Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1126: Do Christians Have a Theological Obligation to Support the Modern State of Israel? Dr. Gary Burge

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

Dr. Burge received his Ph.D. in New Testament from Aberdeen University (Scotland) and has taught at King College (Tennessee), Northpark University (Illinois), Wheaton College (Illinois), and Calvain Theological Seminary (Michigan). He's the author of many books including two on the theology of the land promise: Jesus and the Land and Whose Land? Whose Promise? In this podcast conversation, we wrestle with the question: Do Chrisitans have a thoelogical obligation to support the modern state of Israel? 

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of Theology in the Raw. Do Christians have a theological mandate to support the modern state of Israel? That's the question we're going to wrestle with in this forthcoming conversation. I could think a few people more qualified to help us wrestle with this question than Dr. Gary Burge. Gary Burge did his PhD at the finest university in the world, namely Aberdeen University, where I also did my PhD. We didn't study together. He's a couple of years, maybe a few years older than I am. But Gary did his PhD in New Testament Studies under I. Howard Marshall at Aberdeen University. He taught at Wheaton College for over 25 years and then Calvin Theological Seminary, where he has just recently retired. And I say Gary is highly qualified to help us wrestle with this question because he's

written two books on the question of the promise of the land within biblical theology. He wrote a book called Jesus and the Land. What does Jesus have to say about the land promises of the Old Testament? And then he also wrote another book called Whose Land, Whose Promise, which also wrestles with the land promise in light of ongoing conflicts in the so-called land of Israel-Palestine. So we do focus on the question of the land promise in the Bible. We do also spill over into conversations surrounding the current conflict in Israel-Palestine. And as with any guests that I have on, Gary is going to bring his own background, his own perspective. And I don't, in this podcast,

in this platform, in Theology in Raw, I never ask people to simply sign off on what people are saying, but simply to listen, to engage, to wrestle. We are all about having curious conversations with a diverse range of thoughtful people. And Gary is certainly a very thoughtful person. I enjoyed this conversation very much. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Gary Burge. Gary, thanks so much for joining me on Theology in Iran. I'm really excited about this conversation. Great, Preston.

It's wonderful to be here with you. So you are an expert in what we'll call land theology. What does the Bible say about the land of Israel? We'll just call it the land of Israel for now. But tell us briefly, who are you and how did you become interested in this question about the land promises in the Bible? Sure. Yeah. So great question, because I think all of our academic interests really do flow from some experience we've had at some place along the line. So like you, Preston, I have a PhD from Aberdeen, Scotland, and I've taught New Testament for quite a long time, about 40 years, actually. I have been at places like Wheaton College for 25 years. Then I moved in 2017 to Calvin Seminary,

college for 25 years. Then I moved to, in 2017, to Calvin Seminary, ended up being the dean there. And so, and I just retired a couple of months ago. So, yeah, that's right. A lot of our generation is moving to different places. So, I'm still active in the whole discipline and I really do enjoy it. How did I, I came into New Testament studies through my work in Aberdeen, but I came into Middle Eastern interests and the whole question about Israel and Holy Land because when I was a college student, I was selected to be an exchange student. I was studying politics as an undergraduate. I wanted to be a lawyer. University of California sent me to the Middle East for a year. It was nuts. And the Levitian Civil War started when I was there. School got closed. We didn't know what to do. So instead of going home, we all hitchhiked around

the Middle East. I don't advise that to anyone. We hitchhiked around Syria, Turkey, all over Lebanon, Jordan. Then we just said, hey, let's go to Egypt. Okay, let's go get some cheap tickets. Rode a train all the way down to central Egypt. It's really nuts. Anyway, in Israel, of course, we went all over Israel. And so I think there is something infectious about people's interests when they get into the whole Middle East. The Middle East puts a mark on you. A lot of people say that.

And you are drawn back again and again. So over the course of my career, I have been back at least 25 or 30 times. I've helped lead conferences in Baghdad, Iraq for Presbyterian pastors, likewise in Cairo, Egypt, Libya, Damascus, Syria. So anyway, it's a fairly extensive network. But the group that has drawn my attention the most have been the Palestinians, because they have a lively Christian community there. Worldwide, about 10% of all Palestinians are Christian. But things are so hard for them in Israel that 8% of them have migrated. So it's about 2% now.

So anyway, so there I am, a New Testament guy, and also somebody who has got extensive experience in the Middle East, especially with Israel and the Palestinians. And I'm breathing evangelical air because I'm at Wheaton College, for instance, and I am hearing theologies which actually are siding with one political view or another. And I'm asking myself, hmm, are these theologies effective, especially when these theologies lead to the suffering of my Palestinian brothers and sisters in a place like Bethlehem or Nazareth. So out of all of that turmoil of New Testament studies, living inside of the Middle East, having all this experience with the wars in the Middle East, frankly, like yesterday, I spent an hour on the phone with a Palestinian Christian in Jerusalem,

very good friend, and I just had him describe what is his life like on the street right now in Israel. Yeah, that's why. So this really evolved into an academic interest. But let me say this too. The person who really sparked this interest, I want to give him credit. It wasn't I. Howard Marshall that I worked with. Instead, it was a man named Kenneth E. Bailey. And Ken Bailey, a very famous gospel scholar, works on the parables. He taught in Beirut for a number of years. I studied under him for half a year there. But anyway, Ken and I became lifelong friends. And we corresponded extensively through the course of my career and also up until he died. But there's a man, Ken, in whom you have this merging of a

