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Eschatology Is Affecting the Foreign Policy of the United States
Premillennialism and Foreign Policy
A large percentage, I would say 35% of the population, of Americans is premillennial. Almost 100 percent of those were Trump voters in the 2024 election. Premillennialism takes literally the Old and New Testament promises to Israel. Amillennialism and postmillennialism are growing in the United States, but it is still a small, albeit loud, percentage of professing Christians.
Premillennialism takes what is called an Old Testament priority. The characters of the Old Testament, as God revealed His Word to them, understood what they heard. For instance, the promises concerning the Messiah were literal and fulfilled that way in the first coming of Jesus Christ. A very low percentage of Jews believed that, but Christians did and do.
Abrahamic Covenant
I point to the Abrahamic Covenant of Genesis, which repeats itself multiple times in the book, starting with Genesis 12:1-3, but with an allusion in Genesis 3:15 and the seed of the woman. God promised a seed, a land, and a blessing. It was a unilateral, unconditional, and irrevocable covenant with an ethnic people. You can add to that the Mosaic, Davidic, and New Covenants by God that apply to Israel.
In the present war in the Middle East, a large part of the support of the Israel comes from premillennialists. You can add to that especially the orthodox Jews and then the Messianic Jews. If you went to an orthodox synagogue in Florida, almost 100 percent would have supported Donald Trump. The two ideas coincide. The Messiah is Jesus Christ, even if the orthodox Jews deny that. However, they both look for a Messiah, who will set up a kingdom.
A Division
How are the eschatological positions applying to foreign policy right now? A division exists in the Republican foreign policy. The neo-conservatives are a very small minority now in the Republican Party. Many went Independent or Democrat.
When I talk about the small minority, I’m saying The Lincoln Project, The Bulwark, the Bush/Rove/Cheney/Condoleezza Rice Faction, and the Romney/Murkowski/Collins/Nikki Haley/Mitch McConnell/(now) Mike Pence contingent. Some still hang with the Republicans because they support more Trump ideas than the new Democrat Party. Much of this side on foreign policy wants to keep sending billions or a trillion more to Ukraine and try to defeat Russia and Putin in a proxy war.
The same conflagration of new-conservative types support Israel in the Middle East, but they want a new world order with a muscular U. S. intervention overseas. They still support the idea of nation building, perhaps going to back to an old NATO philosophy after World War II. These are typically the classic free-traders and dollar diplomacy to force the spread of capitalism and democracy across the world.
MAGA and Historical Republicanism
The MAGA, American First foreign policy, as I see it, is split, but an avenue of cohesion exists. The biggest group would take the following position and this fits Premillennial eschatology. I would be in that thinking. First, they reject the war in the Ukraine. They want a diplomatic end to that war with the hope of better relations with Russia. This includes ending NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, threatening Russian sovereignty. This is not support of Putin.
The historical Republican foreign policy prioritizes America. It secures the borders of the nation and strengthens the national economy. Included in this is greater fairness in trade in combination with freeness and a return of strong American industrialization and business. China makes less of the stuff America needs for a secure future. This means less foreign intervention more in the spirit of George Washington in his Farewell Address.
Israel
A second aspect of the MAGA foreign policy relates to Israel. The split exists here, because there is an anti-Israel faction in MAGA. It’s also antisemitic. You can find this also in the Christian nationalism movement. It is not so totally innocent. The amillennialists and postmillennialists abide here, a few premillennialists too, but with what I’ve read as a very odd sort of premillennialism. The latter says that future support of Israel and trust in the promises of God do not necessitate, and could even preclude, present support of apostate Israel.
The premillennialist branch, the bigger one, of MAGA foreign policy can work with the smaller faction, which I believe includes now a name such as Tucker Carlson. They might agree that the United States should allow Israel freedom to win in the Middle East. The United States will continue as a supportive ally without its own military involvement, no more boots on the ground.
Premillennialists like myself would support a one state solution in Israel and an expansion of Israel territory. This mirrors a belief that the Palestinians are in practice something like the Canaanites of the Old Testament. They have no interest in cohabitation or peace with Israel in the land. Israel can’t continue to live like this. A one state solution is the most popular one in Israel today. I think Israel should be allowed to form one state with the integration of like-minded Palestinians.
