The influences shaping American Evangelical’s relationship with Israel over the years are varied and complex. Brad Harper offers a helpful introduction to the history of this relationship by way of a number of key figures, events, and movements. The emergence and growing popularity of Dispensationalism in America during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries meant, for many, cause for reexamination of the present-day Israel’s place in redemptive history. Many saw contemporary events, particularly the reestablishment of the state of Israel in 1948, as literal fulfillment of biblical prophecies, pointing toward the imminent great tribulation and the second coming of Christ. Harper then examines recent statements made by some of today’s Evangelical leaders who have adopted a dispensational premillenial view of biblical eschatology in order to illustrate how myopic support of Israel’s claims to the Holy Land can be problematic, if not completely contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Harper urges for a more comprehensive biblicism, one that recognizes God’s love, will, and plan for all peoples, and applies the implications of such a recognition to all involved in the conflict in the Middle East: Arab and Israeli, Christian and Muslim.
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