Evangelical Zionism: From the River to the Sea Palestine by Tad Delay

Sitting amid this background before a congressional hearing, Reagan’s secretary of the interior James G. Watt was asked if he would protect wildernesses for future generations. Watt replied, “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.” A normal American reaction. When I speak of the popular belief that we are living in the End Times, I hear either laughs in disbelief or, among those who grew up in that world, instant recognition. As a child, I doubt I knew many adults who didn’t believe the world was ending. But how many Americans believe there will be a future? How does that belief intersect with the climate and other crises? In 2010, Pew Research Center surveyed how many Americans believed Christ would return by 2050.[3] Forty-eight percent of Christians agreed (roughly four in ten Americans overall): Catholics (thirty-two percent), mainline Protestants (twenty-seven percent), and the religiously unaffiliated (20 percent) believed this with less frequency than white evangelicals (fifty-eight percent). Only a tenth of American Christians felt sure Christ would not return in this window. But Evangelicals are outliers. Only one in three Americans, while sixty-five percent of evangelicals, believe natural disasters are signs of the End Times.[4] Among those who expect Christ’s return, seventy-three percent of evangelicals say the world will turn against Israel as we approach the rapture, and seventy-nine percent say violence in the Middle East signals the end (compared to forty-three percent of non-evangelical Christians).[5] While Americans are more than twice as likely as the global average to believe the end of the world is near, white evangelicals are nearly twice as likely as the average American: two-thirds of white evangelicals believe the end is near.

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