profound theology about land and people and identity, and then also someone who is deeply invested in the Middle East itself. He spoke fluent Arabic. You know, Ken Bailey also was a catalyst for a lot of my thought. So that ends up landing me writing a book like Jesus and the Land, which is really a matching volume to the land in the Old Testament by Walter Brueggemann. And this is in Britain and America. And my goodness, I thought that this would be a very enlightening thing for all of my evangelical friends. But you publish a book like this and you suddenly discover you've stepped on a high voltage wire. And people don't take this conversation lightly. And so, I know full well that there will be people listening to this conversation with you, Preston. And some are going to say, wow, Gary, you are so spot on. Thank you. And then there are other people who are going to say, you must have studied somewhere

in a very dark and desolate place in Hades. So anyway, it is like black and white. It is like polarized. And so there will be some who will hate this and some who will love this. And that must mean you're right where you want to be. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I actually want to come back to the psychology of that. That's an interesting question. Why is it so inflammatory, this conversation? But let's go back to the beginning. And can you give us maybe what are the different views? Let's start there. The different options, the different views of the land promise in the Bible. There might not, I'm sure there's probably more than just two, but like give us maybe big picture stuff. What are the different views you're wrestling with? Yeah, let's start with the larger picture. The question really has to do with covenant.

And the question is, the land promises are connected to Abraham in the Old Testament. So the question is, is Abraham's covenant and its benefits still applicable to those who are his blood descendants even today, namely modern Judaism and its expression in modern Israel? All right. That's one question. And there are many, many evangelical Christians that will say absolutely that the promises given to Abraham do not go away. And therefore, Abraham's covenant is still intact. Therefore, the modern state of Israel can make a theological land claim. So, yesterday I just went online, I won't mention who, but a very, very influential pastor in California, and that's exactly what he was saying. Gaza belongs to

Israel. So if the Jews have to kill and push people out of Gaza, then that's their right. God will be on their side. Okay, that's the big picture. So it's really about covenant, that's their right. God will be on their side. Okay, that's the big picture. So it's really about covenant, and it's about Abraham. There are other people who come along and they say, well, not so fast, because what does it mean that the covenant we have with Christ intersects all of this? In other words, then, two questions. The first is, who are the children of Abraham? Because it's the children of Abraham who are heirs. And everyone in New Testament studies has made a consistent case, it's the tradition of the church, that Paul is saying Gentiles now become children of Abraham,

Romans 4, Galatians 3. So, that's the first question. So, it isn't so simple. Attachment to Abraham is not by blood, but it's by faith. That's Paul. The second question is, what is the locale? Is there a spiritual location, a locus, where God is at work? And therefore, is there this notion of holy land that Jews would have, promised land? And does the New Testament intersect that? And the answer is yes. We have this in the Gospels, Acts. We have this in Paul.

And so, therefore, Christians are saying, well, this argument that anyone with a Jewish bloodline, therefore, from Abraham still can claim holy land. And secondly, this is only for Jews, and Gentiles are excluded. Well, today, this is a raging conversation, and it has been engaged by no less than Michael Byrd, N.T. Wright, Scott McKnight, and they are about to publish a brand new book that is coming out this year that is going to engage this thing directly because they're kind of unhappy about the way they've been treated on this issue. Where would they, I'm curious where they would, I thought, well, yeah, how would you describe their position?

Well, the thing is, is that the question of land is only a secondary crater, but there's a larger explosion in the middle of it all. And it's the question of covenant. And it's the question of the relationship between Israel and the church. And so, therefore, is there continuity or is there discontinuity? That's the question. And therefore, what you have to ask is, is the message of the New Testament an announcement that the Messiah has come for Israel, and therefore, all the old wineskins are going to break? That's really the question. So let me frame it this way. A very important article written by James Dunn in 1998, and the title is awesome.

It is Paul, colon, apostle or apostate? And the question is, inside of Paul's theology, does he leave Jewish theology unperturbed? Does he leave it alone? Is it intact? And therefore, he doesn't believe that Jews without Christ are in any jeopardy. In other words, all of the Jewish theological system, therefore, stays intact and therefore is saving. Those who are committed to another discussion called Paul in Judaism today, they are trying to make that case, that Paul, therefore, is someone who simply has refined his Judaism without abandoning it. Okay, we all say that to a degree. But then there's another set of voices, and that's these guys who are going to say, no, there is discontinuity as well. The arrival of the Messiah has meant something definitive,

and therefore anyone who is going to detract from the exclusivity of the arrival of Christ demotes Christ. Yeah, that's what they're essentially saying. So therefore, something new has emerged in Christ. There is a new covenant which affects all of the other covenants. And if that's the case, then it puts on the table, on the corner of the table, but still on the table, the question of land. Because land is connected to Abraham through covenant benefit. But if Christ disturbs that, then, of course, everything, that's super helpful. I want to jump in with my own. I'm going to withhold kind of my thoughts in this whole discussion. Let's go back to the one, the first view you articulated that would be, I mean, it would be, right? Pentecostal circles. So very different brands of evangelicalism. And yet, you know, similar focus on, you know, they might see things like 1948, when Israel became an official political state, they would see that as are in those traditions, then, in that time, they're not really thinking along the lines of covenant and Abraham. There's simply, this is a whole prophecy movement in the evangelical church that wants to say, okay, there's been this yearning for the reconstituting of God's people in the Middle East, in Israel. This has been the prediction of the prophets of the Old Testament. Never mind, the prophets are actually referring normally to the return from the exile in Babylon. But they saw 1948 and the establishment of the state of Israel as, yes, fulfillment of prophecy. And then in 1967, that war in which Israel takes all of the land,

