Out of Zion

Narrator: Welcome to the Israel Answers series, connecting Israel, the Bible, and you. Join Susan Michael as she explores timely issues and current events from a scriptural perspective to equip the Christian world with a balanced and biblical response. Be sure to subscribe for future episodes, which will ignite your faith and bring the Bible to life in your everyday world. Now, let’s join Susan with your Israel Answers.

Dr. Susan Michael: Welcome to today's Out of Zion podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Susan Michael, and I'm just so thrilled today to have a very dear friend, colleague, and long-time associate in the work of Christian support for Israel, Robert Stearns. Bishop Robert Stearns is the founder of Eagles' Wings Ministries and has been one of the most dedicated, hardworking soldiers in our field and for our cause. We are now partnering together in different ways, so I'm just so happy to have you with us today, Robert.

And I hope you don't mind if I call you Robert. I've known you for so long. Look, I know your story, but our audience doesn't know your story. You have become such an amazing leader globally for Christian support for Israel. I'd really love for them to hear just a little bit of your story of how that came about and how you founded Eagles' Wings.

Bishop Robert Stearns: It's an honor to be with you, Susan. I so deeply admire your faithfulness and your leadership. You saw what was coming a long time before most people did, and your life has provided a lot of the highway that many of us are traveling on. So, thank you. It's all by the grace of God.

First of all, I am not Jewish. We'll start there. This is a common misconception. My last name sounds Jewish. I'm the Israel guy. I'm in Israel all the time, so people have this assumption that I have an ethnically Jewish background. I get asked that all the time.

In fact, my grandfather was probably the greatest antisemite I'd ever encountered in my life. We could not get through a family meal without my grandfather cursing the Jews. Some of the real nefarious literature, like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and these horrible books, he had on his bookshelves.

I definitely didn't come to this through any ethnic or racial route. My grandparents and my extended family were Catholic, but my parents became evangelicals when I was a toddler. I was raised in the evangelical church and, at a young age, gave my heart to the Lord and believed the stories of the Bible.

Eventually, I felt a call to ministry and went to Bible school. I graduated from Bible school and went through two church assignments in my early ministry. I always, in the back of my mind, remember feeling like, "But what did God do in the world before Jesus?" It was this strange thing that I couldn't find my faith extending back before Jesus.

Of course, I knew the stories of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, but somehow God wasn't really working in those stories. God didn't do anything important until Jesus, and it seemed odd to me. Then, in the early 90s, I had a short period of time in between ministry assignments and, on a fluke, I went to Israel to volunteer at the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.

This would have been 1991 or 1992. I thought I'd stay a couple of weeks to go and help out in the mailroom. I landed in Israel, and that sense of not being connected evaporated immediately. Within days, I all of a sudden understood my faith as extending all the way back to Abraham.

I somehow knew that when Abraham looked at the stars in the heavens and the sand on the seashore, I was part of that by faith. I wasn't part of it ethnically, but I was part of it being grafted in. I was a strong Christian before I encountered Israel, but Israel added a dimension to my faith that is inexplicable.

Until you get to the land, it's hard to understand. My spiritual father, Jack Hayford, used to say there aren't four Gospels; there are five. He said there's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and then there's the land of Israel. The land of Israel is the birthplace of our faith, and it's also the place of our prophetic hope. Whatever we believe about the last days and the return of Jesus, we do believe that God is going to rule from Jerusalem. That is the place of our prophetic expectation.

That's how I got started. I'm forever indebted to the Christian Embassy, which created a highway for so many of us. That was the beginning.

Dr. Susan Michael: It's a beautiful story, and it just highlights what we try to convey to everyone: you've got to go because it's just life-changing. So many things connect. You connect the dots there; the Bible just stands up and comes alive. You returned to the United States and started Eagles' Wings in 1994.

You were still a young man in your 20s, and you had a burden to reach other young people, your generation. You have faithfully been doing that, and even today, you're still reaching the younger generation. You have a real heart for younger pastors and younger Christians. I'd love to hear a bit about what you've done, but also your observations. Over the 35 years that you've been doing this, what changes are you observing in the young generation, and maybe how you've changed your approach? What can we learn from you about that?

Bishop Robert Stearns: Sadly, the number one change that I've seen in the Western church, in particular, is the lack of biblical literacy. Christians don't take the Bible deeply and seriously anymore. When I was growing up, you memorized huge portions of Scripture. How many churches have Sunday school anymore? You have a service, but there's no Sunday school program. We had midweek services. We studied the Bible. You studied it privately on your own, and you studied it as part of your church community.

