Anxious for Armageddon: A Call to Partnership for Middle Eastern and Western Christians

By Donald E. Wagner. Herald Press (Scottdale, PA), 1995, 253 pp. List: $12.95; AET: $8.95.

Reviewed by Rev. L. Humphrey Walz

Anyone who knew the Rev. Dr. Donald Wagner only in his youth or early professional life will be startled to read in Anxious for Armageddon his account of the 180-degree turn in his outlook and career. Readers like the writer of this review, who have known him over the past 15 years as a tireless and dedicated champion of Palestinian rights in the framework of a lasting and honorable Middle East peace, will be equally startled to learn that he once was a committed Christian Zionist.

In this new book, he describes the dramatic course of his transformation. In it he also shares first-hand insights he has gained in the course of his subsequent work as national director (1980-90) of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign and then director of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding.

It was on a sweltering July evening in 1950 that Wagner heard his first confusing references to the Middle East and its role in the future of Christianity and the world. Then aged eight, he had accompanied his grandparents to a revival service in a rural upstate New York church. There he heard a persuasively emotional sermon on "Hell and The Latter Days," the core of which he relates in this abridged excerpt from his book:

"'We have entered the final days of history,' the evangelist proclaimed. 'There is a terrible, bloody battle about to be waged, far worse than anything we witnessed in World War II. The Bible predicts this war will be fought at Armageddon and will involve the nation Israel against forces from the north, probably Russia. There has never been a war as terrible as the one we are about to witness. Nation will fight nation, and brother will battle brother.

"'How do we know this?' he asked. 'Because everything is happening just as the prophets of the Old Testament predicted. When God's people, Israel, return to the Holy Land to establish their own state, everything will be in order for the countdown to the end of history. The Bible says that when this occurs, the final battle will be close at hand. Just two years ago, after centuries of statelessness, the Jewish people miraculously created their nation. What an amazing opportunity! God has chosen to begin this prophetic countdown in our lifetime.

"'But the Bible warns us that Jesus will return before this terrible battle takes place. He will take His own from the earth. They will be spared this awful final battle, and you can be among them if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior...Are you ready tonight to meet Jesus if He returns? If you have not accepted Him as your Lord and Savior, if you have not repented of your sins, you could be left behind to perish in the final battle.'"

It was this preaching, with its promises and fears, that precipitated young Don's decision for Christ, which he has never regretted. But it was his family—pre-eminently, at the time, his grandparents—whose character, spirit and Bible-centered prayer life defined for him who Christ was and what the moral-spiritual-ethical standards were that Christians should follow.

Later, in college and theological seminary, he learned the deficiencies in such forms of apocalyptic fundamentalism. He ceased his unquestioning acceptance of the misuse of selected Biblical passages to confirm preconceived ideas of future events. He came, instead, to seek scriptural guidance by studying the circumstances that brought particular passages into being. As he matured, it was their ancient calls for compassion and justice that reached out across the ages to sharpen his social conscience.

This deeper understanding, however, did not at first undermine his Zionism, but only gave it a new context and rationale. A visit to Auschwitz confirmed his belief that Elie Wiesel and Richard Rubenstein had been right in insisting that "Jews should never again trust others with their fate and must have a state of their own." Unwaveringly, he supported the cause of Jewish immigration into Palestine without thinking of those displaced. It was other circumstances that were to bring about his complete turnabout.

His first two parishes—one inner-city and one affluent white suburban—did not confront him with this particular theme. They did, nonetheless, engage him in many a dialogue in which participants could air conflicting views on other controversial issues without inhibition and in a spirit that could clear the way for cooperative remedial action. This was to have lasting value.

His third pastoral assignment was to the staff of the large and influential First Presbyterian Church of Evanston on the north fringe of Chicago. It began during the 1973 October War, when Egyptian and Syrian armies launched their attack to force Israel to relinquish its occupation of Egypt's Sinai and Syria's Golan Heights. The emergency U.S. airlift of $2 billion in military hardware to enable Israel to maintain its hold on the occupied territories had led oil-producing Arab states to embargo the sale of their products to America. Angry motorists were lining up at gas stations across the United States.

A parish committee in Don's orbit of responsibility felt that these circumstances called for a weekly series of talks on the Middle East. One committee member who had worked among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees uprooted by Israeli forces between 1947 and 1949 suggested including Arab speakers in the programs. Don—unaware of the plight and numbers of those refugees—pressed instead for representatives of Israel's "Chosen People." A format of alternating Arab and Israeli speakers was adopted.