that also then is the culmination of those expectations. Okay. Which, just as an aside, Preston, it just strikes me as remarkable because the land promises in the Old Testament are always connected to covenant fidelity. Right. All the time. And if you're not faithful to the covenant, then you're going to be removed from the land. It says in Leviticus, it'll spit you out.

So today, what we have is Christians making the claim that this modern state of Israel, which was founded intentionally to be secular. They did not even in its original founding documents want to put the name of God in. They did not even in its original founding documents want to put the name of God in. Here you have a state that has no national intention of interest or fidelity in the covenant, none whatsoever. In fact, we think that only roughly 20%, 25%, 20% of Israelis are religiously active. That's what they call it. Are you religious or not religious? That means, are you going to synagogue? Do you recognize the Sabbath? That kind of thing.

So, it is a very secular country. The vast majority is not religious. So, therefore, I ask, if Jeremiah stepped into that scene, he would be puzzled to find people claiming a lineage back to Abraham, having no interest whatsoever in the covenant or God for that matter, and yet making a claim that the blessings of land and Abraham belong to them. That to me is stunning. What I think the, would people say yes, yes to all that, but then say, well, this is kind of a preparation. Like this is kind of a first step toward, you know, Israel actually, or Jewish people. They're now on the land and at some point in the maybe near future, they're going to actually come to Christ. The kind of Romans 11 thing, there's going to be this renewal and this is kind of a first sign of that renewal. Is that what some people might, because that does seem like your pushback to that is pretty clear.

It's like, how do you argue against that? I think that's how they would get around that, right? That this is a first aid. I mean, some Messianic Jews will take that view, especially Christian Zionists will take that view. But I ask, well, where's the evidence for that? I mean, this is complete speculation. It is. All I do know is that in the Old Testament, there is a consistent message. If you ignore the covenant, if you do not live by covenant righteousness,

and you're not worshiping God or interested in God, then out you go. It's very simple. There's no complicated math here. There are many. I stayed at a kibbutz. I've done archaeology in Israel. So right outside of a place called Nufkin Ozar, there's a kibbutz, which is atheist, entirely atheist. No synagogue there. I ate actually in the hall with all of the residents. And I had great conversations. And they said, we don't believe in God.

We don't believe he deserves our respect because of the Holocaust. I understand those feelings. I get all of that. But then I really came away and I thought, well, okay, so how do you stand an atheist who has a cultural and legacy, DNA legacy to Abraham, but has zero faith? Does that person, is that person then able to go to the West Bank and say, ah, my ancestor Abraham was promised this land, now I'm going to take it away from him? Yeah, yeah.

That to me, a little seems like kind of crazy. Another argument in favor of that first view that, you know, I guess we could just come out and say we're not in agreement of is you have a language of, at least in English translations, of eternality, right? Especially around Abraham's covenant language of you're going to get the land forever. You're going to, you know, this will... You have a language that sounds pretty irrevocable with Abraham's covenant, which sometimes includes the land.

Would that be accurate? I mean, I didn't write down the verses, but I know there's some that people point to. I know exactly what you're referring to. Yeah. Yeah. And my good friend, Old Testament scholar and Hebrew expert, John Walton has said, well, wait, not so fast. That word for eternity that you have in the Old Testament, the Hebrews didn't have this notion, philosophical notion of time without end. This is a very modern notion that we're projecting back on this word olam. So therefore, he says, it means something which is permanent. So we have examples of that same word being used in the Old Testament in which God says, this is going to be forever.

And then five chapters later, God changes it. So it means something which is stable, permanent, strong. That's the notion here. And this is John Walton. I'm simply John Walton. So we have actually put onto the Old Testament something which is foreign to the Old Testament when we talked about eternal, eternal sort of presence like that. I think Jonah was in the belly of the whale for an Olam, right? Which was like three days. Yeah.

Which means it was a really serious deal. That's what it means. It was substantial. That's a good translation. It is substantial. Substantial. Okay. So the promise I'm making to you is substantial.

Okay. You also have at the end of Joshua. So this is another, again, I should have noted these before I jumped on, but at the end of Joshua, chapter 23, 24, you have statements that sound like when they conquered the land, that the specific land promises were sort of fulfilled. Like you have the land in fulfillment of everything the Lord has said. I think it's 24, 23 or something. How would you unpack? Is that what you would point to to say the land promises were fulfilled then and then you stayed in land and

then you ended up squandering it and then through exile? Well, I think the promise, I want to say just in respect to my Old Testament colleagues, that the promise of Abraham that is blind in Joshua is a promise that has continuity throughout the Old Testament. So, therefore, the return from the exile is also a return to those promises. So, all of that is fine. But what we also have embedded in the provinces, the prophets, is that there is going to be a horizon on the current status quo. And Messiah is going to broker the nature of that horizon for the status quo. And so, as a Christian, what I want to do is spend my energies working closely inside of

the New Testament to see how does the New Testament announce the horizon has come, and therefore all bets are off. And I mean, think about this, Preston, for a moment. Paul has just said in Romans 4, Galatians 3, that Gentiles are sons. He says sons, I'm afraid. S sons of Abraham. How can he do that? That is absolutely shocking. And then he says in Romans 4.13, he says, and the promise to Abraham was that he would inherit the world, not the land of Canaan. So in other words, Paul is reimagining what God is doing. God is interested in not the provincial preservation of a nation in the Middle

