When asked about the signs preceding His return to planet earth, Jesus responded: “Take heed that no man deceive you” (Matthew 24:5). He went on to reiterate the seriousness of end time deceptions declaring, “Many false prophets shall arise and deceive many (Matthew 24:11).

Today, a deadly deception has overtaken a vast swat of God’s people. That deception is wrapped up in, or some may say,is  the driving force of the political situation in the Middle East.  Primarily, popular Christian ministers and theologians have concluded and fervently proclaim that the moving of the Embassy of the United States from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in the nation of Israel is a fulfilment of Bible prophecy with regards to the future of the nation of Israel and the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Essentially, their thesis is based on the notion that it is exactly seventy years since the scattered Jews were returned to and established the nation of Israel in the land of Palestine. Their’s  a convenient argument to interpret international political maneuvering to justify their theological presuppositions. In turn, their theological presuppositions is then used to justify their political posturing in blindly supporting Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians.

Indeed May 14th, 2018, the day the United States Embassy officially opened in Jerusalem, marked 70 years since the nations of Europe along with the United States of America armed, advised and equipped the Jews to displace the native Palestinians. That act was carried out by some of the very nations who largely ignored the merciless slaughter of more than eight million Jews in the Holocaust of the Nazi death camps. As the second world war came to an end and the remaining Jews were liberated, the European nations were faced with a problem. What do we do with these Jews? None of those nations wanted to admit the remaining Jews within their borders. In fact, many bluntly rejected the dispossessed people who once dwelt among them. The Jews were a scorn to their eyes.

The newly formed League of Nations,  today known as the United Nations which was European controlled, was tasked with the job of finding a solution to the Jewish problem. The remedy: Use a perverted Biblical interpretation to displace the occupants of Palestine and return the territory to the Jews. That decision is at the foundation of all the conflict in the Middle East. The ongoing conflict between the returned Jews and the Palestinians who has been settled there for almost 2,000 years, has been to a great extent, contained by the Americans maintaining their embassy in the city of Tel Aviv rather than Jerusalem. Ever since the year 1948 when Europe’s grand design for the Jews were implemented, there have been upheavals between the occupiers and the dispossessed. At times those contests have been severe. For example, the 1967 war involving the nations of Egypt, Syria and Lebanon on the side of the Palestinians and the Americans and Europeans, as always, on the side of the Jews.

The most recent eruption was triggered by President Donald Trump relocating the United States Embassy to Jerusalem. Rather than listening to the advice of seasoned diplomatic and military professionals who know well the consequences that would be birthed from such a move; the President chose to listen to and fulfill a promise he made to his Evangelical supporters who convinced him that by making such a move he would be doing God’s will. They perceive the move as the fulfillment of a divine prophecy.

Continuing on the lines of their convenient interpretation of Biblical prophecy that began in 1948, Trump’s Evangelicals are relishing the move with hilarity for prophecy supposedly fulfilled and praise for the president whom they believe God has chosen to bring it about. Two of the prominent Trump supporters who were on site to celebrate the occasion were John Hagee and Robert Jeffers, both popular Evangelical ministers from Texas. The fervently embrace an American creation called Dispensationalism.  Its tenets were never taught by the prophets, patriarchs, Jesus nor His true followers.  This theology espouses  that the Jews will be returned to Jerusalem. Their surrounding enemies will wage war against them in what the evangelicals interpret as the Biblical  Battle of Armageddon. Jesus, they believe, will return to fight on their side which will result in Israel’s final victory over her enemies. The temple will then be rebuilt and the Jews will accept Jesus as the promised Messiah who will reign from Jerusalem. With this type of thinking one can understand the Evangelicals rejoicing at and thereby inciting the unmerciful slaughter of scores of Palestinians whose only crime is protesting the illegal and unjust occupation of their homeland.

