Christian Zionism: As Old as the New Testament

Interview with Lee Brainard

Tim Moore: So, Lee, welcome back to Christ in Prophecy.

Lee Brainard: Good to be with you, Tim, Nathan.

Nathan Jones: Excellent, brother. Good to always have you here.

Lee Brainard: Amen!

Tim Moore: Well, before we dive in, fellas, and there’s a lot to unpack in this discussion of Christian Zionism, but let’s unpack and actually define some of the terms that we talk about. So when we say eschatology, for somebody who’s not familiar with that old theological term, what does that refer to?

Lee Brainard: It’s simply the study of the last things or the end of the age.

Tim Moore: All right, study of last things. What do we mean when we say the early Church Fathers? Who is that?

Lee Brainard: Well, it was early believers that were either pastors or Bible teachers in the first few centuries of the Church that actually led the Church forwards in the things of God.

Tim Moore: Okay, so we’re talking probably the first two or three centuries in the Church, okay.

Nathan Jones: Post-apostles then?

Lee Brainard: Yes, post-apostles, yeah.

Tim Moore: But actually some of them, we would obviously point out, were taught by the apostles. So Irenaeus was a disciple of John, and there were others who had a very direct lineage to the apostles and their teaching. And the apostles, of course, had been taught by none other than Jesus Christ.

Lee Brainard: That’s exactly right, yes.

Tim Moore: Okay. So when we talk about Zionism, now, this is a word that has all sorts of political ramifications today. Even as you watch the television news, you see people who are anti-Zionists, as they say. What is Zionism classically defined as?

Lee Brainard: Well, Zionism is the vision for the Jews to return to their own native land of Israel and be planted and grow there and be blessed of God there.

Tim Moore: Okay, so it’s an expectation that there is a provision for the Jewish people as a nation or as what I believe Scripture would call the House of Israel, to go back to a land designated for them. And designated not just by the United Nations the middle of the last century, not just by any other legal entity, but designated for them by God Himself. It is the Promised Land. So I use the phrase House of Israel. That’s a term I pulled directly from Ezekiel 36.
When we talk about, “Well, what is Israel? “Is it a modern-nation state? Is it a people group? “Is it an ethnic group?” Yes, yes, yes, it’s all those things. Is it a land? But biblically the House of Israel is the genetic descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Zionism is simply supporting their return to their ancient, promised land.

Lee Brainard: A land that God promised to them.

Tim Moore: Yes, sir.

Nathan Jones: Well, Lee, promises all throughout the Bible, especially prophecies like Ezekiel 36 and 37, prophesied the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. But why is it that idea in the Church over the last two millennia fall under such scorn and contempt?

Lee Brainard: Well, it really boils down to one thing, Replacement theology. You had the early Church Fathers who decided that they would take every place that Israel appears in the Old Testament Scriptures and the Gospels, replace it with the Church. So you’re spiritualizing all those prophecies that are blessing upon Israel and ignoring all the ones that are curses upon Israel.

Tim Moore: You know, I think we can see this trend even in some good ways. So we, as Gentile Christians, worship the Lord on Sunday, the Lord’s Day because that’s the day of His resurrection. But you can see already a separation from the traditional worship on the Sabbath, which would’ve been Saturday. And then you move forward into the Church Age, and you see how even Easter became the celebration removed from any kind of reflection of the Passover as the origin of our resurrection celebration of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection as that sacrificial Lamb.

Lee Brainard: Yeah, and this is a moral tragedy and even a theological tragedy in that that foundation layer is stripped away from the New Testament. So the Old Testament gets separated from the New Testament.

Nathan Jones: It’s interesting, too, that you even see Bibles today that will take the word Israel and put the word church even in an Old Testament context. Where did Replacement theology come from? Has it been there since the beginning of church history or is it picked up later in church history?

Lee Brainard: Well, it first arose late in the 2nd century. But by the time you’re into the mid-3rd century, it’s becoming prevalent. You come into the time of Augustine and Jerome, and it is the dominant theology in the early Church.

Tim Moore: Well, Lee, it would seem to me that there is some realization that perhaps some credence would’ve been given. And I’m not agreeing with Replacement theology, but you can almost understand why people would’ve thought: “Well, maybe God has turned aside from the Jews.” Because we see that the land itself was devastated. The House of Israel was scattered, and the Church was ascending throughout the Church Age, and it was becoming more and more Gentile in its flavor. But the problem is people didn’t read Scripture to understand all of those things were prophesied.