If you think about it, when biblical literacy is no longer central, the people of the Bible, who are the Jews, and the land of the Bible, which is Israel, de facto become less important. That is one of my largest concerns, that the Christian church has lost a sense of fidelity to Scripture, biblical literacy, and wrestling through text. In doing so, Israel and the Jewish people become irrelevant.

Irrelevant at best, and at worst, of course, the narrative that we're combating is that today's Israel has nothing to do with biblical Israel and all of these falsehoods that are so blatantly stupid, but they're out there. The question becomes how do you change that? That is what I'm calling the New Christian Zionism. That's not the displacement of the old, but we were still in Israel in the early 90s, and 1948 had not been that long ago.

That sign of the rebirth of Israel made it feel like Jesus was coming back next weekend. Then, in 1967, the reunification of the city was it. There was that kind of fervor about the rapture and the end times. I think that fueled a lot of early Christian Zionism, this sense of the prophetic playbook of God being played out around Israel.

Of course, that's interesting and important; we should continue to study that and observe all of that. But for the younger generation today, to the degree that they interpret Scripture, they're looking at questions of social justice and human rights. They're looking at the question of honoring the image of God in every person.

There is no country on earth that does that perfectly. But in the Middle East, of all the nations in the Middle East, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Druze, Baha'i—all these different communities in Israel are given freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, rule of law, rights for women, and rights for minorities.

Israel's not a perfect nation. I would say that the old Christian Zionism, in a sense, kind of blindly followed anything Israel does. Today's Christian Zionism recognizes we can have criticisms of policies; that doesn't take away from our pro-Israel stance if we have a criticism of a policy or a procedure or a government. By the way, Israel's own population has a robust, strong democratic process.

As we approach the younger generation, number one, I'm trying to get them back to the Bible. But until we can manage that, one of the first ways that we need to do that is engaging them in the zeitgeist of today, which is far more based in human rights and these things that Israel tells the story of wonderfully. That's where we begin, and then we bring them into the biblical narrative.

Dr. Susan Michael: One of the points in Christian support of Israel is that you can find many different reasons to support Israel before you even approach the biblical reasons. The human rights, the democracy, all of that is very, very valid reasoning. You can make a liberal case for Israel, and you can make a conservative case for Israel out of the Bible. There are just so many reasons to support Israel, and we need to become better at articulating all the different reasons and then articulating the biblical basis much more clearly.

One of the confusions over support for Israel is that for a lot of Christians, it ends up being all about end-time events. We've been very careful and clear that our support for Israel is not based on prophecy. The prophecies will happen; we believe them 100 percent. But for me today to tell you how that prophecy is going to be fulfilled means I have to be speculative. That's not healthy; that's not a firm foundation. Our support for Israel is based on promise: God's promises to Abraham and confirmed through Moses, the law, and the prophets. That's a firm foundation because those promises are based on the faithfulness of God. He's the one that's going to fulfill those.

A lot of the confusion and a lot of the complaints and accusations against Christian Zionism is because they think it's coming from an end-time event perspective. Of course, Israel is very important when it comes to future events and the return of Jesus, no doubt about it. But we have to be much more clear in how we articulate what it is really based on.

Robert, you have another term I've heard you use about Jerusalem-centered Christianity. Explain that a bit.

Bishop Robert Stearns: As I survey things for whatever it's worth, I've traveled in 48 nations around the world and I think I have somewhat of a global view of the global body of Christ. I really do see these kind of two streams emerging. I don't think this is conscious; I don't think people are thinking this; I just think it's happening.

We really are living in this iteration of Constantinian Christianity. It really goes back to the Council of Nicaea, this real break. There were many wonderful things that happened at Nicaea, but there were some bad things that happened at Nicaea, and this break from the Jewish roots at Nicaea was terrible.

I'm seeing now—I was just in Brazil last week, and the love for Israel in Brazil is extraordinary. It is next level. What is that about? I think there is a group of Christians in the world today who find their faith rooted in the Jewishness of Jesus, the Jewishness of the Gospel message, and the living expression of God's promise, which is the nation of Israel today.

