The Dispensational Kook Factor

Some dispensationalists are dangerous. When Jews were being exterminated under Adolf Hitler’s anti-Jewish policy, a number of prominent dispensational writers believed that prophecy had set the course of inevitability for the Jews. According to dispensationalism, two-thirds of the Jews will be killed during a future “great tribulation” (Zech. 13:8). This led some to advocate a “hands off” approach when millions of Jews were being taken to concentration camps and marched into gas ovens. Bible prophecy had made it so.

A new dangerous kook book has been published: Eye to Eye: Facing the Consequences of Dividing Israel.  The advertisement for this book states that the author “provides undeniable facts and conclusive evidence showing that indeed the leaders of the United States and the world are on a collision course with God over Israel’s covenant land.” The author’s argument is that the recent spate of “major catastrophes transpired on the very same day or within 24-hours of U.S. presidents Bush, Clinton and Bush applying pressure on Israel to trade her land for promises of ‘peace and security,’ sponsoring major ‘land for peace’ meetings, making major public statements pertaining to Israel’s covenant land and/or calling for a Palestinian state.”

If God is so concerned about Israel and her land, then why didn’t He send an earthquake to swallow up the Palestinians who were given the land by Ariel Sharon, a Jew? Why send a hurricane to punish New Orleans when the real culprits are those who are calling for Israel’s extermination? Why punish the United States when we have been Israel’s greatest defender? What nation protected Israel during the first Gulf War and continues to send billions of dollars in aid?

The advertisement for the book claims that the several catastrophic disasters that have hit the United States are a fulfillment of Zechariah 12:9: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.” It seems to me that the nations coming against Israel are not being destroyed. Notice that Zechariah 12 uses the phrase “all the nations.” For a dispensationalist, this must mean every nation in the world today. So why punish just the United States? As I point out in my book Zechariah 12 and the “Esther Connection,” Zechariah 12 is a description of events that happen soon after the prophecy was given. The events described in Esther are a perfect fit to what Zechariah 12 predicts. “All the nations” were those under the domain of the Persian empire throughout its “127 provinces” from “India to Ethiopia” (Esther 1:1) that Haman had called on “to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, who were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus” (3:6). “All nations” is used this way throughout the Bible (e.g., Dan. 4:1; 1 Chron. 14:17; 2 Chron. 32:23; Jer. 28:11; Ps. 118:10; Acts 2:5).

The author of Eye to Eye is selective in the disasters he picks. How do the following fit his scenario?:[1]

1. Galveston (Texas) Hurricane, 1900, estimated 8,000 deaths

2. Great Okeechobee Hurricane in Florida, 1928, estimated 2,500-plus

3. Johnstown, Pa., Flood, 1889, estimated 2,200-plus

4. Louisiana Hurricane, 1893, 2,000-plus

5. South Carolina-Georgia Hurricane, 1893, 1,000–2,000

6. Great New England Hurricane, 1938, 720

7. San Francisco Earthquake, 1906, 700

8. Georgia-South Carolina Hurricane, 1881, 700

9. Tri-State Tornado in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, 1925, 695

10. Labor Day Hurricane that hit the Florida Keys, 1935, 405

Then there’s World War I and World War II, Pearl Harbor, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. What is their prophetic significance?  The nation of Israel has no prophetic significance today.

(Order Zechariah 12 and the "Esther Connection" by Gary DeMar)