By Stan Goodenough
Nov 30, 2006
A growing number of Jews are wondering how trustworthy Christians are who say they love Israel but embrace a teaching that sees the Church heading for glory while the Jews head for another holocaust.
Israel's biggest circulation daily, Yediot Ahronot, Thursday ran a report on its Ynetnews website about the release of a hot new computer game based on a runaway American best-seller prophecy novel.
Described as extremely impressive graphically, and consequently a guaranteed hot sell, "Left Behind - Eternal Forces" pushes the same eschatological line as the books, which see all the world's Christians taken into heaven while the Jews are left on earth to go through "the Great Tribulation"? or "time of Jacobs trouble."?
This period of intense persecution culminates in the destruction of two-thirds of the world's Jews, while the surviving one-third convert to Christianity and are saved.
More than 75 percent of pro-Israel American Christians are believed to subscribe to this interpretation of how our age will end.
"Where do we fit into all this? asks Ynetnews reporter Noam Reshef. Is it "good for the Jews?"
"Jews and Israelis will find the series' plotline extremely troubling, to say the least."?
"Left Behind,"? he concludes, "supports Israel but portrays Judaism as a mistaken religion."
Reshef's report is just the latest in a series of articles that have appeared in recent years as interested, curious, suspicious and concerned Jews have sought to understand the beliefs and motives of the evangelical Christian community which is increasingly viewed as Israel's last and only ally in the world.