensational theology and the centrality of Israel’s role in the end-times.

By the time I left home for college I was a convinced Christian Zionist without ever self-consciously appropriating the term. Most of my friends from the youth group went off to fundamentalist Bible schools (like Prairie Bible Institute and Multnomah School of the Bible) where their religious upbringing would safely be confirmed by like-minded teachers. I was an exception in attending a state university – a decision my youth pastor warned me against. My years at the University of Montana spelled the beginning of the end of my fundamentalism, my dispensationalism, and my Christian Zionism – not because I succumbed to the “dangers of secular humanism,” as my youth pastor feared, but because I saw something of the expansiveness and diversity of Christ’s universal church.

I connected with the campus chapter of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. My new friends were committed Christians who were neither fundamentalists, nor dispensationalists. Some were not even looking to Israel for the signs of the times. I began reading theology and Bible-study books written by godly men like John R. W. Stott and J. I. Packer, British evangelicals who were not Christian Zionists. For the first time in my life, I was engaged with faithful, Christian people who embraced alternative, non-Zionist ways of reading the Bible and thinking about the modern Middle East.

One morning as I read Paul’s letter to the Romans, I was struck by the apostle’s words in Romans 4:11 and 16: “So then, he [Abraham] is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them…Therefore, the promise comes by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring — not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all.” (NIV)

Paul’s words hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks! Why had I never noticed this before? Paul had just redefined the nature of “Israel.” Biblical Israel was composed of the descendants of Abraham. But with the coming of Christ, Abraham’s descendants (Israel) were no longer traced through bloodlines but by faith, specifically faith in Jesus Christ.

My mind was reeling.

If this were the case, then why had I always been taught to place such importance on the final fulfilment of God’s promises to Abraham now (supposedly) occurring in the modern, secular state? If faith in Christ now determines who is a genuine descendant of Abraham – and that is what Paul clearly states – then why should the creation of Israel in 1947 have any end-times, theological significance for the Christian church today?

I suspected then that it shouldn’t.

Today I am convinced that Christian Zionism’s elevation of secular Israel to a special, exalted status as “God’s chosen ones” accounts for the way many in the American church turn a blind eye to Israel’s long-standing oppression of the Palestinian people. The theological mistakes of Christian Zionism have helped to harden the American conscience against this story of human suffering in the land of Palestine.

I have travelled a long road. I have visited Israel several times. My wife and I periodically visit and do volunteer work in a Palestinian refugee camp located in the occupied territory of the West Bank. I have witnessed and documented Israel’s regular brutalization of Palestinian men, women, and children whose only crimes are being Palestinian and living on land that the Jewish state wants for itself.

You see, I now have a number of Biblical, theological, and moral reasons for why I am not a Christian Zionist.

David M. Crump began his career working with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and then as a pastor in a church in Salt Lake City, Utah. He completed a PhD in New Testament studies and soon was hired at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to join their faculty. David taught at Calvin for 18 years and established himself in academic circles as a leading scholar. His book, “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” (2006) is perhaps the leading book on prayer in the New Testament.