Conclusion
Peace in the foreign policy of the American First Movement revolves around an anti-interventionist approach. The United States does not force its own foreign policy on Israel. It supports an Israel First Movement in Israel. At the same time, it neither sends financial aid to either Israel, Palestine, or any other Middle Eastern country. These countries can trade freely and fairly with no advantage to either side.
What I’m writing fits a premillennialist approach and, I believe, it represents the present foreign policy in the United States. It occurs in the most major way because of a belief in the promises of God to Israel. It is also optimistic. With the United States advocating for a literal approach to scripture even in its foreign policy toward Israel, it gives a greater opportunity for blessing on the country.
You’ve heard the mission credo, the church whose light shines the furthest shines the brightest at home. I agree with the same credo for the United States. Let’s stop intervening everywhere and get our own house in order. We are not ready to spread a corrupt Americanism. Only intervene against a direct threat to the security of the United States. If an African country wants to outlaw homosexuality, the United States should not punish that country, but respect its sovereignty. This will have a greater long term affect on the rest of the world, just being that original idea of a bright light shining on a hill.
God and the Bible Are Dispensational (Part Six)
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five
History
One of the biggest criticisms aimed at dispensationalism is the scant historical evidence for this system of interpretation. Opponents call John Nelson Darby, 19th century Anglican clergy member from Ireland, the founder of dispensationalism. They say then the early 20th century evangelical Bible teacher, C. I. Scofield, popularized it in the notes of his Scofield Reference Bible.
If dispensationalism originated in the 19th century, I would find that troublesome. Yet, it’s not how I explain the history of dispensationalism. God intended literal interpretation of the Bible, which is premillennial. You can read that in the Bible itself. For that reason, I say that premillennialism started with the apostles. From there, you can read their influence on several early patristic writers. Irenaeus reports that Papias (AD 60-130) said that “there will be a millennium after the resurrection from the dead, when the personal reign of Christ will be established on this earth.”
Systematization of Interpretation
Darby among others systematized premillennialism and a literal interpretation of scripture. Scofield and others picked up his mantle with their explanation. This could easily have been a counter to the systematization of amillennialism by covenant theology. The system of covenant theology preceded the system of dispensationalism, but premillennialism precedes amillennialism. Scripture doesn’t provide a system. However it is premillennial.
In the first century, no one spiritualized the Bible as a type of interpretation. A literal interpretation was the intention of Jesus and the Apostles. That’s what they did. Spiritualization, the warp and woof of covenant theology, didn’t occur until Roman Catholicism said that the church fulfilled Old Testament Israel.
Seven Dispensations?
Scofield introduced seven dispensations. I can agree with his seven divisions of the Bible and history. However, I would not characterize, explain, or label them the same as he did. One might add a few more divisions for clarity. As I wrote earlier, dispensations indicate the continuity and discontinuity of the workings of God in His world.
God Himself doesn’t change. That is continuity. Both out of His love and justice, He works in different manners during different periods. That is discontinuity.
As a description, I don’t like “age of grace,” speaking of the era in which we now live. Salvation always came and comes by grace. What Scofield called the age of grace, like others, I would call, the church age. God worked through Israel in the Old Testament age and in the church in the New Testament one, the latter from Christ to the rapture.
Bad Dispensationalism
Just because someone is a dispensationalist does not guarantee correct belief and practice or even right exegesis of passages. Dallas Theological Seminary probably did more to spread the system of dispensationalism than any other institution. It also though disseminated a weak or false gospel and doctrine of sanctification.
Dallas for the most part produced the free grace crowd that cheapens and distorts grace. This poses as a dispensationalist view because of its source. Cheap grace bled into independent fundamental Baptists and their anti-repentance and non-lordship teaching. They became more enamored with the soteriology of the free-gracers than historic Baptists. This fit nicely with their pragmatic church growth philosophy, pretending to be revival and the power of God.
Longtime president of Dallas, Lewis Sperry Chafer affected many with his eight volume Systematic Theology. He took his dispensationalism to an extreme, perhaps in reaction to covenant theology. He pushed his discontinuity too far. Chafer presented salvation by works in the Old Testament and by grace through faith in the New. He took Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and applied it to Jews in the Millennial Kingdom.
