Horton Addresses the "Biblical Foreign Policy" Question

Following the recent Barack Obama-Benjamin Netanyahu dust up over Israel's current borders, many evangelicals have responded by warning of covenant curses coming upon those nations who don't support Israel's right to the land (with its current boundaries), because Israel is supposedly a "holy land," or because Israel "has a covenant with God."

The political questions surrounding Israel are important and notoriously difficult to answer.  Where to draw the borders?  Should there be a Palestinian state?  Should there be a divided Jerusalem? 

But to invoke covenant curses because of an unbiblical notion that the modern nation of Israel is a "holy land" is quite another.  In fact, it reveals a serious misunderstanding of redemptive history to do so.  Israel is a modern secular nation, like America, China, or the Philippines.  Israel does not sit on "holy land."  Jesus Christ fulfilled that covenant God made with Israel at Mount Sinai.  Furthermore, it was Paul who universalized the land promise from Palestine to include the whole earth (Romans 4:13)

Horton addresses this matter here:  A Biblical Foreign Policy?

Comments

[Richard]

Thanks for posting this, Kim. Dispensationalists are going nuts over this. I still remember watching Kaye Arthur talk years ago about how an assasination of an Israeli PM occurred because he had given land back to the Araba in defiance of God's plan. This is nuts. But this is American Christianity.

[Howard]

I was reading through Psalm 72 this morning and saw this verse. Just thought it was interesting in light of Christ.

Psa 72:8 May he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth!

[Lloyd I. Cadle]

The situations that arise in the Middle East are nothing but political situations.

They never should be analized with the Bible in one hand and the news sources in the other. (Taking the Scriptures out of context.)

The promises to Israel were fulfilled in Christ and His church.

[Richard]

Lloyd,

What about those promises made about the Diamondbacks?

[Paul]

Perhaps if you lived within spitting distance of some of the world's most notorious terrorist organizations you would view the question of your own survival as being relatively easy to understand.

The difficult questions for Israel are more like, "What kind of stupidity is going to come out of the mouths of the misguided nation builders tomorrow?"

FYI, I do not disagree with Horton's theological view. However, I think both you and he need to understand that there are millions of dispensationalists that support Israel for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with escatology.

[Paul]

Rabin was assassinated in November of 1995 due to his support of the Oslo Accords and the decision to give primary control of the West Bank to the Palestinians.

Kay Arthur notwithstanding, to my knowledge there exists no Biblical precedent to murder government leaders. Rather we are to obey authorities and pray for them. Arthur was simply spinning something for which she had no Biblical basis.

[Zrim]

Paul, no biblical precedent to murder governent leaders also makes one wonder why Bonheoffer is such a hero in the American Christian mind.

[Paul]

The Bonhoeffer case is interesting and I haven't heard anyone defend his role in WW2. Obviously the Nazi's hated him because his very brutal death came just days before the Russians arrived to liberate the camp.

I just started a biography about Erwin Rommel. He tried and failed to get Hitler as well. It's amazing to me that Hitler survived as many assassination attempts as he did -- he had more lives than a cat. Seems contrary to 21st century conventional "Christian" wisdom to think that God foreordained Hitler's survival until 1945.

[Lloyd I. Cadle]

Richard -

The promises about the Diamondbacks are being fulfilled in Gibson and Towers (the already here, but not fully realized).

[Big Daddy Bavinck]

A critique of Horton's piece from a non-dispensationalist:

http://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2011/05/horton-vs-sermon-on-mount-take-2.html