Lux Lucet

According to John Hagee, the answer to this question is a resounding “yes.” Israel, we are told, is on the verge of annihilation and it is incumbent upon Christians to take a stand for Israel now.  Hagee and others believe that Christians have an obligation to bless Israel, and this is generally understood by them to mean supporting whatever initiative is being pushed by the Likud party.     In his book In Defense of Israel, the first chapter of which is titled It’s 1938…Again, Hagee makes the following claim,

John Hagee

As an avid student of history, I am convinced that we are facing the same situation the world faced in 1938.

Iran is the new Germany, and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is the new Hitler. Iran poses a threat to the State of Israel that promises nothing less than a nuclear holocaust. The only way to win a nuclear war is to make certain it never starts. We must stop Iran’s nuclear threat an stand boldly with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East (Hagee, In Defense of Israel. 2,3)

Hagee, of course, in not the first or only person to make comments of this sort. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamen Netanyahu has built his career on statements of this sort. But since Hagee claims to speak for Evangelicals in general, his comments are of special interest to Christians.

Is Iran the New Germany?

This is a remarkable claim and one not backed up by the facts. First, by 1938 Adolph Hitler had already violated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles that Germany signed at the end of WWI. This treaty put severe restrictions on Germany’s ability to field a military force. According to Versailles,

Germany was forbidden to have submarines or an air force. She could have a navy of only six battleships, and an army of just 100,000 men.

Hitler broke all of these provisions in the years leading up the start of WWII, and his treaty violations were well known to the various European heads of state. But even though this was the case, there was little will on their part to hold Hitler’s feet to the fire.

In the case of Iran, it is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This treaty, monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN body, restricts signatories from developing nuclear weapons programs but does allow them to build nuclear power plants. To date, Iran has never been charged with a violation of the NPT, a fact which is almost universally ignored in the popular press.

Second, despite Netanyahu’s many claims that Iran is on the verge of

Netanyahu at the UN in 2012 uses a picture to make his case that Iran is close to developing atomic weapons.

building a nuclear arsenal, the Israeli secret service flatly denies this. According to recently leaked documents, the Mossad concluded that Iran was, “not performing the activity necessary to produce [nuclear] weapons.”

Third, Israel is not David and Iran is not Goliath. Little known to most Americans is the fact that Israel, despite never confirming this publically, is in possession of 200-300 nuclear warheads. Further, it possesses advanced systems, including submarines, capable of delivering these nuclear payloads to targets throughout the Middle East. Contrary to what Hagee and Netanyahu would have you believe, any nuclear war between Israel and Iran would be a holocaust for the Iranians, not the Israelis. And not only that, Israel has first rate conventional forces as well. In the words of journalist Eric Margolis, “Israel’s mighty military could conquer the central Mideast, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in a week. With over 200 nuclear weapons – why so many one wonders – Israel is unassailable.“

One could argue that, despite all the inspections by the IAEA which have not found Iran in violation of the NPT, that despite the opinion of the Mossad that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, that despite Israel’s overwhelming military advantage, Iran could still be in the process of developing an atomic bomb. The answer to this is, yes, it is possible Iran is building a bomb. But until this is established by fact and not by rumor, innuendo and scare mongering, there is no sound basis to charge the Iranians with violations of the NPT. There is no sound reason to claim it is 1938.

Those Dreadful Isolationists

Continuing in this chapter, Hagee chides Americans for their unwillingness to jump into another war in the Middle East when he writes,

Just prior to World War II there were obvious and clear warnings that Hitler was moving forward to implement his Final Solution. Winston Churchill tried to warn the forces of appeasement. He said that an appeaser is someone who feeds a crocodile tin the futile hope it will eat him last. In 1938 Czechoslovakia’s Sudentenland was turned into crocodile food for Germany. The Nazi beast smelled the weakness in the international appeasers and devoured most Europe, systematically slaughtering six million Jewish people.

What did America do? We debated the situation in Congress, and we let isolationist sentiments keeps us from getting involved while millions of innocent people died (In Defense of Israel, 3)

It is interesting that during discussions of Nazi atrocities, while one constantly hears about the Jewish victims of the concentration camps, rarely is there ever a mention that other groups suffered under the oppression of the Nazi regime. According to R.J. Rummel,

Overall, by genocide, the killing of hostages, reprisal raids, forced labor, “euthanasia,” starvation, exposure, medical experiments, terror bombing, and in the concentration and death camps, the Nazis murdered from about 15,000,000 to over 31,600,000 people, most likely closer to 21 million men, women, handicapped, aged, sick, prisoners of war, forced laborers, camp inmates, critics, homosexuals, Jews, Slavs, Serbs, Czechs, Italians, Poles, Frenchmen, Ukrainians, and so on. Among them were 1 million children under eighteen years of age (Death by Government, 111-113).

And, according to Hagee, the blame for this suffering can in part be laid at the feet of American isolationists and congressional ditherers. But before he blames isolationists – I prefer the term “noninterventionist,” as Hagee and others have turned “isolationist” into a sort of swear word that they use to

Woodrow Wilson

discredit people who oppose them and, in the minds of many, render their ideas unfit for public consumption – perhaps he should employ his love of history. Were he to do so, he would understand that much of the blame for the rise of the Nazis and WWII can be laid at the feet of interventionists such as Woodrow Wilson. For it was Wilson who successfully pushed the US into WWI, which in turn tipped the war in favor of the Allies, prevented a negotiated settlement between them and the Central Powers, lead to the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and supplied the kindling for the most destructive war in history which began 21 years later.