East. God is interested in the restoration of his entire creation. And therefore, what you have now is the inclusion of the Gentiles along with Jewish believers, and together the confluence of these two streams create the very people who will take the blessing of Abraham to the rest of the planet, the world. So yeah, the New Testament has this universalizing interest when it comes to these. The horizon has come, Messiah has arrived, and therefore all bets are off. The way I've worded it, and I'd love your thoughts on this, is that you have in Genesis 1, 2, and 3, God has this plan for all of creation. He gives all of creation to Adam and Eve, His presence dwelling in Eden. And then when they sin, they're exiled.

So you have land, blessing, and then they are cursed in exile. And you have that same kind of land, blessing, curse, exile, the very language now embedded in the Abrahamic prognosis. So like the discontinuity is instead of the creation as a whole, now it's the specific land of Israel. But they go through the same kind of blessing, land, you know, inheritance, curse, exile. The book of Judges does the very same thing.

I mean, with Benjamin and Dan, the very same thing. You live unrighteously in the land. You lose your covenant land. It's very simple. Judges does it. Yeah. But then the fulfillment, though, like you said, in the New Testament is the same kind of thing. We are blessed by becoming children of Abraham once again.

But in terms of the land component, it extends once again to all of creation, which is why you see this. It's Romans 4.13 that the promises were given to Abraham that his inheritance, that his descendants, including Gentiles, without being circumcised, which that's another. Because you have Gentiles coming into the covenant, promise of Gentiles coming in. But apart from circumcision, apart from becoming Jewish, that's one of the most shocking things in the new covenant. Exactly. But Paul's argument in Romans 4 is that, look, Abraham was not circumcised when these promises came. Oh, right. Yeah.

He was a Gentile. So therefore, yes. Okay. You said it when these promises came. Oh, right. Yeah. He was a Gentile. Yes. Okay. You said it, not me. So, anyway, yeah. I mean, he really does. Without circumcision, what is he? He's like a Gentile. So, therefore, Paul is saying, really, no, what attaches you to the world of these promises is faith in Christ. So, therefore, he actually says, then in Romans 2, he says, so therefore, even if you're circumcised, your circumcision can become uncircumcision. So he's arguing that these markers that traditional religion has placed on the people of God now are dissipating at the horizon of these covenants. That there's only one measure. And the one measure is, are you attached to Christ

or are you not? Let me give you, Preston, a really nice illustration of this. It is in John 15. The gospels, as I say in this little book, that you have to be careful at this time in the first century when you talk about land and politics. Almost like today, it's kind of funny, but you would be threatened in the first century by this. But anyway, in John, in the Old Testament, when Isaiah, for instance, imagines what Israel is, Israel is a vineyard. This is used in the gospels regularly. Israel is a vineyard, and the people of God are like vines which were lifted out of Egypt, carried to the Holy Land, and planted. So the question of Israelite identity was always, are you planted in the Holy Land? That's always the question. And as you live in the Holy Land, and you're well-planted,

and you are fruitful, God will protect that vineyard with a wall. Okay? If you're not, God will tear down the wall and destroy the vineyard. It's very clear. This is Isaiah that I'm channeling here. Jesus uses this in one of his parables, the parable of the vineyard, and he says, this vineyard will be taken away from you and given to others. That's astonishing language in the parable of the vineyard. But in John 15, Jesus is doing his own spin on Isaiah's vineyard parable, because he says the question is no longer, are you planted in the vineyard of God's holy land? That's not the question any longer. The only question is, do you see that Jesus is the one vine planted that matters? And the question for you is, are you attached to Jesus?

In Jewish theology, the question of attachment and identity is rootedness in the G-I-R-S, you might say. But in John's mind and Jesus' mind here, the only question is, are you planted, are you grafted in to Christ because he's the only vine that matters? What you have is a rearranging of what I call spiritual geography. A reimagining of spiritual geography. And so, yeah, that's – and I think when you read John 15 and you read the parable of the vineyard in the synoptics, and then you go back and you read Isaiah's vineyard parable, you see, oh my gosh, they are upending all of the metaphors. Is John 4, the neither this mountain nor that mountain, is that playing into it as well? Because that is a very geographical concern, right? Which geographical place are we going to be worshiping?