The Lord declared that He would devastate the land, that He would scatter the Jews. You can go back to Deuteronomy 28 and 29, Moses himself made that prophecy. And so you can almost understand their thinking, but it’s divorced from scriptural reality, that this was prophesied, as was God’s regathering and reaccession of the Jewish people.

Lee Brainard: Yeah, they are basically ignoring passages like Romans Chapter 11, Hosea the end of Chapter 5, the beginning of Chapter 6, where there’s a promise of the restoration of Israel.

Nathan Jones: Well, we say that God is faithful and men are faithless. Is God going to fulfill His covenants, that He will bring the Jewish people back to the land as any remnant will get saved? Or did the spiritualists throughout Church History say: “Nah, it means the Church will be the remnant”?

Lee Brainard: I absolutely believe that God is going to go back to Israel dealing with them and honor His Word absolutely, entirely without exception, that He will gather Israel back in the land in unbelief, which He’s presently doing. He’s going to put them through a time of tribulation to humble them and break them and bring them to faith. And then He’s going to bring the whole saved nation into the blessings of the New Covenant in Jesus Christ, in His blood.

Tim Moore: Yeah, and sadly, as our friend Olivier Melnick says, that whole saved nation will be a remnant of the House of Israel that is in evidence today. Because during that tribulation period, two thirds will be killed under the onslaught of the Antichrist. And so we’re trying to share the faith. And let’s be clear: there is not a separate gospel for Jews or Gentiles. It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is salvation only in the person of Jesus Christ. And yet in the fullness of time, God has promised that He will redeem Israel as they turn to Him in faith.

Lee Brainard: Absolutely. And I think people just struggle, they don’t understand there’s a difference between the Church program and the national Israel program. They’re both under the umbrella of the New Covenant, but they’re two distinct programs.

Nathan Jones: Well, why is that then? Because, okay, we can say that the Jewish people can become part of the Church and be saved within the Church realm. Why then nationally do they have to be restored?

Lee Brainard: Because Israel cannot receive her Old Testament promises on the land, the Temple, the throne, or the kingdom, can’t receive them nationally unless the nation is brought into the New Covenant.

Nathan Jones: That solves a lot of questions that people have. Because they can’t divorce the difference between the Jewish people as an ethnicity and the Jewish people as in the three that you said. Or they could be Jewish, but they don’t have to be in the land. All three are necessary for God’s fulfilled prophecies then.

Tim Moore: They sure are. And so even then, the nation of Israel as exists today, so we think about a nation-state in the land of Israel, what was known as Palestine from the era of the Romans through 1948. And what some unfortunately still call Palestine. That was meant to be a Roman…

Lee Brainard: Slur.

Tim Moore: A slur, exactly right, on the Jewish people. But it is the land of Israel. And so even the nation that exists today is kind of a repository for the people, holding them until the time that this nation will emerge even in the End Times as all the Jews are regathered.

Well, Lee, obviously we’re talking about Christian Zionism, and we know that the Lord Himself is faithful to His promises, but faithful Christians have always expected the Lord to keep all His promises. And not just the ones made to us, but the ones made to the Jewish people. I mentioned Irenaeus who was actually a student of Polycarp. Polycarp was the disciple of John. But from the early Church Fathers forward, there have been faithful Christians who have taken the Word of God as literal and true.

Lee Brainard: Absolutely. For instance, in Irenaeus’s work, Against Heresies, we read in Book 5, Chapter 34, Section 1 that there are two distinct programs under the heading church. So he’s got the New Testament Church and the Old Testament Church. And when we go to Book 4 in Chapter 31, we read the story about Lot and his two daughters. And he claims that this is a picture of the two synagogues or the two churches, the Old Testament synagogue, the New Testament synagogue, the Old Testament church, the New Testament church.

And then when we come back to Section 34, Chapter 34 in Book 5, he’s very clear that He’s going to regather the Old Testament church when He is done with the New Testament church. And he’s talking about His work with the New Testament church in the present tense, and His work with the Old Testament church is in the future tense. So he’s teaching the same thing we teach in modern dispensationalism. We say the Church and Israel. He says the New Testament church, the Old Testament church.

Tim Moore: The assembly of God’s people, those who are favored and chosen by God.

Lee Brainard: That’s right.

Nathan Jones: You bring up a term that I think we need to define, is that we talk Zionism as the Jewish belief of returning to land. But you mentioned Christian Zionism. What’s the difference between Jewish Zionism and Christian Zionism?

Lee Brainard: Well, as far as the essence of what it is, it’s essentially the same thing. But Christian Zionism is where we are supporting God’s program in the Scriptures of God returning Israel to the land, God putting Israel in the Tribulation, God redeeming the people of Israel. And so we believe this, we believe God’s program.