They really are feeling rooted in Jerusalem. The geographic center of our faith is not Rome. It's not Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's not Springfield, Missouri. It's not Seoul, Korea, or wherever your denominations are based. Our spiritual home is Jerusalem. An increasing number of Christians—certainly tens of millions, I would estimate probably hundreds of millions—really are feeling this stirring toward Zion. This thing of Jesus's message was based in a place and in a people.

Our call is to make clear that doesn't mean we're converting to Judaism. That doesn't mean we're putting Jesus in the background. No, this is actually the opposite. This is reclaiming Acts chapter 2, verses 42 to 47. What were the earlier followers of Jesus? What was their life? How did they understand themselves, and how do we model that and walk that out?

I think those two things—articulating, as you just said a moment ago, all of the reasons that there are to stand with Israel, not only the biblical ones, and then fostering understanding—are vital. Let me just say one other thing because you said something so important a moment ago. You talked about the faithfulness of God to His promises.

I tell people this: I love Israel. I love the Jewish people. At the end of the day, at the core of my heart, this isn't really about Israel or the Jewish people. It's about the nature of God. This battle is about whether you are serving a God who keeps His promises or not. Are you serving the God of the Bible whose name is the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?

We have this Western world right now whose theology and culture is being shaped by the worship song of the week. So we have this Jesus, and it's like we've got Hillsong Jesus and Maverick City Jesus and Upper Room Jesus and Bethel Jesus and Assembly of God Jesus. We need biblical Jesus, who is a Jew who lived within his context. My argument is—of course, again, I love Israel, I love the Jewish people—but what's at stake here is our devotion to the God of the Bible. That's why I challenge people to really take that trip, get to the land, and take this seriously because it will be the trip that changes your life.

Dr. Susan Michael: How about you share with us a closing testimony of a church or a young person or a young pastor that you took to Israel and you saw that light bulb go off?

Bishop Robert Stearns: It's one of my favorite stories, and you know him. His name is Pastor Micah Wood. He's from Alabama, and Micah's told this story publicly many times, so I can tell it. He was reading a lot of theology, and he said, "I would not have described myself as an antisemite, but I definitely would describe myself as anti-Zionist." He said he was anti the State of Israel because when you're not into this deeply, you don't understand that those are very linked.

He decided to come on the trip with me in order to learn how to debunk me. He came on the trip, and he said, "I'm going to go, and I'm going to study this all out because this guy needs to be corrected." So he was going to go and take all the notes and learn how, because he was against all this.

He now works for me. He's just led his 14th mission to Israel. It was wild to see him on this trip. I'll tell you one other story real quick. We were there on that trip, and it was the days of COVID. It was the days where you had to get tested when you left the airport in New York, and then you had to get tested when you landed in Ben Gurion. You had to get tested twice.

So we landed in Ben Gurion, and all the pastors were going through and they're getting their COVID tests. The pastor comes to me and says, "What is this?" I said, "Well, those are the doctors and nurses." And he's looking, and he says, "But this doctor's name is Muhammad. But that nurse has a hijab on. They're Muslims." I said, "Yes." He said, "But this is an apartheid country."

We had not left the airport, and the fallacy, the lie of apartheid falls to the ground. Israel tells its own story. So our call is to get young leaders there, let them encounter the God of the Bible, the Jesus of the Bible, and let that story be spread.

Dr. Susan Michael: Well, Robert, may the Lord bless your ministry and allow you to reach many thousands of young pastors, old pastors, and young people, and expand that base and expand their understanding of the biblical significance of Israel and all that Israel has to offer. Because for a Christian, it's life-changing once you connect those two dots. You no longer wonder, "What was God doing before Jesus?" You connect the dots and you get the whole story of the Bible.

Thank you for sharing with our audience today. It's an honor. We're going to put links in today's show notes for further information about Christian Zionism and so that you can better inform yourself, and also links for Robert Stearns' ministry, Eagles' Wings. So stay in touch with us. God bless.

Hey, just give me one more minute. I want to offer you one of our free resources. We have wonderful resources in our show notes and if you go to our website at ICEJUSA.org/shownotes, you'll find links for a number of our free offerings. We have downloads to help root you in Scripture, help you to understand the issues surrounding Israel and the importance of Christian support for Israel. And don't forget, please follow us on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn and stay connected. Thank you, and God bless.

Narrator: We hope you have enjoyed this episode of Out of Zion with Susan Michael. Be sure to subscribe to Out of Zion now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Pray.com, Salem1Place, Salem Live Audio. Out of Zion with Susan Michael is a production of ICEJ USA. All rights reserved.