So-called Christian Zionism has infiltrated modern geopolitics.

“There’s a segment of Christianity that believes the creation of the state of Israel was the fulfillment of prophecy,” says Christopher Rollston of George Washington University, “and was predicted in both the Old and New Testaments.”

When U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States Embassy in Israel would move to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv (at the urging of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, an orthodox Jew), he was appeasing both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his evangelical Christian voter base in the United States.

Some 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016, according to exit polls, and many believe that an intact, Jewish-dominated Jerusalem is an essential prerequisite for Jesus’s Second Coming.

Or, as Ibu Ondang put it, “Salvation comes from the Jewish people.”

Pastor John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel, delivered the benediction at the ceremony opening the embassy in Jerusalem, and said that he told Trump he would win “political immortality” for the decision to move the embassy.

– by Paul Spencer Sochaczewski