Nathan Jones: Because we get people who write into the ministry all the time and say, “I can’t support Netanyahu. I can’t support what Israel’s doing.” I say, “Do you support everything our own government does?” Being a Christian Zionist isn’t about supporting a secular nation. It’s about supporting the work that God is doing through that nation to bring a remnant to redemption. And have there been other voices like that throughout Church history?

Tim Moore: That’s well said, Nathan. I appreciate that fact. Because, yes, none of us support everything any government or any government official does, but we support what God is doing even through imperfect men and women amongst us today.

Lee Brainard: Well, I think people need to understand that the fact that Israel’s an ungodly nation, that’s in the plan of God. God gathered the unbelieving Jews in their idolatry, their wickedness, their iniquity back into the land.

Nathan Jones: Isaiah 11:11, that’s a prophecy. The Jewish people would return in unbelief. Because that’s another objection that we get all the time. “Well, they need to be a holy and righteous people, before we can recognize their right to the land.” But prophecy says otherwise. Prophecy says they have to return to the land in unbelief.

Tim Moore: As a matter of fact, even Ezekiel 36, when it says the Jewish people, the House of Israel will be gathered to the nature, to the mountains of Israel. “The Lord says to the House of Israel” in Verse 22: “Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I’m about to act, but for my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations.”

He says the same thing down in Verse 32. “It’s not for your sake,” it’s not because you deserve this, because you’ve merited this, because you have grown in my favor so much by your behavior that I’m going to bless you. It is because I made a promise. And for my namesake, I will not violate a promise. The promise given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the promises given to David, all the rest will be fulfilled in the House of Israel. And we’re seeing that coming to fruition, not fulfilled yet, but beginning to take shape even in the land of Israel.

Lee Brainard: The real message here is God is the God of all grace. If He can take iniquitous, backsliding, rebellious, pagan Israel…

Tim Moore: Or me or you.

Lee Brainard: Yeah, and give them a second chance, He can give anybody on planet Earth a second chance.

Nathan Jones: Isn’t that why they’re called Israel, struggles with God? That’s what Jacob did. He struggled with God.
It’s interesting how the Jewish people have missed that promise, missed that opportunity. I think when we go to Israel, many Jewish people today don’t realize they’re fulfilling the promise of prophecy. Whether they’re Christian Zionists or Jewish Zionists or not, they’re living in a modern-day miracle. And the fact that the Church continues to miss the fact that we’re seeing fulfilled Bible prophecy shows how much little they understand Bible prophecy.

Tim Moore: Well, you mentioned some of the early Church Fathers. Lee, do you know of any medieval church figures down through the ages who also believed in God’s provision and plan for the Jewish people and supported their rightful return to Israel? Or do you think that the Dark Ages, as we think of them, were a darkened period of understanding of Bible prophecy? Were there some shining lights in that period?

Lee Brainard: Well, from the late Patristic era up through the early pre-Reformation area, there was not a lot of information that has survived the purging’s of the Catholic Church. And I think we really need to focus a lot of research on Catholic records in Latin, Greek that need to be searched through, because I think we’re going to find some information there. But once you get into the late medieval era, the pre-Reformation area, we start to find information on the restoration of Israel. And when the Reformation explodes on the scene, then we find a ton of information.

Sola Scriptura, when that came back into the picture, there was a plethora of early Puritans and early Reformation characters who believed in the restoration of Israel. And not always merely as an explosion of Jews being saved into the Church. But many of them held that He was going to go back and fulfill the Jewish promises as a distinct body of promises distinct from the Church.

Tim Moore: And I would argue that some of them actually were eager for the Lord to fulfill those promises because they recognized that it was a part of the fulfillment of the End Times. We talked about eschatology, and they knew that Israel had to be back in the land, had to be back receiving those promises fulfilled when Jesus would return to the earth. So if you’re eager for Jesus to return, then you’re eager for the Jews to go home because all that sets into place the whole End Time scheme.

Nathan Jones: It’s interesting to read the writings of, say, Cotton Mather, a Puritan pastor, all the way up to C.I. Scofield who wrote the Scofield Bible, all before Israel became a nation in 1948. And they read these prophecies, and they’d look at them, and they’d be like: “It says Israel is going to make Aliyah and go back into the land again.” Of course we use the word Aliyah now. And they said, “Well, I don’t understand it, I don’t see how it could possibly happen, but the Bible says it, I believe it, and therefore it must be.” And so they stood on the faith of knowing that God would fulfill it. We, on the other hand, after 1948, seemed to have no faith in the fact, even though Israel is a nation again.

