Last week’s column generated so much feedback, I knew another installment was necessary. Learning about our past helps us make better decisions about the present and to some extent, the future.

As I’ve said before, I love to know why we are where we are. What are the roots and foundations of our present state? In this space, we are talking about the Church, and her understanding of Israel and the Jews.

We live in a time when certain “evangelicals” are friendly with Marxists, certain “evangelical” leaders are engaged in interfaith dialogue with Muslim radicals, and too many “evangelical” leaders don’t like Israel (see Moore, Russell).

Political networks have engaged with religious networks and media networks (check out the book Dupes sometime; eye-opening). But for our purposes today, let’s look at how liberal scholarship has ruined our seminaries, and turned out legions of pastors and professors who have in turn polluted churches and ministries with bad teaching. A common denominator among all these liberal theologians is a minimizing or even outright denial of Jewish history.

Last week we looked at current change agents in the church, who are working tirelessly to blunt support for Israel. Sometimes they do it by calling Jesus a Palestinian. Sometimes they do it by hijacking Jewish history from the Bible and making it “Christian.”

These efforts impact both how we see Israel, and how we see Bible prophecy. The latter is currently out-of-favor in many churches.

The late, great scholar Oswald Allis wrote The Unity of Isaiah in 1950, and in the intro, recounted an interesting story. It seems that he once visited ministry friends in Germany and the story was told of a young seminary student, some 40 years before, who was instructed by his own professors/mentors to remember that no scholar anymore believed that Isaiah recorded the entire book that bore his name. But…he was not to reveal this to his congregation.

The poor chap, in his first sermon, became confused and, in preaching about Isaiah, kept telling his congregation repeatedly that some other, anonymous writer had recorded Isaiah 40-66.

(This because the scholars could not, would not believe in a God who can predict the future; they felt the far-distant prophecies could not be and were merely written history, after the fact. This single line of attack on the Bible is devastating to the faith of many.)

Allis was making the point that if one does not simply read the Bible for what it says, there is no end to doubt. Interestingly, this kind of teaching has now reached full flower, as “doubt” is now pushed as a virtue by evangelical Millennial leaders, who do not want young people to be firm in their faith. This results in what Bob DeWaay has called a “theology of despair.” In the end, one cannot be assured of the faith, if various important doctrines are not wholly true.

Oswald wrote:

“Is it any wonder that they [congregants of the day] are confused and bewildered? Is it any wonder that they are tempted to leave Isaiah and many other parts of the Bible severely alone? Is it any wonder that Bible study is not on the increase but decidedly on the decrease in many circles in the Christian Church?”

Remember, Allis wrote this in 1950! If we think the strange fire coming from Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and Andy Stanley is new, let us think again. Each of these men minimize belief in Bible prophecy; an intended outcome of that is the marginalization of Israel. If the Old Testament prophecies concerning the Jews’ eternal possession of the Holy Land is in question…then today’s state of Israel is perhaps illegitimate and her national claims on the land are certainly illegitimate.

We err if we think the strange fire raging through our churches is new at all. It is quite old. Yet it has exploded in seemingly just the last few years.

Allis (no friend of Dispensationalism, by the way) rightly understood that knocking the legs out from under prophecy would lead to knocking the legs out of everything else in the Bible, and that would leave individuals who succumbed to such lies bereft of any real faith.

Further, even those denominations traditionally thought of as “conservative” have long housed destructive elements. Take the Southern Baptist Convention, for example. Anyone who thinks the great wars between the SBC’s conservative and moderate/liberal wings resulted in a conservative victory is misled. Liberals/leftists never go away; they simply lay low for awhile before re-emerging stronger than ever.

Ralph Elliott’s The Message of Genesis was published by the SBC’s Sunday School Board in 1961. Elliott was in fact a radical who stabbed at the veracity of Genesis:

“As will be noted later, when effort is made to interpret the creation stories, some of the roots has material going back to the early Sumerian-Babylonian period (3000-1500 B.C.).”

The idea that the Bible was influenced by Sumerian myth is blasphemy. Do you understand that? Do you see what has been going on in our seminaries for 100 years?

Is it any wonder then that popular teachers like Andy Stanley profess to accept evolutionary views of Genesis?

And remember: if any or all of Genesis is in doubt historically, so is the history of the Jews and Israel. If it can be alleged that Abraham was myth, then one can say Israel has no modern right to live in the land once known as Canaan.

Do you see how we have gotten to a point where people in the pulpits and pews deny basic biblical history and get away with it? Our churches are filled with peole who don’t know anything about the Bible. The secular corollary is to some degree those “man on the street” interviews in which students are asked who the vice president is and they haven’t a clue.

Today most congregants are helpless in the face of attacks on Scripture. Congregational Scripture reading is a thing of the past, as hypnotic worship music and 15-minute “sermonettes” and self-help talks have replaced expository preaching. When a faith community eliminates real Bible teaching and preaching, that vacuum is filled with nothing good. It’s why today a teacher like Jen Hatmaker can recommend radical Marxists like Cornel West and no one blinks an eye.

It’s why Andy Stanley can deny the infallibility of Scripture and not one nationally known evangelical leader will call him on it and demand accountability. Stanley only grows more popular.

It’s why Fuller Seminary professor Tony Jones can say he no longer believes in Original Sin, and he gets away with it. No accountability.

It’s why we are where we are.

It’s why Israel is defamed, marginalized, and attacked…within the Church. I have come to the conclusion that because of where we are — deep into the last days, a quaint thought in much of evangelicalism — our efforts from here on out should be that of a rescue operation. Tell as many as you can about what is going on, teach Scripture, encourage Bible reading.

If any of the Bible is not true, then all of it is untrue. And if that’s the case, we are all left with a theology of despair.

If however Scripture is all true, then we must steel ourselves and hold on until the end, just as Jesus said.

There is no going back.

Reprinted with author’s permission from Rapture Ready