Don selected Israeli Consul General Shaul Ramati, who delivered a superb opening lecture presenting Israel's perspective on the "Yom Kippur War." The second slated speaker was a Palestinian political science professor, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod from nearby Northwestern University, whose family had been expelled from their Jaffa home by Israeli troops in 1948. This, too, was very moving and the series began attracting standing-room-only attendance. After the fourth talk, Wagner received an anonymous phone call stating that the lecture series was "offensive to the Jewish community" and, if it continued, "we will have no choice but to picket your church next Sunday."

The course was not cancelled. The pickets did not show up. Don, however, had had his first eye-opening encounter with Zionist threats against holders of any but their own opinions on human rights in the Holy Land. He was to have many more such experiences as his friendships with Lebanese, Palestinian and other Christian and Muslim Arabs expanded. Becoming a member, and then the chair, of what evolved into the Chicago Presbytery's Middle East Task Force added to his preparation for the activities for which he now is best known. It led to his decision to shape his entire career in the framework of the Middle East's needs for informed American Christian support.

His book records subsequent experiences that enabled him to take the pulse and heartbeat of many Arabs, especially Palestinians. Reverend Wagner's most shattering experience was in Beirut in June 1982, when, in the course of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, American-made Israeli aircraft dropped their bombs and fired their missiles into that city's virtually undefended neighborhoods and refugee camps. He witnessed courageous responses to the ensuing death, destruction and anguish.

On his return home he went to Washington to describe to Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams the ghastly damage resulting from Israel's illegal use of U.S. military equipment, which had been supplied to Israel for defensive purposes only. "Abrams categorically rejected any connection between U.S. law and Israel's actions and stated he was not interested," reports Wagner. Another early disillusionment resulted from a State Department restriction placed on participation by the Palestine Liberation Organization's U.N. representative, Zuhdi Tarazi, in the May 1979 Christian Conference on the Palestine Question in La Grange, Illinois. The State Department permitted Tarazi, an Orthodox Christian, to attend, but only on condition that he not address the assembly.

In 1988, Don Wagner spent several months in Cyprus, from where the Protestant-Orthodox-Roman Catholic Middle East Council of Churches operates, and made repeated trips to the mainland. All this increased his first-hand knowledge of, among other things, the contrast between U.S. media accounts and the realities of the Palestinian intifada against the Israeli military occupation. It also enabled him to see how some Christian Zionists were persisting in their collaboration with the Israeli powers that be—even when those powers were unleashed with seeming special vehemence against the indigenous Christian community in the Holy Land.

When Israel celebrated its 40th anniversary in 1988, he was in Jerusalem. There the self-styled "International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem" (ICEJ)—which was closely linked with Israel's Likud government—was hosting a conclave with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir as its keynoter. Knowing only that the British Museum had allowed Wagner extensive access to its well-guarded collection of 16th century documents to research the roots of Christian Zionism—and unaware of their documentation of the dismal record of successively failed "end times" prophecies—an ICEJ spokesman invited Wagner to speak at the program. Don declined, but he attended and watched some 700 white-haired Americans, Europeans and South Africans (not the projected 7,000) shouting, "Praise the Lord," as they applauded Shamir's denunciation of the intifada as a "force of evil" and "a continuation of the Arab war against the Jewish people." What more up-to-date evidence could they want about how close was the impending Armageddon from which they, as true believers, would be excitingly rescued? The question of where Shamir and his non-Christian compatriots would wind up according to their interpretations of these same prophecies seemed not to trouble them.

Wagner's many other experiences and his unusual research give the reader fresh perspectives on modern history and current events. They also spur Christian Palestinians and Americans to strive to keep alive and meaningful the world's oldest Christian community, dating from the Book of Acts. The determination with which their Israeli rulers are pressing Palestinians to emigrate is reducing the Palestinian Christian community to an endangered shadow of its former robust condition. American Christian tourists who now arrive to "walk today where Jesus walked" are not introduced by their Israeli or Christian Zionist guides and tour leaders to the Christian remnant struggling to bear corporate witness to their faith in the land where it began. Such Christian pilgrims especially need Wagner's corrective and supplementary facts.

His work and this book are aimed primarily at bringing Palestinian and American Christians together in a way that can promote Christian cohesion and a greater degree of stability in the area. Among the many Palestinians to cheer his endeavors is Father Elias Chacour (whose books are available through the AET Book Club)of Galilee. In his foreword the renowned Arab Melchite (Roman Catholic) priest writes:

"It is very late but not yet too late to decry what has happened in Israel. The Palestinians are still alive, the Israeli Jews are still uncomfortable with their militarism, and movements toward peace are being made. Who will join Rev. Don Wagner in awakening blind political leaders and one-sided supporters to the urgency of pursuing justice and integrity, so that all can enjoy peace and security?"

The Rev. L. Humphrey Walz, D.D., retired Associate Executive of the Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast, is active in denominational and ecumenical peacemaking activities.