Oh, yeah. The Samaritan woman is exactly that in John chapter 4 where she wants to dodge his promies by saying, well, we worship up here on Mount Gerizim. I'm a Samaritan. And he says – and she says, you worship in Jerusalem. Yeah, we have two temples. There's a whole history of the rival temples between the Samaritans and the Jews. We get all of that. But the kicker is, in John 4, is that Jesus says, the day is coming, that's the horizon,

when there will be not worshiping in Gerizim or Jerusalem, but God is looking for those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. What that implies is the dissolution, the dissolving of one thing and the emerging of something new. That's what it implies. Those are the broken wineskins. So again, just to summarize in case people are trying to pull it all together. So like the land promises that are still waiting to be fulfilled in the Old Testament are being fulfilled through all of creation, and they're being kind of reconfigured as well. Is that, yeah. Would it be, this might not be the best language, but this is the language some people use. Like, you know,

these land promises are not going to be literally fulfilled, but spiritually fulfilled. I don't even like the word spiritual because it does include creation. It's not like they're just a non-material idea. It's going to all the nations, right? Yeah, right. The plan, God's program for his creation is restoration. That's God's program for his creation. And therefore, as I read the Old Testament, you can see that the agent of his restoration plan begins with Abraham and with a tribe, Abraham's descendants, and that is the story I have in the Old Testament. But what I have in the New Testament is this reimagining which says the restoration of God's creation is for the entire world because all of the world and all people in the world are loved by God

equally. So that puts in question whether or not there is any, shall I say, exceptionalism for one nation over all of the nations of the world. This is what Paul argues against again and again. It is exceptionalism. It's ethnic exceptionalism. And if you make that step with Paul, you have then just rearranged the way God's program for the world is understood. In fact, this is the very basis of Paul's commitment to the Gentile mission in his life. He can defend, as he does, why he's going to the Gentiles, to conservative Jews back in Jerusalem, Jewish Christians, who really want to have more of a, oh, I don't know, a very limited understanding of where God is at work. He should be at work

in Jerusalem. He should be at work here in the Holy Land. But no, Paul says, God's love for the entire world exceeds that narrow mission that you have in mind. That's good. That's good. So years ago, I did a bit of work on Ezekiel for my PhD dissertation. Not on this issue at all, but I had one chapter on Ezekiel and a couple of verses, but you know how it goes. You got to know the whole book inside it out and everything. So it became my favorite book, honestly, at least of the Old Testament. And I went back when I was teaching at Cedarville University and taught an upper level course on Ezekiel. So I had to work through it again. And it was really in studying Ezekiel, I would say 36 to 39 and then 40 to 48. 40 to 48 is the famous temple

prophecy. 38 to 39 with Gog and Magog and all this stuff. And it was through studying that and how the New Testament interprets those eschatological passages that really kind of sealed the deal for me to basically agree with everything you're saying, because these temple, you know, fulfillment of land, Gog and Magog, Israel back in the land, the so-called third temple or whatever, it's clearly being fulfilled in the new heavens and new earth and the new Jerusalem and all these beautiful images of the restoration of creation as a whole. In fact, Revelation, is it chapter 20? You know, Gog, in the literal translation in Ezekiel is Gog from the land of Magog,

meaning Gog is a person, Magog is a land. And Revelation 20 says Gog and Magog, he refers to Gog and Magog as this kind of generic entity referring to the nations. So he clearly just interprets it, not against, but he extends it in a different direction than if all you had was Ezekiel, what you would think would happen. He's universalizing. He's saying that the great struggle... He's universalizing. So the great struggle that you have focused in historic Ezekiel or back in that period of time in the Old Testament is a struggle between the surrounding nations and the nation of Israel itself. And so Revelation says this is a cosmic struggle. This is Paul in Ephesians 6.

We are engaged not within the struggle to preserve God's program right now in Christ, is not the construction of a national entity. It is broader than that. It is bigger than that. So our opponents are actually bigger, much larger. You know, Ezekiel talks a lot about the restoration of the temple. And of course, this is true in the book of Revelation. But that just reminds me of another great test case for

this. If the Holy Land is still something sacred that is to be preserved, and I hear this all the time when I take all these trips to the Middle East. If the Holy Land is holy, certainly the temple is incredibly holy. And therefore, the temple is at the very center of the Holy Land. Jerusalem is kind of like concentric circles. There's the temple, there's Jerusalem, and then out you go into the rest of the land. Okay, fine. Should Christians, therefore, believe that there will be the building of a temple today in Jerusalem, and this is something we need to pray for and work for?

That is a really hot topic. Oh, yeah, yeah. And my answer to that is no, it's completely wrongheaded. Because one clear thing, very clear thing the New Testament says, is that we have in Christ the replacement of the temple in Jerusalem. In other words, all of the things we seek in our restoration with God that would have been facilitated at the temple now have happened in Christ and his death, John 1.14. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. So this dwelling among us, this place is dwelling. This is the word for the tabernacle. This is the career contribution of Greg Beal,

the tabernacle. This is the career contribution of Greg Beal, well-known New Testament scholar, that all of this temple language now is being used in the New Testament for Christ and the church. And therefore, if you imagine that somehow our agenda as Christians is the rebuilding of a temple in Jerusalem, we are really, we've missed the mark. Well, and it's based on, yeah, a lot of it's based on Ezekiel, but again, the author of Revelation clearly says, and I say clearly, scholars are not supposed to say that. It's pretty clear to me. But anyway, people could disagree with that. And I think I've written a blog a long time ago on all of the many, many, many allusions that Revelation 20 to 22 has that are linked back to Ezekiel 40 to 48.

So, yeah, you have that passage. You have the glory leaves the temple before it's destroyed. Yeah. And when does it return? Well, it returns in Jesus who called himself the temple and his body is the temple and we're the temple. So it's like, does that mean that in order to rebuild a physical temple, it's like you're going backwards. You're going backwards. You're going against the trajectory of scripture that – You are.