Holding and Teaching a Right Interpretation of Scripture
Whatever bad influence Dallas had with classic dispensationalism, it does worse in recent many years. It doesn’t require dispensationalism of its faculty. Instead, it uses its clout to sway people away from inerrancy. Dallas once pumped out serious eschatology to build a pretribulational, premillennial belief in church leaders and their churches. Now it doesn’t care if you’re premill, amill, or postmill, promoting unity with any aberrant position of eschatology.
Biblical churches and pastors must preach and train in a literal interpretation of scripture. Spiritualization and allegorization are easy ways to conform the Bible to whatever someone wants it to say. Easily, the woke churches use the Bible to teach their critical race theory, employing these means. The Words are God’s Words, but what comes out in the teaching are man’s words. Satan was fine using the Word of God to teach his will (Genesis 3, Matthew 4).
Churches need evangelization, preaching a true gospel. They also must make disciples, teaching new converts to rightly divide the Word of Truth. This requires teaching them a literal, grammatical-historical, dispensational interpretation of scripture. God and the Bible are dispensational.
God and the Bible Are Dispensational (Part Three)
The Bible did not come in one neat tidy package. God delivered it progressively through men over a period of 1500 years during history in real time, even using forty different men as human authors. As God revealed scripture, it did not come with a separate interpretive handbook and glossary for defining terms. He expected and presumes people will get it through plain reading.
As God imparted scripture through inspiration, people understood who were hearing in that day. The Old Testament audience did not need the New Testament to ascertain the writings. When He delivered more, past writings become better understood in a fuller way, bringing even greater knowledge of God’s message.
God’s Word has one meaning, yet many applications. People knew the meaning as God revealed scripture. He required the original audience to believe and practice what He wrote.
Satanic Attack on Dispensationalism
From the very beginning, Satan directly and then through the world system attacks scripture in several ways. He does this in one key manner by corrupting the meaning of God’s Word. Satan twists and also confuses the meaning. He does not want people to know with certainty what God says. Change of meaning abolishes or invalidates the authority of scripture.
Satan wants people to think and act in a different way than what God said. He does this in an incremental fashion, where people drift or move further away from scripture. The doctrine and practice of the Bible changed over the centuries through a modification of its meaning. By changing its meaning, it becomes at first a slightly different book and finally a very different one. This fulfills what Satan wants, but also satisfies the innate rebellion of man.
Changes in the meaning of the Bible relate to contemporary events and movements in history. Rather than adapting to what God said, people conform what God said to their desires or will. In a plain reading of the New Testament, churches were autonomous assemblies under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ through His Words. Satan and his system attacked them in vigorous and violent fashion.
Individual churches were vulnerable to fear of the fierce opposition of the Roman Empire. This disposed them toward reorganization favoring extra ecclesiastical hierarchy. Many moved toward greater cooperation and confederation. Prominent churches took on more dominance and authority for their leaders.
Philosophies of Men
In Colossians 2:8 Paul warns against philosophies. The New Testament addresses various heresies arising from human philosophy. Preserved early Christian writings trace the invasion of extra-scriptural thinking into the church. Doctrine and practice changed through intertwining neoplatonic philosophy with scripture. The church became something bigger than local.
The church at Rome at the center of the Roman Empire took on enormous prominence. Emperor Constantine I gave Christianity legal status in the Empire with the Edict of Milan in 313AD. When Constantine became the sole emperor of the Roman Empire in 324, Christianity became its official religion. Christianity became a state church for the Roman Empire when Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380AD. This is the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Empire was Catholic or Universal, so its state church became Catholic too.
Allegorization and Spiritualization
For a true church, local only, to become universal, allegorization or spiritualization of scripture must occur. This developed over three centuries with a unique influence, it seems, from a theologian, Origen of Alexandria. This allowed for modification of meaning to allow change in doctrine and practice. About a hundred years after Origen, Augustine further systematized allegorization of scripture, now known as covenantal theology. The Bible could become a vessel in which to pour ones own doctrine and practice by allegorizing it.
Allegorization or spiritualization gives a lot of leeway with interpretation, making it highly subjective. Someone can read what he wants into the text of scripture. This affects the authority of the Bible.
