The historian Gary North asks the question (July 19, 2000):
With the President meeting this week with Prime Minister Barak of Israel and Yassir Arafat, it may be time to review a topic that is baffling for Jews, annoying to Arabs, and unavoidable for American Congressmen: the unswerving political support for the State of Israel by American fundamentalists.
Vocal support of a pro-Israel American foreign policy is basic for the leaders of American Protestant fundamentalism. This has been true ever since 1948. Pat Robertson and Rev. Jerry Falwell have been pro-Israel throughout their careers, beginning two decades before the arrival of the New Christian Right in the late 1970’s. These men are not aberrations. The Trinity Broadcasting Network is equally supportive. So are the best-selling authors who speak for, and influence heavily, Protestant fundamentalism, most notably Hal Lindsey, author of The Late Great Planet Earth (1970), and Tim LaHaye, the husband of Beverly LaHaye of Concerned Women for America, which says on its Web site that it is “the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization.” Rev. LaHaye and his co-author have each earned some $10 million in royalties for their multi-volume futuristic novel, Left Behind. They have a very large audience.
People may ask themselves, “Why this support?” Fundamentalists earlier in this century were sometimes associated with anti-Semitism. James M. Gray of the Moody Bible Institute in 1927 wrote an editorial favorable to Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent series on Jews. Gray’s editorial appeared in the Moody Bible Institute Monthly. Arno C. Gabelein, a prominent fundamentalist leader, believed that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was a legitimate document. Gabelein’s 1933 book, The Conflict of the Ages, would today be regarded as anti-Semitic.
Other fundamentalist leaders of the pre-War era, while not anti-Semitic, attempted to maintain neutrality on the issue of Hitler’s persecution of Jews. In his 1977 book, Armageddon Now!, Christian historian Dwight Wilson cites numerous examples of fundamentalist theologians in the late 1930’s who regarded Hitler’s discriminatory policies against Jews as part of God’s judgment on the Jews. He writes: “Pleas from Europe for assistance for Jewish refugees fell on deaf ears, and ‘Hands Off’ meant no helping hand. So in spite of being theologically more pro-Jewish than any other Christian group, the premillennarians also were apathetic. . . .” [pp. 96-97].
What was it that persuaded almost the entire fundamentalist movement to move from either hostility or neutrality to vocal support of Israel? No single answer will fit every case, but there is a common motivation, one not taken seriously by most people in history: getting out of life alive.
His answer is all about premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism. But this is nonsense on stilts.
He ignores the obvious, and for obvious reasons. What world-changing events occurred right then, huh?
The truth is, the reality of renewed Jewish sovereignty in the holy land forced the vast majority of Cursedians to revise their opinions (although the Scofield Bible, et al. were also harbingers of the coming changes), as explained elsewhere.