You are, exactly. If you plan to venerate some new building that's going to be constructed where the Dome of the Rock is in Jerusalem, that is so crazy. It is the very thing – Paul would just fall over just in shock. It would just be so contrary to anything he ever imagined for this. Yeah. Yeah. So in Christ, we actually do have the temple who was fully realizing the presence of God. That is what the temple means. The temple is that locus where God's presence dwells and dwells. And therefore, it's a meeting place where the priests can broker that relationship with the rest of Israel. that relationship with the rest of Israel. So Christ is that place, that locus, that space of that person. The incarnation means God has come into history and is present in history.

That's the temple. What would be, in your mind, the strongest counter-argument to your view? Let's go back and let's try to steel man the so-called dispensational view or Pentecostal view, the view that I guess probably a lot of people, I don't think they, they, they would have a airtight argument for it. It's just kind of in the air of, of evangelicalism, right? I think a lot of people haven't really studied this out, but it's just like, yeah, isn't, aren't we supposed to support Israel? I mean, God loves Israel and made promises Israel and we equate the modern state of Israel, biblical Israel.

Right. Anyway, what would be the, in your mind, the strongest argument for like a dispensational sort of reading? Would it be taking these promises on a more, in a more literal fashion in the old Testament or? Right. I think that what,

well, let me just put it this way. With my friends that I debate with, they believe that the strongest argument is not necessarily a theological argument. They believe that the strongest argument is entirely subjective in my mind. And that is it is a miracle that Israel, the regathering of Jews in the Middle East happened in the 20th century, that Israel became a state in 1948 and gained all of the land in 1967. All of this is a divine miracle. And therefore, you cannot contradict the evidence you have at hand. So, for most, honestly, it isn't a theological argument that comes my way. That, in their mind,

is the strongest argument. And I guess I would respond to that by saying, you know, that is a very limited understanding of history because people have made claims throughout history, human history, millennial claims, that some way our time in history is a divinely ordained time. That our building of this nation from the Byzantines right up to the building of the British Empire. Somehow God is blessing us. Manifest destiny, even of taking North America. This is something that God wants us to do. They're the Canaanites, we're the Israelites. This kind of rhetoric is so dangerous, but it has been used so many times. So I ask my debate partners, I say, do you realize that the same argument has been used dozens of times throughout history?

And what's so shocking to me is they just don't know this. They do not know this. Christianity has been millennial, as it were, that our time in history is now the fulfillment of prophecy that has been done again and again and again. Is that a strong argument to me? I don't think that's a strong argument at all, because the fulfillment of the prophecy of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, is a secular state. This, by the way, is the problem that ultra-Orthodox Jews, Hasidic Jews in Israel have with the modern state of Israel. Most people don't know this, but there are many, many Hasidic Jews, the ones with the curls and the hats and all that, that don't support the state of Israel. And yeah, oh yeah. And the reason

they don't is because they think first it is theologically bankrupt, which I've just explained, because they're not doing, they don't care about that theology. They're concerned about moral issues, the moral conduct of Israel with its neighbors, especially with the Palestinians. But thirdly, they believe that the Messiah is the one who's going to call together this nation and make it holy and righteous again. And that has not happened. The Messiah has not come. So, you have this whole segment of Israel that basically doesn't support Israel. It's pretty strange. Can you explain, so since we're on that, Orthodox Jews, Zionist Jews, and maybe even, let's throw in settlers. These are three hot terms. Can you explain maybe having spent so much time there and talked to people? What are these categories? Are they related? Are they the same? Let me just take each of the terms quickly.

And the first is an Israeli is a citizen of the state of Israel. But what most people don't realize is that 20% of Israelis are Palestinian. Right. They hold citizenship. They vote. All of that kind of thing. 20%. And they might be Muslim or Christian. Probably more Muslim.

More Muslim than they are Christian and secular too. So you have all of these that are mixed together inside of the country. So this is what makes it ironic to these people that in 2018, Israel passed a law called the Nation-State Law in which they said this country is for Jews exclusively. It will privilege Jews racially and it will privilege our language, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It would be the same with about 20%. The 20% of that population was immediately excluded by law. If America said, this country is made for white people, and we will privilege white people, and we will privilege your history going back to Europe, and we will privilege white people, and we will privilege your history going back to Europe,

immediately 20% of our African American neighbors would immediately wonder, how can you do that? That is incredible. Israel has done something that we would find deeply objectionable. Okay, so there are Israelis. It's a mixed population. Standing over Israel is what's called Zionism, Standing over Israel is what's called Zionism, and that is an ideological commitment to the restoration of a Jewish nation, and it will draw from all kinds of important threads in the Holocaust. It will draw from Old Testament promises. But the idea is we will create this nation and it's going to be an ethnic nationalism. That's the key. Zionism is a nationalism based on race. All right. That is why some people get in a lot of trouble when they say, well, then that makes it kind of racist. I don't, I mean, does it? That's hotly disputed today. Very disputed. We're in apartheid state. This is everything you're saying sounds like apartheid, but I know

that's highly disputed. And I, I, it's, this is outside of my pay grade to determine whether it is an apartheid state. Right. So the 20% of, of 2 million, roughly, of Palestinians who live inside of Israel, they're not experiencing apartheid. They experience discrimination. And today, it's really bad. But Israel has 2 million people in the West Bank and 2 million people in Gaza, 4 million altogether, who are living under Israeli military rule, don't have the freedom to travel, don't vote, they have no control over their lives whatsoever. And in Gaza for 16 years, they were completely blockaded. So those people are captured populations of Palestinians who are not integrated into Israeli society, but who are controlled by

