Book Review

Jerusalem Countdown:  A Warning to the World.  By John Hagee.  Lake Mary, FL:  FrontLine, 2006, vii+225 pp., $14.99.

              When one accepts the task of writing a book review written by a major religious personality who holds sway over many Christians (including Baptists) who watch his television program, one approaches the responsibility with large doses of trepidation.  Trepidation, because of the fact that regardless of what one writes in the review, whether positive or negative, opposition will come from individuals who will take offense with the outcome.  Therefore, I approach the task of writing a review of Jerusalem Countdown by John Hagee, pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, with a degree of hesitancy but also with an awareness that a response is both warranted and needed.

              Hagee is an avid supporter of Israel and probably welcomes the label of Christian Zionist.  His televised sermons are filled with such apocalyptic warnings that one senses Hagee believes the end of the world is just around the corner.  Hagee is also actively involved in working to bring Russian Jews to the land of promise (Israel) and works with Jewish rabbis in the establishment of schools in Eretz Israel.  (For more information on Hagee’s involvement with non-Messianic institutions, visit his church’s website or watch his television program.)

              Jerusalem Countdown, therefore, utilizes the growing presence of Iran and its desire for nuclear capability as the premise for calling the Christian Church to become more actively involved in supporting the right of the nation of Modern Israel to exist.  The first eleven chapters of the book focus on the present world situation from a political and historical perspective.  As an individual with a history degree and herself an ardent supporter of Israel’s claim to the land as promised in Genesis 12, 15, 17, his historical analysis is somewhat accurate if sometimes overly simplistic.  He often chooses the sensationalist route as opposed to a serious examination of the issue of Christian anti-Semitism over the last 1,900+ years.  For example, he simplifies the anti-Semitic ramblings of Martin Luther and overlooks Luther’s earlier attempts to create a stable life for the Jewish people of Germany (p. 77-78).  He also fails to note that a large majority of “Righteous Gentiles” from the Holocaust era (see David Gushee’s Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust) were evangelical and mission-minded in nature and instead focuses on the non-Protestant individuals who were often guilty of aiding and abetting the Nazi cause (p. 78-81).  His scholarship on the separation of the Christian Church from its Jewish roots is also misplaced and should not be placed during the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 but during the Bar Kokhba rebellion in AD 135 (p. 68-69).  Please note that this challenge to Hagee’s understanding of Christian history is not an attempt to overlook the damaging effects of Christian anti-Semitism.  Christians must acknowledge and seek repentance of our anti-Jewish past.  The question, which will be discussed in the remainder of this review, is whether Hagee’s historical and theological approach is the right path to take.

              Many readers will devour the first 124 pages of Jerusalem Countdown and then struggle to finish the remaining seven chapters as Hagee changes gears from a fairly readable historical and political thriller to a theological exercise that includes a highly questionable exegesis of Romans 9-11.  For while the first three sections of Jerusalem Countdown had its questionable but entertaining moments, the final section of Hagee’s work is filled with contradictions, suspect theological suppositions, and outright stretches of basic hermeneutical principles.  This last problem especially is interesting in light of the fact that Hagee often refers to the first rule of hermeneutics to support his case – always interpret Scripture with Scripture.  He attempts to do so but often at the expense of the overall context of the text.

              The problems begin in Hagee’s final section when he infers that the “remnant” mentioned in Romans 11:5 possibly should refer to Holocaust survivors (p. 125, 157).  The emotional and spiritual conundrum associated with the issue of Christianity’s role or apathetic response towards the Holocaust is a guilt that will stain the family of God forever.  However, it is at best inadvisable and at worst pandering to follow Hagee’s lead and slyly assert that the remnant of Romans 11:5 refers to not only Holocaust survivors but to all Jewish people alive today.  One should not be surprised by this inference because John Hagee has long walked the tightrope of an Evangelical who also appears to follow the theology of dual covenantalism – the concept that Gentiles are saved by the blood of Jesus while the Law of Moses redeems the Jewish people.  Hagee often attempts to refute the claim of dual covenantalist but the words in Jerusalem Countdown (p. 168, 183, 186, 192) and elsewhere contradict his claims.  Visit the Christian Research Institute article on John Hagee at www.equip.org/free/DH005.htm and the March 20, 2006, online article, “Most Evangelicals Are Seeing the Error of Replacement Theology” at Jerusalem Post Online for additional proof of Hagee’s dual covenantal leanings.

              An additional problem in Hagee’s theology is his attempt to prove that Romans 9-11 is a “stand-alone document” (p. 126).  This statement was one of the arguments used by many replacement theologians who believed that the Christian Church had replaced Israel as God’s Chosen People.  For Hagee to use the same argument illustrates one of the basic weaknesses of Hagee’s theological position – he “picks and chooses” theological premises based not upon the facts of the case but on his presuppositions (p. 126-28).  This approach of selective selection is found throughout section 4 of Jerusalem Countdown.  For example, Hagee notes Paul’s lament and willingness for personal separation from Christ in Romans 9:1-3 (p. 129, 163) but chooses to ignore the true context of the passage – the fact that Paul’s lament was based upon the Jewish people’s rejection of the Messiahship of Jesus.

              Additional problems can be noted in the theological section of Jerusalem Countdown including his inference that the repentance of sins on Yom Kippur is sufficient for salvation (p. 129), his mind-bending attempt to prove that the Jewish people are God’s children and therefore “saved” because they are from the physical seed of Abraham and Sarah (p. 144), and his assertion that while Gentiles are saved by propagation, Jewish people are saved by “divine revelation” (p. 174-75).  Despite the fact that this review has selected only three of the most obvious examples that are contrary to the testimony of Jesus himself (John 14:6), they are still not the most obvious example of inaccurate theology and exegesis.  This dubious distinction belongs to Hagee’s attempt to find both Calvinism and Arminianism in the same passages when he states that “divine election is offered only to the nation of Israel” (p. 145).  One does not have to be Calvinistic in leaning to recognize that, to borrow the old cliché, Hagee is attempting to have his cake and eat it as well.  The entire section on his argument for unique divine election (p. 144-152, 155) is filled with premises that are indefensible not only by Scripture but also indicate a lack of understanding regarding the views of both Calvinism and Arminianism.

              A myriad of problems exist in Hagee’s Jerusalem Countdown, problems that are impossible to ignore.  Hagee can be credited as a staunch defender of Israel and the Jewish people.  However, his defense of the Jewish people while denying that the Gospel message is first and foremost for the Jewish people (Rom. 1:16) cannot be defended or reconciled.  I would encourage Pastor Hagee, who is privileged to have a large church and a vast television audience, to continue in his defense of God’s Chosen Ones but to remember the words of Peter before the Sanhedrin – “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).