Why I Am Not a Christian Zionist

March 20, 2023

By Wendall Ward

Within weeks of receiving Christ, I read completely through the pocket New Testament given to me by the Gideons at my induction into the Navy. I was so hungry for truth that I read it over and over for weeks. Shortly after, I purchased a New American Standard Bible and began to read the Bible all the way through. It was an exciting time of dramatic change in my life.

I continued to attend the Evangelical Church in which I was introduced to Christ. After I was baptized, the Pastor asked if I would spend some time with him talking about my faith. It was in those times with him that he shared 2 Timothy 2:16 with me and then introduced me to the Bible as a covenantal story of redemption.

Two years later I was in Bible College preparing for pastoral ministry. It was there that I encountered Dispensationalism and its particular viewpoint of Israel. Both felt contrived to me and not intuitive to the Scriptures that had become the primary source of authority in the development of my spiritual life and understanding of truth.

It was during my time in Bible College that I was befriended and mentored by my Church History and Philosophy professor. We spent many hours together talking of life, history, philosophy and especially covenant theology. He became a lifelong friend and mentor. After two years of Bible College, my education continued at an evangelical college and then a Baptist seminary.

It was after my formal education and through my continuing study that I began to see the Church as the fulfillment of God’s covenant people. The overall witness of the Old Testament and studies in Romans, Galatians and other New Testament texts convinced me that God’s redemptive plan was unfolding through Jesus Christ and his Church. This point of view became the lens by which I would see the physical return of Jews to Palestine.

Over the years, I have come to believe that what has transpired in Palestine since the end of World War II is not the result of a natural assimilation of Jews to a homeland. Rather, it has become a duality of exclusive Jewish self-determination and the unjust exclusion and displacement of Palestinian people groups. This destructive and evolving reality is informed and empowered by Jewish Zionism and its misguided counterpart, Christian Zionism.

In short, I am not a Christian Zionist because I find the teachings of its proponents to be counter-intuitive to the Scriptures and the covenant purposes of God in his plan of redemption.

Wendall Ward graduated from Palm Beach Atlantic College with a B.A. in Religion & Philosophy and the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity degree in Biblical Studies. He is a military veteran and an ordained Baptist minister. He served various Churches in Mississippi, Maryland and North Carolina as a Senior Pastor for 35 years until his retirement in 2017. He now resides in Plant City, Florida.