The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century was led by men raised as staunch Roman Catholics. They reformed Roman Catholic doctrine, however, still preserving much allegorization and spiritualization. More than Augustine, they composed a hybrid of allegorical and literal interpretation, now still referred as covenant theology. The immediate spiritual offspring of the Protestant Reformers further systematized an approach to the interpretation of scripture. Their system of interpretation justified a state church, something not seen in the Bible. They could find it by spiritualizing the church.
Amillennialism
In the main, the church could become an actual kingdom through spiritualization, a view of the future called amillennialism. The theologians of Roman Catholicism removed the distinctions by unifying Israel and the church. The church replaced Israel. They adapted the Old Testament prophecies of Israel and the kingdom for fulfillment in the church. Instead of a future fulfillment of the New Testament prophecy of Revelation, they spiritualized it as fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD.
Liberal theology easily proceeded from amillennialism. Liberals take the same approach even further, making almost everything in the Bible to mean what they want. They see now and in the future a spiritualized kingdom, a progressive social order. Jesus, the cross, the resurrection, and the gospel all take on their own meaning, most often related to advocacy of social issues. Modernism dovetailed easily and nicely from covenant theology.
Growing In and Out of Favor
Even though God and the Bible are dispensational, dispensationalism grew out of favor in mainstream teaching. In recent times, institutionalized theology portrays dispensationalism as of recent origin, arising with Darby in the 19th Century. Premillennialism, a literal interpretation of Christ’s kingdom, traces to the first century with the apostles. However, believers responded to covenant theology with a systematization of a literal interpretation of scripture in the 19th century. The Protestant system of covenant theology itself is of historically recent composition.
I contend that the rising popularity of covenant theology above dispensationalism traces to its allure to human pride. Men ascertain from God’s writings their secret meaning. This allows for a wide variety of contradictory belief and practice. Men like it when they’re free to do what they want, justified by what “God said.”
More to Come
The Bible Teaches Premillennialism, But Premillennialism Also Fits What We See Happening In The World
If you read a word like premillennialism and you just stop reading, I understand. Why does anyone need to use a word like that to explain or represent the Bible? I didn’t come up with the words amillennialism, postmillennialism, and premillennialism, but they are historic words that stand for particular representations, explanations, or systems of interpretation of the Bible.
As a system, the first of the three above words, amillennialism was the first to appear, even though it wasn’t coined until the 1930s. Every one of the previously stated terms have “millennialism” in them. This means that each of them pivot on the meaning of “the kingdom,” because the millennium refers to the kingdom in the Bible.
Amillennialism says “a” or “no” millennium. Instead of saying that Revelation 20 is a literal 1,000 year reign of Jesus Christ on earth, amillennialism spiritualizes 1,000, doesn’t take it literally. In that way, it says there is no millennial reign of Jesus Christ. Amillennialism itself is an explanation of scripture that relies on spiritualization of the text, a highly subjective approach to the Bible.
If someone can read into the words of scripture by spiritualizing them, he can become the authority for scripture. He can make it mean what he wants it to mean. The system of ahmillennialism began with Catholicism or Roman Catholicism, that latter the terminology for the former that arose during the Protestant Reformation. Catholicism said the church is the kingdom of God and the true nation of Israel. It reached that conclusion through allegorical interpretation, which arose from Catholic theologians.
Both amillennialism and postmillennialism say that the kingdom of Christ is the church and a true Israel. However, postmillennialism claims the added feature of an optimistic view of the success of the church in bringing in the return of Christ to earth. Amillennialism arose out of a Catholic church that ruled like a kingdom on the earth, a point of view very pragmatic and appropriate for that day. Theologians systematized that into amillennialism, then postmillennialism.
Premillennialism as an approach takes the Bible literally, that is, grammatically and historically. It takes an Old Testament priority, believing that plain meaning of the text understands scripture as those first hearing it in that day. Anyone who takes the Bible literally will also be a premillennialist. Premillennialism asks how people understood the Bible that were hearing it in the day it was written. It is called premillennialism because Jesus comes back before He sets up a thousand year kingdom on the earth, a literal reading of Revelation 19-20.
What I see happening through history and in the world today matches up with a premillennial approach or explanation. So much we read in the news fits right with the Bible. The application of scripture with a literal interpretation easily corresponds with contemporary events.
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