Out of Zion

Dr. Susan Michael: I've heard lots of crazy things over the years said about Evangelicals. I dare say most evangelical Christians don't know what one is, and no way that our Jewish friends know what it is. I want to take a few minutes today as we close our series on Jewish-Christian relations to set the record straight about Evangelicals.

Guest (Male): 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: Since the year 2000, I have spoken to many Jewish organizations and audiences about evangelical Christians and their support of Israel. I tend to use the term quite often in my articles and in my teachings, but I recognize that most people really don’t know who an Evangelical is. While today's lesson may be of greatest interest to my Jewish listeners, I think we will all benefit by understanding the various segments and trends within Christianity and to clear up some of the confusion.

The first point of confusion is over the description born-again Christians versus evangelical Christians. Some people will use the terms interchangeably, so they will use Evangelical in a very broad way to describe born-again Christians. The narrow definition of Evangelical is very different. I want to explain the difference.

There are many people who the description of born-again Christian applies to. These are people who say their faith is important to them, it makes a difference in their lives, and they have experienced Christianity on such a personal level that it impacted and changed them or their life. This is describing a faith experience. Some estimate as many as 100 million people in America describe their faith in such terms and would qualify as a born-again Christian.

An Evangelical is a description of one's beliefs and not an experience. An Evangelical should be a born-again Christian and have experienced that life-changing moment of faith, what we call salvation, an epiphany, or whatever. Not all born-again Christians who have had an experience know the Bible and have a biblical worldview or lifestyle.

To qualify as a true Evangelical, there are four core pillars of belief. One is the authority of the Bible. Secondly is holding to the key doctrines of the Bible. I'm not going to list those, and some may list the list differently, but basically, there's good and evil, heaven and hell, and these things. The third pillar is that salvation comes through the atoning death of Jesus on the cross. Fourthly is the importance of sharing that good news of what Jesus did with others.

The number of true evangelical Christians that actually hold to these four pillars is much less than 100 million. Some people say it's as little as 20 million. It could be somewhere in between, but I believe the number is going down. This explains a lot of the polling and statistics that are now saying that few Evangelicals even believe the Bible. That actually means they are not Evangelical.

Pollsters use the term Evangelical in such a broad and sloppy way that a lot of their findings don't really make sense. They're talking about this larger group of born-again Christians. To reiterate the difference: born-again Christians' faith is an experience. Evangelicals are defined by their beliefs. Evangelicals should also be born-again, they should be a subsection of that born-again world, but not all born-agains even know their Bible and can qualify as an Evangelical.

If you or anyone you are associated with wants to do a poll on these issues, please make sure you pick a polling firm that understands the two definitions. They also need to know not to rely on self-identification. If you do a poll and you call up people and say, "Are you an evangelical Christian?" a lot of them are going to say, "I don't know," or "No." Or if you ask them how they would describe their faith or their religion, they're just going to say, "I'm a Christian." They don't use these terms. These are terms that demographers use.

We need to not expect them to self-identify. We need to know enough about what we're talking about that we can ask a few questions and we can qualify that person. Are they a born-again Christian? Are they an Evangelical? We have to know what we're talking about. We also have to understand that these worlds, whether it's Evangelical or born-again Christian, are deeply divided. We do not all look alike, sound alike, say the same things, or believe the same things.

Worldwide, there are as many as 2.6 billion Christians. That includes 1.3 billion Catholics, roughly 1 billion Protestants, and then about 300 million others like Eastern Orthodox or other movements. Looking at the 1 billion I called Protestant, roughly 400 million of them are mainline Protestants. That includes the Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and others. Roughly 600 million of those Protestants are Evangelicals.

Of the 600 million Evangelicals, about half are Pentecostals and about half are not. There are individuals who actually believe and would qualify as an evangelical Christian that are part of other categories. There's a little blurring of the line. I know Evangelicals that go to a Catholic church, or they go to a Presbyterian or a Methodist church. You can't really divide these lines by which church they go to or their denominations. It's really on their personal beliefs.

This may raise a big question in our Jewish listeners especially. What is a Pentecostal? You just told me that about half of the Evangelicals are Pentecostal and half are not. Historically, the divide between these two subgroups within evangelical Christianity has been very deep. Some non-Pentecostals have accused Pentecostals of being of the devil, and some Pentecostals have accused non-Pentecostals of not even being saved.

This divide has lessened in the last 20 years, but I remember back in the 70s and 80s, it was really very rough. It was very angry, and there was a very deep divide. I'm so glad that today it's less of a divide. There's more of a recognition of the validity of each other's faith. Pentecostal is a segment of the evangelical Christian world who also believe in the necessity of being filled or baptized by the Holy Spirit.

