(1) The Covenant. God's covenant with Israel is eternal and unconditional. Therefore the promises of land given to Abraham will never be overturned. This means that the church has not replaced Israel and that Israel's privileges have never been revoked despite unfaithfulness.

(2) The Church. God's plan has always been for the redemption of Israel. Yet when Israel failed to follow Jesus, the church was born as an afterthought or "parenthesis." Thus at the rapture the church will be removed and Israel will once again become God's primary agent in the world. We now live in 'the times of the Gentiles' which will conclude soon. This means that there are two covenants now at work, that given through Moses and the covenant of Christ. But the new covenant in no way makes the older covenant obsolete.

(3) Blessing Modern Israel. We must take Gen. 12:3 literally and apply it to modern Israel: "I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you." Therefore Christians have a spiritual obligation to bless Israel and "pray for the peace of Jerusalem." To fail to bless Israel, to fail to support Israel's political survival today, will incur divine judgment.

(4) Prophesy. The prophetic books of the Bible are describing events of today and do not principally refer to events in Biblical times. Therefore when we look at, say, Daniel 7, if we possess the right interpretative skills, we can see how modern history is unfolding. This quest for prophesy has spawned countless books interpreting Middle East history through the Bible.

(5) Modern Israel and Eschatology. The modern state of Israel is a catalyst for the prophetic countdown. If these are the last days, then we should expect an unraveling of civilization, the rise of evil, the loss of international peace and equilibrium, a coming antichrist, and tests of faithfulness to Israel. Above all, political alignments today will determine our position on the fateful day of Armageddon. Since the crisis of 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has been easy to persuade the public that history is unraveling precisely as dispensationalism predicted.

It would not be difficult to offer fatal criticisms of this theological framework. Many biblical scholars have already done so. For instance, the covenant's promises are conditional and their blessings are revoked when there is faithlessness. The Babylonian exile is the best example of this. But in addition the New Testament is making a stunning claim about genuine continuity between the covenants, that Christians are the children of Abraham and heirs of his promises.

But the most important critique - and here I think we discover the Achilles' heel - is that Christian Zionism is committed to what I term a "territorial religion." It assumes that God's interests are focused on a land, a locale, a place. From a NT perspective, the land is holy by reference to what transpired there in history. But it no longer has an intrinsic part to play in God's program for the world. This is what Stephen pointed to in his speech in Acts 7. The land and the temple are now secondary. God's wishes to reveal himself to the entire world. And this insight cost Stephen his life. Such an understanding is a far cry from the views of Christian Zionists like Ed McAteer who recently commented, "Every grain of sand, every grain of sand between the Dead Sea, the Jordan River, and the Mediterranean Sea belongs to the Jews." Stephen would be alarmed.