Israeli society. Now, when you have that, you're getting close to some kind of a form of apartheid and scholars debate what form this is. Apartheid is the A word though, that you are not allowed to say if you're in Israel. Yeah. And I don't, I, I, again, I don't know enough to determine whether this is or isn't. I had on, you know, um, a Palestinian Christian, Daniel Benora on the podcast. And he told a story of when, um, Desmond Tutu and some South African leaders visited Israel. These are his words. Okay. You can fact check this. He said that they were like, this is worse than what we have is what yeah apartheid on steroids that's what they said people who lived under apartheid said that so i again

maybe i'm totally wrong maybe maybe desmond tutu's wrong maybe whatever there's another side of the story i just i don't know but that was interesting the the christian um you might say liberation movements that are inside of the west bank in g, those Christian intellectuals who were trying to figure out what is a Palestinian identity and how do we resist Israel, they were consulting with the South African leadership all the time. And that is why these South African Christian leaders were coming to Palestine regularly, and they were wanting to help the Palestinians to understand how do you do this nonviolently. And they were wanting to help the Palestinians to understand how do you do this nonviolently? Do you get accused of being anti-Semitic or justifying Hamas or downplaying all the violence that certain terrorists, I mean Hamas and other groups have done toward the Jewish people?

And how do you respond to that? Oh, yeah. Of course I do. And in fact, if you have comments, I don't know, at the end of podcasts like this, it'll all show up there. And so what that is, that's an exaggeration. It's like if you say you don't like Alabama, that must mean you hate all Southerners. So it's a ridiculous exaggeration. Someone who would say that someone like me is anti-Semitic simply doesn't understand anti-Semitism very well. And they don't understand what I'm saying very well. I'm saying nothing new. I'm saying things which Jewish citizens of Israel

have been saying for a very long time. So, yeah. So, am I? No, I'm not anti-Semitic. I am echoing Jewish criticisms. Just simply because you are going to lodge a moral criticism against Israel doesn't mean that you're anti-Jew. That's the very important—if you are critical of Zionism, doesn't mean you're anti-Jewish. This is a correlation which Israel has tried to make very carefully. This is a correlation which Israel has tried to make very carefully, that if you are against Zionism, as I said, which is based on race, or you're against sort of critical of Israel, then you're anti-Semitic and you belong to the Holocaust. This is how my debating partners wish to silence the discussion.

If you speak any more critically about Israel's activity in Gaza, for instance, the remarkable and breathtaking killing of now 6,000 or 7,000 people, to speak against that as disproportionate to what had happened on October 7th is to make you anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish. And I just think it's a fallacy. It is not a successful argument. What would you say to someone that says, well, they started it? It's not like Israel would have just, hey, we feel like bombing the heck out of Gaza one day and let's go kill 6,000, 7,000 innocent people. It's like Hamas started this. In fact, they always start it. It's always them shooting the rockets over and then Israel responds and sure. It might be disproportionate.

Sure. Civilians get killed, but it's not like Israel doesn't start these things. How would, how would you respond? That, that was the, I was, I mean, I'm totally honest. That was my perspective up until probably two years ago when I had a better understanding and I'm still, I'm still very much a novice in the history. And the more I studied, the more complicated the history is to me. So, but that, I would have said the exact same thing. And I spent, I spent time in Israel and when I went to Jewish villages, everything is great. When I went to, you know, Palestinian villages, I got rocks thrown at the bus, you know? And it's like, well, how, you know, but again, I'm, I'm entering into a situation I know nothing about at that time, you know? And it's like, well, how, you know, but again, I'm entering into

a situation I know nothing about at that time, you know, 25 years ago, but yeah. Like every conflict, you have to have the context. And if you don't have the context, you're going to misunderstand the conflict. It's, you know, and, and Gaza is especially a subject of that. Let me just give you just a couple of kind of crazy facts, okay? 70% of the residents of Gaza are all refugees. You might ask, well, how did they become refugees? It's because when Israel began as a nation from 1948 to 1955, they began a process of emptying Palestinian villages, moving them by force, getting them out of their country, because they had a demographic problem. When Israel put up its flag in 1948, the majority

of the residents in the country were Palestinian. So what do you do with that? You push, they did, 700,000 Palestinians out of the center of Israel. Now, when it comes to Gaza, those areas in the south, like Ashkelon, they pushed Palestinians into Gaza, and then they slammed the gate. So, they could never get out. So, you've got like three generations sitting in Gaza under incredible poverty, angry as ever, asking, how is it that we end up living in this cesspool of a city and we are surrounded by fences? We can't fish beyond five miles. We have no control over anything from electricity to water to internet. And then for the last 16 years, we've been living under a full Israeli embargo. So we can't even trade with Egypt. We can't trade with Syria

and Jordan. How do we trade? How do we prosper? So they feel as if there is this stranglehold that's been on them for a long time. My friend yesterday in Jerusalem said to me, we all have known that there was going to be another uprising. The tremors have been happening for about three years. No one knows when or where. Now we do. So the last uprising in 2000 came out of the West Bank. Now it's coming out of Gaza. The problem for Israel is how long can you hold 4 million people in captivity when their average birth rate is greater than yours? How long can you hold 4 million people? The South Africans learned the hard way. You can't. Well, Gary, this, yeah, opened up lots of cans and this is an important conversation to have. I want to reiterate again. I know with all the polarization,