In the process the Evangelicals continue to claim to be followers  of Jesus. The same Jesus, however,  facing death by the Jews who had rejected Him, informed His followers back then and those today, “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence ” (John 18:36).  Nowhere in sacred history does Jesus give his followers any instructions to plan, instigate or otherwise incite a military campaign against anyone. His marching orders given almost 2,000 years ago remains the same today: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen ” (Matthew 28:18-20). Men and women will be saved not by waging military warfare nor any other political action; but by preaching of the Gospel and and displaying of Jesus’ character in one’s life.  Question is, How many will be drawn to Jesus and be saved as a result of the political activism of Hagee, Jeffers & Co.?

Ironically, quite  unlike the Evangelicals, the conservative Jews who support this theory have rejected Jesus as their Messiah. They are looking for a conquering king to deliver them from their enemies that surround them. Never mind the fact that their own prophets foretold of Him  coming first as a Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53; Daniel 9). In their rejection of Him, their leaders declared, “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:25). Then together with their followers exclaimed, “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25).  Have their Evangelical counterparts pointed this out to them? Besides, how can the Evangelicals truly believe that Jesus of Calvary is the Messiah while at the same time passionately support and preach the rebuilding of the Jewish temple to offer sacrifices? Don’t they realize that the sacrifices of the ancient sanctuary system pointed to the Man of Calvary they claim to serve?  (Matthew 27:50-51; John 1:29). Further, the Evangelicals have long proclaimed that the Law of God, particularly His Sabbath commandment, had been nailed to the cross and is no longer binding upon them. Contrariwise, the Jews not only revere God’s law (even if they do not keep it) and points to the Sabbath commandment as their special connection to Jehovah God. If this all sounds confusing, it is because it is. Nevertheless, it is the glue that binds the conservative Jews and Evangelicals together in celebrating Trump’s relocation of the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Pointing to the seventy year prophecy and subsequent fulfillment of the Jewish captivity and deliverance from the nation of Babylon, both Jews and Evangelicals misapply these events to the 1948 establishment of nation of Israel by the League of Nations and Trump’s relocation of the American embassy in 2018. In fact, the specific dates, May 14th, 1948 -May 14, 2018 is cited to justify that the embassy’s move as a matter of Divine prophecy. But is it really? Or is it rather a dangerous delusion with deadly consequences?

The prophet Jeremiah had prophesied the Jews seventy year captivity in Babylon (Jeremiah 25:11). Isaiah had prophesied their deliverance by the Persian monarch, Cyrus, to take place exactly seventy years later (Isaiah 44:28-45:1). That was indeed a Divine prophecy which is supported by the historical record. Taken to Babylon in 606 BC, the Jews were granted their freedom by Cyrus when he overtook Babylon as head of the Persian military forces in 536 BC. It takes a tremendous stretch of the imagination to apply that historical record to the actions of the League of Nations and and President Trump’s relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Additionally, most mind-boggling is the comparison of Donald Trump, who has never lifted a toy gun in the field of battle, to Cyrus the Great, one of the greatest military strategist and conquerors of the ancient world.

The apostle Paul, who called himself a Jew of Jews, wholeheartedly embraced the Suffering Servant and looked forward to His coming as the Conquering King, spoke of the Jewish nation thus, “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God” (Romans 2:28-29). He further teaches ,”Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law” (Romans 3:31). Then he concludes,  “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus… And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:28-29).

Here then, is the riddle to be solved by the coalition of Evangelicals and Jews. As a group, one sect  not believe that the Messiah has come; and the other, who claim to believe He has come,  does not believe in keeping the law of God (particularly the keeping of the Sabbath commandment) celebrate Trump’s move as a divine prophecy? Seems more like a poisonous concoction and a deadly deception rather than a Divine prophecy, the very thing that Jesus Christ, both the Suffering Servant and Soon Coming King, warned about: “Take heed that no man deceive you” (Matthew 24:4). 

The conflicts in the Middle East, as those taking place everywhere else around the world, falls into the category of what Jesus prophesied will be the condition of the world shortly before He returns.  Says He,  “And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet”. (Matthew 24:6). His coming has nothing to do with the return of the Jews to Palestine, or He surely would have told us so in His rather insightful discourse of the events preceding His second coming. It is to the New Jerusalem, and not the land of Palestine that His followers should be looking. Jesus, whom the Evangelicals are misrepresenting and who the Jews have rejected, is theirs and ours ONLY hope.