Name: How a Bible prophecy shapes Trump's foreign policy
Uploaded: 2020-07-31T18:10:15.000Z
Duration: 7 min 43 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

There's a church in the city of Bethlehem.

It was built on the spot where Christians believe Jesus was born.

If you consult UNESCO's List of World Heritage Sites,

both will tell you that the church is in Palestine.

But when a question about the church's location came up

during a round of Jeopardy in January 2020...

That answer set off something of an internet firestorm.

That's because what you call this land, and who controls it, is at the center of

a decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

But more recently, there is also a third group

that is becoming more and more influential here and throughout the Middle East,

Today, evangelical Christians are one of the most

politically powerful voting blocs in the United States.

And in the Trump administration, they've been given unprecedented power.

They've turned support for Israel and hostility towards its enemies

into core tenets of conservative ideology.

And a big part of those policies is rooted

In 2016, more than a quarter of all US voters

identified as white evangelical Christians.

One of the primary differences between evangelicals and other Christians is their

Conservative evangelicals believe that the Bible is literally true.

Sarah Posner writes about religion for a bunch of different publications.

Many of them believe that the Bible is sort of this prophetic

road map for modern life, that events described and prophesied in the Bible

The Bible is the most historically accurate book ever penned.

The Bible is the one book that dares to predict the future with 100% accuracy.

For evangelicals, the most important of the Bible's prophecies is

the second coming, when Jesus will return to Earth.

The Bible doesn't say when this will happen,

World history as we know it is going to end right here.

one of several who meet regularly to advise President Trump.

They're the leaders of megachurches with tens of thousands of members.

And many of them, including Greg Laurie, preach a belief called Christian Zionism,

the idea that the return of the Jewish people to Israel is one of a series of

events that will trigger Jesus's second coming.

Jesus is telling us that the rebirth of Israel is a sign of the end.

According to this theology, God will reward those who help Israel

Jesus will be on his throne and he separates the nations.

After the Holocaust, the UN divided up the then-British territory of Palestine,

home to more than a million Arabs, into two states,

giving Jews who had been persecuted in Europe a homeland.

Over the next few decades, Israel fought multiple wars with its Arab neighbors

and seized much of the land that had been originally set aside for Palestinians.

Evangelical Christians see that as a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.

It happened exactly as foretold. It was a miraculous act of God.

They own that land, and they own that city.

Ever since, groups like Hamas have been fighting against the Israelis trying to

And the government of Iran has been one of their biggest supporters.

That's part of the reason Iran plays such an important role in evangelical beliefs

about the present state of the world, and the future.

if the US wants to be on the right side of biblical prophecy,

they need to do everything possible to protect Israel and punish Iran.

That also helps explain why a different Bible story is also really important to them.

The Old Testament story of Esther, about a plot to destroy the Jews of Persia,

The Book of Esther plays such an important role for Christian Zionists

He has convinced your husband to destroy all the Jews, including you.

Esther saves the Jews by using her persuasion with the king.

Evangelicals who are very wrapped up in this kind of theology,

because Persia is modern-day Iran, they sort of contextualize this Bible story

Could it be that that President Trump right now has been sort of raised for such a time as this,

just like Queen Esther. to help save the Jewish people from an Iranian Menace?

As a Christian I certainly believe that's possible.

I'm confident that the Lord is at work here.

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo and vice president Mike Pence both identify as evangelical Christians.

And both have enormous influence over American foreign policy.

A ProPublica investigation found that Pence routed millions of dollars in foreign aid

that had been earmarked for humanitarian projects in Iraq, diverting it towards

When President Trump approved the drone strike that killed Iran's top military commander in January 2020,

it was, according to the Washington Post, at Pompeo and Pence's urging.

When President Trump moved the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,

the move had more support from American evangelicals than American Jews.

The other news swirling around the embassy's move to Jerusalem is what it could signal as part of biblical prophecy.

That evangelical support isn't an accident.

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