Lee Brainard: That’s right. So if a person’s interested in looking at this subject on people from the beginning of the Reformation up to Darby’s time that actually embraced the restoration of Israel, Chapter 2 in William Watson’s book, Dispensationalism Before Darby, has a ton of information there. And he mentions people like Sir Henry Finch, who in the early 1600s taught that there was going to be a true spiritual conversion to Christ of the Jews, not merely as a subset of the Church, but as a physical Israel that’s distinct from the Church under the New Covenant program. And he took Ezekiel 38 and 39 literally.

Tim Moore: Well, there’s another great resource we’ll talk about in a moment, but Dr. David Reagan wrote, The Jewish People: Rejected or Beloved? And so we have resources even here at Lamb & Lion Ministries to point you to all the promises of God that are still being fulfilled and right before our eyes in the nation of Israel.

Well, fellas, I’m so excited about the fact that we are following in the footsteps of other Christians who took God at His Word. And, Lee, I appreciate what you said about the Catholic Church trying to squelch some of this truth. For centuries within the Catholic Church, it was illegal to even own or read a Bible for yourself because they wanted to tell you what the interpreted meaning was. And of course that led to many grave errors in terms of the faith once for all handed down to the saints. We’ll touch on that next week again.

But one of the things that happened with the Reformation, as you said, is people returned to Sola Scriptura, in other words, only the Scriptures. We’ll take the Word of God as literal and true. I think that true faithful Christians began to understand the promises of God are not just for us as followers of Christ, but they are also for the Jewish people because He yet still has a plan.

And I use two examples. In the 1800s, an Anglican cleric, actually a pastor by the name of William Henry Hechler, became convinced that the West, meaning, all the European nations, should be adamantly supportive of the Jewish people going home to Palestine, as he then called it, but to their ancient homeland, because that’s exactly what Scripture foretold. And so he became very outspoken in trying to advocate for the European governments to allow the Jews to go back home to Israel.

And one of the people that he was able to influence and encourage was none other than Theodor Herzl, who is considered the father of Jewish Zionism. But it was a Christian man, a Christian that was faithful to the promises of God that really sparked, even in Herzl’s heart, this understanding that the Jews need to leave places like Russia and Germany and France and go home to Israel.

Lee Brainard: Amen, and what a blessing it is. And where did these men get their beliefs? Did they grab them out of thin air? No, it was going back to the Word of God and trusting. It was written by average men, fishermen and farm boys, for fishermen and farm boys.

Tim Moore: Well, I’ll give you one other example, and that’s William Blackstone. Now, some of you may have heard that name. William Blackstone is a famous legal scholar in England. And much of our own American jurisprudence or law came from William Blackstone.

But this is a different William Blackstone. He was an American who lived, again, in the late 1800s. In 1891, he distributed what was known as the Blackstone Memorial. And this wasn’t something to be written on a gravestone, it was actually a petition that was calling for the support of the Jews being allowed to go home to, again, Palestine as it was known then, but we would know it as the land of Israel, because he recognized there were two million Russian Jews who were suffering under tremendous persecution of the pogroms.

And he said, “We need to support allowing the Jews to go somewhere. And most of the European nations are not going to welcome them. Even America might not. But they can go home to Israel.” And do you know, he had signatories such as John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, future president William McKinley, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Melville Fuller? He had a number of congressmen. He had all the leading newspaper editors, including The New York Times of the day supporting Zionism.

He even had all the Ivy League university presidents signing on because they were Christians then and they were supportive of Zionism. And so this petition was handed over to President of the United States Benjamin Harrison, again, in 1891. It kind of disappeared, but it shows that, even in the late 19th century, there were faithful Christians here in the United States, including leading men of industry and of government, who were very supportive of the Jews being able to go home to their promised land.

Lee Brainard: And what a blessing that is, that God used secular sources and merely religious sources to bring together a cause that’s 100% biblical.

Nathan Jones: I remember some of the Zionist Congresses were pushing the idea of maybe Uganda ought to be a new homeland for the Jewish people. But because of the Christians among them, said, “Hey, no, biblically the land is the land of Palestine.” And actually had to talk some of the Jewish leaders into focusing back on the land of Palestine.

Well, Lee, why is Satan trying so hard to discredit Christian Zionism? It’s almost become a dirty word amongst most of our churches.