I think especially if you're not from the land or live in the land or have even been to the land or haven't done extensive studying, now's the time to not cling to maybe a narrative that you don't quite understand, but to listen. And again, I think listen, learn, learn, listen, be a patient learner. And if at the end of the day, maybe everything Gary says is actually wrong or his narrative, whatever, then whatever. But like

to get there, I think a lot of people enter into this conversation clinging to a certain narrative that they haven't really examined. And that's what I'm doing. I'm just trying to examine and learn and listen, especially to a certain perspective, maybe that I wasn't bathed in for 40 years of my Christian life. Why do you think, I did, you raised this issue. It was really interesting at the beginning. I want to come back to it. Why is it so, of all the really hot issues that we can wrestle with, why is this one so, why have you experienced such volatility around if you're not on the, you know, the right side of this conversation or a certain side? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a really good question. And I,

America, you know, is an outlier with this. I have to say America's an outlier. South Africa has a little bit of this as well. But America is really an unusual place when it comes to this topic. Talking to my parents' generation, they would say there's a degree of post-Holocaust guilt. My dad was in World War II, and therefore he had a commitment to this that just simply wouldn't go away. Okay, I respect and I understand that. We have a very large population inside of America that is very committed to Israel, Jews and Christians both. But I think for evangelicals, I think one of the very key pieces here for evangelicals is that so much of the growth of the evangelical church came through the 20th century with revivals. And eschatology was a key part of the revival.

So if you were to go back, if you and I were Christians, say in 1918, 1920, 1925, say from 1918, the end of World War I, and say 1929 when the stock market crashes, here's what you would know. You would know that so many of the promising young men in our world are dead. A flu virus has killed about 50 or 75 million. We can't count it. And that there is so much economic instability that I have just lost everything in my bank account. The kind of instability. And so therefore, the tent revivals that came out of that in America, especially with Moody and these guys, what they tended to do is talk about eschatology. So these are all signs of the decline of the world.

And we know this decline is happening because in the 19, after World War II, we know that there is this Jewish migration going back to the Holy Land. So, evangelicalism, if you talk to evangelicals at root, they have this instinctive reflex that in some manner, prophecy is being fulfilled in the 20th century. And that's part of the hope in a chaotic, unpredictable world. This is a key piece of hope that gets them through. So So if you mess with that hope, that actually makes a lot of psychological sense. There's certain bricks in our worldview foundation that are pretty sacred. And you pull that out, if it crumbles, then, you know.

Right. So I'm right now being asked to speak on the Gaza situation a lot. Okay. And when I'm in a public forum, what happens is inevitably evangelicals will come forward and they'll open the Old Testament and they'll say, look, Zephaniah 2.4, by the way, is the tip.

Gaza will be raised. Okay. So, but really, it says that in Zephaniah 2.4. I've had it presented to me quite a few times, but it helps comfort me because, in other words, the world is falling apart, I feel, but this is all in God's plan. And therefore,

God is putting Israel where it's supposed to be. God is moving the nations where they're supposed to. And therefore, my comfort is that it's all predicted and Christ will return soon. is that it's all predicted and Christ will return soon. So, again, if you go online right now, you'll see that the Gaza War, there are evangelical pastors saying things like, this is a fulfillment of prophecy, therefore don't worry about it. And to me, that is a form of theological malpractice. I do. I agree with that. I definitely agree with that. I may not know the modern political situation, but on the theological front, I – so in conclusion, Christians do not have a theological necessity, a mandate to support the modern state of Israel. Is that,

would you agree with that statement? That's right. So therefore, if my understanding of the covenant of Christ is the way it's been understood, by the way, for 1900 years and in the whole reform tradition. So if my understanding of Christ's work and identity are correct, If the power of his covenant is true, then it has upended all of those presuppositions which lead to a land theology for Israel.

Well, Gary, that's a great note to end on. I can't thank you enough for giving us so much of your time. I really appreciate it. That's been great to be with you. Where can people find you? Thanks for engaging in the subject. You got a website, Gary? People can go check out more of your work? Yeah. Right. GaryBurge.org. I do. And my publications are there. And if someone wants to dive deeper into this, the one I'd recommend, Jesus and the Land, really does help with the

theological side. But also Whose Land, Whose Promise is the longer book that just describes what the historical story is. And it is the second narrative that you would have to take in. Believe it or not, it has sold so much right now on Amazon. I think they're out. And you have to do an E version, but you can go right to the publisher and get it. I actually saw that. I was looking at it today and I'm like, oh, it's only available on Kindle. I thought it was, yeah, wow, that's crazy. Yeah, I know.

So, but anyway, it's, yeah. So good news for that. Yeah. So you can grab it. But you can get it going directly to the publisher, Pilgrim Press. Awesome. Thank you, Gary, for being on Theology in Raw. I really appreciate it.

Great to be with you, Preston. Thanks. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.