More recently, it is interventionists like Hagee who have brought us the Iraq War, the Afgan War, intervention in Syria. and the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, all which have been expensive disasters. One recent and remarkable ugly consequence of US intervention in the Middle East has been the rise of ISIS, which has conquered large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq using weapons paid for by US taxpayers. It is the incompetent interventionist foreign policy of the US that has lead directly to the hideous videos of men being beheaded and burned alive.

Given their miserable track record, one would think the interventionists would have long ago been discredited. But such is not the case. Being an interventionist still means never having to say you’re sorry. When their meddling goes awry, interventionists simply point to the latest global flare-up and holler for more money, more equipment and more troops to fix the mess they created in the first place. They’re like the arsonist who starts the blaze and then rides to the rescue in the fire truck. Those who oppose them are labeled as Neville Chamberlins seeking to appease the latest incarnation of Hitler. And this ruse works time and time again.

The 2003 Iraq War was instigated based on the false claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. In light of this, why should anyone accept at face value the claim that Iran is close to getting the Bomb and nuking Israel? Why should anyone accept without question the premise that the US must take an aggressive stance against Iran, including the possibility of a military strike on the basis of a Zionist zealots such as Netanyahu and Hagee? The American people have been lied into war before. Is it not possible that this could be happening again. Perhaps congressional debate, for which Hagee has such contempt, is not the worthless exercise he seems to think it is.

Twisting the Scriptures

Hagee invokes Scripture to make the case that American Evangelicals have a God given responsibility to defend Israel. One of his more curious attempts at this is his interpretation of Matthew 25. Writes Hagee,

There is a verse in Matthew 25 that few Christians understand in context. Jesus said to His disciples, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brother of mine, you did for me” (verse 40, NIV).

The express “these brothers of mine” in this verse is a Greek term that refers to “relative according to the flesh.”

Jesus was speaking about the Jewish people when He said, “I was hungry and you didn’t give Me food. I was thirsty and you didn’t give Me water. I was naked and you didn’t clothe Me.”

“When did we see You in that condition?” the disciples asked Him.

Jesus replied that it was whenever they saw one of His “relative” in that condition.

Whenever Christians have seen the relatives of Jesus suffering – for instance, in the Holocaust – and done nothing, it was as if they had ignored the suffering of Christ Himself (In Defense of Israel, 7).

Hagee would have us believe that “brothers” means ethnic Jews only. But we have it on the authority of the Word of God that this is not the case. Who are the brothers of Christ? Jesus himself tells us. He said, “[W]hoever does he will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother” (Matt. 12:50). And what did Jesus mean by, “do the will of My father”? When he was asked, “What shall we do that we may work the works of God?,” Jesus responded by saying, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom he sent” (John 6:28, 29). Jesus brothers, then, are those who believe the Gospel, Jew and Gentile alike. Hagee greatly errs when he identifies the “brothers” in Matthew 25:40 as applying to ethnic Jews only.

In truth, Christians are under no general obligation to give their time and resources to unbelievers, regardless of their ethnic heritage. John Robbins put it this way,

[T]here is no particular virtue in giving per se, as many people seem to think. It is only giving to the glory of God that is not sinful. showing hospitality to false teachers, as John points out, is an evil deed. Furthermore, when the consideration is giving to the poor, rather than to teachers, it is not the giving of a cup of cold water that Christ commends, but the giving of a cup of cold water in his name. Even charitable giving – giving to the poor – must meet a doctrinal test in Scripture. Giving per se is not a virtue. Only giving to the glory of God is. That implies, among other things, that Christians should not support non-Christian charities. It also means that Christians should not vote for or advocate government welfare programs (Biblical Principles of Giving, 2004)

That would include government welfare programs in the form of foreign aid and military assistance, both of which the US taxpayer has been forced to lavish on Israel for decades. US financial and military support for Israel and other countries, support which is underwritten by money forcibly taken from American taxpayers, so far from being a virtue, is actually a sinful act of theft both on the part of those who advocate for it and those who receive it.

It is interesting to note that there are Biblical examples of Gentile Christians lending financial support to Jews. But their gifts were Jewish fellow believers who were suffering persecution, and were not intended for the Jewish nation in general (please see Rom.16:26-28 and I Cor. 16:1-4).

Conclusion

Jesus commanded his disciples to “judge with righteous judgment,” and this means judging by the Scriptures. But all too often, instead of going to the Bible and testing the claims of charismatic political and religious leaders, Christians take the easy way out, preferring to let others do their thinking for them. This is unacceptable. The Apostle Paul enjoined Timothy to, “Test all things; hold fast what is good” (I Tim.5:21). This command applies to present day Christians just as much as it did to Timothy. Unless Christians once again learn to use Biblical discernment, they will continue to be easy marks for religious and political charlatans pushing their ungodly and dangerous agendas.