Lee Brainard: Well, he’s had several main things he’s been going after since the very beginning of time. First, he tried to stop the Messianic line, then he tried to defile and pollute the Messianic line, and then he tried to stop the birth of the Messiah. And now he’s been trying to stop the Church. But his last-ditch effort is to stop Israel. If he can exterminate Israel, there’s no Israel for the Lord to return to to deliver. And in his demented mind, he’s thinking: “Well, maybe I can foil the Kingdom or at least…”

Tim Moore: Prove God a liar.

Lee Brainard: Yeah, yeah.

Tim Moore: Yet, he’s trying to prove God a liar or thwart His plan. But why is it so particularly tragic for a Christian to fall prey to this specific deception that is a Satanic deception? Why should Christians of all people never fall for this kind of propaganda?

Lee Brainard: Well, on a superficial level, you’re missing a very important theme of Scripture, which is God’s plan for a nation. Not just individuals. He’s got His individual salvation plan, but a plan to have a nation which is blessed, not in and of itself, but that nation to be a blessing to the whole world. But on a deeper level, you’re losing the literal, historical, grammatical understanding of the Bible.

Tim Moore: And that’s tragic in and of itself, let alone the Lord will bless those who bless the descendants of Abraham and curse those who curse. I mean, just for that reason alone, we should be blessing the Jewish people, let alone buying into all the promises of God and really giving Him glory for fulfilling them for His own namesake.

Lee Brainard: One of the scariest passages in Scripture, in my mind, is Matthew 25, the sheep and goat’s judgment, when the Lord separates the Gentiles into believing Gentiles and unbelieving Gentiles. But He does not separate them on their profession of faith or their fact of faith. He doesn’t separate them on whether they’re born again or not born again. He doesn’t separate them on the mark of the beast. How does he separate them? On their response to the Jews.

Nathan Jones: Now that’s a lesson. Because who wants to stand in front of the living God and say no? And I think so many Christians today are doing that when it comes to Israel. They’re saying, “No, God, we don’t want You to progress in Your plan of bringing a remnant of the Jewish people to salvation.” So where is this all going prophetically? Because if Christians are standing against Israel, God’s still going to do what He’s going to do. What’s He trying to accomplish?

Lee Brainard: Well, I think He’s got a big separation going in the world right now. And this growing antisemitism, anti-Judaism, anti-Jews, anti-Zionism, it’s going down a path that ultimately is going to completely harmonize with the path of Satan, with the path of the antichrist, with the path of the Mark of the Beast, with the path of unbelief. They’re coming together, it’s converging.

Tim Moore: You know, as a matter of fact, just to look at the transgression from 120 years ago when Christians were supportive of Jews going home, like I said, even university presidents and newspaper editors. And then we saw a BDS movement move out, the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction 20 years ago. And today it’s just rampant antisemitism. Satan is alive and well, and he is raging because I believe he knows his time is short.

Closing

Tim Moore: Well, folks, obviously before we leave, I want to tell you one more time about an opportunity we have here at Lamb & Lion Ministries for you to get The Jewish People: Rejected or Beloved? A great treatise on why we, who are followers of Christ, should support God’s plan for the ages, which includes a provision and indeed a keeping of His promises to the Jewish people.

Well, Lee, we’ve run out of time today on this episode of Christ in Prophecy, but there’s so much we could say about Christian Zionism and its Christ-honoring pedigree down through the ages.

Lee Brainard: There absolutely is. You could write a whole book on it. (laughs)

Tim Moore: I think you should!

Nathan Jones: Well, we could say, “Folks, wait, there’s more.” And since there is so much more we can talk about, we’re going to come back next week and we’re going to continue this conversation.

Tim Moore: That’s exactly right. We planned a three-part series with Lee Brainard. So we hope you’ll join us next week as we debunk the Satanic propaganda that the Pre-Tribulation Rapture is a concept too new to be true. In fact, faithful Christians have been longing for Jesus’ return for the past 2000 years. So, Lee, you will stick around with us for a couple more weeks, won’t you?

Lee Brainard: I wouldn’t miss it.

Tim Moore: All right, very good.

Nathan Jones: Lee, how can people get in touch with your ministry?

Lee Brainard: They can get in touch with me at soothkeep.info for my website. I’m Soothkeep on my YouTube channel, and I’m Soothkeep on numerous social media venues.

Tim Moore: Very good. Well, that’s all the time we do have for today. And we hope we’ve encouraged you to love the Jewish people as God does. We also hope that you will seek to bless those God has promised to bless, not merely as a Zionist, but as a faithful follower of Jesus Christ.

So until next week, let’s keep looking up as we await the homeward call of our Jewish Messiah. Godspeed!

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