In a recent interview, Tucker Carlson, whose animosity toward Israel and the Jewish people has become increasingly apparent, mocked Senator Ted Cruz for his support of the State of Israel based on the Abrahamic Covenant of Genesis 12.
Though it was frustrating to watch Senator Cruz struggle to articulate the Abrahamic Covenant (and where in Scripture it is found), the most alarming part of it all was the antagonism and condescension that dripped from Carlson’s lips as he derided Cruz’s Christian Zionism.
Many Christians, particularly young men, are being influenced by a mixed crowd of socio-political commentators in the Conservative Manosphere, such as Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Andrew Tate, as well as by hardcore, anti-Zionist, Reformed theology bros like Joel Webbon.
This conflation of right-wing populism and extreme Reformed theology has created a new subculture in American evangelicalism—what I call the Young, Restless, Reformed, and Paranoid (YRRP).
And it’s a problem.
Although I have significant, substantive disagreements with aspects of Reformed theology, I gladly admit that there are plenty of Reformed Christians whose theology does not lead them to deride the Jewish people or the Jewish state, politically.
Rather, I am convinced that the opposite is true. In a social application of Newton’s Third Law of Motion, the insanity of the secular, woke Left has created an equal and opposite reaction—the Christian, woke Right.
Ironically, these two otherwise opposed worldviews find common ground in their opposition to the Jewish people, the State of Israel, and the United States’ support for both.
While I have no hope that anything I, an unabashed conservative Christian Zionist, might say will convince a far-Left secularist to abandon their anti-Zionism (which is to say, antisemitism), some hope remains that a YRRP brother who claims the name of Christ might hear me out.
Here are a few things to consider:
1.) The Abrahamic Covenant affirms that the land of Israel will always belong to the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — the Jewish people.
It is an eternal covenant that clearly depends not upon the faithfulness of Abraham or his descendants but entirely upon the faithfulness of Abraham’s God (Gen. 15:7–21; 17:6–8). Abram, it must be noted, contributed absolutely nothing to the covenant—he was asleep during the covenant-cutting ceremony!
For all the Reformed movement’s emphasis on the glory of God, I find it curious that the extreme element within it fails to see how God’s literal, future fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant (not to mention the Land Covenant, the Priestly Covenant, the Davidic Covenant, and the New Covenant) with national Israel brings glory to His name—something He swears He will do (Ezek. 36:16–32).
The testimony of both the Old Testament and the New is that “the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable,” and that because of His unchanging, holy character, He will keep His covenants with the original recipients “for the sake of the fathers” (Rom. 11:28–29).
The onus, then, is on the YRRP to demonstrate contextually from Scripture that God has changed His mind about the Abrahamic Covenant.
2.) God’s command to bless Abraham and his descendants does not require that we support or endorse everything the State of Israel does today.
Whether due to sincere confusion or latent antisemitism, this concept of blessing the Jewish people seems to be a sticking point for many in the YRRP camp. My own anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that it’s far more about an unwillingness to extend kindness and aid to the Jewish people than it is a genuine mystification about the meaning of the word bless.
Blessing Israel does not mean we go around rubber-stamping everything they do or say—any more than we do for the United States. Nor, as one Tuckerite once sarcastically asked me, does it mean we are required to write a monthly tithe check to Benjamin Netanyahu.
Rather, it means we should take every opportunity God gives us to seek the welfare of the Jewish people, individually or as a state, particularly when it comes to protecting them from those who hate them. Indeed, God judges those nations that come against His people Israel, even if He has used those nations to chasten them (Jer. 50:17–18).
Christian anti-Zionists, the YRRP among them, must reckon with God’s warning that He will judge those who divide up His land (Joel 3:2) and who do not extend help to His people in their time of greatest need (Matt. 25:31–33, 41–46).
3.) Christian Zionists are not trying to hasten Jesus’ return by supporting Israel.
The argument goes like this: The Bible speaks of the Jewish people being in the land prior to Jesus’ return (Matt. 24:15–28). The Bible also teaches that there will be an incredible time of antisemitism in the land prior to the Messiah’s return (Zech. 13:8). Therefore, Christians who support Israel do so in order to bring about the repopulation of Israel and another Holocaust so that Jesus can come back.
I’ve heard this from the Jewish community, and I’ve heard it from the YRRP camp. The funny thing is, I’ve never heard it from the Christian Zionists who supposedly believe it.
The fact is, Christian Zionists rightly understand that antisemitism is evil and satanic, and that they are called to stand up for—yes, to bless—the Jewish people in their time of need (Matt. 25:31–40).
Far from desiring attacks on the Jewish people, Christian Zionists have historically, and do presently, put their own lives on the line for the defense of the Jewish people—just consider Casper Ten Boom and Urija Bayer.
Further, as premillennialists, we do not believe there is anything we can do to hasten Jesus’ return. And for those of us who are dispensationalists, we believe Jesus’ taking up of the Church is imminent, not awaiting some act on our part.
A Call to Repentance
To those in the Young, Restless, Reformed, and Paranoid camp, permit me a piece of loving, brotherly counsel: repent.
You think you have secret knowledge about Zionist schemes and Jewish plots. That’s unadulterated Gnosticism, parading behind a socio-political mask.
Let the Word of God be your standard of reality, not the Conservative Manosphere. The Apostle Paul calls what you are doing boasting against the natural branches, and he warns us not to do it (Rom. 11:11–27).
By denying that Israel, even in her fallen state, has any claim to the land of promise, you are rejecting God’s self-revelation as immutable, faithful, merciful, gracious, and long-suffering.
Instead of consuming the endless drivel of angsty YouTubers, let us humbly open God’s Word and allow Him to speak. There we will find that the same God who brought us Gentiles near by the blood of Messiah (Eph. 3:13) promises a New Covenant to Israel and guarantees the survival of that people as long as the sun, moon, and stars shine in the heavens (Jer. 31:31–35).