As described in Acts chapter two, what happened on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon this group of believers praying? Divided fire fell and divided as tongues on each individual, and they all spoke in other tongues. Pentecostal churches or the Pentecostal teaching emphasizes the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the activity of the Holy Spirit in our everyday lives, empowering us not just to live as Christians, but to minister in power to others.

Non-Pentecostal teaching is that the Acts two experience I just described was a one-time experience. After the deaths of the early apostles, this died out. There were no further baptisms of the Holy Spirit. We all receive the infilling of the Holy Spirit at the point of salvation, which is what we call that born-again experience. I am an evangelical Pentecostal, which means that I am also born-again. Those are my labels.

My closing point I want to make in this discussion is about the support of Israel from the Christian world and which of these groups support Israel and why. It's just not that simple. We have to divide the Christian world a little bit differently when it comes to their support of Israel. There are many reasons to support Israel that are irrelevant to one’s faith or where they fall within these denominational categories or even how you read the Bible.

There are many reasons based on history and legality. I have a series called Why Christians Support Israel. It's a five-part series. Four parts deal with all those other reasons. The fifth part then we deal with the biblical reasons. There are many Christians that support Israel that may espouse political support or a number of types of support.

Those who do support Israel for the biblical reasons, many are born-again Christians and they support Israel for sentimental reasons based on the Bible. They know that the people of Israel were the chosen people of God and therefore we should support them, we should stand with them. Then they understand some of the political reasons of our shared values and our shared enemies.

Evangelicals who are much more biblically based, most of them support Israel and will quote biblical reasons. The most quoted is Genesis 12:3, which says that those who bless you, God speaking to Abraham, I will bless, and those who curse you I will curse, and through you all the families of the earth will be blessed. Even within evangelical Christianity though, not every evangelical Christian lines up with support of Israel.

This is because their approach to the Bible is a little bit different than the bulk of the evangelical world. The bulk of the evangelical world reads the Bible to mean exactly what it says, what the writers intended it to mean and to say. There is a theology called replacement theology. This approaches the scriptures a little bit differently, that God's promises to Israel and the Jewish people have now been put on the church because of the Jewish rejection of the Messianic credentials of Jesus and therefore God's rejection of the Jewish people.

The church has replaced Israel. The Bible does not actually say this. It is an interpretation and a spiritualization of many things in the Old Testament. The Bible teaches that we have a faithful God who made promises to Abraham 4,000 years ago, and to Moses, and to David, and confirmed through the Hebrew prophets that are still being fulfilled today and all of them will be fulfilled one day because he is a faithful God.

The church does not replace Israel. Our calling is very different from the calling on the people of Israel. As the Apostle Paul said in Romans 11, their calling cannot be revoked. He just came right out and said it. Their calling is irrevocable. Even if they are the enemy to the gospel of Christ, they are still beloved for the sake of their calling. That's what he said in Romans 11. Look it up yourself.

We see the hand of God at work in the regathering of the Jewish people back to their homeland in our days because it is a fulfillment of his promises to Abraham as confirmed by the Hebrew prophets. If you believe that the Jewish people lost their calling and position with God, then the modern regathering is a fluke or a major coincidence of history. This is the real dividing line within the Christian world concerning the modern state of Israel.

How many Christians in the US support Israel? Nobody knows for sure, but I land somewhere around the 50 million mark because it goes beyond just the Evangelicals; there is also much Christian support for Israel in the born-again Christian world, which is much larger. For biblical reasons, and some of them for more sentimental reasons or political reasons, there is a large reservoir of support for Israel in the American Christian world.

Let's not take it for granted. Many disturbing trends threaten the strength of this support because they are threatening the strength of the evangelical movement in America. That concludes our series on Jews and Christians learning to relate. I hope you learned something today about these different categories of Christians and what the terms mean, who we relate to, who supports Israel, and who believes this or that.

I have really enjoyed this series learning from the pioneers about their work in Jewish-Christian relations. Anything we can do to help further that relationship is our joy and our pleasure. In today's show notes, we link to my series on Why Christians Support Israel that lay out some of these many reasons why we should support Israel. I hope that you've enjoyed the series and I can't wait to see you back here. I may take a little break; I may not be putting out Israel Answers podcasts as often, but we will certainly be doing more series in the future. Until then, I say God bless.

I want to offer you a free download. We have a download, 10 Reasons Why Christians Should Stand with Israel. Get your free download by going to the link in today's show note or go to www.outofzionshow.com and click on the tab for resources. We will have it there as well. Be sure to download this free resource for you. We're going to be talking about some of the points in it in the coming weeks. Invite them to join us here on the Out of Zion show for our Israel Answers series. We'll see you back here next week, and until then, God bless.

Guest (Male): 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, Salem OnePlace, Salem Life Audio. Out of Zion with Susan Michael is a production of ICEJ USA. All rights reserved.